[WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

[Andrew Gray]

On 09/10/06, Kris & Adrian <emailus at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> >
> >>Unilateral deletions are performed hundreds of times a month by
> >>Wikipedia Admins on the basis of their own judgement.  Perhaps I
> >>shouldn't find it shocking that some [[troll (Internet)|opportunist]]
> >>found it useful take advantage of Danny's high profile in order to
> >>play out a little bit of performance art.
> >
> >  >
> >  > It is unfortunate and uncharacteristic to see you equate the elevation
> >  > of experienced judgement and consideration over strict policy
> >  > conformance with a lack of deference to the community.
> >
> > I think that a significant amount of the confusion here has to do with
> > it being a little unclear whether this was intended as a WP:OFFICE act.
> >   It was done under Danny's normal account, with no reference to
> > WP:OFFICE, so I think it is safe to assume this was Danny acting in his
> > capacity and a long standing and widely respected editor exercising
> > editorial judgment in a manner consistent with our longstanding policies
> > of being bold.
> >
> > It just so happened, as it turns out, that it was triggered by a call to
> > the office.
>
> So it did have a reference to WP:OFFICE then.
>
> I'm sorry Jimmy but what you've written above has to be the worst case
> of whitewashing ever.
>
> "It wasn't WP:OFFICE but it was."

"It was caused by contact to the office" is *not* "It was WP:OFFICE".
WP:OFFICE is shorthand for an "office task"; one made by and for the
Foundation. Danny is one of the people who occasionally do these
tasks. It does not cover anything that has a tangential connection
with the actual office, because...

Several hundred people "contact the office" every day - usually by
email, occasionally by phone. A number of people, most heavily Danny,
handle this stuff, and almost always do so without further reference
to "the Foundation" - articles are cleaned up, copyvios hurried along
to deletion, abusive talk page messages removed, egregious bits of
stupidity caught, a hundred and one things quietly kept ticking over.

If I handle one of these because someone sent an email to the office,
it doesn't class as WP:OFFICE. If Kat Walsh or David Monniaux do it,
it doesn't class as WP:OFFICE. If Danny does it in his normal routine
of handling complaints - and in most cases, the only difference
between Danny and the rest of us doing it is that he has a phone to
answer, too - then *it isn't WP:OFFICE*, and the many and myriad
complexities involved there don't come into it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OFFICE

This argument is bad enough without redefining concepts on the fly...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk