Finnish Police Board Wants Justification For Wikipedia's Fundraising Campaign 252
linjaaho writes "Yesterday, the admin list of Finnish language Wikipedia received a request for comment from the National Police Board of Finland. The Police Board claims that the fundraising message appearing on the top of the Wikipedia pages is illegal fundraising and is punishable by criminal law. The Police Board asks how much money have they raised and ask for justification for the campaign. This is not the first time the Police Board has attacked fundraising; in 2012, a crowdfunded textbook Kickstarter project was delayed by a similar request for comment."
wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
That reminds me, I should make a donation.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I thought the whole fuck beta thing is over with now? Didn't they already indicate in the official response the whole thing was just to instigate feedback and everyone hyper reacted?
Nice try, Dice managment.
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I thought the whole fuck beta thing is over with now? Didn't they already indicate in the official response the whole thing was just to instigate feedback and everyone hyper reacted?
They did respond. I quit protesting at that point figuring we made our thoughts clear and they would not continue untill things had been fixed. Others are protesting until the beta is completely dropped.
I wish that they would post on topic then at the end of their post, put their beta protest.
Re:wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)
It is getting a little annoying. We made our point (in spades I'd say). Dice knows full well if they pull a stunt like that again, they'll have another revolt. I'd say, for now, it's time to back off a little bit.
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Sorry about the stupid question, but who the hell is DICE?
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Because I, for one, don't understand a FUCKING thing about allllllll of this Anti-Beta graffito all over Slashdot.
Well that's easy to fix. Here, let's get you going on what's wrong, just use this site for a day or so and get back to us. [slashdot.org]
You stupid fucks are basically now Public Nuisance #1. It's gotten nothing done and it should get nothing done because any number of simple assholes shouldn't have any affect on any SYSOPs policies.
Odd, because it does seem to somewhat have gotten their attention going by the feedback thread. But I guess when the majority of the commenter base says they don't like something, they should just shut up because someone doesn't have an opinion on it. Gee, isn't that the same mentality the people whine and cry about, when government does something and no one speaks up?
I hope you have a shitty fucking day!
Perhaps, just
Re:wikipedia (Score:5, Informative)
Website development is not a quick process. We've been collecting feedback -- not everybody reads Slashdot concurrently, and we don't want to leave out the people who didn't happen to be around on Wednesday and Thursday. After that's done, we need to decide what needs to be done, what order we're going to do it in.. and then the engineers will start hacking at the code. (In reality, they're already hacking at it, to continue implementing features while we work toward parity.)
That's why the beta site is... beta. And why the Classic site is still around, and will continue to be around for quite a while. I'm sorry it's not as fast as you'd like, but it's entirely incorrect to say we're not acting on feedback.
Re:wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)
The beta looks pretty much the same as the last time you asked for feedback on it.
What feedback did you get back then, and what did you do with it? Because the general impression is that you did nothing with it, and that is why people are angry.
You should already have this information. You should be able to post, right now, what you did with the previous feedback and what you changed on the beta as a result, and which points you did not change, and why. This is data from months ago. Where is it? Why do you not publish it? Is it because you really didn't do anything with that feedback?
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I don't have a full changelist -- one of the things I'm doing for our next post, whenever that is, is asking our design team for a complete list of changes. But I can throw out some examples (I've posted this in another thread, so it's partly cut and paste -- apologies if anybody's already read it).
One of the biggest complaints back in October was that the beta site was limited to a relatively narrow max width. I don't recall exactly what it was -- around 900px, perhaps. In response to feedback, we made it
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Sound like minor tweaks to me, but I'm looking forward to the full list. Two questions:
What percentage of active users is still using the Classic Discussion System (D1)?
What kind of response where you expecting when you decided to push a broken, incomplete beta upon 25% of your users?
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I don't know offhand how many users are still using D1 -- I'll ask one of the engineers to run a db query when I can.
Personally, I was expecting the community to rain hell down on us. I was not disappointed.
Let me ask you a question: if we'd spent a bit more time polishing the site and then just set it live for 100% of users, do you think that would have gone better? That's basically what we did for the 2011 redesign [slashdot.org]. Hearing some users now say, "Slashdot's perfect as it is, don't change it" is.. odd, to s
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Oops, responded to you here [slashdot.org] by accident.
