Amir:
I am forwarding your email to Mike Godwin for further opinion--but as far as
I'm aware, the Foundation was not contacted regarding this matter. I have
received no correspondence about it, and I'm not certain that a national
chapter should be superseding a community decision.
--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia
Foundation today:
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Phone: 727.231.0101
Fax: 727.258.0207
E-Mail: cbass(a)wikimedia.org
Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
(Short intro: I am User:Amire80, editor in Hebrew, Russian
and English Wikipedias, and sysop in the English one.)
The whole article about Amnon Yitzhak, a well-known and
controversial Jewish preacher, was deleted from the Hebrew Wikipedia.
It happened after Wikimedia Israel received a letter from an
attorney representing Yitzhak, which requested to remove
allegedly defamatory material from the article.
The article was deleted and recreated without older versions.
For the short time that these versions were available, it was
possible to see that the article was not any more defamatory
against Amnon Yitzhak than an average newspaper or television
item about him. The editors who worked on it were not vandals
and the material was reasonably sourced. Now it's impossible
to see that, too (unless one is a sysop there).
Nevertheless, the bureaucrats of the Hebrew Wikipedia chose
to salt the article with an explanation similar to WP:OFFICE.
The problem is that it is doesn't seem to be a case for WP:OFFICE.
Wikimedia Israel is not the main Wikimedia Office, but only a
small local association, which is just beginning its life. In
any case, as far as my understanding of jurisdictions goes,
Wikimedia Israel cannot be held responsible for the content
of the article and neither the article's editors.
I am sincerely sorry to be a "schtinker". That's a Yiddish
word for "informer". The bureaucrats of the Hebrew Wikipedia
are excellent contributors, thanks to whom the Hebrew
Wikipedia is one of the very best projects of the WMF. But i
am quite sure that they made a mistake in this case.
Wikipedia must not censor out sourced material after one
feeble legal threat so easily.
Many respected editors of the Hebrew Wikipedia voiced their
opposition to this deletion, but the sysops do not agree to
restore the deleted versions, saying that they won't do it
without proper legal advice.
This is understandable; so - can someone from the Foundation
Office, who has experience with BLP legal situations help the
Hebrew Wikipedia sysops to solve this problem?
Thanks in advance.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni
English -
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
Hebrew -
http://haharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
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