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Posted by: Brutus

Damon Dash
[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Dash]Damon Dash[/url]
Can anyone explain why "office" protection has been placed on this article?

Posted by: Text

Wales' (or some other important Wikimedia person's) wallet might have been threatened by having bad information inserted in that article.

Posted by: Retrospect

Long-standing problems here going back to 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Damon+Dash

No doubt the poor chap's had a bushel of fuckwits messing with him and he's got the money to send a lawyer's letter.

Posted by: Brutus

A belated follow up, WP:Office has been removed and there are some interesting comments on the talk page about how the foundation chose to office protect the page for two years rather than be involved in costly litigation which could have bankrupted the foundation.

The moral of this story is if you are "notable" + wealthy and don't like what is written about you on Wikipedia, hire an army of expensive "wiz" lawyers, and threat legal proceedings against the foundation and watch them kowtow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Damon_Dash
Quote" Unfortunately we can not always say exactly why we protected a page, and this is one of those times. We do it very rarely and think very hard about it and have reevaluated this one a couple times since then. Unfortunately when we are unable to talk about the reasons conjecture on them can be dangerous because it runs a severe legal risk for the foundation and the projects and I would ask that we not do so here. I think we are at a point in the article where a new evaluation is probably warranted and am going to talk to one of the lawyers tomorrow to make sure we are in agreement and will update here what the decision is as soon as possible. Jalexander--WMF 02:53, 24 February 2014 (UTC) "

Posted by: Jay

Yes, the WMF usually fold when there's a reasonably credible legal threat. Unfortunately, most people can't afford to mount such a threat.

Posted by: Retrospect

They've only got fuckwit in-house lawyers to advise them.