[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Ethics Commitee?

[private musings]

Firstly, I'd like to say hello all - as a first time poster, and an
'only just figured out how the mailing list works' person. Although
saying I've figured it out may be going too far.

My reading of the culture here is that it's pretty much ok to dive
straight into comment - which is what I shall do. Sincere apologies if
my Ps and Qs are not sufficiently minded. I'll try and learn pretty
fast.

I feel the oft-noted decline in civility on the wiki has led to some
extremism in admin. behaviour, and I am of the opinion that a parallel
stream to the ArbCom, some kind of ethics committee / forum might be a
good idea. That's the bigger picture thought, now some specifics;

It may be repetitive but I absolutely stand by all of my contributions
to the wiki, which absolutely are in good faith. I thank the various
users who have said nice things about me - I can now represent myself
better on this list.

In terms of gauging community consensus, Guy was self evidently wrong
to indef-block me - the decision was rightfully overturned pretty
quickly. Where do I feel ethics come in?

I trusted guy with a user history, directly traceable back to my
identity fairly easily, and practically begged him not to abuse this
trust, and to keep that information confidential.

He shared that information with many users.

This is unethical.

(and incidentally, it both upset and angered me hugely)

Now a couple of further corrections, the need for which concerns me also;

(quoting Matt).....

>Actually, the 'original identity' of PM was a user with less than a
>thousand edits and whose contributions to the project in earnest
>didn't start until January 2007.  He had a dozen or so edits in 2005
>and only a couple in 2006. Almost immediately after he resumed
>editing, he was embroiled in Wiki politics, stirring up trouble in the
>Essjay affair among others.  His encyclopedia-space editing is only
>about a fifth of his edits, and most of those are to just a small
>handful of articles.  Notably, they seem to have been picked mostly
>for their notoriety and for being the locus of disputes.

This is wholly inaccurate. I will happily discuss my history with
those I trust privately - but please don't make such aggressive points
without better information, it creates drama, and upsets.

What do you good people think about the need or use of an editor
ethical committee?

Many thanks,

PM.