[Foundation-l] Litigation costs

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony wrote:
> On Jan 12, 2008 12:37 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> On 12/01/2008, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> It is our admins that enforce policies. It is the collectivity of a project
>>> that fails in its duty to ensure that our data can be published under the
>>> license we claim our data is available under.
>>> If you want to have it worded in a different way: it is up to all of us to
>>> ensure that our projects conform to the license that we make them available
>>> under.
>>>       
>> Your statement about admin responsibilities is simply incorrect. On
>> en:wp, it's been a long-standing principle that no admin is *obliged*
>> to take any particular admin action.
>>     
> So admins have special powers but no responsibilities.  What was the
> analogy with janitors again?
Janitors do not have a high social standing in the real world. So some 
admins see themselves as cops rather than janitors; they would be 
delighted if they could walk around with a nice shiny badge that says 
"WIKIPEDIA ADMINISTRATOR" wherever they can be seen.  Cops have an 
unyielding devotion to upholding the law without being distracted by 
facts or subtlety.  The humble janitors among the admins are not the 
ones who feel chronically compelled to walk into alligator pits to 
rescue their own ego.  They quietly proceed with their work, rearranging 
groups of articles in non-contentious areas, deleting what is no longer 
being useful, discussing changes with rationality and compassion.  They 
don't scream to be noticed in their work, but it gets done.

Ec