[WikiEN-l] BLP, and admin role in overriding community review

[George Herbert]

On 5/23/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> >From: George Herbert [mailto:george.herbert at gmail.com]
> >On 5/23/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> >> Wikipedia:Biograpies of living persons is policy. There is no basis for modifying it or overruling it by consensus or by practice. To the extent possible it will be strictly interpreted and enforced.
> >
> >I don' t think that anyone's arguing with the policy; I think we're
> >disagreeing over how its applicability to a given situation is
> >assessed.
> >
> >I enthusiastically support the idea and written policy in WP:BLP. But
> >I also think there are grey areas around the edges. No policy can be
> >written to be explicit and broad enough to avoid having to interpret
> >applicability for future situations which were unforseen or emergent.
> >And the policy as written now has a lot of gaps in which ambiguity can
> >be found.
>
> Exactly and what I am doing is telegraphing my intention to enforce the discretion it gives to users to delete controversial material which is poorly sourced. and of administrators to stub or delete articles which mainly consist of biased or malicious content.


No, I think that's wrong; you're telegraphing your intention to take
away the normal admin consensus and discretion powers (including
reverting each others' admin actions) in this particular area.

We all know (should know) and agree (I hope) that an editor can delete
BLP violation material, and an admin can delete BLP violation material
and stub an article if need be and speedy it on discretion if there's
a justifyable BLP reason to do so.  Those are all well established.

But it's also been well established up until now that those actions
were like any other admin action - reversable, and subject to other
admins overturning, hopefully with proper discussion and consensus but
via the normal processes.

You're saying "You can't do that anymore" to the latter (normal admin
review/override on BLP issues) not the former (BLP related editing,
truncating, speedy deletions).

The former is not controversial as a matter of policy or practice; the
latter is new (to me, and others in thread) and given that it's
concerning me here and suprising me here is likely to be controversial
with the community as a whole.

I don't know that I'm fundamentally opposed to the change; I am
concerned that it seems to be inconsistent with what I know of prior
written and community informal policy, and seems like a rather
significant change to just make with no warning, and concerned that it
isn't documented anywhere properly (see prior "Out of band discussion
considered harmful" threads - this discussion here is only marginally
better for the encyclopedia than a poorly-attentioned IRC conversation
to block someone).

Even if this is the right thing to do, please do it the right way;
this doesn't strike me so far as the right way.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com