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It was a poor choice of wording, I agree. But believe me, there's no confusion that the community drives the site. When we're talking about fixes/changes/new features for the site, the commenters and submitters are foremost on our minds. We call you folks Makers.
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I'm one of the users that still use the old comment system, so for me you didn't change much in 2011. But since you implied that that won't be an option this time, users are not happy...
I would have expected you to make the beta feature complete before pushing it on 25% of the users. Then the feedback probably would not have been quite so negative.
If you wanted feedback on the design aspects I would have expected you to make a story about it, asking for feedback, like last time. But for a second round of fe
Re:wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
You're right -- we should have communicated it better. It would have been my preference to get closer to feature parity, too, personally. But I do see value in rolling it out to more people, particularly when they're free to switch back to the Classic site. It helps a lot with the statistical significance of the feedback. Our earliest, invite-only alpha got very positive feedback overall. If we'd just gone with that, we'd be in serious trouble.
I got some numbers for you on the D1 system. The total number of users who have it enabled is very small -- less than 10,000 out of 3M+ accounts.
However, among active users, the percentage is much higher -- around 10%. And those users contribute roughly 15% of the comments on the site.
Re:what about linking to comments? (Score:5, Informative)
Linking to comments will definitely be re-implemented. It's something that was already on our to-do list before expanding the beta test.
Re:wikipedia (Score:4, Informative)
I can categorically state that the beta site will certainly get more features and layout changes.
I can categorically state that redesigns happen, and will continue to happen. We've had, what.. 4 redesigns, now? This isn't our first, and I'm sure it won't be our last.
As for how long the classic site will stay up: it's not my call, and plans are far from firm. I wish I had more information for you, but I don't.
I'm really sorry if it doesn't end up in a state that's to your personal preference. But given your comments, I'm not sure how that's even possible. Are you objecting because you don't like the specific changes, or because you don't want it to change at all?
Re:wikipedia (Score:4, Informative)
I miss the one-line comments, too, and it's one of the features I've been trying to get bumped up on the to-do list. The commenting system is not finished, by any means.
That's actually one of the reasons for the redesign. Our codebase is vast and byzantine, and some of it stretches back from more than a decade ago. Rewriting and redesigning will allow us to make some changes and fixes much more easily than we can do currently.
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They did respond. I quit protesting at that point figuring we made our thoughts clear and they would not continue untill things had been fixed.
What they said was that they wouldn't rescind Slashdot Classic until Beta was "ready", which is missing the point that we don't want Beta at all. It was a very disappointing response.
Others are protesting until the beta is completely dropped. I wish that they would post on topic then at the end of their post, put their beta protest.
Very well.
Fuck beta. Try Usenet: comp.misc is the new Slashdot.
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It could be a face-saving retreat: say Beta will replace Classic when "ready", keep it "in development" for a while and then silently drop it.
Companies do that kind of thing a lot. For all the talk about how they exist solely for shareholder value, they certainly do seem to exhibit a lot of human characteristics. I wonder if i
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Basically, redefine the legal concept of incorporation to give the resulting entity a duty to care equally about shareholder value, stakeholder value and the continuation of the corporation.
Sounds sort of like a benefit corporation [wikipedia.org], although good luck getting that to be the default.
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That doesn't say what you think it does: "Therefore, $7.2 million of intangible assets and $6.3 million of goodwill related to Slashdot Media were reduced to zero"
A ledger entry for "goodwill" means that Dice previously claimed that Slashdot had more real worth than its book value suggests, due to hard-to-measure aspects of the site (demographics, loyalty, reputation, etc). Usually a company will record that largely to justify
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tyranny (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the point is that you fill an application and get the permit to raise funds. All kinds of non-profit organizations get them all the time. If wikipedia had done that the Finnish police would be quite happy. The problem is that Wikimedia is registered in California and they obviously do not care about Finnish law and I have no idea of how the police think they can force a US organization to comply with the rules if all the servers and staff are outside Finland.
The issue with the kickstarted texkbook was different because it was not a non-profit organisation. In Finland you need to crowdsourcing very carefully so that it is clear that you are selling a product and not raising money. Jolla did it with their phone so it can be done, but just using kickstarter as it is is illegal, because it is too much like charity for funding a regular company.
