Full Version: Wikipedia®
I started a thread over at Wikipedia®
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Pag...ed_trademark.3F
On inspiration of
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/audio/podcast...iew&wid=12&pn=1
(see the bottom of that page). I was surprised what a negative reaction I got about adding just that one little character to Wikipedia® in just that one place. So I am still wondering if this makes me a troll or the Snake in the Garden of Eden or what? Are these Wikipedians too barefoot and fancy free?
I have already updated most my pages at
http://home.earthlink.net/~amorrow/wiki_index.html
accordingly.
Why you are a troll = because you just keep on proving them wrong.
Why you are like the snake in the garden of eden = because you just keep on tempting them to yell at you and hurl insults and abuse since they can't beat your arguments.
Why you are like the snake in the garden of eden = because you just keep on tempting them to yell at you and hurl insults and abuse since they can't beat your arguments.
QUOTE(blissyu2 @ Thu 11th May 2006, 7:40pm) 
Why you are a troll = because you just keep on proving them wrong.
Why you are like the snake in the garden of eden = because you just keep on tempting them to yell at you and hurl insults and abuse since they can't beat your arguments.
Hmm. I suppose you are right. I guess that does seem to be part of the process. Why, I hardly did not ever notice that previously (double-negative intended).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Man...28trademarks%29
Besides, it says it at the bottom of the page.
QUOTE
Do not use special symbols such as TM and ® unless they are important to the context (for instance to distinguish between generic and brand names for drugs).
Besides, it says it at the bottom of the page.
wikipedia is indeed a brand name now right?
QUOTE(ownage @ Fri 12th May 2006, 2:42am)
wikipedia is indeed a brand name now right?
It's been a registered trademark for a while; many organizations trademark their names...
Granted it is a bit of a petty argument, as to whether it should be Wikipedia ® everywhere, or just at the bottom. But Amorrow still has a point there. A point that they are ignoring.
It is just that the situation over there is so volatile. As I keep saying, I was expecting an experience more like a library than like a saloon. But I have not pets do talk about, I do not watch cartoons (or any TV for that matter) and I do not want to block anybody. However, I do choose difficult articles. I choose articles that might make a difference in real life. Articles whose implementation at Wikipedia might be rather more complete than anything else so easily available. Artilces that might take on a life of their own. I am very happy that biographies such as Sam Sloan are over there, because I think that help people to see him in a new light. As a whole person who has lived a long and interesting life. Wikipedia organizes that information into someting compact and coherent. In that sense, it is orignal material. No original research, but a compate and coherent document that would otherwise not get written. His own web site can take days to get through and sort out.
I do not think that this is exactly what Jimbo had in mind when he started Wikipedia, but that is what I want Wikipedia® to be. It is all these kooky activists and had-beens and others kinds of marginally notable folks for which they will have no biographer writing an ISBN-bearing book about them. Such a book would be a very short-run vanity publication anyway. People who were somewhat famous for a while and then faded away. I really can only focus on certain kinds of Americana and Afrah Shafquat and not much else.
And I do not want to fight about it with teenagers who do not really care about recent history. And I especially do not want to deal with people who cannot comply with a delay, like 24 hours, before they revert something new. I deeply resented how easy it was for Nunh-huh to revert 200 of my versions on a very difficult artilce in a few seconds. That was just too easy for him to do.
Even the David Irving article. He does not seem like a very likable guy, but if you get his lead section "right" (or "good" or whatever), then you can see him for what he is. Kind of sad, but he will get out of jail in a few years. It is not the end of the world for him. He will get out and slowly fade into obscurity (probably). Once you get to know the guy, you tend not to get so very excited about him, but he is still worthy of a read as long as the article does not get to lengthy. That is exactly what Wikipedia® was supposed to do. Not quite the sum of human knowledge. Not better than Britannica. Different. In a good way.
I added a video for this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_S._Touretzky
He has a Wikipedia account and edited his own article a year ago, but that hardly matters. I added a video with him being interviewed. You see how much depth that adds to the article? That is what I thought Wikipedia® was supposed to be about. The article is fine, but the video adds a lot of information about the real person. For some, I expect that he is a lot less imposing in person. He is kind of picky. He is, not to put him down, wimpy, even though his mind is formidable. That is the real person. It is pretty close to being as if you met him face-to-face.
The MediaWiki software imposes a lot of limitations on what is possible to get The Community to a point where it is stable. Right now, it is still much like the Wild West or some cartoon. There may be nothing that they can do about trolls and abrupt admin actions like what Cyde did the other day to Avillia. But a few signals to the effect of "let's get down to business" and stop these crazy indef blocks of established users. It is so easy for one young man to tell anohter: "I will hate you forever", but that should not translate into the cartoon "blowing away" of that person. If Wikipedia were seen more as a "business" (perhaps at the cost of some of that youthful idealism), then maybe some of these explosive emotions would cause some of the extremists on both ends of the spectrum to go somewhere else. Hard to say, really, but worth a try, if even for a week or so with that one little ugly mark, right at the top of the Main Page.
