[WikiEN-l] Rank hath its privileges

[Carcharoth]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:05 PM, Sam Blacketer
<sam.blacketer at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As far as I am concerned, this is a minor, if rather stupid, abuse of
>> the tools.  Trout-slapping, rather than arbitration, seems in order.
>>
>
> I agree; also the fact that it seems to have taken place nearly two years
> ago has some weight in persuading me that a heavy-handed response is not
> appropriate. The biggest part that concerns me is the dubious judgment in
> admitting doing it to a journalist from a major newspaper.

The initial posting of the information in question to Wikipedia (by an
IP) and the deletion of two revisions of the article in question, were
both done in February 2007. It is not clear when the use of tools to
view those deleted revisions, and the Facebook posting, took place
(the WSJ article doesn't say). There was also an OTRS ticket
associated with the deletions - though that was not stated in the
deletion log (it should have been). Like Sam Blacketer and Sam Korn,
it is the "disrepute" aspect and the judgment aspect that concerns me
here. I don't really want to say more, though, as an on-wiki ArbCom
venue would be more appropriate than here. And waiting for the user in
question to respond is also important.

There should, though, really be a place on Wikipedia itself for open
public discussion like this that doesn't require the formality of RFAR
or the non-transparency of the ArbCom mailing list, and is less
chaotic than ANI. At the moment, WT:RFAR is all there is for this "is
there a problem here" pre-RFAR query - see a post made there by Masem
on another issue that has garnered little response.

Carcharoth