[Foundation-l] Wikinews is giving out press credentials

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 11/8/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Traroth <traroth at yahoo.fr> wrote:
> > Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at 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.