On Jan 2, 2008 10:18 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Orangemarlin#Contacting_people.27s_em...
This is an interesting thread (one of a few on this subject, including in the Jimsch62 (sp) RfAr) - two editors who are in the military/work for the US government claim that it is their legal responsibility to report to the USAF the use of a military PC to edit Wikipedia because that is a violation of the UCMJ. I'm curious about whether that is true, and if it is why we don't block .mil IPs from editing en masse.
Mike Godwin, do you have an opinion on this issue?
In case anyone else on Foundation-l found this summary unclear, it appears that what is being argued is the following:
Two (or more) individuals who are both enwiki admins and members of the US military assert that under the US Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) they have an affirmative obligation to report violations of the UCMJ by other members of the military.
They assert that the actions of another editor, who is believed to be with the Air Force, violate the UCMJ, both because of personal use of government computers and other unspecified (at least in what I read) infractions.
By raising the issue of these alleged infractions, and their possible obligation to report them, these admins have been seen by others as intimidating/harrassing this user on the basis of off-wiki circumstances.
This case is already moving into arbitration on an expidited basis, largely because of the perception of harassment.
So the legal question is whether the UCMJ does in fact lead to these sorts of conflicts of interest and real world consequences.
If it does, the practical question is whether this conflict of interest is so severe that actions should be taken to limit its impact. For example, a draconian approach would be to disallow all editing from .mil addresses (which is the possibility Nathan suggests above).
-Robert Rohde