[WikiEN-l] No-indexing of project-space pages

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
> <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>   
>> Do I understand correctly that those who do not just
>> download our non-mainspace (you know the real wikipedia
>> stuff of articles like of an encyclopaedic value), do it with
>> full knowledge that isn't really encyclopaedic matter, but
>> download it anyway?
>>     
>
> They have the option to download only articles. We can't guess their
> understanding or motivation.  I think that they are just grabbing the
> first thing that works is the more obvious theory. ;)
>   

Who says we can't guess? And why do you follow that with
what is palpalby just your personal guess?


I don't think it follows Ochams Razor to assume that people
in search of profit would make a special exception in the case
of Wikipedia and act in a directly naîve way. That is simply asking
too much from credulity; even if I know some net-rippers-off can
be astoundingly stupid. There can be a presumption that most of
them do one or the other, but assuming they do the naïve choice
by default, is "the most ridiculous thing I ever heard".

>   
>> On the gripping hand the arguments I have heard
>> against adjusting the licencing of the non-mainspace
>> pages has been on the basis of not providing free
>> web-hosting, so everything has to be copy-left.
>>
>> Somehow I don't think that equation passes the
>> sniff test.
>>
>> Particularly in the light of the fact that the
>> MediaWiki help-pages are already definitely
>> *not* copy-left, but decisively PD.
>>     
>
> You're free to make your contributions more liberally licensed, just not less.
>
> If you want to post information about yourself under a restrictive
> license, there are lots of low to no cost web hosts that allow it. So
> long as you're a contributor the projects are very permissive about
> making your userpage just a link to your website, as far as I've seen.
>
> Beyond the "avoiding free webhosting", keeping the project spaces
> freely licensed contributes to keeping freely licensed content part of
> the culture and superordinate goal.
>   

I think you missed the part where I was asking *specifically*
about _copy-left_ and *not* "freely licenced". No biggie, easy
to miss.

Then again, maybe the situation is more nuanced, and the
question is ont really about less or more "free" but about
the precise licence, where people can even disagree about
which licence is the most "free". I certainly can consider
many "copy-left" licences to be "encumbered" in certain
specific manners, and still wrap my head around those
peoples mindset that contend that going whole-hog PD
is letting downstream users hobble the content that is
derivative later.

The fact is that choosing any specific licence as a requirement
or even choosing some minimum which has to be compatible
with the chosen licence for non "content" pages, does
constitute a restriction; though arguendo a restriction
against allowing restriction.

> In any case, if nazi-pedia is really trying to make it look like
> you're a contributor there, they could do amply well without copying
> your Wikipedia userpage. :)  Licensing is not the right tool to use
> against fraud. It's a wrong fit.

Well, of course here you are extrapolating that something
that I said a while ago, was a hidden reference in a post
that did not explicitly not reference it at all. Nicely done.

Hand on my heart, I didn't even think about the Nazipedia
thing in talking about userspace licencing this time. I in
fact didn't think about this at all in personal terms; I was
genuinely trying to explore the real licencing landscape
we have to work with, not just you and me, but all of our
contributors. Take that as you will, believe it or not.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen