On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 6:16 PM, Risker <[email protected]> wrote: > On 16 June 2014 20:48, phoebe ayers <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 11:17 AM, Risker <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Not quite sure what you're shouting about, Gerard. The amendment > clearly > > > gives individual projects the right to have an alternative to this > > > particular section of the terms of use, and that alternative can be > > either > > > more strict or less strict. > > > > > > > That's correct. Members of various projects asked for this kind of > > flexibility in the comment period, and the board agreed that we should > add > > the ability for projects to craft alternatives on a per-project basis to > > this amendment. > > > > In the absence of a local policy, however, the ToU amendment applies to > > every project. While this issue is a concern of many on the English > > Wikipedia, the amendment was not crafted specifically for en:wp; this has > > been an issue across many language communities. The terms of use > > (amendments and all) apply to all of our projects. > > > > best, > > -- phoebe > > > > > > I'm so very disappointed in the Board and the WMF for this TOU amendment, > which was obviously written to quell concerns about English Wikipedia, with > extremely little consideration of any other project. Now projects *must* > formally exempt practices that are perfectly acceptable to them: Commons in > particular, where professionals (who link to their personal for-profit > websites in their file descriptions) contribute a great deal of the highest > quality work; MediaWiki and all its developer-related sites, where a large > number of our best non-staff developers are financially supported by other > organizations; Wikidata, which is pure data and no benefit can be derived; > Wikisource, where no benefit can be derived; and a multitude of Wikipedias > that have openly welcomed editors who receive financial support or are paid > by various organizations without any issue whatsoever. It is extremely > unlikely that it will ever be enforced in the vast majority of WMF > projects. >
I'm sorry you're disappointed. But I don't really follow your reasoning. I don't know of many people who get paid *specifically* to upload photos or contribute to Wikidata. Perhaps a few cultural professionals.... who are already, in general, following this best practice. And if someone is specifically getting paid to upload photos to Commons (or contribute to another wiki) it seems, in general, like a good idea to know about it. (If a professional photographer that's not doing work for hire chooses to donate some of their professional-quality photos to the project -- in their spare time, as it were -- I don't think the amendment applies, though I leave discussion of that nuance to the legal team and the commons community). Anyway, I'm not sure why you are assuming that the amendment will automatically be abhorrent to every community that's not English Wikipedia. Of course projects do vary based on size and cultural norms and other factors; that's why we put in the local exemption clause however. > It would have been far more beneficial if the WMF and the Board had had the > courage to work directly with the English Wikipedia community to develop a > policy there instead of imposing it on hundreds of projects that not only > don't care, they will now have to create policies to counteract the effects > of this TOU amendment. Simply put, Terms of Use should never include > clauses whose enforcement is undesirable in a significant portion of the > overall site. > > I'll be off now to help Mediawiki create their RFC to essentially void this > decision. Of course you should feel free, though I'm not entirely sure how a provision that a person should disclose if they are getting paid specifically to edit that wiki (in mediawiki's case, it would likely be something along the lines of "I work for the Foundation" or "I work for someone else who has an interest in developing mediawiki and also developing documentation on the wiki") is especially undesirable. I'm pretty sure most paid developers do this anyway. (If someone is editing in their spare time -- on any project -- and not specifically getting paid for that work, the amendment doesn't apply). At any rate, I leave that specific discussion to the mediawiki community, where I suspect it's basically a non-issue. best, -- phoebe _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
