Update. We managed to identify one of the targets of "Dave" via his school (and thanks to the person who managed that). I contacted his teacher, who is an ex police officer. He urged me to call the English police.
It struck me at that moment that we don't have any idea of the identity of his other targets. This is because of the double anonymity. We don't know who 'Dave' is, and we don't know (except in the one case, which was luck) who are the children he contacted.
What if something bad has ever happened on Wikipedia? How would we know, given the secret policy of not asking and not telling? We can't. Perhaps some anonymous adult has contacted some anonymous child at some time in the past, and perhaps something bad happened. How do we know? We don’t.
With all respect to
this commenter, Wikipedia is not necessarily safer than Facebook. My experience of my children’s FB pages is that they are very small communities most of whom know each other. If a fox gets into that henhouse, there will be a lot of noise and commotion. Entirely different from Wikipedia, which is like a busy railway station. Also, Wikipedia is not protected by any of the standard filters, and it has a semi-respectable image as a place where scholars and clever people hang out. Few people understand the reality of Wikipedia, and that is what makes it so dangerous.
And who is responsible if something like that did happen? I wrote to the Wikimedia Foundation explaining these risks, and how the policy on child protection needs to be changed. Children, and anyone who works with children, should be identifiable by someone.
They didn’t reply of course. Why not? Even to acknowledge they received such a communication means that they were warned of the risks, and if something bad happened, it might mean they were liable. So they maintain silence. I have written to Gardner, WMF legal, Jimmy, Jay Walsh. No reply, nothing. It is as though everything I wrote vanished into the ether.
I shall be writing to the Arbitration Committee this weekend, pointing out that the Foundation effectively disclaims all responsibility, and that they are, in effect, responsible for anything that has happened, or will happen. It’s a responsibility they clearly don’t want, but someone has to accept it.
Meanwhile, the whistleblower continues to be vilified, both by some members here, and on Jimmy’s talk page. A friend of mine is a solicitor dealing with whistleblower cases. He tells me that the whistleblower is never blamed for the whistleblowing. Rather, anything else they can pin on him or her – poor work, rudeness, poor attendance, any much that they can find to slur him with. Human nature does not change.
Croat Canuck Say hello or just talk 00:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
) Resolute 00:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
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