Slashdot Mirror
Finnish Police Board Wants Justification For Wikipedia's Fundraising Campaign
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."
That reminds me, I should make a donation.
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.
...from Start to Finnish.
Smivs on the intertubes!
People, shut the fuck up already. I hate the beta as much as the next guy, but we have seen enough of these "fuck beta" comments at this point. They do not change the situation right now in any meaningful way. You just make yourself look like an obsessed clown.
Whether you think fundraising should be unfettered (what? even for Al Queda? or in times gone past: the IRA?) or controlled, if the Finns have a law, then it's up to people in Finland - Finnish or not - to abide by it. Complaining that you don't think it should apply to you, or your cause, because it's special makes no sense: to every fundraiser: legal, illegal, moral, immoral, commercial, charitable, fraudulent or honest - their cause is "special" otherwise they wouldn't do it.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
What functionality is missing? All I see is bitching because its different or has whitespace.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pip... http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
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?
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
What company directs 25% of its users to a partially-working, not-ready-for-production website?
Should the government have a monopoly on that?
Oh Bravo!
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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.
Coffee would be fine.
I don't have mod points, so I'm not sure what the issue with modding is.
As a Finnish taxpayer I am utterly frustrated by this. It seems like the work of an overly-enthusiastic police official. The Wikipedia fundraiser makes it very explicit that the funds are being collected by a non-profit organization incorporated in California, and subject only to their local laws. Although the fundraiser would be illegal in Finland as-is (Finnish law requires applying for a fundraising permit to discourage fraud), the police and the courts in Finland clearly lack jurisdiction against a U.S. non-profit. The police resources, which they claim to be very scarce due to recent cuts in public sector spending, would be much better spend investigating actual fraud and other crime, where the police and the courts actually have jurisdiction and means to prevent and stop the crime and bring the perpetrators to justice.
You have to have *permission* to ask for help?? And you all thought the US was draconian..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I am almost tempted to option out of classic view just to see what the fuss is about; But not quite enough.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I'm also sure the law is used to punish entities that they don't approve of.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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 useful.
2. Nested comment boxes on mobile is horrible. The or four letters deep and I'm down to one word per line on the screen.
3. Something's wrong with moderation?
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'?
Have gnu, will travel.
There is a short explanation in English on the Finnish police force's web site which makes an effort to explain their organizational structure and the role of National Police Board.
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.
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 very small (to the right of the "All", "Informative", etc., line, and a few pixels large).
Conclusion: All the moderation functionality does appear to still exist, but the UI is terrible.
I have also observed some missing functionality (permalink to comment, comment without specifying a title, comment as Anonymous Coward without logging out). This comment was sent from Beta for research purposes, but I think I'm going to go back to Classic for actual browsing.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
Dear Finnish police board,
Jurisdiction, you goddamn scandinavian hillbillies.
Sincerely,
Jimmy Wales.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Interesting. On my screen instead of a gear it shows a tiny little box with the code "F013" scrunched up inside like it's Korean, but it does actually seem to work, once you turn off all security, reload, and find the little bugger.
Not as bad as I feared, on that particular score at least. It certainly still seems very much like 'design' is being put first and function is an afterthought, however.
Even after finding the control and setting it, it just resets every time you change pages too.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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 years of ownership).
The designers think it is intuitive but really, it's just "click every image on the screen to figure otu what it does" then "click and hold on every image on the screen to see what it does" then try various "double click" and "hold" and "drag" combos then "move your mouse to different corners of the screen and leave it there for a few seconds to see if something pops up".
I think the desire is to use images instead of text. And once you learn that little obscure symbol will list the moderation levels, then you are fine.
I'm not sure about actual moderating yet. I moderate a lot but haven't been given an opportunity to moderate in beta mode yet.
In my case (since I have a huge monitor) the new layout is fine. Currently the comments are typically a mile wide and two or three lines high. Under Beta, they are a half mile wide and six or seven lines high.
I personally think people are overreacting and there is a certain mob mentality and groupthink going on. I also think Slashdot did a poor job of championing and explaining the change. Users are DUMPED into the new screen with no tool tips, no documentation, no help. Pretty arrogant and insensitive on their parts. And typical for designers and programmers who were with a project from the start so they do not realize how alien it is and do not see how steep the learning curve is.
