Wow, so do we have a name for this phenomenon yet? I think I'll write up an RFC for "Monroe's Law"[1] tomorrow.
[1]: http://xkcd.com/386/
It's the sort of thing dystopian novels are made of...
Personal situations like these where freedom of speech doesn't serve public interest are hard to come by.
It's a great article, revealing heretofore unreported aspects of Wikipedia governance. (Wikipedia is the top hit for so many topics that its importance is up there with Google, the NY Times, and network TV news.) And, the events are in relation to a vivid, emotional, recent story with relevance to journalism, terrorism, and foreign policy in the middle east.
This could have gone much earlier in the paper than p. B4, and deserves some independent reporting by another outlet not directly involved.
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid paper; it is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives. The possibility of harm to living subjects is one of the important factors to be considered when exercising editorial judgment." [emphasis added]
Thanks for pointing directly to Wikipedia's stated editorial policies. That makes clear how Wikipedia had already announced it would resolve such trade-offs.
In particular the BLP policy has likely been the center of the most controversy and debate of any policy (using this in the official meta-Wikipedia term for policy). Most of this debate surrounds over how far the interests of the subject should be respected over the truth, particularly when the truth is reported in what Wikipedia considers reliable sources. As Jimbo Wales himself states in that article, HAD this incident been reported in such a source, it would have been much more difficult to deal with.
Frankly, when BLP was drafted and discussed, no one foresaw an event like this occurring. This was the first time a subject was actually in real-time danger and any edit could literally damage his well-being. The events that BLP had in mind were things like libel (google for daniel brandt), unsubstantiated celebrity gossip, invasion of privacy (Allison Stokke, the star wars kid), misinformation (sinbad's death).
What's interesting is that Wikipedia has a culture of decision/discussion transparency that is at odds with protecting privacy in this situation. This could not have been discussed on the typical Wikipedia boards without totally giving up privacy. It's amazing they were able to keep this under wraps as they did.
Just because a presidential administration or governmental agency says publication of information will "endanger national security," it does not necessarily mean it will cause Americans to die - it might just embarrass the organization.
However, it appears that they are entirely hypocritial on this topic: I've read TONS of articles in the NYT about people being kidnapped.
I guess that the alleged danger to the captive is only a motivating force when the captive is one of their own. When it's a mere aid worker, or military contractor, or something, then the calculus changes.
Color me disgusted.
And sometimes - often, in fact - you just don't know, and you make the best judgment call you can.
I'm not claiming that the Times always acts correctly in these situations, and it's certainly worthwhile to question what the motivating factors are in whether, when and how to hold a story.
But it's also not really correct to say that all kidnapping situations are exactly the same and must be [not] publicized. They're simply not.
- Other reporters and nonprofit workers considering going to Afghanistan. How many of your colleagues have been kidnapped doing something you're considering doing is pretty useful information. Even if you still decide to do it, you might demand extra compensation for the risk. The editors of the New York Times may have saved themselves substantial hazard pay by keeping this secret. - The kidnappers, obviously, who apparently represent the former government of Afghanistan. This might seem unremarkable (who would side with the kidnappers, after all?) except that it is very unusual for Wikipedia to take sides in a contentious international issue like this, even in cases where there are clear issues of right and wrong (Scientology, Guantánamo, the US's support for terrorist guerrillas in Nicaragua in the 1970s, etc.) There's a strong tradition of letting the reader decide. - Old friends of David Rohde wondering why they hadn't heard from him in months. - Anyone who, in the future, seeks information that fairly presents all sides of an issue without the fear that some sides have been entirely suppressed. (This is the first such case, to my knowledge.) I imagine this case will be brought up every time some kid from a radical madrasa tries to convince his buddies that actually the US did take action to save Muslims from persecution in Bosnia, using Wikipedia and the sources it cites to make his case.
I agree that there is a plausible case to make that secrecy was the lesser of the evils, but I don't think it's an open-and-shut case. If nothing else, it's possible that this secrecy has already resulted in the deaths of other journalists.
It's also interesting how this story was kept quiet for over seven months- however Prince Harry's deployment to Afghanistan didn't last four months before he had to be pulled.
So it's a different case on the ground than it is here in the safety of our homes and offices- and I am certain that people share lots on the ground - that's how they keep safe.
Sounds like Jimbo broke both the "sock puppet rule" AND the "three revert rule".
When you are accusing someone of hypocrisy and serious misconduct, it is a good idea to have both a clear idea of the definitions of the kinds of misconduct you are accusing them of, and some iota of evidence that the person in question committed them. It is not generally considered good practice to throw around serious accusations in the complete absence of any incriminating evidence. And that is what you are doing.
Forking the entry so that they could carry on editing in ignorance would, I imagine, be a rather large challenge, but just hard wiring a divertion to some sort of explanation might have been feasible.
> “But the idea of a pure openness, a pure democracy, is a naïve one.”
I have to believe that if someone was posting this to Wikipedia, the information was already publicly available. If you want something to be a secret, don't tell people about it. (See also, the Streissand Effect.)
2) Great, now we know how to manipulate Wikipedia into censoring articles.
