1

One of my jobs as the steward of wikiHow is making difficult decisions that cannot easily be made by the community. And one of those areas is in removing admin powers from existing admins. With that in mind, I’m sorry to announce that I have concluded to de-admin Monica ( http://www.wikihow.com/User:Bokehmon ) and Caidoz ( http://www.wikihow.com/User:Caidoz ). One June 8, due to unhappiness with the 2.0 version of the image pages, Monica and Caidoz participated in a round of protest deletions of over 150 images at the request from non-admin Lewis Collard. They did these speedy deletions without the usual 7 day waiting period or seeking input on discussion pages or in the forums. As admins, they should have been aware that contributions to wikiHow are irrevocable and while we may from time to time delete a handful of things at a user’s requests as a courtesy, such a large scale deletion was certainly worthy of seeking a broader community consensus and a slow, diligent process. They had a right to be angry about the image page changes, but as admins they are expected to find less disruptive ways to communicate it. Looking at step 8 of http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-wikiHow-Admin , which lists the criteria admins are selected by, trust is the most important: “Do the existing admins trust you to exercise control responsibly on one of the most popular sites on the Internet? Trust is earned over time by continually displaying good, level-headed, mature judgment.” After the mass deletion I can no longer say that Monica and Caidoz have the trust we need to grant them powers to delete content in way that admins are expected to. The reason we give only certain people the power to delete is because we don’t want content to get erased rashly, which is what happened here. Admins, like any other volunteer on wikiHow, may not be happy with what is happening on wikiHow, but there are other ways to solicit change without using admin privileges. I hate to make decisions like this. I waited several days from when this event happened to sleep on this decision a few times and make sure I wasn’t over reacting. And to reduce the risk that I have over reacted here, I would like the existing admins to be able to reverse this decision if they wish. We can do that by enabling Monica and Caidoz to run for re-election in the current round of admin elections, if they wish. I’d also like to stress that Monica and Caidoz are good members of this community who have together done some fantastic work here. Monica has been at wikiHow for almost 4 years and patrolled over 100,000 edits. Caidoz joined us in January 2009 and has written 28 articles and boosted hundreds more. I really hope they don’t leave wikiHow over this. On a personal note to Monica and Caidoz - I’m sorry to spring this on you without any warning. Due to the nature of de-admining, it’s not the sort of thing we can talk about beforehand due to the risks of a “protest action”. I’m open to the idea of you guys coming back to adminship either at this election, or in a subsequent one. I don’t hold grudges and you can win my trust back. As you may remember from the last time I de-admined someone, I was the most vocal supporter of re-admining him in subsequent elections. Again, I think you are great contributors and I’m sorry to have to do this. Finally, let me add that I’d welcome community input on this decision either publicly or in private over email. I’d also encourage existing admins to reverse this decision by re-electing Monica and Caidoz in the current admin election, if the admin community has a consensus to do that.

2

Monica and Caidoz were both friends with Lewis, and he was deeply upset about the changes to the images that were coming in 2.0…didn’t he say that he was leaving? Those images were all taken by Lewis, and he asked for them to be removed. The Creative Commons license agreement states that all images uploaded are the property of the public domain, right? .

3

No, the Creative Commons license is distinct from the public domain.

4

Then, the image holder can have them removed, right? Or do the images become site property?

5

Not commenting here on the wider issue here, and IANAL, but: > The Creative Commons license agreement states that all images uploaded are the property of the public domain, right? No. The Creative Commons is not a Public Domain licenses, but per the wikiHow Terms of Use (emphasis mine):

However, in previous individual cases a degree of good will has been involved. And there’s a loose informal policy that things tend to be removed on the author’s request.

6

That seems to be very strange… A perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free license? If you make your living off of photography, you wouldn’t want to do that…

7

Thank you for letting us know Jack, that can’t have been an easy decision. Looking at your reasoning I support your decision.

