DHowell

Hi, I'm Dan, and I've been using Wikipedia resource for years. I'm currently an occasional contributor to WikiProject Radio Stations and WikiProject Television Stations.

I am also fascinated by logos and am bugged by the fact that logo images are being deleted from Wikipedia every day because someone forgot to include the {{logo}} template or some vandal removed an image reference from the article and it became orphaned.

Copyright paranoia and fair use

I believe copyright paranoia is running rampant on Wikipeida. Contrary to what a very vocal and influential minority of Wikipedians believe, fair use does not violate the GFDL. Jimmy Wales said "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." But when copyright laws are continually being extended, in both duration and scope, to the point where an ever-increasing portion of human knowledge is becoming increasingly protected by copyright, it is impossible to be the sum of all human knowledge without fair use.

Articles for deletion

Lately I have been spending my much of my Wikipedia time in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (doing AfD patrol), because I continually see so much good-faith work needlessly being thrown away. Here is a prime example of everything that is wrong with AfD—while reason ultimately prevailed in that case, Lobojo is absolutely correct that if he had come into the discussion any later the article might well have been deleted under the snowball clause. Deletion review would have been likely unsuccessful in such a case, as seemingly unanimous deletes are rarely if ever overturned.

A thought about our future legacy

While we endlessly debate whether certain articles should exist or not, it is interesting to note that while articles get deleted, the deletion discussions never do. So I wonder if there will come a time where the volume of content in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and all its subpages will exceed the volume of (non-deleted) content in the mainspace encyclopedia itself? At which point we will have not only created the world's most comprehensive encyclopedia, but the world's most extensive archive of debates about what topics don't belong in an encyclopedia. I wonder which legacy will be more valuable to historians in the future...

Licensing rights granted to Wikimedia Foundation

I grant non-exclusive permission for the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. to relicense my text and media contributions, including any images, audio clips, or video clips, under any copyleft license that it chooses, provided it maintains the free and open spirit of the GFDL. This permission acknowledges that future licensing needs of the Wikimedia projects may need adapting in unforeseen fashions to facilitate other uses, formats, and locations. It is given for as long as this banner remains.

Minor edits multi-licensed into the public domain

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All rights released to all minor edits

I agree to release all rights, unless otherwise stated, to all my English Wikipedia text contributions marked as minor edits, enabling anyone to use them for any purpose. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to freely use my minor edit contributions, please check the multi-licensing guide.

Additionally, all edits which would qualify as minor edits, e.g. spelling or grammar corrections, formatting or layout changes, correction of obvious facts, etc., but not so marked may be treated as if they were marked as minor.