[WikiEN-l] Dead wikipedians and how to really make a project boring to death

[Anthere]

Kat Walsh wrote:
> On 7/27/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> 
>>Silas Snider wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Except when process protects us from (potentially lenghty and costly)
>>>legal proceedings. Without a tag, it is not clear whether we have the
>>>right to even host the image.
>>>
>>
>>It would be nice if people who put up these claims about protecting us
>>had half a clue about what they are saying.  Such legal proceedings are
>>always possible no matter what we do.  So too is winning the big prize
>>in a national lottery.  If you sign a binding agreement to donate 50% of
>>that prize to WMF when you win it, I would suggest that the Board not
>>make that eventuality a prominent part of its future plans.
>>
>>Ec
> 
> 
> I'd like to think I have at least half a clue, having seen loads of
> "you are using my copyrighted material, take it down or else"
> messages. (And then many more "hey, I wrote this press release, and
> you guys called me a copyright violator, take that down immediately."
> You just can't win.)
> 
> Most of them are just angry and will never actually go to the trouble
> of a lawsuit, sure. Some of them might. Considering the volume, not
> many of them would have to for it to be a huge waste of the limited
> resources of WMF. It's *possible* for people to attempt to sue us for
> all sorts of frivolous things even if we take as much care as
> possible, yes, but it's not the wisest course of action to invite it
> where we don't need to by failing to be responsible.
> 
> However:
> 
> In this case, there must be some sort of special case. Purist though I
> generally am, surely there must be some way to hang on to a few
> pictures of deceased editors and tag them appropriately to make their
> status clear. Considering all the copyright issues on the project, it
> would be a happy day if this were the most pressing of them. I would
> be loath for this to be some sort of precedent so that everyone and
> his dog wants an excuse to be a special case, but, well, really, I am
> OK with this particular image.
> 
> -Kat

Just a thought... Dismiss it if that sounds stupid.

I suppose only a minority of you guys have known wikipedia before there 
were user pages (within a user space).
In the old wiki, there was no user space. Someone could have a user name 
and no page associated with it. As long as the wiki was small, no one 
really needed a private place to communicate. There was even no 
equivalent to the village pump. We just discussed on talk pages. And 
when a wiki has 5 modifications per day, it is not an issue to follow 
your own discussions :-)

Then, people started having their own page. It was easier to communicate 
with other editors, when the community started growing. Of course, there 
was no user space, so user articles... were encyclopedic articles. I 
remember when I created my user page... [[anthere]]. It was also a 
french word, so my user page was sitting at an article place :-)

But do you know why user pages are really necessary ?
Not really to communicate. In a collective project, it is important to 
keep some private space for each individual. A place where they can blow 
steam. Where they can make their own personnality more important than 
the collective. Where they matter as individuals. On projects with rules 
such as NPOV, it is also highly suitable to offer a space for people to 
express a POV.

The need for that space was quickly recognised. It was identified and 
separated from the encyclopedia. In a recurrent fashion, we observe 
issues about user images. These user images actually ARE in the 
encyclopedic space. Why ? Why could not they be separated in the user 
space just as user pages ? NPOV is a very strict rule of Wikipedia and 
still, we do allow opinions to be expressed on user pages. Why could not 
user images be stored separately from encyclopedic images ?

ant