If your hosting provider (like mine) lets you create unlimited free subdomains, you can go with reckless abandon pointing them at Wikipedia pages. For instance, in honor of my infamous ArbCom case proposal, I've set up http://rutabaga.dan.info/ to point at the Wikipedia article "Rutabaga". Should that article now be brought up for deletion because I've made it into a free-hosting extension of my personal web space? (As far as I recall, I've never actually edited that article.)
I also found this curious, from the other thread. From posts there, it does seem to make some difference whether you're linking to an article that has clear use to the project, a userpage that might be a bit more ambiguous, or a jokish "homepage" for a group of users hosted in userspace. Not sure if that settles the issue entirely, on its own, but it seems to be a useful distinction.
Issues of page ownership are also potentially at hand. That's probably related to the above, though.
Not the most useful post, but maybe jump-starts discussion. ;)
-Luna
On 31/01/2008, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
I also found this curious, from the other thread. From posts there, it does seem to make some difference whether you're linking to an article that has clear use to the project, a userpage that might be a bit more ambiguous, or a jokish "homepage" for a group of users hosted in userspace. Not sure if that settles the issue entirely, on its own, but it seems to be a useful distinction.
I'm at a loss to think of cases where a domain redirecting to a given Wikipedia page is useful to the project. Projects will often have a WP: shortcut anyway, for instance.
But I also find it hard to see it as any more than "mostly harmless."
- d.
I suppose that if you were pointing a subdomain to a wikipedia article which related to your company on an open wiki it could just become a vandalism magnet for your competitors or clients you have managed to upset.
In terms of Search engine optimisation the direct wikipedia URL would always have preference to a subdomain anyway. I'm also led to believe that redirects aren't listed by google because they see it as a way of gaming the ranking system.
Slightly OT, I know some wikia sites have a shorter URL for convienience, but as Luna points out that also has *"...Issues of page ownership". *Before the fork, it was pointed out how many tinyurls point to wikipedia, so in that respect you could say that the whole issue is moot.
mike
What's stopping someone from registering http://totaldickhead.com and pointing it to their favourite Wikipedian's user page?
And on another matter, is it possible to create a fullscreen single-frame frameset on a domain, and have a Wikipedia article filling that frame, but use Javascript in the parent frameset to modify that Wikipedia article? If that makes sense...
~Mark Ryan
On 31/01/2008, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
What's stopping someone from registering http://totaldickhead.com and pointing it to their favourite Wikipedian's user page?
And on another matter, is it possible to create a fullscreen single-frame frameset on a domain, and have a Wikipedia article filling that frame, but use Javascript in the parent frameset to modify that Wikipedia article? If that makes sense...
I believe we have some kind of frame-breaking Javascript trickery to avoid this sort of thing - or we used to, at least.
On 01/02/2008, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I believe we have some kind of frame-breaking Javascript trickery to avoid this sort of thing - or we used to, at least.
I just tried doing it, and it appears Internet Explorer 7 doesn't let you do it anyway (cross-domain names). Gives an "access is denied" javascript error message. Unless that's a result of the aforementioned Wikimedia-based trickery.
~Mark Ryan
Its all pretty irrelevant, though, isn't it? GFDL says they can reuse it anyway as long as it still says its from Wikipedia and provides access to the history of contributors. As it relates to user conduct - its off-site and outside the purview of en.wiki to regulate, not to mention its completely harmless (diverging from David's mostly harmless) and not worth debating.
If anyone can point to any actual harm here (rather than vague notions of impropriety) then its worth considering if its covered by our policies, if there are technical solutions to prevent such a thing from happening, etc. Otherwise, all smoke and no fire. (Before you tell me, yes I know - smoke kills).
Nathan
On Jan 31, 2008 9:53 AM, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
What's stopping someone from registering http://totaldickhead.com and pointing it to their favourite Wikipedian's user page?
Nothing at all. It would, however, fall under http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPA#Off-wiki_attacks, so if it was known who did it they would probably be blocked or at least asked (firmly) to take it down. If they did not have an account (or were already blocked, etc) then there's not really anything we could do about it, short of asking the devs to redirect to Main_Page if the HTTP referrer header matched that domain.
