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

[MacGyverMagic/Mgm]

On 4/20/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.


You pretty much said this yourself. If an admin was to do this, it would be
against Wikipedia rules as well as the law and the foundation would have no
reason to protect them. If they were to get sued for this, the instigator of
the claim would be in the right.

Mgm