[Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

[Fred Bauder]

On Jun 13, 2006, at 1:19 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> On Jun 13, 2006, at 12:01 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>> What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would
>>> do *right* that the present management is not?
>>>
>>
>> Deal with marshaling assets and legal resources to deal with
>> defamation litigation. Tackle the problem of how to effectively avoid
>> such litigation.
>>
>
> Is there anything specific in what you'd like to see done about it?  
> What can the
> management do to make this work more visible or more complete?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I think the major step leadership can do is to made every  
administrator and user aware that one of the major risks of being a  
publisher (which Wikipedia and each user is) is defamation  
litigation. [[Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons]] is an example  
of good work in that direction. So, consciousness raising and support  
for administrators who take the initiative and act boldly in this  
area (the arbitration committee can help in this now). All this goes  
toward building a track record of good faith efforts to minimize the  
consequences and damage that results from vandalism and malicious  
editing. When we do end up in court it is going to very helpful to be  
able to document the policies and actions we took to minimize and  
control damage resulting from defamation.

Also we need to start lining up legal resources for every language  
and jurisdiction on Earth. If someone is libeled in the Finnish  
Wikipedia, what happens? Do we just say, tough, see you in court in  
Florida? So part of this is public relations. Being able to quickly  
apologize in Finnish might be very helpful.

And I guess, we need to consider the question raised by the  
Siegenthaler incident and focused on by Brandt: the degree of our  
responsibility for the anonymous malicious editor. The legal defense  
that we are not a publisher, nor are we responsible for identifying  
the person who made the malicious edit might be effective, but that  
is very like keeping a stray dog around and when it bits someone,  
saying, "not my dog".

Fred

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