[Foundation-l] Stewards are ignoring requests for CheckUser information?

Wed Apr 19 08:49:46 UTC 2006

2006/4/19, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>:

> Absolutely.  It's important to have broad principles like NPOV to guide
> all projects, but it's also important to recognize that not all projects
> will have the same priorities as Wikipedia.  For most of Wikisource NPOV
> is meaningless, as is the ability of downstream users to modify the
> material.  If the material is modified it is no longer the same
> material.  We can permit editing, translating and other commentary, and
> that will be subject to the usual rules for NPOV and modifiability, but
> unless there is a clear recognition of an inviolable source text it is
> all meaningless.  When a vandal wanted change a string of digits in the
> middle of "Pi to 1,000,000 places" on Wikisource I suppose it could be
> explained in terms of the right to modify, but the result was no longer pi.

I don't think the difference with Wikipedia is as large as you state
here. Sure, one can rewrite a Wikipedia article and still have an
encyclopedia article, but one can also easily make small changes that
are simply incorrect. Someone who changes the digits of pi in
wikisource isn't that much different from someone who changes an
article on Wikipedia to state that Hitler was born in China. Do they
have the right to do that? I'm not sure. But someone is definitely
allowed to take a Wikipedia article, change it to say that Hitler was
born in China, and publish that under the GNU/FDL. Likewise, they have
the right to take the value of Pi from Wikisource, change it, and put
that on their website.

> Going out of our way to ensure that downstream users will be able to
> copy this material is ultimately an untenable position.  People must
> accept responsibility for their own actions.  We do well to warn them of
> possible problems, but we should have no obligation to hold their hands
> in the way that we would hold those of a child.  We can say that we have
> reasonable and supportable grounds for saying that a given document is
> in the public domain, or that it is covered by fair use (or dealing) in
> the server jurisdiction, and that we cannot vouch for its legal status
> in some other jurisdiction.  In saying this I make a specific statement
> that I do not consider public interest alone to be grounds for
> publishing most documents.

And here I disagree. The right to re-publish is at the heart of the
Wikimedia philosophy. It's very nice that you ensure you have the
right to republish (although I think "they haven't complained yet"
isn't exactly 'ensuring a right' - I strongly advise you to take
stricter guidelines), but Wikimedia was made for free material. Which
means that others have the right to republish. That that is under
different licenses - Wikipedia allows changing, but requires it to be
under the same license, Wikisource only requires that it may be copied
unchanged - is no problem. But if your material may not be reproduced
by others at all, I think you are not following the spirit of
Wikimedia.

> I don't know that a survey will accomplish anything.  I still think that
> dividing Wikisource into separate language communities was a big
> mistake; that's the one issue that most influenced me to drift away from
> it and back to where most of my time is now spent dealing with Wiktionary.

I find this a weird remark, because I think the decision to split
Wiktionary was even worse than the one to split Wikisource...

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels