On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:05 PM, Sam Blacketer sam.blacketer@googlemail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
As far as I am concerned, this is a minor, if rather stupid, abuse of the tools. Trout-slapping, rather than arbitration, seems in order.
I agree; also the fact that it seems to have taken place nearly two years ago has some weight in persuading me that a heavy-handed response is not appropriate. The biggest part that concerns me is the dubious judgment in admitting doing it to a journalist from a major newspaper.
The initial posting of the information in question to Wikipedia (by an IP) and the deletion of two revisions of the article in question, were both done in February 2007. It is not clear when the use of tools to view those deleted revisions, and the Facebook posting, took place (the WSJ article doesn't say). There was also an OTRS ticket associated with the deletions - though that was not stated in the deletion log (it should have been). Like Sam Blacketer and Sam Korn, it is the "disrepute" aspect and the judgment aspect that concerns me here. I don't really want to say more, though, as an on-wiki ArbCom venue would be more appropriate than here. And waiting for the user in question to respond is also important.
There should, though, really be a place on Wikipedia itself for open public discussion like this that doesn't require the formality of RFAR or the non-transparency of the ArbCom mailing list, and is less chaotic than ANI. At the moment, WT:RFAR is all there is for this "is there a problem here" pre-RFAR query - see a post made there by Masem on another issue that has garnered little response.
Carcharoth