This then had the effect of blocking many “innocent” UK editors from being able to edit Wikipedia. They could always READ and/or COPY Wikipedia, all they liked.

I agree with your first and third defenses, as well as your conclusion, of course.

There is a movement afoot at Wikipedia right now to view “Wikipedia” (the text and image content) as a “country”; and the Wikimedia Foundation, the Arbitration Committee, and the senior administrators of the site are viewed as the “government”. Many people who dearly love their “country” are now calling for the complete ouster and replacement of its “government”. I wholly endorse that. Their government is packed with scoundrels.

I’m not familiar enough with the incidents to comment on them directly, however in their defence (and I feel they need one given they’re not here):

* It is a revolutionary concept that would have had problems, no matter who was in charge

* Internet Watch Foundation *were* too aggressive in their approach to Wikipedia in the first instance by insisting that the whole site should be blocked by all UK ISPs. *The whole thing* because of one picture that had been used as album art without prosecution for 30 years!

* The media will pick their fights with Wikipedia, but whenever they pick on something online they do so poorly it just looks like self-protecting snobbery.

That said, all organisations need to get their house in order and will struggle with issues like this: it’s a tribute to the structure that we hear about this stuff to be honest. You don’t think news papers don’t have the same issues but get it hushed up? Read Private Eye from time to time!

I am happy that this debate exists over whether what the NY Times or Jimmy Wales or Wikipedia’s pseudonymous administrators did was ethical or not. I’m not sure where I stand on either side of the coin, but the reason I am happy is because it exposes a key and obvious fact that seems to have eluded the popular media for the past seven years.

That fact is that the Wikimedia Foundation board, its staff, and most all of Wikipedia’s administrators have ABSOLUTELY NO EXPERIENCE in knowledge management systems or in publishing reference resources. They really have no business acting with any authority whatsoever, on their own, when arise these complex questions of ethics and principle.

A properly engaged journalist would now compile an historical retrospective on all of Wikipedia’s past blunders that had anything to do with ethics and principles. Incidents to probe in concert with one another would include:

* Essjay lying to a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist about his fraud;
* Jimmy Wales as “sole founder”;
* the disappearance of Carolyn Doran from the WMF and from Wikipedia article space;
* the accusations of Danny Wool that were dismissed on camera by Sue Gardner with her opinion that “Jimmy Wales has never done anything wrong”;
* the Rachel Marsden sex-for-edits fiasco;
* the fact that Wikia, Inc. is now a landlord to some of the Wikimedia Foundation’s key personnel;
* how Jimmy Wales handled the use of Wikimedia images portraying Boy Scouts on the “Spanking Art” wiki at his Wikia, Inc.;
* how Erik Moeller was hired, without competitive job search effort, directly off the WMF board onto the WMF executive staff;
* how Moeller once told a Berlin audience that “non-violent child pornography does no harm”;
* how a Wikimedia UK spokesperson enjoyed “dancing on the skulls” of an organization that sought to limit the reach of child pornography and exploitation on the Internet;
* etc., etc., etc.

In all honesty, I have never encountered an organization with its collective morality and professionalism so far off balance. But the media doesn’t seem willing to pick up on this curious cultural characteristic and investigate it further.

Why is that?