--- Axel Boldt axelboldt@yahoo.com wrote:

Sorry that I am late to this debate. In Alex's proposal, I read

"[...] you further affirm that such text is not defamatory or in violation of any law; [...]"

I strongly object to this language. I do not feel a moral obligation to be bound by all laws, not even by all laws I happen to know about or that apply to me. Also, I am not capable to decide whether a given piece of text violates any law, not even those laws I happen to know about or that apply to me. I however do feel a moral obligation to be honest, which would therefore preclude me from affirming the above.

Axel

P.S. Minor point: presumably there are or have been laws against defamation somewhere, so it is not necessary to mention defamation specifically.

That's a good point, now that you mention it. In general, Alex's proposal sounds too much like the legalese that no one reads and most websites come with. Wikipedia is a wiki, so because of its dynamic nature and social pressures, I don't think we need any legalese in order to submit stuff; just in plain English that you're licensing it under the GNU FDL and that, if someone else wrote it, they gave you permission to licence it that way. It's kind of implied that you can't break the law on wikipedia. You can't break the law off wikipedia, but you don't have to read a paragraph of legalese every hour to make sure that you don't. And you ARE allowed defame people in a legal way (ie. not liebel), and we shouldn't make additional laws. We're loosing sight of the original concept of a wiki: no hard-bound rules and contracts, just social pressure and the dynamic nature of a wiki.

LDan

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