Jayjg wrote:
Wikipedia isn't a whole bunch of things, including a court of law. Not even the ArbCom.
Which is why Wikipedia should be LESS dogmatically officious about enforcing rules-for-rules-sake than an actual court of law. In this case, Jayjg's behavior seems to have been MORE officious than the actual legal system.
I know some police and other people who work within the actual legal system. Real cops and judges know that they don't have to enforce every law on the books. They use discretion. If the police notice that someone has a broken tail light or an expired driver's license, they may just issue a warning and tell the guy to get it fixed. On the other hand, if they suspect that the guy is guilty of more serious crimes, they may choose to maximally enforce and investigate the minor infractions as a tactic to facililtate investigation and prosecution of the more serious crimes.
In this case, we're talking about a user (CharlotteWeb) who seems to have a long history of constructive editing, and no evidence that she is a vandal or a sockpuppet. The fact that sockpuppets use Tor does not mean that using Tor proves she is a sockpuppet. (Elementary logic lesson: "a implies b" does not mean that "b implies a.") In the absence of other evidence that CharlotteWebb is a problem user, therefore, Jayjg should have used discretion and raised his question privately rather than publicly in the RfA.
-------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts | Weapons of Mass Deception | Banana Republicans | The Best War Ever -------------------------------- | Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting: | http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html | | Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting: | http://www.prwatch.org/donate --------------------------------
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
Jayjg wrote:
Wikipedia isn't a whole bunch of things, including a court of law. Not even the ArbCom.
Which is why Wikipedia should be LESS dogmatically officious about enforcing rules-for-rules-sake than an actual court of law. In this case, Jayjg's behavior seems to have been MORE officious than the actual legal system.
It frequently haqppens here that when an analogy is raised with the legal system, someone is directly criticized by the point cries "Foul" and is quick to point out that our system is not the judicial system of the real world, and the traditions of the outside world can be safely ignored.
What he also ignores is that the underlying principles of a free judicial system were built up to prevent some very serious infringement of civil rights. Notions of fundamental justice don't need written laws to be meaningful. Constitutional principles may very well underlie written laws, but similarly a sense of fundamental justice underlies ethical behaviour.
If constitutional rules were to apply here the most relevant one might be the safeguard against unreasonable search and seizure. Checkuser could be viewed as a form of searching. Heretofore a reasonable cause was required before it could be used; there had to be a belief that some wrong was committed BEFORE the tool could be used. In the real world a search warrant would be needed. Clearly taking things to that extent would go too far, but we can insist that conditions similar to what would be required for a warrant should prevail.
Making gratuitous searches or taking undue advantage of inadvertently received private information to discredit someone else is simply and blatantly unethical.
The argument that miscreants COULD use proxies to do harm, or that it leaves open operational avenues for sockpuppets is the stuff that paranoia is made of. I would rather ask how much of it DOES happen, and how can policies be adapted so as to best thwart the wrongdoers with the least damage to social structures and personal freedoms. In the real world we already see the damage that can be done when too much protection is provided,
Ec
On 6/15/07, Sheldon Rampton sheldon@prwatch.org wrote:
In this case, we're talking about a user (CharlotteWeb) who seems to have a long history of constructive editing, and no evidence that she is a vandal or a sockpuppet. The fact that sockpuppets use Tor does not mean that using Tor proves she is a sockpuppet. (Elementary logic lesson: "a implies b" does not mean that "b implies a.") In the absence of other evidence that CharlotteWebb is a problem user, therefore, Jayjg should have used discretion and raised his question privately rather than publicly in the RfA.
"Assume good faith" comes to mind. Before the checkuser, was there any evidence to the contrary?