Wikipedia doesn't have a clear policy on the proper response to legal threats. According to [[Wikipedia:No legal threats]], legal threats against Wikipedia by editors are a violation of policy, but there does not seem to be consensus to block or ban users who engage in this practice. Nevertheless, many admins do routinely block people for making legal threats. I don't believe these blocks are justified by policy. Whether or not you believe blocking should be allowed, the policy is currently inconclusive. Maybe someone could clarify this, or if necessary, we could have a vote about it. Cross-posted to [[Village Pump (policy)]].
Rhobite
IMO, legal threats are attempts to stifle debate, and are rarely (if ever) backed up. In fact, most threats of legal action are not even legally actionable! I believe they should be a blockable offense as they make Wikipedia a very hostile place. Legal threats are bullying when you are losing an argument or your POV is being challenged.
I will continue to block users for making legal threats, after giving them a warning.
TBSDY
Rhobite wrote:
Wikipedia doesn't have a clear policy on the proper response to legal threats. According to [[Wikipedia:No legal threats]], legal threats against Wikipedia by editors are a violation of policy, but there does not seem to be consensus to block or ban users who engage in this practice. Nevertheless, many admins do routinely block people for making legal threats. I don't believe these blocks are justified by policy. Whether or not you believe blocking should be allowed, the policy is currently inconclusive. Maybe someone could clarify this, or if necessary, we could have a vote about it. Cross-posted to [[Village Pump (policy)]].
Rhobite
--- "csherlock@ljh.com.au" csherlock@ljh.com.au wrote:
I will continue to block users for making legal threats, after giving them a warning.
Good for you. And as an ArbCom member I will not vote to censure any admin who does the same in good faith. Although it would be bad form to block a person for making a threat at you - let some other admin do it.
-- mav
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
csherlock@ljh.com.au wrote:
IMO, legal threats are attempts to stifle debate, and are rarely (if ever) backed up. In fact, most threats of legal action are not even legally actionable! I believe they should be a blockable offense as they make Wikipedia a very hostile place. Legal threats are bullying when you are losing an argument or your POV is being challenged.
I don't worry about them, and don't feel bullied at all. I just dare them to try. 8-)
Ec
What if someone who is the copyright holder of an image that is used in Wikipedia under the Fair Use clausul threatens to sue Wikipedia? Do you think that should be illegal? Personal threat how?
BJörn Lindqvist (bjourne@gmail.com) [050108 00:27]:
What if someone who is the copyright holder of an image that is used in Wikipedia under the Fair Use clausul threatens to sue Wikipedia? Do you think that should be illegal? Personal threat how?
As you know, having read the policy page in question before posting to the list on the matter, this case is specifically covered in the policy.
- d.
Of course not. Such a person may have created a user page and done some editing in order to communicate. Hopefully we will be responsive to their concerns.
How should this communication be properly handled by someone complaining and by us?
Blocking seems inappropriate, who should they be referred to?
Fred
From: BJörn Lindqvist bjourne@gmail.com Reply-To: BJörn Lindqvist bjourne@gmail.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 14:27:06 +0100 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Are legal threats blockable offenses?
What if someone who is the copyright holder of an image that is used in Wikipedia under the Fair Use clausul threatens to sue Wikipedia? Do you think that should be illegal? Personal threat how?
-- mvh Björn _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
BJörn Lindqvist stated for the record:
What if someone who is the copyright holder of an image that is used in Wikipedia under the Fair Use clausul threatens to sue Wikipedia? Do you think that should be illegal? Personal threat how?
We will not try to stop anyone from seeking judicial redress, but we will not allow them to continue to edit Wikipedia while they try to harm us.
What does that mean? It's not harmful to Wikipedia for a copyright holder to give notice before he goes ahead with litigation. It's beneficial. I don't really think threats of legal action are a big deal. Usually it's just somebody being obnoxious/cocky. Let them be delusional and tell people they're going to sue them. There's no way that should offend someone. And if they do go through with it, at least the end being served had some warning. :) --cookiecaper.
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Sean Barrett Sent: Friday, January 07, 2005 9:47 AM To: BJörn Lindqvist; English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Are legal threats blockable offenses?
BJörn Lindqvist stated for the record:
What if someone who is the copyright holder of an image that is used in Wikipedia under the Fair Use clausul threatens to sue Wikipedia? Do you think that should be illegal? Personal threat how?
We will not try to stop anyone from seeking judicial redress, but we will not allow them to continue to edit Wikipedia while they try to harm us.
On Saturday 08 January 2005 10:35, Jeff Cook wrote:
to give notice before he goes ahead with litigation. It's beneficial. I don't really think threats of legal action are a big deal. Usually it's
Banning someone who made a legal threat may encourage him/her to actually sue.
NSK wrote:
On Saturday 08 January 2005 10:35, Jeff Cook wrote:
to give notice before he goes ahead with litigation. It's beneficial. I don't really think threats of legal action are a big deal.
Banning someone who made a legal threat may encourage him/her to actually sue.
