[WikiEN-l] Arbiter involvement on the Durova affair

[George Herbert]

On Nov 29, 2007 7:42 PM, Alec Conroy <alecmconroy at gmail.com> wrote:

> [...]
> If it turns out that there's a decision to ban Giano for revealing
> secret mailing list posts by Durova, and  the two deciding votes are
> just happen to come from people who are on a secret mailing list with
> Durvoa-- Wikipedia might well be headed for a civil war.  I know it
> would radically change how I interact with the project, and I'm sure I
> won't be alone.


Please come down off the hyperbola and get realistic.

We have longstanding policy that private emails aren't to be republished on
WP without permission.  In the case where someone feels that such is
evidence for something, one can submit it to Arbcom directly without making
it public, or in the case of something not under arbitration send it to any
administrator investigating the case (or theoretically OTRS, I guess, if
it's serious).

Giano knows this policy.  He's known it for a long time.

We can't not enforce the policy if arbcom members are some of the people who
saw the private email in the first place.
What if the email wasn't a mailing list, but had gone directly to an arbcom
member on the To: or Cc: list?

What if the email was sent to or cc'ed to Arbcom-L?


There seems to be some sort of attempt to categorize these emails as
contagion of some sort, contaminating the independence and judgement of
anyone who's seen them.  That's nonsense.  Nobody has even tried to
establish a reason why that would be true, you're just acting like it's
obvious.  If you intend to operate based on that assumption, you need to
justify why anyone should be treated any differently for having seen the
emails.

Given that the underlying case was brought *against* Durova for their
actions....


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