DOOM Wiki to update their terms of use August 30th, 2021

[Chip]

Nothing huge here, but if you haven't visited the Doomwiki in a bit, they are planning on updating their terms of use on August 30th, 2021 at 8:30 PM CDT.

 

Basically, the update is just this (taken from the Doomwiki),

Quote

Our content is not inherently political or religious in nature: Users agree that contributions to the Project do not qualify as speech reflecting personal ideas of a political or religious nature. Users agree that contributions to the Project are not part of any political campaign or statement of a political official and do not qualify for any special protections ascribed to such. Users agree that the Project cannot be compelled to host or serve any speech of a political or religious nature. By submitting any contribution to the Project, users agree to waive any special rights of protection ascribed to political or religious speech by any state law should such laws be relevant despite the above agreements, and further agree that the Project cannot be held liable for any damages under such laws...

 

...you further agree to recognize the Constitutional right of the Project as a private non-governmental entity to be protected from compelled speech, as established in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette and Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck.

The jurisdiction of the website has been changed from Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, to Cook County Illinois. 

 

That is all! please do not derail the thread with any political views or anything like that. I simply posted this thread for others to be aware that there is will be a slight change in the terms of use for the Doomwiki.

[BaileyTW]

Weird change but okay.

[Caffeine Freak]

Have people ever posted political/religious stuff on Doom Wiki articles? I'm not the most frequent visitor there and I know there's plenty of pages I've never visited, but that's something I don't specifically recall ever seeing.

[BaileyTW]

18 minutes ago, Caffeine Freak said:

Have people ever posted political/religious stuff on Doom Wiki articles? I'm not the most frequent visitor there and I know there's plenty of pages I've never visited, but that's something I don't specifically recall ever seeing.

Well you see technically, and I'm purposely stretching things here, since Doom has demons and religion-adjascent imagery a lot of things would fall in that umbrella.

[roadworx]

34 minutes ago, Caffeine Freak said:

Have people ever posted political/religious stuff on Doom Wiki articles? I'm not the most frequent visitor there and I know there's plenty of pages I've never visited, but that's something I don't specifically recall ever seeing.

i'm sure some asshole has before

 

we can probably just summon @Fredrik and ask why the tos has changed in this way

[Chip]

1 hour ago, BaileyTW said:

Weird change but okay.

Quaser wrote this in the discussion thread for the Terms page,

Quote

A series of state laws is slowly being passed in the United States which threatens to force websites (sometimes defined as having 75 million "subscribers" or more, but other times without limitation or restriction) to host political views, religious beliefs, and even hate speech of a racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. nature posted by their users... Oklahoma is one such state (its bill is currently stalled in committee but could move at any moment without warning)

 

[BaileyTW]

That's understandable then.

[Redneckerz]

If the day comes that i have to decide whether a source port like GZDoom or PrBoom is Democratic or Republican then ill be calling in a hearing. :P

 

Odd law. You should not force sites to host views of a political nature when its unneeded. 

 

My 2cents, but in the case of DoomWiki, which strives to document Doom's history, such views are only when they are part of historic context. Something which is already done so since DoomWiki's infancy.

 

Outside of that, the wiki's eternal goal is to serve as a book.of knowledge styled after an actual encyclopedia and dictionary. In this role, political views hold no water for they are dynamic and moving.

 

An encyclopedia, on the other hand, merely cares about facts, not political views.

[Dark Pulse]

Hmm, government telling private entities what they can and cannot do?

 

Yup, that sounds totally like what I'd expect using the "muh religious/free speech" line: A bunch of uneducated, nearly-entirely Republican congressmen/women not knowing what the founders meant by free speech, which as it turns out to anyone who took a basic civics course, is actually the exact opposite of the very thing they're trying to force it to do.

[Quasar]

It's by and large just a safety measure on my part to protect the wiki from bad actors. For example we have many transgender people documented on the wiki. Some asshole might feel their personal beliefs entitle them to deface those persons' articles or articles about their works to post some screed about their opinions, etc. We cannot and will not be obligated to allow this.

 

The aforementioned state laws are largely suspected to be unconstitutional to whatever extent they would cause a compelled speech requirement, but I am definitely not looking to become a test case for that. Instead I'll have my users informed that such content is off-topic and not allowed in general, and will be removed without bias, and then if they choose to violate that and want to make a case out of it, their case is significantly weakened by the agreement that was in place. Or this is my legal theory anyway - IANAL, I just play one on the Internet sometimes.

[Scuba Steve]

Not a lawyer?

[OniriA]

3 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

Not a lawyer?

 

Spoiler

: Probably not. 

 

[Chip]

59 minutes ago, OniriA said:

Probably not. 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/James_Haley_(Quasar)

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Bill_Koch_(Bloodshedder)

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Stephen_McGranahan_(SoM)

The person in the pic is Quasar. the other two people named are Bloodshedder (Who notably hosted the Newstuff Chronicles and maintains the Idgame archives), and SoM (who I've never heard of, but was apparently the creator of Cardboard, and several big source ports). 

[Dark Pulse]

On 8/2/2021 at 1:08 PM, Quasar said:

It's by and large just a safety measure on my part to protect the wiki from bad actors. For example we have many transgender people documented on the wiki. Some asshole might feel their personal beliefs entitle them to deface those persons' articles or articles about their works to post some screed about their opinions, etc. We cannot and will not be obligated to allow this.

 

The aforementioned state laws are largely suspected to be unconstitutional to whatever extent they would cause a compelled speech requirement, but I am definitely not looking to become a test case for that. Instead I'll have my users informed that such content is off-topic and not allowed in general, and will be removed without bias, and then if they choose to violate that and want to make a case out of it, their case is significantly weakened by the agreement that was in place. Or this is my legal theory anyway - IANAL, I just play one on the Internet sometimes.

Yeah, I get why you're doing it. It's just sad that you have to in the first place because of some inept idiots who, sadly, hold the levers of power.

[DollarStoreChili]

On 7/31/2021 at 11:16 PM, BaileyTW said:

Weird change but okay.

 

Right? I feel like political or religious submission would've been up for automatic review because they'd be off topic by their very nature. Save for very specific discussion about hell, obvious reason being the game revolves around depictions of hell and demons.

 

I read a little closer, this is more of a response to a particular law. Nvm.

[scalliano]

Surprised that a user-maintained encyclopaedia would fall under such regulations as opposed to, say, Twitter, FB et al but w/e, better safe than sorry.