There's a need to distinguish between legal "threats" and a statement of intention to uphold one's legal rights. People who are just making idle threats have a tendency to regularly repeat their threats in all sorts of circumstances, and really doing nothing to back up the words. Like Jeff I don't consider legal threats to be a big deal.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
NSK wrote:
On Saturday 08 January 2005 10:35, Jeff Cook wrote:
to give notice before he goes ahead with litigation. It's beneficial. I don't really think threats of legal action are a big deal.
Banning someone who made a legal threat may encourage him/her to actually sue.
There's a need to distinguish between legal "threats" and a statement of intention to uphold one's legal rights.
More than that, one needs to distinguish between a "threat" and a request to remove material that violates some applicable law or intellectual property right. I don't think anyone is really suggesting we ban someone that simply requests we remove copyrighted material we have no right to use, or clearly defamatory content that has no evidence to back it up.
Wikipedia has become so slow as to be almost unusable at times for me in the last 10 days, both for reading and editing. Pages are taking minutes to load. There are problems saving edits - even when they appear to be saved, when I check they're not there (even though my name is in the edit history); and sometimes when they appear not to have been saved, when I check, they ARE there. As of the last hour or so, it won't save edits at all. We must be losing a lot of readers, and will start to lose editors. I know from my own experience of doing online research, that if a website takes even a few seconds longer to load than I expect it to, I move on, and when I see that website again, I don't even try it. So losing readers even once can mean losing them forever.
There's a page for discussion of this here http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_Status, but it seems to be largely editors reporting their problems. Could one of the people who's working on the problem post an explanatory note on that page, or on the main page? There are a couple of notes from Tim from a few days ago, but they don't seem to explain why there has been such a significant change in the last 10 days (If it is explained, my apologies for not having understood it).
Some people have said the slowness is caused by an increase in requests-per-second, but I wonder whether that's an effect of the problem, rather than a cause, because of editors having to make multiple requests for pages before they appear.
It seems to me that there's been a change in kind, not degree, in the last 10 days. Any information from those who may know what has caused this would be much appreciated.
Slim
slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
It seems to me that there's been a change in kind, not degree, in the last 10 days. Any information from those who may know what has caused this would be much appreciated.
Ariel ran out of disk space and suda was made the master DB server. We'll probably have to switch the site into read-only mode for a day or so to fix this. Before we do that, we want to finish compressing the database, which will probably take another few days.
In case you're wondering, the root cause of this problem was a lack of available development and system administration expertise, coupled with a poorly timed developer conference.
-- Tim Starling
Thank you for taking the time to reply, Tim. The information's much appreciated.
A day or so in read-only mode? But I'm completely addicted. Gulp. That may require round-the-clock anesthesia.
Slim
On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 12:45:58 +1100, Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Ariel ran out of disk space and suda was made the master DB server. We'll probably have to switch the site into read-only mode for a day or so to fix this.
slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for taking the time to reply, Tim. The information's much appreciated.
A day or so in read-only mode? But I'm completely addicted. Gulp. That may require round-the-clock anesthesia.
It's just read-only to regular folks, the cabal will be still be able to edit and get everything their own way, bwahaha.
Lots to do when WP is not online though - go to the university library and get info out of the many books there (most of that info is not online anywhere, WP article will be the first appearance), also take pictures and prepare them for uploading. 30,000 towns in the US alone, every town article should have at least one picture so the rest of us can see what it looks like.
Stan
--- Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Lots to do when WP is not online though - go to the university library and get info out of the many books there (most of that info is not online anywhere, WP article will be the first appearance), also take pictures and prepare them for uploading. 30,000 towns in the US alone, every town article should have at least one picture so the rest of us can see what it looks like.
You should also be able to view and copy the wiki text of each page as well. So you can expand a set of articles and upload the result when the site is put back into read/write mode.
-- mav
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today! http://my.yahoo.com
Stan Shebs wrote:
slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for taking the time to reply, Tim. The information's much appreciated.
A day or so in read-only mode? But I'm completely addicted. Gulp. That may require round-the-clock anesthesia.
It's just read-only to regular folks, the cabal will be still be able to edit and get everything their own way, bwahaha.
Lots to do when WP is not online though - go to the university library and get info out of the many books there (most of that info is not online anywhere, WP article will be the first appearance), also take pictures and prepare them for uploading. 30,000 towns in the US alone, every town article should have at least one picture so the rest of us can see what it looks like.
Stan
When the database is locked noone gets access. Including the Cabal. Evidently there is a master-Cabal that controls the Cabal. Muahaha- oh. Wasn't meant to let that one slip.
TBSDY
Wikipedia seems to have been picking up over the last couple of days to me -- it was really bad before that. But now it's going pretty fast. :) But a day in read-only is a long time. :(
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim Starling Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 7:46 PM To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Slowness of Wikipedia
slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
It seems to me that there's been a change in kind, not degree, in the last 10 days. Any information from those who may know what has caused this would be much appreciated.
Ariel ran out of disk space and suda was made the master DB server. We'll probably have to switch the site into read-only mode for a day or so to fix this. Before we do that, we want to finish compressing the database, which will probably take another few days.
