james duffy wrote:
I agree. People need to be able to discuss matters openly and frankly.
It
really is nobody else's business but the people on the mailing list what
is
said on that list.
Well, I don't agree at all. Wikipedia is a transparent public project, what we do is all out in the open for anyone to see.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
This argument reflects an ongoing debate in political science over tranparency versus confidentiality in public office decision taking. Keeping of records and access to them is vital. To too much ''immediate'' access tends to lead to (a) people not being able to be open in a discussion without their words coming back to haunt them or being used outside wikipedia against them (if they were called on the list a rascist, a bigot, a homophobe, anti-semite, anti-catholic, any-woman, anti whatever) (b) playing to the gallery, ie., phoney positions being taken up simply for the impression they give if anyone does a google search on someone.
Most organisations provide a space where full records are kept of discussions, debates, etc but where that information is not instantly available, providing a degree of confidentiality that allows things to be discussed fully and frankly without the worry that someone doing a google search discovering that 'x' was accused of such and such. I know I wanted to send a sensitive message to someone on wiki, but couldn't email them as they have no email account listed.
I would hate to think, for example, that if Mav ever ran for public office, an opponent could do a google search under Mav's name, find that someone on the list in the heat of an argument once accused him of anti-semitism (and that is a ficticious example!) and use such a suggestion against him. I myself was accused of being like a holocaust denier here once. Luckily this email account doesn't give my real name, but if it did, that wild accusation could show up against me in a google search if for example in next year's Irish local elections I agreed to run for office as I have been asked. Or if ran in the next Irish general election in 2007. If there was the slightest chance that that wild claim or others could be found if someone did a google search under my real name, I would be gone from the list (and probably from wikipedia) like a shot.
Communication on this list should only be available (a) through a carefully restricted means (eg, through being a contributor to wikipedia), not simply through a google search, and (b) perhaps with some time delay mechanism. There is, for example, a US Democratic Party political consultant called James Duffy, a soccer manager called James Duffy and a number of others. What happens if someone does a google search, finds attacks made on me under the name of this email account and presumes it was some other 'James Duffy', one with a public profile. That is why organisations 'always' provide restricted access to discussions such as those here, usually with a time delay mechanism. They universally find that unrestricted access blocks free discussion and prevents, not encourages, free speech.
JT
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james duffy wrote:
james duffy wrote:
I agree. People need to be able to discuss matters openly and
frankly. It
really is nobody else's business but the people on the mailing list
what is
said on that list.
Well, I don't agree at all. Wikipedia is a transparent public project, what we do is all out in the open for anyone to see.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
Communication on this list should only be available (a) through a carefully restricted means (eg, through being a contributor to wikipedia), not simply through a google search, and (b) perhaps with some time delay mechanism. There is, for example, a US Democratic Party political consultant called James Duffy, a soccer manager called James Duffy and a number of others. What happens if someone does a google search, finds attacks made on me under the name of this email account and presumes it was some other 'James Duffy', one with a public profile. That is why organisations 'always' provide restricted access to discussions such as those here, usually with a time delay mechanism. They universally find that unrestricted access blocks free discussion and prevents, not encourages, free speech.
Many organizations also restrict what parts of their website can be edited, if any. They restrict access to their services to those without an account, and they verify accounts. Personally though, I think some protection should be offered against "ego surfing" where information on a person from the list is indexed in Google. This can still be an open and transparent public project with a fully searchable mailing list archive. I think that anyone should be able to search the archive only after clicking an appropriate link on Wikipedia.org.
cprompt cprompt@tmbg.org wrote: james duffy wrote:
james duffy wrote:
I agree. People need to be able to discuss matters openly and
frankly. It
really is nobody else's business but the people on the mailing list
what is
said on that list.
Well, I don't agree at all. Wikipedia is a transparent public project, what we do is all out in the open for anyone to see.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
Communication on this list should only be available (a) through a carefully restricted means (eg, through being a contributor to wikipedia), not simply through a google search, and (b) perhaps with some time delay mechanism. There is, for example, a US Democratic Party political consultant called James Duffy, a soccer manager called James Duffy and a number of others. What happens if someone does a google search, finds attacks made on me under the name of this email account and presumes it was some other 'James Duffy', one with a public profile. That is why organisations 'always' provide restricted access to discussions such as those here, usually with a time delay mechanism. They universally find that unrestricted access blocks free discussion and prevents, not encourages, free speech.
Many organizations also restrict what parts of their website can be edited, if any. They restrict access to their services to those without an account, and they verify accounts. Personally though, I think some protection should be offered against "ego surfing" where information on a person from the list is indexed in Google. This can still be an open and transparent public project with a fully searchable mailing list archive. I think that anyone should be able to search the archive only after clicking an appropriate link on Wikipedia.org.
many people block all javascript, and (AFAIK) javascript is necessaryto tell the source page. If it may be achieved with PHP, people also can disable all requests of a source page (as I do). Without the sourcepage, there is no way to force a link from wikipedia.org. Plus, I see no reason to make the mailing list inaccesable to googlers. I often find a lot of information about open source software from either the direct mailing list archive and news.gmane.org, which archives several mailing lists (including all of the Wikipedia lists). If you really don't want to have the lists show up on Google, just edit robots.txt and you're done --LittleDan
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--- james duffy jtdirl@hotmail.com wrote: I
myself was accused of being like a holocaust denier here once. Luckily this email account doesn't give my real name, but if it did, that wild accusation could show up against me in a google search if for example in next year's Irish local elections I agreed to run for office as I have been asked. Or if ran in the next Irish general election in 2007. If there was the slightest chance that that wild claim or others could be found if someone did a google search under my real name, I would be gone from the list (and probably from wikipedia) like a shot.
Err...I think that any person running for any election should be ready to face these types of accusations anyway. That often ends up in front of tribunal.
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--- james duffy jtdirl@hotmail.com wrote:
Keeping of records and access to them is vital. To too much ''immediate'' access tends to lead to (a) people not being able to be open in a discussion without their words coming back to haunt them or being used outside wikipedia against them (if they were called on the list a rascist, a bigot, a homophobe, anti-semite, anti-catholic, any-woman, anti whatever) (b) playing to the gallery, ie., phoney positions being taken up simply for the impression they give if anyone does a google search on someone.
I don't think we have seen any evidence of either (a) or (b) with respect to the Wikipedia mailing lists.
That is why organisations 'always' provide restricted access to discussions such as those here, usually with a time delay mechanism. They universally find that unrestricted access blocks free discussion and prevents, not encourages, free speech.
"Always" and "universally" are factually incorrect. Organizations comparable to ours, such as the Debian project, KDE, the Free Software Foundation etc. all keep their mailing list archives open, immediately accessible and searchable. So should we.
Axel
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