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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5→Archive 7

about content and links

What do the hacks do? — Dzonatas 17:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK they're hacks in the good sense of the word (features, expansions, etc). —Locke Cole • t • c 20:53, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Ok, so they may be extensions or other good hacks. How do they violate the copyright? Does it redistribute source? — Dzonatas 21:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
They don't. The "copyright" issue is so small and insignificant that it's a non-issue as far as I'm concerned. Specifically, people mentioning the "copyright" issue are referring to phpbbhacks distributing a modified version of the subSilver SDK (which contains a PSD (Photoshop) file containing all the original artwork used for the standard subSilver theme distributed with phpBB 2.x). As that's the only potential copyright infringement on the entire site (out of hundreds of other downloads) I am not sold on the idea that it's a significant reason to exclude that particular link. Redistributing source is okay since it's licensed under the GPL I believe. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:08, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
"The subSilver SDK is not released under the GPL and is not subject to that licence.
You are permitted to use the files contained within this package for personal use only. You may not use the files in any commercial package in part or in full without the express permission of phpBB Group. You may not re-distribute this package in any way, shape or form without prior agreement from phpBB Group (this includes linking directly to the package on this site). If the files in this package are used to produce images for any non-phpBB Group product the images or packaged image set should carry a name which indicates its origins as being phpBB or otherwise clearly state that phpBB originated the graphics. This package and its contents are Copyright © 2001 phpBB Group, All Rights Reserved."
Copyright infringement is still copyright infringement. phpBB itself is GPL, the subSilver SDK is not Anon 01:21, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
That's fascinating. Except I never said the subSilver SDK was under the GPL. I said the "source" was under the GPL (that is, the source code to phpBB). —Locke Cole • t • c 03:08, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad that we've established that phpBB is indeed under the GPL, and that people can, in fact, redistribute it. However, the point is that the subSilver SDK is not under the GPL, is not allowed to be redistributed, and should not be there. It is a violation of copyright laws, and is illegal. That and the fact that the wikipedia does not allow sites with "objectionable amounts of advertising" is why phpbbhacks.com should not be linked Anon 06:35, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
It's irrelevant, okay? Total non-starter. One download out of hundreds, and it might be illegal (and if it were illegal, why is it still up for download)? I'm just not impressed at all with the argument that one download on the site means it can't be listed here when we provide a direct link to The Pirate Bay that has links to thousands of illegal downloads. —Locke Cole • t • c 07:33, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
TPB is perfectly legal under Swedish law (And incidently NZ law which I live under, so I have no objection to what they do), so that is a null argument Anon 08:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Mediator comments

My sense of things is that the problem centers around:

  1. the usage of the term "official" (as defined by outside sources, or represented by partisan or POV parties), to have a meaningful bearing on a Wikipedia article.
  2. the attempt by partisan parties to edit a Wikipedia article according to partisan standards rather than by agreeing to consensus or finding other solutions

On the first point, the term "official" does not have substantial meaning here. We make our own rules about what can and cannot go on an article. On the second point, I agree with those who have characterized this as an improper attempt to bogart an article, centering around what is deemed "unofficial". A simple find search for 'unofficial' on the page confirmed this.

Someone wrote: "I simply believe that allowing even one unofficial external link would be a bad precedent, because determining whether a Web site is worthy of inclusion in the external links section is very subjective and will eventually lead to never-ending arguments over the value of a certain site." This is wrong, and this fallacious type of justification can be applied to any context where a partisan's claimed desire to put an end to "never-ending arguments" is in fact just a rhetorical veneer, for "we get to decide, because we're official." Put simply, partisans must live with the inconvenience of "never-ending arguments", and no form of censorship should be accepted as a solution.

