Martin Harper wrote:
>>Some sites ask users to "sign" agreements related to their activities
>>
>>
>
>So will we, eventually:
>
>[[en:Wikipedia:terms of use]]
>[[en:Wikipedia:Submission Standards]]
>
>I've made the former "official" - it was created by Alex756, reviewed by JamesDay,
>myself, and mentioned on this list, village pump, IRC, enough times. Old hat now. So
>now is a good day to be bold about it.
>
>Other Wikimedia wikis may decide they don't need such terms, or need different terms,
>so I don't think we need a Wikimedia-wide decision on this. However, I will copy to
>foundation-l, since that's the new home for wikilegal-l.
>
As a practical matter, what difference will this make?
All of us have acquired software which require us to "read, understand
and agree" to some longwinded licence full of legalese bafflegab. We
all "agree", but that's just because we know that if we don't "agree"
the software won't work. Who could honestly say that he understands the
terms of these "agreements"?
For the most part the legal effect of these documents is at best obscure
and unenforceable.
Ec
--- On Tue 06/15, phil hunt < zen19725(a)zen.co.uk > wrote:
> I've never come across him on the Wikipedia either, but judging
> from his writing style, I would tend to side with anyone he's in
> disagreement with [because it is style and not substance that
> matters.]
This is what separates the Bubbas from those who understand academic rigor. The Bubbas go by style and get carried away by smooth-talkers.
Hey, I insist that the sun does not go round the earth. Now clearly, phil insists that the sun goes round the earth. How idiotic! This is the same mentality that has made Wikipedia into a substandard resource full of factual errors and propaganda.
Many Americans used to call anyone who didn't side with them as a Communist. Now it has gone to the other extreme. The Americans don't think, but bash anyone who points out the existence of Communists as indulging in McCarthyism!
This is amazing. Keep insisting that this is not true, but India has a coalition controlled by Communists.
-libertarian
_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com
I agree that this is important. However, it seems to be masked in a lot of
jargon, so that it is difficult to get to the main point, which is important.
Remember, no one reads things like this. At best they scan them. This may not
be an ideal situation, but it is reality.
I suggest a one sentence summary in bold and big type on top, followed by all
the legalese you want.
Danny
>If he's only willing to contribute on his own terms, and if he reacts
to
>a "time-out" by running a computer program that automatically
vandalizes
>our encyclopedia database,
I'm just correcting factual errors here -
It wasn't the 7 day ban by the AC that prompted Wik to run the script,
it was the continual creation of subpages to Wik's user page by certain
people who were trying to taunt him. The subpages in question were being
deleted by various admins but that wasn't good enough for Wik.
>... THEN it's fairly obvious that he never had a congenial purpose in
mind.
I can't agree with that. Wik certainly made a whole lot of very good
edits and wrote some very good articles. I'm sure that when he joined
Wikipedia he did so with the same altruistic intentions as everyone
else.
Note also that the vandalbot is attacking user pages, user:talk pages,
policy pages, and pages in the wikipedia namespace. It is not(as far as
I've seen anyway) attacking articles in the main namespace.
Theresa
> Some sites ask users to "sign" agreements related to their
> activities
So will we, eventually:
[[en:Wikipedia:terms of use]]
[[en:Wikipedia:Submission Standards]]
I've made the former "official" - it was created by Alex756, reviewed
by JamesDay, myself, and mentioned on this list, village pump, IRC,
enough times. Old hat now. So now is a good day to be bold about it.
Other Wikimedia wikis may decide they don't need such terms, or need different terms,
so I don't think we need a Wikimedia-wide decision on this.
<s>However, I will copy to foundation-l, since that's the new home
for wikilegal-l.</s> (I'm not subscribed at the moment - oops)
-Martin
------- End of forwarded message -------
My point is that we are seriously considering the
viability of the "open" model. That bothers me a lot.
Mark
--- Viajero <viajero(a)quilombo.nl> wrote:
> On 06/17/04 at 12:56 PM, Mark Richards
> <marich712000(a)yahoo.com> said:
>
> > Why don't we adopt a methodology more like
> Britanica?
> > We could choose editors, who would be accountable
> to
> > us, then they could write articles that we'd be
> > pleased with, and we could control the final
> version?
>
> > Oh, I remember, because this is a WIKI!
>
> Your point? Wikipedia has demonstrated that,
> quantitavely, it is a viable alternative to
> Britannica but qualitatively it is a *long way* from
> being its superior. The same goes for Encarta. A
> certain modesty would be appropriate I would have
> thought, particularly in view of the ongoing
> problems with we have trolls, vandals, POV-pushers,
> and all-round morons, which, in my mind, seriously
> brings into question the viability of the "open"
> model as it is currently implemented...
>
>
> V.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
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Some sites ask users to "sign" agreements related to their activities on
the site and absolving the site owner of any damage the site may cause
the user's computer or brain. I don't recall having to agree to anything
when I first joined Wikipedia except to allow my work to be mercilessly
edited should I choose to submit any. Had I signed an agreement to
abstain from behavior that could be considered mischevious or
detrimental to the safety of Wiki and its members, on the consequence
of (fill in here), then (a) I might be less inclined to launch vandal
bots in the first place, and if I did then (b) all the yelling to
lawyers I wanted to do would serve for nothing when I got banned for
life.
The actions the bot took yesterday did not just affect Angela, Texture,
and other users whose user pages were trashed, it affected a whole
community. The letter replacements on Town Pump and cleanup were
offensive to me, and the condition of the VfD page was such that I just
refrained from participating.
When the action of one user has an impact such as this on an entire
community, then there should be reasonable consequences. Certainly a
hard ban, whether for three months or one year or life would not be
inappropriate. It is time to kill the clowns.
Denni
--
"The difference between extra-marital sex and extra marital sex is not
to be sneezed at." --George Will, on hyphen use
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Visit my Wikipedia user page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3ADwindrim
Do you ICQ? I do - 276534369 Magpie
In case anyone still has any lingering doubts about whether it was right
to ban Wik...
If he's only willing to contribute on his own terms, and if he reacts to
a "time-out" by running a computer program that automatically vandalizes
our encyclopedia database,
... THEN it's fairly obvious that he never had a congenial purpose in
mind. He was like those people who post whatever they want to newsgroups
or blogs. And if others object they just say "Nyaah nyaah, can't stop
me!"
Now of course when Bilbo was trying to rescue the dwarves from Giant
Spiders in "The Hobbit", he did a bit of taunting and teasing. There's a
place for everything, I guess. But the spiders had waylaid the travelers
and intended to eat them; a far cry from the, er, ecology of Wikipedia.
Uncle Ed
mav wrote:
-----
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> What I want to do is to create an agreement that all
disputes will be
> handled through our arbitration procedure, thus
precluding any legal action
> other than possible appeal of an arbitration
decision. I don't think folks
> realize that we can legally do that.
That is already part of the submission standards that
Alex drafted a while ago.
We should look back into that and make it official
(along with the terms of use
he wrote up as well).
-- mav
-------
I believe the matter of this thread is general enough
that should be continued either on wikipedia-l, or
even
better, on foundation-l, in case the agreement was
required in all of the foundation projects.
I agree that we really should bring back the matter of
the submission standards and terms of use, including
the arbitration clauses, as a
condition for editing. Once this is agreed upon,
would it be conveninet to requiere all
registered users to sign once the
agreement as a condition for their continuing editing,
or is it enough with telling something like "edition
of a page means acceptance of the conditions"?
AstroNomer
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What Ant and Mav are talking about is called a Captcha - "completely
automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart")
We have an article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha
--Mark