On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Andrew Turvey <
andrewrturvey(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
As you mentioned, oversight wasn't necessary in
this case. However, it's
not inconceivable that another case where oversight is used might also be
"temporarily sensitive". Perhaps, for instance, if it has been used in a
suspected harassment that turns out to be something else.
In that case, it might make sense for the "book policy" to allow
disclosure (or even reversal) of the oversight in these cases.
Its very rare - almost all uses of oversight/suppression are material that
isn't time dependent. In the few exception cases commonsense applies. In
this case the focus is known and the event that it's hanging on is a
publicly known one. In such a circumstance there may be a possibility. But
suppose during the incident someone had posted some personal information,
defamation, possibly defamatory accusation about the subject or someone
involved..... I would then have had to say "sorry, I wont be answering that"
and you would not have had a way to know if there was no issue, material
relevant to the incident, or completely irrelevant material just happened to
be posted to that page.
Unfortunately the problem is that a promise to disclose in some cases
implies that conclusions will be read into others. That's got to be a no-no,
however much one might wish otherwise. I hope you can understand that; there
doesn't seem to be an easy way around it that ensures the system won't get
gamed, except trust, commonsense, and understanding of the reasons behind
it.
I'm sorry. I can't see a way round it that protects privacy, if there is a
norm that disclosure will be given in some cases but not others. if that
were a norm, it could too easily be used for probing if there were some
privacy issue or harassment case or whatever - and some people would ask
because they wanted to know or wanted to "uncover" stuff, not realizing it
is for a good reason, and some real live person might be affected who these
policies are precisely there to prevent being harmed in these serious ways.
If you want to discuss it, a thread on Meta would be the way.
But whatever was decided, there will always be some matters where it just
won't work, and I think that's just got to be accepted. It's why oversight
exists in the first place.
FT2