On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 5:25 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)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.