Wikiversity:Candidates for Custodianship/Dave Braunschweig/Privacy issue

Sidelight is raising on the candidacy page, issues that should not be raised on-wiki. I am therefore responding here. We need to update our proposed Wikiversity:Child protection policy, to reflect the Wikipedia experience. I originally wrote what is below to be placed as a response to Sidelight12's comment, [1]. I am placing it here, instead, so that any decision to delete or revision-delete this can be separate from what is on the Candidacy page, which is being widely read, and so that this will not appear on watchlists, only the reference to this that I'm placing on the Candidacy page. It is possible that the Sidelight edit should be revision-deleted, and, of course, my response with it.

Meanwhile there may be some value in some active members of the Wikiversity seeing how privacy and child protection issues are handled.

Sidelight12 radically misrepresents what happened. Wikiversity is not being used to "soapbox pedophilia," nor has it been used to do that. If this were Wikipedia, Sidelight12 would be blocked by now for making charges of "soapboxing pedophilia," see w:Wikipedia:Child Protection, and, specifically:

Comments posted on Wikipedia suggesting that an editor may be a pedophile will be RevDeleted promptly, to avoid issues of privacy and possible libel. You should raise your concerns only by email; questions or accusations directed against a particular editor in project space may result in a block for the editor who posted them.

In what follows, I am not providing diffs, to at least partially shield the editor in question, whose privacy is also being violated by Sidelight in a discussion on WV:RCA.

What happened here was that an editor, who had not been disruptive here, referred to a globally locked user by name, on my talk page, without intending to violate that policy. This was promptly revision-deleted. The editor, our user, is well-known, and has been a libertarian activist (even a candidate for public office), but also became radicalized and defied federal law (having nothing to do with pedophilia), and went to federal prison for some years. For activities related to that sequence, he was banned on Wikipedia. He is not blocked on any WMF wiki other than Wikipedia.

In discussions of child protection, there is a substantial minority of the WMF community that favors, not "pedophilia," which is a personality disorder, but freedom of speech. Child protection policy is the only example I know of where off-wiki advocacy is sanctioned. It would seem that one could advocate cannibalism or (adult) rape and it would be fine, but the right of legal minors (sometimes as old as 20) to make their own sexual choices, no. This position, of zero tolerance for "pedophilia and pedophile advocacy" is WMF policy, however, and I agree with it, especially as expressed in the Wikipedia policy. There is also zero tolerance for making public charges of pedophilia, and that is what Sidelight is violating here, overturning what Dave and I had worked to accomplish, to handle this as privately as possible.

I have known the editor in question since 2007. He is not a pedophile, contrary to Sidelight's claims. He has been a libertarian; but because he has been going through a major personal transformation -- this is quite visible, from anyone who has watched his contributions and then looks at what he has been working on, on Wikiversity -- I no longer could classify his political position. He has been accused of being a pedophile, and of being a pedophile advocate. The charges were false, but he was also tendentious and provocative, and he could easily cite notable academic literature that has been called "pedophile advocacy." Discussions of this, where they have occurred, are violently disruptive, I have seen a wiki torn apart by them, with threats of gross physical violence; when I pointed out simple fact, in one of these discussions, a user told me, "Go f*** your kids." He was not sanctioned.

We don't want that here, or anywhere in the WMF. I do stand for academic freedom, but until we have far better control and custodial attention, that is immediate and clear and accurate, this is a forbidden topic, and Sidelight is insistently violating that prohibition. He is the only one being disruptive here.

There was a situation, in that edit to my talk page, that required immediate attention. There was also an edit to Wikiversity talk:Child protection policy. I handled the situation with my talk page, sending email, and Dave responded immediately. We warned the editor, firmly. The editor cooperated.

Sidelight then blocked the editor, shutting off email access and talk page access, based on his own inexperienced opinion, and made unnecessary revision deletions.[2]. I objected, and so did Dave. Dave acted with complete adherence to general WMF and wiki policy, he did not wheel-war. Under some pressure, then, Sidelight unblocked talk page access. The user waited four months to request unblock. When he did, there was a discussion, and based on assurances given in it, Dave unblocked. There has been no disruption from or involving this user, until now, and what is happening now did not come from the user, it is coming from Sidelight.

This is really a meta issue, and should be handled with office action, and that seems to be the direction that Wikipedia will move toward, there are Wikipedia arbitrators who object to being made responsible for the matter, not being experts and not being trained.

This is one incident of many where Dave showed clarity and maturity as a Wikiversity probationary custodian. I did not support Dave's candidacy because he always agrees with me. We disagreed strongly on the matter of the deletion of User:Augusto De Luca, and Dave even blocked me once, for eight hours, over a slip of mine. He always properly handled situations in full accordance with Wikiversity policy, the stated policies, the proposed policies, and the unstated ones, implied by years of WMF practice. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 12:15, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Sidelight was just warned on meta for making comments referring to this issue.[3]. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 13:17, 12 September 2014 (UTC)