[WikiEN-l] Oversight log

Thu Jun 22 17:39:49 UTC 2006

>  > 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.

This isn't about publishing deleted articles.

Not that I have any objection to something like publishing every
deleted article without personal information somewhere. Might produce
some welcome extra feedback about what gets deleted inappropriately.

> > 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).

It's good to have the largest practical group able to examine our
actions. That increases the chance that enough people will take an
interest and provide effective questioning of actions.

> > 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?

Nothing harmful at all will happen if all the actions are in accord
with policy.

If someone uses the capability to hide edits that are uncomplimentary
to them or simply make a project look bad in a news story, when the
project did actually have a problem then that would be an entirely
different and problematic mater. Things like "we screwed up" or "yes,
that was a bad edit" aren't what this capability is for. Oversight is
about making sure that the capability isn't misused in this sort of
way, however much we all want to be perfect and might be tempted to
try to look better than we are.

> > 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.

I disagree.

> > 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?

It's not bad at all. Looking hard at what we do is good. So is
capabilities without oversight going away, since that needlessly
introduces the scope for misuse by eliminating the checks and balances
we should be striving for in all we do.

James Day