Todd Allen writes:
I agree that not all legal concerns can be discussed publicly, and have made that point myself. And if the Foundation believes that there is a legal concern, it can certainly OFFICE the article in question.
My belief is that OFFICE removals should be very rare, and that OFFICE edits should be practically nonexistent.
As to the issue of "community vs. from above", if Jimbo or you contacted me and said "Hey, Todd, you better take this given action," I would generally tend to consider that an official request. If we wanted the community to decide, we should've let them decide through normal processes. If action needed to be taken from above, it should have been transparently (e.g., OFFICE) marked as action from above.
This is, if you think about it, a false dichotomy. There are choices between OFFICE action and doing nothing. Those choices include "giving advice" or "making a request." It depends on whether you think the community should be empowered to make its own decisions but still be able to hear advice or requests from the Foundation. I happen to think that we're sufficiently unintimidating (witness this list, for example) that advice or a request can be rejected.
The attempt to make this look like a community decision when it really appears to be a WMF mandate ("strong suggestion", or whatever we want to call it) is what I find disturbing here.
So the theory here is that we're clever enough to cloak an OFFICE action as a community action, and even to convince some community members that they believe they're merely acting on advice rather than under a "WMF mandate," but not quite clever enough to fool you about our cloaked agenda?
I confess it is a terrible burden for us, being smart enough to cook up such schemes but not smart enough to fool you entirely. :)
--Mike
Mike Godwin wrote:
This is, if you think about it, a false dichotomy. There are choices between OFFICE action and doing nothing. Those choices include "giving advice" or "making a request." It depends on whether you think the community should be empowered to make its own decisions but still be able to hear advice or requests from the Foundation. I happen to think that we're sufficiently unintimidating (witness this list, for example) that advice or a request can be rejected.
Is that actually true? In the past, when "advice" or "a request" was rejected, the parties doing the rejecting were later informed that the "request" had in fact been binding (though that hadn't been stated up-front), and some people were de-sysopped as a result. In one notable incident, a current member of the board (Erik) was de-sysopped by Jimmy in April 2006 for unprotecting an article that a Foundation representative had protected, though that protection had not been labeled as an official Foundation action.
There have been several of these incidents of unofficial-but-really-we-mean-binding Foundation actions that I don't believe it is actually true that "we're sufficiently unintimidating that advice or a request can be rejected". For that to be true, the Foundation needs to be *much* clearer about when it is giving advice that can be rejected, versus orders that it will use its ownership over the servers to enforce.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
In one notable incident, a current member of the board (Erik) was de-sysopped by Jimmy in April 2006 for unprotecting an article that a Foundation representative had protected, though that protection had not been labeled as an official Foundation action.
I did not de-sysop Erik, ever. To the contrary, actually.
Please be careful about making such dramatic claims.
--Jimbo
On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 4:23 PM, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
In one notable incident, a current member of the board (Erik) was de-sysopped by Jimmy in April 2006 for unprotecting an article that a Foundation representative had protected, though that protection had not been labeled as an official Foundation action.
I did not de-sysop Erik, ever. To the contrary, actually.
Please be careful about making such dramatic claims.
--Jimbo
This is true, but your initial reaction was in favor of taking swift preventive action. I think we all agree that what happened was an overreaction that caused more trouble than it prevented, that you didn't have the full situation in hand when you commented on it, but you were not against it when it happened. (You were having dinner in VA with Greg and me that evening.) You may have rethought the situation soon after, but the immediate reaction caused the sparks.
My take is this: reactions happened two years ago that happen differently now that crises are no longer managed entirely by someone running around the office like a chicken with his head cut off conferring by cell phone with someone who's probably getting on a plane in five minutes, and now that we've learned from doing ten or twenty of the infinite number of dumb things we could possibly do. We'll probably continue to make some poor decisions in tough situations, but hopefully different ones.
-Kat pointed here by someone else who got to muck through the aftermath of that...
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Delirium wrote:
In one notable incident, a current member of the board (Erik) was de-sysopped by Jimmy in April 2006 for unprotecting an article that a Foundation representative had protected, though that protection had not been labeled as an official Foundation action.
I did not de-sysop Erik, ever. To the contrary, actually.
Please be careful about making such dramatic claims.
