[Foundation-l] "Filtering" ourselves is pointless

[Excirial]

Let us assume for a minute that would not have taken any action whatsoever.
Seeing Fox's habit of stretching and turning the truth upside down i would
not be surprised if the next headline would have been "Wikipedia or
Pedopedia? - Online encyclopedia endorses child pornography". Eventually the
Foundation would have to respond to this in some way, if only to counter a
web of lies being spun. Again, no matter what, we would have gotten a
negative response. Had Jimbo released a written statement or open letter to
the community the headline would have been "Failing Founders - Wikipedia
founder fails to take decisive action". Fox was out to burn and pillage, and
no matter what, they would have done so.

Also keep in mind that Fox news was actively pursuing large Wikimedia donors
with a clear intend to make them "Guilty by association" of child porn.
Hence, the truth is irrelevant in this case. No company wants to be
associated with anything negative and therefor Wikipedia itself could have
taken even more damage if we just headed to a shelter and waited for the
storm to pass. If i would blame Jimbo for something, it would be the
complete lack of communication and the removal of content which was in use
and valid. Had Jimbo kept his deletion spree to unused sexual images the
community response would have been more limited, while the breaking story
would have been largely the same.

Even so, we are starting to beat a horse that is dead and buried, with the
Jimbo discussion going round and round in circles. Jimbo relinquished his
founder flag and apologized. What else can we do? Ban him altogether? I
would say it is best to lay the Jimbo issue to rest unless someone suggest
that we need to take further actions - complaints won't change history.

~Excirial

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:59 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sure Mike, we were going to get bad press from Fox News no matter what
> we did. You're clearly right about that, and I don't think anyone
> would disagree with you. I'm not seeing how you go from that position
> to endorsing (or at least defending against criticism) the panicked
> response from Jimmy and the board. Reason would suggest that if we
> can't change the message from Fox News, urgent action that earns
> universal condemnation (as opposed to just condemnation from Fox) is
> the wrong way to go. Now, instead of just further bad press from Fox,
> we've got Jimmy giving up his founder status, a large group of angry
> contributors, *and* more bad press from Fox. How is that defensible,
> given that the outcome was predictable?
>
> Nathan
>
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