[WikiEN-l] Oh shit, Slashdot is an attack site!
Jimmy Wales
jwales at wikia.com
Sat Jul 28 23:57:55 UTC 2007
This entire discussion really and truly misses the point in a grand way.
Yes, information has been oversighted to protect the personal identities
of many people, both Wikipedia editors and members of the general
public. The reasons include inadvertantly revealing personal
information as well as the deliberate posting by trolls of personal
information. This is policy and will continue to be policy.
In this particular case, due to some really spectacular nonsense, this
is being treated as evidence that a private person who has been badly
harassed by stalkers and lunatics is... a former spy? Please.
Many editors at Wikipedia have been involved in dealing with
extraordinarily crazy people. Some of these people are dangerous in
real life. Some of them have made direct physical threats. Others have
made phone calls to people's employers. Others have done some homemade
self-styled "investigative journalism" that any rational and kind person
would see as being what it really is: abusive stalking.
I fully support the right of the Wikipedia community to protect itself
from those kinds of lunatics by giving support to those who need to
maintain their privacy.
Have edits been oversighted to protect people's identity? Damn straight
they have.
Are there massive factual errors that make me laugh out loud at the
speculation in the weird rant Slashdot linked to? Absolutely. The
amount of truth in that piece is so slim, you'd have to be a complete
intellectual virgin to take any of it at face value.
--Jimbo
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