My mistake; I completely misremembered who did what. Those interested in the details can get the accurate summary from a contemporary edition of the Wikipedia signpost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-04-24/Office_...
In any case, though, Erik *was* blocked and desysopped for undoing a Foundation action, and people since then (especially with less stature in the community) have been quite wary of ignoring or undoing Foundation "suggestions".
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Delirium wrote:
In one notable incident, a current member of the board (Erik) was de-sysopped by Jimmy in April 2006 for unprotecting an article that a Foundation representative had protected, though that protection had not been labeled as an official Foundation action.
I did not de-sysop Erik, ever. To the contrary, actually.
Please be careful about making such dramatic claims.
My mistake; I completely misremembered who did what. Those interested in the details can get the accurate summary from a contemporary edition of the Wikipedia signpost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-04-24/Office_...
In any case, though, Erik *was* blocked and desysopped for undoing a Foundation action, and people since then (especially with less stature in the community) have been quite wary of ignoring or undoing Foundation "suggestions".
I would add that incidents like this are part of the reason Mike prefers the Foundation avoid resorting to "office actions" if possible. As Kat has indicated, the reaction at the time was symptomatic of the dysfunctional organization in place then. I think the more professional office Sue has put in place would have handled the situation quite differently.
--Michael Snow
I have negatively covered the Foundation. There were no repercussions, although some people might wish I had never started the story.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomic_communi ty%27s_frustration_with_Wikipedia_guidelines
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Delirium Sent: 19 May 2008 02:23 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [WL-News] Wikimedia Foundation in danger of losing immunity under the Communications Decency Act
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Delirium wrote:
In one notable incident, a current member of the board (Erik) was de-sysopped by Jimmy in April 2006 for unprotecting an article that a Foundation representative had protected, though that protection had not been labeled as an official Foundation action.
I did not de-sysop Erik, ever. To the contrary, actually.
Please be careful about making such dramatic claims.
My mistake; I completely misremembered who did what. Those interested in the details can get the accurate summary from a contemporary edition of the Wikipedia signpost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-04-24/Office_ actions
In any case, though, Erik *was* blocked and desysopped for undoing a Foundation action, and people since then (especially with less stature in the community) have been quite wary of ignoring or undoing Foundation "suggestions".
-Mark
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On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 12:58 PM, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Todd Allen writes:
I agree that not all legal concerns can be discussed publicly, and have made that point myself. And if the Foundation believes that there is a legal concern, it can certainly OFFICE the article in question.
My belief is that OFFICE removals should be very rare, and that OFFICE edits should be practically nonexistent.
On that, I would agree. However, when it -is- WMF taking an official action, it should be clearly marked as such. If it is not, it should be made absolutely, 100% clear that this is "Mike Godwin, the editor" not "Mike Godwin, the WMF representative" putting forth the position. What should be studiously avoided (ESPECIALLY in cases where the material at issue is critical of WMF) is some grey area between the two.
As to the issue of "community vs. from above", if Jimbo or you contacted me and said "Hey, Todd, you better take this given action," I would generally tend to consider that an official request. If we wanted the community to decide, we should've let them decide through normal processes. If action needed to be taken from above, it should have been transparently (e.g., OFFICE) marked as action from above.
This is, if you think about it, a false dichotomy. There are choices between OFFICE action and doing nothing. Those choices include "giving advice" or "making a request." It depends on whether you think the community should be empowered to make its own decisions but still be able to hear advice or requests from the Foundation. I happen to think that we're sufficiently unintimidating (witness this list, for example) that advice or a request can be rejected.
Certainly. Once again, you have every right to nominate the article for deletion, using whatever normal process Wikinews uses to determine whether an article should be deleted or not, and allow the community (you know, the whole community) to make the decision. You, in particular, are also empowered to say "Folks, this has got to go, NOW", and OFFICE it. Again, what should not happen is some "grey area" thing, where you choose the target and someone else summarily pulls the trigger, and again, this distinction should be most carefully maintained in areas where the article paints an unflattering picture of WMF.
The attempt to make this look like a community decision when it really appears to be a WMF mandate ("strong suggestion", or whatever we want to call it) is what I find disturbing here.
