All BLPs should be locked down. Period.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 3:22 pm

Screwing around with an umpire's wikipedia page.

Why does an umpire even need a wikipedia page?

If they are forced to have one, why would you let random people edit it?

Why let IPs edit it during baseball season?

Will_Little (T-H-L)

Johnny Au · Unread post by **Johnny Au** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 4:46 pm

The page has since been semi-protected for a year.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 4:52 pm

Johnny Au wrote:The page has since been semi-protected for a year.

Why isn't this the default state for all BLPs?

Are only those who make the news deserving of protection and respect?

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 4:55 pm

Dunno that simple vandalism asserting a baseball umpire is "blind" is a molehill worth fighting over, Vig...

RfB

Rogol Domedonfors · Unread post by **Rogol Domedonfors** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:03 pm

I think that Vigilant is more concerned about the general principle that BLPs are particularly subject to directed vandalism and that the results are particularly offensive to actual human beings. I'm pretty sure that he isn't using this board as an elaborate and ineffective way of reporting individual cases.

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:16 pm

One benefit of these news stories about hurtful vandalism of personal biographies is that they continue to cement in the public's mind that Wikipedia is not a serious encyclopedia.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:20 pm

Rogol Domedonfors wrote:I think that Vigilant is more concerned about the general principle that BLPs are particularly subject to directed vandalism and that the results are particularly offensive to actual human beings. I'm pretty sure that he isn't using this board as an elaborate and ineffective way of reporting individual cases.

That's correct.
Additionally, the fix to this problem is simple and exists already.

Either all BLPs should be on indefinite semi-protection or they should be protected by Pending Changes.

That neither of these is policy speaks volumes about the bottomless contempt that en.wp and the WMF have for those poor souls unlucky enough to have an article on en.wp.

Rogol Domedonfors · Unread post by **Rogol Domedonfors** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:23 pm

I seem to recall Jimbo once saying something to the effect that he would like a biography for everyone in the world. Does anyone have a link for that?

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:37 pm

Rogol Domedonfors wrote:I seem to recall Jimbo once saying something to the effect that he would like a biography for everyone in the world. Does anyone have a link for that?

That appeared in this story:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121815517776622597

Wales was quoted as saying:

I'd be happy to have, in theory, a good, neutral biography on every single person on the planet. I mean why not, right?

We're spinning in 3-year circles now, in awe of how stupid Jimbo was, and continues to be.

Rogol Domedonfors · Unread post by **Rogol Domedonfors** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 6:11 pm

Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 8:07 pm

Rogol Domedonfors wrote:Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.

I don't think that's Greg's point.

This has been going on for a long time.
The solutions are well known.
Jimmy had it within his power to fix.
He still hasn't.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 8:08 pm

The overwhelming bulk of BLPs are either watched closely (so any vandalism is likely to be removed rapidly unless it's extremely clever) or totally ignored. Still,one stupid piece of vandalism that distresses the subject is one too many. And it's not just BLPs; people's family and friends may also get distressed by vandalism, especially if it refers tothem rather than their deceased relative.

Moral Hazard · Unread post by **Moral Hazard** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 8:48 pm

Wales is a WMF and Wikipedia leader like Trump was a business tycoon and is now President.
It's his role.

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 9:40 pm

Vigilant wrote:This has been going on for a long time.
The solutions are well known.
Jimmy had it within his power to fix.
He still hasn't.

Wales actually wanted pending changes; the community didn't. His power to decree such things by fiat vanished long ago.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 10:12 pm

HRIP7 wrote:
Vigilant wrote:This has been going on for a long time.
The solutions are well known.
Jimmy had it within his power to fix.
He still hasn't.
Wales actually wanted pending changes; the community didn't. His power to decree such things by fiat vanished long ago.

That's an interesting position. My recollections are different.

At some point, Jimmy stuck his foot in it around the admin tools and backed off lest he be voted off the island, but prior to that, he could have forced the issue.

However, the WMF, of which Jimmy is a permanent board member, has insisted on much lesser things despite community disagreement, such as Superprotect, Visual Editor, Flow, Media Viewer, etc...

For positions so fundamental to human decency like Child Protection, BLP Protection, Anti Harrassment, the WMF is far less interested in doing the right thing.

Johnny Au · Unread post by **Johnny Au** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 2:18 am

We can do almost what the German Wikipedia did.

Instead of making every single article under pending changes, all BLP articles (and a select number of other articles often subject to vandalism but not enough to warrant semi-protection) would be under pending changes.

I personally prefer the approach of the German Wikipedia: every article under at least pending changes.

