Office actions

[Guy Chapman aka JzG]

Let me just start by saying that I am completely in favour of
[[WP:OFFICE]] (I for one have no intention of paying the legal bills
we would undoubtedly incur if we had no such system in place).

But...

Take for example Pacific Western University.  This is a verifiably
unaccredited school, there are numerous credible reports in the press
about people being disciplined after claiming its degrees, it is not
in the accreditation database, it is listed in several sources as a
diploma mill.  A university it ain't.

Here's a typical example of external coverage:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D81E30F937A15754C0A961948260

Look up the "unaccredited correspondence school" in the press report
and you get an article on what appears to be a legitimate school
offering various degree programmes.  No mention of accreditation.

The article was stubbed and OFFICEd, no doubt in response to
complaints from the school or its alumni.  No problem with that, the
history sows some, ahem, problematic content.  But well over a month
ago I asked Danny if we could at least add {{unaccredited}}.  No
response.

Where is the mechanism for review and feedback in respect of OFFICEd
pages?  I can't find any.  Should I be bold, ignore all rules and add
{{subst:unaccredited}} in the lead, as I have done for every other
unaccredited school article I've found being whitewashed by its
students?  Right now we provide a directory entry for an institution
multiply identified as a diploma mill, which makes no mention
whatsoever even of the trivially verifiable fact of its being
unaccredited.  Doesn't look good, does it?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

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[Matthew Brown-5]

On 12/14/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman@...> wrote:
> The article was stubbed and OFFICEd, no doubt in response to
> complaints from the school or its alumni.  No problem with that, the
> history sows some, ahem, problematic content.  But well over a month
> ago I asked Danny if we could at least add {{unaccredited}}.  No
> response.

I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
Foundation on record.

I would say that careful addition of factual content would not be a problem.

-Matt
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[bbatsell]

On Dec 14, 2006, at 2:13 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> Let me just start by saying that I am completely in favour of
> [[WP:OFFICE]] (I for one have no intention of paying the legal bills
> we would undoubtedly incur if we had no such system in place).
>
> But...
>
> Take for example Pacific Western University.  This is a verifiably
> unaccredited school, there are numerous credible reports in the press
> about people being disciplined after claiming its degrees, it is not
> in the accreditation database, it is listed in several sources as a
> diploma mill.  A university it ain't.
>
> Here's a typical example of external coverage:
> http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?
> res=9B0DE1D81E30F937A15754C0A961948260
>
> Look up the "unaccredited correspondence school" in the press report
> and you get an article on what appears to be a legitimate school
> offering various degree programmes.  No mention of accreditation.
>
> The article was stubbed and OFFICEd, no doubt in response to
> complaints from the school or its alumni.  No problem with that, the
> history sows some, ahem, problematic content.  But well over a month
> ago I asked Danny if we could at least add {{unaccredited}}.  No
> response.
>
> Where is the mechanism for review and feedback in respect of OFFICEd
> pages?  I can't find any.  Should I be bold, ignore all rules and add
> {{subst:unaccredited}} in the lead, as I have done for every other
> unaccredited school article I've found being whitewashed by its
> students?  Right now we provide a directory entry for an institution
> multiply identified as a diploma mill, which makes no mention
> whatsoever even of the trivially verifiable fact of its being
> unaccredited.  Doesn't look good, does it?

The procedures w.r.t. [[WP:OFFICE]] should be more fully fleshed  
out.  But looking at what we do have in this case, in particular the  
[[WP:OFFICE]] template, the text says this: "This page is currently  
under the scrutiny of the Wikimedia Foundation Office and is  
protected. **If you are able to edit this page, please discuss all  
changes and additions on the talk page first.** Do not remove  
protection from this article unless you are authorized by the  
Wikimedia Foundation to do so."

 From that, I think it's fair for administrators to edit the page as  
long as the changes are factual and discussed on the talk page first,  
which I assume are monitored at least partly by Danny or someone else  
at the Foundation, who could throw the axe down on an edit that might  
affect the Foundation legally.

My $0.02.


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[Guy Chapman aka JzG]

On Thu, 14 Dec 2006 14:25:44 -0600, bbatsell
<wikipedia@...> wrote:

>**If you are able to edit this page, please discuss all  
>changes and additions on the talk page first.** Do not remove  
>protection from this article unless you are authorized by the  
>Wikimedia Foundation to do so."

I think you are right.  I will be bold but cautious...

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

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[Thomas Dalton]

Hmmm... the template on the page suggests you can edit it, as long as
you discuss the changes first. The [[WP:OFFICE]] page clearly states
not to edit the article at all. Personally, I would leave the article
completely alone until you manage to contact Danny...
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[Earle Martin]

On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven@...> wrote:
> I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
> such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
> Foundation on record.

I thought this project was founded on accountability.


