Wikipedia Legally Challenges UK's 'Flawed' Online Safety Rules (bbc.com) 16
Wikipedia is taking legal action against the UK's new Online Safety Act regulations it says could threaten the safety of its volunteer editors and their ability to keep harmful content off the site. From a report: The Wikimedia Foundation -- the non-profit which supports the online encyclopaedia -- is seeking a judicial review of rules which could mean Wikipedia is subjected to the toughest duties required of websites under the act.
Lead counsel Phil Bradley-Schmieg said it was "unfortunate that we must now defend the privacy and safety of Wikipedia's volunteer editors from flawed legislation." The government told the BBC it was committed to implementing the act but could not comment on ongoing legal proceedings. It's thought this is the first judicial review to be brought against the new online safety laws - albeit a narrow part of them - but experts say it may not be the last.
"The Online Safety Act is vast in scope and incredibly complex," Ben Packer, a partner at law firm Linklaters, told the BBC. The law would inevitably have impacts on UK citizens' freedom of expression and other human rights, so as more of it comes into force "we can expect that more challenges may be forthcoming," he told the BBC.
Lead counsel Phil Bradley-Schmieg said it was "unfortunate that we must now defend the privacy and safety of Wikipedia's volunteer editors from flawed legislation." The government told the BBC it was committed to implementing the act but could not comment on ongoing legal proceedings. It's thought this is the first judicial review to be brought against the new online safety laws - albeit a narrow part of them - but experts say it may not be the last.
"The Online Safety Act is vast in scope and incredibly complex," Ben Packer, a partner at law firm Linklaters, told the BBC. The law would inevitably have impacts on UK citizens' freedom of expression and other human rights, so as more of it comes into force "we can expect that more challenges may be forthcoming," he told the BBC.
It would be better if... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I think they just need to change the way users are counted.
Wikipedia has millions of viewers who read the websites published by them, but it has less than a million active contributors or editors.
It's 100K registered users who are active editors who should be counted; not the number of people anonymously accessing the material published by a website.
Re:It would be better if... (Score:4, Interesting)
With apologies to Jimmy Wales, who seems to be a nice guy, I have to say that I sort of agree with this FP, though I think it's too extreme. I do agree that a lot of people have entrenched themselves in the Wikipedia organization and that it feels closed to outsiders, but I feel like "abusive" is hard to justify. The situation is complicated and editors are doing difficult work that gets little recognition or appreciation. Speaking as a "vintage" professional editor, I think the clear trend is to weaken the influence of editors even though (I think) the evidence is that we need more editorial guidance these days, not less. (And the AI is making the situation much worse...)
Personal anecdote time, but maybe it applies to you? Long ago I would try to help with Wikipedia articles, though mostly at the level of correcting grammatical mistakes or internal inconsistencies. I never felt that tedious work was appreciated and over time I did less and less. I sometimes asked questions on the Talk pages, especially when the article did not address whatever curiosity had led me there, but these days I rarely bother with even that minor effort. Sometimes I even feel like I shouldn't look at Wikipedia--but it does seem to be the "best intentioned" source in many cases.
Re:It would be better if... (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the entrenched administrators see nothing wrong with violating Wikipedia's policies on civility and especially not on "don't bite the newbies." They violate those regularly and with impunity, confident that other administrators will always protect them.
Anyone who isn't an administrator who has stood up to an uncivil administrator has found themselves indef'ed and accused of being a "sockpuppet" merely for asking that administrators be made to follow the same rules everyone else has to follow.
Re: (Score:2)
Basically the ACK, but I don't have enough recent experience with Wikipedia to say one way or the other.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd fix spelling and grammar errors if they would let me, but they block most VPN endpoints from editing and I can't be bothered to disconnect just for that. Even if I did, my ISP uses CGNAT so there is a decent chance the IP address would be blocked anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Again the ACK, though you make me wonder about the motivations of the vandals. Seems unlikely to me that Wikipedia is motivated by giggles, though some of the vandals probably are.
lost interest (Score:2)
I lost interest in Wikipedia due the ever increasing number of articles turning what should be information into lopsided political pieces.
Too many Wikipedia articles are stuck in the 2010 era with a dedicated group of editors seeking to exclude any post-2014 new research findings or reliable source news from after that era.
The flowchart based dismissals of any new research or news sources is driving new contributors away since the apparent goal of enough tiny subset of editors seems to be "win the discussio
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... If I get a chance I'll ask him about that NOR thing... That one must have its own meta-history.
The NPV thing has always struck me as a peculiar joke because I don't think it's possible. We can only perceive and interpret reality (or fantasy) in terms of our personal perspectives, and we are never neutral about our own perspectives. There is something oxymoronic in the idea, though it seems deeper than the usual oxymoron, where the linguistic clash is often obvious.
However my own perspective may be ta
legacy preservation at wikipedia (Score:2)
It will be interesting to see if the politically lopsided Wikipedia articles get a better balance once the large number of retired political activists stop using Wikipedia.
And then there is the whole group who play "block changes and new information" to Wikipedia articles as a pastime. This practice could be akin to their favorite video game.
False dichotomy (Score:3)
Why does it have to be one or the other? Why not suggest they "also" focus on the issue you care about?
Re:False dichotomy (Score:5, Interesting)
Reason comes from this paragraph:
The OSA requires the regulator, Ofcom, to categorise platforms according to a number of factors, including how many users they have and what features they offer.
Wikipedia isn't contesting the laws, only the rules of categorisation, by number of users, which make them fall under the scope of the law.
The regulation is made for things like Facebook, millions many registered users who share information; then Meta to check identities, maybe police fake news, whatever is in the law. But Wikipedia isn't Facebook, the number of contributing users and the number of viewers is very different. If myself and my family publish a blog, we might have millions of views, we don't fall fall under the law. So if the Wikimedia Foundation they paint themselves as a collective blog with "only" 100k users, whatever are the number of viewers, they fall outside.
Re: (Score:2)
Well I replied to the wrong thread. I thought you were contesting mysidia's arguments above.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it wouldn't, because one is an existential threat that would prevent Wikipedia from existing in the UK, and the other is a pet peeve raised by someone who wanted to bitch about something that's more or less off topic.
I'm not a fan of Wikipedia's internal politics, but arguing they should focus on that rather than a government bill that, if implemented, will likely ban them from operation in at least one country is ludicrous.