I feel that Bradford Patrick is going to do a lot more good for WikiMedia. His hands are clean of past, petty fights and missteps. He is a visionary of a different sort. He "gets it" as far as Jimbo's vision is concerned but he brings a new influx of integrity and maturity to the process. I am hoping that it percolates down to a small change in culture over at Wikipedia® so that I might go back there and feel not quite so ostracized. Not quite so out-of-place among all these teenagers and twenty-somethings. Not quite so vulnerable to being indefinitely blocked by somebody half my age without the slightlest warning. Not threatened by people like David Gerard to have my work divorced from my past accounts just because of that man's personal emotions, no matter how popular he might be among the ladies in his life.
Wikipedia® might help to make Wikipedia not suck.
I do not think that this is exactly what Jimbo had in mind when he started Wikipedia, but that is what I want Wikipedia® to be. It is all these kooky activists and had-beens and others kinds of marginally notable folks for which they will have no biographer writing an ISBN-bearing book about them. Such a book would be a very short-run vanity publication anyway. People who were somewhat famous for a while and then faded away. I really can only focus on certain kinds of Americana and Afrah Shafquat and not much else.
And I do not want to fight about it with teenagers who do not really care about recent history. And I especially do not want to deal with people who cannot comply with a delay, like 24 hours, before they revert something new. I deeply resented how easy it was for Nunh-huh to revert 200 of my versions on a very difficult artilce in a few seconds. That was just too easy for him to do.
Even the David Irving article. He does not seem like a very likable guy, but if you get his lead section "right" (or "good" or whatever), then you can see him for what he is. Kind of sad, but he will get out of jail in a few years. It is not the end of the world for him. He will get out and slowly fade into obscurity (probably). Once you get to know the guy, you tend not to get so very excited about him, but he is still worthy of a read as long as the article does not get to lengthy. That is exactly what Wikipedia® was supposed to do. Not quite the sum of human knowledge. Not better than Britannica. Different. In a good way.
I added a video for this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_S._Touretzky
He has a Wikipedia account and edited his own article a year ago, but that hardly matters. I added a video with him being interviewed. You see how much depth that adds to the article? That is what I thought Wikipedia® was supposed to be about. The article is fine, but the video adds a lot of information about the real person. For some, I expect that he is a lot less imposing in person. He is kind of picky. He is, not to put him down, wimpy, even though his mind is formidable. That is the real person. It is pretty close to being as if you met him face-to-face.
The MediaWiki software imposes a lot of limitations on what is possible to get The Community to a point where it is stable. Right now, it is still much like the Wild West or some cartoon. There may be nothing that they can do about trolls and abrupt admin actions like what Cyde did the other day to Avillia. But a few signals to the effect of "let's get down to business" and stop these crazy indef blocks of established users. It is so easy for one young man to tell anohter: "I will hate you forever", but that should not translate into the cartoon "blowing away" of that person. If Wikipedia were seen more as a "business" (perhaps at the cost of some of that youthful idealism), then maybe some of these explosive emotions would cause some of the extremists on both ends of the spectrum to go somewhere else. Hard to say, really, but worth a try, if even for a week or so with that one little ugly mark, right at the top of the Main Page.
I feel that Bradford Patrick is going to do a lot more good for WikiMedia. His hands are clean of past, petty fights and missteps. He is a visionary of a different sort. He "gets it" as far as Jimbo's vision is concerned but he brings a new influx of integrity and maturity to the process. I am hoping that it percolates down to a small change in culture over at Wikipedia® so that I might go back there and feel not quite so ostracized. Not quite so out-of-place among all these teenagers and twenty-somethings. Not quite so vulnerable to being indefinitely blocked by somebody half my age without the slightlest warning. Not threatened by people like David Gerard to have my work divorced from my past accounts just because of that man's personal emotions, no matter how popular he might be among the ladies in his life.
Wikipedia® might help to make Wikipedia not suck.
Definitely. Wikipedia depends on donations so it musn't do anything that makes it look like a business, as that will discourage contributions. Scranchuse 02:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Most of us think that Wikipedia should not look like a business. It will not motivate too many people to make contribs to the site. As mentioned above by user:Scranchuse and other users. FellowWikipedian 22:25, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
That pretty much sum's up the reason.
Most of us think that Wikipedia should not look like a business. It will not motivate too many people to make contribs to the site. As mentioned above by user:Scranchuse and other users. FellowWikipedian 22:25, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
That pretty much sum's up the reason.
This may sound harsh, but it if drives a bunch of people away who are so immature as to be bothered by that mark, then that might be a good thing for the Foundation. Negative feelings about that mark are emotional and a sign of immaturity. Mature people have patience and can wait more than five seconds before they go and revert a page or, if an admin, block a user. I am far from a paragon of maturity, but I know what it looks like. Mature people just get acclimated to these things. You do not have to be old in years to be mature (and visa versa).
