Jump to content

User:Jamesday

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jamesday (talk | contribs) at 23:28, 13 September 2003 (added not a lawyer note.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

New comments immediately below this paragraph please, even though it isn't the normal culture here.

Thaks for the welcomes and such. I'm letting Bush discussion simmer for a week or so, since there is no urgency about reaching a consensus.JamesDay 07:32, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hello James, and Welcome to the Wikipedia... (Sorry, Mav and sometimes Angela are the red-carpet greeters. -- Nice work on Diabeted mellitus, and other works. See WP:VP for my comment on Bush. -戴&#30505sv 04:04, Sep 12, 2003 (UTC)

bio

Manager/head sysop at the CompuServe Diabetes & Hypoglycemia forum, promo/web person at their Comedy Central forum, a moderator/sysop and handler of some technical issues in their community for sysops, one of many sysops in their computer areas, former manager of their Benchmarks & Standards forum. One of the people tracking IP law for that group of communities; not a lawyer. One of the developers of the SpamPal anti-spam program (perhaps second in knowledge of the core program and one of the plugin authors). Programmer who started out with FORTRAN then progressed quickly through B, Basic, Pascal, C, C++, SQL on Oracle/Sybase/MS and a variety of other things. Tend to become technical problem fixer of last resort wherever I end up. Occasionally pontificate on moderation philosophy, with emphasis on two key rules: "anything worth saying can wait a day" and "someone thought it was worth writing, either work out why before responding, or make a question your first response".:) Wonders whether the apparent presence of Quaker dispute resolution philosophy in the documentation of the Wikipedia is deliberate or coincidental evolution - for whatever reason it's there, it was quite striking and welcome.

Pushing for 1.0

Pushing for 1.0 at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Pushing_To_1.0 is interesting. There's a logical model which embraces most of the requirements there but hasn't been suggested yet, so I'll take a try at it here.

Statement of beliefs:

  • The Wikipedia will tend to evolve over time to include all knowledge, however arcane. This is good and should be embraced to a generous degree, so that higher levels can be high school level, more detaied levels university articles and greater detail still in items for professionals in the field.
  • It is desirable to be able to extract subsets of the work based on significance, to allow arbitrarily detailed publication views, both to facilitate print publication and to hide unnecessary depth online.
  • The Wikipedia is fundamentally a dynamic work and it should be possible to say "make me my encyclopedia now", with all of its content up to date as of 24 hours ago.
  • It is desirable to assist people in selecting subsets which they will not find offensive according to their beliefs, be they religious, social, legal or parental.
  • It is desirable in the future to have index articles for specific subject areas and link depth limited extraction to construct an encyclopedia of chemistry or medicine or whatever, as a subset of the work with less breadth and more depth. The encyclopedia need not become useless in your field as you specialise.

Methods:

  1. All portions of articles have an importance rank. This starts at a base value of 10,000 for all new articles. High numbers indicate more arcane knowledge. 1 is the ultimate truth about everything, in one sentence. Infinity is all facts about everything, however trivial, taking infinite space.
  2. All articles with a score lower (importance greater than) than the currently set user preference value will be displayed/ printed/ whatever.
  3. A perfect system has a score which is influenced by:
    1. A score from -2 to +2 assigned by every logged in user who chooses to give a score
    2. The score weighted by the degree to which the willingly entered demographic profile of the scorer matches the demographic profile of the viewer.
    3. This computationally and database intensive, for scores cannot be stored as fixed values and all scores from all users must be kept with each article, to allow dynamic weighting.
    4. A demographic profile of a logged in user contains ranks 1-10 for how strongly the logged in user wishes to claim to be associated with a particular view and all of these entries are entirely optional. It should never be mandatory to enter any of this data.
    5. Demographic profile affiinity statements are items such as:
      1. I wish to view material which some parents may wish to shield children from.
      2. I have Christian/ Muslim/ Atheist/ whatever religious beliefs, one question per belief which people request.
    6. The affinity weighting will automatically tend to shield children specified as having strong Christian belief from material which others having strong scores in that area have ranked negatively. Someone with high Muslim score will be unlikely to seee an article about the book "Satanic Verses". Someone with a low Muslim score will be quite likely to see it.
  4. Creates my own personal encyclopedia, for each individual viewer.
  5. A first approximation has:
    1. Sysops setting fixed scores from 1 to 30 for each article, which are multiplied by 1,000 internally.
    2. End users specifying a single 'detail level' in their profile.
    3. Only articles and portions of articles with a lower score (less detail) than the current detail level are displayed.
    4. Primarily addresses the question of how to achieve print and CD editions, by adjusting the desired 'detail level' to reach the target edition size.

