It's a shame that the Times framed this as a Times editor's personal intercession to help a journalist, rather than as an application of Wikipedia's "Biographies of living persons" policy:<p>"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. <i>The possibility of harm to living subjects</i> is one of the important factors to be considered when exercising editorial judgment." [emphasis added]<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biographies_of_living_persons" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biographies_of_living_persons</a>
<i>When the news broke Saturday, the user from Florida reposted the information, with a note to administrators that said: “Is that enough proof for you [expletives]? I was right. You were WRONG.”</i><p>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.<p>[1]: <a href="http://xkcd.com/386/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/386/</a>
If the New York Times had a policy of never publicizing kidnappings, I could respect their policy.<p>However, it appears that they are entirely hypocritial on this topic: I've read TONS of articles in the NYT about people being kidnapped.<p>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.<p>Color me disgusted.
Wikipedia is officially large enough that all of the abstract futurist notions of the internet community about freedom of information are coming in contact with some really real-world roadblocks. It's one thing to imagine wikipedia (or whoever else) valiantly fighting against some repressive third-world government, and thus striking a blow for freedom, democracy and the like. But it's situations like these where the really interesting stuff happens.
Am I the only one who finds it a bit disturbing that editors can just call a few buddies and a piece of information doesn't get published? All the conspiracy theories seem a bit more likely now...
So maybe this secrecy was justifiable. But maybe it wasn't. Here's a list of parties who would have benefited from the information:<p>- 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.<p>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.
I'm really glad to hear the guys escaped, even though it was obvious from the premise. However, the final line sounds terribly Orwellian to me:<p>> “But the idea of a pure openness, a pure democracy, is a naïve one.”
> Around that time, Catherine J. Mathis, the chief spokeswoman for the New York Times Company, called Mr. Wales and asked for his help. Knowing that his own actions on Wikipedia draw attention, Mr. Wales turned to an administrator<p>Sounds like Jimbo broke both the "sock puppet rule" AND the "three revert rule".
I wonder if they considered showing this person (or at least people on that ISP or region) custom content?<p>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.
Isn't this ironic? Hasn't the Times printed stories despite being told that doing so endangers "national security" (i.e. could result in the deaths of citizens)?
"Information wants to be free."<p>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.)
1) If the kidnappers "obviously" would have benefited from the publicity, why didn't they create publicity deliberately?<p>2) Great, now we know how to manipulate Wikipedia into censoring articles.
Seems like any reasonably intelligent kidnapper would take a peek at the edit history of the article and see all the edits and reverts, which would be even more suspicious.
Recently it seems like the NYTimes jumps on every opportunity to write articles about the downsides of its new-media competitors. First LinkedIn crowdsourcing, now problems with Wikipedia decentralization. Just getting a bit old.