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Well, the point is that you fill an application and get the permit to raise funds. All kinds of non-profit organizations get them all the time. If wikipedia had done that the Finnish police would be quite happy. The problem is that Wikimedia is registered in California and they obviously do not care about Finnish law and I have no idea of how the police think they can force a US organization to comply with the rules if all the servers and staff are outside Finland.
"Forcing" may be a problem, but generally the principle is that a possibly illegal action "happens" where it takes effect, so if people in Finland read the donation requests, then the Finnish police has the right and duty to act on it.
So worst case, the Finnish police could ask Finnish ISPs to prevent access to a website that breaks the law in Finland.
Re:Tyranny (Score:5, Insightful)
"Forcing" may be a problem, but generally the principle is that a possibly illegal action "happens" where it takes effect, so if people in Finland read the donation requests, then the Finnish police has the right and duty to act on it.
So worst case, the Finnish police could ask Finnish ISPs to prevent access to a website that breaks the law in Finland.
NO. This is not just wrong, it's also incredibly stupid. Think about what you're saying: If every website must comply with every law in every country where the website can be seen, then we end up with a web that is the lowest common denominator of all the tyrannical laws in the world. A website in Finland does not get to dictate the terms of a website anywhere outside of Finland. Period.
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A website OUTSIDE a sovereign state does not get to dictate the laws WITHIN said state.
Wikipedia, not any other organization has the right to do business on their terms just because they can hide themselves behind a server.
Note, the Finnish police asked for clarification and if Wikipedia answers it will not accept payments from Finnish citizens then there is no problem. If they want to receive payments from them, they will have to follow the Finnish laws. Period.
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"Hide behind a server"? Wikimedia is a US-based non-profit. By the nature of the web, people in Finland can read this site (you know, what we tend to call the good thing about the Internet). Nobody is hiding behind anything.
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A website OUTSIDE a sovereign state does not get to dictate the laws WITHIN said state. Wikipedia, not any other organization has the right to do business on their terms just because they can hide themselves behind a server.
Nope. You are badly mistaken. Wikipedia isn't "doing business" in Finland. They are running a website that happens to be viewable in Finland. If the Finnish government wants to censor that website (i.e. by blocking at the ISP level) that's their prerogative. But then they'd just be engaging in censorship for no good reason.
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censorship for no good reason.
You must not be a Finn. Tax Evasion and Doing Things Without The Proper Permits are very serious offenses in all the Nordic countries. That shit may fly in Somalia, Wiki, but not here.
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See in North America, we have this premise that "whatever is not spelled out in law is permitted." In turn, permits for things like this are so stupid, that it borders on the line of assine. And why do you ask? Because government generally believes through the will of the people that they're grown-up enough to make proper choices on their own.
And if Canada, Japan, S.Korea and the US are "somalia" then the Nordic countries are a very small step away from Stalinist Russia.
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Wiki is doing business in Finland, they provide information services to Finnish citizens by providing access to their website.
It is irrelevant if the Finns pay for it or not (payment can be made in different ways, money, bit-coins, advertisement, information gathering etc). Furthermore, being a non-profit organization doesn't mean you are not doing business.
Don't get me wrong, I think Wikipedia should be allowed to collect money in Finland but only within the Finnish law.
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It doesn't matter if they are doing business in Finland unless they have an offfice or HQ in Finland.
Serving a Finish language site doesn't equate to doing business in Finland.
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The analogy is wrong, as a book would have to be in my possession first to be opened. The service is provided when the book is transferred to me.
WP is engaged in sending information not already in my possession. Hence they do provide a service.
Anyway, just broke my rule w.r.t. responding to an AC. Shouldn't do that.
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The analogy can be made to work however...
Imagine a pamphlet, printed in a country that's not Finland, that includes, like many do, a back cover soliciting for donations for some worthy cause. I mention to my Finnish friend an article I happened to read in aforementioned pamphlet, and they say to me "That sounds fascinating, I'd be very interested in reading that article. Can you send it to me?*". So I pop the pamphlet in an envelope, and post it to them. So now a Fin, in Finland, is in possession of someth
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Wikipedia, not any other organization has the right to do business on their terms just because they can hide themselves behind a server.
