[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 71, Issue 74

[Ken Arromdee]

On Mon, 29 Jun 2009, Matt Jacobs wrote:
> It really doesn't matter what policy administrators used to keep it quiet,
> or even if they abused the rules.  The information had a very real
> probability of affecting whether a man lived or died, so that takes obvious
> precedence over internal rules on an online website.

1) We have IAR so we don't need to abuse the rules.  In this case, WP:OFFICE
would have been even better.

2) Whether something endangers lives is often not a black and white decision
(especially if it was reported in an Afghan newspaper, which reduces it
from "will endanger lives" to "might endanger lives").  We would not give
similar consideration to non-well-connected Wikipedians who think something
should be left out of an article because it endangers lives, especially if
it was reported in a newspaper (in which case the person wanting to remove
it will be told that Wikipedia is not censored and that we couldn't possibly
hurt someone by publishing something that's already in a newspaper).

In fact there have been cases in the past where the Times or other newspapers
have been accused of endangering lives *by* releasing information.  For
instance, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/washington/web22ksmnote.html?_r=1 .
I've never heard of Wikipedia not using the information in such cases.
(Of course, you could argue that since the name is already out, Wikipedia
can't cause any further harm, but the same could be said about something
being reported in an Afghan news source.)

3) Abusing the rules this way makes it hard to trust Jimbo, administrators,
and anyone else with authority in future disputes.