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

[MacGyverMagic/Mgm]

On 4/20/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/19/07, 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 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?
> >
> There's the inadvertent restoration of previously deleted material;
> that's a very real problem when deleting and restoring. There's the
> inadvertent failure to remove defamatory material from an article
> we're taking admin action in relation to, or the inadvertent
> protection of a page containing defamation. There are quite a few
> genuine legal pitfalls.
>
> Sarah


Inadvertant means the admin had no intent of restoring defamatory material.
They could solve the whole issue by reverting their mistake.
If someone wants to sue an admin over a mistake and doesn't take any
apologies...

Mgm