[WikiEN-l] Dead wikipedians and how to really make a project boring to death

Fri Jul 28 10:59:37 UTC 2006

On 7/27/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/27/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > What are the good reasons to "prohibit fair use" in the User namespace
> > that don't apply to the Wikipedia namespace?
>
> The user namespace is treated by most of its inhabitants as a space of
> personal ownership, and its content is almost unregulated. For
> instance, something like [[User:SPUI]] can survive only because it is
> a user page, and indeed, attempts to get rid of it would be dealt with
> as vandalism. Allowing fair use in that space is likely to lead to
> more MySpace pages, with random celebrity photos, O RLY type crap, and
> boobie-shaking GIF animations. Allowing only free content in the User:
> space is a way to limit it, whereas the content of the Wikipedia:
> space is already regulated by the community.
>
> To me, this is not only about the legal validity of the use, it is
> also about its impact, and whether it is desirable.
>
> Erik

That's a reason, I suppose, but I don't consider it to be a good one.
The problem in my opinion is that it attempts to solve one problem
(crap in the user namespace), with a rather unrelated second one (ban
non-free images).

Anyway, looking at the User:SPUI page I guess I see what you're
saying.  And I guess the ban on non-free content would tend to lessen
this type of thing.  Actually my response would probably be a minority
one - I don't really see a problem with providing every Wikipedian
with his or her own little private webspace, wholly unregulated by the
community except for the limits of the law and space considerations.

IOW, good response, I guess you've convinced me that allowing fair use
in the user namespace isn't something that's likely to happen.  For
those of us who want to be individuals who happen to contribute to
Wikipedia as opposed to Wikipedians who happen to have interests
outside of Wikipedia, we can just keep our user pages fairly sparse.
Personally, I don't even bother to log in very much any more.

Anthony