8

Indeed, you have to be aware of this before sharing your work and it is clearly stated at upload. Just to confuse things slightly more, Lewis did not upload under the CC license, he used a Public Domain one.

9

You’re misrepresenting the situation: First, I asked them to do it. They didn’t come out and say “wow, the new image page sucks, let’s randomly delete a bunch of things”, I asked my images to be removed because I was unhappy with the changes, figured two weeks was long enough for at least SOME kind of response from the office, and consequently I wanted them gone. Note: wanted them removed , not wanted to bring attention to the issue .

Let’s just be totally clear there. OK, good.

Nobody suggested that either the license I put on them or the wikiHow terms of use would allow me to revoke my permission. Indeed, you could have undeleted them and continued using them even though, at the time, I didn’t want them to be in wikiHow. I knew that, they did too.

I recall me being angry, not them. And if anyone was trying to communicate anything, it was me, not them. (At the time, if I had to think of a message I was sending, mine would have been the English language’s most liberating two-word phrase, not “please fix the image description page”. But that’s me, not them.)

Yeah, let’s not do anything rash here. Wait, what’s this thread about?

Perhaps, but I 1) don’t make my living off photography and 2) was fully aware of what I was consenting to when I uploaded them.

10

I use many different licenses, depending on my mood at the time. Some of them were PD, some were CC. I am entirely aware of the implications of both.

11

It sounds like there are two different issues here: - The reinstatement of admin rights to Bokehmon and Caidoz - The removal of images licensed under CC and released to PD Personally, I don’t think this forum is the right place to discuss the first point, but will make a note about the second. Regardless of whatever policy wikihow has, even the most liberal CC license (CC-BY) states :

This is section 7, subsection b. IANAL but it seems like even though you can stop distributing the licensed work, but you cannot withdraw the license. Thus, wikihow still has the rights to continue to use your work, provided that wikihow follows the license, since violation of said license is revoked should the licensee breach any of the terms. If Lewis was exercising this termination, then I would assume that he would need to file a DMCA notice with wikiHow. Again, this is not legal advice…

12

It shows. P.S. Thanks guys, but I do know what rights I gave away when I licensed my images that way and submitted them to wikiHow, in particular, I know I no longer have the right to ever legally compel wikiHow or anyone else from using them, which is not the same thing as asking them to be deleted.Can we drop this tangent of the discussion now?

13

Im pretty… speechless. Reading this for the first time on the bus and certainly not the last.

14

That’s a real shame. It must have been hard to make the decision, but I hope that they both remain on wikihow, as both are simply wonderful. After the correct action is taken, we forgive and forget - Lana Green (she wrote several very witty joke books, and died a few years ago). I am glad wikihow follows Lana’s philosophy.

15

Caidoz has deleted her user page, and Bokehmon has removed her live profile box…bad signs. Looks like we are down two contributors, and that is never good.

16

I’d like to offer my side of what happened here. As Estel has said, there’s a loose informal policy that things tend to be deleted at the request of the original author. No one has raised a concern about this before, nevermind disciplined someone for it. Monica and I were not aware that we had done anything wrong in deleting the images at the request of the original author, and in the conversations with Jack that followed he never gave any indication that this was the case. Had Jack or someone else explained this I would have been willing to put it right and restore the images myself (I cannot speak for Monica here, but I assume she would too) and apologise. As it is, the first indication we were given that we had done anything wrong was in this forum thread, as neither of us were contacted via email to explain the situation and give us some warning before this was created.

17

Well, for sure we are learning about alternate ways do responding to things.

18

This is the first I’ve heard about this, but I’d like to give my support to Caidoz and Monica. If content is open for the community to edit, why is it wrong for the originator of the content to want to have his content deleted? I’m no admin and frankly have no idea of what I would do in this situation, although if Lewis, who knows site policy like the back of his hand, wanted his content gone, they should be able to delete it without question.

19

So will two others take their place?

20

The only other time someone was deadminned was back in 2007 and he was not replaced, so I’m assuming no.