Proposal:WikiLaws

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The status of this proposal is:
Request for Discussion / Sign-Ups

Strategic Priorities

Every proposal should be tied to one of the strategic priorities below.

Edit this page to help identify the priorities related to this proposal!

1. Achieve continued growth in readership
2. Focus on quality content
3. Increase Participation
4. Stabilize and improve the infrastructure
5. Encourage Innovation

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Summary

A pan wiki project to ensure we have copies of all laws, with information and educational materials on them.

Proposal

A pan wiki project to:

Store in an online repository all laws historic, current and future proposed for every nation on earth, using WikiSource.

Create information about them on the appropriate wikipedias.

Store important court decisions that show how laws are applied.

Create educational materials about them using sub projects on wikiversity and wikibooks.

Motivation

To empower all human beings with knowledge of law to use for their benefit and protection. Law is one of things that make societies what they are. To help people abide by the law or protest against it. Law texts are valuable and will help other projects like wiktionary & wikiversity improve in size and quality. Civil servants contributing to WikiLaws might help in other wikis increasing the number of authors. Law information is expensive and difficult to find in most countries. WikiLaws solving such problems will increase readability, helpfulness & accuracy of WikiMedia as a whole and might also get some government funds.

Key Questions

1. Do any governments retain copyright on their laws and if so can we persuade them to change this?
2. Which languages should we offer this in?
3. Are there laws sufficiently unnotable that we won't be able to find sufficient sources to justify them as notable enough for wikipedia.
4. Is there anything this project needs that we don't already have wikis for?
5. Would meta be the right place for this project?

Possible Answers

1. It is in the nature of any legal process to be published. Laws should/must/have to be published. Court orders as well. There is no point in parliaments voting a secret law and then ask people not to break it. There is no point in disclosing laws only to people that pay money for that, either. Governments are charging money only to cover their supposed costs like paper, etc.
2. All official languages are eligible. Translating lowers the legal value of the text and increases costs.
3. There are no unnotable laws. If you can't find a law, you don't have to observe it.
4. There are some diferences from other wikis, which need new software to be written. Only government officials should be allowed to edit laws. Besides simple talks like in wikipedia, court decisions & law explanations by experts is needed.
5. Meta-Wiki is just the place for the coordination of WikiLaws as a new Wikimedia project.

Potential Costs

• Hardware
• Software
• Coordination/Communication

[After some time, when WikiLaws' usefulness is well known, the governments themselves will be persuaded to use WikiLaws. This will lower their costs of publishing/finding/changing laws. This means that after this time a great number of civil servants in every country will contribute to WikiLaws as part of their work.]

Community Discussion

Do you have a thought about this proposal? A suggestion? Discuss this proposal by going to Proposal talk:WikiLaws.

Want to work on this proposal?

1. Stamos 20:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
2. .. Sign your name here!