[Foundation-l] Greetings, Wikimedians

[James Hare]

That's what's so hard.

My plan has been to have a protected mainspace and editable drafts that
weren't obvious to the public eye, but that was denounced as unwiki. Having
a freely-editable website, however, introduces us to extreme liability and
would make Jimmy Wales's head explode if it were to happen.

What we need is a middle ground -- one that's not awfully anti-wiki but
should keep us pretty safe.

On 6/18/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, June 18, 2006 05:55, Kelly Martin wrote:
> > That seems like a fundamentally bad idea from the get-go.  Wikimedia
> > is probably not the best entity to sponsor the creation of the
> > emergency medical hologram.
>
> Can I give an even simpler warning/worry?
>
> At the moment we have students complaining that they were marked down in
> essays for getting things wrong, and their response is "But it must be
> true - I found it on Wikipedia!"
>
> What happens when someone reads something on WikiMed - the medical
> information that anyone can edit - (or whatever it gets called) and finds
> that what they read wasn't accurate and someone is injured, maimed, or
> even dies? Don't say it won't ever happen, in some countries people sue
> because their coffee is too hot. It will. There are plenty of medical info
> sites out there, but they don't permit drive-by editors. Us doing so would
> be a very dangerous step away from behaving in a legally and medically
> responsible way, imho.
>
> Which is a pity, as otherwise I liked the idea as being a way to find the
> info without being 'attacked' by so many adverts!
>
> Alison Wheeler
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