Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Suicide announcement 9-25-2008

Suicide announcement?
I don't know if this is serious or just a hoax:. But you never know. The IP is registered to St. John's Memorial University, St. John's, NFL, Canada. De728631 (talk) 13:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think we have some framework in place to deal with these things but I can't remember what it is. Perhaps someone in the area should phone the uni, just in case. — ^.^ &#91;citation needed&#93; 13:16, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * In most cases WP:RBI. D.M.N. (talk) 13:17, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I suggest the possibly less harmful and lifesaving Responding to threats of harm. — ^.^ &#91;citation needed&#93; 13:20, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I found that too, sent an email to the NFL Constabulary, maybe that helps. De728631 (talk) 13:30, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That likely wraps it up. Nothing more we can do here except move on.  Cheers, guys, and good work.  lifebaka++ 14:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * We probably want the edit deleted from non admin viewable history, but we'll probably need an oversighter to do it.--Tznkai (talk) 15:51, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Sent an email to stewards AT wikimedia.org, so it'll either get taken care of or not. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely to NOT WP:RBI this. There has been a specific threat of violence made and pursuant to WP:TOV this should be taken seriously and reported to the authorities. I am currently on a bus from Boston to New York so cannot do this. Can someone please take point on this? Bstone (talk) 16:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Give me a moment to set up a subpage, with two active threads this is getting to damned confusing.
 * FYI, action has already been taken - Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents. Cirt (talk) 16:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would not suggest to use RBI, instead contacting local users so effective measures can be taken. Cau  lde  16:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * This may be helfpul: Responding to suicidal individuals -- Flewis (talk) 03:46, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Suicide threat - cross posted from WP:AIV
has threatened to commit suicide. The Whois look up indicates the address is registered to a university in Newfoundland. I've emailed the university and the Wikimedia foundation, however I'm not based in North America, and would be grateful if someone could phone the Canadian emergency services. PhilKnight (talk) 13:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Per WP:TOV, if anyone finds these threats of suicide credible, please feel free to contact the relevant authorities. I have blocked the IP for the vandalism, but have not taken any additional action myself. -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I reported this one level above on this noticeboard. An email was sent to the Newfoundland Constabulary and to the Wikimedia foundation (who just replied that they're going to monitor this). De728631 (talk) 13:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The AN thread resulted in the local government being emailed, so there's nothing else we can do here. Cheers.  lifebaka++ 14:33, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I also followed up via email with the IT department at that university. Toddst1 (talk) 15:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

See dup thread: Administrators'_noticeboard. Cirt (talk) 16:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Unified
This is now a transcluded so both pages are up to date simulatiniously--Tznkai (talk) 16:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Oversight
I have been asked to oversight the revision concerned here. I have declined to do so, with the advice of some other Oversighters, on the grounds that it may be helpful for ISP/authorities to see the revision. Sam Korn (smoddy) 16:24, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Should we have it deleted/oversighted sometime in the future? --Tznkai (talk) 16:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No point, I think. Stifle (talk) 18:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I cannot see why this should ever be oversighted. If blatant vandalism is not oversighted or deleted than things which the authorities may need access to should certainly not be oversighted. Bstone (talk) 22:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * To clarify, the Threats of harm essay above suggests deleting, not oversighting the offending edit. Usually to avoid people doing something really stupid misguided with a potentially suicidal person.--Tznkai (talk) 04:06, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposed change of confusing jargon
Why do we call it oversight? Oversight usually means some sort of independent review or process, often to try to keep people honest. Wikipedia usage of oversight really means "Removal", "Content deletion" or "Censor" (censorship doesn't need to be bad; some countries have a censorship board). Propose making Wikipedia more user friendly and less jargon by renaming the term "oversight" to "content removal" or "remove". So the first sentence of this section would read "I have been asked to do content removal of the revision concerned here" or "I have been asked to remove the revision concerned here". 903M (talk) 03:56, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Not meaning to seem like I'm muting discussion here or anything, but you probably should head over to WP:VPP for things like this. You'll get a much wider group of editors there.  Cheers.  lifebaka++ 03:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I forget where I read this, but IIRC, the name came from the fact that all members can hide revisions and also see those hidden revisions, thereby providing oversight of each other to ensure that no one is hiding revisions that don't need to be hidden or hiding them for ulterior motives. Or it may have been that a narrow group had that oversight role and more could hide revisions, but now the groups are congruent and inseparable.--chaser - t 05:00, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The way I've always looked at it is since the GFDL requires attribution of all edits, exercising this tool is sort of "overlooking" that license, as we're deleting part of the history. Hers fold  (t/a/c) 19:04, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That doesn't have anything to do with it (admins can do that with deletion and selective diff restoraton).--chaser - t 06:04, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The GFDL also only requires us to have the major contributors. Almost universally when we oversight whatever is left has little to no contribution from the edits in question. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)