I suppose there is a very important thing that will require some careful survey: who contributed the money in the last fund drive. What kind of person were they? Did teenagers send in those average $30 donations? Would the Foundation take it in the shorts financially? They will need to pay a marketing analyst to get those answers, but they would do well to spend some money in that direction. Of course, the Foundation is getting some money from other sources as well. I do not know the numbers or if/when they are reported to the public. But I wonder when the next fund drive is going to be as opposed to the low-key one that is always ongoing.
Business-like vs. barefoot an fancy-free. You can be both, to some degree. Look at successful health food stores and food co-ops. But if you run out of money, either go begging for a bailout or dissappear.
Really, they are trying to do a very good thing. And they have a very interesting and complicated interaction with the World that they are trying to observe, such as the recent Morton Brilliant example. Just like some other biographies I have worked on, I find that Wikipedia changes the world that it merely was meant to observe. It is very interesting. Like the free press that the USA has. I think I heard in Bradford's talk that somebody is already doing their PhD dissertation on Wikipedia.
I still think a one-week trial run would be very healthy thing, to probe more deeply into how people feel about themselves while it is up there.
I suppose there is a very important thing that will require some careful survey: who contributed the money in the last fund drive. What kind of person were they? Did teenagers send in those average $30 donations? Would the Foundation take it in the shorts financially? They will need to pay a marketing analyst to get those answers, but they would do well to spend some money in that direction. Of course, the Foundation is getting some money from other sources as well. I do not know the numbers or if/when they are reported to the public. But I wonder when the next fund drive is going to be as opposed to the low-key one that is always ongoing.
Business-like vs. barefoot an fancy-free. You can be both, to some degree. Look at successful health food stores and food co-ops. But if you run out of money, either go begging for a bailout or dissappear.
Really, they are trying to do a very good thing. And they have a very interesting and complicated interaction with the World that they are trying to observe, such as the recent Morton Brilliant example. Just like some other biographies I have worked on, I find that Wikipedia changes the world that it merely was meant to observe. It is very interesting. Like the free press that the USA has. I think I heard in Bradford's talk that somebody is already doing their PhD dissertation on Wikipedia.
I still think a one-week trial run would be very healthy thing, to probe more deeply into how people feel about themselves while it is up there.
Bradford's talk? Link please...... I am doing a thesis on Wikipedia as well for my Master's.
Thanks 
LOL - Brad call's it "Pesky legal requirements". Oh boy impressive legal help there.
I would call Brad's talk nothing more then Jimbo propaganda. He mostly talked about donations and how much money they got last year, $400,000 USD in total. There was hardly any mention of anything legal. What a joke.
I would call Brad's talk nothing more then Jimbo propaganda. He mostly talked about donations and how much money they got last year, $400,000 USD in total. There was hardly any mention of anything legal. What a joke.
Not really much of a requirement for the ®, strictly speaking. The burden is more-so on the publisher to verify that he is not infringing on a trademark rather than the owner of a trademark to make it publically visible.
The pretty big issue as far as publishing registered trademarks without the ® is implied ownership, sponsorshop, or approval.
Not including the ® in strictly commercial prints (ads) is fairly frowned apon, but Wikipedia doesn't seem to be too much into any ads... At all.
It would mostly be a vanity statement, a statement which would, admittedly, not benefit Wikipedia's image.
~Avil.
Note: I don't pawn off anything I say as a legal opinion. I furthermore cannot say THIS is too educated as far as opinions go; I'm not too well versed in trademark law and 'narrow' copyright law (IE: Applicable uses and principles; I try to be fairly up to date on such draconian measures at the DMCA designed for copyright enforcement.)
The pretty big issue as far as publishing registered trademarks without the ® is implied ownership, sponsorshop, or approval.
Not including the ® in strictly commercial prints (ads) is fairly frowned apon, but Wikipedia doesn't seem to be too much into any ads... At all.
It would mostly be a vanity statement, a statement which would, admittedly, not benefit Wikipedia's image.
~Avil.
Note: I don't pawn off anything I say as a legal opinion. I furthermore cannot say THIS is too educated as far as opinions go; I'm not too well versed in trademark law and 'narrow' copyright law (IE: Applicable uses and principles; I try to be fairly up to date on such draconian measures at the DMCA designed for copyright enforcement.)
That speech was SOOOOO boring! Anyway, yes, early on Brad Patrick does make a point that Wikipedia should be written with a ® next to it as it is trademarked. In other words, that Amorrow is right.
How does one register® a copyright on a image that was released as GFDL or is it on the name only?
Heh. I make reference to the thing, after sitting there for months and a few days later it moves. It is now at
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/audio/archive
There is a second talk in that archive: "Web of Ideas: The Authority of Wikipedia"
It is about the "authoritativeness" of Wikipedia®. It is a bit longer than Brad's talk, but User:Sj and to a lesser degree User:AaronSw participate in the last half.
You might find it to be a bit more lively. It is by this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Weinberger
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/audio/archive
There is a second talk in that archive: "Web of Ideas: The Authority of Wikipedia"
It is about the "authoritativeness" of Wikipedia®. It is a bit longer than Brad's talk, but User:Sj and to a lesser degree User:AaronSw participate in the last half.
You might find it to be a bit more lively. It is by this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Weinberger
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