Earthy Astringent · Unread post by **Earthy Astringent** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 3:31 am

But iif they are locked down, then the righteous wiki warriors couldn't tell people how bad they are.

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 3:45 am

HRIP7 wrote:
Vigilant wrote:This has been going on for a long time.
The solutions are well known.
Jimmy had it within his power to fix.
He still hasn't.
Wales actually wanted pending changes; the community didn't. His power to decree such things by fiat vanished long ago.

He had and still has the ability to persuasively advocate for positive change. He gave up on Pending Changes way too easily to consider him a true advocate of it.

Kingsindian · Unread post by **Kingsindian** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 4:44 am

Randy from Boise wrote:Dunno that simple vandalism asserting a baseball umpire is "blind" is a molehill worth fighting over, Vig...

RfB

My viewpoint is similar to this. Besides, the vandalism lasted less than an hour.

Pending changes would be a good thing, however.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 6:22 am

Kingsindian wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:Dunno that simple vandalism asserting a baseball umpire is "blind" is a molehill worth fighting over, Vig...

RfB
My viewpoint is similar to this. Besides, the vandalism lasted less than an hour.

Pending changes would be a good thing, however.

Speaking for myself, I'm never going to click a pending changes button again. Although I'm not a lawyer and don't play one on TV, I feel it is highly likely that a litigious prick could make the case that "Approving Changes" makes the approver responsible for the entire content of the article approved. And I don't hide my real life identity, whereas somebody who may have stuck in something defamatory might be hiding — ergo, I would be the easy target for something I did not actually do.

Not gonna happen. I'm going nowhere near that scenario.

RfB

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:58 am

Vigilant wrote:
HRIP7 wrote:
Vigilant wrote:This has been going on for a long time.
The solutions are well known.
Jimmy had it within his power to fix.
He still hasn't.
Wales actually wanted pending changes; the community didn't. His power to decree such things by fiat vanished long ago.
That's an interesting position. My recollections are different.

Have a look, Vig:

http://wikipediocracy.com/2012/10/28/fl ... and-didnt/

At the time, the initiative was championed by Jimmy Wales and reflected concerns over several biographical mishaps:

Wales posted his plea to implement a pre-screening effort called Flagged Revisions after several unfortunate, but not unfamiliar incidents last week on the site including edits falsely reporting the deaths of Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Janis Joplin’s entry was also tampered with and eventually locked down after a “30 Rock” episode aired involving the cast messing with the entry themselves. “This nonsense would have been 100% prevented by Flagged Revisions,” Wales wrote.

Wales was correct, and the same goes for the more recent vandalisms discussed above. But in the end, the English Wikipedia “community” of pseudonymous editors blocked the initiative. Despite all the media fanfare, the global introduction of Flagged Revisions for English Wikipedia biographies never happened.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7851400.stm (January 2009)

Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, is proposing a system of flagged revisions, which would mean any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be approved by one of the site's editors, before the changes were published.
This would mean a radical shift from the site's philosophy that ostensibly allows anyone to make changes to almost any entry.
In a blog entry, Mr Wales said the "nonsense" of the false reports would have been "100% prevented by Flagged Revision" and said he wanted the changes to be implemented as soon as possible. ...

Flame war
However, this posting caused a storm of comments on his site, with many editors saying the proposal was unworkable.
One user posted that "Enabling Flagged Revisions will undoubtedly create backlogs that we will be unable to manage" while another said that there were "gaping holes in what you propose to do".

http://content.time.com/time/business/a ... 26,00.html (September 2009)

Late in August, Wikipedia announced that it was reining in its freewheeling ways. In several interviews, including many with TIME, officials at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that manages Wikipedia, explained that the user-edited online encyclopedia would soon impose restrictions on articles about living people. Under the new policy, anonymous Web editors would still be allowed to freely change biographical Wikipedia entries — but their changes would be made visible to readers only after an experienced Wikipedia volunteer had approved them. The plan, officials explained, would make the world's largest encyclopedia more accurate and fair, and would help prevent the high-profile hoaxes that have occasionally tarnished Wikipedia's reputation.

There's only one problem with the new policy: "It's just completely wrong," says Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder. Wales says that reports of Wikipedia's clampdown to prevent errors have themselves been in error. Wikipedia's ruling body of volunteers never decided to impose restrictions on all articles about living people. Instead, the site will adopt "flagged protection" — the new method for requiring editorial approval before changes to Wikipedia go up — for a small number of articles, most likely on a case-by-case basis.

There was a complete U-turn, but it was because the community went up in arms.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 2:37 pm

I see.

