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

[Todd Allen]

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 12:58 PM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin at 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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Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.