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

[John Lee]

James D. Forrester wrote:

>Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea,
>but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: 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.
>  
>
While I agree with all that you've said, I fear that for practical 
reasons, it would be impossible to cover up an action. As geni has noted 
on Wikipedia-l, often what happens instead is that the scandal becomes 
even bigger once it's revealed a controversial action was kept quiet -- 
something which, as we've just learnt, probably isn't going to be a rare 
occurrence. Security through obscurity isn't a very effective mechanism. 
I suggest creating a special board class of users (as others have 
proposed), so that ordinary admins can't wheel war with these users, or 
otherwise do anything liable to get us in trouble (i.e. view deleted 
revisions of a page deleted by a board user). Confronting the problem 
head on is a lot more effective than trying to prevent people from 
finding out about the problem -- with the latter, you either succeed 
greatly, or fail miserably. Security through obscurity won't work here, 
not as things stand.

On another note, I find it disturbing that some people (Kelly and Tony, 
mainly) appear to have missed the greater point here. Yes, we know -- 
doing something under WP:OFFICE draws trolls and real rouge admins to 
the article like moths to a flame. However, if due to this, we abandon 
WP:OFFICE altogether, what's the point? And even assuming that all 
admins have their heads screwed on the right way, and do ask Danny if he 
did this because of legal issues, how does this resolve anything? The 
rouge admins would still have the information they need.

I'm not saying this because of "free speech" or "openness" or all that 
crap -- you guys know that I'm among the last people who would care 
about Wikipedia being a social experiment and all that. What's 
concerning is that this is a very effective way to piss off admins while 
leaving an apparent loophole for the rouge admins to bulldoze their way 
through. Apparently the fact that Karmafist, et al made a number of 
terribly insensible arguments has obscured one of the few things that 
they got right: anarchism isn't a feasible way to build an encylopaedia.

I'm not a process wonk -- far from it -- but unlike most established 
[[common law]] policies which trolls were challenging using the "OMG, if 
we don't know the rules, how can we abide by them?" argument, WP:OFFICE 
is an established (but new) policy which Danny did not follow in this 
particular case. He obviously had good reasons for it, and I'm not 
criticising him for performing one of the most thankless jobs a 
Wikipedian can have, but I hope we can drive home some lessons from this 
terrible misunderstanding: If you don't want people to undo something 
because of an established policy with real-world implications, do make 
it explicit that this policy is being applied here.

Now, maybe there is a point in just not stepping on Danny's toes and 
letting him go about his business. However, unlike with most ordinary 
cabal members, Danny and other editors like Angela, Jimbo, et al can be 
acting either as ordinary editors/admins or in their capacity as a 
representative of the Foundation. This presents worrying consequences 
for the enforcement of policy -- is NPOV really non-negotiable if we 
can't touch an edit Danny made where he might have inadvertently 
introduced POV into an article, but nobody dares to correct it?

All I'm saying is, we might need to go this far. But there are plenty of 
other possibilities yet to be explored. Let's accept the fact that 
trolls will buzz around WP:OFFICE protected articles, spreading their 
malicious lies. As James has noted, what's important is that we batten 
down the hatches and prevent any real damage from coming to Wikipedia. 
One way at least guaranteed to achieve something towards this end is to 
prevent board actions from being reverted, and to make the information 
related to them out of bounds to ordinary admins and editors. It's a lot 
better than being left in a situation where admins aren't even sure 
whether their next action (be it a simple query about something Danny 
did, or undoing a very questionable deletion) will get Wikipedia and/or 
the Foundation in deep shit.

John