Wikipedia talk:Risk disclaimer

I've drafted this preliminary risk disclaimer and if anyone has any comments I'd be happy to discuss them in detail. I've made it short and relatively untechnical so that most readers will be able to understand that they assume the risk when they use or rely upon Wikipedia information. --- Alex756

It's really professional. Should we change the ALL CAPITALS to SMALL CAPITALS. It's how it's used in the non-legal books I've seen. Quite asthetic. Or would that be oppose to the purpose of the document? --Menchi 03:25 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

I put the two main notices in small caps, but it probably will look better in the inline text. I think the all caps gives the SHOUT better than SHOUT in the large text, is there any way to make the larger notices sans serif? it is really an asthetic issue as long as it gets people's attention quickly then it serves the legal purpose of giving them NOTICE that they can't avoid to read. Alex756 06:02 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

Without the serif? You mean as in Arial font? --Menchi 06:10 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

I've tried looking at this with various sizes on my IE6 browser with 1280x1024 and now (with your suggestions, thanks!) even at the smallest text size under the view menu the large titles are VERY READABLE. Alex756 06:38 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

It's true, some people enjoy reading puny font size, perhaps because their eyesight is so superb. Well, now this oughta take care of them! Now they can't blame us saying that they didn't see it clearly! --Menchi 06:47 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

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This is a really bad idea. First it looks very unprofessional to place SCREAMING TEXT at the head of an article, second this page will not be linked from many page that is theoretically "should" but once people know of this page's existence then the lack of such a statement will indicate to them that they should trust the Wikipedia article. This potentially opens us up to lawsuits. It is also a very frowned upon practice to link to Wikipedia-specific pages from within articles since doing so reduces the transportability of our text (meaning any downstream third party user would have to remove all these Wikipedia-specific references). And on top of all that, the text of this page is far too alarmist sounding - it makes Wikipedia look like a dangerous place that shouldn't be trusted at all. This is an overblown mischaracterization.

What is needed is a real general disclaimer linked in the uneditable part of each page where the copyright notice now is. --mav 23:04 20 May 2003 (UTC)

I don't agree with the above comments. The risk disclaimer stated that it was proposed. As well, it is only where DANGEROUS activities are described, not to be used on all pages, and yes, I think IT SHOULD BE VERY PROMINENT AND ANNOYING. As far as your argument that if it is not there it means that they can trust the page, this is also not a very good legal argument. First of all, this is a wiki, anyone who uses it knows that they can edit it.

As far as it being non-professional, what kind of profession is being spoken about? If the writer has an professional qualifications, please cite appropriate authority. Disclaimers are supposed to be annoying, they are supposed to get your attention and they are supposed to tell you to be careful, obviously such an article should not be put on pages that deal with feudalism, but DEFINITELY on pages that deal with autoerotic asphyxiation, bundgie jumping, parachuting, etc.. IT WOULD BE UNPROFESSIONAL NOT TO DO SO. IMHO.

General disclaimers are not necessarily a good idea. Many people do not read them because they are so general and they are just sitting on the bottom of the page. The ideal solution is a click through disclaimer, but I doubt if YOU guys would agree to that. If YOU don't want to put it on the boilerplate page and make it available and someone gets killed, YOU will get sued, not me, and now on top of it there is a history of YOU deciding to take it off when it was offered to YOU. If it is an option and it is available and someone does not use it and then it is the problem only of the people who have edited, not the so-called general wikipedia community (which seems to be about 20 people as far as I can count). This is not as open a community as first appears. USERS BEWARE! Alex756 02:58 21 May 2003 (UTC)

1) if it was proposed then why was it on the boilerplate page? 2) Who defines dangerous? A fundamentalist Christian would think it very dangerous to a person's soul to read our articles on evolution. 3) Disclaimers in the real world of printing are placed behind the cover of the publication ; they are not placed at the head of selected pages. Therefore a link next to our copyright notice is more than enough - esp. if it is linked from every page (which all have the potential problem of reliability due to the fact we are a wiki). 4) It is not immediately apparent that our website is world editable and most people don't even know what a wiki is (I didn't before I landed here and in fact I used Wikipedia as a reference several times before finding out that I could edit the articles here). 4) If they already know anybody can edit any page and place anything on it then there is absolutely no need for a disclaimer at all. Imagine the laughter in the courtroom when the plaintiff explains that he knew this but relied on the information anyway - come on, readers have a responsibility to minimize any foreseeable harm that may come to them (IANAL, BTW). 5) A general disclaimer should be a jumping-off place to our various specific disclaimers. 6) This is the type of thing that should be discussed on the mailing list and decided there before being implemented. 7) The only page the boilerplate was placed on as of yet was on the Goatse.cx. Now I'm not an MD but I'm pretty sure looking at that image is not foreseeablely fatal in any way. 8) An open community doesn't mean we let everyone do anything they want. --mav