Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Rocksanddirt (talk | contribs) at 23:44, 29 November 2007 (→Forward to ArbCom). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The following is a proposed Misplaced Pages policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption.

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This page in a nutshell: Publicizing private correspondence is a breach of privacy that can only be warranted by exceptional circumstances.

Private correspondence in relation to Misplaced Pages usually means e-mails, IRC logs, online text messages or other recorded conversation or ideas that were not originally posted on Misplaced Pages. Original text posted to Misplaced Pages is submitted under GFDL while other text can be public domain, copy-left or fair use.

The traditional respect to the privacy of the communication not originally intended to be public is first and foremost a social norm rather a norm ingrained and codified in written laws and rules. Therefore, publicizing the private correspondence is an ethics issue. It is considered improper under most circumstances and it was widely held as entirely appropriate under certain truly exceptional conditions. The norm that the intended privacy should be respected in most, save exceptional circumstances, has been widely held in the society. What qualifies as such exceptional circumstances is the crux of the matter.

Despite, there are very few instances in which any benefit to the community outweighs privacy concerns, referring to private correspondence may sometimes be unavoidable in Misplaced Pages's dispute resolution. There are right and wrong ways to do this, and the standing convention at Misplaced Pages is to submit it privately to the Arbitration Committee via email when appropriate, rather than posting them on Misplaced Pages pages. This method may avoid ethical dilemmas and copyright concerns by reducing the violation of privacy and drama.

Contributors' anonymity

Respect for contributor's choice to remain anonymous has been a long-standing, core principle at Misplaced Pages. Therefore, publicly revealing the real life identities behind the Misplaced Pages usernames is a bannable offense.

Public posting on Misplaced Pages

If a Misplaced Pages user obtained the private information and considers its publication on Misplaced Pages because the user thinks the matter at hand is one of the truly exceptional cases that warrant such disclosure, the privacy violation is still less invasive if the information is given not through direct quotes but through summarizing and refactoring the points, with direct quotes being as short as possible.

There is no difference really in posting the confidential information to Misplaced Pages or to an external site and linking to it. The breach of privacy is the same and can only be warranted by exceptional circumstances. Any editor who makes the decision to post such information should be aware that except in these special cases, some editors and administrators will seek sanctions for that action.

Forward to ArbCom

It is important to remember that forwarding the information originally intended to be private to the ArbCom is still a privacy breach. If the originator intended the information to be private, s/he has unlikely meant "private except the Misplaced Pages ArbCom". So, providing the ArbCom with such information should be generally governed by the same ethics rules: "Only exceptional circumstances warrant the dissemination of private information".

See also

• Misplaced Pages:Confidential evidence
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Durova and Jehochman
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Durova and Jehochman/Evidence#What was in that damning report?
• Misplaced Pages:Privacy

• Misplaced Pages proposals