[Foundation-l] WP edit/access blocking in the UK - statement from the WMF

Mon Dec 8 11:58:17 UTC 2008

2008/12/8 Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com>:
> On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 12:41 PM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> geni wrote:
>>> 2008/12/8 Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
>>>> A link
>>>>
>>>> http://stats.grok.se/en/200812/Virgin_Killer
>>>>
>>>> Ant
>>>>
>>>
>>> More up to date:
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Popular_articles
>>>
>>> If the current rate continued we would be looking at close on half a
>>> million views of that article today.
>>
>> A sudden thought... and what if the whole story had been entirely made
>> up ? As in "Amazon staff member made the complain to the UK foundation
>> in hope it would give a kick to the album sale ?"
>>
>> Right, I am dreaming, but I like the "what ifs" :-)
>>
>
> Mhm....that would be a risky move for whomever profits from increased
> sales of the album...although coverage is surprisingly pro-Wikipedia
> at the moment, (allegations of) child pornography do not make for very
> good PR in general.
>
> I think the consensus on this list (or wikimediauk-l?) was that the
> album cover is rather tasteless and objectionable, albeit not illegal.
> I would guess that the public does not view the image much more
> favorably than the participants of this list, so the band will now
> forever have this "nude child on cover"-story attached to it. As said,
> not really good PR in the long term although surely profits might go
> up at the moment. Though, incidentally, is it not more likely that
> people would only go to the shops (physical or virtual ones) to see
> the cover without actually buying the album itself? I'm not sure
> whether many people think that just because the album has a
> controversial cover, they should buy it (as opposed to "having a look
> at it in-store")
>

Yes.. I rather expect that the claim to block this page was sent to
IWF by someone who requested to delete this picture on Wikipedia and
was unhappy with the deletion request result.

-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html