Enough, for now. Time to let thoughts simmer and read the version 1.0 page again before writing more. And at some point, enumerate the issues there which this appears to address.

Wikipedia:Copyright issues

A few corrections and notes

  • Wikipedia does not currently comply with the requirements for a DMCA safe harbor. The following should be linked from at least the main page:
    • the details of the person who should receive DMCA take-down notices. Should follow the form laid out in the law, since that will obviously comply.
    • a statement of the policy on cancellation of accounts for repeat offenders.
    • See Condiions for Eligibility (i)(1)(A).
  • Even without the DMCA, Wikipedia would have little risk of actual liability. All it loses is the safe harbor. Prior law and cases had already established a clear lack of liability for online service providers, in part due to the CDA provisions. However, the fee has been paid and it is foolish to fail to complete the steps required to obtain the safe harbor.
  • Wikipedia need not refrain from editing things. There were decisions which suggested that and for a few years it was the safest course. They have been made obsolete by subsequent decisions and laws (CDA and DMCA) and can safely be disregarded.
  • Wikipedia may not rely on the DMCA for a print or CD edition. Those must be in compliance with the rest of the law, rather than rely on the DMCA protections for an online service provider. Fair use can still apply but the DMCA will not. It is essential for sysops to indicate confidence that an image or sound or written work is actually in the public domain or placed here by a valid license before something goes to CD or print. If you do not hold this view, I strongly recommend obtaining personal legal advice on this subject, particularly when it comes to sound recordings or photographs.
    • Wikipedia examining and rating images for this purpose does not invalidate the DMCA protection for the online work. The legal standard for the DMCA is actual knowledge. An opinion of a sysop is not actual knowledge, which has a high burden of proof. As a practical matter, it will take a DMCA take-down notice or equivalent (both sworn under penalty of purjury) before Wikipedia has actual knowledge.
  • It is possible to make fair use of photographs for a print edition but it is necessary to be conservative. Photo journalists tend to have excellent legal representation and the consequences of a negative decision are very nasty. On the online side, use of reduced size complete images has been found to be fair use in search engines but Wikipedia can't exploit that because it isn't a search engine. The DMCA is the best online protection route.
  • Note that Jimbo and developers may be considered to be employees or agents of Wikipedia and if they knowingly place a work here which is infringing, Wikipedia is most unlikely to be able to use a DMCA safe harbor for Jimbo and programmers are risky. That's direct infringement, not innocent infringement by the actiosn of third parties. I'm unsure of the status of sysops in this project. I think that the low threshold means that they are insufficiantly related to the project to create great risk but a sysop should pobably exercise more prudence than a non-sysop.

I'm one of those who tracks online service provider law for sysops in CompuServe communites, including routinely discussing these issues with two law professors and at least two other lawyers. I'm not a lawyer, you haven't paid me $1 to establish a client relationship and require me to exercise good professional care, so I'll deny everything if you get sued and lose all you own.:) JamesDay 10:42, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

If anyone has comments, please do place them at the top of the page. This area is a playpen for my thoughts and I'd rather be the person writing in this piece of space. The top, and greatest prominence, is for the world; the bottom for the wanderings of my mind.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Jamesday&oldid=1466697"