On 22/06/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
TK: "Unfortunately this means that the log itself has to be kept private. Those people with oversight can view it. No one else can."
What people seem to disagree with is with the notion that the log "has to be kept private" due to someone's claim of 'legally problematic revisions.' Is Google facilitating the "damage of Starbucks' reputation" by not removing "consumer whore" from its Image searches?
Understanding that legal systems are not always reasonable, WM cant reasonably be responsible for everything in the history of its articles. And to say the risk is great is simply to court the clique of privelege who think they can simply make a phone call and get things deleted through a privileged legalistic and back-door process -- for what everyone else does with the edit button.
Wait, wait, wait.
There isn't a "clique of privilege" who "think they can get ... a back-door process". There are normal people who write to us saying "You have an article about X school, where I work, giving my home address and saying I'm a child molestor. Please get rid of this!"
It's not only impolite to expect people to tactfully and quietly learn how our system works and remove this material, it's also fundamentally stupid. /That isn't going to happen/. They're going to write to us, and we're going to have to handle it.
And the risk *is* great - I've dealt with a suprising number of emails to the info-en address which complain about their article and say *someone else told them*. What if that someone else is the employer, the client... the schools inspector?
We cannot be held legally liable for everything that's there. We may not even be legally liable for leaving it up once they've told us it's there (though I'm sure that question will be tested by someone somewhere someday). But we are *morally* liable if we don't at least try to do something about helping a person who, through no fault of their own, is suffering from the misuse of our resources. It's simple humanity.
And on the first part... if we're deleting these things, expunging them totally, is there any *reason* for the log to be public? Any at all? Oversight, perhaps. But... what effect does this oversight have? Are we really, honestly, concerned about the dozen people with this capacity using it in some nefarious way to win arguments or to rewrite history? I sound like I'm attacking a strawman here, but I honestly don't think I've seen a good reason why people think this tool is dangerous. Please, someone, give me a scenario where this could be used badly, where the ability to expunge deleted revisions is somehow harmful in a way that a public log would prevent...