Wikipedia:Landsbybrønden/Removal of information and Foundation procedures

Removal of information and Foundation procedures

First off, let me apologize for any misunderstanding or ability to adequately convey my actions to dawiki community affected by the recent removal of an individual's name (hereafter referred to as 'RP'). I understand that this person's extensive actions have caused havoc throughout the community.

Here is the situation. The Wikimedia Foundation's relationship to each project is as a hosting company. Occasionally, we get complaints, such as the one from RP, that have nothing to do with the content but rather a specific issue. The individual's real name is showing up on search engine requests for numerous pages which relate to conversations by and about that person. It is our duty as hosting provider to occlude that person's name wherever possible. This is done, with respect to the project in question, by simply replacing characters in the name with garbage. This is standard practice for any responsible hosting organization.

If our interest was to hide RP's actions, we would have deleted or even oversighted historical edits.

Ideally we do this with members of the project, and I attempted to engage dawiki members to do this, via OTRS. Unfortunately, so many members of the community have been adversely affected by this individual, that it was incredibly difficult finding uninvolved parties. At some point RP contacted me directly, which came as a surprise, and I again engaged some community members.

Note: I have no interest in enabling this individual to participate on this wikipedia; to the contrary, I have asked him to please go away. It is up to you to determine whether he remain blocked.

I regret not being able to explain this in fuller detail--but please understand, as a not-for-profit organization, we have limited resources. I deal with a number of issues on a regular basis, and have to manage my time. I usually rely on other individuals to help support and explain, and was sincerely unaware that I was not receiving this support in this matter until it had blown way out of proportion.

My job is not to subvert anything in the dawiki community; on the contrary, my goal is to help bring peace to it, so you can go on doing what you do best, building this wikipedia.

I approached RP with two demands:

• That he remove personal information about dawiki contributors from his personal website.
  • He complied.
• That he go away and leave dawiki alone, as it was apparent things weren't working out between him and the community.
  • He said he would, offering me a detailed explanation of what he thinks went wrong.

It's apparent that something failed somewhere in this case, and my efforts had not been adequately conveyed to the community. I hold nobody responsible for this fact but myself. I should have followed up, and not gotten frustrated with people who approached me on my talk page rather than emailing me privately (which is always the best way of getting information from me).

I hope this goes a way to smoothing out the issues. Cary Bass 7. feb 2008, 22:34 (CET)

This sounds reasonable to me. Will future foundation interventions be announced on the Danish Village Pump? --Morten LJ 8. feb 2008, 15:52 (CET)

What made me leave Wikipedia was not RP's insanity or the whole censoring issue, but the way the changes were "forced" down upon us without any prior discussion nor announcement. Actually I just found out at random, when Wegge announced on the Village Pump that it had already been done by bot. In the future, I would very much like to see radical changes such as this one be discussed at the Village Pump or, if the Foundation has some kind of secret policies requiring the changes to be done then at least announce the changes prior to making them. That way I would at least don't feel as "cheated" as I did this time. And Cary Bass: When I approached you on your talk it was after I discovered how an archive was being changed radically (something that I found unacceptable - I was raised with the 'Don't edit in archives'-rule :-) ). Therefor I tracked you to your meta-page, and since I was also raised with the 'use talkpages'-rule, I used that. However, I was very disappointed at your answers and that you just removed my questions. I can see now that you may have been frustrated, but I did not know about that at the time. My three main complaints are a) The Foundation forcing policies upon us - I now to a degree may have a better understanding of why. b) How it was handled - I hope you announce it earlier next time a nutcase bugs you, and c) your, to me, arrogant answers - please stop that, and I'll be very happy.

To me the main problems are partly solved, although TBH I still don't like your attitude. I don't know if I'll return to Wikipedia. I think I may return to contributing my main interests, but I'll never (or at least not in the foreseeable future) seek to be admin again, and my engagement in the daily routines and administration of Wikipedia definitely ended, because frankly I'm tired of all this crap - but at least I'm not angry anymore. --Lhademmor 8. feb 2008, 18:56 (CET)

I am myself happy to see the above apology for the behaviour on the discussion pages. But (and, excuse my language and remember, that I am but an illiterate "childish troll", and I am really getting tired of the handling of the whole thing), even then I don't know what to think of comments as "When the Foundation gets sued we'll shut down da.wikipedia first" or the slandering of the involved Danish Wikipedians (implicitly called "dramamongers" in a conversation in the OTRS channel). Also, I never realized that the long time (we're talking over 4 years) contributor Peo was a "trouble maker" to whom "this is funny". I would myself have liked to find a more friendly solution to this thing, but I believe this to be way too harsh and not even close to being appropriate.

That said, I'm happy to see, that there is at least some will to handle things in a friendly tone of voice. However, as I read the above, the main subject of future censorship is completely avoided, and it seems that we cannot expect not to be dictated in the future? However, I did notice the comment "Note that I will endeavor to put stronger procedures in place to see that this level of misunderstanding does not take place again" (from this page), which sounds very delightful; I would like to know what kind of procedures, you were thinking about?

As far as I can see, the need to involve the Foundation instead of taking care of the case locally, originates in the risk of a lawsuit. I am completely aware that this is a problem as lawsuits are always costy (at least according to Mike Godwin who I'm sure is very competent), even though there is no risk of losing (as is the case in this particular situation). But, does this mean that there has been threats of lawsuits in this case? I have seen no clue of any such thing, but it is of course hard to say with all the secrecy ...? (This of course touches the bigger problem of users being able to force changes through by just threatening with silly lawsuits, but let's not get into that now.)

That's two points I (and I'm sure a lot of other people) hope you will elaborate on. Thanks in advance. --Pred (diskussion) 9. feb 2008, 18:48 (CET)

Okay, I'm aware that I too am somewhat confrontational in the first section of the above, but I really have a hard time accepting this behaviour ... --Pred (diskussion) 9. feb 2008, 20:18 (CET)