On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 4:55 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: What was that underlying principle which was codified after the Brian Peppers deletion debates? Ah yes, 'basic human dignity', now to be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Basic_dignity. This case is more about basic common sense. If someone's life may be endangered by what is on their wikipedia biography but is not widely reported elsewhere, I would expect that anyone sensible would find some way of applying policy so as to keep the life-endangering stuff off it. And that would take precedence over secondary arguments over whether obscure news agencies were reliable. -- Sam Blacketer

2009/6/29 geni <geniice(a)gmail.com>om>: There is no evidence this has ever stopped anyone on Wikipedia from doing so. - d.

Sam Blacketer wrote: Well, no. This case is about whether an editor at (in this case) The New York Times can successfully collude with editors of other major media outlets, for the best of reasons, to keep a certain fact out of the media for N months. And can this still be done when one of the other media outlets has 1,000,000 cats as editors, who actively resist herding, and especially when someone's trying to suppress some information that "wants to be free".

2009/6/29 Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net>et>: The government of Iran has made it fairly clear that further protests carry the risks of further deaths. It's also fairly clear that the protests in part at least are aimed at gaining western media coverage. If they fail at that they are likely to stop more quickly. Should we remove our content on the Iranian elections? After all lives are at stake. -- geni

On Mon, 29 Jun 2009, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: Besides, if someone's life would actually be endangered by the information, it should be taken out under IAR. It should *not* be taken out by abusing the rules to take it out. That's why we have IAR in the first place. If you do it by abusing the rules, you undermine the trust that people have placed in the system.

While I cannot speak for the New York Times, Canadian media have acted in the same way to protect members of NGOs who have been kidnapped. Perhaps a more pertinent question is why this particular reporter's kidnapping was more newsworthy than the majority of kidnappings that occur in the area. Risker 2009/6/29 David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com>

2009/6/29 Sam Blacketer <sam.blacketer(a)googlemail.com>om>: Do you know it was an embargo and not simply that they didn't have the information?

2009/6/29 Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>om>: I don't think it's necessarily that people abhor compromise, it's that we have no way to privately discuss these things and nobody that can really impose a decision without discussion.

I might have an interesting side note here. Sorry if this is a bit out of context. I have a source in a certain "other government agency," who knows about a certain unnamed individual in Pakistan whom *we are going to bomb straight into wherever terrorists go when they get bombed. Through my source, I know much of the intel. I thus have considered publishing it in certain semi-reputable news sources (I was certain the New York Times was in this category, but apparently they think they aren't). Anyway, I'm finishing up an indymedia piece right now - with anonymous sources and everything. That in turn is going to be the basis for the Wikipedia article on the impending killing, which I will publish no sooner than 2.2 minutes after I publish the news story. The names are different, so there's no conflict of interest. The question though is, should I publish it? I mean, there's the higher principle of "killing the bad guy" and all, and that's really what's interesting about the story. Otherwise who cares? But the fact is that by publishing, I just might save Mohammed Aziz Yousef Abdul Mohamed Ali Ben Gaba's live with this story, and I guess that's what's messing with me. I guess its kind of the same scenario in reverse, I suppose. -Stevertigo On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:

2009/6/29 Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net>et>: Content decisions are not made by ArbCom, functionaries or Jimbo. The community aren't going to be keen on orders from on high that we're not allowed to question or get an explanation for.

---- "Thomas Dalton" <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Office actions are taken over content all the time. A.

We simply can't let that happen. Their reputation must somehow be factored into decision making. Fred

But explain how naming them would have endangered them any further than they already were.? How is their name a bargaining chip or whatever the logic is. -----Original Message----- From: Sam Blacketer <sam.blacketer(a)googlemail.com> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Mon, Jun 29, 2009 1:15 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] News agencies are not RSs On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 8:42 PM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote: There's a two-year-old ongoing kidnapping in Iraq involving five Britons - a consultant and four security guards. The consultant was named immediately but the security guards were not; eventually their first names only were released*. That embargo has held through the British media and no foreign media has broken it either. There is much more of a culture in Britain whereby voluntary media embargoes are held to (think Prince Harry in Afghanistan, for example). There are definitely circumstances where, although the law should not be used, it is still in everyone's interests if certain details are not reported. In the abstract the press doesn't report things simply for the pleasure of seeing them reported, but because they are important and it is in the public interest that they should be known. An encyclopaedia isn't in the exact same position but it is close enough. * Two of the security guards died during their captivity; when their bodies were repatriated last week their full names were released. It became possible to check and neither had been mentioned in any British publication. -- Sam Blacketer _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Explain first how you know that the kidnappers don't already know who they've captured when they've captured them.? Every person carries identity papers and as a side-note, I would expect they would have targeted a person *just because* they were famous for some reason. Do you understand why having a famous person captive, and being part of the 24 hour news cycle, is different from having a low-profile prisoner whom no one knows is in captivity? If so, then you'll agree that transforming the latter into the former is not necessarily a good idea? -----Original Message----- From: Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Mon, Jun 29, 2009 1:38 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] News agencies are not RSs On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 4:33 PM, <wjhonson(a)aol.com> wrote: Do you understand why having a famous person captive, and being part of the 24 hour news cycle, is different from having a low-profile prisoner whom no one knows is in captivity? If so, then you'll agree that transforming the latter into the former is not necessarily a good idea? Nathan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On Mon, 29 Jun 2009, Risker wrote: I already posted this, but... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/washington/web22ksmnote.html?_r=1

