Wikiversity:Community Review/Wikimedia Ethics:Ethical Breaching Experiments/Unethical Research

Unethical research
Research is unethical, amongst other criteria, if it harms, or has the potential to harm, the subjects of that research. Breaching experiments on Wikipedia are unethical if it is disruptive to the thousands of editors working there. Many commentators above seem to have failed to grasp this simple principle, or at least have given the "freedom" of Wikiversity editors priority over this. As a regular contributor to Wikipedia I am furious that this project has allowed planning of these kind of attacks on your pages. You do not have our permission to carry out breaching experiments on Wikipedia and doing so harms the reputation of Wikipedia and all the people who have put so much effort into creating it. I dare say I could break your windows if I tried hard enough, they are probably not sufficiently secure - but it would still be wrong to bring the fragility of your windows to your attention in this way. It is completely incorrect that openly discussing how to carry out such attacks improves security. Far from it, one act of vandalism is inevitably followed by more once the trail has been blazed. In my view, Jimmy Wales would be entirely correct to have Wikiversity closed down if it fails come out against this behaviour. SpinningSpark 18:09, 19 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Dear friend! 1. If you are "furious" than maybe calm down and write a non-furious comment afterward. 2. The trail has been blazed already. See yourself. And from the deleted page it seems that there are some other fake BLPs sitting on the site right now. 3. Have you read/seen the pages in question? --Gbaor 18:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Spinningspark appears perfectly calm to me. Gbaor, on the other hand, seems to be dictating what Spinningspark can and cannot justifiably feel. Righteous anger has a place. If someone wrongs me, I am justifiably angry. I see no evidence that Spinningspark is in any way allowing his/her very justifiable anger to affect him/her unduly; if someone burglarizes and vandalizes my home, I may well be angry - and there is absolutely no reason to be condescending and order someone to put their outrage aside. Outrage is indicated and called for when injury is willfully done. To suggest otherwise is to advise being a willing victim. You might want to back off and drop the condescending tone of superiority. The "pages in question" have zero, I repeat zero, bearing on the issue - just as which houses were burglarized, whether low rent trailers or mansions, would not have any bearing on whether the burglary was wrong. KillerChihuahua 18:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Please accept my apology for the "the condescending tone of superiority" to Spinningspark and anyone else who might get offended by it. Your words making sense. It seems they are choosing wise people for WP admins after all (edit: just realized that this might be interpreted other way that I meant it. So just to say, I meant it as a compliment.). I could say I just wanted to be friendly. Well it is true. On the other hand this was not the first "rush in" for this page. Although I must admit this one was more polite... This is how I handle the things... To the point: "the pages in question" are the topics what we are discussing here + some other minor issues, such as if the reaction of mr. Wales (the blocks and desysop) were appropriate reaction. The latter part was called "red herring" above, so the pages and the topic/content remains. --Gbaor 18:49, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * What people seem not to understand is that people here think that injury was not willfully done nor was it supported by Wikiversity. Wikiversity is not responsible for the actions of others. This is like accusing Wikipedia of willfully helping someone to kill another person because they read the Gun article. -- dark lama  18:51, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * How can anyone think that a deliberately fake article with accusations of Nazism, adultery and murder cannot be intentional injury? Of course it is, and detailed instructions on how to do it again is equally bad. SpinningSpark 19:08, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * That is hardly what I am saying. I am saying that Wikiversity is not responsible for people creating deliberately fake articles. Block the people responsible, delete the fake articles, and be done with it. -- dark lama  19:14, 19 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The Mike Handel article remains deleted which is what the link you provided seems to be discussing. If you know of any other such pages on Wikipedia, please provide me with links so that they can also be deleted and the perpetrators blocked.  I don't know what pages you are referring to: I have read the deleted Mike Handel article on Wikipedia, the articles in Wikipedia Signpost, the On Wikipedia page you linked to and nearly all of this page.  I do not know how much you think I need to read before I am allowed to give an informed opinion on Wikiversity (please give links) but I do know that on Wikipedia I only need to know the article was entirely fake before coming to the decision to delete the article and having everyone involved with it chucked off the project. SpinningSpark 18:57, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * There are (as far as I know) 2 mirrors of the deleted content. An early version (link blocked by the spam filter) and an another. All the info we have. There might be more info in the history, but since the pages are deleted, I just don't know. Link from a blog comment with the first few words of the page: here, full page here --Gbaor 14:14, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
 * It is perfectly clear to me that the page went way beyond an academic discussion of breaching experiments into a "how to" description encouraging others to follow. Especially inappropriate is the list of proud boastings of successes in getting fake articles onto Wikipedia. SpinningSpark 18:18, 20 March 2010 (UTC)