Wikipedia DO have a right to do business, and Finland has no control of Wikipedia's ability to solicit funds, or to accept payments from people in Finland. Finland can only interfere with this business by passing a law forbidding Finlands from visiting Wikipedia's website to do business.
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Note, the Finnish police asked for clarification and if Wikipedia answers it will not accept payments from Finnish citizens then there is no problem. If they want to receive payments from them, they will have to follow the Finnish laws. Period.
How is Wikipedia supposed to determine where the payments came from? If people donate using PayPal, is their home address always given? Is there anything to stop Finnish people from opening US PayPal accounts?
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NO. This is not just wrong, it's also incredibly stupid. Think about what you're saying: If every website must comply with every law in every country where the website can be seen, then we end up with a web that is the lowest common denominator of all the tyrannical laws in the world. A website in Finland does not get to dictate the terms of a website anywhere outside of Finland. Period.
Exactly. Take it to a conclusion to make your argument crystal clear; a website based in country A that is full of images that meet the definition of child pornography in Country B CANNOT be censored by Country B, which has no right to "dictate the terms of a website anywhere outside of (Country B)". Keep in mind, you responded to a post that suggested Finnish authorities (Country B) can respond by ASKING ISP's to block the site in Finland.
Does that help? Are you ready to back down on your absolutist po
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Keep in mind, you responded to a post that suggested Finnish authorities (Country B) can respond by ASKING ISP's to block the site in Finland.
If you'll read carefully, you'll see this tidbit in the post I was responding to:
"Forcing" may be a problem, but generally the principle is that a possibly illegal action "happens" where it takes effect, so if people in Finland read the donation requests, then the Finnish police has the right and duty to act on it.
Does that help? Are you ready to back down on your absolutist position?
Nope.
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A website in Finland does not get to dictate the terms of a website anywhere outside of Finland. Period.
However, ISPs operating in Finland do not have the same luxury ---- it is possible that the government will pass a law requiring them to interfere with foreign ISPs not judged to be operating to the satisfaction of the local authorities.
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NO. This is not just wrong, it's also incredibly stupid. Think about what you're saying: If every website must comply with every law in every country where the website can be seen....
We are talking about a charitable solicitation in the Finnish language for contributions to support the Finnish-language Wikipedia.
It doesn't surprise me that the government of Finland would expect to have a say in that. There are about five million Finnish speakers, almost all resident in Finland. Finland must certainly does have the authority to block payments made through bank accounts, credit cards, etc., in Finland.
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If every website must comply with every law in every country where the website can be seen [...]
Wikipedia donation requests are very targeted. I saw the donation request while browsing in my corporate VPN (the gateway to internet happens to reside in GB) and wanted to donate some money, but the system did not allow me to enter a credit card address outside of GB, so I gave up. When browsing at home, I have never seen a donation request, probably they think there would be no point in putting one up for my country.
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Or the websites don't care if tyrannical country x bans access and just ignores it, if you have not noticed China already does that en mass.
Indeed they can. And if Finland wants to follow China's example, then we will have learned something valuable about Finland's government.
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I thought there were some Finnish speakers outside of Finland. Does England get to claim jurisdiction over ever webpage written in English?
Re: Tyranny (Score:2)
They ohappens y won't be easily able to go after Wikimedia Foundation itself, but they might be able to go after volunteers who live in Finland. I think particularly vulnerable would be the person who translated the fundraising notice to Finnish, if he happens to live in Finland.
Not that I really expect this to lead to much. I think it's entirely plausible that even if he got charged and found guilty, the court would decide to not punish him (and quite certainly he wouldn't get more than a small fine in the
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I have no idea of how the police think they can force a US organization to comply with the rules if all the servers and staff are outside Finland.
If you are actively soliciting funds from Finland, I am betting that you have to comply with Finnish export controls, laws governing international banking, commercial paper, charitable solicitation and so on. The Finnish bank will refuse payment.
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no idea of how the police think they can force a US organization to comply with the rules if all the servers and staff are outside Finland.
I would hesitate on that.... there are a lot of international deals between countries. The US has capital controls on US citizens passed in 2010, that the government wants Finnish banks to enforce against American, to prevent us from opening foreign accounts ---- therefore, it is not hard to see the US enforcing Finland's controls.
