User talk:Jan-Bart

Dear Mr. Van de Vreede,

I wish to bring to your attention a serious problem regarding the takeover of one of your pages by a cult group. This has been brought to the attention of Wikimedia via the only email contact provided, but to date, I don't think the problem has been taken seriously. I represent a legitimate educational organization that contributed freely to the page in question. Our scholarly references have been removed by this cult, then replaced by links to their cult. Further, the false and incorrect practices espoused by this group can lead to permanent disfigurement and even death. Having your imprimatur on their publishings, they are operating with impunity. They have also removed all edit buttons so that their material cannot be challenged or removed. I have been notifying your people for days to no avail. Thus I am contacting you. This is an extremely serious issue. I hope that I might have the courtesy of a return email. I can be reached at correspondence@briangray.com. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Sincerely,

Brian Gray

Head of the Iron Palm International Organization

Tada. You're a liar. You know have at least those edits on meta. Héhé. Welcome aboard! notafish }<';> 14:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I said "Virtually" no edits, lets put it another way: I don't have enough edits to vote in a board election ;) --Jan-Bart 14:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

If we all suggest edits to your user page you might increase your edit count. "ICT" is not commonly seen all around the world; you could link it to w:ICT (education). Thanks for serving on the Board! --JWSurf 21:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Done, thanks for the suggestion :)--Jan-Bart 07:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Congratulations

Hey, Jan-Bart! I was offline for a few days, and so missed all this excitement. Great news! Cormaggio ^@ 18:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Its been too long, will contact you soon about wikiversity!--Jan-Bart 19:01, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Final approval for bcl

I am excited for it. --Filipinayzd @ incubator

How tall are you?

How tall are you, Jan-Bart? I am 6 feet, 2.5 inches. I always fly Economy, unless I get bumped to First Class for some reason. -- Thekohser 03:50, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

1,99m , aparently thats 6,52 feet--Jan-Bart 11:56, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

pronunciation of your name

Hi,

I am going to check and update Translation_requests/WMF/Board_of_Trustees/ja. Could you please check your entry on a pronunciation table and put self-checked in the checked column?--NJT 11:11, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions for changes in the WMF privacy policy.

Dear Mr Vreede, I would like to draw your attention to some suggestions for changes in the WMF privacy policy posted that I posted today at the WMF site: [1]. Since the WMF Board of Trustees actually decides on any changes in the privacy policy, I hope that you, as a Board member and Vice-Chair, will take a look at these suggestions. The main gist of the suggested changes is to require some form of notification of those registered users whose identifying info is being sought by subpoenas in third-party lawsuits. These suggestions are motivated in large part by a discussion that took place in January 2008 at the Wikipedia Village Pump (Policy) page [2] in relation to an incident where identifying IP data of sixteen Wikipedia users was released in response to such a subpoena. Of course, anyone else reading this is also welcome to participate in the discussion on this proposal. Regards, Nsk92 21:31, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry, I completely missed this addition to my talk page. I will check to see if this is still an issue in the revised privacy policy!

Geachte heer de Vreede,

er zijn in Vlaanderen enkele jongeren die er een sport van maken om foutieve dingen over mij te publiceren op Wikipdia. Ze schrijven onder meer onder de pseudoniemen: Patrick VanM; Peter B en Tukka. Ik heb ze daar al enkele keren op gewezen en de leugens en beledigingen aan mijn adres uit het artikel gehaald, maar elke keer plaatsen ze dit terug. Wat kan ik daar tegen doen. Ik heb met mijn raadsman overlegd, maar eerst doe ik via u nog een poging. Ze schrijven in een artikel over mij steevast een bedediging over mijn uiterlijk wat volgens de regels van Wikipedia niet mag. Ze beschuldigen mij van 'fraude' iets wat helemaal niet waar is. Fraude is een strafrechterlijk begrip dat strafbaar is voor de wet. Ook brengen ze mij in verband met Vlaams belang waar ik niets mee te maken heb. Ze baseren zich op één of ander foutief krantenartikel. Ze willen niet aannemen dat ik het zelf ben die hun dit schrijf. U kan mij bereiken op emial: e.goelen@telenet.be of mobiel 0032495125140

Wikipedia's Expert Peer Review process (or lack of such) for Science related articles

Hi - I posted the section with the same name on my talk page.

Could you take part in discussion ? 

Thanks ARP 24.62.24.98 22:54, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Logo Wikimania

Hoi Jan-Bart,

Als je tijd hebt, zou je dan even navraag kunnen doen over de licentie van het Wikimania logo, waar we het over hadden op de borrel? Onze ontwerpwedstrijd komt a.s. vrijdag tot zijn eind en ik zou dan graag willen weten hoe de rechten-situatie in elkaar steekt. Alvast bedankt en vriendelijke groet, Ciell 22:49, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

My message to the FBI

Dear Mr. de Vreede,

I wanted to let you, as a member of Wikimedia's Board of Trustees, know that I have sent the following message to the FBI, my senators and representatives, and your fellow trustees. I have also posted it to EDTECH, the educational technology mailing list, and Tweeted about it.