Just for a start, they could have changed the existing combo box to the new icon in classic (one little change) for a month before using it in beta (then people would know it from the location on the page in classic -- and then recognize it in the new interface.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Not sharing your vision and intentions with your users is underhanded, by it is hardly a conspiracy. Dice is, in my opinion, just trying out a Hail Mary business plan.
Dice made a bad investment in buying Slashdot. Assuming that they aren't using sleight-of-hand accounting, not only did Dice not see the profit they expected, they aren't making a profit at all. In trying to minimize their losses, scavenging the website and its resources is perhaps the only option they think is left.
this idea that Dice is intentionally repurposing Slashdot
The fact remains that, by their own account, /. is a B2B social platform. We all surely agree that, as it is now, /. can hardly be called that. No matter how ill conceived it may sound, that is indeed what they have in mind with their Beta revamp.
if they do so, they lose almost all the value of the existing site, leaving only a well known domain name and some sort of "brand". The former is easy to come by, and the latter is of no value if all its previous "audience" becomes disillusioned with it.
In treating /. as a B2B site, Dice will lose many of its existing users. Since /. is all about the comments, all they will end up with is a no more than a well known IT brand. I assume they expect the number of new visits to very quickly surpass the abandonment rate of their existing userbase. Even if they aren't "out to get us", crippling the commenting and moderation systems (e.g. no visible UIDs nor any direct links to comments) is a hare brained idea that will ruin /. for the majority of slashdotters. It will, in short, create a mass exodus to other forums. Sadly, none of them have a moderation system that comes anywhere close to Slashcode.
If we assume they're losing money with the current format, it might be logical to for them to change formats, though there's a significant risk of alienating the current "audience" if they change it too much too fast, or otherwise handle the transition badly - as they've clearly done. As the old saying goes, "Don't ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence."
I think we're both saying the same thing.
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?
Apparently, oh, and there is no judicial process or court I can complain to..
If I live in the middle east and I decide to support freedom figthers (who happen to be Muslim) should I expect a drone strike on my ass?
Maybe,
If I work for the CIA and murder people in Germany should I expect to be extradited for for my crimes?
No!
But they're not a Finnish` registered non profit company, so it's impossible for them to obtain permission.
They can't get a permit, because they're not a registered non profit organisation in Finland.
This is quite a silly law and has been in the news here in Finland quite a lot recently. There could be misuse of the law, but I have a feeling it isn't that common and I doubt that the Wikimedia foundation has been singled out.
The police have been very openly active at enforcing the law and whilst resulting in situations like this, unfortunately it is easy to forget that it is their job to do so and they are right to do it. It is not the police's actions that need to be amended, but the law itself. That being said, I am personally frustrated to see tax money spent on such waste.
I understand that the purpose of the law is supposed to protect against scam organizations. We had eg. one cancer relief fund (on organization) that collected money and had spent around 99% of the donation money to administrative costs *1. A blatantly fraudulent enterprise. I have no idea how efficient the law is at fighting fraudulent organizations such as those, but I do have some doubts.
Similar baffling interjections by police have come up with companies. A recent one was a small radio station "Radio Helsinki", that introduced voluntary listening fees to gather funds. That was not possible *2. Also the kickstarter-like projects faced somewhat similar troubles *3.
Hopefully Finnish taxpayers contact their members of parliament about refactoring the law, or perhaps even use the citizens initiative act *4 to address the issue.
*1, "Cancer business leads to fraud prosecution", in finnish. http://blogit.mtv.fi/kolmevart...
*2, "The police board shoots down Radio Helsinki's listener's fees", in finnish. http://yle.fi/uutiset/poliisih...
*3, "The police shoot down facebook based book campaign", in finnish. http://www.kauppalehti.fi/etus...
*4, https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi...
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.
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.
If it's the police initiating this then they must feel it's a criminal matter and so extradition becomes a possibility, and Finland is part of the EU. If they want to play hard ball then Jimmy might have to cut down on visits to Europe because, once he's there, it will be European courts who get to decide who has jurisdiction.
