[WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

[Anthony]

On 10/2/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> You're right, we can't stop bad people from being bad, but that
> doesn't mean that we can't keep employ measures to encourage the
> honest people to stay honest.
>
> Or are you also opposed to doors that lock?  ... with the exception of
> high security doors, a locked door actually does fairly little to
> prevent a determined attacker from getting inside, and yet locked
> doors have been demonstrated over and over again to be effective.
>
This isn't a door lock.  It's a tiny little sign above the door which
says "don't break in".

> Or another way of looking at it:   One of the more clearly stated
> arguments against us running advertising on Wikipedia ourselves is the
> potential creation of bias, or at least the creation of the appearance
> of bias.   It strikes me as odd that people will scream so loudly
> against the introduction of advertising which would bring us lots of
> useful money without a definite introduction of bias, and yet folks
> are not willing to take maximal measures against the abuse of
> Wikipedia as an astroturfed advertising medium... when the latter does
> create a clear bias in our content.

Wikipedia runs perfectly fine without advertising, though.  To "take
maximal measures" against others using Wikipedia for advertising would
require virtually shutting down the wiki.  It also has nothing to do
with the current proposal, which is to take a measure which will, it's
being argued, accomplish nothing at all.

All that said, I really don't care that much about the terms of
service, so long as it's not phrased horribly obscenely.  One thing I
think would be horribly obscene is to say that Wikipedia Services "are
for the personal use of Members only and may not be used in connection
with any commercial endeavors except those that are specifically
endorsed or approved by [the Wikimedia Foundation]".  Of course, even
then, it's not like anyone reads or cares about terms of service.

Anthony