[WikiEN-l] ArbCom Legislation

[Ian Woollard]

On 23/06/2008, WJhonson at aol.com <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> In a message dated 6/22/2008 3:22:58 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
> ian.woollard at gmail.com writes:
>
> So far  as I am aware the guy's name was placed in the
> public domain without his  request, and this has been repeated by a
> bunch of publications. He also  received a large award in an out of
> court settlement, and could possibly  have a case against the wikipedia
> if they chose to *perpetuate* it (the  wikipedia may not *ever* go
> away, but other publications tend to  fade).>>
> -------------------------------------
> This  is not correct.
> Once the genie is out-of-the-bottle there is no law under which you can
> "sue" to silence it.

> "Naming" someone is not harassment, it is reporting.  If you think it  is,
> name one case, any case at all, where this theory has been successful in a
> finalized court proceeding.  In the US.

Perhaps there could be a first time. But that's not what we're talking
about, we're talking about what policies the wikipedia *should* have.
We're also talking about cases like the Star Wars kid where adding his
name really adds very little to the article, and in fact helps people
track him down in real life.

Saying that the wikipedia is part of the press is not in any way
accurate. The press don't necessarily have a permanent page on every
story they've ever covered, indexed by google. But the wikipedia does.
The indexing and searching makes a huge difference to the issues of
potential privacy and harassment. The press may easily decide to
archive or prevent indexing of stories older than a certain date (and
in my experience they frequently seem to be doing that to some
degree), but the wikipedia *cannot* do that. These properties are an
essential difference between a news organisation and an encyclopedia,
and need to be taken into account when the policies are drawn up.

You can't force a genie back into a bottle, but in many cases the
genie will tend to fade once released, and this should not be
prevented by the wikipedia.
-- 
-Ian Woollard

We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly
imperfect world things would be a lot better.