[Wikipedia-l] Re: image copyright

Tue Feb 17 08:07:49 UTC 2004

Erik Moeller wrote:

>I see three possibilities:
>1) Waste much of our time arguing with Anthony about his FDL  
>interpretation, possibly hire a lawyer, possibly go to court, possibly  
>lose.
>2) Name clear conditions for how individual articles must be licensed. If  
>Anthony refuses to comply, permanently ban him from editing Wikipedia.
>3) Do nothing.
>
>Option 2) seems the wisest to me. Anthony is clearly a troll who, like a  
>vampire, wants to suck energy from us and our project. We should not give  
>him what he wants. His "fork" seems to have no intention other than to  
>piss people off. It will likely fade away into the darkness as he himself  
>does.
>
>Either he adjusts his behavior and can be unbanned, or he does not and he  
>cannot. Whatever he does, we win: We either get rid of a persistent troll,  
>or we get our interpretation of the FDL confirmed.
>
>In my opinion, this is a decision Jimbo should make, as this is clearly a  
>Wikimedia issue. I can only attribute his silence on the matter to him not  
>haven taken notice of the fork and related discussion yet.
>
I could also attribute it to Jimbo concluding that the fork is not 
important enough to bother about. There's no significant harm to 
Wikipedia, except when we waste time on option 1). Banning Anthony 
doesn't prevent him from copying Wikipedia for his fork. If McFly will 
likely fade away, and I believe it will, then option 3) is a better choice.

Calling Anthony a troll, when he's complying with his interpretation of 
the GFDL in good faith, seems like a good way to turn him into one.

--Michael Snow