Changing The Meaning Of Signed Contributions

There is a signed work on Wiki and you want to...

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...make technical edits to it: This is perfectly fine as long as it's done in good faith. The original author will own the improved work.

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...change its meaning: You can't go around putting words in someone else's mouth. It's immoral if not illegal and has no place on Wiki. That means that you can't change the meaning of a signed piece and leave the signature intact and you can't put someone else's signature on work that they did not create.

Can we provide some examples that clarify the differences between these two?

Technical edits: fixing typos, improving indentation, cleaning up the grammar if it's ropey.

Changes of meaning: turning "I'd like to try implementing this in Smalltalk" into "I'd like to try implementing this in C". Turning "Capitalism is good because it creates wealth faster than anything else" into "Capitalism is good because it makes it easier for me to exploit the poor". Turning "I'm not too sure about this issue; it seems complicated" into "If I knew more about this, I'm sure I'd prefer X".

I think that the "good faith" clause is the key to the whole thing: if we have it then we may have some mishaps but things will work out well in general. If we don't have it then we are lost -- there are no rules that will save us. I personally will endeavor to apply an ever increasing amount of good faith to everything I do here and I will trust that others are doing the same until their actions prove otherwise. -- PhilGoodwin

What about more borderline cases?

Sure, someone deletes part of a post. That can be appropriate.

There's also the change in context when you RefactorByExtractingToPage. This often requires minor changes to meaning. As does coping with a WikiMindWipe. How do you know you've said it the way the author would have? But is it practical to check with every person concerned, in every situation?

[some text moved to ChangingSignedContributions]

There are also situations where you're refactoring and it's quicker to put (new or different) words into somebody's mouth as a well-meaning suggestion of what they really meant, or would have said if they wrote such good English as you (IronyWarning). As long as the person concerned sees the edits and reviews them in this positive light all is well. If the next thing you get is a letter from their copyright lawyer then all is not well. --RichardDrake

A lot of this is covered in the "fair use" clauses of copyright law. I think that reasonable expectations also come into the picture as does the clause in WikiCopyRights that gives permission to perform "technical edits". I think that there is a great deal of legal leeway available to us. Especially if we all act in good faith as I mentioned before. -- PhilGoodwin

RichardDrake: Phil, my question was about the ethics of Wiki community interaction not really the legality. (My last sentence may have misled you, but it was really meant to sound absurd.) Of course I agree with you about the "good faith" aspect.

PhilGoodwin: Right copyright law just delineates the outer limits of what can be done here. Some folks seem to think that it's much more restrictive than it actually is. I think that its fair use provisions combined with the norms (and lack thereof) on Wiki make it all but inapplicable to most of the problems we have on Wiki. On the other hand it won't get in our way of fixing them either.

RichardDrake: I have a couple of questions I guess. One is: concern has been expressed about this area recently. But not so much (though one or two of us have been trying) about the lack of refactoring, about the vast amount of repetition and crud that has accumulated on Wiki. What has been the greater practical problem on Wiki over the last five years? Where is the long list of people who have been the victim of gross violations of their signed contributions that could not be easily resolved?

PhilGoodwin: I certainly hope you aren't expecting me to provide a counter-argument to this. I think that we need to refactor more and that the egos of authors should be subordinated to the edification of readers. (No, that does not mean that the readers get to eat the authors).

PhilGoodwin: As far as repetition goes: I think that Categories can help us there. Once we have the majority of interesting (but possibly redundant) pages categorized we can go back and refactor the whole category by replacing big blocks of text with appropriate pointers.

RichardDrake: Secondly, what about the possibility that subsets of people on Wiki might grant each other the right to tamper as much as they like with their signed words, for the purpose of making overall dialogue more effective? Good faith here must include of course making sure people know about the changes to review them.

PhilGoodwin: I think that everyone should expect most of their thread mode contributions to be summarized by some future editor. We should expect our spelling errors and our facts to be corrected. And we should expect our wording to be changed slightly and pieces deleted when we are quoted (if you change the context of a work then you should consider that you are quoting it and perhaps note that fact). I think that those are reasonable expectations and that they are permissive enough to allow the kinds of editing that Wiki needs. I think that we need a consistent set of norms that allow the needed editing while providing adequate (but modest) protection to our authors. If people don't want to be subject to those norms then let them go elsewhere.

PhilGoodwin: I'm starting to think that we ought to look to the practices that "real" copy-editors and researchers use to do this kind of work. It would be nice to have an external standard that we can all agree to emulate.

RichardDrake: Although the WikiSuccessCanInhibitNewWriters refactoring was my sole initiative, this kind of notification was what I gave in the last 36 hours to CliffordAdams about some (I thought minor) changes I'd made to his words as I moved them to WikiConsensus. I'd included the word "newbies" in Cliff's first sentence, which I'd felt I had to construct as the context was now quite different from his original. (I "put this word into Cliff's mouth" because I was in fact the newbie in both cases and it was intended as a statement of humility towards more mature Wiki contributors.) Cliff initially didn't like "newbies" but on reflection decided to keep it. But the point is that he did review the changes and once he had the whole signed contribution had become "his" to all intents and purposes. (In fact his main concern was that his views had moved on since writing the original!)

PhilGoodwin: I take it you thought that what you were doing was bordering on changing the meaning? I think that it's appropriate to be polite and notify people of such changes. But it's also appropriate to be thick skinned enough to accept that sometimes your words will be changed without your knowledge. I discovered earlier today that someone had deleted a chunk of one of my posts. It was poorly written, good-bye, good-riddance, and thanks to whoever it was that cleaned up my mess. I think that the kind of conversation that you and Cliff had could be done inline on an active page or off-line on an inactive page depending on individual judgement.

RichardDrake: The biggest complaint I've had in this area was about a "violation" of someone else that lasted for less than five minutes (and was intended as a joke). Even during the WikiMindWipe there wasn't any problem of this sort that I know of.

RichardDrake: In short I think copyright law is a very blunt instrument to be referring to here as a guide for Wiki interaction (though okay as a legal last resort). Good faith is right, as is TrustAndResponsibility.

CategoryWikiMaintenance