On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 5:25 PM, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
On 4/17/2014 7:37 AM, Russavia wrote:
So how about a simple WMF policy that states something along the lines of:
"Employees and contractors of the Wikimedia Foundation shall not edit articles relating to the Wikimedia Foundation, broadly construed, but at rather directed to raise potential edits on the talk pages of affected articles. This directive does not apply to the reverting vandalism, removing copyright violations or potentially libellous materials."
To illustrate how silly this can get on some level, consider the fact that justifiably or not, the media and the general public often treat the content of Wikimedia projects as if it reflects on the reputation of the Wikimedia Foundation. Thus when "broadly construed", any edit to any article could in a sense be charged with a conflict of interest because it's an effort to make the Wikimedia Foundation look better. So basically staff would not be allowed to edit at all, and the second part of this policy would amount to no more than a limited exception under which all edits have to be made, or at the very least vetted, by the legal department.
hehe, micheal, _that_ one seems far reached. but i must admit, few people at the wikimedia foundation really seem to believe wikipedia is "theirs". and the volunteers spend their time to make the foundation justify WMFs expenses to the U.S. tax authorities, and/or WMF to look good. they even put the foundation logo on a blog.wikimedia.org, instead of the wikimedia logo.
but at the baseline you are of course right. and i appreciate russavia bringing up the topic and fully support what sue, erik, christophe were writing, just to name a few comments going this direction. i do not agree with pete forsyth, and everybody who thinks WMF and its employees needs special treatment. and i liked the two core messages, just to repeat it:
1. what zack did was not ok by that times rules, is not ok according to current rules, and most probably will never ever be ok. Independent if he works for WMF or not. and, pete, adding a rule does not make the existing rules simpler. throwing away (aka _delete_) rules makes it simpler.
2. if an organisations employee or officer does not volunteer in the movement, it will lead to disconnecting the organization from the voluntary movement. this is valid for WMF, chapters, thematic orgs.
rupert.