Four thoughts: 1) Geni's question about Pajhwok Afghan News is valid. But also Al Jazeera,* Adnkronos, Little Green Footballs, *The Jawa Report* and *Dan Cleary, Political Insomniac*, also apparently qualify as "unreliable sources." Or "temporarily unreliable sources," if that's the preffered term. A cynic though might say the rationale looks something like: 'if its a third string newspaper from a smelly third-world country, or else the largest Arab world-based news agency, then "its [temporarily] not a reliable source."' What is interesting though - in Western newspaper terminology, when a newspaper first breaks a story it is called a "scoop." They sometimes hand out prizes for "scoops." The kind of which Rohde himself won. Maybe if Pajhwok Afghan News got a Pulitzer out of this ordeal, for doing actual journalism, then our hundred year old concept of journalistic integrity might be validated. 2) The idea that media attention would raise someone's ransom value is also a bit tendentious and the subjectives involved make it.. subjective. Did Rohde's Pulitzer factor into it? Obviously his New York Times status was an issue: Would a Vanity Fair reporter get the same treatment or consideration? 3) Its conceivable that if Rohde was of some unpleasant design, then his bosses might not have not bothered with the embargo. The "young white [fe] male" dimension might have relevance. Thus the story is also about how their personal love for one of their valued own helped to temporarily redefine the journalistic priorities of news organizations around the world. Wikipedia's participation was likewise not based in vague concepts like professionalism or "reliable sources," but out of love for a fellow accomplished and respected person from the English-speaking world. Accomplished people everywhere should now feel safe that as they - out of professional interest in human destruction - wander into dusty, hostile, and foreign lands, their stories will be tweaked a little bit. I do understand though that if I sent someone to Mordor - to bring back profitable reportage or whatever - I myself might pull some strings to get them back too. I might even shoot at Al Jazeera.* Anyway, apparently now NYT and Wired owe Wikipedia one each. 2) Found this on the Rohde talk page: "Okay, [?] now blackout every kidnapping. I suggest [we also censor] articles about drugs, [as] that will probably save lives too. - 89.61... " 89 makes an interesting point. There are other things that kill people and we write about them as if they are just another thing. Most of the paraphilias qualify - much of that category is just plain destruction and death. Other concepts effectively promote destructive behaviours, and there are notions that basically reduce to 'criminalistic inconsequentialism' ("perfect crime" etc.). -Stevertigo

David Goodman wrote: That may be the case; but saying that acting to prevent harm makes one a censor is not a valid deduction from that, but a trite fallacy. The truth of the matter is that the policy on BLP involves us in casuistry, in the technical sense. Your first comment illustrates that point. Charles

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 11:55 AM, geni<geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Even if we think *they* were not a RS (which of course they are), there were still other sources: "Word came close to leaking widely last month when Rohde won his second Pulitzer Prize, as part of the Times team effort for coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Italian news agency Adnkronos International did spill the beans, reportedly spurring a number of blogs into action." http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25673247-2703,00.html -- gwern

"OTRS actions" (for lack of a better term) should always stand on their own merits. OTRS volunteers have no special authority to do anything that a regular administrator doesn't have. Thus, we do not make actions "per OTRS". In the final protection I did note the summary with a link to the OTRS ticket in case people decided to ask about it. It was for informational purposes only. But there was no "drama" before. Only a few edits and a few reverts (as well as the previous protections). --- Rjd0060 rjd0060.wiki(a)gmail.com On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Michel Vuijlsteke <wikipedia(a)zog.org>wrote;wrote:

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Durova<nadezhda.durova(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes, I read it. I don't think it comes *anywhere* near proving your sweeping proposition that this sort of censorship is justified. They claimed they were going to execute him and were doing mock executions before any news broke; after the news broke, they... went on doing naughty things. Yeah. Not a very good example. Sure, he may have 'thought' he had convinced them to let him go, but that conviction is worth about as far as one can throw it; I remember hearing that the Vietnamese and Iranian hostage takers liked to taunt their prisoners in a similar manner. -- gwern

