In a decision announced last week and proclaimed a "landmark", the Wikimedia Foundation prevailed in a lawsuit brought by three people over alleged defamation on the French Wikipedia.
The plaintiffs were attempting to have the Wikimedia Foundation declared responsible for an article in the French Wikipedia that identified them as gay activists. The statements, which also referred to one of them having difficulty adopting children because of his activism, were introduced by an unregistered editor and subsequently removed. The plaintiffs sought to hold Wikimedia liable for € 69,000 in damages based on a claim of defamation and invasion of privacy.
Taking the position that the Wikimedia Foundation had been notified of the problem, one of the plaintiffs claimed to have contacted the foundation to complain. Efforts to locate a message from the plaintiffs failed to yield fruit, and Wikimedia's position was that the disputed content was removed promptly once it was notified. While not reaching the issue of whether the statements were legally defamatory, the judge noted that any damage was mitigated by the removal of the material from Wikipedia. He concluded that Wikimedia "acted promptly to cease giving access to the content once it became aware of its character."
The decision came Monday, 29 October, from Judge Emmanuel Binoche of the tribunal de grande instance (the court of initial jurisdiction) in Paris. The ruling was based on a French law known as the LCEN (Law for the Security of the Digital Economy). Somewhat like Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the U.S., the LCEN distinguishes Internet hosts from content publishers, and provides some protection from liability for hosts who are unaware of illegal content. By classifying Wikimedia as a host, it would relieve the foundation from the burden of actively screening for defamatory material.
Some news reports pointed to the case as the first European litigation involving the Wikimedia Foundation. However, it should be mentioned that the local chapter for Germany, Wikimedia Deutschland, prevailed in a lawsuit last year over whether the name of a deceased individual could be published in Wikipedia. In the United States, Wikimedia seems to have avoided direct involvement in litigation so far, although Wikipedia edits have been the subject of lawsuits involving other parties, such as one involving a Nebraska school, and a professional golfer complaining about defamation. The Wikimedia Foundation was included as a party in a wide-ranging lawsuit filed in Canada by a Green Party activist earlier this year, with such companies as Yahoo and Google as co-defendants, over postings about the plaintiff on Wikipedia and elsewhere; Wikimedia is seeking to have the matter dismissed.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Fall Out Boy". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
The Foundation announced the acceptance of a $20,000 grant, earmarked for the process of creating copyleft illustrations for use within Wikipedia and elsewhere. The grant was given by entrepreneur Philip Greenspun. The project, coordinated by Brianna Laugher (Pfctdayelise) and Cary Bass (Bastique), will involve a list of needed illustrations, to be compiled on the Meta-Wiki, followed by a period in which users can sign up for an illustration, and upon completion and acceptance, earn the amount offered for that illustration (most will be around US$40 per illustration, with some variation). The grant marks the first foray into paid content creation for the Foundation.
The Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser continued this week. In the first fifteen days of the fundraiser, about 15,700 people had donated, and the Foundation had raised about US$442,000.
After an update to the sitenotice displayed on all Wikimedia websites, the fundraising totals on November 4-6 were roughly doubled from prior levels. In response to a thread critiquing the banner's design, Board member Erik Möller said,
I think no matter what we put at the top of the page, we'll probably get 20 comments telling us that it's horrible, unprofessional, too professional, too preachy, not preachy enough, too irritating, not irritating enough, too colorful, too gray, too banner-like, not sufficiently banner-like, too familiar, too unfamiliar, [etc.] I'll stop now. Since we put up the new banner, the number of donations per day has more than doubled. Whether this is due to its newness or the new design -- it's clear that we have to make modifications like this to meet our fundraising goals. We need $4.6 million for the FY 2007-2008, and so far we've raised $368,000. We expect that we'll need another fundraiser in 2008 and we also have some major donors interested in contributing for this fundraiser; this one will run into late December. During that time we'll experiment further with the notice, the landing page, etc. Helpful comments are appreciated at Wikipedia:Fundraising redesign.
Later in the thread, in response to a comment by Dragons flight asking whether the US$4.6 million budget was overestimated, Möller said,
There are two paths the Foundation could take in its organizational development: 1) Focus, 100%, on hosting Wikipedia and generating enough funding to do so -- rely almost exclusively on ad hoc volunteerism for everything beyond hosting. 2) Build WMF into a mission-driven non-profit that is not merely hosting a website, but distributing knowledge to people world-wide, and reaching out to the global community for participation and content creation. These paths are extremely different. For example, in scenario 1), it would not be necessary to relocate the Foundation from St. Petersburg, Florida to San Francisco, as we've decided to do -- we would surely be able to support basic server hosting without it. On the other hand, becoming a successful and global charity requires access to a different talent pool, the ability to execute program directives, etc. As Jimmy's video should make clear, the Foundation (through its majority-elected Board of Trustees) has chosen path 2) -- we're not merely a webhost; we want to be a new kind of charity: a charity of free knowledge. And this necessitates that we prepare & plan our growth accordingly.