So why didn't the WMF insist as they did on Superprotect, Visual Editor, Media Viewer, and a sundry of other changes?

The WMF insisted on Russavia's ban (I agree) over strong objections from the commons crowd.

I guess the real question is why does the WMF fail to do the right thing so often?

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 3:06 pm

Vigilant wrote:I see.

So why didn't the WMF insist as they did on Superprotect, Visual Editor, Media Viewer, and a sundry of other changes?

The WMF insisted on Russavia's ban (I agree) over strong objections from the commons crowd.

I guess the real question is why does the WMF fail to do the right thing so often?

Because the WMF is a legal ownership entity that is one player in a complex political situation marked by dual power, not the actual top-down directing entity in a command-and-control system.

They can only barely even handle the technical and engineering matters that ARE part of their purview, let alone matters of content, which are NOT.

San Francisco has to pick its fights and it has not deemed the Automatic-Protection-of-BLPs issue to be a battleground where it wants to wage war against the volunteers who actually have run Wikipedia since 2001.

...Superprotect, Visual Editor, Media Viewer...

And how did those battles turn out? Superproject — lost battle to the community although they hold that nuclear card in their hand, to be sure; Visual Editor, removed as default by community due to epic shittiness of the tool; Media Viewer — bitter battle WMF eventual won, after being forced to make multiple modifications. I'd score that 1-1-1 — and German WP still hasn't recovered from WMF's heavy-handedness.

RfB

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 3:23 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:
Vigilant wrote:I see.

So why didn't the WMF insist as they did on Superprotect, Visual Editor, Media Viewer, and a sundry of other changes?

The WMF insisted on Russavia's ban (I agree) over strong objections from the commons crowd.

I guess the real question is why does the WMF fail to do the right thing so often?
Because the WMF is a legal ownership entity that is one player in a complex political situation marked by dual power, not the actual top-down directing entity in a command-and-control system.

They can only barely even handle the technical and engineering matters that ARE part of their purview, let alone matters of content, which are NOT.

San Francisco has to pick its fights and it has not deemed the Automatic-Protection-of-BLPs issue to be a battleground where it wants to wage war against the volunteers who actually have run Wikipedia since 2001.

...Superprotect, Visual Editor, Media Viewer...
And how did those battles turn out? Superproject — lost battle to the community although they hold that nuclear card in their hand, to be sure; Visual Editor, removed as default by community do to epic shittiness of the tool; Media Viewer — bitter battle WMF eventual won, after being forced to make multiple modifications. I'd score that 1-1-1 — and German WP still hasn't recovered from WMF's heavy-handedness.

RfB

The technical overreach was obviously going to be a problem since the tools were broken on delivery.
The point I was making was that the WMF seems to be willing to stick its neck way out for broken tool delivery, but not to protect actual people.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 4:28 pm

Vigilant wrote: The point I was making was that the WMF seems to be willing to stick its neck way out for broken tool delivery, but not to protect actual people.

Division of tasks: WMF makes broken tools. The community makes broken people.

RfB

Rogol Domedonfors · Unread post by **Rogol Domedonfors** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 6:32 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:[...]"Approving Changes" makes the approver responsible for the entire content of the article approved. And I don't hide my real life identity [...] Not gonna happen. I'm going nowhere near that scenario.

I think that might be one of the points. Making contributors feel, indeed be, responsible for articles. If, as you suggest, that would severely limit the number of people contributing, why would that be such a bad thing?

Kingsindian · Unread post by **Kingsindian** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:33 pm

I believe Tim's point is that it's one thing to take responsibility for your own edits, it's quite another to take responsibility for someone else's. It's thankless work with little upside and potentially big downside.

Rogol Domedonfors · Unread post by **Rogol Domedonfors** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:48 pm

Yes, and that's the fundamental contradiction at the heart of crowd-sourcing.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:51 pm

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:28 pm

Wikibooks has pending changes on every article, but it's very easy to get reviewer status meaning that you can approve changes and your own edits are automatically approved immediately.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 2:30 am

Rogol Domedonfors wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:[...]"Approving Changes" makes the approver responsible for the entire content of the article approved. And I don't hide my real life identity [...] Not gonna happen. I'm going nowhere near that scenario.
I think that might be one of the points. Making contributors feel, indeed be, responsible for articles. If, as you suggest, that would severely limit the number of people contributing, why would that be such a bad thing?

Incurable backlogs. If an edit doesn't appear expeditiously, chances are there will be no second edit, and no newcomers...

