[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

[Ray Saintonge]

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
>>
>>>> That's an awful lot to proclaim without a supporting argument.  I'm
>>>> interested in details of why you think so.
>>>
>>> Well, my PhD is on the emergence of Law and I am using wikimedia and 
>>> wikipedia as demonstrations for my arguments :)
>>>
>>> But you're right, I should write something on it !
>>
>> A simpler response would be to cite the clause in the statute that 
>> says this.  To me a fundamental principal of law is that anything 
>> which is not specifically forbidden is allowed.
>>
>> Ec
>
> Hoi,
> It may be a fundamental principal of law. However, I am uncomfortable 
> with it as it leads to all kinds of weasely people do things and 
> argue: "reading the law I can interpretet it in such a way so it 
> should be allowed" while it is totally against what the law is about. 
> It works both ways as this is also used to prevent people from doing 
> things because some people are great in bending the rules. 

Without fundamental principles the law is meaningless. Reading the law 
in a way that doing something should be allowed is perfectly fine; it is 
neither weasely nor against what the law is about.  Bending rules is a 
part of the normal legal game.  Big companies like Microsoft will do 
whatever they can to have the law work the way they want it to work.  If 
it's right for them it's right for the little guy, and until the little 
guy learns that he will forever be a loser.  The principle as I 
expressed it does not prevent people from doing anything.  If something 
is not mentioned in the law then doing it is not a violation of the 
law.  The converse principle, that what is not specifically allowed is 
forbidden, would lead to the absurdity that any kind of innovation is 
illegal.

> When it comes to our projects, it must be clear that they have their 
> rules, they invoke an image of what they are to mean.

The fewer rules the better.  To me an image or vision of what the 
project is about determines what rules are necessary.

> When the language is deemed to be unclear and that is used as an 
> excuse to do what is manifestly against the spirit of our projects, I 
> would not excuse this.

Who does the deeming?  If the rules are contrary to the spirit of the 
project I would change the rules.

> The guiding principle of what we do is, we write an encyclopedia, a 
> dictionary, news, training material whatever that is free[,] NPOV and 
> with we do this with respect for our fellow editors. 

There's nothing wrong with this, but then it has nothing to do with the 
topic.

> We are not a debating club.

Who said that we are?

> We have people active as member of our community in practically all 
> legal entities of this world and therefore there is not only one law 
> and one law's principles that we have to take into account. 

So a balance is required, and this only proves my point.  If something 
is clearly allowed in one country, but requires a slight "bending" of 
the rules in another country we go ahead and bend those rules.  This is 
not the same as an outright violation of the rules.  We do not need to 
strive for the lowest common legal denominator.  If we did that we would 
be bowing to the whims of a government like the one in China which might 
shut the project down for anything that it felt was an insult to their 
government.

> Our rules are different from project to project, it is the spirit of 
> the Wikimedia Foundation that binds us all. It must be clear, that 
> rules within a project that are against the spirit of the WMF are not 
> acceptable, neither are practices that violate what the WMF stands for. 

The separate rules of different projects are not an issue here.

Ec