James D. Forrester wrote:
Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea, but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: Wikitruth.info (amongst other 'helpful' critics) seems to have a sysop working for them. Were we to flag an article that was libellous with {{office}}, you can bet that they would go and dig out the deleted sections, and repost it to their wonderful service. Now Wikimedia has been informed that they are likely to be sued, and in response has done something knowing that it would increase the publication and spread of this libel. - we're then liable for their reposting of the content, and "utterly screwed". I know, I know, "that's not what was intended". Well, tough, that's the way the Real World(tm) works.
So, what does this mean? Well, flagging articles as Office-protected is a legal no-no in that kind of case, and something significantly less high profile has to be done - and, possibly, the existence of this action would be buried for all eternity (or, certainly, several decades, which on the Internet is much the same thing).
This is something that we have to deal with /now/ - the Foundation could possibly be sued out of existence tomorrow. There is no time for us to have a nice chat, or wring our hands about whether it's properly the "wiki way". We're here to build an encyclopædia, above all things, and if you don't care that the Foundation is here to keep everything working, then possibly you need to re-evaluate your priorities and commitment to this project; Distributed Proofreaders could always do with a few more volunteers, for instance.
Please note that this is all conjecture on my part, I'm not the one who makes {{office}} decisions.
While I agree with all that you've said, I fear that for practical reasons, it would be impossible to cover up an action. As geni has noted on Wikipedia-l, often what happens instead is that the scandal becomes even bigger once it's revealed a controversial action was kept quiet -- something which, as we've just learnt, probably isn't going to be a rare occurrence. Security through obscurity isn't a very effective mechanism. I suggest creating a special board class of users (as others have proposed), so that ordinary admins can't wheel war with these users, or otherwise do anything liable to get us in trouble (i.e. view deleted revisions of a page deleted by a board user). Confronting the problem head on is a lot more effective than trying to prevent people from finding out about the problem -- with the latter, you either succeed greatly, or fail miserably. Security through obscurity won't work here, not as things stand.
On another note, I find it disturbing that some people (Kelly and Tony, mainly) appear to have missed the greater point here. Yes, we know -- doing something under WP:OFFICE draws trolls and real rouge admins to the article like moths to a flame. However, if due to this, we abandon WP:OFFICE altogether, what's the point? And even assuming that all admins have their heads screwed on the right way, and do ask Danny if he did this because of legal issues, how does this resolve anything? The rouge admins would still have the information they need.
I'm not saying this because of "free speech" or "openness" or all that crap -- you guys know that I'm among the last people who would care about Wikipedia being a social experiment and all that. What's concerning is that this is a very effective way to piss off admins while leaving an apparent loophole for the rouge admins to bulldoze their way through. Apparently the fact that Karmafist, et al made a number of terribly insensible arguments has obscured one of the few things that they got right: anarchism isn't a feasible way to build an encylopaedia.
I'm not a process wonk -- far from it -- but unlike most established [[common law]] policies which trolls were challenging using the "OMG, if we don't know the rules, how can we abide by them?" argument, WP:OFFICE is an established (but new) policy which Danny did not follow in this particular case. He obviously had good reasons for it, and I'm not criticising him for performing one of the most thankless jobs a Wikipedian can have, but I hope we can drive home some lessons from this terrible misunderstanding: If you don't want people to undo something because of an established policy with real-world implications, do make it explicit that this policy is being applied here.
Now, maybe there is a point in just not stepping on Danny's toes and letting him go about his business. However, unlike with most ordinary cabal members, Danny and other editors like Angela, Jimbo, et al can be acting either as ordinary editors/admins or in their capacity as a representative of the Foundation. This presents worrying consequences for the enforcement of policy -- is NPOV really non-negotiable if we can't touch an edit Danny made where he might have inadvertently introduced POV into an article, but nobody dares to correct it?
All I'm saying is, we might need to go this far. But there are plenty of other possibilities yet to be explored. Let's accept the fact that trolls will buzz around WP:OFFICE protected articles, spreading their malicious lies. As James has noted, what's important is that we batten down the hatches and prevent any real damage from coming to Wikipedia. One way at least guaranteed to achieve something towards this end is to prevent board actions from being reverted, and to make the information related to them out of bounds to ordinary admins and editors. It's a lot better than being left in a situation where admins aren't even sure whether their next action (be it a simple query about something Danny did, or undoing a very questionable deletion) will get Wikipedia and/or the Foundation in deep shit.
John