So the theory here is that we're clever enough to cloak an OFFICE action as a community action, and even to convince some community members that they believe they're merely acting on advice rather than under a "WMF mandate," but not quite clever enough to fool you about our cloaked agenda?
I confess it is a terrible burden for us, being smart enough to cook up such schemes but not smart enough to fool you entirely. :)
I'm sure it's terrible, and I do feel for you. Tomorrow, I'll be exposing your global-domination scheme, just you wait! :)
In all seriousness, you may have done this with the best of motives, and really, I don't think you're a bad guy, I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you did. But especially when the involved article is unflattering to WMF, it looks bad. I think the legal or quasi-legal term is "appearance of impropriety." Whether or not you had bad motives here, it smells bad for this to be done through the back door, with a few words whispered in a few ears, rather than one of: "I am going to OFFICE this, because I believe it's that bad, and I'll take the heat", or "Well, it's questionable, but I'll put my two cents in and then let the community decide through its normal processes whether that's enough concern to get rid of it."
--Mike
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--- On Sun, 5/18/08, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
From: Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [WL-News] Wikimedia Foundation in danger of losing immunity under the Communications Decency Act To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Sunday, May 18, 2008, 4:44 PM On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 12:58 PM, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Todd Allen writes:
I agree that not all legal concerns can be
discussed publicly, and
have made that point myself. And if the Foundation
believes that there
is a legal concern, it can certainly OFFICE the
article in question.
My belief is that OFFICE removals should be very rare,
and that OFFICE
edits should be practically nonexistent.
On that, I would agree. However, when it -is- WMF taking an official action, it should be clearly marked as such. If it is not, it should be made absolutely, 100% clear that this is "Mike Godwin, the editor" not "Mike Godwin, the WMF representative" putting forth the position. What should be studiously avoided (ESPECIALLY in cases where the material at issue is critical of WMF) is some grey area between the two.
I don't see the issue here. If you are approached as an administrator and asked to delete something and given information about why this is recommended it is clearly a request. To be completely clear, I have been approached about such a thing in past (i.e. before Mike Godwin). There was no doubt in my mind that I was expected to use my judgment as an administrator and uphold the trust of my community and not follow advice I believed to based on grounds the community would dismiss even if they could not all be given access to the necessary info.
After all it is not like WMF doesn't have access to the database if they must remove something. If they are asking an admin it is a recommendation, no grey area about it.
Birgitte SB
Birgitte SB wrote:
--- On Sun, 5/18/08, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
From: Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [WL-News] Wikimedia Foundation in danger of losing immunity under the Communications Decency Act To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Sunday, May 18, 2008, 4:44 PM On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 12:58 PM, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Todd Allen writes:
I agree that not all legal concerns can be
discussed publicly, and
have made that point myself. And if the Foundation
believes that there
is a legal concern, it can certainly OFFICE the
article in question.
My belief is that OFFICE removals should be very rare,
and that OFFICE
edits should be practically nonexistent.
On that, I would agree. However, when it -is- WMF taking an official action, it should be clearly marked as such. If it is not, it should be made absolutely, 100% clear that this is "Mike Godwin, the editor" not "Mike Godwin, the WMF representative" putting forth the position. What should be studiously avoided (ESPECIALLY in cases where the material at issue is critical of WMF) is some grey area between the two.
I don't see the issue here. If you are approached as an administrator and asked to delete something and given information about why this is recommended it is clearly a request. To be completely clear, I have been approached about such a thing in past (i.e. before Mike Godwin). There was no doubt in my mind that I was expected to use my judgment as an administrator and uphold the trust of my community and not follow advice I believed to based on grounds the community would dismiss even if they could not all be given access to the necessary info.
After all it is not like WMF doesn't have access to the database if they must remove something. If they are asking an admin it is a recommendation, no grey area about it.
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
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
I don't see the issue here. If you are approached as an administrator and asked to delete something and given information about why this is recommended it is clearly a request. To be completely clear, I have been approached about such a thing in past (i.e. before Mike Godwin). There was no doubt in my mind that I was expected to use my judgment as an administrator and uphold the trust of my community and not follow advice I believed to based on grounds the community would dismiss even if they could not all be given access to the necessary info.
But would you ever dismiss it if it was the foundation's lawyer telling you there were legal concerns? We all know the law trumps community policy.
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