Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-11-05/News and notes

Discuss this story

I am a little bit unhappy with linking the WCA voting to the fact that once Sebastian Moleski (the WMDE chair) applied for a WCA position. Both had nothing to do with each other, to make that clear. Ziko (talk) 23:29, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The German legal decision

There are some interesting aspects to their decision: First, they concluded that the fact there was discussion of the material on the article talk page did not ameliorate any problems with the page content, because very few people actually looked at the talk page--to most readers, WP means the article text itself at the time or reading. Second, they considered that a major factor in the culpability of the anti-competitive advertising was that the edits were made anonymously using a pseudonym, and considered this a particular unfair competitive practice, and the key point preventing them from considering the material protected by fundamental considerations of free speech. As I understand it, European practices with respect to negative and anti-competitive advertising are much more restrictive than in the US, so the decision may have limited applicability in the US. Nonetheless, if I were engaged in commercial editing without disclosing my true identity, whether for an employer or as an external paid writer, I would take this as a warning. I also think their reasoning on this point can be useful in informing our own guidelines. I recognize my limited understanding of German--especially legal German--and my similarly limited understanding of German commercial law , so I would welcome corrections from those more fluent. (The clearest versions I have found of the judgment are this one from the major German publishing industry journal and this one from a German legal information service; I found the Google translations harder to decipher than the original. Perhaps someone more capable than I can prepare a proper translation.) DGG ( talk ) 03:21, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]