Anon Article Creation/Vandal's Holiday, uncork the BLP grudges. Options

[GlassBeadGame]

November 9th is Vandal's Holiday. Mark your calendars.


Note: Corrected date above.

[Jonny Cache]

November 9th is Vandal's Holiday. Mark your calendars.

They don't know me vewwy well, do they ???

PACMAN

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 26th October 2007, 10:26pm

[everyking]

It's Nov. 9, not 19, and it's not a "holiday", it's a full month, which could be extended depending on how it goes.

[GlassBeadGame]

It's Nov. 9, not 19, and it's not a "holiday", it's a full month, which could be extended depending on how it goes.

Thanks for the date correction. "Holi-month?" I'll change it above to reduce confusion.

[Jonny Cache]

It's Nov. 9, not 19, and it's not a "holiday", it's a full month, which could be extended depending on how it goes.

You never took a fortnight holiday before?

And I thought I was overworked !!!

Jonny

[everyking]

It's Nov. 9, not 19, and it's not a "holiday", it's a full month, which could be extended depending on how it goes.

You never took a fortnight holiday before?

And I thought I was overworked !!!

Jonny

I only use the word holiday to refer to individual days, but now that I think of it I realize that in some places it's used for longer periods.

[GlassBeadGame]

I don't follow the decision making process here. Apparently neither does Flo. Can anyone shed any light on where this decision came from?

Interesting...
Well, I do not know who exactly made that decision, but I am happy of
it. I was never really convinced it was a good idea.

--- Anthere

[guy]

Other wikis are going the other way. For example, Wikinfo now requires you to be logged in to edit at all, let alone create articles.

[w.marsh]

The weird thing is, the guy who'd make the techical change to allow anons to create pages, Tim Starling, can't figure out where this edict from on high actually comes from:

"Who is "we"? The Gregory Maxwell committee? Obviously it wasn't a Board decision, if Florence knows nothing about it. And if it was an executive decision, why isn't it being announced by Sue, or one of the staff?"

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ber/084328.html

[Somey]

This is the sort of thing people mean when they suggest that the WP community is "fracturing," actually. It seems to be primarily old-guard vs. new-guard, too - in this case, the old guard wants to bring back the "good ol' days" of "exponential growth," which they feel can be achieved simply by allowing things like anonymous page creation. Exponential growth makes them feel more special, because they can use their experience to lord it over that (presumed) big influx of n00bz, right? Besides, deleting vanity-cruft articles is fun! Particularly if you get to complain about it without having to actually do it yourself!

And yet, anyone with any sense of perspective should see that nearly all the good article topics have been worked to death, that "deletionism" is on the upswing (and probably for good reason), and that simply making that sort of rule change isn't going to "revert" WP back out of the maintenance phase and back into the growth phase - not unless they want to practically start over by deleting half the content. Something like this is much more likely to simply piss off the admins who are already swamped with janitorial work, when they'd rather be doing things that are more intellectual, or at least pseudo/quasi-intellectual.

Is it any wonder why we tend to criticise the old guard here much more than the new? IMO there's a perfectly good case to be made that if they hadn't done something, there would have been a lot more Siegenthaler-like cases over the last two years than there have been. In fact there have been several nevertheless, and even one is more than there should have been.

[w.marsh]

I would see the "Old Guard" as people devoted to the 'foundation principles' above all else (free content, anyone can edit, etc.)

The "New Guard" just came to Wikipedia to actually write an encyclopedia-ish thing, and when the 'core principles' get in the way of that, they aren't automatically deterred.

The problem is, the "New Guard" (of which I'd be a part, despite being relatively old) does the vast majority of the day-to-day work on Wikipedia... which creates interesting conflicts, as it seems to be doing in this case.

Your commentary about some people wanting to somehow recapture the old "experimental growth" days of Wikipedia is quite interesting. Even as Wikipedia has grown exponentially, there is a powerful camp that seems to support "back to basics" philosophy-driven directions for Wikipedia, which would have been quite shocking to people back in 2005. For example, image policy has gotten vastly more puritan as Wikipedia has grown... you'd have thought the opposite would have happened.