---

Lawrence M. Sanger, Ph.D. | http://www.larrysanger.org/ Editor-in-Chief, Citizendium | http://www.citizendium.org/ Executive Director, WatchKnow | http://www.watchknow.org/ sanger@citizendium.org

I really regret having to report this, but I feel I must. My name is Dr. Larry Sanger and I am widely known as co-founder of Wikipedia, the encyclopedia project. I have long since departed the organization, over disagreements about editorial and management policy. I have also since founded a more responsible project, Citizendium.org, and a teacher-edited non-profit directory of preK-12 educational videos, WatchKnow.org. Given my position of influence on matters related to Wikipedia, though I'm no longer associated with it, I feel I have a moral obligation to make the following report. The language of 18 USC §1466A makes it sound like I have a legal obligation as well, so here goes.

I believe Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/), owned and hosted by the California-based Wikimedia Foundation, may be knowingly distributing child pornography. The clearest instances I found (I did not want to look for long) are linked from [deleting link; it's a category about pedophilia] and [link deleted; it's a category about something called lolicon]. I don't know if there is any more, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is--the content on the various Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons and various others, are truly vast.

You can see on [the history of the category page] that the page has existed for three years. Considering that Eric Moeller, a high-level Wikipedia manager, is well known for his views in defense of pedophilia (http://mashable.com/2008/05/08/erik-moeller-pedophilia/), surely the existence of this page must have come to the attention of those with the legal responsibility for the Wikimedia projects.

In my non-lawyer's opinion, it looks like this violates 18 USC §1466A(2)(A). http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1466A.html Perhaps the defense of this will be that the depictions are exempted due to §1466A(2)(B), i.e., the Wikimedia Foundation may argue that the images have some artistic value. I guess that's for you and maybe the courts to decide.

There are probably many copies of such images online. If there is a reason to hold the Wikimedia Foundation [responsible], however, is that they purport to be a reliable source of information. Moreover, a recent discussion on EDTECH, the educational technologists' list, indicates that some school district filter managers are not filtering such smut from the view of teachers and students. See: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lx&list=EDTECH&user=&pw=&month=1004 It was actually in response to comments on that discussion that I decided to look into this situation myself.

I don't envy the FBI the task of regulating the seedy underside of the Internet, and I doubt this is very high on your list of priorities. But I want to be on the record stating that this is wrong and should be investigated.

As is commonly the case when non-lawyers attempt to invoke a statute without adequately researching the relevant law and legal categories, Sanger has confused and conflated a number of legal doctrines. First, he has referred to "child pornography" while invoking 18 USC 1466A, which is not a child-pornography statute but an obscenity statute. The federal child-pornography statute is 18 USC 2252-2252A.

Second, he is apparently unfamiliar with the obscenity test provided by Miller v. California and its progeny, which emphasize the importance of community standards in defining what qualifies as obscenity. (The federal statute he cites represents an effort by religious-right activists to develop a per-se obscenity standard independent of community standards, but that doctrine has yet to be blessed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and it seems unlikely that the Court would overthrow the Miller obscenity doctrine in this way.)

Third, Sanger asserts that the Wikimedia Foundation is "knowingly" distributing child pornography. Even if we substitute "obscenity" for "child pornography," and even if we assume that the Wikimedia Foundation in some sense can be said to "know" that some material on the sites it hosts may be unlawful, Sanger's comment is legally irrelevant, since the Communications Decency Act (47 USC 230) expressly bars hosting providers for liability for such content if it did not originate or develop the content, and further declares that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider [e.g. a user or subscriber who posts content]." Federal obscenity and child-pornography statutes make similar distinctions. As Sanger seems to have forgotten, the Wikimedia Foundation does not originate or develop Wikipedia content or Wikimedia Commons content. This was true in Sanger's day as well as is in the present day.

Fourth, while there are currently legal disputes as to what constitutes the relevant community when it comes to "community standards" on Wikimedia Commons, there is no doubt that there is a community of editors on Wikimedia Commons and elsewhere that takes pains not to post material that is clearly illegal. There is no evidence in Sanger's message that the community has failed in its efforts to make sure that the content of Wikimedia Commons is legal, at least in the context of the law applicable to Wikimedia Foundation as a hosting provider.

Fifth, Sanger's allegations regarding Erik Moeller raise a wholly separate question of free-speech law -- specifically, defamation. In the United States, even a public figure can successfully sue for libel if it can be shown that the defamer posted information with "reckless disregard for the truth." The pattern of slipshod legal research and allegation in Sanger's letter strikes me as convincing evidence that Sanger is reckless in how he chooses to accuse Wikimedia Foundation and Erik Moeller. While I won't analyze his letter in a way that would amount to republishing and re-emphasizing the defamation contained within it, I will say that I think any jury might reasonably infer that Sanger's recklessness in posting his allegations, together with his clear intention to damage the reputation of an individual person, is the kind of thing that deserves compensation and ought to be deterred.

I understand the impulse to post something intemperate when one feels a sense of injury, as Sanger clearly does, for reasons others may know better than I. But I don't think bad feelings justify this sort of attack on an indivdual. Wikimedia Foundation is well-positioned to defend itself publicly in a way that no individual staff member can be. Sanger knows that Moeller in his Wikimedia Foundation role is not developing or originating Wikimedia Commons content -- there is in my mind no excuse for this over-the-top personal attack. MGodwin 16:51, 8 April 2010 (UTC)