Jayjg wrote:
> Wikipedia isn't a whole bunch of things, including a court of law.
> Not even
> the ArbCom.
Which is why Wikipedia should be LESS dogmatically officious about
enforcing rules-for-rules-sake than an actual court of law. In this
case, Jayjg's behavior seems to have been MORE officious than the
actual legal system.
I know some police and other people who work within the actual legal
system. Real cops and judges know that they don't have to enforce
every law on the books. They use discretion. If the police notice
that someone has a broken tail light or an expired driver's license,
they may just issue a warning and tell the guy to get it fixed. On
the other hand, if they suspect that the guy is guilty of more
serious crimes, they may choose to maximally enforce and investigate
the minor infractions as a tactic to facililtate investigation and
prosecution of the more serious crimes.
In this case, we're talking about a user (CharlotteWeb) who seems to
have a long history of constructive editing, and no evidence that she
is a vandal or a sockpuppet. The fact that sockpuppets use Tor does
not mean that using Tor proves she is a sockpuppet. (Elementary logic
lesson: "a implies b" does not mean that "b implies a.") In the
absence of other evidence that CharlotteWebb is a problem user,
therefore, Jayjg should have used discretion and raised his question
privately rather than publicly in the RfA.
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Along the lines of what's been discussed regarding this recent use of
CheckUser results...
Let's say that you're part of a big city's police vice squad. In the
course of some investigation of an unrelated issue, you happen to
stumble on the customer list of a house of prostitution. There are
no current plans to prosecute that place or its customers, and no
active search or arrest warrants regarding it, but you get a glance
at the list by chance while investigating something else entirely,
and you happen to see that a prominent politician who's just starting
an election campaign is on that list. Would you keep this
information to yourself, or leak it to the press in an attempt to
torpedo the guy's election? Just wondering...
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
On 15 Jun 2007 at 23:45, "Joe Szilagyi" <szilagyi(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it appropriate for a CheckUser to disclose on someone's RFA the methods
> of *how* they connect to edit Wikipedia? Here, Jayjg disclosed that
> CharlotteWeb edited from Tor previously:
An interesting aspect to the whole issue is the fact that it appears
that the same group of people who is so fervently in favor of banning
all links to so-called "attack sites" -- supposedly for the purpose
of protecting the privacy of editors "outed" there (said "outings"
being done by those sites with the supposed justification of imposing
"accountability" on those editors) -- is also fervently in favor of
maintaining the ban on editing through open proxies (the users of
which are doing so in order to protect their privacy, but opponents
of which claim gets in the way of "accountability"). In both cases,
they demand rigid, draconian enforcement "on sight", without
discretion.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
The inquiry does not seem to involve disclosure of identity. As to Tor proxies, their use is a continuing mystery. Perhaps the answer will reveal a legitimate non-abusive use.
Fred
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Joe Szilagyi [mailto:szilagyi@gmail.com]
>Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 05:29 PM
>To: wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Jayjg: Abusing CheckUser for political ends?
>
>Is it appropriate for a CheckUser to disclose on someone's RFA the methods
>of *how* they connect to edit Wikipedia? Here, Jayjg disclosed that
>CharlotteWeb edited from Tor previously:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/CharlotteWebb
>
>Specifically:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/…
>
>":'''6''' Can you explain why you edit using TOR proxies? [[User:Jayjg|Jayjg
>]]<sup><small><font
>color="DarkGreen">[[User_talk:Jayjg|(talk)]]</font></small></sup> 03:04, 15
>June 2007 (UTC)"
>
>
>How is he allowed to make such a public disclosure to sink an RFA? Any
>question of whether Jay's actions are inappropriate (if not a violation of
>the Foundation Privacy Policy?) are deflected by SlimVirgin.
>
>Is Jayjg in violation of the Wikipedia Privacy Policy by disclosing this to
>affect a Requests for Adminship? He also implies he has similar data on
>others, yet has not acted on them. Sitting on them for the political winds
>to be right?
>
>Regards,
>Joe
>http://www.joeszilagyi.com
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
In en-wiki we are making good progress in addressing BLP concerns
related to non-notable individuals, as well as being very cautious
about using primary sources that have not been described in secondary
sources (such as court documents) in BLPs of notable individuals. But
what about Wikisource?
Currently there is no exclusionary criteria in Wikisource that will
limit contributors into adding material such as civil cases court
rulings, including divorce proceedings, bankruptcy cases, and other
such disputes.
As it stands know, an editor can upload a bunch of court documents to
Wikisource, link these Wikisource pages back to Wikipedia articles
and add a links to Wikisource to WP articles via the {{sisterlinks}}
or {{wikisource}} templates.
Material that would not have been acceptable to include in a BLP,
either as text or as an EL, by virtue of the lack of a consistent
exclusionary policy in Wikisource, and relative low number of
contributors and admins that monitor material there, is now bypassing
all these BLP protection measures we have in place.
