Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:22:44 +1100, "private musings" thepmaccount@gmail.com wrote:
The implication of recent editing there is that we can no longer mention or refer to sources like The Times, or The Guardian even on talk pages, if they may lead readers who click on them to think worse of the article subject.
Are you willing to foot the legal bills? I have seen the emails to OTRS from di Stefano. He is a lawyer. A wealthy lawyer who is prepared to defend people like Milosevic and Noye.
And for those wondering, I believe the official Wikimedia Foundation position is that editors are indeed on their own when it comes to the legal consequences of any edits they make. Even if those edits are obviously what we'd consider good edits.
There's some sound legal reasoning behind this, and I think they've made the right choice, but it was still a surprise to me when I learned it.
My guess is that if there were a reasonably good test case, there would be a fair bit of public support and possibly donations and/or pro bono legal assistance. But even with that a lawsuit like this would still be a substantial burden, probably a multi-year one, for the editor involved.
This does leave us with the risk of having articles that have been whitewashed due to legal threats. That worries me, so I've proposed a warning template for articles in that condition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri/Legaldispute
But I don't think anybody has used it yet.
William