Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Theresa knott (talk | contribs) at 08:55, 3 January 2008 (→The issue is less about the original email than the attempt to justify it on Wiki). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Evidence presented by JzG

Dispute escalated beyond all sense

• This is the root of the case, as far as I can tell: . Not a very civil remark but not a blatant attack either. To have that bit of silliness escalate to ArbCom really is pretty lame, IMO.

Jim2sch and the email

• The email was sent on September 6, nearly four months ago, and was intended to point out a potential problem. It's not clear, per policy, what other route Jim should have taken to bring the AUP issue to VO's attention. Probably he should simply not have done it, but my past experience shows that Jim is a pretty straight up-and-down kind of guy and he probably felt obliged to point out something he knows is almost certainly not permitted by a Government employer. No evidence has been presented of any comparable incidents, so this is not a serious, repeated or persistent issue with this user, just a single email that maybe got misinterpreted.
• Jim2sch apologised for the offence caused , and explained (at least tried to) why he sent the email; this explanation appears to have been interpreted as truculence rather than simply taken at face value.
• Jim62sch recognised that his attempts to explain were not productive

Videmus Omnia was in dispute with Jim62sch

Videmus Omnia (VO) appears to have a long-standing dispute with Jim62sch. VO's actions in bringing this from a complaint of minor incivility to an ArbCom case are perplexing to me:

• I am struggling to find a charitable interpretation of this , note the personal comments about FeloniousMonk (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• is far from civil and indicates an ongoing dispute, one which I think may be more significant in VO's mind than in those against whom VO is protesting, speaking for myself anyway.
• This was unhelpful at best.
• This looks like a calculated attempt to escalate a dispute; the accusation is a non-sequitur of no obvious relevance to the debate at hand; were this a diff on Misplaced Pages it would be dismissed as hopelessly stale and unactionable.
• This is just wildly inappropriate. Extortion is a felony, guys, we do not accuse each other of felonies without really good evidence!

Overall VO gave a strong impression, which I really hope is wrong, of a vendetta against those promoting the scientific rationalist perspective in intelligent design related articles. I'm sure VO can explain this, because pursuing a vendetta like that would be wrong on so many levels.

No attempts at resolution

In as much as this is clearly a dispute dating back to early September if not before, it is not clear to me which other steps in dispute resolution have been tried. The case request at WP:RFAR contained no evidence of such, only a complaint of serious harassment which, if it really is only one email, does not stand up to scrutiny. Perhaps there are others that ArbCom have and we have not seen.

The wrong end of the WP:STICK

I reckon that the two parties have grabbed the wrong ends of a stick and shaken vigorously. Guy (Help!) 21:39, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Theresa Knott

The issue is less about the original email than the attempt to justify it on Wiki

The email is bad enough, asking a question like this is bound to cause alarm and distress, but the attempts to justify the sending of such an email made matters much worse.

• here Jim62sch repeats the harrassment.

He states that at the time he sent the original email he was suffering from illness but he is not claiming to be ill at the moment.

• and again It seems that he expected Videmus Omnia to have to answer to him for editing Misplaced Pages. It "irks" him to see poeple editing Misplaced Pages on what he supposed must be goverment computers.

At this point I chime in to say that it harassment and he must stop. His reply is ... Misplaced Pages is not its own universe.... ." But in my opinion at least Misplaced Pages is in it's own universe when it comes to this sort of thing. Editors should have the right to edit here without fear of somone reporting their editing to an employer.

Meanwhile Orangemarlin pipes up:

• with an abusive quip Note that it is direct reply to another user who states that such behaviour is unacceptable.
• and again

At this point User:MastCell tries to gently suggest that Misplaced Pages is not the place for such threats.

• and Orangemarlin repeats the threat even more enthusiatically on Mastcell's talk page.

Seeing this reply and noting the sheer number of times the threat has been repeated I leave a rather terse message on OrangeMarlins talk page Orange chooses to initially respond by slapping a NPA warning on my talk page but Jim62sch chooses to reply on OM's talk page for him (which is interesting)

At this point there followed a very long discussion on OM's talk page. I'm not going to post all the diffs here because it's easier to simply go an read the page.[ here the relavent sections are Contacting people's employers in real life and both sections below. My apologies for it being so long.

Evidence presented by Georgewilliamherbert

This case resolves on ambiguity in Misplaced Pages:No legal threats

The core of this matter is whether informing someone that they may be breaking the law (or UCMJ, a military subcategory thereof) and that they may be reported for doing so constitutes a legal threat.

Legal obligations

All societies encourage people to report criminal conduct to legal authorities. Some require reporting of some conduct, making failure to report certain crimes itself a crime ( Misprision of felony ) illegal.

Reasonable reporting

We already accept some reporting - there is no doubt that community consensus supports reporting of criminal violations such as credible death threats and child pornography.

Additionally, while it is "merely" an essay, WP:SUICIDE seems to have reached a functioning level of informal guideline within the experienced / admin communities, and it explicitly recommends reporting suicide threats.

All of these could potentially be seen as violating a strict interpretation of WP:NLT but are widely accepted.

On-wiki vs Off-wiki

In this specific case it is my understanding that the actual email made was sent directly to the editor in question, not on-wiki. WP:NLT is already slightly ambiguous about on versus off wiki threats (it says specifically " You should instead contact the person or people involved directly. "), though it does imply that merely making off-wiki contact is enough to trigger WP:NLT.

Criminal vs Civil legal threats

There is a significant difference between legal threats, depending on the asserted nature of the underlying threat - criminal violation versus civil law. The "typical" on-wiki legal threat is a threat to sue for perceived libel, which is a private tort between individuals. Criminal or administrative violations are issues between individuals and government or society as a whole.

Incivility

2 of the 3 rationales given for WP:NLT are " chilling effects " and " creates bad feelings ", which are significant civility issues for Misplaced Pages. These will arguably apply to any sort of legal threat, and based on peoples reactions in this case obviously do have traction.

Administrative powers and uninvolved admins

Within Misplaced Pages, we expect that users applying (for example) administrative tools to disputes do so in a fair and unbiased manner, and avoid abusing users they are in disputes with by use of admin tools. Some of these actions that Admins take have chilling effects and create bad feelings - we know that, and have set expectations that admins are to attempt to minimize those, but we accept that they happen. The community has judged that in some problem cases, chilling effects and bad feelings held by a few are less damage to the project as a whole than the underlying behavior.

Proportionate actions

As a general rule, we ask that admins responses be proportionate. This applies anywhere that policy leaves us implementation or decision judgement.

WP:NLT should be sharpened a bit

The policy should be focused a bit to avoid these ambiguities, hopefully in a manner which is consistent with other related policies and community standards within Misplaced Pages.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:00, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by {your user name}

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

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