[WikiEN-l] Rambot the User_talk: Spambot

Wed Dec 15 09:49:20 UTC 2004

I support you there Fennec.
I do not think bots should be used in such a way.

There is another thing bugging me with RamMan drive.
Not only is it asking editors to do dual-licensing on his geographic article, but 
it is first asking that editors do it in a more general way.

Whether we like it or not, the current license IS gfdl. And changing license under which
we offer information should be a global decision, not the decision of one person only.

I understand well why RamMan is doing this, but indeed the geographic articles are special
and the relationship/reusability with wikitravel is special as well. But I do think RamMan should only 
make a call for THOSE articles, not for the whole wikipedia articles.

Since I am at it, I regularly have editors asking me to fix my image license (I uploaded them before any tagging existed).
While I understand the need to tag images extremely well (I worked on such policy on fr a year ago)
it is bugging me that the spam message proposes me either to tag them gfdl, or to tag them fairuse under the USA law.

I do not think we should encourage tagging with a fairuse mention. And I do not think we should encourage 
a tag for a system existing only in US law.

If there were choices to make, could not be the spam propose gfdl and other free licenses ?

Ant

Hello. I'd just like to draw attention to   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ram-Man#Spambota discussion about whether Ram-Man should be permitted to use rambotto send unsolicited bulk messages (soliciting participation in a"dual-licensing drive") to thousands of user-talk pages. The bot iscurrently blocked indefinitely, pending the resolution of this issue.Ram-Man seems to believe that an implicit community consens exists andapproves of his use of the bot in this fashion. Currently, he claimsto have "over 70% support" of users who responded to the message,although I believe this figure to be skewed by the "users whoresponded" part. I therefore would appreciate it if otherwiseuninterested individuals provide Ram-Man with a more concrete measureof the level of community support which exists regarding this message.Others have expressed concerns regarding the precedent which this setsfor distribution of unsolicited user-talk messages, and suggest that amore concrete policy be
 formed to deal with this form of userpagespam.

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