On 5 October 2011 10:45, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
(changing the topic, since hijacking a thread is considered inpolite)
I think indeed they are incomparable. One is an internal political discussion, the other is totally external and legal.
So de.wiki doing this would be merit-less because it is an internal matter and not for public consumption?
I disagree; the aim here is to make the public/readership aware of something new and major that would impact Wikipedia and its editors. There are distinct parallels - and if this is implicitly OK'd as a platform by the foundation you can't undercut that with "but only when it is about legal stuff" :)
I still believe the Wikimedia Foundation will be reasonable in this and if there is a true majority against it, I can hardly see them implementing it without further ado.
This doesn't really mean anything; if de.wiki oppose it through other channels and the idea is scrapped (either for them, or for good) obviously such a manoeuvre wouldn't be needed.
What we are discussing here is the potential situation where it is being enforced on de.wiki against their support & whether the WMF would be as supportive of such an action....
And if you dont cooperate with
the image filter, the worst thing really that could potentially (and still unlikely) happen, is getting blocked from *editing* Wikipedia.
If that is a credible threat (and I don't think it is!) I think that de.wiki would be well in their right to protest...!
In the Italian case, you would get sued and pay high fines.
At this stage there is not an awful lot (apart from FUD) to support this notion. In fact the only credible opinion I have seen (from an Italian lawyer) in response to such a suggestion was "unlikely". Although he did go on to say "admin" was ill-defined, but the law is quite clear in identifying owner/publisher of the site.
(as I've already said; my Italian sucks, but the media is as vague about the exact limits of this law and how it would practically be applied, and as yet no one has offered a full, clear opinion)
At the very least this needs exploring.. for example similar laws exist in France (in fact, if my memory serves they are more problematic than these Italian laws), to my knowledge this has not presented a credible threat to editors.
If the threat is credible then we need to explore the possibilities and how to respond and protect our editors across the world.
If the threat is not credible then we need to assure those editors.
We're talking about totally different ball parks here.
The Italians make two arguments; one about the risks for editors, the other about feeling unable to provide an uncensored service in line with the community goals.
Whilst the former certainly is not comparable; the latter is an identical concern (now whether you feel those concerns have equal merit is another matter!).
Tom