Hey everyone,
I would like the template for every article to be altered, to include something similar to the following: "This is licensed under GFDL...if you with to copy this article, go ahead...but you are required to provide a link to the GFDL... and you are required to link back to the original article..." That is essence of what needs to be added to the template for every Wikipedia article. This is in order to stop the ripping of Wikipedia articles without full copyright/license compliance.
I posted this today on the http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content page.
"Jesus, there are two many websites out there in non-compliance. The template for all pages needs to say explicitly what people are to do if they wish to copy the text. I mean, here we are advertising "Wikipedia: The Free Encylopedia" everywhere, and there is a link to GFDL at the bottom of every wikipedia article. What is the average person to think??? Of course they will assume they can just rip off the content. If they have any knowledge of GFDL or GPL, they might think that they can use it and modify it as long as they put it under the same license. But how are they supposed to know that they have to link back to the original article? We should stop the problem at the source and put explicit instruction on EVERY SINGLE wikipedia article at the bottom or top of the page so that when people are clicking and dragging their mouse across the page they will see it. Or if they save the HTML, they will also see it when they edit that hopefully. Who to talk to about this? Just my two cents. I'll continue to help out sending letters and such though, because I think it's a worthy cause. dave http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dgrant 23:28, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)"
Please CC to david.grant@telus.net, or reply all...
David Grant wrote in part:
I would like the template for every article to be altered, to include something similar to the following: "This is licensed under GFDL...if you with to copy this article, go ahead...but you are required to provide a link to the GFDL... and you are required to link back to the original article..." That is essence of what needs to be added to the template for every Wikipedia article. This is in order to stop the ripping of Wikipedia articles without full copyright/license compliance.
But they are /not/ required to link back to Wikipedia! They're required to list up to 5 authors, and linking back to Wikipedia is the easiest way to do that. To avoid making people stop believing us, we must separate: * You /must/ release your version under the GFDL; and * We /advise/ you to link back to the original Wikipedia article.
More comments on the meta page (possibly, if I get to it), about ideal wording and the like. I do agree with you in general.
-- Toby
Please use plain text when sending email. HTML is not secure when sending email because it can contain malicious programs; so I view my mail only in plain text. Please see http://www.houghi.org for how to set this in your mail program.
phma
--- phma@webjockey.net wrote:
Please use plain text when sending email. HTML is not secure when sending email because it can contain malicious programs; so I view my mail only in plain text. Please see http://www.houghi.org for how to set this in your mail program.
phma
I don't see what's wrong with HTML. If we really can't use HTML, possibly we could use the HTML text for a unicode symbol (like è (in case that came out wrong, è)). LittleDan
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
At 03:22 PM 7/30/03 -0700, Daniel wrote:
--- phma@webjockey.net wrote:
Please use plain text when sending email. HTML is not secure when sending email because it can contain malicious programs; so I view my mail only in plain text. Please see http://www.houghi.org for how to set this in your mail program.
phma
I don't see what's wrong with HTML.
What's wrong with HTML is
* It can contain viruses, tracking software, and other malware (as explained in the message you're replying to) * It enforces the appearance of a message on the reader, whether she likes it or not (sometimes things like black on dark blue) * It takes up a lot more space, which is a problem for people on dialup lines or with space-limited mailboxes.
If we really can't use HTML, possibly we could use the HTML text for a unicode symbol (like è (in case that came out wrong, è)).
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
What's wrong with HTML is
- It can contain viruses, tracking software, and other malware (as
explained in the message you're replying to)
- It enforces the appearance of a message on the reader, whether
she likes it or not (sometimes things like black on dark blue)
- It takes up a lot more space, which is a problem for people on
dialup lines or with space-limited mailboxes.
I don't see how an HTML message could possibly contain a virus, unless you have a horribly broken mailreader. It's simply markup, like SGML or TeX or whatever (or at least, the mail reader should treat it as simply markup, certainly not as executable code). Tracking software I'll agree is an issue, but I don't expect anyone on this list to be including image bugs in their emails.
Appearance too should be taken care of by the mailreader -- if you want black on white background, your mailreader should have an option to ignore HTML colors or something of that sort.
