[WikiEN-l] Rank hath its privileges

[Carcharoth]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:22 PM, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Wilhelm Schnotz <wilhelm at nixeagle.org> wrote:
>>> To ray, you have a point, if it is a 3rd parties copyright, it is
>>> their fight. Generally though I don't like the thought of that ability
>>> being used to undelete stuff that is not helpful to this project and
>>> creates these sorts of distractions, but it is now his fight.
>>
>> I agree mostly with these sentiments.  If there was a case to be made,
>> I would argue that it should be presented as "using the admin tools in
>> a way likely to bring the project into disrepute".
>>
>> There has been no breach of our copyright policy, as the content was
>> not posted on Wikipedia.  I do not recall ever taking on-wiki actions
>> against a user for breaching the GFDL on another website.
>>
>> 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.
>
> As said on ANI...
>
> Sam, how is it "minor"? A comparable case is User:Everyking, where he
> was emergency desysopped for even suggesting that he might disclose
> deleted information on Wikipedia review--and that pales in comparison
> to this. This admin did disclose information that was apparently
> deleted for copyright purposes, posted it onto one of the busiest
> non-WMF websites in existence, and then had it splashed over one of
> the major media sources on the planet Earth that he did it with his
> WMF admin tools. This is minor how?
>
> Any admin can freely recover content deleted for copyright purposes
> and then repost it wherever and however they want?

There is a better place than this mailing list to debate whether there
has been a serious case of abuse of administrator tools. I know I've
posted in this thread myself, but please, let's not have the
discussions spread over several different venues. At the very least,
the sitting arbitrators should withdraw from this discussion (as they
may be required to arbitrate) and the former arbitrators who are privy
to the ArbCom mailing list discussions should probably also stay out
of the discussion here. As a sitting arbitrator, I'm going to do
exactly that and stop posting in this thread until the matter has been
resolved.

Carcharoth