QUOTE(Larry Sanger @ Mon 3rd May 2010, 2:25am)
QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Sun 2nd May 2010, 8:29pm)
Seeing as Larry is here - hi, Larry, we've not been introduced! - perhaps he can outline what he hoped to achieve in simple terms, what he thought might happen if the police thought that there was a problem with Commons?
Hi dogbisquit and thanks for the welcome. If you don't mind, I'm not going to answer, because I don't want to play this game. If I say, "I expected that some people would be arrested," then the Wikipedians will howl that I was trying to get people arrested. If I say, "They'll just get a take-down notice," or "I didn't think about it," and instead somebody does get arrested, then later they will say, "Sanger acted irresponsibly, without thinking."
If, as I suspect, the intent behind the question is to accuse me of being irresponsible in serious matters, I'll simply say that I know very well that what I did was serious.
But then, what Wikipedia and WMF does daily with people's reputations and with respect to the law is serious as well. They have acted outside of the law and basic moral standards on too many occasions, and it's time they were held responsible for this. It gives me no pleasure at all to say this, but it seems necessary for the law to act in order to rein in their most egregious abuses.
Far too suspicious! I have, in the past, attempted to trigger action from the UK by contacting various child protection areas about elements, really with the aim of forcing the WMF to accept that they have a duty of care with regard to Wikipedia. Didn't get a response, in part because I simply do not think that normal people hear the words Wikipedia and understand it is not an encyclopedia - they are naive.
It therefore needs someone to use their public position to get them to take notice.
I do understand your reservations in answering, but it wasn't a set up (IMG:
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What I would hope would happen is that it dawns on the WMF that there is a real problem that if they do not address it, will get them into serious trouble - on the basis that they are well aware of the problems, but for some distorted reasoning they either do not care, or do not perceive it to be a problem.
I happen to believe the solution is fairly simple, but it requires the WMF to accept that while they can hide behind S.230, they still have an ability, and a duty, to set up processes to deal with the various problems that exist within Wikipedia.