This is one of the more interesting web sites where a lot of postings are by people who actually seem to know something about the topic. Information density per page in the beta is a lot less that it was on the old system. The new site feels like form over function. I guess the good news is that my scroll wheel finger is going to get all buff with the extra workout.
Yeah, fuck Betas 'cause change is bad! Change is scary! Grr!! I actually like the beta version...
So shoot me. I like the beta. It is my preferred mode of looking at Slashdot. All the bitching about it degraded the site far more than anything in the beta did.
planet texture maps and more
D1 is the *old* system, from before 2000 I think.
Okay so IANAL but I do work for the Finnish government and I have to deal with the Police Board every once in a while.
The police in Finland are a national organization (cities or provinces don't have their own police, they are all under the same organization) and they have jurisdiction over a lot of permit and license matters, like residence permits, raffles and lotteries, and in this case the raising of funds. This side of the police administration is taken care of by the Police Board instead of any local police department. They answer directly to the Ministry of the Interior. They do not investigate crimes or prosecute people, the Board is a purely administrative organ. In other words Wikipedia is not under criminal investigation, though the Board could refer this to a police department in Finland to see what they make of this, since the police departments are responsible for actual investigation. Requesting a statement from an entity that may be raising funds is a pretty regular bureaucratic procedure, in a sense.
The problem here is not that the police board have "too much spare time" (my personal experience is the exact opposite, and reading the request, it would have been written within an hour or two by a junior official), or that they are petty power-hungry tyrants out to suppress the freedom of information, it's that their job is to interpret Finnish law and the Finnish law when it comes to fundraising is terrible and about two decades out of date. Hopefully this will get enough media attention in Finland to start a political discussion that leads to a proper reform of the law.
I doubt they expect the police will be able to initiate anything against Wikipedia, but they would be negligent in their duty as public officers to not do anything about the issue once it came to their attention.
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 responsive up to a much wider limit. We've also been busily implementing features as we work toward full parity with the old site. ...
Does "full parity with the old site" mean ALL functionality w.r.t. commenting? In the current beta, an important case of apparently lost functionality is that we can't link to individual comments. Or bookmark them for later reference – my biggest complaint. I'm not the first to point this out.
Part of the value in the comments, for myself at least, is not only the immediate functionality but (to repeat myself) the ability to refer to particular "gems" later; for example a good example of a licensing issue. Or a better coding idiom. A clever adaptation of an algorithm. And any of countless "gotchas"... For me, slashdot's also been a technical reference.
Of course you got lots of feedback about layout; that's what's immediately in people's faces. But read between the outrage: peoples' complaints about losing most of the expected UNIQUE commenting functionality IS CENTRAL.
Will linking to comments be re-implemented?
Doesn't service provider like PayPal take care of these/tax related issues with Finnish Central Bank?
https://www.paypal.com/us/weba...
Casteism
I wrote to Timothy some of my recommendations in this comment), and it seems that some major ones have been addressed -- including the layout and amount of text that is visible. I don't know if that was in response to what I wrote, but either way I appreciate it. At this point, fixing Beta must be the most thankless job on Earth. ;-)
One other big recommendation I have is to not show pictures by default (icons are okay). Often these images are not directly related to the article, so they are just there to add some color to the screen, at the expense of the article text itself. (1) Maybe it's asking too much for the pictures to simply "go away" if they are unnecessary, but I think that would be positive. (2) Another option might be to default the users who are not logged in to see pictures, while default the readers who logged in to seeing just the text. The idea would be if you are not logged in, you're a peon who enjoys colorful irrelevant pictures, whereas if you are logged in, you just want to read the article. (3) Another possibility, the simplest, would be to resize these thumbnails to be smaller, so they intrude less on the article text. Ideas #1 and #3 would be the simplest approaches.
I think addressing the image thing would be a big improvement to Beta, and is one of the major things at the heart of what all the protest is about. Basically, that Slashdot as a technical site is about text, not just a slideshow of pretty pictures. Slashdot can keep pictures, but they should be resized appropriately since they are not really the point of the site (just colorful distractions).
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems