On 7/9/07, Geoffrey Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
I wish I could agree with Jimbo's summary of this unfortunate account, but he is wrong on one vital topic: It took several days for an explanation to be provided, & only after the matter was raised at WP:AN/I. According to the page history, the article was protected 18 June 17:33, then blanked sixteen minutes later. No explanation appeared until 21 June at 02:28 when a thread had been running for a few hours. Admittedly, based on the datestamp of a question left on the talk page, apparently no one noticed this action until a few hours before the WP:AN/I thread started, but I would have expected a notice on the Talk page shortly after the action had been taken.
I still don't understand the reasoning that justified blanking the page as "the best solution". Wikipedia has a number of articles on subjects with trademarked names -- I assume that names like "Ford Mustang", "Microsoft Windows", "Spam", etc. are tradmarked & the ownership rights adequately protected. If Wikipedia received a letter from a corporate lawyer at Ford Motors about the Mustang article & their trademark, would the appropriate action in that case be to blank *that* article?
And maybe it's because I happen to have a couple of lawyers in my family, I don't find them all that scary. This email (who serves legal notices by email, except shady lawyers on the payroll of criminal organizations?) should have been replied to with a request that he deliver in hard copy proof of the ownership of the trademark & proof that ownership of this trademark has been adequately protected. Only after that had been delivered would I have considered blanking the page. And maybe not even then.
The point is that this entire incident made Wikipedia look foolish. We didn't need anyone's help to do that -- be they a scurrilous website or a news organization known for its quality around the world.
Geoff
Excellently said Geoff! I have always been amazed that OTRS volunteers believe that email is a valid way to serve legal notices.
Sincerely, Silas Snider