That being the foundation, the elementary compromise solution is to simply separate "official" and "unofficial" links, and include brief notes on what their content is. I like to get as much information about the site linked to, before I click to it. Caveats and warnings can be included, as long as they are brief and understandable --ie. not based on some partisan notion of what is proper and what is not. How can we agree on those descriptions? The descriptions must be NPOV, of course, and I would encourage the partisans present to familiarise themselves with that policy. (NPOV is in fact our first policy, taking the goal of creating an encyclopedia as an axiom, and understanding civility is a clear second.)-Ste|vertigo 04:43, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I think breaking it into sections is a good idea. As an example of how to handle external links, I think we should use Microsoft Windows as a guide. For sites dealing in hacks/extensions, I think it'd be reasonable to place some of them in a sub-section called "Extensions/Hacks". —Locke Cole • t • c 08:38, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I am all for this idea, provided that we have in place a function to make sure links are useful, valid, and comly to Wikipedia/s guidelines Anon 09:10, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Separation of links is perfectly fine with me, but I'd appreciate it if we could let this mischaracterization of myself and various other users as some sort of official representatives of the phpBB Group die out. It is dead wrong, and to see a mediator use it is rather disappointing. æle ✆ 19:18, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
As I said above, I am not (any more) against "non-official" links. I'm against the specific link to phpBBHacks for the reasons of genuine copyright violation and objectionable amounts of advertising. Pti 19:21, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I have inserted a new section and added a selection of the external links listed above. These links (and the act of adding them to the article) are, I believe, in compliance with Wikipedia guidelines and/or policy (specifically WP:EL, WP:NPOV, amongst others). I have also removed the ownership claim to the article made in the comments. —Locke Cole • t • c 22:31, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

That is fine, however I have removed to links - the phpBB Book and the old version

The book removed because WP:EL dosen't allow bookstores The old version since they are avilable from the sf.net page Anon 00:27, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Apologies if anyone has felt slandered by a label. I simply wanted to drive home the point that we must find agreement with regard to the terms and labels. All that said, its good to see some agreement among all parties. The external links/Refs section on Microsoft looks like a good example indeed. Edward (Anon) -- I would suggest you refrain from removing any links for now, and instead put notes which assert what content is what. That said, if any removal is non-controversial, and not just by your own opinion, then there's no issue with removing it. The function is consensus. - there is no automatic function for inclusion or exclusion. -Ste|vertigo 01:39, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

phpBB 3.0 feature list needs sources

I haven't been able to find evidence for half of the listed features for phpBB 3.0, therefore the sources tag. I think this sort of information would be better represented by a few links instead of an inline list. æle ✆ 01:36, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=104463 and http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=131610 maybe? Anon 02:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I rather agree, it's not very encyclopaedic now I look at it again. Pti 22:29, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Articles should be about historical facts. A future feature list is not a historical fact. There are other parts of the article that aren't reflective on the past. — Dzonatas 02:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Specific is an eight letter word beginning with s, and this comment is specifically about phpBBHacks

The issue of linking to phpBBHacks has not been resolved. The arguments against it have been dismissed by User:Locke Cole for specious reasons. To reiterate;

  1. phpBBHacks.com breaches copyright.
    1. phpBB.com offers a download of the source files, in PSD form, of the subSilver images.
    2. These images are an original, non-derived copyrighted work of the phpBB group.
    3. The PSD source files of the images are not released under the GPL.
    4. The license terms of the PSD source files prohibit redistribution of the source files in any form:
      1. "You may not re-distribute this package in any way, shape or form without prior agreement from phpBB Group"
    5. phpBBHacks.com redistributes the PSD source files at this address: http://www.phpbbhacks.com/download/294 . Contrary to the description, these were not "re-created" but converted from the PSD source files into an older PSD format. This was done by Daz, a former member of the phpBB team, for the phpBB Group, and the files on phpBBHacks.com are taken from phpBB.com.
    6. phpBBHacks.com's redistribution of the PSD source files is in breach of the license of those files, and therefore in breach of copyright.
  2. phpBBHacks.com contains an objectionable amount of advertising.
    1. http://www.coyote.org.nz/phpbbhacks.jpg documents the advertising on phpBBHacks.com.
    2. Leaving aside the links to other sites in the same "network" as phpBBHacks, there are still at least ten significant adverts on the front page of phpBBHacks.
    3. Ten adverts is objectionable.
    4. This volume of advertising is not seen on other sites linked from the article.

