Mark Gallagher wrote:
G'day Michael S,
Mark Gallagher wrote:
G'day Daniel S,
(And in the legal world there are also phenomena such as jury nullification and rogue judges...)
We have them on Wikipedia, too. Witness the Jack Thompson OFFICE action and certain admins.
Pardon me, but what exactly are you referring to here?
The Jack Thompson OFFICE action was an incident that occurred not too long ago. Some background (I don't know if you already know this stuff, so bear with me if you do): the American Jack Thompson is a professional lawyer and talented amateur wowser, famous amongst a small subset of gamers. The reason he's well-known to hardcore gamers is because the target of his wowserism is violent video games. Since hardcore gamers typically enjoy playing violent video games above all else[0], this is not a match made in heaven by any means.
Through a curious quirk of the Internet, hardcore gamers are far more likely to contribute Wikipedia than American attorneys. In particular, strange though it sounds, hardcore gamers are far more likely to contribute to an article about Mr Thompson full of such improperly sourced, utterly trivial, and of course totally biased nonsense that the only reason I can't describe it as a "hatchet job" is because the phrase "embarrassment to Wikipedia" leaps far more readily to the tongue.
When the Secret Wikipedia Puppet Government, aided by the Men In Black, finally pulled the plug on this hatch--excuse me, this embarrassment to Wikipedia, a thousand thousand gamers rose up in complaint. "That asshole Thompson wins again!", they cried. "Wikipedia under the control of a Secret Wikipedia Puppet Government, aided by the Men in Black!", they cried. "I credit my 'blog. That's enough for me to argue that Thompson is a Satanist, right?", they cried. "Ow, I just stood up for the first time in seventy-two hours and my knee joints cracked!", they cried.
As the person who drafted and watched over the rewritten Jack Thompson article, I do already know what transpired, but you give a decent summary for those who don't (as long as it's not taken too literally). I would note that quite a few of the gamer editors quickly recognized the superiority of a neutral, well-referenced version and have increasingly taken over defending it and educating the newer arrivals on how to do things properly.
This seems to me a good case of "jury nullification": we asked for an opinion, we got utter bollocks in return, we said, "actually, let's not do what they said after all."
This is what confused me. If, as it would seem, you're equating the response from gamers with that of a jury, then you've got the concept of jury nullification exactly backwards. Jury nullification does not involve a judge or some other higher authority nullifying the decision of the jury. Jury nullification refers to the ability of the jury to reach a verdict contrary to the law and the instructions of the court. Fans of the concept like to cite John Peter Zenger's acquittal on a charge of libel as an example of this.
--Michael Snow
On 7/8/06, Michael Snow wikipedia@earthlink.net wrote:
Jury nullification does not involve a judge or some other higher authority nullifying the decision of the jury. Jury nullification refers to the ability of the jury to reach a verdict contrary to the law and the instructions of the court. Fans of the concept like to cite John Peter Zenger's acquittal on a charge of libel as an example of this.
Exactly right, to the best of my knowledge. The American legal system and others like it treats this as an unfixable bug in the jury system; despite all exhortations to the contrary, the jury can reach any conclusions it likes for whatever reason it wishes. Some activists and others, however, try and push the idea that juries' ability to ignore laws they disagree with is a feature, not a bug.
-Matt
On Jul 9, 2006, at 5:34 AM, Matt Brown wrote:
Jury nullification does not involve a judge or some other higher authority nullifying the decision of the jury. Jury nullification refers to the ability of the jury to reach a verdict contrary to the law and the instructions of the court. Fans of the concept like to cite John Peter Zenger's acquittal on a charge of libel as an example of this.
Exactly right, to the best of my knowledge. The American legal system and others like it treats this as an unfixable bug in the jury system; despite all exhortations to the contrary, the jury can reach any conclusions it likes for whatever reason it wishes. Some activists and others, however, try and push the idea that juries' ability to ignore laws they disagree with is a feature, not a bug.
Juries under the American legal system cannot be held accountable for their decisions in any way. (As I recall, this may be a holdover from English law.) There was one case in colonial America where a colonial journalist, Zenger, was tried for sedition and libel for certain things he published about the governor of New York Colony. In addition to establishing the American precedent that truth is a defense to libel, this trial was also an early example of jury nullification--the laws as written and established by precedent led to a guilty verdict, but the jury refused to convict.
Jury nullification also reduced the effectiveness of the American prohibition of alcohol. Similarly, juries in African-American communities have apparently been known to acquit black defendants of certain crimes (particularly drug crimes) in response to perceived racism on the part of the police.