Forgive my rather circular logic, I know, but the Wikipedia article on "Notability in Wikipedia" can only refer to issues that have been discussed in reliable secondary sources. It comes back to the whole point about verifiability: we can't add something even if we know it to be untrue unless we can find some other reliable person stating it.
Given that restriction, I though it was a rather good article.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, 27 April, 2009 14:26:44 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability in Wikipedia
Carcharoth wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notability_in_Wikipedia
>
Rather misses the points that (a) the "sources" metric for notability is
horribly bad, in that "famous for being famous" rates much higher than
"made an obscure medical advance that only saves thousands of lives a
year", unless you work on it, and (b) notability is a really bad concept
for determining inclusion, except that we have no snappy replacement.
Inclusion is what matters, ultimately. "Voting on notability" is
obviously evil piled on evil, but somehow the double negative has worked
for us.
Charles
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>From the Foundation-L post:
>we sent a letter to
>Wikipedia Art that was aimed, not to threaten legal action, but to outline
>what our legal concerns were, and to try to begin a negotiation to resolve
>the matter amicably -- ideally by switching the domain name over to us, but
>not by requiring any content changes on their site at all.
This is disingenuous. A letter sent by a law firm "to outline our legal
concerns" which uses legal language and tells a site that they will settle
matters amicably if they meet a demand is a legal threat. It may not actually
include the words "or we will sue you", but trying to spin it as not being a
legal threat is absurd.
>I can answer that question -- it's wholly unrelated to the recent Board
>statement on trademarks. Our concern was not primarily about trademarks.
This spawned a discussion where someone pointed out that the letter *was*
primarily about trademarks, and Mike replied that it wasn't about the board
statement, which only relates to the first of those two sentences. Again,
spin.
Yeah, Wikipedia Art are basically trolls, but I find this disturbing. If
Wikipedia can make legal threats to trolls and deny it, and accuse trolls of
trademark violation in a baseless way, they can do it to anyone, and the
next guy they do it to may not necessarily be a troll.
The point isn't whether you take a picture of a Campbell's soup can and
call it "Soup Five". The point is can you call it "Campbell Soup Art"
The name you give it, is the point. Not what the subject matter is.
Will Johnson
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In a message dated 4/26/2009 4:00:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com writes:
> Of course, there is
> nothing that says you have to sue in the US.>>
---------------------
When you sign up you agree to a terms of service which states that
Wikipedia operates under Florida law and that you agree to this.
You would first have to prove to any other judge, that either you didn't
understand this, or that it's not material to the case.
Many companies do this same thing, I mean have you agree to a contract
which states under what jurisdiction you agree to abide. The question is, has
anyone successfully shown that such an agreement is arbitrary, capricious and
irrelevant?
Will Johnson
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EC, you agree to the terms of service when you sign up. If you fail to
actually read them, you alone are at fault.
You would have to show something like the contract is so confusing that no
sensible person could understand it. It's not the point of whether you can
today find it, it's the point of what you agreed to *when* you first signed
up for the project.
Will Johnson
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In a message dated 4/24/2009 4:34:04 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
nawrich(a)gmail.com writes:
Plus, 350 probably way undercounts the number of copyviolations. There are
probably many more than that in Wikipedia articles alone. My own feeling is
that there should be a way to present wp articles on Knol that complies
with
copyright (by not changing the copyright status, reproducing the GFDL
license notice, etc.), but I don't think any of the WP articles on Knol do
that currently anyway.>>
----------------------------------
When there is no repurcussion, people will do what they will ;)
Does the WF want to start sending cease-and-desist letters based on mirrors
not displaying the license link? Or on mirrors not specifying "From the
Wikipedia article..." with a link back or something? I don't know if they
do, but I can't see what recourse they are going to have if they don't and
then after some time suddently decide they will start doing it. There is a
certain understanding in the law that if you do nothing about a situation
that you know about for long enough, then you can't any longer.
As far as reproducing WP pages at Knol, there are several copyright choices
you can choose, none of them are the GFDL. However I think you'd be in
pretty safe waters if at the top of your Knol you stated something like this:
"This Knol, regardless of what the sidebar might say, is licensed under the
GFDL. This statement supercededes any other statement about the
licensing."
That makes it pretty clear and displays your exact intent. I doubt anyone
is going to sue you over it.
Will Johnson
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On 26 Apr 2009 at 09:24:54 -0700 (PDT), Ken Arromdee wrote:
> >From the Foundation-L post:
>
> >we sent a letter to
> >Wikipedia Art that was aimed, not to threaten legal action, but to outline
> >what our legal concerns were, and to try to begin a negotiation to resolve
> >the matter amicably -- ideally by switching the domain name over to us, but
> >not by requiring any content changes on their site at all.
>
> This is disingenuous. A letter sent by a law firm "to outline our legal
> concerns" which uses legal language and tells a site that they will settle
> matters amicably if they meet a demand is a legal threat. It may not actually
> include the words "or we will sue you", but trying to spin it as not being a
> legal threat is absurd.
It certainly would be interpreted as one if it were something written
on-wiki by somebody an admin wanted to ban under the WP:NLT policy.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
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How do you tell an expert? They have credentials, of course. Er, maybe.
http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html
(Paul Graham is a computer scientist and dot-com winner who
pontificates on subjects he understands to a greater or lesser degree.
Interesting even when wrong.)
- d.
In a message dated 4/25/2009 10:20:12 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com writes:
> The WMF doesn't own those articles, so I'm not sure they can really do
> anything about it. The actual authors need to complain.>>
-----------------
Presents an interesting problem doesn't it?
*Who* actually has standing?
I contributed 12 words to the Henry the VIII article. Is that enough to
give me standing? And would any of the minor authors care?
In the long run, it my opinion, that no one is actually going to care how
the content is used with or without the license, enough, to actually hire a
lawyer. Of course someone could *mention* to those who take the content that
they should really post a back-link and a license notation at least. I've
done that in a few cases.
Will
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