WP:External links informs us not to link sites with objectionable amounts of advertising. I rather feel that phpBBHacks comes under this heading.

WP:External links informs us not to knowingly link to sites which violate copyrights. It has been suggested that linking to The Pirate Bay from the relevant article sets a precedent allowing the inclusion of the phpBBHacks link. However:

  1. The linking of The Pirate Bay from the article regarding that site is much more highly justified, as the article regarding that site is, in fact, entirely about that site.
  2. The Pirate Bay does not, it appears, break Swedish law.
  3. Suggesting that something is not wrong because it is being done in another article has already been dismissed as a fallacious argument, when it was noted that vBulletin only allows official links. See Talk:VBulletin#External_Links for the largely non-controversial and very short discussion regarding the systematic restriction of links in the vBulletin article to official links only.
  4. This does not address the issue of the objectionable volume of advertising in any way.

Reiterating again, I am not against the inclusion of official links. I am against the inclusion of phpBBHacks.com for the reasons enumerated above.

Please address these points and consider consensus when you edit the article.

Pti 14:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding point #1, Wikipedia is not a court of law. I will not address that further, as the argument has absolutely no merit. Regarding the advertising, I viewed the site in Internet Explorer and noted a horizontal banner ad across the top, as well as vertical banner ad across the right edge of the page. The only other "large" ad to appear was an inline advertisement. Any other "advertising" was small (less than 5% of the displayed page) or text-based. Overall, I'd guess the total amount of advertising to be less than 30% of the page (from top to bottom).
In light of the fact that there's no clear reason not to include the link, I have re-added the link. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
If Wikipedia is not a court of law, then why is there a policy in place against linking to sites that breach copyright? Why, for that matter, is there a policy in place against breaching copyright on Wikipedia? Do you believe that no breach of copyright can be asserted outside of a courtroom for the relevant jurisdiction? Would you care, that failing to be the case, to explain how the argument of breached copyright has no merit when Wikipedia external link policy disqualifies links which breach copyright?
Furthermore, before acting without regard to achieving consensus, would you please explain how you do not find:
  1. One large graphical horizontal banner advert, often Flash
  2. One large graphical vertical banner advert, often Flash
  3. Two large graphical square adverts, often Flash, breaking up the page content
  4. One small graphical horizontal banner advert
  5. Numerous text adverts
  6. Numerous internal adverts for "iFroggy" free and paid services
which you quantify yourself to be a third of the page, to not be a large amount of advertising? phpBBHacks.com falls foul of two WP:External links policies. I think this "merits" further discussion rather than the unilateralism you are employing in your edits and your arguments.
So that interested parties can once again see the quantity of advertising being referred to; http://img1.yoxio.com/img/223737.jpg
Pti 22:24, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
A few things–
  1. I said less than 30% of the page was advertising, not that it was 30%.
    • I believe "objectionable" is more likely towards 50+%.
  2. If there is a policy against linking to sites with copyright infringements, then why is The Pirate Bay linked to?
    • There is, of course, no correct answer to this. My argument isn't that we shouldn't link to sites with copyright infringement on them (in fact, my argument is that Wikipedia should not care about what a 3rd party site does; it is not an encyclopedias business to determine right from wrong, only to report on what the world perceives as right or wrong), but that the amount of infringing material on phpBB Hacks is so insignificant as to be irrelevant. One potentially illegal download out of hundreds does not, in my opinion, make this site run afoul of WP:EL.
I will, as above, strongly urge you to stop with the article ownership campaign. You have no consensus to keep this link out (just as I have no consensus to keep the link in). I will not engage in this debate again, as it appears to just be going in circles. I believe I have made my case, and will leave it at that. —Locke Cole • t • c 23:14, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
I have said it before, and I will say it again. TPB is not illegal. Under Swedish law, it is perectly allowed. Furthermore, hosting torrent files is in no way, shape or form coyright infringement. Therefore, it is legal, while hosting pds files aginst the licence is not.
Also, yes, objectionable advertising is subjective. However, would you happily put that amount of ads on your website? Time for a comparison with other sites over advertising methinks Anon 00:57, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
You keep making references to WP:OWN. Can you point me to a section that states that this is making an ownership claim? æle ✆ 22:54, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

