

Wikipedia new Terms of Use (effective May 25, 2012) - madmaze
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_(2012)/en

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tokenadult
This really caught my eye when I visited Wikipedia as a logged-in editor
yesterday:

"Under the following conditions:

"Responsibility — You take responsibility for your edits (since we only host
your content).

A huge number of I.P. edits, and not a few edits by logged-in editors,
currently show no sense of personal responsibility.

"Civility — You support a civil environment and do not harass other users.

This is why I edit very little on Wikipedia anymore. If I try to edit on any
subject that I actually have a lot of sources for,

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

I get into time-wasting edit wars, without even much by way of administrator
enforcement of the existing civility rules.

"Lawful Behavior — You do not violate copyright or other laws.

Some of highest-volume "contributors" on Wikipedia, including at least one
person who made it onto the Arbitration Committee, appear to have been serial
plagiarists.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spotting_possible_cop...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spotting_possible_copyright_violations)

"No Harm — You do not harm our technology infrastructure.

"Terms of Use and Policies — You adhere to the below Terms of Use and to the
applicable community policies when you visit our sites or participate in our
communities."

A reasonably noble set of aspirations, but with number of active
administrators declining in "unsustainable fashion,"

[http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Wikimedia_Editor...](http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Wikimedia_Editors#Chapter_Three:_The_future_.282007-present.29)

and many of those administrators being callow and inexperienced besides, it's
not clear how any of these goals can be achieved.

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greenyoda
I think one can argue with Wikipedia's statement that "we only host your
content". If Wikipedia empowers editors with administrative privileges,
including the ability to enforce rules like "no original research", lock and
delete articles, block users, etc., they would seem to wield a lot of indirect
power over what kind of content users can and can't post.

Contrast this with a web hosting provider like Rackspace or Amazon AWS who
really "only hosts your content". They generally won't delete your content
unless there are legal issues (e.g., alleged copyright infringement, court
order, etc.).

~~~
sold
Think what if YT automatically deleted videos with 90% dislikes. They would
only "host your content" then, even though users would have some kind of
"administrative privileges". On Wikipedia, it is not that automatic, yet
administrators are expected to execute "community will" in the same way.
Choosing administrators is also done by other editors, Wikimedia rarely
influences this process.

