Really? I didn't know allowing everyone in the world to edit with exposing yourself as really optional was accountable. On 12/14/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia(a)downlode.org> wrote:

Stephen Bain wrote: This is all fine, but Office actions should not be a technique for sweeping issues under the rug indefinitely. If someone has made a statement that may be libellous, and it is so alleged by a person who may be affected a bit of time needs to be taken to gather the appropriate verifiability. If an educational institution is not accredited we do need to mention which list(s) of accredited institutions we have checked to back our position. But note too that we are supporting a negative position. If they are accredited they should have no problem establishing that. A failure to find their name on any reliable list, combined with their refusal to answer about their accreditation would be very difficult for them to sustain in any litigation. I have no idea who if anyone has been threatening lawsuits, but students and alumni would likely not have standing for this. Perhaps the university administration? Surely the foundation is not responsible for the legal defence of its editors, but a plaintiff is likely to want to make the Foundation at least a co-defendent in a law suit, It should be prepared to defend itself against groundless, vexatious, or SLAPP lawsuits. If it ends up defending an editor at the same time so much the better. Ec

Ray Saintonge wrote: I agree completely. The message of WP:OFFICE should not be "hands OFF" but "hands ON". The core idea is that the process SHOULD work like this: 1. A hysterical phone call comes in to the office. There might or might not be legal threats. The hysteria might or might not be justified. But someone is sad, and Wikipedia is not here to make people sad. So we want to respond in a helpful and loving way. 2. The article is stubbed and tagged as WP:OFFICE. This is a message to good editors: "Please help us. This article is making someone unhappy. We want to make sure that it is a thoughtful, fair, neutral article. We need GOOD editors to pay attention to it, and help us make it good." I would recommend protection or semi-protection at this point, but with the idea that even if protected admins are (as compared to normal protection) actually encouraged to come help with the article. 3. After some reasonable period of time, hopefully 24 hours, but perhaps as long as a week, the article has become a shining beauty. The subject of the biography (and really, these are most often biographies) is either made happy (because a horrible error was corrected, a troll was vanquished, or whatever) or made at least satisfied (the story of the negative thing he or she did once is now placed in appropriate context, properly cited, including citations to his or her own response and defense). 4. Joy. ----- In fact, this is far too often not what happens. A few things can go wrong with this. Perhaps trolls scream that the OFFICE is being paid off to censor Wikipedia. Perhaps trolls scream that Jimbo is pulling the strings for his friends. Perhaps young and excitable Wikipedia contributors think that the point of the exercise is to SHOW PEOPLE that you CAN'T PUSH WIKIPEDIA AROUND, and go out to try to dig up well-cited dirt on the person, creating an even more horribly bad and biased article than we started with, forcing us to start all over again. Perhaps good contributors who respect WP:OFFICE think "Gee, trouble here, I will just stay out of the way"... and then nothing happens. Perhaps no one really cares in the first place, such that if the article has been out-of-process speedied, it would have slipped through the cracks. Etc. I am unsure exactly how to redesign the process so that we get the good outcome more often, and the bad outcome less often. An example of the good outcome can be seen at [[Ron Jeremy]], which was NOT subject WP:OFFICE, but rather subject to a controversial blanking by an ordinary editor. It has become an excellent article which continues to improve, because good editors are keeping unsourced cruft out of the article completely. --Jimbo If someone has made a

On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 09:46:11 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Stating the case here has already helped. We should work on [[WP:OFFICE]] to ensure that it reflects this aim. I am very happy to hear that we should be working to fix up these articles, since it is often the case that several editors are motivated to do just that. Sometimes it's not quite so simple (as with Gregory Lauder-Frost, whose friends made baseless claims in respect of our ability to document his verifiable conviction for fraud, a notable and significant fact by any rational assessment). In this case, hopefully it is simple. We have impeccable sources for a number of significant facts which bear directly on why this place was ever considered notable in the first place. We can work on those, applying the highest standards of care. Hopefully the evidence of this care, through showing our working, will be sufficient to ward off trouble, but there is still the niggling concern that fiddling with OFFICEd articles has in the past led to summary disciplinary actions. I'd really rather that didn't happen to me. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On 12/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: And your post further up this thread will, I think, be invaluable in moving towards that long-term solution in helping people understand exactly how this should be managed. -- Sam

