[WikiEN-l] Oversight log

Thu Jun 22 17:07:21 UTC 2006

On 6/22/06, James <user_jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> The suitable initial group seems clear enough: every administrator.

1000 people? That's an absurdly large group. As it is there are
administrators digging up deleted articles and posting them on other
websites.

> Beyond that, the censored log should be available to everyone.
> Administrators often have more than enough to do and any assistance
> non-administrators can do in the way of oversight is a good thing.

No, the log should not be available to everyone.  I can't see what
possible good that could come from it, and the log itself could be
used to reveal the very kinds of things it is intended to conceal
(e.g. personal information).

> Removing the page isn't close to sufficient - it conceals what is
> perhaps the most significant part of what is being overseen: who is
> doing what, where and still concealed from most, why.

What's the danger here?  What horrible thing will happen if some edit
disappears from the history?

> It's worth remembering that a few million pages with things not
> vanishing completely have not brought the encyclopedia or Foundation
> down.

Um, not yet.  The past is not a good predictor of the future in these
kinds of things.

> Making sure we have ample oversight so that people actually look
> hard at what is being done and mention problems is important to our
> process.
>
> Without broad oversight, the capability to make thing silently vanish
> should also be vanishing.

And that's bad because?

Jay.