On 1/31/08, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
If they did not have an account (or were already blocked, etc) then there's not really anything we could do about it...
You've identified the inherent fallacy of considering this (or any other off-wiki activity) to be actionable under on-wiki policy.
short of asking the devs to redirect to Main_Page if the HTTP referrer header matched that domain.
Of course, if a domain name is so offensive that we must prevent it from redirecting to a specific user page, I doubt we'd want it redirecting to anywhere else on Wikipedia either. If we're going to derail a unsavory domain name by technical means, let's do a better bloody job of it. Use your imagination.
—C.W.
On Feb 3, 2008 7:41 AM, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/31/08, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
short of asking the devs to redirect to Main_Page if the HTTP referrer header matched that domain.
Of course, if a domain name is so offensive that we must prevent it from redirecting to a specific user page, I doubt we'd want it redirecting to anywhere else on Wikipedia either. If we're going to derail a unsavory domain name by technical means, let's do a better bloody job of it. Use your imagination.
Oh, right. Let's redirect to WR instead. :)
On 01/02/2008, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
What's stopping someone from registering http://totaldickhead.com and pointing it to their favourite Wikipedian's user page?
And on another matter, is it possible to create a fullscreen single-frame frameset on a domain, and have a Wikipedia article filling that frame, but use Javascript in the parent frameset to modify that Wikipedia article? If that makes sense...
As David points out in another post, the following site is pretty close to this.
http://fishwrap.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/mike-ciresi-is-synonymous-with-wiki...
Cheers,
Peter Ansell
On Feb 3, 2008 8:35 PM, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
As David points out in another post, the following site is pretty close to this.
http://fishwrap.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/mike-ciresi-is-synonymous-with-wiki...
This really makes me wonder how much his PR staff is involved in editing the article.
Sadly, allegations of staff doctoring articles isn't new:
http://todaysapatheticyouth.blogspot.com/2006/02/wikipedia-clues-in-to-spin....
On 04/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 8:35 PM, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
As David points out in another post, the following site is pretty close to this.
http://fishwrap.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/mike-ciresi-is-synonymous-with-wiki...
This really makes me wonder how much his PR staff is involved in editing the article.
Meg
On Feb 3, 2008 9:41 PM, Meg Ireland megireland99@gmail.com wrote:
Sadly, allegations of staff doctoring articles isn't new:
http://todaysapatheticyouth.blogspot.com/2006/02/wikipedia-clues-in-to-spin....
Of course it's not new -- I've seen it happen before my eyes. (I don't recall on which article, but I remember being unhappy about it.)
On Feb 3, 2008 10:19 PM, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 9:41 PM, Meg Ireland megireland99@gmail.com wrote:
Sadly, allegations of staff doctoring articles isn't new:
http://todaysapatheticyouth.blogspot.com/2006/02/wikipedia-clues-in-to-spin....
Of course it's not new -- I've seen it happen before my eyes. (I don't recall on which article, but I remember being unhappy about it.)
-- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Maybe it would be a good idea to semi-protect articles that have been "doctored". That way, the articles can still be updated etc. with greatly reduced chances of doctoring. We will, of course, end up playing whack-a-mole with trying to block any accounts they do create... although autoblocking helps. Of course, someone else probably thought of this already...
On 04/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 9:41 PM, Meg Ireland megireland99@gmail.com wrote:
Sadly, allegations of staff doctoring articles isn't new: http://todaysapatheticyouth.blogspot.com/2006/02/wikipedia-clues-in-to-spin....
Of course it's not new -- I've seen it happen before my eyes. (I don't recall on which article, but I remember being unhappy about it.)
The nice thing about the WikiScanner is that now the rest of the world knows what we've known for years, and the crap we clean up to keep Wikipedia good and usable.
(I was also surprised to see that public and media opinion on what constitutes a "conflict of interest" is way harsher than even our own guidelines on the subject. Never mind trying to game a Wikipedia rule, if you're caught out on this stuff you'll be buried in *public* oppobrium.)
- d.