[WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l] Re: Update to gfdl copyright notice needed

Mon Sep 8 06:13:54 UTC 2003

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
To: "Discussion list for English-language Wikipedia"
<wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 10:00 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l] Re: Update to gfdl copyright notice
needed

> >(Doesn't LittleDan state that his parents know about
> his >work on Wikipedia?)
>
> Yes, but an initial requirement for parental
> permission/knowledge might have detered me. Besides,
> restricting minors, even if for legal reasons,
> detracts from the whole wiki-ness of Wikipedia.

the wikiness of wikipedia is already limited by the need
to make the copyright of user contributions as pure as
possible. There is a certain frenzy regarding dealing with
copyright violations. I think that is very unwiki, but I
understand that many contributors have a sense of
ownership with Wikipedia, that is why they are so
concerned (IMHO) about copyright "violations".
This is understandable and admirable in a certain way.

However, people violate copyright all the time. It is not a big
deal, but here everyone is concerned with the purity
of Wikipedia's text because there is is this belief that
other people will copy it, use it etc. I am not so
convinced that it will happen much for a lot of reasons.
This minor issue is one of them.

What if we told all those people who have spent all
that time that they can just forget redistributing
Wikipedia because no one knows how many minors
have contributed or how many of the users might
have copied text from somewhere and they did not
discover it?

For that reason alone this discussion is important.

Having said that, I think it was clear from my proposed
Submission Guidelines that someone can just post anonymously.
Also they can lie, we cannot prevent children from
posting to WIkipedia, it is up to them and their
parents to deal with it. We just want to raise it as an
issue so everyone gets fair notice. THAT IS very
in tune with wiki-ness; we can keep allowing
contributors and well, if they sue Wikimedia, it will
definitely get us more press and more users. Isn't
that the point? Letting people know there could
be a problem might get them to contribute in a way
that doesn't cause problems, that is what wiki
contribution is all about.

Alex756