RfC

Please place RfC commentary here for discussion - JustinWick 20:24, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

RfC - if PhpBBHacks.com is a popular, notable, and relevant website, then I don't see what the problem with linking to it is. Furthermore I do not see any Wikipedia official policy violations. Copyright violations on the site are not Wikipedia's concern and NPOV says that "damage to a party" is not a reason to censor something. - JustinWick 19:48, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

RfC by 203.173.24.42

RfC: I wanted to comment on this (I don't know what RfC means so forgive me if this rather long comment should go elsewhere). I'm user 203.173.59.111 who had the rather long-winded discussion with NeoThermic above. I am not a member of the phpBB group but I currently operate 5 (or is it 6...?) forums that run the phpBB software and have done so for quite some years now. During that time some of those forums have been modded up to buggery and beyond, with all sorts of features. Part of that involved assistance and mods I found at phpbbhacks. When I first came to this article and looked at "External Links" I thought "Gee, phpbbhacks.com should be there" and I checked the talk page. I found a discussion which I felt had resolved the "Unofficial link" issue (given that was the only reason ever given for the links removal) and added the link in (or back in, as the case was). I'll now go on to address each point in my opinion.

  1. Unofficial: The phpbbhacks.com link was historically removed because it was an "Unofficial Link". No other reason was ever given until I raised it in this discussion page. "Unofficial" is not and should not ever be given as a reason for removing any content or information from a wikipedia article, ever. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and I believe many articles benefit from having "unofficial" information and in some cases, content which is flat-out denied by "official" authorities (EG: Xenu).
  2. vBulletin: At the time I had the debate with NeoThermic, vBulletin actually had a handful of useful resources linked in its external links section, beyond just "official links". That's why I actually raised that page as an example above. It is clear that no formal wikipedia-wide policy has been formed on offical vs unofficial links. It is also clear that a large number of resources would be "lost" if unofficial links were banned wiki-wide. It is also important to keep in mind that vBulletin is not phpBB, they are two different products. Put simply, the vBulletin and phpBB pages are having a discussion about the same issue but they are in fact very different topics. The people who support vBulletin are happy with only vBulletin links being provided. If that is the case, then so be it. However, we here of the phpBB-ilk are clearly not satisfied at phpBB.com being the only available resource. That may be because vBulletin is a commercial product and proponents have no choice but to like official vBulletin sites. It may because phpBB is an open source project and has had issues with its development in the past. Who knows? It is probably pertinent that similar discussions have occured on IPB, Ikonboard and other pages under the "internet forum software" category. Most of those pages have only official links. I would however argue that that is probbaly because they are not as popular as phpBB and do not have many other well-known "non-official" websites about them. They're also mostly stubs.
  3. Copyright: I see the argument about copyright as a non-issue for four reasons.
    1. Firstly, out of literally thousands of mods and hacks, only one is being brought up as a copyright violation. One out of a thousand or two. So not even 1% of the web-site is devoted to "illegal copyrighted material". Out of all of phpbbhacks.com, only one file is being disputed. Further to this point, phpbbhacks.com does not actively encourage breaching copyright or breaking the law apart from having this file available for download. It is my belief that the intent behind the policy on copyright in external links is about websites who actively and solely promote copyright. phpbbhacks.com does not do this. The phpbbhacks.com page itself does not contain copyrighted material, it is only one small piece of content.
