[WikiEN-l] Oversight or RevisionDelete

[FT2]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Andrew Turvey <
andrewrturvey at googlemail.com> wrote:

> As you mentioned, oversight wasn't necessary in this case. However, it's
> not inconceivable that another case where oversight is used might also be
> "temporarily sensitive". Perhaps, for instance, if it has been used in a
> suspected harassment that turns out to be something else.
>
>  In that case, it might make sense for the "book policy" to allow
> disclosure (or even reversal) of the oversight in these cases.



Its very rare - almost all uses of oversight/suppression are material that
isn't time dependent. In the few exception cases commonsense applies. In
this case the focus is known and the event that it's hanging on is a
publicly known one. In such a circumstance there may be a possibility. But
suppose during the incident someone had posted some personal information,
defamation, possibly defamatory accusation about the subject or someone
involved..... I would then have had to say "sorry, I wont be answering that"
and you would not have had a way to know if there was no issue, material
relevant to the incident, or completely irrelevant material just happened to
be posted to that page.

Unfortunately the problem is that a promise to disclose in some cases
implies that conclusions will be read into others. That's got to be a no-no,
however much one might wish otherwise. I hope you can understand that; there
doesn't seem to be an easy way around it that ensures the system won't get
gamed, except trust, commonsense, and understanding of the reasons behind
it.

I'm sorry. I can't see a way round it that protects privacy, if there is a
norm that disclosure will be given in some cases but not others. if that
were a norm, it could too easily be used for probing if there were some
privacy issue or harassment case or whatever - and some people would ask
because they wanted to know or wanted to "uncover" stuff, not realizing it
is for a good reason, and some real live person might be affected who these
policies are precisely there to prevent being harmed in these serious ways.
If you want to discuss it, a thread on Meta would be the way.

But whatever was decided, there will always be some matters where it just
won't work, and I think that's just got to be accepted. It's why oversight
exists in the first place.

FT2