 New WP Oversight bit being mass used, Oversight bit allows complete deletions violating the GFDL |
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| Sgrayban |
 
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#21
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Gone  Group: On Vacation Posts: 907 Joined: Member No.: 7  |
Deletions -> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/oversight?limit=500
List of admins with "Oversight" powers -> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Listadmins/oversight?limit=500 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-06-05/Oversight This violates the GFDL..... QUOTE 0. PREAMBLE The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html (fixed links -Selina) This post has been edited by Selina: |
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| Blu Aardvark |
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#22
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Gone Group: On Vacation Posts: 907 Joined: Member No.: 2 |
"Oversight" is a quite appropriate name for this tool. Assigning it to those users was clearly an oversight.
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| Selina |
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#23
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Cat herder Group: Staffy Posts: 1,513 Joined: Member No.: 1 |
Yeah, out of them the most obvious who should never have been given this kind of power are Dcmdevit and Raul654...
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| blissyu2 |
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#24
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the wookie Group: On Vacation Posts: 4,596 Joined: From: Australia Member No.: 5 |
At least Slim Virgin the censorship queen doesn't have it. Or Grace Note for that matter. Are any of the others known to be big on censorship?
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| guy |
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#25
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Postmaster General Group: Inactive Posts: 4,294 Joined: From: London Member No.: 23 |
QUOTE(blissyu2 @ Wed 7th June 2006, 12:41pm)  At least Slim Virgin the censorship queen doesn't have it. Or Grace Note for that matter. Are any of the others known to be big on censorship? Grace Note isn't an admin, is he? Charles Matthews is OK, and I personally think well of Essjay, though I think he's been criticised on here (Essjay - apologies if I'm wrong). |
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| Sgrayban |
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#26
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Gone Group: On Vacation Posts: 907 Joined: Member No.: 7 |
Essjay is known to flip/flop......
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| blissyu2 |
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#27
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the wookie Group: On Vacation Posts: 4,596 Joined: From: Australia Member No.: 5 |
QUOTE(guy @ Wed 7th June 2006, 11:00pm) QUOTE(blissyu2 @ Wed 7th June 2006, 12:41pm) At least Slim Virgin the censorship queen doesn't have it. Or Grace Note for that matter. Are any of the others known to be big on censorship? Grace Note isn't an admin, is he? Charles Matthews is OK, and I personally think well of Essjay, though I think he's been criticised on here (Essjay - apologies if I'm wrong). No, Grace Note is not an admin. But Grace Note is a censorship queen (or king). I am not sure if oversight is admin-only or not. But Grace Note shouldn't get it either, for the same reasons as why Slim Virgin shouldn't get it. I can't think of anyone else who fits in to that category though. Who else mass censors? Oh probably Thebainer would be another one. |
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| Avillia |
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#28
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Member Group: Contributors Posts: 106 Joined: Member No.: 118 |
Not a violation of the GFDL.
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| Ior |
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#29
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Neophyte Group: Contributors Posts: 15 Joined: Member No.: 246 |
The Wikitruth has an interesting writeup about this http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=...r_Lack_Thereof) -- I think the question really is, how long until the oversight people begin abusing these powers, and how would we ever really know?
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| Blu Aardvark |
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#30
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Gone Group: On Vacation Posts: 907 Joined: Member No.: 2 |
QUOTE(Avillia @ Wed 7th June 2006, 8:22pm) Not a violation of the GFDL. Not in and of itself, no. However, the tool needs to be used appropriately, or else the GFDL could be violated. Deleting a user's contribution from the article at that user's request is not a violation of the GFDL. If later revisions incorporate text from a user's contributions, however, and that user's contributions are removed from the page history, and that user did not authorize such removal, there is a violation of the GFDL, and that user could potentially take legal action against Wikipedia for violating his or her copyright. |
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| blissyu2 |
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#31
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the wookie Group: On Vacation Posts: 4,596 Joined: From: Australia Member No.: 5 |
I wonder if "Oversight" was made because of Wikitruth.
Or alternatively even if Wikitruth was made so that there could be an "Oversight". We've already seen with Pan Am Flight 103 and Port Arthur massacre, 2 articles where they had already used "Oversight" powers beforehand. There's a good deal of evidence of edits wiped from history. Yet we don't know what they were. Now of course they have a way to say "Nah, its all conspiracy theory nonsense - it never happened in the first place". Now even admins who have the powers to prove that it happened can't help you out. Now nobody has a chance. |
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| Sgrayban |
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#32
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Gone Group: On Vacation Posts: 907 Joined: Member No.: 7 |
What I find insulting is this.......
