On 2/17/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 2/17/06, BJörn Lindqvist
<bjourne(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If Wikipedia isn't mine, then who owns it? Who
gets to decide whether
Wikipedia is, to the best of my knowledge, owned by the Wikimedia Foundation.
I agree. But the Wikimedia Foundation only owns Wikipedia in one of
thre three following facets of Wikipedia:
1. Wikipedia, the worlds biggest collection of organised information.
2. Wikipedia, the great community who have created #1.
3. Wikipedia, the trademark and the servers used to run #1.
You argued that since I am not a member of the Wikimedia Foundation I
don't have the write to write "I'm a fish" on my user page, if I
recall. Also, to the best of my knowledge the Wikimedia Foundation has
not banned writing "I'm a fish" on my user page. And since you are
not, AFAIK, a part of the Wikimedia Foundation you really can not ban
writing "I'm a fish" on my user page.
Do you understand? The question of ownership is utterly irrelevant to
this discussion. Neither you nor I are owners, therefore please do not
try to make it sound like your opinion is the Wikimedia Foundation's
one.
Actually, the charter of the Foundation appears to indicate all of us
are members of the Foundation. Maybe you mean "not a member of the
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees"? And I think much of the rest of
your post is a strawman -- Steve only pointed out a fact (Wikipedia is
owned by the Wikimedia Foundation); he didn't ban (or say he could ban)
you from putting "I'm a fish" on your userpage. And while you certainly
can do that, the Wikimedia Foundation can very well ban you from doing
it. So, yes, the question of ownership is very relevant to this
discussion, especially since you brought it up ("If Wikipedia isn't
mine, then who owns it?").
John