Apparently, literary agent [[Barbara Bauer]] has sued a number of
people and organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation, for
defamation because of their involvement in making or publicizing
allegations that Bauer's services are a scam because she insists on
payment up front from authors (where normal industry practice is for
agents to collect only after the author's works sell) and has
apparently sold few or none of her clients' works to anything other
than vanity presses. She has made it onto the Science Fiction
Writers of America's "20 worst agents" list (they're another of the
defendants in the suit). She has a long record of threatening suits
against sites and forums that criticize her, at one point demanding a
billion dollars for unauthorized use of her name as the title of a
forum thread asking a question about her business practices.
http://forums.writersweekly.com/viewtopic.php?p=44820
If anybody's interested, the suit is docket number L-001169-07 in
Monmouth County, New Jersey, where it can be looked up here:
http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/acms/disc/CV0227W0E.ASP
It's one of the many court sites that make it a pain to link to their
stuff because they use a form-post interface for document retrieval.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
Folks,
I tried to find the answer to this question in the policy sections of WP,
but couldn't:
After you have placed a "citation needed" flag into an Article, is there a
specific length of time you wait for either the citation to be added, or the
statement in question to be removed by the person who wrote it, before
deleting it yourself? The Article in question, BTW, is the one on [[Franz
Kafka]].
Thanks,
Marc Riddell
William Pietri wrote
> Assuming we feel the content meets
> appropriate standards like BLP, then I'd prefer we just carry on.
I agree. If the BLP policy is not enough to keep defamation off the site, it should be fixed up so that it does. We should concentrate on making biographies comply with WP:BLP.
Charles
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"The Cunctator" wrote
> Or should I say, the AOW has gotten TOC.
The Act Of War has a Table Of Contents? Maybe with {{NoTOC}} we could outlaw war.
Charles
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Ray Saintonge wrote
> Nearly 600 years after the Battle of Acre is recent.
Yeah, well, I thought you'd argue that the nineteeth century is 'recent'. More of the subtle misdirection. Get with it, man.
>Judging from
> Maalouf's notes there does not appear to be any serious attempt to look
> at the Arab perspective until the 1950s with Gabrieli (1957 not 1969)
> and the French translations of Ibn Jubayr and Ibn al-Qalanisi.
You were arguing about the availability of sources, not the will to look at them? Shifting your ground.
> Maalouf
> (p.270) makes an interesting about the suppression of stories of
> Frankish cannibalism: "In the twentieth century, however, these accounts
> have generally been concealed - perhaps in the interests of the
> West's'civilizing mission'?"
Let's have the full quote, shall we?
"The Frankish chronicles of the epoch contain numerous accounts of the acts of cannibalism committed by the Frankish armies in Ma'arra in 1098, and they all agree. Until the nineteenth century, the facts of these events were included in the works of European historians [...]" and goes on to cite one such, Michaud. Then on to the bit you gave.
So
(a) we are talking about European sources (Frankish)
and
(b) this is entirely not your point, which was about whether non-European (you presumably took Byzantine as European) sources were available until 'recently', but is about whether there was a period of European historiography of the Crusades which was selective of the sources that it had always had.
Looking at Runciman's bibliography: Latin translations of Abu'l Feda started in 1789; Armenian sources before 1850; Latin translation of Syriac sources in the 1870s.
Charles
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On 3/27/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> And what makes blog entries less reliable than your average website.
> You're
> applying too much of a generalization.
> Newspapers are a good example. Generally reliable, but that doesn't mean
> they all are.
>
> Mgm
This might be my semi-newbieness asking but could someone explain to me why
we even differentiate "blogs" at all? all a blog *is* is a private web
site/web space.
Whats different between:
1. dennycolt.blogspot.com
2. www.dennycolt.com, running with blog softwares...
3. www.dennycolt.com, with hand-edited pages
I don't understand why the ruckus about blogs specifically--shouldn't it be
"personal non-notable websites by non-notable people, if editors judge it to
be a crap website"? A 'blog' is just a site organized... with a certain
structure. Some news sites that are RS even run off blogging/blog style CMS
software... simply because they're good at organizing stuff.
Would a blog about NBC written by the CEO of NBC be bad? I am actively using
a blog on the [[RegisterFly]] article that is on blog.icann.org that is
written by the CEO of ICANN, Paul Twomy. It's written an in a personal tone
but it's a fine source for the ICANN/registerfly issue.
on the same token, a privately held website on flora of south america could
end up being a great, fantastic source on south american trees. or a
blogspot.com by Jerry Seinfeld on his about stand up comics. or a movable
type blog on emeril.com by emeril lagasse could be a good authority on cajun
cooking, and so on...
I am wondering why the 'blog' aspect itself has this dirty Scarlet Letter
connotation...
--
- Denny
"James Farrar" wrote
x
> On 27/03/07, charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com
> <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > "Denny Colt" wrote
> >
> > > I am wondering why the 'blog' aspect itself has this dirty Scarlet Letter
> > > connotation...
> >
> > If you want to use a blog as a source, the burden of proof lies with you to substantiate its reliability. The low barriers to access for blogging mean this is the only sane approach.
