Talk:Freedom of information laws by country/Archive 1

Archive 1

Untitled

This article has recently been used to advertise free copies of a journal, and a professional conference. This material has now been removed.

TPP

• The weird edit was me testing a bot's response. I forgot to mention this in the edit summary... Shimgray | talk | 00:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Page move/rename discussion

{from Wikipedia:Requested moves)

Freedom of Information Act (disambiguation) → Freedom of Information Act

And therefore Freedom of Information Act → Freedom of Information Act 1966

January 3rd

This request has been moved to the duplicate request that was posted for 4 Jan by violetriga

.. and move Freedom of Information Act to Freedom of Information Act (US) or whatever. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the UK legislation) just came into force on 1 January 2005 and is consequently the subject of much media interest. Jooler 10:52, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Support This is clearly the name of acts in several countries, and in my opinion there should be a disambig at the name. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 16:03, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Support. We have a Freedom of Information Act (or did, it's perhaps now "of sorts") in Ireland. zoney ♣ talk 22:06, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

---

January 4th

The UK version of the act is very much in the news at the moment and the disambig is almost a summary. Not too sure of the naming yet though, using just the year seems a bit wrong when they are from different countries. -- violet/riga (t) 21:11, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Support. It's tempting to put the country name in there somewhere; but disambiguation by year is probably enough, as long as an appropriate reference to other countries is included at the top of the article. And the main Freedom of Information Act page should be a disambig. Rd232 23:39, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Strongly support. The ostensible disambiguation page is a full article in itself, and I see no reason the American version should trump all. Freedom of Information Act 1966 is an awful title, however, missing preposition notwithstanding; the primary distinction is the country in which it's law, not the year it was enacted. United States Freedom of Information Act was the first alternative to come to mind, although it might imply to some that "United States" is part of the proper name of the act; perhaps Freedom of Information Act (United States) is a better option (despite the parentheses). ADH (t&m) 00:09, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
• Support. — Matt Crypto 00:53, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. ‘Freedom of Information Act’ is a proper noun. The US FOIA preceded the other Freedom of Information Acts listed on the page by at least thirty-two years. If there is a class of objects known as ‘freedom of information acts’, and the present disambiguation page describes them, then: (a) the entire class is named in reference to the US Freedom of Information Act, and (b) the page should be in lowercase. But the present arrangement is acceptable; it was not determined by pro-US bias but by precedence. — Ford 03:03, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)
  • Precedence is only one thing to take into consideration. Gdr 10:50, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)
• Oppose. Could the disambiguation page not be an article entitled Freedom of Information which is a topic of political science? Why a need to append Act? In Sweden's case it seems to be part of the constitution rather than a specific "act". Then there could be detailed articles on individual country's freedom of information legislation.--BrentS 05:46, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Support. The current article at Freedom of Information Act (disambiguation) is quite detailed and we shouldn't assert one country's Act as primary. Timrollpickering 10:43, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Support. The (US) name for the US Act is clearer than the (1966) name. Gdr 10:50, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)
• Oppose. It doesn't appear that all such information acts are actually named "Freedom of Information Act". I prefer the proposal mentioned by User:BrentS. Moves:

• Support This is clearly the name of acts in several countries, and in my opinion there should be a disambig at the name. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 16:03, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Support. We have a Freedom of Information Act (or did, it's perhaps now "of sorts") in Ireland. zoney ♣ talk 22:06, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose. Most of the acts in the disambig aren't "Freedom of Information Acts," but are just legislation about freedom of information. In any case, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act is the primary meaning. Neutrality^talk 16:52, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose for reasons previously stated. →Raul654 17:10, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Actually I originally nominated this myself, but my nomination was overlooked by others who voted for this entry. The UK version of the Act is located at Freedom of Information Act 2000. This came into effect on Jan 1, 2005. It has therefore been in the news quite a lot. Australia's act is called the Freedom of Information Act. Ireland's act is also called the Freedom of Information Act. So we have at least 4 nations using the words 'Freedom of Information Act'. This calls for disambiguation at Freedom of Information Act. I am at a loss to understand why people think that the USA act should hog this spot? I suggest moving the US Act to Freedom of Information Act (US) or similar. Jooler 17:04, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Being in the news at the moment is not a good enough reason to displace an established article for the primary historical meaning of an expression. To take an uncontroversial example from elsewhere on this page, if there is a disaster or terrorist attack in Lima, Ohio, it, too, will be much in the news. Should we then undo the move of Lima, Peru to Lima that so many support? The US FOIA has a long history and its notability is well-established. You may still be right, but not because of an event-oriented press trend. — Ford 17:19, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC)
    • Yes but right now if someone outside of the USA hears the words 'Freedom of Information Act', how many are thinking of the United States Act? Nobody in the UK is thyinking of that, Nobody in Australia is thinking of it either, and nor is anyone in Ireland. Using your rule of chronological precedence, we should move British House of Commons to House of Commons because it is centuries older than the Canadian House of Commons and we should move Boston, Lincolnshire to Boston. Chronological Precedence comes way down the list when it comes to things like this. Our primary concenr is usefulness and I'm afraid hosting the USA page where we should have a disambiguation page is reducing usefulness because the rest of the world are not thinking of the USA act. Jooler 23:31, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• It's clear that the view is that most Wikipedians are American and therefore the American usage should naturally take precedence - any UK interest is purely parochial and best relegated to a minor category
• Support - Freedom of Information Act is cleary ambiguous that the page should be a disambig. --Neo 08:40, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Decision: No consensus for page move or overall direction after 12 days listing on WP:RM. -- Netoholic @ 05:59, 2005 Jan 16 (UTC)

Expansion

If anyone's wondering where this expansion is coming from, I just completed a dissertation which - as a side effect - managed to turn out a list of all currently extant FOI laws as of 2005. Will get this into a references section once I get a copy online somewhere... Shimgray | talk | 15:53, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

It's here; I've added a link as a reference. (It's my own work, but it has been externally reviewed, so I feel citing it's okay). If anyone's interested in expanding further based on it, do feel free... Shimgray | talk | 19:25, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Germany-Greece mixup

There seems to be a mixup with the entry for Germany including plenty of greek letters. Probably, the text below the heading refers to Greece? --84.46.7.212 (talk) 16:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I am an attorney working in Germany. The laws referred to are not German laws. They may be Greek, given the greek characters. Can anyone clear that up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.110.20.43 (talk) 08:11, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

More research on Indian Right to Information Act

I removed the following as it didn't have any source citation and was ungrammatical: "A unique use of RTI done by Prof. Sapovadia in conducting a research, he found government officials were reluctant in giving information, he sought information under RTI and successfully complated the undertaken research."Kohl Gill (talk) 21:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

rearrangement of open government articles

Please see the discussion at Talk:Open_government#merges. Joriki (talk) 10:53, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Links to documents in note 14 and 15 are dead. 95.102.25.100 (talk) 10:22, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Open Meeting Laws

I disagree with "Open Meeting Laws" redirecting to "Freedom of Information Legislation". Doubtless open meeting laws fall under the general topic of freedom of information legislation, but there is no significant treatment of open meeting laws in this article. Frankly, open meeting laws is a significant enough topic in itself to merit a separate article. Open meeting laws are quite different from FOIA related topics. Perhaps someone with technical legal expertise would like to craft an article like that.claimman75 (talk) 17:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)