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What is a group?

The article does not explain what a "group". " is. Since it says right in the first section:

Promotional usernames are used to promote an existing company, organization, group, or website (including non-profit organizations) or product(s) on Wikipedia.

I believe it is crucial to define "group" in this article. Don't you agree? Ottawahitech (talk) 19:20, 11 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Would it not be an overemphasis? What should you wish to be included in the definition? Wifione Message 14:54, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • A "group" means different things to different people. If a Wikipedia policy forbids the use of a "group" as an ID on Wikipedia, Wikipedians should know what a "group" is? No? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:25, 17 March 2012 (UTC) Problem has finally been fixed by Gfoley4 - a big THANK YOU. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:37, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think the change made is both wrong (it's not just "business" groups that matter here) and needless WP:instruction creep. As far as I can tell, all groups are nominally prohibited, so the fact that it means slightly different things to different people is unimportant: all of the people are correct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You're right. I've put in a larger definition of groups. Tell me if it works. Wifione Message 13:58, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

trademark/copyrighted usernames

I thought previously I had seen a ban of trademarked/copyrighted usernames, or character names from comics/movies/etc, but I do not see it in the policy anymore. Am I confused? Was this removed? Gaijin42 (talk) 03:09, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I did a quick check on half a dozen names of cartoon characters. We seem to have a lot of accounts using character names (most of them with minor variants, like adding a number), and none of them were blocked over their usernames. So I don't think that such a rule was ever enforced much, even if it existed.
Of course, if the trademarked name is an organization's name (implying that the account belongs to the org rather than the individual human user), then the user would need to change that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is the actual point behind WP:NOSHARE?

See also Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Shared account. What is the advantage to Wikipedia in blocking a couple's shared account if they like to edit together (and are open about that)? I don't get it. The argument of licensing issues has been given, but that appears to hold no water. So what gives?  --Lambiam 14:01, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Licensing certainly IS a legitimate concern, as material once contributed to wikipedia is irrevocably contributed. Its too easy for people to try and start weaseling out if they can say "that wasn't meant to be released, someone unauthorized did it, but they did it with the account that is otherwise used for authorized releases. Additionally when people are breaking the rules : it wasn't me! don't punish me! Or for issues that have legal liability (copyright violation, BLP violation, threats, etc) we need to be able to show the account (and therefore individual) that is doing those actions. Gaijin42 (talk) 14:13, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is true of accounts which are shared widely, or within an employment relationship. For partnerships I think things can be clearer as they can be reasonably treated with equal responsibility. Arrangements might also be agreed for using personalised signatures where it matters, or specifying a more general licence. But the reality is they have chosen their joint licensing arrangements and it is reasonable to assume they are happy with them.
You know a very similar argument was once used to support a blanket ban on open proxies. It was argued, in effect, that without knowing who was editing, the content couldn't be licensed properly, or something - I never really understood it. The fact is the person contributing has chosen both their licence and attribution. When you have a shared IP address with unregistered users editing from it (open proxy or not) then there is no possible way, unless you're in law enforcement with a reasonable excuse, to know who was editing. We also do not need to show which individual is making threats, BLP violations, etc. If it is a legal problem only law enforcement can make a guess about the individual behind it (and even then not always). We on the other hand just ban the IP or account and blame everyone with access to it. If they didn't want to share responsibility they shouldn't share an account, so it should be their problem not ours. -- zzuuzz (talk) 15:39, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Copyright is the biggest one. There is no such thing as copyright assigned to a couple (married or not); and with corporations, you start getting into issues such as work-for-hire and the like. We have decided to simplify things by insisting that each edit must be attributable to a single individual human being: full stop. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:43, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Your first argument does not hold (see below). Also otherwise I do not think it really simplifies or achieves anything at all: semicolon pilcrow.  --Lambiam 21:25, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I am in agreement with your statement OM, but how does that mesh up with the anon ips and open proxies? Frankly, I think we should spot anon ip, as frankly its actually LESS anonymous. I know nothing about you other than what you choose to tell me. I actually know a hell of a lot about an ip.Gaijin42 (talk) 15:57, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Copyright can belong to joint authors in the US and most other places - not just sequential editors, but concurrent ones.[1] -- zzuuzz (talk) 15:58, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, for example my copy of Freakonomics has: "Copyright © 2005 by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner." So they can write a book together, but they could not donate content to Wikipedia together. That doesn't make sense.  --Lambiam 21:04, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
An original copyrighted contribution (an edit) can be made by a married couple as well as two blokes called Steve, where they agree that their contributions are joint and indivisible. As with a book, they can write an article, a paragraph, or a sentence and the work is indivisible. Does it make sense to say an edit or an article was made by Mr and Mrs Smith? I don't see why not. Do you get two Christmas cards from every couple you know? We have already sorted out the attribution and blame issues. And then there's things like Lennon-McCartney and Jedward.
I'll just say that I find the argument that these types of edits from a married (or not) couple aren't allowed somehow (outwith Wikipedia policy) to be completely unsupported. It gets rehearsed every once in a while in long lists of mostly uninformed Oppose votes. To be honest I'm not persuaded either way about what we should have for the policy. I'd prefer married couple like this weren't penalised, but there remains the problem of companies. It could probably be resolved with a diplomatic rephrasing of the policy. But please let's not continue justifying another policy for reasons that don't make sense - especially with the tautology that something is bad because official Wikipedia policy says it is. -- zzuuzz (talk) 06:02, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just to point out, that while this is a very interesting discussion, it does not impact the policy. If you really want to fight this fight, you would need to make an RFC on changing this policy. Expect this to be a GIANT CLUSTERFUCK of a political fight if you do. Gaijin42 (talk) 21:16, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I thought, before I start an RFC to change the policy, let me first ask what the point is, because, after all, it is entirely possible that I am overlooking a good rationale for this policy, and then I would just be wasting everyone's time with an RFC.  --Lambiam 21:30, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's more practical for the community. There's less potential for WP:LITTLEBROTHER excuse-making (all vandalism was always the other person, right?), if someone screws up it permits us to block only the person screwing up, and whatever notices are delivered (e.g., about ArbCom's discretionary sanctions), we can be sure of them reaching both people (without "But I didn't know about that... someone else using the account must have read it!). WhatamIdoing (talk) 11:56, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