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The problem is that Wikimedia is registered in California and they obviously do not care about Finnish law and I have no idea of how the police think they can force a US organization to comply with the rules if all the servers and staff are outside Finland.
Just because they are located else where doesn't mean they are not subject to the regulation. They can still be subject to the regulation, even if the Finish policy can't enforce it.
However, the payment processing probably goes through an entity located in the EU, I'm sure paypal and friend have subsidiaries in the EU. And these subsidiaries can be targeted and court ordered to block payments. I'm no lawyer, but I believe you can now be sued by any court within the EU, so policy might have options here.
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Because you want to discourage charitable fundraising unless the state APPROVES of it? This is pretty goofy.
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Correct. Believe it or not, there's a shitload of scammers that run various "collections". Registering with police requires you to provide purpose of the collection as well as contact information of people responsible if you actually do scam someone.
Some people appear to think that if someone is less intelligent, or informed, or just plain more gullible than average, it's completely okay to scam them. Most of the reasonable people disagree.
Re:Tyranny (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, Finnish police, like police all over the world, are ignorant morons.
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It is true.
Actually, AFAIK (and according to googling) churches in Finland can't even get the permit as they don't satisfy the "yleishyödyllisyys" (general benefit for society) requirement to get the permit. They co-operate with separate associations/foundations exist for that purpose, though, e.g. Finn Church Aid [kirkonulkomaanapu.fi].
There is a change to the law being planned that would allow churches and universities to conduct fundraisers, but no big overhaul that would actually be needed for the out-of-date law...
Unoff [finlex.fi]
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>Actually, [...] churches [...] don't satisfy the "yleishyödyllisyys" (general benefit for society) requirement [...]
A keen observation.
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churches in Finland can't even get the permit as they don't satisfy the "yleishyödyllisyys" (general benefit for society) requirement
I no longer feel sorry for people who have to learn English.
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If that is even half true, that's just tyrannical. Think about it. That means even a church in Finland doing disaster relief cannot call together a congregational meeting and ask for funds without getting a "by your leave, sire" from a bunch of police bureaucrats.
I don't think so. Regulated fund-raising might not be such a bad thing. Certainly it'd reduce fraud if folks had to demonstrate a legitimate need accountability structure.
On an unrelated note, since I don't live in Finland I was wondering if you'd like to donate to my cause? It's called:
Prevent Children From Getting Sick, Ever BBMAH*
Insert a bunch of statistics here about how kids get sick all the time, from all sorts of preventable causes. Seriously, a big wall of text going on and on about the
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It also means that when I donate money it is on record what the purpose of the donation is and who is receiving the funds. This could very well protect the Finns from fund-raising scams.
Calling it a tyranny without considering the other side of the story nor knowing on how hard it is to receive such permit is.... (I'm just lacking the words for it.)
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It's tyranny when petty bureaucrats in one country attempt to force their laws on the rest of the world.
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Calling it a tyranny without considering the other side of the story nor knowing on how hard it is to receive such permit is.
No. Tyranny is more about the means than it is about the end goal (and a lot of tyrannies got started in the pursuit of lofty goals). Protecting Finns from fundraising scams is a worthy goal, but how you implement that protection makes all the difference. Going after actual scamsters and warning people through public service messages is a lot less tyrannical than censoring websites or requiring permits for fundraisers.
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If that is even half true, that's just tyrannical...
How so?
I'm sure it is fairly easy to get a permit, it's probably just a standard form you fill out and file... I imagin prevents a lot of scam artists, honestly, that's good.. Obviously, wikipedia isn't being attacked or targeted, the police is just asking for compliance with local law by filling out a form.
Oh, and I suspect that most non-profits in Finland have a standing permit to raise funds...
In many countries it also illegal for poor people to beg for money on the street, not unreasonable in countr
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That means even a church in Finland doing disaster relief cannot call together a congregational meeting and ask for funds without getting a "by your leave, sire" from a bunch of police bureaucrats.
CORRECT. This is a way to help prevent private association that the government does not approve of. You can congregate; HOWEVER, if you want to pool some money for any real action, then the government has to approve of what you want to accomplish strongly enough to issue you a permit.
