On 3/11/06, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
On 10 Mar 2006 at 20:25, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Else you may be blocked or temporarily desysopped. These tags are bloody serious, the WP:OFFICE rule is only used in case of actual problems, and the Foundation handles them as expeditiously as they possibly can. I expect everyone will piss and moan, but removing a WP:OFFICE tag is a really really dickish thing to do. So please don't.
Not that I have any intention of doing such a thing... but I still have some concerns about the whole WP:OFFICE business. Sure, I realize the necessity for something like that; as long as Wikipedia and its parent foundation exist as real-world entities rather than just disembodied Internet phenomena, there will be people in charge who have bills to pay, legalities to comply with, servers to keep running, and so on... and, hence, concerns for which their butts are on the line in a manner not shared by the typical geek just editing Wikipedia for the fun of it. Nevertheless, in a site which prides itself on openness and rule by community consensus, having actions take place unilaterally and secretively goes against the grain, and should be kept to an absolute minimum.
There's kind of a feel that, if an article happens to offend the "wrong" people (who have some kind of political, financial, or legal leverage to use against Wikipedia/Wikimedia?), the Wikipedia Secret Police can just make it disappear, and community consensus (and all the Wikipedia pillars) be damned.
We already know that the community is secondary to the goal of producing an excellent encyclopedia. But is that, in turn, secondary to some secret corporate agenda held by the Foundation Office? Blanking articles into sub-stubs and protecting them doesn't seem conducive to producing an excellent encyclopedia, and doing this without explanation is not conducive to the community.
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Dan, I think if you actually *read* the policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Office_Actions you'll see that it's nothing like the secretive, corporate, anti-Wikipedia, anti-community type of thing you suggest. It says on the page that it is a "temporary action to allow us to be kind while we sort out the encyclopedic way forward". Community consensus won't tell us when we're in danger of being sued - that's more likely to be ascertained by the person who's just received the angry email/phonecall - but community consensus will, as always, be what actually writes the balanced article in the end.
N'est pas?
Cormac
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