QUOTE "For legal reasons, revisions deleted through oversight are not visible to anyone, including oversight members. The only way to retrieve such revisions is by manual restoration by a developer." If the oversight members can't see what they deleted then how do they know what version was deleted? If its not marked as they claim even a developer can't undelete it. |
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| blissyu2 |
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#33
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the wookie Group: On Vacation Posts: 4,596 Joined: From: Australia Member No.: 5 |
Well, we just have to trust them. That they will never, ever, use it to hide truths.
Except that it has already been abused by Jayjg to deleted Slim Virgin's edits to Pan Am Flight 103. So is Jayjg suggesting that Slim Virgin said something libellous? If so, why wasn't she punished? Jayjg's rationale, of "cyber stalking" is irrational. Deleting something by Slim Virgin in order to protect Slim Virgin from cyber stalking is just plain ridiculous. If there was anything personal in what Slim Virgin wrote, well, she shouldn't have written it. Jayjg perhaps isn't the wisest choice for Oversight status if he is going to do this kind of thing. |
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| kotepho |
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#34
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Member Group: Contributors Posts: 152 Joined: Member No.: 84 |
If you believe that Jayjg's removal of the edits by that account was improper feel free to email Jimbo or one of the mailing lists. He says he looks into many cases of admin abuse, why would he not bother with abuses limit to such an elite few? I believe that it was outside of the stated use of the right (the only docs on it I know of is m:Hiding_revisions.. but maybe arbcom has decided on looser rules), but defensible.
QUOTE What I find insulting is this....... QUOTE "For legal reasons, revisions deleted through oversight are not visible to anyone, including oversight members. The only way to retrieve such revisions is by manual restoration by a developer." If the oversight members can't see what they deleted then how do they know what version was deleted? If its not marked as they claim even a developer can't undelete it. That was just a signpost article, not some offical policy. Hell, I almost rewrote it. The use of "deleting" the edits in both contexts was ambigious and the article was badly structured. People with oversight cannot see what they removed, they know what version was removed.. because they are the ones that removed it? Developers can restore the edits, the revision data is copied to another table before being removed. Hell, they could just extract one of the database dumps and restore it from there also. |
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| Sgrayban |
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#35
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Gone Group: On Vacation Posts: 907 Joined: Member No.: 7 |
I talked to a FSF lawyer yesterday about this license issue... It seems that deleting any revision's is illegal and violates the GFDL.
The issue's I raised about this was two main points... 1) The deletions are whole pages not just comments or specific edits. 2) It violates the GFDL because of point #1 The GFDL applies to ALL revision's not just the current one. The only solution Jimmy has is to make the license a commercial license and ask for permission to use the source. Until he does that he is open for a lawsuit and most likely to be backed by the FSF/GNU Foundation. The lawyer said he will be looking into the legality of the current use of the GFDL license. That is exactly what the lawyer at FSF said. Anyone may of course call them and say they are liar's. |
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| Selina |
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#36
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Cat herder Group: Staffy Posts: 1,513 Joined: Member No.: 1 |
I wonder if the Free Software Foundation would be interested in pursuing a case against them. after all, plenty of money to be squeezed
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| Sgrayban |
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#37
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Gone Group: On Vacation Posts: 907 Joined: Member No.: 7 |
Like I said, the lawyer I talked to is going to look into this.
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| Selina |
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#38
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Cat herder Group: Staffy Posts: 1,513 Joined: Member No.: 1 |
You didn't say that, in the above post you said you talked to them and found out that Wikipedia're definitely breaking the GFDL, nothing about further investigation.. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)
cool that they are gonna, did you warn him not to say anything on actual Wikipedia (due to their "no legal threats" rule) but by email or the mailing list instead? then again, he might not care if he gets banned |
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| Sgrayban |
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#39
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Gone Group: On Vacation Posts: 907 Joined: Member No.: 7 |
If they ban a FSF lawyer about them violating the GFDL license I would say with a good 100% possibility Jimmy will be in the news in the next few hours following it.
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| Avillia |
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#40
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Member Group: Contributors Posts: 106 Joined: Member No.: 118 |
Ten bucks says you misrepresented the situation to a FSF attorney, intentionally or accidentally.
Wikipedia has no obligation to host the modifications people make to their text; Only to have a full history of every modified version leading to the current version hosted. That means, for example:
Now, let's say I have a libel case.
Also, on a somewhat related note, I doubt the FSF will start going to war against the Wikipedia Foundation without some conversation happening between the two. This image sums it up nicely: (IMG:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Wikimania_stallman_keynote2.jpg/300px-Wikimania_stallman_keynote2.jpg) He's historically supported the Wikimedia foundation after he gave up on Gnupedia, he's attended the first Wikimania, I do believe he's onboard for the second. I'd expect he'd go through his unique brand of reprimanding-and-lecturing-to-encourage-openness style of dialogue with Wikipedia before allowing the council for the FSF to start lapping up blood. Not criticising that dialogue style, of course. This post has been edited by Avillia: |
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