RfB

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 2:44 am

Randy from Boise wrote:
Rogol Domedonfors wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:[...]"Approving Changes" makes the approver responsible for the entire content of the article approved. And I don't hide my real life identity [...] Not gonna happen. I'm going nowhere near that scenario.
I think that might be one of the points. Making contributors feel, indeed be, responsible for articles. If, as you suggest, that would severely limit the number of people contributing, why would that be such a bad thing?
Incurable backlogs. If an edit doesn't appear expeditiously, chances are there will be no second edit, and no newcomers...

RfB

So you're saying the German Wikipedia hasn't grown at all in a couple of years?

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 3:12 am

thekohser wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:
Rogol Domedonfors wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:[...]"Approving Changes" makes the approver responsible for the entire content of the article approved. And I don't hide my real life identity [...] Not gonna happen. I'm going nowhere near that scenario.
I think that might be one of the points. Making contributors feel, indeed be, responsible for articles. If, as you suggest, that would severely limit the number of people contributing, why would that be such a bad thing?
Incurable backlogs. If an edit doesn't appear expeditiously, chances are there will be no second edit, and no newcomers...

RfB
So you're saying the German Wikipedia hasn't grown at all in a couple of years?

It is not as healthy as En-WP in terms of Very Active (100+/mo.) Editors.

But let's see... Pulling up the stats... link https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWi ... sGt100.htm[/link]

German WP for May, last 5 years: 1001 — 912 — 929 — 917 — 874 (down 12.7%)

English WP for May, last 5 years: 3385 — 3122 — 3288 — 3424 — 3525 (up 4.1%)

Sum of All Wikipedias for May, last 5 years; 10,495 — 9,678 — 10,104 — 10,348 — 10,476

Wikipedia community overall? Flat.

English Wikipedia community? Growing.

German Wikipedia community? Declining.

Heavily protected editing is bad for community health.

RfB

P.S. @Vig. I believe that the simultaneous downtick in 2014 is connected with the Superprotect controversy.

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 8:18 am

Randy from Boise wrote:
thekohser wrote:So you're saying the German Wikipedia hasn't grown at all in a couple of years?
It is not as healthy as En-WP in terms of Very Active (100+/mo.) Editors.

But let's see... Pulling up the stats... link https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWi ... sGt100.htm[/link]

German WP for May, last 5 years: 1001 — 912 — 929 — 917 — 874 (down 12.7%)

English WP for May, last 5 years: 3385 — 3122 — 3288 — 3424 — 3525 (up 4.1%)

Sum of All Wikipedias for May, last 5 years; 10,495 — 9,678 — 10,104 — 10,348 — 10,476

Wikipedia community overall? Flat.

English Wikipedia community? Growing.

German Wikipedia community? Declining.

Heavily protected editing is bad for community health.

RfB

P.S. @Vig. I believe that the simultaneous downtick in 2014 is connected with the Superprotect controversy.

You got that all wrong.

Just look at the figures for the Polish Wikipedia for the last five years:

246 — 223 — 228 — 251 — 265 (up 7.7%)

Wikipedia community overall? Flat.

Polish Wikipedia community? Growing at almost twice the rate of the English Wikipedia, thanks to pending changes.

Further reading.

Kingsindian · Unread post by **Kingsindian** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 8:36 am

Tim's point about defamation seems plausible, but I wonder how realistic it is.

1. Can someone (as in some contributor, not the WMF) be sued for their contributions to a Wikipedia BLP?
2. Has anyone been sued (or threatened with a suit)?

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 10:24 am

Kingsindian wrote:Tim's point about defamation seems plausible, but I wonder how realistic it is.

1. Can someone (as in some contributor, not the WMF) be sued for their contributions to a Wikipedia BLP?
2. Has anyone been sued (or threatened with a suit)?

Yes.

Yes.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4857

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/ ... pedia-page

https://www.dailydot.com/news/greek-pol ... l-lawsuit/

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 10:27 am

Randy from Boise wrote:Heavily protected editing is bad for community health.

Some of us believe that one of the Wikimedia Foundation's most disappointing turns in focus was deprecating the mission of building a good encyclopedia, in favor of building a healthy community (of unkind people).

Kingsindian · Unread post by **Kingsindian** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 11:04 am

thekohser wrote:
Kingsindian wrote:Tim's point about defamation seems plausible, but I wonder how realistic it is.

1. Can someone (as in some contributor, not the WMF) be sued for their contributions to a Wikipedia BLP?
2. Has anyone been sued (or threatened with a suit)?
Yes.

