On 11/8/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Traroth <traroth(a)yahoo.fr> wrote:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> a écrit
:
>Credentials are given by organizations - not by just some people on the
>Internet (which is all any Wikimedia project is by itself). Using that
term
>in the real world where it has a specific
meaning - to describe that
process
>is very misleading. Using that term and the
Wikinews mark implies an
official
>connection that does not exist. That is
dishonest and an abuse of the
mark.
Does it mean Wikinews is not an organisation in itself ? I disagree. It
is.
And that means that Wikinews can choose the way
it wants to give out
credentials.
Sorry, but in any legal sense it is not. Wikinews is a project of the
Wikimedia
foundation. Noting more from a legal perspective. The Wikinews community
is a
collection of people who work on that project but who don't have any legal
membership in it. All authority to use the Wikinews mark outside of that
community falls to the registered owner of that mark; the Wikimedia
Foundation.
If the foundation wants to use the Wikinews community as its agent to
select
people to be credentialed and thus be able to use the Wikinews mark on
badges,
then that is fine.
Your argument would be a lot better if it didn't rest on trademark rights,
because it seems clear that this has nothing to do with trademarks.
But the foundation must make that permission explicit and should put in
place
reasonable oversight measures that would be used in case anybody abuses
the
privilege of being credentialed. Again, in almost all cases, the community
should be the foundation's agent in deaccreditation and reaccreditation.
But
community processes are slow and in really bad cases the foundation should
be
able to quickly remove credentials of offending users or even suspend the
whole
process if it ever gets out of hand.
All I want to do is protect the foundation and the good name of its
projects.
It is simply potentially dangerous for people to use the foundation's name
and/or the name of its projects to gain access and authority in the real
world
they would otherwise not be able to have. For one thing, they need
permission
to do that, for another, we need to have some type of official oversight
on
this.
-- mav
Is anyone actually using these essentially self-assigned credentials to
gain any significant access and authority in the real world (something that
couldn't be gained by just saying "I'm a member of qwyjibo
productions")? I
think it would be pretty hard to do so without committing some sort of
fraud.