[WikiEN-l] The problem with flagging things with {{office}}

[Ben Lowe]

On 4/20/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

> Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but if Wikimedia were found
> liable for Wikitruth's deliberate and purposeful attempt to re-spread
> material we removed at request of someone else, wouldn't Wikimedia
> have standing for suing Wikitruth as attempting to defraud Wikimedia
> or something like that?
>
> FF


This is a very good point.  I would also strongly suggest that admins be
required to agree to a EULA prohibiting them from copying and redistributing
information.  Give us all ten days to sign it, de-sysop anyone who doesn't,
and require all new admins to agree.  Any new content posted on Wikitruth
that's clearly from admin-only Wikipedia screens would be a clear violation
of that EULA.  IANAL, but I imagine this would help protect Wikimedia even
more, non?

OFFICE-protected articles should have their content locked from view from
anyone, including from admins.  And I have no problem with a hidden OFFICE
block. Let's dump the OFFICE tag.  Let the page simply appear as "protected"
to non-admins, and un-unlockable to admins.  You could potentially even set
it up such that Danny does an unlogged OFFICE block of the page, and then
requests via email that an administrator block the page in the log.  Thus
([[WP:BEANS]]....) it's not possible to simply monitor Danny's contributions
to find out what pages are WP:OFFICE locked.

Yes, this is, ostensibly, censorship creep.  But I would also argue that
these steps are apparently becoming necessary.  Concealing WP:OFFICE actions
conspiracy style is not necessary, but simply being quiet about it is
appropriate.  So long as admins don't loudly kvetch about not being in the
know on why an OFFICE action has been implemented, and quietly assume that
the article will be available for edit at some later point, the profile of
this whole thing can be lowered a bit.

It might not be as catchy a tag line, but Wikipedia being "the encyclopedia
anyone can edit except in those rare cases where the subjects of articles
legitimately threaten to sue because of libelous content posted about them,
in which case the article is temporarily unavailable to edit until such
problems can be resolved " is fine by me.

Ben







> On 4/20/06, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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> > Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea,
> > but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: Wikitruth.info<http://wikitruth.info/>
> > (amongst other 'helpful' critics) seems to have a sysop working for
> > them. Were we to flag an article that was libellous with {{office}}, you
> > can bet that they would go and dig out the deleted sections, and repost
> > it to their wonderful service. Now Wikimedia has been informed that they
> > are likely to be sued, and in response has done something knowing that
> > it would increase the publication and spread of this libel. - we're then
>
> > liable for their reposting of the content, and "utterly screwed". I
> > know, I know, "that's not what was intended". Well, tough, that's the
> > way the Real World(tm) works.
> >
> > So, what does this mean? Well, flagging articles as Office-protected is
> > a legal no-no in that kind of case, and something significantly less
> > high profile has to be done - and, possibly, the existence of this
> > action would be buried for all eternity (or, certainly, several decades,
> > which on the Internet is much the same thing).
> >
> > This is something that we have to deal with /now/ - the Foundation could
>
> > possibly be sued out of existence tomorrow. There is no time for us to
> > have a nice chat, or wring our hands about whether it's properly the
> > "wiki way". We're here to build an encyclopædia, above all things, and
> > if you don't care that the Foundation is here to keep everything
> > working, then possibly you need to re-evaluate your priorities and
> > commitment to this project; Distributed Proofreaders could always do
> > with a few more volunteers, for instance.
> >
> > Please note that this is all conjecture on my part, I'm not the one who
> > makes {{office}} decisions.
> >
> > Yours sincerely,
> > - --
> > James D. Forrester
> > Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
> > E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
> > IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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