The last point I'll concede, though "a lot" isn't always necessarily accurate, especially for relatively simple messages without absurd amounts of formatting.
-Mark
--- Delirium delirium@rufus.d2g.com wrote:
The last point I'll concede, though "a lot" isn't always necessarily accurate, especially for relatively simple messages without absurd amounts of formatting.
-Mark
Yeah, I guess you have a good point with that last one. I won't use HTML (even though I haven't been) in my letters. But I think unicode-encoded letters are just as bad. It's the same basic thing with some mailreaders can't read them properly. Webmail can't read unicode, and some people have HTML turned off or are unable to use HTML in their mail client. So neither should be used. I still think that it would make sense to use HTML-esque unicode marks, such as €. I think most of us can read those in our heads. -LittleDan
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
Yeah, I guess you have a good point with that last one. I won't use HTML (even though I haven't been) in my letters. But I think unicode-encoded letters are just as bad.
Unicode has nothing to do with HTML. This posting is in UTF-8 (Unicode Transfer Format), but it does not contain any HTML.
ć <-- This is a c with an acute accent. If you can't see it, well, doesn't matter much, because if I hadn't put it there, you wouldn't be able to see it either.
Timwi
On Wednesday 30 July 2003 20:06, Delirium wrote:
I don't see how an HTML message could possibly contain a virus, unless you have a horribly broken mailreader. It's simply markup, like SGML or TeX or whatever (or at least, the mail reader should treat it as simply markup, certainly not as executable code). Tracking software I'll agree is an issue, but I don't expect anyone on this list to be including image bugs in their emails.
An HTML message can contain a JavaScript program, or an iframe with an executable in it. Klez spreads by sending HTML messages with executables in iframes, though Klez is filtered out before it reaches my inbox.
phma
Pierre Abbat wrote:
An HTML message can contain a JavaScript program, or an iframe with an executable in it. Klez spreads by sending HTML messages with executables in iframes, though Klez is filtered out before it reaches my inbox.
Well, any mail client that allows that is clearly broken. Correct JavaScript implementations should not be a security risk, but it's probably best not to have JavaScript enabled in your mailreader anyway.
-Mark
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 17:06:28 -0700, Delirium delirium@rufus.d2g.com gave utterance to the following:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
What's wrong with HTML is
- It can contain viruses, tracking software, and other malware (as
explained in the message you're replying to)
- It enforces the appearance of a message on the reader, whether
she likes it or not (sometimes things like black on dark blue)
- It takes up a lot more space, which is a problem for people on
dialup lines or with space-limited mailboxes.
I don't see how an HTML message could possibly contain a virus, unless you have a horribly broken mailreader.
80% of PC users have a horribly broken mailreader - it comes with their OS.
I can recall an instance of a Chinese fireworks website where there were two thumbnail images on a page of about 20 where clicking the thumbnail served not a jpg image but a vbs scripted virus or bomb. While IE blindly trusts the extension rather than checking the MIME type as per the standard, both Opera and Mozilla simply reported that they could not open the resource. Fortunately the computer I was using when I tried it in IE was not my work one, because the C: drive had to be wiped and the OS reinstalled from scratch. And the nasty got straight past an up-to-date AV program. If such an image was called from an email, you could be toast if using client which uses IE as its HTML renderer, without a single click. The vulnerability has probably been patched by now (but who knows, there are still unpatched vulnerabilities published 18 months ago) and how many people have their OS fully patched. As a result, I do not have vbs or activeX installed on my computers any more.
Could we get back on subject or change the title of this thread? David Grant brings up a valid issue, and it should be discussed.
-- Michael Becker
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Richard Grevers Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 9.02 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: About copyright violations
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 17:06:28 -0700, Delirium delirium@rufus.d2g.com gave utterance to the following:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
What's wrong with HTML is
- It can contain viruses, tracking software, and other malware (as
explained in the message you're replying to)
- It enforces the appearance of a message on the reader, whether she
likes it or not (sometimes things like black on dark blue)
- It takes up a lot more space, which is a problem for people on
dialup lines or with space-limited mailboxes.
