[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 33, Issue 152

[Molu]

"The recent fuss over Office actions demonstrates amply that even quite
well established administrators feel that they can challenge and
disregard the interests of the Foundation." Unfortunately it demonstrates nothing even remotely resembling the dark senario you choose to paint. No party involved *has* challenged, let alone felt entitled to challenge, the interests of the foundation. I believe it is a unanimous consensus among wikipedia community (disregarding vandals of course) that the interests of the foundation are foremost because without it the project can not exist.
   
  One of the parties has challenged what he could be reasonably certain were the interests of another party as an individual editor having nothing to do with any real-life Foundation affairs. By challenging an out-of-policy action he did the irght thing and the interests of the Foundation had nothing to do with it. It seems some people do not find it unreasonable to expect an editor to act on information he did not have.
   
  Reverting once the actions of another editor, especially when that action was in direct violation of wikipedia policies established through community consensus, is part of the normal wiki editing process and such actions are encouraged by [[WP:BOLD]] because they serve to advance the interests of the encyclopaedia better than spending endless hours (and because of the nature of talk page communication, holding even a short dialougue can take days) discussing an edit even when that edit is not very likely to cause controversies and edit wars.
   
  It is surprising how some people go on claiming that Erik should have emplyed some hidden precognitive abilities to deduce that an action explicitly labeled by Danny as a normal editorial action was actually performed in the interests of the Foundation and thereby refrained from exercising the editorial powers gifted to him by the *wiki*pedia.
   
  Molu


  

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 20:54:42 +0100
From: "Tony Sidaway" 
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Why the uproar over wikitruth
To: "English Wikipedia" 
Message-ID:
<605709b90604221254l3f7c6da1uf7bed1d214415ee0 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 4/22/06, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> Under the Communications Decency Act
> >which provides a general exemption from third party liability to
> >online information providers, this exemption does not extend to
> >liability for publication by agents of the provider. A Wikipedia
> >administrator who uses his special powers to publish defamatory
> >content or copy copyright-infringing content would tend to advance the
> >case against Wikipedia for third-party liability.
> >
> The fallacy there is in suggesting that all admins are agents of
> Wikipedia. There is nothing in any description of admins that allows
> them to do anything on any site outside of a particular project. A
> Wikipedia admin does not thereby receive the right to be an admin on any
> sister project or even on a Wikipedia in any other language. Perhaps
> you should review the meaning of "agent".


I use the term loosely. If someone entrusted with the ability to see
unpublished content then uses that ability to cause it to be
published, then the organisation's task of showing that it took
reasonable steps to prevent publication is made more difficult, for it
most demonstrate that it reasonably believed that this person would
not do so. If our admins are chosen through a popularity contest in
which their loyalty to the aims and interests of the Foundation,
rather than the community, is not examined, I think it would be very
difficult to argue that such a belief was reasonable. Basically we
let any mutt off the street act as an administrator, irrespective of
his views on, or knowledge of liability, copyright, or anything else
relevant, or his commitment to act in the interests of the Foundation.

The recent fuss over Office actions demonstrates amply that even quite
well established administrators feel that they can challenge and
disregard the interests of the Foundation.
		
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