On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Andrew Turvey < andrewrturvey@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