Re: [Libcdio-devel] Rock Ridge and libisofs/xorriso 'AL' extension

[Pete Batard]

Hi Natalia,

On 2017.07.25 12:49, Natalia Portillo wrote:

> If you create an interesting tool and/or structure specification whatever, YOU 
> CANNOT create the wikipedia page yourself,

Yes, I know about page creation. But we are talking about editing an 
existing page to add content about an item that is being used by many 
people and has existed for years. As with everything there needs to 
exist a balance with regards to how a rule should be interpreted, rather 
than a blind observance when the end result is stifling the spread of 
very legitimate, useful and non-biased information, which is the goal of 
Wikipedia.

I had my share of discussions with Wikipedia moderators, and from what I 
gather, the rule is mostly there to prevent attempts at profiteering 
from the data being published as well as trying to weed out obvious 
bias... elements that are hard to be accused of from pointing to 
technical Open Source specs, that have existed for many years and aren't 
part of a choice of competing proposals. From talking with them, I 
didn't really get the idea that the message that the moderators of 
Wikipedia were aiming to spread was that, if you are the main person 
involved in a technical topic, you can never ever be trusted to provide 
objective information on it. Instead, the rules are intended to avoid 
issues that stem from dealing with the more intangible aspects of a 
topic (like the perception of a famous person, a historical event, 
etc.), which are obviously hard to filter from bias and are better left 
for edition by unconnected third parties. Then again, I'm not a 
Wikipedia moderator (and am obviously also biased on my perception of 
what the actual scope of the Wikipedia rules is -- good thing we're not 
editing a Wikipedia page here), so that's just my current interpretation 
of how things are meant to be applied in practice.

For what is worth, the way this is supposed to work is: you cannot 
create a page for something that you are involved with. But you can 
place a request for it to be created. However, once the page is created, 
you are perfectly entitled to edit its content, as long as you make your 
affiliations with the topic clear enough, and also ensure that the 
elements you edit are unlikely to be interpretable as being subject to 
conflict of interest.

> it is considered original research and will be queued for deletion per their 
> rules.

If the research is recent, I would tend to agree. But if the proposal 
has existed for a few years, and is being used by a large number people, 
it's hard to still see it as original research. My point being that, 
regardless of how one chooses to interpret the Wikipedia rules, if 
original research has existed for years and is being commonly used, by 
all means, some aspects of it should exist on Wikipedia, and if nobody 
else but the people involved in that research appear to be willing to 
edit the content, then they need to be allowed to do so. As far as I'm 
concerned, the spread of useful knowledge trumps the blind 
interpretation of arbitrary rules.

> I'm in the same situation having done DiscImageChef and the only known reverse 
> engineering and documentation of the Lisa filesystem.

I would strongly suggest you engage with Wikipedia moderators on these 
topics. If Wikipedia cannot let you document what are obviously 
noncommercial technical elements, that one would be hard pressed of 
seeing as subject to potential bias or spin, without defaulting to 
pointing to a "conflict of interest" rule, then something is very wrong 
with Wikipedia...

> Basically you need another person, that can't be related to you directly (not 
> your friend) to write the article even if the references are to your website or 
> source code.

If that rule was intended to be applied to the letter, then I am clearly 
in breach of Wikipedia with regards to the information I added to the 
Rufus page after it was created [1].

Yet, while the moderators did engage with me about potential conflict of 
interest at the time (since I was also new contributor), I would tend to 
think they saw that, despite being provided by the main contender, and 
therefore with possible bias, the data added was technical enough in 
nature to be meet the expected level of objectiveness and therefore 
acceptable for a Wikipedia entry. Either that, or I just got lucky with 
the Wikipedia moderators who reviewed my entries.

All, this to say that, as far as I'm concerned, I don't actually see 
much that should have prevented Thomas from adding a mention of 'AL' to 
the Wikipedia Rock Ridge page over the past few years, regardless of his 
involvement with AAIP (which is not to say that I can't see the many 
very logical reasons why he hasn't done so). Relatively obscure 
Wikipedia technical topics are notoriously hard to find motivated 
editors to update, so there needs to be some leeway with regards to 
allowing the people one might construe as being too close to the subject 
to provide the information.

Anyway, I guess this is a discussion that should better be held on a 
Wikipedia talk page, and with the presence of Wikipedia moderators, 
rather than on the libcdio mailing list.

Regards,

/Pete

[1] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rufus_(software)&action=history