    2. Secondly, I run a fan site for a computer game. That fan site is linked to from the wikipedia article about that game. That fan site is created using images from the computer game. Those images, according to the EULA, are copyrighted to the publishers of that game. My site is therefore in violation of copyright law by using those images (I did not seek, nor obtain permission). Furthermore, according to the EULA, patches of that computer game may not be redistributed except in accordance of the EULA. The EULA does not specifically mention that patches may be distributed for download purposes, therefore I am again in breach of copyright as my site provides those patches for download. Finally, part of my site includes a substantial section on modding that computer game. Part of that involves tools created from reverse engineering the computer game itself. This is a clear and direct breach of the EULA of the computer game. However, in these regards, my website is exactly the same as all other fan-based websites about computer games. Should links to all these websites be removed under a policy of removing sites which clearly breach copyright?
    3. Thirdly, the file in question has (and I believe still is) publicly available from phpbb.com itself. The file was not "stolen". It was downloaded from phpbb.com who are the ones who released the file in the first place. There is no charge to download this file from phpbb.com nor is there a charge to download the file from phpbbhacks.com. In essence, proponents of the "illegal copyright" claim are arguing that the file should only be available for exclusive download from phpbb.com and nowhere else (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, just that that's what their core argument is). A readme.txt file contained in the distribution clarly states 'Copyright of these PSD images is assigned to the phpBB Group and their use is subject to any terms enforced upon distribution.. On this point, according to the license.txt file included with the download You may not re-distribute this package in any way, shape or form without prior agreement from phpBB Group (this includes linking directly to the package on this site).. Therefore, what seems to be the issue is not the copyright but rather the re-distribution of the files against license or in other words, providing an alternative download mirror, which is in essence what phpbbhacks.com is doing. In fact, you can see that the "illegal" file in question clearly states who owns the copyright and that it is available purely for personal use.
    4. Fourth and finally, the file in question I would argue is available purely for educational purposes. Something which is actually perfectly legal under copyright laws in many countries. In my opinion, there is simply no other use for the files. I'm not really a graphics guy though, so may not be the best to comment on that particular issue.
  4. Objectionable Amounts of Advertising: "Objectionable" does not appear to be defined in wikipedia's policy. At what percentage do we cut that off? Compared to some sites on the internet, yes phpbbhacks.com has quite a few more ads. Compared to others, it has quite a few less. Wikipedia's policy clearly states "sites with objectionable amounts of advertising". I believe however, that phpbbhacks.coms benefits as a resource far outweigh any negative impact from the advertisements. Nor do I find the advertisements personally objectionable (within reason, in reality I find all advertiements on the internet objectionable but that would mean no links anywhere). The site also does not (or did not at the time of my visit in IE, with no pop-up blocker) contain pop-ups, one of the most objectionable forms of advertising on the internet. I'm not sure how "objectionable" should be defined but again, I believe the benefits far outweigh the costs and I do not personally find the amount of advertising that objectionable.
