[Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

[Alison Wheeler]

On Tue, October 3, 2006 00:08, Delirium wrote:
> I guess I don't see how this in any way helps that goal.  How is a
> "terms of service" any more useful than the existing Wikipedia
> policies?  We can already ban anyone we want and ask them not to come
> back, and don't need any sort of legal terms of service to do that.  We
> aren't offering a paid service, so don't need a legal terms of service
> as a way of terminating anyone's right to use our service, since we
> never sold any such right in the first place.

This isn't about what we've sold or not sold, but about the effects of
time. At the moment if we discover something that is, in essence,
commercial cruft we might find that our current <process> demands it goes
for AFD rather than get speedied. That gives a delay, during which time
the advertiser (for that is basically what they are) gets free use of our
services, is able to take screenshots and use them in their advertising
(has happened), and will get mirrored to other sites.

We should be removing commercially-based 'listings' as soon as they are
discovered, and one way to stop the people placing these 'adverts' (be
they the company concerned, their PR team, or someone they've especially
employed for the task) is to make it explicit to them in terms they
undersstand (ie *legal*) that we will delete it without further notice and
without further delay. At the moment it is problematic to deal with this
stuff in that way without someone popping up and shouting that you've
abused <process>.

Doesn't stop some of us, I know, but we should formalise the solution
before the problem gets even further out of hand, not just on en: but
everywhere else too.

Alison Wheeler