Wikipedia talk:Ownership of content

Positive implications

This page mainly talks about the negative sides of now owning content namely that authors and subjects can't control the content etc but I think we should also talk about the positive sides namely the lack of responsibility due to now owning content. Namely for example that the author of an article doesn't generally have an ongoing duty to watch the page for vandalism, updates or a need to change the content due to a change in consensus that occurred after the article was created as long as the content was acceptable at the time the article was created, see WP:MESS. Also that subjects do not have a responsibility to maintain the article for policy violations, inaccuracies or vandalism. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:28, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

I've added this as there has been no objects in a few weeks though maybe it could be improved. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:53, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

"Routine adminstration" with Linter

Hi, I started a discussion at WP:Helpdesk#Etiquette for user home pages/sandboxen about whether user pages are somehow different from other pages, even sacrosanct? I ended up WP:OWN#User pages, which says "Usually others will not edit your primary user page, other than to address significant concerns (rarely); or to do routine housekeeping, such as handling project-related tags, disambiguating links to pages that have been moved, removing the page from categories meant for articles, replacing non-free content by linking to it, or removing obvious vandalism or BLP violations."" The concise answer from Wikipedia talk:Linter#User home pages was "Fixing Linter errors fits in with "routine housekeeping". All pages are fair game for fixing errors, replacing deleted templates, adjusting wikitext to conform to MediaWiki code changes, and other maintenance that keeps Wikipedia pages rendering correctly." Could this perhaps be clearly stated in the 'Background' section in the Project page, and elsewhere? MinorProphet (talk) 16:57, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I know this may seem crazy.

But doesn't Wikipedia belong to good ol' Jimbo, and/or the Wikimedia Foundation? So technically they own the rights to pretty much everything used and written on here... oh wait! They own talk pages, files, users, comments, and especially topics for discussion. They even own what I am writing right now! Ṫḧïṡ ṁëṡṡäġë ḧäṡ ḅëëṅ ḅṛöüġḧẗ ẗö ÿöü ḅÿ ᗰOᗪ ᑕᖇEᗩTOᖇ 🏡 🗨 📝 01:03, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Mod creator, Jimmy Wales is one of the founders but he does not own Wikipedia. As for the Wikimedia Foundation, it was founded 2-1/2 years after Wikipedia. It owns the trademarks and the servers but does not own the content. Cullen328 (talk) 01:18, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

^{[just kidding]}

that is why I said it may seem crazy. ^[Humor] Ṫḧïṡ ṁëṡṡäġë ḧäṡ ḅëëṅ ḅṛöüġḧẗ ẗö ÿöü ḅÿ ᗰOᗪ ᑕᖇEᗩTOᖇ 🏡 🗨 📝 01:29, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

See also essays

@Nikkimaria: Could you expand on why you think including two essays in the see also section is "potentially confusing for users"? I cannot see it. Quickly scanning around, it also appears that the vast majority of see also sections on PAGs include, or indeed consist primarily of, related essays – even core policies like WP:V#See also and WP:NPOV#See also. – Joe (talk) 11:32, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Joe, because newer users often struggle to understand the spectrum of policies through one user's essay, presenting the latter as is done here can be confusing for them and lead them to assign more weight to these than is appropriate. It may well be the case that other policies' see-alsos should be re-examined, but the cases you mention at least have the benefit of a much wider variety of resources being presented and correspondingly less of a weighting concern. And edit-warring to bring in your own essay is really not on - please self-revert. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:43, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

You didn't just remove my essay, you removed both – the other has been there for sixteen years so inclusion is definitely the status quo. Or do you object to the inclusion of Wikipedia:Gatekeeping specifically?

It sounds like you have an issue with the inclusion of inclusion of essays in PAG see also sections in general, rather than just on WP:OWN. In which case I'd suggest it makes more sense to seek consensus on that issue rather than removing them from a single page. Personally I've never encountered users new or old being "confused" by the inclusion of these links, given that essays are generally have a large explanatory banner at the top explaining their consensus status. On the contrary I think they are the primary way most users encounter essays and therefore learn of the spectrum of thought on a topic. – Joe (talk) 10:38, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm surprised you've never encountered the issue of users not understanding what essays are, since it seems to be a pretty common problem - here's a recent example.

I've explained why I think the links here are particularly problematic. While I appreciate you would like users to encounter your essay, its inclusion is definitely not status quo. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:20, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Could you tell me again why linking to essays here is particularly problematic? I cannot find it. – Joe (talk) 11:03, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

the cases you mention at least have the benefit of a much wider variety of resources being presented and correspondingly less of a weighting concern; this page in particular does not. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:58, 7 March 2025 (UTC)