On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Andrew Turvey < [email protected]> wrote:
> As you mentioned, oversight wasn't necessary in this case. However, it's > not inconceivable that another case where oversight is used might also be > "temporarily sensitive". Perhaps, for instance, if it has been used in a > suspected harassment that turns out to be something else. > > In that case, it might make sense for the "book policy" to allow > disclosure (or even reversal) of the oversight in these cases. Its very rare - almost all uses of oversight/suppression are material that isn't time dependent. In the few exception cases commonsense applies. In this case the focus is known and the event that it's hanging on is a publicly known one. In such a circumstance there may be a possibility. But suppose during the incident someone had posted some personal information, defamation, possibly defamatory accusation about the subject or someone involved..... I would then have had to say "sorry, I wont be answering that" and you would not have had a way to know if there was no issue, material relevant to the incident, or completely irrelevant material just happened to be posted to that page. Unfortunately the problem is that a promise to disclose in some cases implies that conclusions will be read into others. That's got to be a no-no, however much one might wish otherwise. I hope you can understand that; there doesn't seem to be an easy way around it that ensures the system won't get gamed, except trust, commonsense, and understanding of the reasons behind it. I'm sorry. I can't see a way round it that protects privacy, if there is a norm that disclosure will be given in some cases but not others. if that were a norm, it could too easily be used for probing if there were some privacy issue or harassment case or whatever - and some people would ask because they wanted to know or wanted to "uncover" stuff, not realizing it is for a good reason, and some real live person might be affected who these policies are precisely there to prevent being harmed in these serious ways. If you want to discuss it, a thread on Meta would be the way. But whatever was decided, there will always be some matters where it just won't work, and I think that's just got to be accepted. It's why oversight exists in the first place. FT2 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
