How would you stop people from creating fake "real" names? They could just use the random name generator that Tim Starling posted on Saddam Hussein's talk page.
From: Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com Reply-To: Discussion list for English-language Wikipediawikien-l@Wikipedia.org To: Discussion list for English-language Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Controversial user nicknames Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:16:20 -0700 (PDT)
IMO, this is a Bad Thing (TM). It will discourage many useful users from participating in Wikipedia. I use my real name (at least part of it), but I totally can understand why people would not do so.
RickK
Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
I have been thinking lately about [[PPR:RealNamesPlease]]. (That's .) This is a longstanding policy on the orginal wiki which perhaps Wikipedia should have adopted a long time ago. ???
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Adam Bishop wrote:
How would you stop people from creating fake "real" names? They could just use the random name generator that Tim Starling posted on Saddam Hussein's talk page.
As I understand it, the way the "use real names" policy is used elsewhere is to simply ask new users if the name they are using is theirs. So the choice is to either use a real name or to lie. This doesn't seem that useful to me, those likely to cause trouble are the same people as those likely to lie. For myself, I don't wish to use my real name and I wouldn't lie - so I would not participate in a community with a "use real names" policy.
Regards,
sannse
At 09:57 AM 8/27/03 +0100, sannse wrote:
Adam Bishop wrote:
How would you stop people from creating fake "real" names? They could just use the random name generator that Tim Starling posted on Saddam Hussein's talk page.
As I understand it, the way the "use real names" policy is used elsewhere is to simply ask new users if the name they are using is theirs. So the choice is to either use a real name or to lie. This doesn't seem that useful to me, those likely to cause trouble are the same people as those likely to lie. For myself, I don't wish to use my real name and I wouldn't lie - so I would not participate in a community with a "use real names" policy.
There's another problem with "use real names." I'm using mine. If the other Vicki Rosenzweig I'm aware of wants to participate in Wikipedia, I doubt either of us would think it a good idea for her to edit as "Vicki Rosenzweig 2".
And that's with an unusual name: there are a *lot* of "John Smith"s out there.
Any user name is a copyright pseudonym if it is not a real user's name. The user name (or IP address) is the only way to trace the attribution rights (this is especially inportant in droit d'auteur countries such as Canada where an author's moral rights must be respected, and if someone has questions about the validity of the copyright of the underlying text submitted to Wikipedia the only way to check that is to contact the contributor from Wikipedia (they usually call that 'due diligence' in the copyright chain of title review industry).
The GFDL requires that the last five authors of a document released be listed (see section 4(B) of the license). Thus, five contributors to a page may technically have to be listed by any GFDL republisher of that page.
Imagine someone who wants to publish a page and finds that one of the authors has an offensive name; they may decide that they cannot morally accept to use such a page because of the offensive character of the author's name which they must acknowledge.
If there is an offense username, a controversial name, or one which involves profanity, then this would tend to discourage the redistribution of Wikipedia content. Thus IMHO using an offensive user name is in violation of the spirit of the licensing scheme that we use in order to encourage redistribution of our work. That should be enough reason to prohibit the use of such names.
Alex756
----- Original Message ----- From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" vr@redbird.org
There's another problem with "use real names." I'm using mine. If the
other
Vicki Rosenzweig I'm aware of wants to participate in Wikipedia, I doubt either of us would think it a good idea for her to edit as "Vicki Rosenzweig 2".
And that's with an unusual name: there are a *lot* of "John Smith"s out
there.
Alex R. wrote:
The GFDL requires that the last five authors of a document released be listed (see section 4(B) of the license). Thus, five contributors to a page may technically have to be listed by any GFDL republisher of that page.
Imagine someone who wants to publish a page and finds that one of the authors has an offensive name; they may decide that they cannot morally accept to use such a page because of the offensive character of the author's name which they must acknowledge.
If there is an offense username, a controversial name, or one which involves profanity, then this would tend to discourage the redistribution of Wikipedia content. Thus IMHO using an offensive user name is in violation of the spirit of the licensing scheme that we use in order to encourage redistribution of our work. That should be enough reason to prohibit the use of such names.
This brings up an interesting point, especially if Wikipedia is going to ever be published in paper. With online publishing, a link to the page history should suffice for attribution, but in a paper format the publisher would actually have to list five authors for every single article, and they certainly wouldn't want to list offensive names for those authors.
I think this whole thing is unfortunate though, and it's becoming increasingly clear that the GFDL exactly as written isn't *really* what we want to do. I think most Wikipedians would be happier with a license that required Wikipedia to be credited rather than five authors. As it stands now, the republisher *has* to credit five authors, but does *not* have to credit Wikipedia at all. They could give it their own name and not mention its connection to us at all, as long as they list the authors properly. I think most of us would prefer the opposite -- that they be required to credit Wikipedia, and not be required to credit the individual authors. But this would require a license change, which may be impossible at this point.