  5. No more than 5 "Other" links: Keeping the above in mind, I would like to make the following proposal. I personally quite like the current setup of "official" and "unofficial" links as displayed on the page today. To ensure that the article does not become burdened and that Wikipedia does not become a link repository, I would suggest that "Other" external links are kept to a maximum of 5 and no more (excluding of course, links under "Sources" or "References" used to create an article). 5 is a nice number of links that "makes sense". By not allowing any links, articles are one-sided and unbalanced. By allowing a handful of external links, it gives people other resources to follow up on, should they not want to follow the "official" links. 5 is a good number in that consensus can be reached in the talk page on what those links are. Healthy debate is always fun and I feel creates better articles. If necessary there can be discussion and a voting process akin to most other wikipedia policies with the resulting top 5 links at any given time being included. It shows that there are other web-sites about this topic out there beyond "official" ones and if anyone wants more, there's always google.
  6. In Conclusion: When this link was removed the first hundred or so times, "unofficial" was the reason given. Since that argument was disputed, numerous other reasons have been raised as to why phpbbhacks.com should not be linked. So many in fact, that either phpbbhacks.com is the most awful site on the internet and should never be linked to EVER or, opponents of the link are desperately grapsing at whatever reason they can, no matter how obscure, to get the link removed. Why would they do this? That I feel I can answer. Since I had the discussion with NeoThermic I couldn't work out why a link to a resource which provided an awful lot of help for a free, open source development project would be such a bad thing. So I tried to look for anything which might explain the reasons. I found this (Google cache link of page 1 as phpbbhacks.com is in all irony, down at the moment). I don't want to go into what I view is a pathetic dispute so in short, when phpbbhacks.com was established, phpbb.com seems to have taken offence and as a result, banned all linking to phpbbhacks.com from their forums. Because of that, people on both sides still love the product but seem to hate each other's guts. I believe this is the real reason why phpbbhacks.com is having so many attacks made specifically against it. (Yes, I know I should probably register) 203.173.24.42 13:16, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Comment: This is absolutely true, that the phpBB Group has some personal vendetta going, and it's inappropriate here. Is it going to be necessary to call the mediator back? 67.42.85.2 06:20, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
"when phpbbhacks.com was established, phpbb.com seems to have taken offence and as a result, banned all linking to phpbbhacks.com from their forums." This is untrue, and you obviously have no idea about the history of phpbbhacks and phpbb.com. From information I have access to, phpBBHacks is in the wrong, and it is misleading to say that the phpBB Group do not want to link to it simply because we do not like any alternative sites Edward NZ 03:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Comment: Our rules are straight foraward and simple to avoid spam:
rule 5B states that "Members may include or post links to 3rd party sites in an effort to render support for phpBB in response to a support request (including requests for Mods not available at this site). Members are not permitted to post links to material unrelated to phpBB or where linked material is not relevant to a given support request." - In other words, if you asked for a modification that was not avalble on phpBB.com, a user would be well within the rules to link to the mod on phpbbhacks.com. We do not have a problem with that in any shape.
This is further backed up by Rule 5D, which states that "General linking (within posts) to other sites is generally not permitted. Exceptions may be made where links are being offered in a "support context" for non-phpBB related questions. Acceptable support contexts may include (but are not limited to): problems with non-forum 3rd party software, hardware, and so forth. Unacceptable support contexts include requests for hosting providers, questions and discussion of alternative fora systems, and so forth." Thus the example above would also be fine under 5D.
If you are aware of a rule that stipualtes no one is allowed to link to phpbbhacks.com on phpBB.com, then please show us, else stop spreading FUD into this RfC. NeoThermic 06:47, 11 February 2006 (UTC)


