[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Art incident

[Anthony]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:

> Yeah, Wikipedia Art are basically trolls, but I find this disturbing.  If
> Wikipedia can make legal threats to trolls and deny it, and accuse trolls
> of
> trademark violation in a baseless way, they can do it to anyone, and the
> next guy they do it to may not necessarily be a troll.
>

At least the next guy will have benefited from watching Wikipedia Art stand
up to the WMF, most likely successfully.  The next time someone gets a
letter from the WMF lawyers, they ought to know to read it carefully to
discern whether it's a bona fide legal threat or just the WMF holding out a
tin cup and asking for favors.  I for one appreciate trolling when it
accomplishes such feats ("positive trolling for the good of mankind", as
Paul Wehage put it at http://akahele.org/2009/03/in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/
).

One wonders if Visual Wikipedia may not have had its domain name taken away
if they had the benefit of watching the Wikipedia Art situation first.

Trolls are the plecostomus of the Internet.  Sure, it'd be better to not
produce all the crap in the first place, but at least there are trolls
around to eat up when you feed them.