If they decide in the
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The English translation of the law is here [finlex.fi], and is a whopping 12 pages of sparse text, so no need to keep guessing.
But why didn't the summary just link to it in the first place?
That seems to be beyond the scope of the law according to Section 2. Also, the possibl
A story to watch... (Score:5, Funny)
Cut the "fuck beta" crap already (Score:5, Insightful)
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then they will think that it is all ok, people stopped complaining. /. from my phone in the airport today. i closed it immediately, as i got the "beta". it a fucking joke and incredibly crappy.
i opened
fuck beta. i will not visit slashdot next week. let's see what happens afterwards
Re: the "fuck beta" crap (Score:2)
I am almost tempted to option out of classic view just to see what the fuss is about; But not quite enough.
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Good luck with that. I tried it too, and got modded down ( too ). The children now run the asylum.
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I suppose the millions of people who protested and fought for change throughout history were all acting like spoiled children too. Sure comparing the beta protest to major protests or even wars is exaggerated but in the end its about people fighting for what they perceive as important. Since 1999 when I started reading /. I have learned so much. And a good percentage has come from reading comments that are moderated by the community. And the community is you and me, not some paid shill or robot. /. is impor
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if you really think you can compare the childish crap that is is being done here to legitimate protest *at all*, you really need to get out of your mothers basement more.
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I see you don't believe in protests. Why do you hate civil rights?
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If people stop complaining and start "being reasonable", they will interpret this as a sign that we will get used to beta. I actually have more respect for dice that for people like you. At least the dice people are trying to make a business work -- misguided as their action might be. But you are a fucktard. You are not willing to compromise an inch of your comfort to influence the world in the slightest way. You're a fucking sheep.
Duh. I myself have expressed clearly enough my feelings towards beta. So have many others. Slashdot has clearly seen that feedback and already said "okay, okay, we got it!" If after that people still continue to rave about the beta, that's just retarded. It's clearly not about making a point across anymore but getting excited of a good riot.
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Duh. I myself have expressed clearly enough my feelings towards beta. So have many others. Slashdot has clearly seen that feedback and already said "okay, okay, we got it!"
Slashdot has seen it, but Slashdot management has already shown their unwillingness to admit failure.
The question is whether it has bubbled up to the decision makers who can override Slashdot Media, like the advertisers, the top brass at Dice Holding and their owners, Atlantic Holding and the Quadrangle Group.
A reaction has to be elicited. The hand has to be forced. Vague bromide non-promises from the lower end staff toeing the corporate line doesn't help - if anything it tells how much upper management i
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+1. I don't mind the beta, it's ok. What's not ok is all the comments about it that makes the actual comments hard to read.
That's the whole point of the comments. Disruption is the nature of picketing, and you play your part as a useful idiot [wikipedia.org] who helps the protest by stating how disruptive it is.
Thank you for verifying the effectiveness of the protest.
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Haha no, have some screenshots [imgur.com]. The first two are in response to a guy claiming that he can see as much in Beta as he sees in Classic, which was 100% bullshit. The third one is an example of how fucked up everything is once you get a few replies into a thread. Note that slashdot appears to be picking random fonts for everyone's posts, that's always a plus for readability. I'm sure Pi/10 horses they asked for their UX research thought
Different countries, different laws (Score:2)
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The question is who is running the fundraising. It's Wikipedia US that runs the fundraising, all the Finns did was translate the message.
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Which has what, exactly, to do with Wikipedia, a purely American company that hosts everything including the Finnish site) in CA?
If, as an American, I write a webpage in Russian condemning Putin and the Russian orthodox church, should I expect the "we don't call them KGB anymore" to swing by and throw me in a glass cage? If I draw a cartoon of Mohammed molesting little girls, should I expect Ali Khamenei to c
Let me answer that :) (Score:2)
If, as an American, I write a webpage in Russian condemning Putin and the Russian orthodox church, should I expect the "we don't call them KGB anymore" to swing by and throw me in a glass cage?
That's a maybe... If you rat them out, you should expect a slow painful death from radiation served through sushi.
If I draw a cartoon of Mohammed molesting little girls, should I expect Ali Khamenei to call down a Jihad on my ass?