I don't see how an HTML message could possibly contain a virus, unless you have a horribly broken mailreader.
80% of PC users have a horribly broken mailreader - it comes with their OS.
I can recall an instance of a Chinese fireworks website where there were
two thumbnail images on a page of about 20 where clicking the thumbnail served not a jpg image but a vbs scripted virus or bomb. While IE blindly trusts the extension rather than checking the MIME type as per the standard, both Opera and Mozilla simply reported that they could not open the resource. Fortunately the computer I was using when I tried it in IE
was not my work one, because the C: drive had to be wiped and the OS reinstalled from scratch. And the nasty got straight past an up-to-date AV program. If such an image was called from an email, you could be toast if using client which uses IE as its HTML renderer, without a single click. The vulnerability has probably been patched by now (but who knows, there are
still unpatched vulnerabilities published 18 months ago) and how many people have their OS fully patched. As a result, I do not have vbs or activeX installed on my computers any more.
David Grant wrote:
[something in HTML]
Other people have complained when Stevertigo sends HTML with black text on a dark background (or some such thing). I've often found these complaints a bit pointless, since it's the reader's own decision to view the HTML; every one of Steve's posts has also appeared in plain text. As such, I've only ever viewed the text version, which is fine.
David's post above, however, appeared only in HTML. I can't read it unless I copy the file to another program, or else view the HTML source and read that by hand.
I will now look at the source, and if it's easy to convert to text, then I'll post the text version and (if applicable) reply to it. But if it has a bunch of HTML markup all over the place, then I may well just ignore it.
-- Toby
[This is David Grant's recent HTML post, redone in plain text. -- Toby Bartels]
Toby Bartels wrote:
David Grant wrote in part:
I would like the template for every article to be altered, to include something similar to the following: "This is licensed under GFDL...if you with to copy this article, go ahead...but you are required to provide a link to the GFDL... and you are required to link back to the original article..." That is essence of what needs to be added to the template for every Wikipedia article. This is in order to stop the ripping of Wikipedia articles without full copyright/license compliance.
But they are /not/ required to link back to Wikipedia! They're required to list up to 5 authors, and linking back to Wikipedia is the easiest way to do that.
Yes, this is the tricky thing though.� However, my opinion is that this needs to be explicit on every Wikipedia article so that all people who "rip" an article, have a "fighting chance" of seeing it at the bottom/top of the page.� It should perhaps say, "You are required to provide a link back to the original wikipedia article, or a link to up to 5 authors."� The part where it says authors, can be a link to the Page history.� But you are
To avoid making people stop believing us, we must separate:
- You /must/ release your version under the GFDL; and
- We /advise/ you to link back to the original Wikipedia article.
Shouldn't we say "MUST" link back OR "MUST" give names of 5 authors?� I don't think using "advise" is a smart thing to do...
More comments on the meta page (possibly, if I get to it), about ideal wording and the like. I do agree with you in general.
Thanks for your comments.
-- Toby
David Grant wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
But they are /not/ required to link back to Wikipedia! They're required to list up to 5 authors, and linking back to Wikipedia is the easiest way to do that.
Yes, this is the tricky thing though. However, my opinion is that this needs to be explicit on every Wikipedia article so that all people who "rip" an article, have a "fighting chance" of seeing it at the bottom/top of the page.
Yes, we must have /something/ better. I'm just criticising the factual accuracy or your /specific/ suggestion.
To avoid making people stop believing us, we must separate:
- You /must/ release your version under the GFDL; and
- We /advise/ you to link back to the original Wikipedia article.
Shouldn't we say "MUST" link back OR "MUST" give names of 5 authors? I don't think using "advise" is a smart thing to do...
OTOH, that's more complicated -- and we really do want them to link back. We can always say that they should look at the GFDL for the precise rules.
We basically agree, I just wanted to correct the factual misapprehension, so that the error isn't spread amongst the other readers. I'll take the rest of my comments to the English meta talk page [[En:Wikipedia talk:Sites that use Wikipedia for content]], where people can discuss the best wording for such a statement.
-- Toby