Wikipedia:Landsbybrønden/Removal of information and Foundation procedures

Removal of information and Foundation procedures

First off, let me apologize for any misunderstanding or ability to adequately convey my actions to dawiki community affected by the recent removal of an individual's name (hereafter referred to as 'RP'). I understand that this person's extensive actions have caused havoc throughout the community.

Here is the situation. The Wikimedia Foundation's relationship to each project is as a hosting company. Occasionally, we get complaints, such as the one from RP, that have nothing to do with the content but rather a specific issue. The individual's real name is showing up on search engine requests for numerous pages which relate to conversations by and about that person. It is our duty as hosting provider to occlude that person's name wherever possible. This is done, with respect to the project in question, by simply replacing characters in the name with garbage. This is standard practice for any responsible hosting organization.

If our interest was to hide RP's actions, we would have deleted or even oversighted historical edits.

Ideally we do this with members of the project, and I attempted to engage dawiki members to do this, via OTRS. Unfortunately, so many members of the community have been adversely affected by this individual, that it was incredibly difficult finding uninvolved parties. At some point RP contacted me directly, which came as a surprise, and I again engaged some community members.

Note: I have no interest in enabling this individual to participate on this wikipedia; to the contrary, I have asked him to please go away. It is up to you to determine whether he remain blocked.

I regret not being able to explain this in fuller detail--but please understand, as a not-for-profit organization, we have limited resources. I deal with a number of issues on a regular basis, and have to manage my time. I usually rely on other individuals to help support and explain, and was sincerely unaware that I was not receiving this support in this matter until it had blown way out of proportion.

My job is not to subvert anything in the dawiki community; on the contrary, my goal is to help bring peace to it, so you can go on doing what you do best, building this wikipedia.

I approached RP with two demands:

• That he remove personal information about dawiki contributors from his personal website.
  • He complied.
• That he go away and leave dawiki alone, as it was apparent things weren't working out between him and the community.
  • He said he would, offering me a detailed explanation of what he thinks went wrong.

It's apparent that something failed somewhere in this case, and my efforts had not been adequately conveyed to the community. I hold nobody responsible for this fact but myself. I should have followed up, and not gotten frustrated with people who approached me on my talk page rather than emailing me privately (which is always the best way of getting information from me).

I hope this goes a way to smoothing out the issues. ~~~~