This post has been edited by w.marsh: Sat 27th October 2007, 4:38pm

[GlassBeadGame]

So here is how they make decisions around that place.

The longer story is:

I met with Sue, Mike Godwin, and Kat for a friendly "people are in
town" meeting a few hours before sending the message.

During the meeting someone (i.e. not me, I believe) brought up
anonymous page creation and there was a general discussion about why
it hadn't been undone yet. Mike suggested that the board write a
resolution making it so, Kat responded that in her opinion she didn't
think the board should decide over it since it was an enwiki decision
and not originally a board decision. Originally Anonymous page
creation was originally presented as Jimmy's sole initiative.

I pointed out that Jimmy had said that we should change back on
several occasions, spanning all the way back to Wikimania Boston.
Jimmy has also publicly stated "And preventing anons from creating
new pages was an example of a restriction that, as far as I am aware,
has not been particularly successful."

Our meeting moved on to other topics without finding a good path to
bring this matter to conclusion.

There also seemed to be a concern that the community would oppose
making the change, but that was not a concern I shared in this
instance. This seemed to be to be one of those issues where everyone
thinks everyone else will complain but almost no one actually does.

When I got back my office I did some research, saw that the two prior
public discussions were nearly unanimous on the subject of turning it
back off and, in fact, I'd played a non-trivial role in disrupting an
effort to do so.

As such I decided to step up to move this forward. If the community
didn't like it they could blame me... I made sure that they would be
reasonably well informed and have a chance to comment, unlike some
other unfortunate recent decisions.

I didn't propose it as "lets have a debate over" partially because
we've already had public discussions (Sept 2006), and mostly because
without more information there is nothing more to debate:

"It will break things", "No it won't", "anons create bad pages",
"people who create bad pages seem to log in just fine" "there will be
more" "no there wont" ... Right now, neither side in a debate site any
strong facts to make their argument.

Why invite an unproductive discussion unless one is needed? Besides
"the unilateral statement of fact" approach is a time honored
tradition of successful enwp policy revision, and I think this one
isn't even half as unilateral as many decisions.

...Especially considering that this was originally stated to be "an
experiment", that it was pushed out without community consensus and
amid some community opposition, and that its original proponent no
longer supports it.

I selected dates that would avoid other changes which would disrupt
data gathering and which gave enough time to hold any pre-change
discussion. Other dates would have worked equally well, and in the
absence of other factors having a decision is better than not.

Had I been looking to perform this as an act of authority from above I
would have flipped to my @wikimedia.org address.

When I checked with Mike he indicated that he wouldn't see a problem
with me publicly positioning this as a direct result of our meeting,
... and I admit that doing so now would be a fun response to Tim and
Erik's somewhat sharply pointed messages, but ultimately I don't think
thats the best approach.

I did get a private query along the lines of "where did this decision
come from", which I responded to which a longer explanation. The
person who asked seemed happy with my response. I also responded
privately to Anthere's message as soon as it went out. Hopefully
everyone elses curiosity on this point will be satisfied.

I can't help but feel a little depressed about the control battles
that go on around here ... but I am happy that the discussion on this
subject has been reasonable.

--- Gregory Maxwell

Cheers

Cheers.

[Robster]

So here is how they make decisions around that place.

So essentially, this major policy change comes down to "it seemed like a good idea at the time"?

Well... if they're looking to create a whole bunch of new admins, this'll work. There will be a whole new "New Article Patrol" springing up to delete the crap being generated by IP-address editors... and that Patrol will, in short order, be looking for their admin stripes.

Dunno if this is good or bad for the Cabalistas.

It'll be interesting.

[GlassBeadGame]

So essentially, this major policy change comes down to "it seemed like a good idea at the time"?