On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 17:18:43 +0000, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm not sure I agree here. There is a bar to entry for admins, and it is reasonable to require, at least in the short term, that we allow editing only by trusted individuals. Protection is a blunt instrument and certainly excludes many highly trustworthy individuals, but it does exclude most of those likely to perpetuate the problem. Hopefully if the clarification Jimbo gave is taken to heart, the protection period can be reduced as we fix the articles. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Dec 15, 2006, at 11:54 AM, geni wrote: I agree in principle and in nearly every other instance, but working in the legal profession myself, I understand how important and damaging certain actions can be to future civil action. Looking at [[WP:OFFICE]], I see that 8 articles are under protection, and 1 should probably be delisted and can't be fixed by anyone. We're not talking about an enormous backlog of OFFICE-protected articles, and I think each article that needs editing could have that done by one or two enterprising administrators. In my mind, it's not that big of a deal.

Jimbo said protection *or semi-protection*. Perhaps more OFFICE articles should be semi-protected, rather than protected. Indeed. A balanced article isn't one that has the same number of good points as bad points. It's one that has a ratio of good points to bad points that accurately represents how good/bad the subject is (yes, it's not our job to decide is someone is a good person or not, but we don't need to, if we do our research properly and cite everything properly, we'll get the right ratio without having to decide what that ratio is). An article on a convicted murderer is going to have mainly bad points, that's perfectly balanced. An article on an uncontroversial charity worker will have mainly good points, that's perfectly balanced. If there are far more bad points than good points in an article, and the bad points are all well cited, then there are two possibilities. Either the subject is simply bad, in which case the article is fine, or the article is missing some good points, in which case they should be added. I can't see any reason for a well cited bad point to be removed. Especially not when [[WP:OFFICE]] says: "The following pages are currently under full Office protection and full page protection and must not be edited by anyone not explicitly authorised to do so." should be edited on a temporary subpage and then get explicit authorisation to move the subpage to the main page. If that's what's intended, it should be made clearer.

On 15/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote: I have no idea where you got the idea that I was asking the Foundation to be responsible for other people's actions. I'll quote you again the text (quoted above) that I was replying to: "Danny... doesn't want an official decision of the Foundation on record." In this case, it was an "office action", which appears to generally equate to "putting stuff in the memory hole". Is it Foundation policy to hide official decisions of the Foundation? Or is it Danny policy? Either way, it appears that the management of this project is asymptotically approaching that of the Open[sic] Directory Project. -- Earle Martin http://downlode.org/ http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/

Yes. We all know what happened to Erik Moeller. And now let's not speak of that incident ever again. On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster(a)gmail.com> wrote:

He may have been the first permabanned user to become elected to the Board of Trustees! (Although his ban was lifted... I was talking about the nasty office issue.) On 12/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I may be senior to many Wikipedians but I wasn't around in the stone ages! :) On 12/15/06, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 12/15/06, Guettarda <guettarda(a)gmail.com> wrote: Doesn't everyone think that? -- Sam

On 12/15/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: You do? Oh good. -- Sam

On 12/15/06, Guettarda <guettarda(a)gmail.com> wrote: but it's sad to see that Hm. I'm on dewp since April 04 and I don't feel ent-ish yet. At least on dewp, there are still a lot of people, who were regulars (as in "sysops") when I joined... Michael

Angela wrote: Did you know that this is, as far as I can remember, the first time I ever knew that account was being used by Anthere? :) --Jimbo