Yes! You should expect this :)
Kurt Westergaard who publicly owned up to one of the Mohammed drawing is still living under protection by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service.
If I give a Nazi salute in public, with Merkel get her panties in a bunch?
No, she doesn't care... But she might want you to stop spying on her! Now, let me ask you some questions:
If in Denmark I buy Cuban cigars from Germany, should I expect US security service to confiscate my money?
Primary sources (Score:2)
PDF file... in Finnish (Score:2)
Did the summary just link to a PDF file... in Finnish? It wasn't enough that the same file was already linked from the mail article, but was judged useful enough to link from the summary? Really?
The trick to good linking is to avoid overlinking, to avoid confusing the reader. This summary fails.
Stupid waste of taxpayer money (Score:5, Insightful)
You cant ask for help with funding? (Score:2)
You have to have *permission* to ask for help?? And you all thought the US was draconian..
IANAFL (Score:2)
I Am Not A Finnish Lawyer, but doesn't some court have to produce a warrant to collect such information? What's a 'police board'?
Appropriate reply. (Score:2)
Dear Finnish police board,
Jurisdiction, you goddamn scandinavian hillbillies.
Sincerely,
Jimmy Wales.
Re: (Score:2)
Please note that the request was directed only to the Finnish Wikipedia admin list. That's a nice touch - they did not (so far) go after the entire campaign. Since the Finnish language is quite local (unlike English or Spanish), the request on that site is rightly presumed to be aimed specifically at Finnish users.
In my opinion, this is an error on the Wikipedia's side. An action like this should be properly organized. Admins of local language versions should be involved early and they should verify how to
Re: BETA sucks. (Score:2)
What functionality is missing? All I see is bitching because its different or has whitespace.
Re: (Score:2)
It breaks the moderating system. Would you like me to Google that for you?
Perhaps also bring you some coffee or tea while you wait?
Re: BETA sucks. (Score:2)
Coffee would be fine.
I don't have mod points, so I'm not sure what the issue with modding is.
Re: BETA sucks. (Score:2)
I read it. I read through the comments, too. More bitching with little discussion on what the actual issues are.
The only thing that would kill the place is if people can't comment. I agree that comments are what makes the place. Maybe moderation is second, but I normally browse with all comments visible, so moderation doesn't mean anything to me.
How about instead of posting "fuck beta" how about listing it at least linking to a discussion on the issues.
1. Can't link to comments. I see where that is often us
Re: BETA sucks. (Score:2)
I was just playing with it on my phone. There are links to show All, Funny, Informative, etc. comments. Plus there's a gear (settings) to click on to set the view level from -1 to 5.
This actually works better than the old slider, at least on mobile.
It seems I have to type a title for comments on Be (Score:2)
I have mod points right now, so I just checked the interface. There's a link "Moderate" on the bottom of each post. If you click on it, it takes you to the home page, for some reason. If you have enough restraint to hover it without clicking on it, it pops up a menu of the various moderation possibilities, and you can (presumably) click on one to moderate the post.
Posts still appear to have moderation values, and there's a link you can click on to choose a threshold (and thus filter by score), but it's very
Re: (Score:2)
You select the type of moderation on the top of the pain above the comments.
They only supported 4 types of moderation when I looked at it (I think they should have all of them with an OR function of selected types).
The moderation level is an obscure icon to the right of the filters. You click it and then you can see a list of levels to select. The current combo box is hidden behind an undocumented, unintuitive icon. Sort of like iphones and androids (where I was still discovering features almost two year
Re: (Score:3)
What company directs 25% of its users to a partially-working, not-ready-for-production website?
Should the government have a monopoly on that?
Re: (Score:2)
I see that my parent post got marked as a Troll. If trying to further the discussion here on Slashdot with some interesting (I thought) points that others have subsequently elected to respond to in an interesting way constitutes Trolling, then I'm guilty as charged. Please forgive me. I think I'll take next week off from commenting as penance to pay for my Trolling sins here.
Re:They could not get a permit even i they wanted (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm also sure the law is used to punish entities that they don't approve of.
Re: (Score:2)
But they're not a Finnish` registered non profit company, so it's impossible for them to obtain permission.
Re: (Score:2)
They can't get a permit, because they're not a registered non profit organisation in Finland.