--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
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[James Hare]

Really? I didn't know allowing everyone in the world to edit with exposing
yourself as really optional was accountable.

On 12/14/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:

>
> On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven@...> wrote:
> > I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
> > such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
> > Foundation on record.
>
> I thought this project was founded on accountability.
>
>
> --
> Earle Martin
>             http://downlode.org/
> http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l@...
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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[Stephen Bain]

On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:
> On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven@...> wrote:
> > I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
> > such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
> > Foundation on record.
>
> I thought this project was founded on accountability.

Editors are accountable for their own actions.

The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
people's actions.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain@...
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[Ray Saintonge]

Stephen Bain wrote:

>On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven@...> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
>>>such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
>>>Foundation on record.
>>>      
>>>
>>I thought this project was founded on accountability.
>>    
>>
>Editors are accountable for their own actions.
>
>The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
>people's actions.
>

This is all fine, but Office actions should not be a technique for
sweeping issues under the rug indefinitely.  If someone has made a
statement that may be libellous, and it is so alleged by a person who
may be affected a bit of time needs to be taken to gather the
appropriate verifiability.

If an educational institution is not accredited we do need to mention
which list(s) of accredited institutions we have checked to back our
position.  But note too that we are supporting a negative position.  If
they are accredited they should have no problem establishing that.  A
failure to find their name on any reliable list, combined with their
refusal to answer about their accreditation would be very difficult for
them to sustain in any litigation.

I have no idea who if anyone has been threatening lawsuits, but students
and alumni would likely not have standing for this.  Perhaps the
university administration?  Surely the foundation is not responsible for
the legal defence of its editors, but a plaintiff is likely to want to
make the Foundation at least a co-defendent in a law suit, It should be
prepared to defend itself against groundless, vexatious, or SLAPP
lawsuits.  If it ends up defending an editor at the same time so much
the better.

Ec

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[Stephen Bain]

On 12/15/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@...> wrote:
> Stephen Bain wrote:
> >Editors are accountable for their own actions.
> >
> >The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
> >people's actions.

<snip>
> Surely the foundation is not responsible for
> the legal defence of its editors, but a plaintiff is likely to want to
> make the Foundation at least a co-defendent in a law suit, It should be
> prepared to defend itself against groundless, vexatious, or SLAPP
> lawsuits.  If it ends up defending an editor at the same time so much
> the better.

I was speaking in the general case, to explain one common reason why
people like Danny and Brad don't speak on every matter they are asked
to speak on.

To bring this back to the specific case at hand, the article once
again has the assertion that the institution is unaccredited, but
there are no sources cited to verify this. This is highly surprising,
given that one such source was mentioned in the original email in the
thread. Why have the sources not been added to the article?

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain@...
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[Earle Martin]

On 15/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain@...> wrote:

> On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:
> > On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven@...> wrote:
> > > I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
> > > such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
> > > Foundation on record.
> >
> > I thought this project was founded on accountability.
>
> Editors are accountable for their own actions.
>
> The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
> people's actions.

I have no idea where you got the idea that I was asking the Foundation
to be responsible for other people's actions. I'll quote you again the
text (quoted above) that I was replying to:

"Danny... doesn't want an official decision of the Foundation on record."

In this case, it was an "office action", which appears to generally
equate to "putting stuff in the memory hole".

Is it Foundation policy to hide official decisions of the Foundation?
Or is it Danny policy? Either way, it appears that the management of
this project is asymptotically approaching that of the Open[sic]
Directory Project.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
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[Parker Peters]

On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:

>
> On 15/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain@...> wrote:
> > On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:
> > > On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven@...> wrote:
> > > > I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
> > > > such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
> > > > Foundation on record.
> > >
> > > I thought this project was founded on accountability.
> >
> > Editors are accountable for their own actions.
> >
> > The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
> > people's actions.
>
> I have no idea where you got the idea that I was asking the Foundation
> to be responsible for other people's actions. I'll quote you again the
> text (quoted above) that I was replying to:
>
> "Danny... doesn't want an official decision of the Foundation on record."
>
> In this case, it was an "office action", which appears to generally
> equate to "putting stuff in the memory hole".
>
> Is it Foundation policy to hide official decisions of the Foundation?
> Or is it Danny policy? Either way, it appears that the management of
> this project is asymptotically approaching that of the Open[sic]
> Directory Project.
>
> --
> Earle Martin

Given that the risk of violating an Office action is Danny having you
banned/desysopped/draped in sackcloth and ashes, I think that the boundaries
of Office actions need to be spelled out pretty clearly. Hiding them is not
good for the project.

Parker
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[Stephen Bain]

On 12/16/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:
>
> I have no idea where you got the idea that I was asking the Foundation
> to be responsible for other people's actions.

That's how it seemed from putting what you said in the context of the
other two posts.