Comment. I will take this opportunity to state that I was completely unaware of this, me having never posted — in fact, rarely viewed — the phpBB forums and never even looked at the phpBBhacks ones. æle ✆ 21:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

RfC by Dzonatas

RfC: Articles on Wikipedia need to have historical facts.

  • My question above about the data on future releases went unanswered. A list of future events have not happened and should not be in an encyclopedia. If there is a particular group that voted for such events, then the facts that there were votes are the emphasis of the historical facts and not the data like the release notes.
  • In comparison of phpbbhacks.com to the release notes, phpbbhacks.com existed, and that is a historical fact that can be included into an encyclopediac article.
  • If that sites has a file out many other legit files deemed as questionable, that is not a reason to not link to the site. If a user has already paid for the copyrighted material, it is not an infringement to download the data as it has already been paid for in a previous form. If someone didn't pay for it and downloads it, it is not a problem of the site but a problem with the person who downloaded the file. The question is if the site promotes the copyright infringement or is it just a repository. It appears to be a repository. — Dzonatas 18:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Comment: Let it be noted wikipedia includes some future events, such as World War III, 2008 U.S. presidential election and 2012 Summer Olympics. Also note what Wikipedia is not a crystal ball says with relation to such things. I, and others, feel that the feature list for Olympus is notiable, since it is going to happen, it is of intrest, and can be verified by two links and a CVS. NeoThermic 04:26, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Comment: Those were in consideration. Perhaps, the path of where the features exist now (or are staged) in CVS or such need to be stated. Not everybody looks at those links in depth. As the page presented the data, it is not even as clear as you suggested above. — Dzonatas 14:32, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Comment: phpBBhacks should not be linked to for two reasons
1. It has files that break the licensing terms set down by the phpbb team. Would you really want to link to a site that claims to support something, but then tries to hurt them by breaking licenses?
And so what if it's only one file out of hundreds? That dosen't matter. In a corporation with hundreds of PCs, it is unacceptable if there is a computer with pirated software. It dosen't matter if there is only one or hundreds of PCs with warez. It is still illegal and you can be convicted for it. It is the same here
2. It has objectionable advertising. Yes, this is subjective, and I am well aware of that. However, a quick comparison of other sites that have the same content shows that none have that amount of ads. phpBB.com only has 2 (1 Store ad, and 1 block of tet ads), forumimages has 4 (5 if you count one link to a rugby store), while phpbbhacks.com has 14. Because it has more than 7 times the number of ads a larger site has, I believe it is objetionable. Let me put it this way; would you happily put that number and type of ads on your website? Edward NZ 07:12, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Comment: I think what you people are doing with respect to phpbbhacks is in direct conflict with the thoughts of the mediator. Shall we bring him back to clarify with specific respect to phpbbhacks? This is all just more evidence that in fact this "article" is nothing more than an extension of the phpBB Group. 67.42.93.179 00:12, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Instead of making such allegations, could you present your own argument for linking to phpBBHacks.com? Thanks. æle ✆ 02:31, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Comment: About the two reasons by Edward NZ: On (1), the terms of that license do not, and can not, override the GPL or GFDL that is in use by wikipedia. There is no direct link added to support any other copyrighted material. I have yet to see evidence that supports any claim that phphacks promotes "pirated" software. On (2), it appears most of the advertisements are on the front page. I compared the rest of the pages with yahoo. Each of the yahoo pages supported about an average of 3 advertisment areas. That is the same for phpbbhacks once you get past the front page. Yahoo just has a more subtle style to their ads, as some blend in with the content. — Dzonatas 00:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)


What are you talking about? In case you have not noticed the link that that offers the subSilver SDK for download even when the copyright plainly states that you are not allowed to redistribute it it is a little bit up the page. Again, would you link to something that openly breaks the copyright of the thing it is trying to promote?
As for the second comment, that has no validity whatsoever. phpBBhacks and Yahoo are completly different companies. One has a multi million dollar profit and is one of the most visited sites on the internet, and as such I would expect it to have a fairly large amount of ads. The other on the other hand is a site that breaks and hurts the community it "supports", and has a massive amount of ads for what it does.
However, if you will notice, Yahoo in fact has fewer ads than phpbbhacks. I counted one small flash ad, a couple of graphical ads and text ads with Yahoo information. phpBBhacks on the other hand has many flash ads that are constantly animated, large graphical ads and plenty of off site text ads. And this was the index page.
After visiting the search page, yahoo has 3 lots of text ads, while phpbbhacks has 2 animated flash ads, 3 lots of google ads and those same "compare laptops" as down the left. If yahoo, one of the largest sites on the net, manages to get away with fewer ads, that signals to me that phpbbhacks is just getting over the top here. Edward NZ 05:17, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Who cares if one download may be illegal when the other hundreds of downloads are legal? Just you and another who seem to have some tie to the phpBB group. Your second paragraph is highly subjective; I do not see the harm it causes the "phpBB community" (and even if I did, I do not see the relevance to Wikipedia, we are not the phpBB group!).
With regards to advertising, again, I cite my previous statement that phpbbhacks seems to have less than 30% advertising on the main page (on subpages the amount of advertising drops far lower). It's not the quantity of advertising that matters here, it's the page coverage (how much screen real estate is consumed).
I again express my complete and utter disgust at the WP:OWN campaign being waged here. You may not like the site for whatever reason, but that doesn't give you reason nor license to summarily exclude it on false (or trumped up) grounds. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:32, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
What is it about breaking the license that the files are under that you do not understand? Edward NZ 09:25, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
The part where Wikipedia should care one way or the other since they're not violating the license (or the law) by linking to the site? —Locke Cole • t • c 09:49, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Do note that we're linking to the front page, so the advertisements are in all likelihood being seen at least once. æle ✆ 02:31, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
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