

Archives (index)

Threads older than 90 days may be archived by .

Alternative WP:OFFICE template [ edit ]

Hey Philippe. Posting here as I'm guessing you're keeping an eye on this page. I realize that the language of the current {{pp-office}} template is fairly vague about time period for protection. Still, in my experience, pages that have WP:OFFICE restrictions are often temporary (in the several months sense of temporary). For an article such as this, where it is essentially under indefinite protection (until someone properly files a counter-claim), I'm wondering if a template that indicates the indefinite period of the Office Action protection might be appropriate.

The simple reason for a separate template would be to alert users to the fact that they cannot simply "check back later" and expect the office action to be resolved. I doubt all users dive through the talk page. The extended reason for a different notice is that the DMCA notice, even if entirely valid, serves as on-going censorship of this page (in that it limits the content in a certain way). Just to be clear, assuming PCI-SIG's claim is valid, they could very well have the legal right to censor this article in the way they have. Still, since WP is not normally censored, I'm suggesting bringing to more prominence on the page itself that this page has been censored.

I'm suggesting nothing more extensive than something similar to the DMCA notice Google drops at the bottom of your search results when they've censored the results. New template could read:

The Wikimedia Foundation Office has placed [[ref/link to specific restrictions|certain indefinite restrictions]] on this page as the result of a [[link to legal notice|legal request]] by party making request under the DMCA. For more details, please see Wikipedia:Office actions, [[page?|how you can respond to this DMCA notice]], or the article's talk page. Do not remove this template from the article while these restrictions are in place.

I could do up the template, but as this is an Office matter, wanted to check in first. Again, even if a revised notice doesn't look like the suggestion above, I really think that this page should have a clearer notice about the indefinite nature of the restrictions on this page, as it does make it a bit of an oddity on the project.

P.S. Just as I was finishing this, I thought, "Maybe the article page doesn't point to the notice because the notice was less than absolute?" (I'm referring to the exceptions to the take-down mentioned earlier on this page by other editors.) That is, since they haven't come in guns blazing, maybe it's best not to be pointing editors directly to the means by which they could "pester" PCI-SIG, for fear of things escalating. (I realize escalation of any matter would be a first and entirely unheard of for the project.) I'm not sure if this played into WMF's thinking at all, but if it did, I think that moving the DMCA response instructions from talk to article page wouldn't have much effect given it would be the editor making the claim and it really is just one level removed from where the instructions are already located. Now that I've taken too much of your time, I'm off. Please hit me with a {{tb}} or something similar on my talk page if you respond as I'm not really expecting one soon. Thanks for reading!--Policy Reformer(c) 20:39, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

This looks reasonable to me. I'll ask legal what they think. :) -Philippe (talk) 21:22, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

What about showing a small lock icon in the corner only and giving the full explanation only when editing the page using an edit notice? —Ruud 21:31, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

My thought was that this protection, even more than most office protections, should be highlighted rather than diminished. Here, an article is being indefinitely censored, and given that consensus typically beats censorship on the project, this instance where consensus cannot beat censorship (without going through the DMCA counterclaim procedures) should be highlighted both to alert the reader (99.5% of whom aren't editors) that they are looking at a DMCA-censored page and to serve the purpose that (I entirely agree) would be well served by an editnotice warning (i.e. alerting editors to situation and/or specific things they can't include). Since this would be a change/addition to the pp-meta template, I'm sure there's some channels or proposal procedures this might need to go through anyway. Initially posting here to both get comments from WMF as well initial comments to see if this is a non-starter from the beginning. If legal says, "Yes, do it like that right now period end of story," maybe public comments/consideration might be brief. If legal says, "Yeah, let's see what the community comes up with," then we toss it through the normal process, and probably ask for approval on whatever we come up with. Legal could also say, "That's absolutely foul language. What made you think we'd go with that? Although we do like the idea of a DMCA notice as opposed to other office actions. We'll give you some language." And finally, they could say "No, let sleeping dogs lie." Before we go to any trouble (other than me writing this junk that you're kind enough to read), thought it best to check it to see where we fall in the spectrum. Thanks again for reading my novels. Happy New Year!!--Policy Reformer(c) 05:55, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

