On 20/09/2007, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: Someone brought up 'the good of the project', and the project could be sued in the United Kingdom if it fails to adhere to their defamation law. Ethically, of course, you are right - the United Kingdom does not define morality, though they may make good moral arguments. E.g. that pointing at an attack or whatever extends it, failure to remove something upon request means you are no longer an innocent disseminater, etc. Who says attacks are made maliciously? One person's attack is another person's fight for justice (or something perceived as good). A lot of the attackers have been attacked too....

On 20/09/2007, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: Not all countries will let you sue in their country even if neither the defendant nor the plaintiff is a resident. There was a case where Australia let an Australian sue a foreigner in Australia, so Australian defamation law may be relevant when writing about Australian subjects. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56793,00.html You do that, I'm not a Wikipaedian. However, I do not see how anything defamatory under British law would ever make a good encyclopaedia. An encyclopaedia should be an outside observer of the world, not an active participant in it, and should especially avoid having a negative effect on individuals. If anything, Wikiapedia's BLP standards should be much stricter than British defamation law. Well, remembering that all people have flaws, a number of people on WR seem quite nice. Still, WR has attacks which should not be linked to. Removal of links should be done to protect people, not to punish WR. You can't stop people from making attacks. Wikipaedia can create a supportive environment where they are not so rampant, but they will still happen sometimes, because the life is pain and people get upset. The opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is indifference. Coolness may be perceived as insensitivity. People are in pain.... Transience would be good. A fight between my friends and I, whatever the cause, generally ends in hugs and is forgotten in a day or a week. Leaving the material on-wiki for all eternity solidifies the attack, preventing recovery. Remove it and forget. : )

Okay. I'm not a lawyer so I'll take your word for it, for the moment at least. However, is it even worth worrying about in the case of only marginally notable subjects? For example, subjects who have been mentioned in newspapers, but do not have biographies about them written in any major reliable source, such as Britannica? (Or random Wikipaedians not mentioned by *any* reliable source....) If a subject who has not have a full biography on him or her in any major reliable sources wishes to not have a biography on Wikipaedia, why not delete it? On 21/09/2007, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 21/09/2007, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: Worse, kicking up such a big fuss about such attacks draws attention to them.

On 21/09/2007, Armed Blowfish <diodontida.armata(a)googlemail.com> wrote: Because that's certainly been an effective approach so far. Oh, wait. - d.

On 21/09/2007, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes! Discretion would indicate that private or otherwise sensitive matters should not be discussed publicly. If people do not get that, they should be censored. Of course, in order to not make them feel like they have to discuss it publicly in order to be noticed, it should be discussed privately. In theory, no, it shouldn't. Just tell the person their comment was hurting someone, and either offer to explain why (privately) or tell them its a delicate matter just take your word for it (not preferred, but I can see how it would be necessary in some situations). In actuality, if comment is removed with an edit summary like 'remove personal attack', the person whose comment is removed may also feel attacked. Hence, the edit summary should read 'remove hurtful comment, email if you want to know why it is hurtful' or something.

Armed Blowfish wrote: We are an open community. It would be great if we could discuss things in private, but the only shared discussion is unfortunately a public one. This is a core aspect of Wikipedia. There is such public objection to your approach precisely because is undermines that core. I'm not denying any of that. However, the notion that we should suppress information because some people might end up with an opinion not officially sanctioned is antithetical to the spirit of Wikipedia. More importantly, it doesn't work. Going into the JFK article and removing all mention of conspiracy theories because they are bunk will not, in the long term, reduce their popularity or longevity. Sure, some people will not hear about them, so they will have the "right" opinion. But you'll make the conspiracy nuts more adamant, as you have just proved the conspiracy is even bigger than they thought. Further, attempts to suppress information has counterintuitive effects. A publisher loves it when a book is banned by somebody, as it dramatically increases sales. People will rate a banned product as better in every way than similar people to whom it is freely available. Jurors can place more weight on a fact that they've been ordered to ignore, not less. And people prevented from hearing one side of an argument will favor that side more, not less, when they learn about the ban. [1] And, as David Gerard points out, this has been amply borne out in our context as well. As well-meaning as the attempts to suppress information have been, they have achieved precisely the opposite of their goal. The pains you mention are real, and worth weighing. But the solution you propose hasn't worked and will continue not to work. Trying harder to make it work will harm both the people you are trying to help and Wikipedia as a whole. William [1] See Robert Cialdini's "Influence", Ch 7, "Scarcity" and the studies he references there for pretty much everything in this paragraph. -- William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri

