Wikibooks talk:No legal threats

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Adapted from en.wiki. In an effort to protect Wikibooks or the Wikimedia Foundation, I propose this policy be enforced ASAP. A poll to determine consensus is below. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 21:46, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

First off, you absolutely need to change references from "wikipedia" to say "wikibooks". How can we vote on a policy that doesnt even reference this project? Next, while i understand what you are saying about threats ruining the whole atmosphere, at wikibooks, we need some threats, because we can't have users violating copyright to post information here. In fact, we should never need legal threats, because everybody should always perfectly follow all applicable laws. Of course, this isnt the case. If a contributer here posts copyrighted information, the entire wikibooks project could land in hot water for hosting it. I vote no to this policy, for those reasons. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 21:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Good call on the Wikipedia references. Not really sure what I was thinking. As to your other point, did you not even see the big "Note:" on the policy page? It specifically allows for people to claim copyvios. Duh, what kind of policy would that be if we allowed copyvios to go unchallenged? --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 21:48, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

What i dont understand is what other kinds of (plausable) legal threats could there even be here except for copyvio threats? --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 21:57, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Threatening to sue Wikibooks or the Wikimedia Foundation for modules or remarks made about a certain person or thing. Or a threat of legal action if a module is not removed from the project. Or between editors threatening to take another editor to court for something they have written. There are quite a few possibilities, and like I said, it might be more for liability protection than for actual deflection of legal threats. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 22:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I suppose that makes good sense, I'll change my vote for now --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 22:03, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Consensus Poll to enforce

Should the proposed policy, Wikibooks:No legal threats, be an enforced policy?

Yes

1. Liability protection. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 21:46, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
2. It seems reasonable enough to me. I'm not much of a legal-minded person. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 22:03, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
3. Looks good to me. Odd bloke 15:29, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
4. I would support {{enforced}} on the current version. --Kernigh 22:57, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

No

1. • For the reasons listed above. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 21:34, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
2. People can take legal action if they want to and they should be able to warn people if they are considering it. Otherwise you get people out of the blue suing people.Dolive21 17:08, 30 November 2005 (UTC) (adding on to my previous comments from here) Peoples the world over have decided to allow people to seek legal redress for their greivances. Such a system exists in just about every country of the world.Dolive35 11:21, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
3. I guess I'm weighing in on this matter now. To have this page as a guideline, I would support. This is more common sense than something that could be used as justification to ban a user... presumably the reason this should become an enforced policy. If we need this as liability protection, we should add to or modify Wikibooks:General disclaimer instead. If you make a legal threat and don't follow through, it is illegal and you can be sued for barrity as a counter-claim against you. In other words, if you try to pull legal manuverings and threaten all kinds of legal action, you had better be prepared to put your money where your mouth is, and make sure you have actually read the applicable laws to make sure you have a reasonable chance to succeed. You could in theory also have criminal charges pressed against you if you make a legal threat improperly. In other words, making legal threats has legal consequences and there is no need to make a disclaimer policy that is likely to screw things up further if you have to go to court. In addition, I don't know of a specific instance on Wikibooks where this is needed, although this is famous last words and the last time I made a comment like that I found myself eating my own words. I just don't know why a policy like this is needed on Wikibooks at this time. --Rob Horning 10:06, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
4. This isn't Wikipedia, and hopefully will never become as divisive and abrasive as Wikipedia. I don't think we should be looking to copy our policies from there. That's not to say I would welcome someone coming here and making lots of legal threats, it's just I don't think we should have a policy that gives people ideas. One of the easiest ways to get people to think of something is to tell them not to think about it! Jguk 23:49, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
5. Before we make ourselves little dictators of our virtual domain, perhaps we ought to think about the ramifications. Systems of crime and punishment are a failure state. They are an admission that we weren't able to work congenially as co-editors on a common project — that our little Animal Farm couldn't exist without making some of us "more equal." Do we really want to duplicate the system of punishment and vandalism that exists at Wikipedia? Is their instruction creep working for them? Perhaps we could learn something from our founder. --Zephram Stark 03:55, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem we are seeing, again and again, is this attitude that some poor victim of a biased rant in Wikipedia ought to not get pissed and take us up on our offer of "anyone can edit" but should rather immerse themselves in our arcane internal culture until they understand the right way to get things done. I do not know what is going to change, but something BIG has got to happen and SOON about this issue, because the amount of time it is consuming for some of our best editors is getting way out of control.

~Jimbo Wales May 3, 2006 WikiEN-l

6 Can we really ban people for raising legal issues? If they have a case they must be able to raise it here. RobinH 10:13, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Comments

This is an enforced policy on other Wikimedia Foundation projects, and Jimbo himself said this policy should be in place here as well. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 17:37, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

How many votes do we need to lable this one {{enforced}}? --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 00:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

We just need a good idea of general community consensus. Since it is a policy and not just a small little poll, perhaps a few more people expressing their opinions (either way) would be nice. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 16:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Move to "rejected" status

The poll is equivocal and a consensus is not being achieved. See discussion in staff lounge where the move to rejected was unopposed. RobinH 11:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I only found this proposal thanks to Robert's link to current proposals. I know I'm far too late to vote but I am glad that this was rejected. Xania ^talk 21:37, 23 March 2007 (UTC)