[WikiEN-l] Jayjg: Abusing CheckUser for political ends?

[Sheldon Rampton]

Jayjg wrote:

> Wikipedia isn't a whole bunch of things, including a court of law.  
> Not even
> the ArbCom.

Which is why Wikipedia should be LESS dogmatically officious about  
enforcing rules-for-rules-sake than an actual court of law. In this  
case, Jayjg's behavior seems to have been MORE officious than the  
actual legal system.

I know some police and other people who work within the actual legal  
system. Real cops and judges know that they don't have to enforce  
every law on the books. They use discretion. If the police notice  
that someone has a broken tail light or an expired driver's license,  
they may just issue a warning and tell the guy to get it fixed. On  
the other hand, if they suspect that the guy is guilty of more  
serious crimes, they may choose to maximally enforce and investigate  
the minor infractions as a tactic to facililtate investigation and  
prosecution of the more serious crimes.

In this case, we're talking about a user (CharlotteWeb) who seems to  
have a long history of constructive editing, and no evidence that she  
is a vandal or a sockpuppet. The fact that sockpuppets use Tor does  
not mean that using Tor proves she is a sockpuppet. (Elementary logic  
lesson: "a implies b" does not mean that "b implies a.") In the  
absence of other evidence that CharlotteWebb is a problem user,  
therefore, Jayjg should have used discretion and raised his question  
privately rather than publicly in the RfA.

--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
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