Armed Blowfish wrote: Yes, I think we all get that now, thanks. Going from the assumption that you are actually asking and not using my comment just for a rhetorical launch pad into something that's clearly a big issue for you, I'll answer: When I said "we" I referred to the Wikipedia community. I am going to grit my teeth here again and assume that you are not willfully misunderstanding my point. However, I do think that you are repeatedly misunderstanding it to the extent that I suspect explaining it again won't help. From my side, it feels like you are picking out minor parts of what I've written, arguing with those bits, and ignoring the meat of what I'm saying I know this is an emotional topic for you, apparently based on deep personal trauma, so perhaps I'm expecting too much in the way of reasoned discussion. If so, sorry; we can pass on to some other topic. Regardless, let me try one last time: Nobody reasonable is advocating for unrestricted on-Wiki gossip. Nobody is requesting unlimited power to dig through somebody's personal life when it has no bearing on on-Wiki behavior or Wikipedia's governance. What I am saying is that when concerns are raised about things that could affect Wikipedia's quality or reputation, Wikipedians should be able to look into those concerns. If that leads them to information published elsewhere on the Internet, even information some would rather keep quiet, we should generally trust them to handle that information wisely. If that leads them to people being jerks in ways that we wouldn't accept on Wikipedia, we should trust our colleagues to recognize the jerkiness. And to aid Wikipedians in coming to the right conclusions, we should let them discuss the issues as much as they need to. When specific people fail to handle that power responsibly, we should deal with them in the ways we already deal with malice and foolishness. Yes, people will get things wrong sometimes. Usually, they will get it right. Right or wrong, their opinions will make people sad sometimes. I regret that, but believe the alternatives on offer are much more harmful. Again, I feel like this is so tangential as to miss the point, but I'll play along for a bit more. Under the US Constitution, they have every right. And you have the right to carry on judging them for judging. The notion is that over time, the truth wins out. And that letting the truth win out is more important than preventing bad feelings in the meantime. Take a look at this guy: http://cbs5.com/video/?id=26888@kpix.dayport.com Did he change his judging of homosexuals because a committee somewhere ordered him to? Or because people with power suppressed mention of the views that he previously held? I don't think so. I think he's verging on tears because an honest examination of things led him to a powerful truth. Yes, but again you miss my point. Or at least appear to ignore it, using a snippet to jump to something else. I find that very frustrating. However, to address your point, old notions of public and private are changing. Their used to be a wide separation, depending mainly on your access to an expensive communications device like a four-color printing press or a TV transmitter. But the Internet has changed that. For $50 a month, you can have global distribution of your ideas. For a little more, you can do it with sound and video. The narrowing cost gap means a narrowed gap between public and private. And that gap will continue to narrow and blur as the technology gets cheaper. [1] Wikipedia is an open project building the world's most read factual source. The notion that one could play an important public role in that and not thereby become an object of discussion is not just wrong, it's absurd. Wikipedia is essentially and inescapably a public endeavor. Electing to participate is putting oneself in the public sphere. No, this is not a license to gossip endlessly. No, this does not excuse people being jerks. However, most-read factual source or not, our powers are limited. We cannot end gossip or jerkiness. The best we can do is to discourage those things on-wiki, and allow honest investigation of legitimate complaints, so that Wikipedians can judge for themselves what has merit and what does't. William [1] See Brin's "The Transparent Society" for a detailed look at this.

On 21/09/2007, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: If you ask ED to remove something, they will attack you even more. Where do you think they learnt that from?

On 21/09/2007, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Interesting. Did WP also learn this from 4chan?

On 21/09/2007, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Well, apparently bringing the Gunston Hall article up from a stub to a Good Article was an egregious violation of WP policy, so now I am advocating being nicer to banned users and other people and strengthening BLP in general.

On 21/09/2007, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Except Wikipaedia does attack people for even asking for content to be removed, because Wikipaedia seems to think it has the right to discuss everything, including the private lives of individuals connected to Wikipaedia.

On 21/09/2007, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: The OTRS people are quite nice. Unfortunately, OTRS is not a badge, and the community sometimes fights them tooth and nail.

On 21/09/2007, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Or perhaps the community is cruel. Saying no is one thing. Attacking someone for even asking, threatening to file an AN/I against the person if he or she ever asks for any more page blankings and deletions, and drawing attention to the part of the material that outed the person is another matter entirely. If you then proceed to email WR to ask them to remove the material on their website that draws attention to the blankings, the attacks, and the outing, they will kindly do so, send you a sympathetic email in return and you won't hear anything more from them on the subject.

On 21/09/2007, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: 'I'm in pain, please make it better.' 'How dare you even ask! Tell us all about your pain!' Privately, to the OTRS member, who blanks the material, only for there to be an outcry from the WP community.