On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster(a)gmail.com> wrote: As an aside, could we stop writing "office" in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS? It's starting to kind of creep me out. ;-) The office is not _that_ impressive; believe me, I've been there. :-) I don't think it's likely that an editor will be indef-blocked for good faith edits anytime soon -- and if it does happen, we'll try to straighten it out ASAP. Most of the articles under office protection end up there because they were written by people not familiar with our policies of verifiability and neutrality, or those deliberately violating them. In general, the process is: stub it down and start from scratch, with more trusted editors taking the lead. I think the office process is still one we need to eventually reform (make more transparent, scalable, etc.). But right now we're in the middle of a major fundraiser and other organizational reforms, so it's not the highest priority for Board+ED+Legal Counsel. -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

James Hare wrote: Exactly. Drummed from the project in shame, never to be heard from again. ;-) (In case anyone reading this doesn't get this obscure reference, there was an unfortunate incident which was quickly cleared up regarding WP:OFFICE and some confusions surrounding it, and Erik is of course still a valued member of the community and in fact a member of the board.) The point is, mistakes are made, errors are reversible, assuming good faith and trying to listen to each other is always better than the alternatives.

Parker Peters wrote: Yes.

Parker Peters wrote: Given the number of people who don't understand or don't care that what happens on Wikipedia can have real-world implications, a suitable degree of "HERE BE DRAGONS" /is/ needed. -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

Jimmy Wales wrote: More carrot, less stick? -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

Jimmy Wales wrote: That's what I am unclear on (and I imagine some others are too). My original understanding of WP:OFFICE was that it was a quick-fix lockdown: while the Foundation is trying to sort out an imminent problem, the page gets stubbed or blanked and has a WP:OFFICE banner on it, giving the Foundation a bit of temporary breathing room to do the sorting out. But it seems that's not what it's *actually* being used for, since the banner sometimes stays for months and there doesn't seem to be any of that "sorting out" activity going on in the meantime. So what is actually intended? That the article be rewritten cautiously from scratch? How long does the WP:OFFICE banner (and protection) stay on in that case? Basically I'm unsure what, as a normal editor, I should do with regards to such pages. My original understanding was that I should just leave the page alone for a few days, pending someone figuring out the situation and re-opening editing from a new starting point. But maybe that's not the process? -Mark

So, we're all agreed that it's broken and needs fixing. That's an excellent first step! :-) How do we want to do the second step?

On 12/17/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: Whoa, whoa, whoa. How would Wiki[m/p]edia, in the United States, be subject to a law in the United Kingdom? Just because some country has a law that would prevent Wikipedia from stating something about some particular topic doesn't mean Wikipedia has to follow it. If we followed North Korean or Chinese or Iranian laws on free speech, I have the feeling some of our articles would be pretty blank. :-) Or should we even try discussing that, because most of us aren't lawyers? -- theProject

theProject wrote: While the placement of the servers and offices gives primary legal jurisdiction to the United States, this is not a green light for ignoring the laws of other countries completely. People in many countries become justifiably upset when Americans take this route. A respect for the legal culture of other countries helps to build mutual co-operation even if there is no conceivable avenue for enforcing those laws. Why shouldn't North Korean, Chinese or Iranian law be respected when they are relevent? Ec

On 12/21/06, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: Bits of europe. Our legal systems are not harmonised (heh even the legal systems within the UK have their differences). -- geni

Mark Wagner wrote: Respect for foreign laws does not extend to abjectly kowtowing to all their peculiarities. That would be impossible even if we knew them all. If we must follow Indian law about Kashmir we must also follow Pakistani law on the same issue. Much of the respect comes from applying NPOV, and treating everyone with fairness, and taking note of the fact that Wikipedians living in those countries have to live with what they have. If the common criticisms of Kim Jong-Il are valid it still does not justify gratuitously insulting language. If the United States ignores the copyright laws of another country because it does not have copyright relations with it, that does not mean that we too should be free to ignore them. Ec

I've been closely following the thread about WP:Office actions and appreciated what clarification has been provided as to the different types of Office actions that can be taken. If I am reading things correctly, I gather there is a distinction between (1) a page that is fully Office Protected (meaning that it basically shouldn't be edited at all without express Office permission; this is a rare status, there are only 7 such pages as of now in the whole project); and (2) and a page that has been Office Blanked/Stubbed (meaning the article needs to be redone but feel free to edit as long as it's in accordance with policy including WP:Living). In due course, the WP:Office page might be clarified in this regard as there does seem to be widespread uncertainty. Another WP:Office related question on which clarification might be in order is under what circumstances an administrator or editor should call situations to the Office's attention. A few weeks ago, I came across a serious legal threats situation involving threats to sue the Foundation unless changes were made in an article immediately. I suggested on one of the noticeboards that this seemed like the sort of thing that the Office would want to know about right away. I was e-mailed by two people who indicated that the Office actually prefers that administrators deal with these situations on their own without getting the Foundation involved. Some clarification on when the Office should be notified of the various types of threats and other situations that arise could be helpful so that admins and editors are able to do the best possible job of protecting the Foundation and the contributors. This is a concrete issue that comes up every week, any insight would be helpful. Newyorkbrad

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 21:03:02 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: As long as we have some idea what the grounds for objection were, the application of Clue should be sufficient. Hopefully protection will do that, since admins are supposed to posses that elusive quantity. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

How many people have been forcibly desysopped? I don't think it's many...

On 12/18/06, Ryan Wetherell <renardius(a)gmail.com> wrote: That's about right, according to the list available at: [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_de-adminship]]. "Newyorkbrad" _______________________________________________

Thomas Dalton wrote: It suggests that it takes a lot to de-admin someone. I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing, but I'm not sure how to solve it anymore, either. -Jeff -- If you can read this, I'm not at home.

Maybe we need a new subpage of the admin noticeboard for determining consensus on whether or not an admin made the right decision. At the moment, admins sometimes go to AN/I and say "I've done this, was I right?" which is great, but I think a more formal process would be good (and a way for other people to ask the question). Someone explains the admin action, then other admins state whether or not they endorse it. In most cases, we'll just get a load of " '''Endorse''' --~~~~" comments, and that should shut up anyone complaining about the admin action. In cases where the admin action is more questionable, it can be discussed more fully and a course or action decided upon, rather than it becoming a wheel war. This is essentially what happens on AN/I already, but I think it should happen more often (not for every action, obviously, but anything controversial - it should only take a few admins a couple of minutes to check and endorse an action), and slightly more formally. If we had this process, we would be able to catch admins making questionable decisions before they start making outright wrong decisions, and we move the "You're abusing your powers, unblock my friend now" comments from the admin's talk page, to a central place where we can help deal with them.

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 00:51:21 +1100, "Stephen Bain" <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'd just like to confirm that this was one of the two questions I needed answered; the other was: what should we do in order to avoid having OFFICEd articles in a state of perpetual stagnation, often at the "wrong version". Talk pages of these articles often contain a lot of debate, much of it focused on why we can't get any kind of answer from OFFICE. Sometimes the answer is perfectly reasonable - Brad needs to consider a issue, for example - other times, the answer is "dunno". It's fine to reply with "sorry, we can't say", but no reply at all is very hard to deal with. That sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory to me. Much more likely that he has no easy answer and Foundation hasn't equipped him with a set of usable guidelines. Not that Danny is stupid or lacking initiative, but he is, I understand, very busy. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote: I don't think Earle needs to be put on moderation, I think Earle needs a big hug. Earle, I can tell you that nothing is approaching anything like the Open Directory Project. Is there a problem that WP:OFFICE articles have tended to sit there in the "wrong version" for too long, and that good editors are unsure how to proceed? Absolutely. But that's a problem that everyone wants to fix in an open, transparent, and loving way. It is not very helpful to accuse Danny or the Foundation of any sort of "memory hole" policies or of becoming closed like the ODP. Please, let's all always move forward by assuming good faith. Good people, trying to do a good thing for the world, balancing many complex and competing concerns. It's a complex mess. That's because the world is a complex mess. We're all doing our best here. --Jimbo

Jimmy Wales wrote: "Memory holes" strike me more as a by-product of negligence than of any assumption of faith, good or bad. The person who lurks at the problem article but does nothing to repair it may also operating on the good-faith intent that he should not be meddling in a situation that he knows nothing about. Ec