My reading of the conversation: Guy was wondering why he hadn't heard
any answers from Danny in regard to fairly specific questions he had
asked about what he could or could not do to the page. Matthew
suggested one reason would be that Danny doesn't want it on record
that the Foundation has said "yes you can add this to an article" or
similar statements, because the Foundation doesn't want to be
accountable for what editors do in that type of situation.

So when you mentioned accountability, I thought you were following the
same line that Matthew had followed. Sorry if that's not what you
meant.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain@...
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[Guy Chapman aka JzG]

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 00:51:21 +1100, "Stephen Bain"
<stephen.bain@...> wrote:

>My reading of the conversation: Guy was wondering why he hadn't heard
>any answers from Danny in regard to fairly specific questions he had
>asked about what he could or could not do to the page.

I'd just like to confirm that this was one of the two questions I
needed answered; the other was: what should we do in order to avoid
having OFFICEd articles in a state of perpetual stagnation, often at
the "wrong version".  Talk pages of these articles often contain a lot
of debate, much of it focused on why we can't get any kind of answer
from OFFICE.  Sometimes the answer is perfectly reasonable - Brad
needs to consider a issue, for example - other times, the answer is
"dunno".  It's fine to reply with "sorry, we can't say", but no reply
at all is very hard to deal with.

>Matthew
>suggested one reason would be that Danny doesn't want it on record
>that the Foundation has said "yes you can add this to an article" or
>similar statements, because the Foundation doesn't want to be
>accountable for what editors do in that type of situation.

That sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory to me.  Much more likely
that he has no easy answer and Foundation hasn't equipped him with a
set of usable guidelines.  Not that Danny is stupid or lacking
initiative, but he is, I understand, very busy.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

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[Jimmy Wales]

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> This is all fine, but Office actions should not be a technique for
> sweeping issues under the rug indefinitely.

I agree completely.  The message of WP:OFFICE should not be "hands OFF"
but "hands ON".

The core idea is that the process SHOULD work like this:

1. A hysterical phone call comes in to the office.  There might or might
not be legal threats.  The hysteria might or might not be justified.
But someone is sad, and Wikipedia is not here to make people sad.  So we
want to respond in a helpful and loving way.

2. The article is stubbed and tagged as WP:OFFICE.  This is a message to
good editors: "Please help us.  This article is making someone unhappy.
  We want to make sure that it is a thoughtful, fair, neutral article.
We need GOOD editors to pay attention to it, and help us make it good."

I would recommend protection or semi-protection at this point, but with
the idea that even if protected admins are (as compared to normal
protection) actually encouraged to come help with the article.

3.  After some reasonable period of time, hopefully 24 hours, but
perhaps as long as a week, the article has become a shining beauty.  The
subject of the biography (and really, these are most often biographies)
is either made happy (because a horrible error was corrected, a troll
was vanquished, or whatever) or made at least satisfied (the story of
the negative thing he or she did once is now placed in appropriate
context, properly cited, including citations to his or her own response
and defense).

4. Joy.

-----

In fact, this is far too often not what happens.

A few things can go wrong with this.

Perhaps trolls scream that the OFFICE is being paid off to censor Wikipedia.

Perhaps trolls scream that Jimbo is pulling the strings for his friends.

Perhaps young and excitable Wikipedia contributors think that the point
of the exercise is to SHOW PEOPLE that you CAN'T PUSH WIKIPEDIA AROUND,
and go out to try to dig up well-cited dirt on the person, creating an
even more horribly bad and biased article than we started with, forcing
us to start all over again.

Perhaps good contributors who respect WP:OFFICE think "Gee, trouble
here, I will just stay out of the way"... and then nothing happens.

Perhaps no one really cares in the first place, such that if the article
has been out-of-process speedied, it would have slipped through the cracks.

Etc.

I am unsure exactly how to redesign the process so that we get the good
outcome more often, and the bad outcome less often.

An example of the good outcome can be seen at [[Ron Jeremy]], which was
NOT subject WP:OFFICE, but rather subject to a controversial blanking by
an ordinary editor.  It has become an excellent article which continues
to improve, because good editors are keeping unsourced cruft out of the
article completely.