RfC on the WP:NOSHARE prohibition

The prohibition on shared accounts "[f]or reasons of attribution and accountability" was introduced on April 2, 2007. An argument presented at the time was that "[p]er the GFDL, all contributions must be by a single identified user". However, the text of the GDFL refers to "one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship", while the text of the CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported License uses "the individual, individuals, entity or entities who created the Work". Also, we allow contributions by unregistered users, possibly operating from Internet cafes, even though they can obviously not be attributed to a single identified user and any accountability is purely fictitious. Copyright law allows multiple individuals to hold joint copyright. It appears that there is no legal reason for the prohibition.

The proposal is to lift the prohibition for certain clearly harmless joint accounts, for which in fact the prohibition itself may be harmful: the case of couples, married or otherwise, who choose to contribute to the Wikipedia project together, as a single entity, and who accordingly will hold joint authorship and accept joint responsibility for their contributions. A tentative replacement text for the section is as follows:

The editing privileges that come with your user account are solely given to you, individually. It is not permitted to give others the password to your account or otherwise allow them access to your account. Doing so will result in the account being blocked.

This rule does not apply to accounts that directly represent the Wikimedia Foundation or internal Wikipedia committees, and bot accounts that are maintained by more than one contributor, provided the existence of such an arrangement is made clear and has consensus.

It does also not apply to accounts registered by couples who contribute to Wikipedia together, provided that they do not use the joint account individually, but always as a single joint entity.

However, please concentrate on the principle, and not the particulars of this text; if there is consensus for a policy change, the precise formulation can be adjusted by the usual Wikipedia editing process.  --Lambiam 14:20, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support

Oppose

  • oppose while the particular use vase is valid, it opens up a huge loophole for others to invalidly claim, and cause confusion regarding why some joint accounts are allowed and not others. Why not business partners? Why not parent/child? Why not organizations, etc. Gaijin42 (talk) 14:58, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose - We do not exist to allow corporations to use role accounts to maintain PR about themselves or socialize. Socking is often made easier when role accounts are used. I would support a limit of a maximum of 2 people per account, but not like a whole group.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:31, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    The proposal is to allow couples to edit together. It would still disallow "corporate" shared accounts, in which obviously not all users of the account would always edit together as a single entity, but instead take turns editing.  --Lambiam 19:51, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, I still have concerns about socking, and I also have privacy concerns.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:53, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: Joint accounts are still unnecessary even with a couple. Couples should still edit individually (why would there be a need otherwise?) because they may have different opinions - and it would look a little bizarre if the account is conflicting themself by changing their vote. For example, users use this tag: {{User married wiki}} to show that two individual editors are a couple. Regards, Whenaxis (contribs) DR goes to Wikimania! 00:56, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, couldn't we create a template similar to the above mentioned "married" template to show "User employed by" or similar? Troll-Life (talk) 12:52, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Couples (or other associations) can just as well use individual accounts. These are required because responsibility for one's edits, on Wikipedia, attaches to individuals. That is a necessity because we allow pseudonymous editing and therefore cannot verify or know about any form of association; allowing shared accounts would make making people responsible for their conduct even harder.  Sandstein  07:17, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: I don't see any reason to make an exception for couples.—Kww(talk) 16:15, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Solution searching for a problem. Stifle (talk) 17:23, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The concern is not really copyright, I think; it's transparency. Also, couples wanting one account aren't a big enough demographic of our users to require more complex rules. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 17:29, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose This is, frankly, a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible idea. Opens all sorts of cans of worms and would cause uncountable problems but with absolutely NO measurable benefit to the encyclopedia to offset them. Have I mentioned this was a terrible idea yet? Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 08:19, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • No - Per the above. Reaper Eternal (talk) 12:44, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Other comments or discussion

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