[WikiEN-l] News suppression: Did it use Oversight or RevisionDelete?

[FT2]

A quick answer.

I have no idea which dispute or real-world issue this was about, nor when.
I'm assuming following a quick search the page concerned is "David S.
Rohde".

When oversight or revision delete are used, it's almost without exception
for serious reasons, for example where there is a concern over potential
defamation or breach of privacy policy in the post. Not mere offensive
comments, and not mere undesirability. A significant number of users
cross-check each other on it, and there is an audit committee on english
wikipedia to investigate any concerns as well. Privacy issues are taken
extremely seriously.

When oversight or suppression are used, it's book policy that oversighters
almost never discuss or disclose anything, beyond what can be seen openly in
the public logs. The trust required is why oversighter selection is a big
deal. The underlying reason for the policy is that sometimes just having
confirmation that a person or topic was targeted can be enough to do serious
harm, when genuine cases such as stalking and serious harassment etc are
intended by someone, if you think about it. (And if some were answered and
others weren't then things might be read into a non-answer.)

So the standard answer to all inquiries of this kind by any oversighter is
"we don't discuss such matters, but we will look and check nothing untoward
has happened, if you would like"

However in this case I have discussed the inquiry and can confirm, that no
material was or has ever been oversighted or suppressed (using
revisiondelete) from the article I think you're referring to, "[[David S.
Rohde]]".

Hopefully that's enough to put your mind at rest. Don't count on such
confirmation another time -- it's exceedingly rare to get it :)

FT2


On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Joseph Reagle <reagle at mit.edu> wrote:

>
> Does anyone know if during the NYT/Rohde case the Oversight function was
> used to hide edits? When the story broke, I could see all the edit history,
> but I presume the function can be deployed against select revisions and then
> removed? Or maybe it was the new RevisionDelete?
>
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