Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>> Another thing to keep in mind is the three-year limitation for
>>> taking action on a copyright violation. If something has been on
>>> the site for at least three years it is probably safe to keep. The
>>> argument that continuing availability may result in new limitation
>>> periods can probably be countered by invoking the doctrine of laches.
>>
>> However, republishing in another medium, such as publishing a print
>> edition of Wikipedia, probably would easily restart the limitation
>> period.
>
> That's debateable. With GFDL the history of the material should be
> traceable. A fairly recent case involving laches went against the
> Church of Scientology because they had delayed the enforcement of
> their rights. This was despite the fact that the limitation period
> had not yet expired when they started their action.
Two points are worth noting here. First of all, in case it's not clear,
the doctrine of laches can only apply if the plaintiff knows about the
infringement and fails to complain. If, as is very likely, a copyright
holder did not know about infringing material on Wikipedia, then laches
would not prevent a claim based on the continuing availability of the
material within the statute of limitations.
Second of all, if the Scientology case Ec alludes to is the New Era
Publications v. Henry Holt case that I've read, I should mention that
laches was only applied to deny an injunction against publication. It
did not prevent a remedy for monetary damages.
So the notion he suggests, that anything that's been on Wikipedia for at
least three years is safe to keep forevermore, probably should not be
used as a "rule of thumb" for copyright problems.
--Michael Snow
I'm pissed, and I want to rant. (you've been warned)
At Mitsubishi Companies and Mitsubishi, I spent weeks figuring out
all the ramifications of the mitsubishi companies.
Then the list of companies gets dropped from the main article, then
the mitsubishi companies article gets redirected, and now appears
nowhere.
The information on the current mistubishi page is incorrect.
I tell you something. I've been spending a lot of time trying to
unravel japanese companies, their partneships, ownerships, lines of
business, banking reltionships, subsidiaries, formal and informal
relationships. Yet people come behind me and redirect everything back
to the old bad way it was before. And these are not vandals, but
regular wikipedia contributors. I don't want to hurt their feelings,
and I don't want to get into wars of words, but when they simply
redirect or blank out hours of work without comment as to why, it
makes me believe they don't care for my contributions.
I don't make waves, I do my share of vandal reverts, I plod along
super-boring subjects, fact-checking and fact-checking on google
every little word I write in here. I never remove people's words,
rather I copyedit. typoedit. add sections, try to organize, to
expand, to make more and more complex subjects accessible. I even try
to get along, help along, people who otherwise are insufferable.
I want a little respect for my work.
If it's too much to ask, then, I'll have to leave and remember WP as
something which sounded good on paper but didn't work for me in the
real world.
About http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution,
I deal with plenty of politics at work already, and I don't care to
follow an overly burdensome and complicated process to enforce
something which is obvious to civilized people.
=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com
chris.mahan(a)gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo
As I am currently unable to defend myself due to a
block on my proxy server (through some other activity
by someone else) I post here in the hopr that it can
be inserted as my first comment under the "Statement
by affected party".
Quote:
"I wish to bring it to the attention of the committee
that the first attempt by Exploding Boy for a RFA
failed as the dispute resolution process had not been
followed, specifically any attempt at mediation. I
subsequently requested mediation with him which he has
spurned. I therefore request that the AC instruct
Explosive Boy to submit to the Wikipedia dispute
resolution process and engage in mediation."
I quote from my request for mediation:
"Exploding Boy has instigated both an RfC and a
request for Arbitration against me. Together with this
he has made a number of allegations which are
contrived. I believe that the source of this animosity
towards me lies in a fundamental difference in POV.
His POV position has become even more evident
recently. My belief is that he has behaved atrociously
and as an admin has brought the office of admin/sysop
into disrepute. Through this mediation I hope to reach
an understanding with Exploding Boy that he ceases to
abuse the systems of Wikipedia as a means to
neutralise those with whom he has a POV disagreement.
Should the mediation fail I intend to take this issue
to the AC with the view of having him stripped of
admin/sysop position. - Robert the Bruce 18:04, 22 Jan
2005 (UTC)"
Thank you
Robert
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
Since some people have asked for occasional reminders to continue, this
is to let everyone know that the latest issue of The Wikipedia Signpost
just got posted, and offer apologies for the delay. It took a few hours
longer to assemble than normal because my ISP's connection was having
trouble. Fortunately, it's still Monday in nearly all of the world, so
hopefully the news isn't too dated, even if I did get scooped on this
list about Heavy metal umlaut.