If the article really was censored, okay, I'd agree there definitely should be a big and clear disclaimer targeted at the readers. But in the current version of the article nothing has been removed for which there wouldn't have been a strong consensus to remove it anyway based on our own policies. Cheers, —Ruud 15:43, 1 January 2012 (UTC) I agree that links to copies of the specifications that are in violation of copyright laws also contravene WP policy and undoubtedly consensus. It's more the ongoing limitation (the need for at least a padlock). In order to avoid violations of the safe-harbor provisions of the DMCA, links to a legitimate alternative/proper copyright holder (ACH) are also impermissible based on the same need to protect WMF under DMCA. Before posting links to the ACH site, there needs to be a DMCA counterclaim. An editor who stumbles upon this ACH site likely does not have standing to file a counter-claim. In this situation (and perhaps others), the editor would be "censored" in that he is prevented from adding material to the site on the basis of the notice. "Prevented from" might be better. I was trying censored in the sense that when one is prevented from expressing a statement or idea by a third party especially under the auspices of a legal or governmental threat, one is censored. For example, when a radio DJ uses language to dance around the seven dirty words, I'd argue she's censored, even though it's not a case where they "bleep" her. A side effect of this DMCA notice is that PCI-SIG makes their site the only source listed on the page, and in some way may funnel business to themselves through that circumstance. Not saying their claim is improper or that's not how it should be. Still, had they made an account here and raised the copyright flag, we probably would've resolved it ourselves in favor of them anyway and then it would be the community upholding the protection rather than WMF under legal threat. Again, something just feels different about this one. Most Office Actions: "Don't use that one picture, or say that one thing, or include that one page." This action, and perhaps broad DMCA notices in general: "Remove now and don't ever at any time possible in the future post a link to anyone other than us or we'll bring the hammer." I feel this one's an oddity due to it's indefinite nature. Office Actions are already pink elephants (thankfully - Philippe & rest of WMF, thank you for the freedom) on the project. Just thought it's worth pointing out this is a pink three-legged elephant. I'm probably running all over WP:MOUNTAIN right now, but thanks for entertaining my diatribes.--Policy Reformer(c) 20:29, 1 January 2012 (UTC) According to the takedown, they first requested removal through e-mail. No idea why the Foundation failed to respond to this in time. The ongoing protection of the article, also seems to be a choice of the Foundation (it's a technological measure the MediaWiki software happens to provide, but I doubt it's required to prevent losing the safe harbor status.) You rightly point out that there will be some indefinite restrictions on this article, but they are mostly theoretical and only affect editors. We're still presenting readers the article we would have wanted to present to them if the PCI-SIG wouldn't have sent a takedown notice. —Ruud 21:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Could be that they did respond to it and the response was insufficient, or that the response wasn't received. Thanks for pointing out the prior email as I didn't pickup on that part of the take down (the prior email). Based on that email, I'm wondering if there's more to this in OTRS than we know.

If this was just a matter of being as "polite" a follow-up as PCI-SIG could make based on a non-response or unreceived response to their initial email, and given that, as far as I know, they haven't tried to further affect the article, I agree that the indefinite restrictions are on editors rather than community created content. I do believe the restrictions on editors are real, but regardless, they're editor restrictions which could be served by an {{editnotice}} as you pointed out.

When I looked at this restriction, I assumed PCI-SIG was playing hardball, as I imagined that WMF would have lifted as soon as possible just like normal. Just knowing that PCI-SIG reached out first makes me rethink that premise. Moving forward, I'm wondering if what should happen here is the move of the WP:OFFICE notice to an {{editnotice}}. Saves all the readers that never hit edit from seeing the warning, since as Ruud pointed out they're not seeing different content anyway as of right now. If it is moved to an editnotice, I think it's just a matter of pointing out that these are WMF required restrictions instead of community based. Something like "WMF has placed the following indefinite restrictions on this article per a [[link to DMCA explanation and counter-claim instructions|DMCA takedown notice]] which you can find [[link to actual notice|here]]."

Normally office actions result in full protection of an article, but I don't think that's the case here anymore. If the article is left indefinitely semi'd though, maybe just included that in the editnotice as well. Could also maybe go with a small=yes protect (either office or semi) template, as you suggested, to avoid the issues of constantly revisiting to see if we could remove the large {{pp-meta}} template.

Finally, I still think there could be a circumstance where someone or some company could try to censor content through the liberal use of DMCA valid or invalid notices including threat a future action if the notice is not enforced on an ongoing basis. I'm guessing WMF doesn't want to do that enforcing nor spend time fighting them, and I'm sure we don't want to either. It looked like this was a case where that might be occurring on a small scale. It's probably not. Even in the face of legal threat, I shouldn't have forgotten WP:AGF. I also suppose it's a good sign that this issue hasn't come up before. As long as we continue to make clear the restrictions, and that the restrictions are based on something outside WMF and the project, doesn't matter where it is as long as it works, right?