Gwern Branwen wrote: By calling it "censorship" you are of course assuming what you want to prove, that it was unjustified. "Censor" is the name of an official position. If there were a position within the WMF devoted to keeping _news_ out of Wikipedia when there are reliable sources, beyond a quibble, supporting it, just because someone was lobbying to have it suppressed, then you'd have a case. I'm not aware of that type of arrangement. Charles

On 30/06/2009, Durova <nadezhda.durova(a)gmail.com> wrote: Interestingly, that isn't currently part of WP:BLP. I think it needs to be codified. Clearly, when the subject of the BLP's life may be significantly endangered, through no fault of their own, from information that may be widely published for the first time in the wikipedia, then there's a very reasonable case that it shouldn't be published in the wikipedia. -- -Ian Woollard "All the world's a stage... but you'll grow out of it eventually."

Durova wrote: If this is to be codified that could begin by taking it out of the already contentious BLP arena. Endangering lives can apply just as easily to individuals about whom we would not otherwise have biographies at all in the first place. If the information was already published by an Italian and an Afghan news agency, one can hardly say that Wikipedia was publishing it for the first time. The whole reliable sources argument too easily becomes another way of pushing a POV when there are no guidelines whatsoever for determining ahead of time what is or isn't a reliable source. What will be reliable in an era of citizen journalism when reports do not go through the filter of paid editorial staff, and the traditional sources of original news are no longer consistent with the economics of news consumption? What makes tweets out of Tehran reliable? Is it merely because they support our preconceptions? If saving lives is the issue where do we get the arrogant idea that we are so important that our reporting will make any difference. If we are smart enough to suspect that a person from Montreal with the name of Hechtman might be Jewish, it underestimates the Taliban enemy to suggest that they would not be able to figure that out for themselves. Do we apply the policy even-handedly? Doing so would require treating a Taliban life, or that of his innocent family member, with the same respect as a Western life. Ec

2009/6/30 Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com>om>: Can't be. We live in a world where there are people who if they know we will censor if we consider lives to be in danger will put lives in danger to get what they want. I doubt FARC would hesitate to threaten a few of their hostages if it meant we removed some of our more negative information about them. Heh censorship to avoid civil unrest or other risks to people's lives is one of the oldest excuses in the book. People can get really nasty about it. I mean obviously if wikipedia and the western media hadn't carried all that information about Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy the monks would not have marched and the Burmese government would have not needed to restore order. With a slight shift it can become an effective form of victim blaming. Now fortunately the defenses are equally well practiced. It's you thats killing them thus the blood is on your hands not ours. Thing is that defense works far better if you never compromise on it. Of course that would create the problem that we would be taking the position that more notable people are somehow more deserving of protection. -- geni

2009/6/30 Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com>om>: Remove X bit of information that has not been previously widely published or random kidnapped tourist dies. But of course we don't have an article on random kidnapped tourist. -- geni

Ian Woollard wrote: What are policies for? We tend not to ask this often enough. I say that policies are generally there to create reasonable expectations, of editors contributing to Wikipedia, under what you could call "normal circumstances". We have IAR because not all circumstances are normal, and application of policy can lead to the "wrong" answer. WP:BLP has as nutshell "Biographical material must be written with the greatest care and attention to verifiability, neutrality and avoiding original research", which I agree with; together with stuff about ethical and legal responsibility (which I find somewhat surprising). Anyway, the "greatest attention" to verifiability means that high standards such as more than one source can be applied, even if news agencies were always reliable sources (which is very debatable, I think). "Be very firm about the use of high quality references", it says. That's the letter. Charles

2009/6/30 Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com>om>: Yeah. I think in many ways that we're seeing a case here of a fairly reasonable judgement call being defended by quite slipshod means. (I could see myself having done the same thing). If we had people more confident to *say* "this is a judgement call, there are Serious Things", and a community more willing to trust established users to say that and not be playing tricks... ...well, we'd have a different community. But it'd be one where this sort of situation would be more likely to play out without abuse of "the rules" to get the intended result. I guess, as you note above, we could probably see more use of OTRS in a future situation; a way to note that the problem's been looked at by someone generally-trusted, that there's something that probably shouldn't be poked too hard, and please could people leave it there or ask discreetly for details. This is, on the other hand, not something that has historically proved popular to codify. Hmm. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Ray Saintonge<saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Standard policy on-wiki is that administrators have to be willing to explain and justify their actions. OTRS is a venue for being somewhat opaque; office is a venue for being more opaque. Issues which rise to this level should presumably be handed to OTRS and/or office - if they're that sensitive, the normal administrator pool is not well enough known and trusted, and fundamentally don't have appropriate private channels to discuss and decide on what to do. If random administrators start playing cowboy on issues like this, it's not helping anyone. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com