[Foundation-l] Fwd: [WL-News] Wikimedia Foundation in danger of losing immunity under the Communications Decency Act

[Mike Godwin]

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