Philippe - Thanks again for looking into this. Whatever legal wants to do goes, of course. I still think we should figure out a way to change this to differentiate it from the temporary actions. However, you can see that I'm questioning my approach of declaring the malevolence of all those bearing DMCA notices through a new notice. For me right now, I think it just gets down to effectuating the requirements by WMF without having this as a "Current Office Action" from now until the end of time. (you guys have the servers leased through then, right?)

Ruud - Thanks for making me rethink this. Take care.--Policy Reformer(c) 01:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi folks - Ruud rightly pinged me again today about this. We have an alternative that Geoff has cleared... how's this? Pursuant to a rights owner notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Wikimedia Foundation acted under the law and took down and restricted the content in question. A copy of the received notice can be found here: xxxxx. For more information, including websites discussing how to file a counter-notice, please see Wikipedia: Office actions and the article's talk page. Do not remove this template from the article until the restrictions are withdrawn.

Looking forward to feedback. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:22, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks great to me! Thanks so much for the follow-up!--Policy Reformer(c) 05:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Philippe. Thanks for following up on this. The proposed text still implies the article is being "censored" in some sense. Yes, technically speaking content was removed, but this should have been removed in any case if we would have followed our community's content guidelines. I do think the proposed text is at least an improvement over the current banner, but I'm not sure if it will stop the occasional recalcitrant editor trying to insert a reference to the illegal copies of the specifications precisely because the banner tells him not to. Cheers, —Ruud 09:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC) Bearing in mind that it's not perfect, but we're willing to give it a shot... I'll get someone to update the template. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:02, 16 April 2012 (UTC) I created {{pp-office-dmca}} and added it to this page. It substitutes notice into "notice can be found here: ..." Cheers, - Stephen LaPorte (WMF) 19:42, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

The term "conventional" as opposed to "PCI-e" [ edit ]

Will sound very academical, but it's an encyclopedia, after all. "Conventional PCI" is never being shortended to the term "PCI" - if anything, PCI is being lengthened to "conventional PCI", since PCI-e came around. That's what the word "conventional" means. The notion that "PCI" alone may include "PCI-e" has led to all kinds of confusion, just like "art" may not include "fart". After all, "PCI-e" is a marketing term, it has no technical similarities with PCI. 92.193.154.40 (talk) 08:38, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I haven't tried to follow it in that much detail, but I thought that there were enough similarities at least at the higher levels. How do the look to software, for example? Gah4 (talk) 00:28, 17 March 2020 (UTC) The proper name for PCI is actually PCI Local Bus, or PCI for short. Nowhere in any of the specifications is it called anything else. It's called PCI, not PCIe; that "e" at the end of "PCIe" is there to tell you that PCI and PCIe are not the same thing. Like how eSATA is different than SATA, or mATX is different than ATX. How hard is that to understand? No need to tack the word "conventional" in front of PCI. If you can't understand that PCI is not PCIe that's not my problem. Go read the PCI Local Bus Specification Revision 3.0. You will not find the word "conventional" in that document anywhere. Not once. Not one damn time. I dare you to go and read it. I even linked to it at the end of this comment. Don't make me come over there and beat you to death with a stack of spec documents. I've got a PDF and I'm not afraid to use it! If there are no objections I move that this page be renamed to either PCI or PCI Local Bus and all instances of "conventional" be deleted from the page.Allthenamesarealreadytaken (talk) 02:37, 6 May 2020 (UTC) [1] I've corrected it. Please show your support before it gets reverted again. Nabeel_co (talk) 21:12, 17 June 2020 (UTC) Well, it keeps getting reverted, despite lacking any sources whatsoever. It really speaks to Wikipedia's lack of desire to have factual information and instead focus on pointless processes that make contribution to the community exclusive and beyond the reach of the average person that likely knows much more about certain topics than the "editors" who rule the website at the click of a mouse. Very draconian and toxic in my opinion. My help is clearly not wanted, so I'm not going to bother anymore on this subject. Nabeel_co (talk) 21:41, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

A low profile one [ edit ]

The picture of a low-profile bracket, marked: A low profile one, looks like a regular bracket to me. Both boards look like the size that can hold the low-profile bracket. (They are often sold with both, so you can change them yourself.) The ones that I have are in a running system, so I can't take a picture of one. Gah4 (talk) 20:18, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree, both of the cards pictured there are low-profile compatible but the bracket shown is full-height, not low-profile. We need a different picture. Allthenamesarealreadytaken (talk) 02:07, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 17 June 2020 [ edit ]