[Foundation-l] Wikipedia:Office Actions

[Platonides]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Why the overhead?
> 
> Why don't we just wait for the need, "OMG we're doing X on jawiki!",
> do what needs to be done "Brion, oversight cary on Jawiki now please!"
> ... and then clean up and explain after the fact.
> 
> Important cases are rare enough that I don't see the need to explain
> something in a hundred languages that it will never be used in...

I completely agree.

"Wikimedia Foundation removing an article for a legal threat" is imho a 
concept simple enough for being understood by our Wikimedians.


GerardM thinks it's not used due to "not knowing it's out there". I feel 
it's the other way round.
If normal people doesn't know about it, they will only troll a bit at 
the Village Pump, Administrators Noticeboard and quit. Things are 
managed inside. While a person being serious about suing won't stop by 
not seeing a policy supporting it.
So with current approach only important cases arrive to the office, 
which is good.


Two weeks ago, a new user which had been trying to push his PV about 
canibalism in American natives, wrote a "letter to the Wikipedians" on a 
free host, where we were required to remove the content opposed to it 
from 50 articles (not mentioned which), adding them a chapter explaining 
why it was wrong and also have permanent excuses about it on the Main Page.
It ended stating that if not following them after being warned, 
Wikipedia could be demanded by "cultural associations and american states".
All of this was said as comng from the "the Raelian movement", as this 
man seems to be a local coordinator (note there was no relationship 
between Raelianism and the issue, nor any endorsement from the Raelian 
movement).

There were three "replies" [1],[2],[3] and all of them mentioned the 
ability of referring to WMF.

Not only there wasn't an Office action on our main page, as i'm now 
writing this i discovered the original webpage has been changed[4] into 
simply explaining his points.

I don't really know if he really contacted foundation (i doubt) but 
impossible claims (suing an entity by a webpage) should be kept apart of 
normal work if possible.

In an Internet which can be censored with a hotmail account [5], making 
policies of "we can be censored by the office" where in the office the 
case will be judged by someone which doesn't even read the language the 
dispute is on and has never heard of that "fascist communist censoring 
sysop" is *dangerous*.

On the other hand, knowing we have the WMF with a lawyer able to defend 
NPV is a relief... but it's a knowledge only for advanced wikipedians ;)


1-http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikies-l/2007-April/001703.html
2-http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikies-l/2007-April/001714.html
3-http://nidododo.blogspot.com/2007/04/los-raelianos-amenazan-con-demandar.html
4-I keep a local copy of the original.
5-http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/10/09/1929259.shtml