-Mark
I wrote:
I think this whole thing is unfortunate though, and it's becoming increasingly clear that the GFDL exactly as written isn't *really* what we want to do. I think most Wikipedians would be happier with a license that required Wikipedia to be credited rather than five authors. As it stands now, the republisher *has* to credit five authors, but does *not* have to credit Wikipedia at all. They could give it their own name and not mention its connection to us at all, as long as they list the authors properly. I think most of us would prefer the opposite -- that they be required to credit Wikipedia, and not be required to credit the individual authors. But this would require a license change, which may be impossible at this point.
A thought occured to me, though I'm not sure if it's feasible or not. Our license is "the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation." This "or any later version" is generally added explicitly to allow the FSF to correct any license deficiencies that weren't realized until later. Now certainly the FSF isn't going to release a specially-crafted-for-Wikipedia license, but would they FSF possibly be amenable to adding a clause to the GFDL permitting collaborative projects to be optionally credited by the name of the project rather than the individual authors? This would be a fairly general addition it seems, possibly useful to projects other than Wikipedia. Certainly a lawyer would have to see if there's a legally reasonable way to word such a requirement. But it'd (hopefully) have the effect that a republisher could credit "Wikipedia" and in so doing be absolved from the requirement to credit five individual authors, which really seems to be what we want.
Any thoughts? Is this one of those 'not gonna happen' things?
-Mark
On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, Delirium wrote:
I think most Wikipedians would be happier with a license that required Wikipedia to be credited rather than five authors. As it stands now, the republisher *has* to credit five authors, but does *not* have to credit Wikipedia at all. They could give it their own name and not mention its connection to us at all, as long as they list the authors properly. I think most of us would prefer the opposite -- that they be required to credit Wikipedia, and not be required to credit the individual authors. But this would require a license change, which may be impossible at this point.
What gives you the impression that more than a handful of people want this? As far as I'm aware, most people like to be credited for what they do. What exactly is wrong with the idea of crediting people for what they do, anyway?
Aside from the problem of having to credit people with offensive user names, that is, which is really only a minor point at the moment, because there are few of them around.
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
Oliver Pereira wrote:
What gives you the impression that more than a handful of people want this? As far as I'm aware, most people like to be credited for what they do. What exactly is wrong with the idea of crediting people for what they do, anyway?
Aside from the problem of having to credit people with offensive user names, that is, which is really only a minor point at the moment, because there are few of them around.
It's quite possible I'm wrong on that point; I should've qualified it. It was a guess based on some previous discussion both here and on the village pump. The main problem I see with crediting individual authors is that it greatly dilutes credit. Someone could publish an encyclopedia that's 1/4 other content and 3/4 Wikipedia content, and as long as they credited five random authors for each article, they could publish it without ever mentioning Wikipedia, instead only mentioning "User:145.223.22.5" and "User:Saddam Hussein" and so on as authors. If they wished to purposely deny credit as much as possible, they could even go through and prefer to list IP addresses rather than user accounts where possible, since the GFDL lets them list any five authors of their choosing.
-Mark
GFDL Sec. 4(B) states at least five of the major authors, so if someone is the major contributor and their name is not listed well, it does not matter how many users make subsequent edits, that original major contributor will have to be cited, otherwise whoever uses it will be subject to a lawsuit for violation of the copyright license as granted.
Wouldn't that be interesting, user:Saddam Hussein suing some publisher for not using his pseudonym in violation of a copyleft license. Of course sometimes courts will find something so offensive as to not enforce the law. I recall a California publicity rights case of a dildo that was cast from a porn star's penis and the judge in that case refused to recognize that the "owner" of the penis had any rights to prevent a casting of it from being used without compensation. Perhaps that is the defense to use if one refuses follow the attribution rules under the GDFL for offensive names. Even though IAAL I cannot guarantee such an outcome, it would be an interesting case, I wonder if user:SH would be game to file such a suit should the occasion arise? Might be interesting publicity for Wikipedia! (Just joking) Alex756 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Delirium" delirium@rufus.d2g.com
It's quite possible I'm wrong on that point; I should've qualified it. It was a guess based on some previous discussion both here and on the village pump. The main problem I see with crediting individual authors is that it greatly dilutes credit. Someone could publish an encyclopedia that's 1/4 other content and 3/4 Wikipedia content, and as long as they credited five random authors for each article, they could publish it without ever mentioning Wikipedia, instead only mentioning "User:145.223.22.5" and "User:Saddam Hussein" and so on as authors. If they wished to purposely deny credit as much as possible, they could even go through and prefer to list IP addresses rather than user accounts where possible, since the GFDL lets them list any five authors of their choosing.
-Mark
Alex R. wrote:
GFDL Sec. 4(B) states at least five of the major authors, so if someone is the major contributor and their name is not listed well, it does not matter how many users make subsequent edits, that original major contributor will have to be cited, otherwise whoever uses it will be subject to a lawsuit for violation of the copyright license as granted.