Any thoughts?
-- Jossi
On 02/06/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
> Jeffrey O. Gustafson wrote:
> > To the point of your hyperbolic complaint, please see
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:EL#Restrictions_on_linking ... "Sites that
> > violate the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations
> > should not be linked."
> Actually, yesterday in this thread I posted a link to the Wikipedia
> database dumps and pointed out that the deleted BJAODN pages were still
> in them. So unless linking to Wikipedia database dumps is now
> prohibited, it's not as simple as it seems.
And I see that The Cunctator just undeleted them all.
If there's a wheel war over this, I swear I'm adding it to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP%3ALAME#Wheel_wars .
- d.
On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_322_in_New_Jersey , the 1936
date in the infobox ostensibly has two references. But the first one
("American Highways") is incomplete, and thus impossible to verify. The
second does not mention that the route was formed in 1936.
So I mentioned this to the article creator in #wikipedia-en-roads-us. It
turns out that the "American Highways" reference (<ref>{{cite
book|last=AASHTO|authorlink=AASHTO|title=American
Highways|publisher=AASHTO|year=1973}}</ref>) is copied from an old
version of
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=U.S._Route_322&oldid=138197841
, where it was being used to support a date of 1926. I spoke with the
person who added that to the US 322 article, and he says he found it at
the library, and all he remembers is that it was from 1973 and had a
list of U.S. Highways from 1926, including US 322. (I'm not disputing
the accuracy of that in this email, since it's not relevant to the
current matter, though I did do so at the time.) But then, if the list
is from 1926, how is it being used to support a date of 1936? Even if it
does, the citation is incomplete, so no one can look up the issue of
American Highways (it was published more than once a year) and check. I
pointed out that the 1936 date was not backed up by any sources, and was
quieted.
(tl;dr version: neither reference supports the statement, but the person
that added it, instead of removing the sources, ignored me.)
I could remove the sources, but (a) I'm retired and (b) it would likely
start a revert war. I would appreciate it if someone else could take
care of this.
Guy Chapman aka JZG wrote:
> Of course some people will sign up to
> promote their own interests, we get that on Wikipedia as well, but
> these people do not generally make good contributors because they have
> no real interest outside of their own financial gain.
Odd thing is that there is currently a project that is doing just that, &
thriving quite well at the moment: http://www.aboutus.com. A for-profit
Wiki, with over two dozen employees & last I heard a positive cash flow.
Last time Kohs described what he was trying to do, I immediately thought
of them. Further, they did get Ward Cunningham to join them as CTO, so Ray
King & company _must_ be doing something right.
Wikipedia is not meant to be everything to everyone. I don't see the harm
in directing those PR people, who insist on writing articles about
companies that always end up on AfD, ought to be directed over there. I
think all parties would be happier.
COI disclaimer: I happen to be personal friends with many of the folks
working there, so I may be a little biassed about this.
Geoff
Reviewing the text of one of the BJAODN pages Jeffrey O Gustafson deleted
and then wheel-warred to protect his action ([[Wikipedia:All Your Bad Joke
And Other Deleted Nonsense Are Belong To
Us<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:All_Your_Bad_Joke_And_O…>]],
it's clear that JOG's unilateral action is unsupportable. He claims massive
copyright violation, but the earliest entry to the page was Navigium
Flammae, whose history exists in the database.
If Jeffrey O Gustafson's intentions were pure, he would have done the work
to make the pages compliant with *his interpretation* of the GFDL by merging
edit histories.
Instead he deleted the page out of process. And since deletion with the
claim of copyright violation are protected from content review (c.f.
[[Wikipedia:Deletion
review]]: "Note that only uncontroversial content should be restored — not
revisions deleted as copyright violation, potentially libellous content or
similar") his actions can't be easily reversed, even temporarily, so that
the general community may take action, instead of the small group of admins.
I think it's righteous, for several reasons: bragging rights about Jews' valuable contributions, clear evidence that Jews don't run everything, or even much, and links to interesting accomplished people. There are all kinds of ways to go wrong with this list, but I'm sure the article does not suffer from want of watchers.
Fred
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Andrew Gray [mailto:shimgray@gmail.com]
>Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:19 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Thoughts on naming people - article content, this time.
>
>So, reading wikien-l in one window, and browsing random-article with
>the other, I came across:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jews_in_politics
>
>"This List of Jews contains individuals who, in accordance with
>Wikipedia's verifiability and no original research policies, have been
>identified as Jews by reliable sources."
>
>Given the context of the ongoing discussion about wilfuly outing
>people... is it just me who finds that wording, hmm, a touch odd?
>Discuss.
>
>--
>- Andrew Gray
> andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
>
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