joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote:
Quoting William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com>om>:
joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote:
This really shouldn't be being discussed on
an open list. [...]
We are an open project, so personally I lean toward discussing as much
of this as possible in public. One of the lessons I draw from the
BADSITES fiasco is that public decisions based on secret discussion do
not stick nearly as well as our usual fully open approach.
Is your concern more about a good-faith discussion accidentally giving
someone grounds for action against a participant? About not tipping our
hand in some way? About risking legal action against the Foundation itself?
Yes, yes and yes. In general, once there are serious legal threats in play it
almost never makes sense to discuss them in the open. This is simple
pragmatism. There are many possible risks and not enough gain.
I think this is good advice for entities that have good places other
than "the open" to discuss things. Because power is so distributed on
Wikipedia, we don't really have that.
We do have the Wikimedia Foundation, of course. But the more involved
they get in content issues, the more they put themselves in the legal
firing line. So I would expect them to work vigorously to stay very much
a service provider that hosts Wikipedia, avoiding an editor-in-chief role.
But for controversial edits, we individual editors are the ones with
primary legal responsibility. So I think we editors have to discuss
these thing. And the open nature of our project means we must discuss
them in the open.
William
--
William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri