http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1661567,00.html
"It is true of the Wikipedia, as it is of the rest of the internet,
that information should not be regarded as sacrosanct. Everything
should be double checked."
Well, quite.
By the way, I really hope the experiment of switching off anon page
creation is followed up with an experiment in switching off AFD for a
month.
- d.
I've been grabbed to be a last-second plug-in media whore for
Wikipedia this afternoon - BBC Radio 4 PM, around 5:40pm or so. (I'll
be taking one late lunch!)
It'll be on the subject of recent changes to Wikipedia and the current
storm in a teacup. I just chatted to someone there setting up the
technical details and mentioned the planned UK organization, so that
might get mentioned too.
If you miss it, you can get RealAudio or WMA from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/a…
- d.
I'm still officially on wikibreak (can that be official? =) but I just wanted to
drop a note here on my take on these new restrictions.
Many feel that the [[USA PATRIOT Act]] was only passed on the basis of it being
a highly emotional, gut reaction. Pretty much everyone was OK with it at first,
but over time a lot of Americans have come to wonder if it violates some of our
very basic principles. That's just a surface analogy - don't read into it too
far. The point is that, whether or not it is a perennial suggestion, and whether
or not an article existed for several months and displayed a prominent person as
an assassin, we should absolutely not go against the principles that got us
here.
The reason is simple: It is a slippery slope from stopping "anonymous" editors
from creating new pages, to stopping "anonymous" editors period. I quote
[[anonymous]] because it only (and merely) raises the bar to entry, and does not
affect the pseudo-anonymity that these so-called anons are granted. Creating an
account does not improve our ability to identify you, and not creating an
account does not stop us from identifying you. Creating an account merely gives
you the possibility of handing over legitimate contact information. It is
unnecessary and makes us look like a [[gated community]]. We are not that.
Requiring the creation of an account to solve these so-called problems (and I
will get to that, below) is akin to you realizing you are driving over the speed
limit, and in order to slow down you /turn around and start driving the other
direction/. Now you're just speeding the other way! You are going to the exact
same place, but you're just going to have to drive all the way around
the world to
get there.
I think the point we should take from the experience is this: Wikipedia worked
EXACTLY the way it was supposed to. Sure, we like to trump the fact that we
legions of uber-nerds scanning incoming edits as fast as they can sometimes
catch erroneous facts in a matter of seconds. But sometimes it takes longer.
Instead of requiring account creation, what we should really do is drive the
community to higher inter-linkage of obscure articles so that more people can
read it and the discrepancies can be caught by the very same process that got us
to hundreds of languages, hundreds of thousands of articles (and contributors!)
and multitudes of projects.
I know you can think of other ways we can focus community effort, and I think
that's what we should do. Wikipedia is not a gated community - it is an open
community based on open, (FOSS!) principles. Getting rid of one principle is a
step towards getting rid of them all. If we really do have a problem, e.g., if
we really are experiencing growing pains and not just sensationalism, we need
to stick to our principles to solve it, not drive frantically in the other
directions. It doesn't solve the problem, it just means its going to be around
for longer.
--
Cheers,
Brian Mingus (Alterego)
Hi, Having been sued for libel several times (they never won), I am afraid that as absurd as Ray Saintonge may think it is, my understanding of the law is that Steve Block is correct:
> * Newspaper editors are often named in suits, at least within the UK.
> * The reason they are named is that they authorise content which is
> published.
> * By saving a page, I am creating an edition which is published.
> * I am called an editor.
And as long as the page history text is accessible, all prior versions of the page are "published" even if the current edit has deleted the potentially defamatory material. And so not only are the people legally responsible for Wikipedia potentially laible for damages, but so is every Wiki editor who hit the save button on a page that contained the defamatory text, even if it no longer on the current page.
:-(
I, too, would like to see an actual legal opinion on this.
________________________________
From: wikien-l-bounces(a)Wikipedia.org on behalf of Ray Saintonge
Sent: Wed 12/7/2005 5:05 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Libel law
Steve Block wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
>> On 12/7/05, Steve Block <steve.block(a)myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Is there any thoughts on private individuals? Are we open to libel
>>> suits if we edit a page containing a libellous statement and fail to
>>> remove it completely from the edit history?
>>
>> I don't think there are any legal presidents in that area.
>
> No, but it would be nice to hear people's opinions, and also nice to
> hear if any legal opinion had been given to Wikipedia regarding this.
> Look at it this way:
>
> * Newspaper editors are often named in suits, at least within the UK.
> * The reason they are named is that they authorise content which is
> published.
> * By saving a page, I am creating an edition which is published.
> * I am called an editor.
>
> Also note the [[McLibel case]].
>
> Those sued did not make the statements, they simply distributed them.
>
> I would think a lawyer will make a good argument that it is possible
> we can be named in a suit if we have edited a page containing a
> libellous statement and failed to remove it.
Your hypotheseis leads to an absurd result. If I edit this page
containing an alleged libel for matters unrelated to that statement how
am I supposed to know what is libellous in that article? By your line
of reasoning, if I want to be safe I might as well delete the entire
article. Your reading would make busibodies of us all.
Ec
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How exactly should these images be treated? I'm talking about the image
tag <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikipedia-screenshot>
and it's category
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Screenshots_of_Wikipedia>. The
template only says that Wikipedia text is licensed under GFDL and that
Wikipedia is copyright of Wikimedia, but it doesn't rely address the issue
of the copyright status for the image itself.