Good you see that too. I thought maybe it was just me.

[Derktar]

I'll be intrigued to see how this plays out, UV and Joseph must be cooking something up as we speak.

[Amarkov]

Well, unlike the other "returns to traditional Wikipedian ideals" we've seen (kill the fair use images, kill everything that looks like voting), this one actually happened in early Wikipedia. That's somewhat of a plus.

[Jaranda]

This is going to be a deletion party spree, will overclutter NP patrol, horrible idea

[JohnA]

Your commentary about some people wanting to somehow recapture the old "experimental growth" days of Wikipedia is quite interesting. Even as Wikipedia has grown exponentially, there is a powerful camp that seems to support "back to basics" philosophy-driven directions for Wikipedia, which would have been quite shocking to people back in 2005. For example, image policy has gotten vastly more puritan as Wikipedia has grown... you'd have thought the opposite would have happened.

The Puritanism is driven by fear (as the original Puritanism was). Put simply, Wikipedia is now a big juicy target for a class action lawsuit, unless it enforces normal copyright protections to intellectual property that it does not have written permission to use.

For example, see the biography of silent screen actor, Harold Lloyd. It has a famous picture taken from the movie of Harold hanging from the minute hand of a clock on the side of a building.

The copyright statement for the picture reads thus:

This image is a screenshot from a copyrighted film, and the copyright for it is most likely owned by the studio which produced the film, and possibly also by any actors appearing in the screenshot. It is believed that the use of a limited number of web-resolution screenshots

* for identification and critical commentary on the film and its contents
* on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation,

qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law. Any other uses of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement. See Wikipedia:Non-free content for more information.

...which to me begs the question as to who is kidding whom. Most blogs are non-profit enterprises as well, so can they ignore copyright like Wikipedia?

I work for a non-profit educational charity, and believe me, they cannot infringe copyright just because they're a non-profit.

This post has been edited by JohnA: Sun 28th October 2007, 11:18pm

[Chris Croy]

The Puritanism is driven by fear (as the original Puritanism was). Put simply, Wikipedia is now a big juicy target for a class action lawsuit, unless it enforces normal copyright protections to intellectual property that it does not have written permission to use.

For example, see the biography of silent screen actor, Harold Lloyd. It has a famous picture taken from the movie of Harold hanging from the minute hand of a clock on the side of a building.

The copyright statement for the picture reads thus:

[...]

...which to me begs the question as to who is kidding whom. Most blogs are non-profit enterprises as well, so can they ignore copyright like Wikipedia?

I work for a non-profit educational charity, and believe me, they cannot infringe copyright just because they're a non-profit.

You picked one of the worst possible examples. Safety First came out in 1923. It's in the public domain. Wikipedia could host the entire movie without any legal repercussions. But ignoring that your example is a horrible one, let me address your actual point: Is there a massive legal problem waiting to happen for Wikipedia because of images?

No.

1. Fair Use. Fair use provisions allows the use of copyrighted images even without permission from the copyright holder. They're not particularly broad, but many images would be covered.

2. The Wikimedia Foundation doesn't upload the infringing material, users do. Even when users DO upload infringing material, the Foundation has established procedures for removing copyrighted material even before copyright holders complain and actively does so. Any would-be suiter would have a hard time proving they created an environment that encouraged copyright infringement.

3. Lawsuits are expensive. The IP holder doesn't WANT to file one any more than Wikipedia wants to be the victim of one. If a copyright holder has a problem with an image, their first step will be to firmly ask for it to be deleted. An administrator would almost certainly do so quickly and without complaint.

And finally, most bloggers DO ignore copyright laws. No one goes after them because they usually don't reduce the value of the photograph, they rarely have any money worth taking, they'll probably take it down if asked, and there's a PR cost in any lawsuit against loud little guys.

[guy]

2. The Wikimedia Foundation doesn't upload the infringing material, users do.

Aha! The "We're not really publishing this encyclopaedia" defence.