Various updates were made this week to job openings listed for the Wikimedia Foundation. Job listings for the position of Personal Assistant to the Executive Director and Office Manager closed last week. Meanwhile, job openings for the position of Accountant, Head of Development, Head of Communications, and Head of Business Development were scheduled to close on Monday, though the openings still remained on the Wikimedia Foundation's website as of press time.
The office of Chief Financial and Operating Officer is scheduled to close on November 12, while the volunteer position of Treasurer of the Board of Trustees will close on December 1. In an update on Friday, Foundation advisor Sue Gardner noted that the positions of software developers, public outreach and partnerships development will open soon.
A list of all users who have created at least 50 namespace non-redirect pages was compiled this week. The results show bots at the top two positions, with Blofeld of SPECTRE as the top human, with 11,752 articles created (most of which, according to Blofeld of SPECTRE, were geographical stubs). 180 IP addresses or IP ranges had written at least 50 articles, accounting for over 21,000 articles.
Nominations for the December 2007 Arbitration Committee Elections opened this week. As of press time, 21 users had nominated themselves: Cbrown1023, David Fuchs, Deskana, Dreamafter, Durova, Endlessdan, Giano, Hemlock Martinis, Messedrocker, Misza13, Monsieurdl, Moreschi, Newyorkbrad, Physchim62, Pilotguy, Raul654, Ryan Postlethwaite, Shell Kinney, Swatjester, White Cat, and Wizardman.
Of the five current arbitrators, only Raul654 has indicated that he will stand for re-election. Fred Bauder, Mackensen, and Neutrality have all stated that they will not run in the 2007 elections; SimonP has not yet indicated whether he plans to stand for re-election. These five seats will expire in 2007; it has not yet been noted whether any other seats will be added or replaced.
WikiProject Lists of basic topics is a WikiProject dedicated to improving Wikipedia's collection of basic topic lists, or lists of topics in a subject area. Started by The Transhumanist (talk · contribs) on 22 October 2007, it is very new. As a result, the project has only four members, but grew to that size within six days.
The project has found some gaps in basic list topics, and has compiled the list below of lists that should be created.
Project members have also located several lists that are incomplete, and need expansion, and have listed them.
List of basic geography topics is currently nominated to become a featured list. It is a slightly controversial nomination, as the list is a basic topic list, it serves as a sort of "table of contents" with other articles in it, and thus has no sources.
Since the Basic topic lists project is relatively new, it is in need of help. If you are interested, you can join it by adding your name to its members list.
Eleven users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Kwsn (nom), Ev (nom), Dppowell (nom), Accounting4Taste (nom), Athaenara (nom), Lradrama (nom), east718 (nom), Chris G (nom), The-G-Unit-Boss (nom), Davewild (nom), and GlassCobra (nom).
Three bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Eubot (task request), PxBot (task request), and Chris G Bot 3 (task request).
Twenty-four articles were promoted to featured status last week: Lambeosaurus (nom), Turkey Vulture (nom), Xenon (nom), Chetwynd, British Columbia (nom), Stede Bonnet (nom), Kingdom of Mysore (nom), Chinua Achebe (nom), Branded to Kill (nom), Cillian Murphy (nom), Jack Sparrow (nom), James II of England (nom), Wiglaf of Mercia (nom), December to Dismember (2006) (nom), Borobudur (nom), Flight feather (nom), Blyth, Northumberland (nom), Hurricane Dog (1950) (nom), Edward Low (nom), Dungeons & Dragons (album) (nom), Motörhead (nom), Pinkerton (album) (nom), Lawrence Sullivan Ross (nom), Ganesha (nom), and Shelton Benjamin (nom).
Seven lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Claymore chapters (nom), List of Minnesota Vikings first-round draft picks (nom), List of Ipswich Town F.C. players (nom), List of York City F.C. players (nom), York City F.C. seasons (nom), NHL Plus-Minus Award (nom), and List of WWE European Champions (nom).
One topic was promoted to featured status last week: Mary Wollstonecraft (nom).
No portals or sounds were featured last week.
Two articles were de-featured last week: Separation of powers under the United States Constitution (nom), and Canadian House of Commons (nom)
No pictures, lists, portals, topics, or sounds were de-featured last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Plug-in hybrid, Halloween II, Karnataka, Arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, Four Times of the Day, 1880 Republican National Convention, and GameFAQs.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Murerplan, Human Skeleton, Landslide on Mars, Korean War, Bird Beaks, Beautiful Demoiselle, and Little Joe 1.
Fourteen pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
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This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.8 (f08e6b3), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
The Arbitration Committee accepted one new case this week, and closed one case.
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