Of course, such delays would be avoidable if this was less of a one-man
show. I know I've got quite a lot of people reading, but I need to start
turning at least a few readers into writers, otherwise I won't be able
to continue this indefinitely. Contact me if you're interested, I need
the help.
The URL, for those of you who haven't been reading yet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
--Michael Snow
Jay wrote:
> Perhaps the confusion here is the assumption that the first time one adds
> information to (or deletes information from) an article, it is not a
> "revert", but the subsequent 3 additions (and deletions) are "reverts".
> Thus "3 reverts in 24 hours" can mean 1 edit, then 3 reverts to it.
Yes, technically a revert is a restoring of the article to a previous state. So a new edit/addition does not count. The first edit if a deletion does count, unless it is a novel deletion to a state that did not previously exist.
Of course complex edits are more difficult to judge, and if there is any question should not count against the 3RR rule, they first should be objected to in specificity, an attempt should even be made to move them to the talk page, for discussion of specific objections. Further edits which look like good faith attempts to respond to specifically articulated objections are also not reverts. If good faith attempts are being made and objectors are still reverting or arguing that the 3RR rule is being violated, then it is probably a case for page protection rather than banning under the 3RR rule.
-- Silverback
I fear that the way this contrast is set up, we could never reach agreement
on a good policy. Of course no cite is better than a bad cite, because we
do not want to give credibility to unreliable sources, or even direct
people there way. The problem is there are many citations where people
will vociferously argue whether they are good or bad.
I think the only way to proceed is to instead distinguish between
"controversial cites" and "uncontroversial cites." Both can be provided;
if a cite is controversial we simply explain what the nature of the
controversy is (something we are all well-practiced in doing already, to
comply with the NPOV policy in writing articles.
S
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
While googling for mentions of our featured articles, I found this:
Jon Udell (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/)
at Infoworld has put together a flash movie (8 megs, about 9 minutes long)
about the life cycle of the Wikipedia article on Heavy Metal Umlaut (which
is, I
might add, a featured article).
So without further ado, check out Heavy Metal Umlaut, the movie -
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html
--Mark
Following up on the recent discussion about citation and sources,
I'd like to make a few points in no particular order.
1. Some primary sources are too difficult for most editors to access.
Examples include unpublished material in archives and old
newspapers in foreign languages. Other material is readily
available - for example almost every university with a Law
School or Political Science department will have the UN official
records that I located recently.
2. Primary sources are not necessarily better than secondary sources.
Many types of primary sources require experience and knowledge
to interpret because they are written for people in the know and
not for outsiders. In this case a presentation and analysis of the
material by a specialist who understands the context and knows
about other relevant sources is to be preferred. (Conversely,
presentation of genuine primary material in a misleading fashion
is taught in Propaganda 101.)
3. Many secondary sources are written by people whose purpose is
to deceive their readers. We Wikipedians did not invent the
art of POV-pushing. For every topic which provokes edit-wars
in Wikipedia, there is an active information-war out there trying
to
convince us of one or the other POV.
4. The combination of 2 and 3 is a catch-22. We need the specialists
but can we trust them? There is no easy answer to this but some
partial answers can be given. One is that people who work for
advocacy groups or governments are the least trustable. Next
least trustable are the "independent experts" the media like to
consult. The most trustable are academics; not the teachers you
may have taken a course from, but those who publish their research
in peer-reviewed journals and get cited by other such people.
However, this only goes for academics writing on their own
specialties.
5. Academic specialists have prejudices and political opinions too
and there is no such thing as an unbiased secondary source.
6. The first rule of citation is to state the actual place you got the
information from. If you want to report on some document D
you read about in book B, your first obligation is to name B.
It is a sin to only name D unless you looked at D yourself.
7. If it is necessary to cite one of the less trustable sources (see
4),
the source should be identified sufficiently to warn readers
that the source may have a motivation in slanting the evidence.
That is, say what organisation the source belongs to or what job
they have which might influence their opinion. However, it is
not necessary to pass judgment on the source (say "member of
the XYZ political party", not "member of the XYZ political party
which some people claim to be a lot of racist scum").
8. Random web pages which make unsourced claims are not
sources at all in my opinion and should be avoided altogether.
Zero.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail