I have been talking with Irismeister for several days now, partly (I admit) in an effort to get him to talk to me instead of insulting Theresa, and partly because his edits to [[Iridology]] were POVing that page again (and his comments in the article's talk page seemed to be false). After he made comments which seemed contradictory, I admit I said that he either needed to admit he didn't mean his 2nd statement, or else admit that he had been a liar in making his original statement. My patience was wearing thin, I admit. You may judge whether I have acted wrongly.
At any rate, he just posted this at [[Talk:Iridology]] -- "His Quackness is back and will let gentle, knowledgeable lawyers deal with the libel and slander off Wiki, having gathered all necessary material, addresses, and hard evidence, thank you :-) Nobody calls a doctor a lier without some very serious consequences, trust me !" I have to assume I am being implicitly threatened with legal action. I thought that I should notify this mailing list of the threat for information's sake, to warn others who attempt to converse with Irismeister, and to announce to those who care that I won't be talking to him anymore. I would ask that the matter be forwarded to the Arbitration Committee, but fear that doing so might constitute legal evidence of harassment (IANAL). You can assure me he's making the whole thing up, but I don't have the money or time to risk it.
James Rosenzweig (Jwrosenzweig)
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want. http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools
The course of action I recommend to everyone is to leave a crystal clean paper trail so that the arbitration committee can ban this guy with a clean conscience if he misbehaves.
His "lawyer" contacted me (from France, so I'm not really worried about it), but made no specific legal threats other than the typical lawyerly hints and tone.
It's very important, as a matter of justice and transparency, that we not ban Irismeister for behavior that others commit against him. This is one of the biggest reasons why Usenet-style flaming is so bad around here -- it deprives us of one of the cleanest reasons we have for getting rid of bad apples.
In a real anarchy like Usenet, where getting someone else kicked out is impossible, the only known solution to jerks is to yell at them in the hopes that they get some sense. (This solution doesn't work at all, but that doesn't keep people from trying it.) Around here, the solution is to greet them with respect, love, and sincere attempts to help them achieve whatever rational goals they may have. And this leaves us a nice clean and simple paper trail for banning if they just can't behave.
--Jimbo
James Rosenzweig wrote:
I have been talking with Irismeister for several days now, partly (I admit) in an effort to get him to talk to me instead of insulting Theresa, and partly because his edits to [[Iridology]] were POVing that page again (and his comments in the article's talk page seemed to be false). After he made comments which seemed contradictory, I admit I said that he either needed to admit he didn't mean his 2nd statement, or else admit that he had been a liar in making his original statement. My patience was wearing thin, I admit. You may judge whether I have acted wrongly.
At any rate, he just posted this at [[Talk:Iridology]] -- "His Quackness is back and will let gentle, knowledgeable lawyers deal with the libel and slander off Wiki, having gathered all necessary material, addresses, and hard evidence, thank you :-) Nobody calls a doctor a lier without some very serious consequences, trust me !" I have to assume I am being implicitly threatened with legal action. I thought that I should notify this mailing list of the threat for information's sake, to warn others who attempt to converse with Irismeister, and to announce to those who care that I won't be talking to him anymore. I would ask that the matter be forwarded to the Arbitration Committee, but fear that doing so might constitute legal evidence of harassment (IANAL). You can assure me he's making the whole thing up, but I don't have the money or time to risk it.
James Rosenzweig (Jwrosenzweig)
Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want. http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Jimmy Wales wrote:
The course of action I recommend to everyone is to leave a crystal clean paper trail so that the arbitration committee can ban this guy with a clean conscience if he misbehaves.
His "lawyer" contacted me (from France, so I'm not really worried about it), but made no specific legal threats other than the typical lawyerly hints and tone.
It's very important, as a matter of justice and transparency, that we not ban Irismeister for behavior that others commit against him. This is one of the biggest reasons why Usenet-style flaming is so bad around here -- it deprives us of one of the cleanest reasons we have for getting rid of bad apples.
In a real anarchy like Usenet, where getting someone else kicked out is impossible, the only known solution to jerks is to yell at them in the hopes that they get some sense. (This solution doesn't work at all, but that doesn't keep people from trying it.) Around here, the solution is to greet them with respect, love, and sincere attempts to help them achieve whatever rational goals they may have. And this leaves us a nice clean and simple paper trail for banning if they just can't behave.
While it's not the approach I advocate, from a purely legal standpoint I don't see how he has a leg to stand on. The Wikimedia Foundation has no legal obligation to let all viewpoints be heard, and is permitted to be explicitly anti-iridology if it so desired. We ought not to be biased on any particular matter (as far as being unbiased is possible), but we're *legally permitted* to be. We can even ban people because we don't like the word "iridology", because it makes my head hurt trying to pronounce it. Or we can ban people because having a name ending in "idology" irritates us. Simply put, we don't *need* a clean paper-trail to ban anyone, legally speaking. "The Wikimedia Foundation does not like User:Iridology, and no longer chooses to permit him to publish his material on our website" is a good enough reason.
All, again, legally speaking. Obviously we want a much different process for our own satisfaction. But not because it's required by any law.
-Mark