Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines/Archive 2

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The link to Blocked IPs from the Wikipedia policy page says "IPs which have been banned, and why". I don't see the "why" part here. -- Bignose

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Some of the most obvious "Wikipedia policy pages" have been moved to the "Wikipedia:" namespace, but I'm starting to get uncertain as to what is and isn't a policy page. Should anything related to Wikipedia be on there (that isn't already on meta)? What about pages about WikiWiki? How about discussion pages and subpages (e.g. General policy discussion? -- April

From the article:

Open content text and media are licensed by the copyright holder, Bomis, Inc., to the general public, permitting anyone to redistribute and alter the text free of charge, and guaranteeing that no one be able to restrict access to amended versions of the content.

Please, can someone tell me this is outdated nonsense based on the previous OPL license? As I have come to understand the wikipedia copyright issue, everything contributed is released under the GNU FDL, PERIOD. I never once agreed to reasign copyright of my contributions over to Bomis or anyone else for that matter. That is part of the power of this project (So I thought?) -- everyone who contributes owns their material and agrees to release it under the terms of the GNU FDL -- making a non-free fork almost completely impossible (since everyone who ever contributed would have to agree to the change in license). Furthermore, anyone else can freely modify or redistribute all the material based upon this license.

However, if Bomis is claiming ownership then they can, on a whim overnight change the license to anything they want. Not that I believe Jimbo Wales would do such a thing, but car accidents happen all the time and liquidators don't care didly about the project. Yeah, I know; all the older versions of the 'pedia would still be under the FDL. But one of the reasons I contribute is because I have the knowledge that what I do here will forever be free and there will never be an unfree version. I really don't know if I would continue contributing without this knowledge. --maveric149, Wednesday, April 10, 2002

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I'm sure it's just outdated. From the discussions we've had about the topic here and on the mailing list, it's clear that the intent is that Bomis hold a collection copyright on Wikipedia as a whole, but that individual articles are still copyrighted by their original author(s), who grant use of them under the GFDL to Bomis and to the public. Further, Bomis grants license to use the collection under the GFDL as well. Yes, there need to be clearer statements of these legal positions here. -- Lee Daniel Crocker

Thanks for the assurance LDC. BTW, I don't have much of a (if any) problem with Bomis having a "collection" copyright under the FDL -- it is their right for forking over the dough to pay the bills and providing a place for us all to contribute (so long as individual articles will forever be free). I would like to take this issue to the wikipedia mailing list though... Just so we can all be clear on this issue. --maveric149

I agree, it must just be outdated. Wikipediarules2221