In case you're wondering, the root cause of this problem was a lack of available development and system administration expertise, coupled with a poorly timed developer conference.
-- Tim Starling
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Legal threats are all hot air and an attempt to force a POV. Unless they somehow get bomis's provider to give up the sued person's web address, and then they somehow get THAT person's provider to give up the person's personal information, there's no way they can sue. Especially on an international project.
RickK
NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote: On Saturday 08 January 2005 10:35, Jeff Cook wrote:
to give notice before he goes ahead with litigation. It's beneficial. I don't really think threats of legal action are a big deal. Usually it's
Banning someone who made a legal threat may encourage him/her to actually sue.
BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
What if someone who is the copyright holder of an image that is used in Wikipedia under the Fair Use clausul threatens to sue Wikipedia? Do you think that should be illegal? Personal threat how?
Isn't there a copyright agent they can file with? Why would they just straight into legal action?
TBSDY
Hi,
Could someone contact all the wikipedians who voted for this week's Collaboration of the week winner, [[Military history of France]] and encourage them to participate in editing the article? I'm having trouble with my computer so I can't.
here's the list of voters:
Hi,
As you nominated this week's COTW winner I'm wondering if you could contact all those who voted for [[Military history of France]] to encourage them to participate in this week's project? See list below:
===[[Military history of France]]=== :''Nominated [[December 21]] [[2004]]; needs 25 votes by [[January 25]] [[2005]]''
'''Support:''' #[[User talk:Jiang|Jia]][[User talk:Jiang|ng]] 08:11, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:McMullen|McMullen]] 19:07, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:Wonderfool|Wonderfool]] 23:55, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:The King Of Gondor|The KoG]] | [[User talk:The King Of Gondor|Talk]] 00:40, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:Snipre|Snipre]] 00:50, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:Ambi|Ambi]] 01:55, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:RoboAction|RoboAction]] 10:56, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:Geni|Geni]] 14:10, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:SimonP|SimonP]] 16:13, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC) #[[User talkr:ExplorerCDT|ExplorerCDT]] 18:21, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:Bogdangiusca|Bogdan]] | [[User talk:Bogdangiusca|Talk]] 22:13, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:Golbez|Golbez]] 03:06, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:PZFUN|Páll]] 20:11, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:Brian0918|brian0918]][[User talk:Brian0918|™]] 12:51, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:Smedley Hirkum|Smedley Hirkum]] 04:25, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC) #[[User talk:Neutrality|Neutrality]]<sup>[[User talk:Neutrality|talk]]</sup> 18:28, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC) # [[User talkDmcdevit|Dmcdevit]] 08:37, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC) # [[User talk:Burgundavia|Burgundavia]] 00:02, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC) #[[User talk:Julius.kusuma|Julius.kusuma]] 01:59, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) #[[User talk:Kaal|kaal]] 22:04, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) # --[[User talk:Onefool|Onefool]] 01:54, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC) # [[User talk:Pmeisel|Pmeisel]] 16:18, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Rhobite stated for the record:
Wikipedia doesn't have a clear policy on the proper response to legal threats. According to [[Wikipedia:No legal threats]], legal threats against Wikipedia by editors are a violation of policy, but there does not seem to be consensus to block or ban users who engage in this practice. Nevertheless, many admins do routinely block people for making legal threats. I don't believe these blocks are justified by policy. Whether or not you believe blocking should be allowed, the policy is currently inconclusive. Maybe someone could clarify this, or if necessary, we could have a vote about it. Cross-posted to [[Village Pump (policy)]].
Legal threats are personal attacks and should be treated the same way.
On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 18:10:39 -0800, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
Legal threats are personal attacks and should be treated the same way.
We don't block people for isolated personal attacks. Some administrators do block people for single instances of legal threats.
Are we talking permanent blocks or 24/48/foo hours blocks? I think there is a very big difference between the two.
paz y amor, [[User:The bellman]]
On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 22:11:49 -0500, Rhobite rhobite@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 18:10:39 -0800, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
Legal threats are personal attacks and should be treated the same way.
We don't block people for isolated personal attacks. Some administrators do block people for single instances of legal threats.
--- Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:
Are we talking permanent blocks or 24/48/foo hours blocks? I think there is a very big difference between the two.
Admins do not have the authority to indefinitely block users (vandals are different). Simply making a legal threat is not vandalism in itself. Any pattern of bad behavior should be dealt with through the dispute resolution process.
-- mav
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Rhobite (rhobite@gmail.com) [050107 11:31]:
Wikipedia doesn't have a clear policy on the proper response to legal threats. According to [[Wikipedia:No legal threats]], legal threats against Wikipedia by editors are a violation of policy, but there does not seem to be consensus to block or ban users who engage in this practice. Nevertheless, many admins do routinely block people for making legal threats. I don't believe these blocks are justified by policy. Whether or not you believe blocking should be allowed, the policy is currently inconclusive. Maybe someone could clarify this, or if necessary, we could have a vote about it. Cross-posted to [[Village Pump (policy)]].
It's frequently an attempt to intimidate - a personal attack by another name.
- d.