Wikiversity talk:General disclaimer

Protection
Protecting a legal disclaimer for editing by a legal representative makes sense. However, this is the general disclaimer and as far as I can tell no WMF representative has vetted it. -- Adrignola 16:46, 26 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Disclaimer: A disclaimer is generally any statement intended to specify or delimit the scope of rights and obligations that may be exercised and enforced by parties in a legally-recognized relationship. I have no clue to what extent any of the disclaimers that this or any other project uses has been vetted. I think legal issues are best left up to WMF to deal with, and I think this counts as one. -- dark lama  17:02, 26 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I;m going to look at the disclaimers later today and propose some adjustments so they are wikiversity specific. Afterwards I'll email Wikimedia Legal and ask that they be looked over and approved. We probably should make sure that WMF legal has approved these, regardless Geoff Plourde 17:07, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * A few link to Wikipedia at the moment. I could import those if you want to then adapt them for Wikiversity. Wikipedia's disclaimers are probably a good starting point since I assume they have been discussed substantially including issues such as WMF approval. Adambro 17:11, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Adam, that would be most helpful. I briefly glanced at the WP ones and I think we should review them and adjust the wording to apply to Wikiversity. Geoff Plourde 21:13, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. Doing a draft proposal should be fine. Maybe I am assuming too much in what the standing or purpose of these disclaimers are. Clarification on that from the WMF would be nice too. -- dark lama  17:25, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I've imported the relevant pages from Wikipedia and done a certain amount of adaptation work. More will be required but if we keep it as close as possible to Wikipedia's collection of disclaimers we'll probably not need to worry too much about having the WMF involved in checking them. Adambro 18:14, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * All those disclaimers should be protected IMO, and a subpage or another page used to draft changes. -- dark lama  18:18, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for those imports, Adambro. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 18:25, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I have unprotected this page at least for now so the community can work to improve all the content in Category:Wikiversity disclaimers. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 18:31, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Issues with recent edits and actions arising
The editing history of the page to this point indicates that it was drafted by the WV community (with not WMF involvements) - and most notably the bulk of the content (which the community finds acceptable) up until the recent edits was authored by JWSchmidt, the same editor who is now being prevented via block and protection of the page from further editing it. I think we need to appreciate this context.

JWSchmidt's recent edits were provocational in their content but more so in terms of their placement (e.g., had the content been placed on a talk page or WV:Colloquium or community review or the open letter page etc. it would probably would not have been reverted and we possibly wouldn't have had the escalation of the problem.) However, placing the content on a general disclaimer page which, whilst most likely not explicitly approved by the WMF nevertheless may well be used in a court of law should a legal case arise. Thus, understandably, the page probably does warrant extra attention in terms of ensuring that it is acceptable to the WMF and the local community. In its current form, JWSchmidt obviously finds it unacceptable but such controversial edits could have been approached in a more diplomatic matter as could the revert/delete/block/protect response (e.g., what about move/edit?). The revert/delete/block/protect response is understandable in that it is the kind of stronger response from the WV community that it seems the WMF board wants from the WV community with regard to content which is ________ (this is the part I'm not sure about - it would be helpful to get a clear statement from the WMF about what they're most concerned for the WV community to be paying closer attention to in terms of preventing/deleting/blocking/protecting). -- Jtneill - Talk - c 17:56, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * James, good points. I'm not going to comment on JWS's actions, because this is not the appropriate venue to do so. My sole purpose in proposing review of the disclaimers is to ensure that the disclaimers are applicable to WV, because using nonspecific disclaimers could lead to legal migraines for everyone in court. (Just want this on the record, so no misunderstandings of my reasoning for review) Geoff Plourde 21:22, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * "JWSchmidt's recent edits were provocational in their content"<-- I was providing Wikiversity participants with important information that they should have before participating at this wiki website. It is a sad day when providing relevant information to wiki participants is viewed as a "provocation". "controversial edits" <-- Providing needed information to Wikiversity participants is only controversial under the current regime of policy-violating admins who now control Wikiversity and who cannot allow truth to be spoken about events at Wikiversity. This kind of censorship is an embarrassment to the Wikiversity project and further alienates honest Wikiversity participants. This kind of censorship is damaging to the project. --JWSchmidt 22:43, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Protection restored (semi-protection)
I understand that the protection was once removed many years ago to allow improvements by anyone (Special:redirect/logid/262290), I believe this was important for incubation. On the other hand, since the general disclaimer (GD) became open to everyone, many unhelpful changes have been repeated, and every time somebody had to revert such edits. I think reasonable amount of time has passed since the creation of the GD, and I thought we should end incubation and start stabilization. I will also like to note that our GD was one of the last unprotected GDs, counterparts at other English-language sister projects are (semi-) protected, as well as some other versions of Wikiversity. I believe keeping our GD unprotected any more longer may have negative impact to other projects. This is my full reason for restoring to semi-protection. Questions can be asked at here or my talk page. Thank you for reading this long message. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 07:30, 28 November 2023 (UTC)