On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 11:49 PM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
Quite so. If anyone asks you to help with something they could accomplish just as well without you, it's entirely your decision whether or not to assist. "I'm not comfortable participating, ask someone else" is totally fine as an answer.
--Michael Snow
True, but I'd still say such a situation is pretty much identical to the WMF performing the action itself.
It's an interesting situation, because the act of deleting the article is certainly not illegal. I guess it's embarrassing? Or bad PR? I don't know. If you read my earlier posts you'll see I don't really understand why the WMF doesn't just perform the deletion itself.
I guess my difficulty in coming up with a good analogy is that I was thinking of actions which were bad things, but the action of deleting a libelous article is a good one. So here goes. If I leave a bag of saplings out on my front porch and I ask someone to plant a tree in my front yard, is it far to say that I planted a tree in my front yard? What if I just tell the person that the location of the saplings and "explain to some length" how cool it would be if I had a tree there?
Then some newspaper story comes out about how I planted a tree in my front yard, and when asked about the story I say something like "there is absolutely no truth to that story and I'm shocked that anyone would engage in such shoddy journalism".
Anthony