[Foundation-l] Will Beback

[George Herbert]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 11:38 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> On 03/12/12 12:35 PM, George Herbert wrote:
>>
>> Without delving into the specifics here, or concluding either way as
>> to the current case lacking actual evidence in front of me, it is a
>> real and quite serious problem if we don't hold senior and longtime
>> editors to account for abuses they may perpetuate on the Wiki.
>>
>> The hue and cry of "But I contributed XZY!" is true, but irrelevant.
>> If one is abusive on the Wiki, one damages the community in deep and
>> divisive ways.  Everyone needs to understand that.  If you start
>> disrupting the community, no matter who you are or where you were, it
>> needs to stop.
>
>
> This would be fine if all the established admins who abuse newbies were held
> to the same standards.
>
> But as has been said, Wikipedia is not a democracy. That's enough to make
> secret Stalinist processes valid.
>
> Ray


There is an insidious problem with our privacy and outing policies
that force some disciplinary related discussions off-wiki.

Avoiding things like that are why I use my real full name on wiki.

That said - that's the privacy policy nearly everyone has consistently
wanted, and I'm far in the corner minority on the wisdom of the
privacy policy as a whole there.  The private considerations of
privacy related abuses are a necessary outgrowth of the policy and
community norm on privacy writ large.

There are similar privacy issues in a number of other areas such as
the unblock list and OTRS.

It's all nice and good to point out that some of the effects are
stalinist (which, to some degree, I agree) but without a total revamp
of the privacy approach across the whole project - if not Foundation -
that's as far as I know and see the only way to do it.  If you have a
better balance point proposal or a specific issue with this case, I
for one am interested in it, but it really has to work with the
totality of the privacy / management situation...


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com