Wouldn't that be interesting, user:Saddam Hussein suing some publisher for not using his pseudonym in violation of a copyleft license. Of course sometimes courts will find something so offensive as to not enforce the law. I recall a California publicity rights case of a dildo that was cast from a porn star's penis and the judge in that case refused to recognize that the "owner" of the penis had any rights to prevent a casting of it from being used without compensation. Perhaps that is the defense to use if one refuses follow the attribution rules under the GDFL for offensive names. Even though IAAL I cannot guarantee such an outcome, it would be an interesting case, I wonder if user:SH would be game to file such a suit should the occasion arise? Might be interesting publicity for Wikipedia! (Just joking)
It's too bad you're just joking. A really good publicity stunt requires this kind of chutzpah.. You don't mind people calling you nuts as long as they keep buying the product.
It's very easy for some people to get carried away making up rules about every facet of life. Every time a cat writes a rule to make himself secure against some merely perceived problem, he gives the mice an opportunity to find creative ways for circumventing the rule. There are more mice than cats ... and far more cockroaches.
Ec.
Delirium wrote:
With online publishing, a link to the page history should suffice for attribution, but in a paper format the publisher would actually have to list five authors for every single article, and they certainly wouldn't want to list offensive names for those authors.
Then get five other people to edit it. Problem solved! ;)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
Delirium wrote:
With online publishing, a link to the page history should suffice for attribution, but in a paper format the publisher would actually have to list five authors for every single article, and they certainly wouldn't want to list offensive names for those authors.
Then get five other people to edit it. Problem solved! ;)
The borrower could even invent 5 user names that best reflect his point of view; a [[User:Baby Killer]] would suggest a very specific POV about [[abortion]], or could you have faith in the student [[User:Learner Heisenberg]]'s credibility about the [[Uncertainty Principle]]?
Ec
Delirium wrote:
With online publishing, a link to the page
history should suffice for
attribution, but in a paper format the publisher
would actually have
to list five authors for every single article,
and they certainly
wouldn't want to list offensive names for those
authors.
What about just writing down the URL in ink? LDan
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LittleDan wrote:
What about just writing down the URL in ink?
That's hardly transparent for the GNU FDL. Even linking in a web page seems rather fishy to me. As an institution, /we/ really would prefer it; and as long as Wikipedia is up, it's ethically OK. But it probably violates the letter of the FDL (although IANAL).
To see why this could be a problem, consider: If something ever happened to Wikipedia, we would no longer be giving credit to anybody. That's OK for own compliance with the License, since we're not publishing their work anymore either. But how is the visitor to another site to see the credit?
As for writing down a URL, that's even worse. What if the reader has no access to the Internet? At least another web page can reasonably assume this.
-- Toby
On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 12:48:59 -0400, Alex R. alex756@nyc.rr.com gave utterance to the following:
Any user name is a copyright pseudonym if it is not a real user's name. The user name (or IP address) is the only way to trace the attribution rights (this is especially inportant in droit d'auteur countries such as Canada where an author's moral rights must be respected, and if someone has questions about the validity of the copyright of the underlying text submitted to Wikipedia the only way to check that is to contact the contributor from Wikipedia (they usually call that 'due diligence' in the copyright chain of title review industry).
The GFDL requires that the last five authors of a document released be listed (see section 4(B) of the license). Thus, five contributors to a page may technically have to be listed by any GFDL republisher of that page.
Imagine someone who wants to publish a page and finds that one of the authors has an offensive name; they may decide that they cannot morally accept to use such a page because of the offensive character of the author's name which they must acknowledge.
Another point that it raises is that the majority of people are still on dynamic IP's. (Wikipedia probably has a higher proportion of static IP's than most websites due to the number of contributors who are staff at academic institutions. So with a not-logged in contributor on a dynamic IP, the only means of identifying the person is by asking the ISP who had that IP at that time. And most ISP's will flatly refuse to divulge that information. Under New Zealand's privacy laws I think the only grounds on which they are obliged or even allowed to release such personal information is a police investigation or as part of a civil lawsuit. A copyright enquiry simply doesn't cut it.
Another point that it raises is that the majority of people are still on dynamic IP's. (Wikipedia probably has a higher proportion of static IP's than most websites due to the number of contributors who are staff at academic institutions. So with a not-logged in contributor on a dynamic IP, the only means of identifying the person is by asking the ISP who had that IP at that time. And most ISP's will flatly refuse to divulge that information. Under New Zealand's privacy laws I think the only grounds on which they are obliged or even allowed to release such personal information is a police investigation or as part of a civil lawsuit. A copyright enquiry simply doesn't cut it.
-- Richard Grevers Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried
...therefore, we cannot be expected to list anon users. They know perfectly well that they cannot get credit as anons, or are complete newbies, and wouldn't know that credit exists (in that case, they soon will). I knew an anon user who made many great edits on a static IP. Even as an advanced user, he didn't make a username because he didn't <em>want</em> any credit for hist work. Eventually, he created a username, I think CrusadeOnIlliteracy or something like that, so that he could move pages and upload images. (On a related note, anons should be able to do those tasks.) He still didn't want to have credit. I think that there are many anons like that, and we don't need to give them credit because they don't want it. LDan
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