According to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags>
it's a "fair use" tag (that's where it's listed anyway), but we are not
currently treating it as such. Gmaxwell's bot originally tagged these
images as "far use orphans" if they where not used in articles, but after
a storm of protests (well 3-4 anyway, I raised some questions myself back
then) he (reluctantly) excluded them from his bot. Problem is you can't
rely argue that they are free images, as many of them include either
copyrighted GUI elements from the users browser and OS, and a lot of
others include copyrighted "fair use" images from articles.
The way I see it we have 3 choices.
1) Keep using it as a semi-free "special" case, maybe we can argue that
the screenshot as a whole give enough context to declare the inclusion of
copyrighted images to be within fair use or some such (IANAL).
2) Make it a GFDL tag, and run an extensive cleanup project to crop, blur
or otherwise remove all copyrighted elements from the screenshots (and
clean out other mis-tagged junk).
3) Confirm that it's a fair use tag, and delete all the images that have
not been used in any articles for at least 7 days (in other words most, if
not all of them).
Any thoughts? Whatever status they should have needs to be made more clear
IMHO.
--
[[User:Sherool]]
Hello,
Advice please.
During a bout of Insomnia-Induced Insanity, I did a major expansion of the article about David Hager. Hager is the controversial fellow that Bush appointed to the FDA committee on Reproductive Health Drugs. (Self-disclosure: We both live in central Kentucky and our paths crossed through our professions from mid 80's - mid 90's.) Being a controversial figure, I was prepared to deal with POV crap. However, I never thought anyone would put him on a list of convicted rapists. Of course, I immediately took his name off the list. He was on the list for less than five hours, from Dec. 1 00:58 to 05:19. This brings up several issues.
1. Was this information spread to other web sites like Answers.com? Who do I ask to find out?
2. Do we all agree that this is a BIG problem. Can you imagine what would happen if another major media source published Hager’s name on a list of convicted rapists?
2. How do I (hopefully, we) stop this unregistered user (or any other) from doing this again? Being very, very generous, I will assume this was an isolated incidence of poor judgment. This doesn't change the fact that this libelous misinformation appeared in OUR encyclopedia.
3. I can‘t unring this bell. The Wikipedia article is listed 6 in an Yahoo search of the words David Hager. Being a registered user, I will be associated with this article forever. While, an unregistered user can damage Wikipedia, Hager, and me.
Immediate solution? Ask everyone here to put his name on your watch list.
Long term solution?…….
SP AKA FloNight
So, lost in the press uproar over the Seigenthaler incident is the Adam
Curry / podcasting incident.
A friend who knows about the podcasting community tells me that our
article is currently not very good. I personally think that the problem
is the age old problem which happens when partisans with a fight from
somewhere else on the Internet spill over into Wikipedia to have their
fight.
The solution is: get rid of the partisans, and focus the attention of
good Wikipedians on the topic. Input from various factions is fine, but
we also need to take a firm stand on not allowing any of them to hijack
or subvert the article in an attempt to win points in their own external
fight.
I have no policy recommendations, but I do hope this email will prompt
several people to add these articles to your routine patrols.
--Jimbo
"Now, you do have a general disclaimer on the site, it says that
Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here,
none of the authors, contributors, or anyone else connected with
Wikipedia in any way whatsoever can be responsible for the appearance of
any inaccurate or libellous information." - Kyra Phillips, talking to me
on CNN
I wish my response could have been:
"Yes, Kyra, and let me read you the disclaimer from _your_ website:
NEITHER CNN, ITS AFFILIATES NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES,
AGENTS, THIRD PARTY CONTENT PROVIDERS OR LICENSORS WARRANT THAT CNN
INTERACTIVE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE; NOR DO THEY MAKE ANY
WARRANTY AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM USE OF CNN
INTERACTIVE, OR AS TO THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY OR CONTENT OF ANY
INFORMATION, SERVICE, OR MERCHANDISE PROVIDED THROUGH CNN INTERACTIVE."
But I didn't have that handy.
--Jimbo
Sounds like a plan, I will go hibernate for a week, then check back to see if I feel a need to add any comments to the arbitration.
-cb
________________________________
From: wikien-l-bounces(a)Wikipedia.org on behalf of Fred Bauder
Sent: Wed 12/7/2005 2:25 AM
To: English Wikipedia
Cc: Fred Bauder
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck
And I'll take another look at the evidence he has put up. I have not
really gone through all of it.
Fred
On Dec 6, 2005, at 6:58 PM, Chip Berlet wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If Sam Spade needs time to take his finals, I have no problem
> suspending
> the arbitration process for a week in order to give him time to gather
> any more evidence he thinks would be pursuasive. I am currently
> taking a
> break from editing pending the arbitration outcome, but I suspect Wiki
> will not collapse without my input. I can also take a break from
> discussion pages and replying to the arbitration pages. I have
> recently
> been converted to the eventualist camp. My keyboard thanks you. :-)
>
> Chip "incompetent abrasive commie stooge" Berlet
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: wikien-l-bounces(a)Wikipedia.org
>> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Sam Spade
>> Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 8:50 PM
>> To: English Wikipedia
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck
>>
>>
>> I "threw" evidence regarding Cberlet, what did that result in?
>>
>> Sam Spade
>>
>> On 12/7/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>>
>>> Sam Spade wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Please, don't bother w the false indignation. You have
>>>>
>> given me no
>>
>>>> reason to believe you would be swayed by any evidence, no
>>>>
>> matter how
>>
>>>> clear. I had begun to waste my time looking into the long
>>>>
>> history of
>>
>>>> conflict between Jayjg and I.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Rather than, say, presenting no evidence because you have
>>>
>> no evidence
>>
>>> that wouldn't be laughed out of the room? So far you've
>>>
>> thrown mud and
>>
>>> presented nothing to back it up.
>>>
>>>
>>> - d.
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
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