--Jimbo



  If someone has made a

> statement that may be libellous, and it is so alleged by a person who
> may be affected a bit of time needs to be taken to gather the
> appropriate verifiability.
>
> If an educational institution is not accredited we do need to mention
> which list(s) of accredited institutions we have checked to back our
> position.  But note too that we are supporting a negative position.  If
> they are accredited they should have no problem establishing that.  A
> failure to find their name on any reliable list, combined with their
> refusal to answer about their accreditation would be very difficult for
> them to sustain in any litigation.
>
> I have no idea who if anyone has been threatening lawsuits, but students
> and alumni would likely not have standing for this.  Perhaps the
> university administration?  Surely the foundation is not responsible for
> the legal defence of its editors, but a plaintiff is likely to want to
> make the Foundation at least a co-defendent in a law suit, It should be
> prepared to defend itself against groundless, vexatious, or SLAPP
> lawsuits.  If it ends up defending an editor at the same time so much
> the better.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l@...
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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[Alphax (Wikipedia email)]

Earle Martin wrote:

> On 15/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain@...> wrote:
>> On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:
>>> On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven@...> wrote:
>>>> I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
>>>> such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
>>>> Foundation on record.
>>> I thought this project was founded on accountability.
>> Editors are accountable for their own actions.
>>
>> The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
>> people's actions.
>
> I have no idea where you got the idea that I was asking the Foundation
> to be responsible for other people's actions. I'll quote you again the
> text (quoted above) that I was replying to:
>
> "Danny... doesn't want an official decision of the Foundation on record."
>
> In this case, it was an "office action", which appears to generally
> equate to "putting stuff in the memory hole".
>
> Is it Foundation policy to hide official decisions of the Foundation?
> Or is it Danny policy? Either way, it appears that the management of
> this project is asymptotically approaching that of the Open[sic]
> Directory Project.
>

That's grounds for moderation, citizen.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP



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[Thomas Dalton]

> I am unsure exactly how to redesign the process so that we get the good
> outcome more often, and the bad outcome less often.

I think the OFFICE template needs a parameter telling people what the
complaint was. We can't fix something if we don't know what's broken
about it.

It seems you're hoping that people will turn it into a perfect
article, and thus fix whatever was complained about in the process,
however it is very difficult to make an article perfect, and often the
ones that are complained about aren't articles people are very
inclined to work on (popular articles are usually good articles
already). If we knew precisely what needed fixing we could fix that
quickly and be done with it. No-one wants to start a job without any
way of knowing when they're finished other than by reaching
perfection.
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[James Hare]

Yes. We all know what happened to Erik Moeller.

And now let's not speak of that incident ever again.

On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster@...> wrote:

>
> On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:
> >
> > On 15/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain@...> wrote:
> > > On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:
> > > > On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven@...> wrote:
> > > > > I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond
> to
> > > > > such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
> > > > > Foundation on record.
> > > >
> > > > I thought this project was founded on accountability.
> > >
> > > Editors are accountable for their own actions.
> > >
> > > The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
> > > people's actions.
> >
> > I have no idea where you got the idea that I was asking the Foundation
> > to be responsible for other people's actions. I'll quote you again the
> > text (quoted above) that I was replying to:
> >
> > "Danny... doesn't want an official decision of the Foundation on
> record."
> >
> > In this case, it was an "office action", which appears to generally
> > equate to "putting stuff in the memory hole".
> >
> > Is it Foundation policy to hide official decisions of the Foundation?
> > Or is it Danny policy? Either way, it appears that the management of
> > this project is asymptotically approaching that of the Open[sic]
> > Directory Project.
> >
> > --
> > Earle Martin
>
>
> Given that the risk of violating an Office action is Danny having you
> banned/desysopped/draped in sackcloth and ashes, I think that the
> boundaries
> of Office actions need to be spelled out pretty clearly. Hiding them is
> not
> good for the project.
>
> Parker
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l@...
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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[Alphax (Wikipedia email)]

Parker Peters wrote:

> On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:
>> On 15/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain@...> wrote:
>>> On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia@...> wrote:
>>>> On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven@...> wrote:
>>>>> I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
>>>>> such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
>>>>> Foundation on record.
>>>> I thought this project was founded on accountability.
>>> Editors are accountable for their own actions.
>>>
>>> The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
>>> people's actions.
>> I have no idea where you got the idea that I was asking the Foundation
>> to be responsible for other people's actions. I'll quote you again the
>> text (quoted above) that I was replying to:
>>
>> "Danny... doesn't want an official decision of the Foundation on record."
>>
>> In this case, it was an "office action", which appears to generally
>> equate to "putting stuff in the memory hole".
>>
>> Is it Foundation policy to hide official decisions of the Foundation?
>> Or is it Danny policy? Either way, it appears that the management of
>> this project is asymptotically approaching that of the Open[sic]
>> Directory Project.
>>
>> --
>> Earle Martin
>
>
> Given that the risk of violating an Office action is Danny having you
> banned/desysopped/draped in sackcloth and ashes, I think that the boundaries
> of Office actions need to be spelled out pretty clearly. Hiding them is not
> good for the project.
>

Given the number of people who don't understand or don't care that what
happens on Wikipedia can have real-world implications, a suitable degree
of "HERE BE DRAGONS" /is/ needed.

--
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[Alphax (Wikipedia email)]

James Hare wrote:
> Yes. We all know what happened to Erik Moeller.
>

... he got elected to the Board?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
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