Yes.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4857

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/ ... pedia-page

https://www.dailydot.com/news/greek-pol ... l-lawsuit/

Interesting. None of the lawsuits seem to have come to anything, at least so far. Though getting sued, or the possibility of being sued, by itself can have consequences.

I read the Yank Barry thread; the WMF apparently meant to defend the people involved. Their statement, saying that the edits were simply talk page edits is interesting. Putting aside the fact that the defence was based on dishonesty (some edits were on the article page), does this mean that it is ok with the WMF if someone sues over edits made to an article?

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 1:27 pm

Kingsindian wrote:]Though getting sued, or the possibility of being sued, by itself can have consequences.

Speaking from direct experience involving a potential case involving (a) a litigious prick; (b) Wikipediocracy; and (c) a WP article to which I did not not even contribute —it is extremely unpleasant. One consequence is a commitment to the principle that Jimmy Wales can take his Pending Changes and forcefully place them where the sun shineth not.

RfB

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 1:28 pm

Kingsindian wrote:1. Can someone (as in some contributor, not the WMF) be sued for their contributions to a Wikipedia BLP?
2. Has anyone been sued (or threatened with a suit)?

It may be worth reiterating that, as most regulars here are aware, from a legal standpoint the WMF is neither responsible nor liable for anything written in Wikipedia. It is protected by Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act:

(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).

The legal position of WMF is exactly the same as that of an email provider: if you write a defamatory letter and send it via Google Mail – or indeed the regular postal service – only you are responsible for its content, not Google or the postal service.

There were some attempts to sue the WMF for allegedly defamatory content in Wikipedia in the early days. As far as I recall, they all failed without exception due to the above protection the WMF enjoys.

So Wikipedia contributors are personally and solely liable for anything they write in Wikipedia. However, attempts to sue individual contributors are hampered by the fact that they are, by and large, anonymous. Just discovering their identity involves a legal process with an uncertain outcome.

When Seigenthaler was defamed in Wikipedia, he did eventually learn the identity of his defamer, thanks to the good offices of Daniel Brandt. However, the culprit apologised, and Seigenthaler came to feel sorry for him, to the extent that he dropped any intent to sue and even intervened with the man's boss to save his job.

Other interesting cases:

German Wikipedia court ruling / Wikimedia is liable for contents of Wikipedia articles, German court rules (this is not what it sounds like: WMF only become liable if they have been advised by a court that content is defamatory and still allow it to stand after that)
Paid editing, the bright line, and European law (an individual Wikipedia contributor was sued and ordered by a court to refrain from making certain statements in Wikipedia, with the threat of a €250,000 fine or 6 months in prison for any future instance of non-compliance; they also had to pay some legal costs)

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 1:42 pm

HRIP7 wrote: The legal position of WMF is exactly the same as that of an email provider: if you write a defamatory letter and send it via Google Mail – or indeed the regular postal service – only you are responsible for its content, not Google or the postal service.

There were some attempts to sue the WMF for allegedly defamatory content in Wikipedia in the early days. As far as I recall, they all failed without exception due to the above protection the WMF enjoys.

Correct from a legal standpoint. In practice, I found WMF legal to be sympathetic and helpful. Whether they would spend 5 cents in the righteous defense of an unrighteous lawsuit remains an open question.

HRIP7 wrote: So Wikipedia contributors are personally and solely liable for anything they write in Wikipedia. However, attempts to sue individual contributors are hampered by the fact that they are, by and large, anonymous. Just discovering their identity involves a legal process with an uncertain outcome.

And here lies my point: as an uncloaked contributor who has already been sucked in to a similar situation once as a litigant attempted to track down an anonymous contributor, I find it almost unimaginable that pending changes would not be used as a mechanism by a malevolent lawyer to get to the person they want. I'm absolutely going nowhere near that; I am fine being responsible for what I write, but am utterly unwilling to be burned at the stake for something someone else writes.

It is an enormous and utterly unaddressed defect of the Pending Changes idea.

RfB

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 2:27 pm

Another interesting case brought by Susan Burke (a suit that didn't go to completion, if I recall, because the subpoena was quashed in late May 2014) was documented by Mr. Barbour and me here, back when we were on more cooperative terms. We unmasked a number of ill-intentioned COI Wikipedia accounts during that research -- all of which would have been forbidden to do on Wikipedia.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Wed Aug 02, 2017 7:01 pm

Kingsindian wrote:1. Can someone (as in some contributor, not the WMF) be sued for their contributions to a Wikipedia BLP?
2. Has anyone been sued (or threatened with a suit)?

Obviously, people would prefer to sue the WMF if they could, since very few editors would have enough assets to be worth suing even if they can be identified.