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

[Ray Saintonge]

Sheldon Rampton wrote:

>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.
>
It frequently haqppens here that when an analogy is raised with the 
legal system, someone is directly criticized by the point cries "Foul" 
and is quick to point out that our system is not the judicial system of 
the real world, and the traditions of the outside world can be safely 
ignored.

What he also ignores is that the underlying principles of a free 
judicial system were built up to prevent some very serious infringement 
of civil rights.  Notions of fundamental justice don't need written laws 
to be meaningful.  Constitutional principles may very well underlie 
written laws, but similarly a sense of fundamental justice underlies 
ethical behaviour.

If constitutional rules were to apply here the most relevant one might 
be the safeguard against unreasonable search and seizure.  Checkuser 
could be viewed as a form of searching.  Heretofore a reasonable cause 
was required before it could be used; there had to be a belief that some 
wrong was committed BEFORE the tool could be used.  In the real world a 
search warrant would be needed.  Clearly taking things to that extent 
would go too far, but we can insist that conditions similar to what 
would be required for a warrant should prevail. 

Making gratuitous searches or taking undue advantage of inadvertently 
received private information to discredit someone else is simply and 
blatantly unethical.

The argument that miscreants COULD use proxies to do harm, or that it 
leaves open operational avenues for sockpuppets is the stuff that 
paranoia is made of.  I would rather ask how much of it DOES happen, and 
how can policies be adapted so as to best thwart the wrongdoers with the 
least damage to social structures and personal freedoms.  In the real 
world we already see the damage that can be done when too much 
protection is provided,

Ec