> OK, fine; that seems reasonable. It's no excuse for a speedy deletion
> in the current case, though.
Disagree. Articles on living people containing statements likely to damage their way of making a living have to get across some high hurdles. Anything apparently defamatory hardly needs an 'excuse' for zapping. We have a policy on this, which insists on reliable sources. We also discourage the importation into Wikipedia of quarrels from the rest of the Internet (a growing problem). We also discourage under teh heading of 'conflict of interest' various kinds of campaigning; and a recent Arbitration shows that this type of reasoning is likely to be used on material from 'activist' websites. So, even setting aside the issue of whether the blog references in question can be made to stand up, deleting the article (pro tem) is not something I'd want to criticise. Getting potential defamation off the live part of the site gives one a chance to go more properly into the issue. Articles can be restored, you know.
Charles
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>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ron Ritzman [mailto:ritzman@gmail.com]
>Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 07:03 PM
>To: fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info, 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions
>
>On 3/25/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
>> No, that's why we have BLP. Malicious material may be reverted and deleted without limit > by any user.
>
>And if it's deleted for that reason and no other admin restores it then fine.
>
>Quoting BLB 3
>
>"Administrators encountering biographies that are unsourced and
>controversial in tone, where there is no NPOV version to revert to,
>should delete the article without discussion"
>
>I'm assuming that admins are reasonable people, otherwise they
>shouldn't be admins. Therefore, if admin Foo, speedy deletes a bio
>because he feels that there is no NPOV version to revert to and that
>deletion is reverted by admin BAR, then admin BAR reasonably believes
>that the bio can be made NPOV.
>
>At this point what would be better, to discuss the deletion "in
>process" or have wheel war with the article being deleted and restored
>over and over again?
Yes, discussion is appropriate, if it does not spread libelous or malicious material to another page, which it is extremely likely to do.
Bottom line, the user, whether they are an ordinary user or an administrator, may revert or delete libelous or malicious material without limit, for which they will receive, "Well done". Considerable slack will be cut if they make a mistake or are overly conservative. Users, whether they are an ordinary user or an administrator, who restore or repeatedly insert libelous or malicious material may be be blocked or desysopped. Little slack will be cut if there are obvious problems with the material. If you find yourself in such a "wheelwar", you would be well advised to let the deletion stand if the claim that the material is libelous or malicious is at least colorable. To take an obvious example, if someone has removed a statement that John Siegenthaler played a role in the Kennedy assassination, unless you have multiple reliable sources that the statement is sound, don't put that sort of information back in the article.
As to administrators being presumed to be reasonable, reasonable is as reasonable does. Repeated insertion of libelous or malicious material into a Wikipedia article is not reasonable. Nor are actions taken to block or otherwise discipline users or other administrators who are doing their duty by removing or deleting it.
Fred
Ray Saintonge wrote
> We never know whether we will find the key source in the
> next place that we look. Fermat's Last Theorem remained unproven for
> three centuries because nobody could find the killer counterexample.
No, because no one could find a proof. We _now_ know that was the reason.
> Until recently the only available sources for writing about the Crusades
> were European ones.
The Receuil des historiens des croisades (1881 onwards) included Arabic language sources in translation. Amin Maalouf's book mentions at least one other 1890s translation. 'Only' is certainly wrong.
Charles
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http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
[...]
Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP):
a project-specific policy, in accordance with United States law and
the law of countries where the project content is predominantly
accessed (if any), that recognizes the limitations of copyright law
(including case law) as applicable to the project, and permits the
upload of copyrighted materials that can be legally used in the
context of the project, regardless of their licensing status. Examples
include: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use and
http://pl.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Dozwolony_u%C5%BCytek.
[...]
In addition, with the exception of Wikimedia Commons, each project
community may develop and adopt an EDP. Non-free content used under an
EDP must be identified in a machine-readable format so that it can be
easily identified by users of the site as well as re-users.
Such EDPs must be minimal. Their use, with limited exception, should
be to illustrate historically significant events, to include
identifying protected works such as logos, or to complement (within
narrow limits) articles about copyrighted contemporary works. An EDP
may not allow material where we can reasonably expect someone to
upload a freely licensed file for the same purpose, such as is the
case for almost all portraits of living notable individuals. Any
content used under an EDP must be replaced with a freely licensed work
whenever one is available which will serve the same educational
purpose.
Media used under EDPs are subject to deletion if they lack an
applicable rationale. They must be used only in the context of other
freely licensed content.
For the projects which currently have an EDP in place, the following
action shall be taken:
As of March 23, 2007, all new media uploaded under unacceptable
licenses (as defined above) and lacking an exemption rationale should
be deleted, and existing media under such licenses should go through a
discussion process where it is determined whether such a rationale
exists; if not, they should be deleted as well.
Now then - en:wp does have an EDP in place, so we can't quite Burn All
{{fairuse}} yet. But the above does give us room to narrow fair-use
abuse sensibly. Particularly for living famous people who are out in
public a lot, may I suggest.
- d.