[WikiEN-l] Will the WMF protect admins acting as their agents to enforce policies?

[Tony Sidaway]

On 4/20/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I can't see anything an admin could do within the policies of any
> > > Wikimedia project that would put them at risk legally.
> >
> > In addition to everything a Wikipedia editor could do which would
> > place him or her at risk legally, an administrator could also run a
> > risk by undeleting defamatory material previously hidden, failing to
> > act in a reasonable manner when notified of defamatory material,
> > making defamatory blocking summaries, blocking an editor who attempts
> > to remove defamatory material, protecting articles to prevent attempts
> > to remove defamatory material, placing defamatory material on
> > protected pages, and abusing his administrator privileges to copy
> > defamatory material and publish it elsewhere.  And that isn't by any
> > means an exhaustive list.
> >
> > I'll leave the reader to extrapolate to copyright law and the like.
>
> I think only about 2 or 3 of the things you list are both illegal and
> significantly related to admin abilities, and even those would not be
> within established policy. An admin doing the kind of things you list
> would be a rogue admin - why would the WMF protect rogue admins?


All of them are specifically related to administrator powers (I
omitted those that could be done without the sysop bit). None of them
are necessarily illegal (that is to say, they are not criminal
offenses) but all of them would expose the administrator to civil
action.

Certainly I agree that the administrator in question would be a rogue
admin, but if not rogues, *whom* would the foundation indemnify?