Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing interim update
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 7:35 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/2/3 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu: Where can I read about what, exactly, the spirit of the GFDL is? Start with the license preamble Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, Interesting you should choose to quote this while conveniently failing to include the *primary* purpose: The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. We are moving to the CC-BY-SA license to improve compatibility and foster reuse, yes? The 'spirit' clause gives us a good deal of freedom to address new problems or concerns and one of the primary residual problems that many (most?) of us have relates to the secondary purpose. Surely where the secondary purpose is at odds with the primary purpose it is the primary purpose that should prevail? Given that full attributions are both largely worthless and onerous to the point of forbidding reuse in many circumstances (e.g. paragraph quotes, most physical mediums, compilations, etc.) and partial attributions are in many ways worse than no attributions at all, surely attributing Wikipedia is the best way to achieve our primary goals? If your concern is that we will run out of content because we are not attributing individuals then I wouldn't worry about that - there are more than enough selfless people working tirelessly for no other reason than to make the world a better place. Kudos to Erik for the excellent summary, Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The reality of printing a poster
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, The economics of it are such that there is a real fine balance between cheap and expensive. I positvely hate text on my posters. Printing on the back is two prints and that IS expensive. My point has been and still is that it is nice to come up with solutions. They have to be practical in the real world. If a proposed solution adds enough overhead, the effect will be that it will not be accepted a solution. Thanks for another practical example of attribution stifling reuse - too bad if you ever wanted to print something like this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikimediaMosaicCapture.png I'd be a lot more accepting of a 'Wikipedia' and/or the Wikipedia logo printed discretely in the bottom right corner of my poster than one or more meaningless usernames too. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The reality of printing a poster
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 10:43 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/2/3 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, The economics of it are such that there is a real fine balance between cheap and expensive. I positvely hate text on my posters. Printing on the back is two prints and that IS expensive. My point has been and still is that it is nice to come up with solutions. They have to be practical in the real world. If a proposed solution adds enough overhead, the effect will be that it will not be accepted a solution. Assuming posters are not for large scale public display sending the credits on a separate bit of paper would probably meets the requirements. I'm not aware of any print-on-demand providers who facilitate the sending of arbitrary documentation with prints so my ability to reuse is still unnecessarily restricted. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing interim update
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 11:37 PM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote: Um... yes we have... unless full attribution means something different to you than it does to me. To me it means giving a full list of authors of a work along with the work - that's precisely what I interpret CC-BY-SA as requiring (it's rather flexible on exactly how In the context of Sam's mail full attribution refers to a list of all editors of the article, not a list of all authors. Right, you mean the mail in which I explained why it is essentially impossible to differentiate between the two? Looking forward to hearing about your simple and reliable process for re-users to weed out the 'authors' from the 'editors'. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing interim update
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 9:54 PM, Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com wrote: If one wants to go down the suggested attribution route, one approach might be: Create an authors page associated with each page that contains: snip There may be a far simpler (and fairer) way that could satisfy a large segment of the pro-attribution party: Where the majority of an article is contributed by one user they must also be attributed by real name. Comments made by Mike Peel in another thread got me thinking again about the 'problem' of photographs, which has not sat well with me until now. This gives those lone contributors credit for their work even when transformed (e.g. touched up) by others. It avoids most conflicts as by definition there can only be one 'majority contributor' and this will be trivial to identify compared to, say, the 'top 5'. It's also easy for re-users to understand and could be made easier still by embedding RDF so creativecommons.org can give specific attribution instructions. It resolves my concerns about 'unprofessional' usernames (attribution is a meatspace construct and requiring real names shouldn't pose a problem for most authors). Finally, it would be trivial to implement (at least compared to some of the other proposals) - just link a user id to the articles or even use an 'author' template (or exclude collaboratively developed content from the scheme altogether). This (or something like it) could well be the happy medium we've been searching for. Even if still not palatable for the legal bigots, it should satisfy lone authors (who have the strongest claim for attribution) as well as those who fret about onerous attribution requirements in terms of lists, urls, etc. Many (most?) articles would end up being attributed as (something like) 'from Wikipedia', while others would be 'from Wikipedia by Sam Johnston'. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing interim update
On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 12:05 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Where the majority of an article is contributed by one user they must also be attributed by real name. How does that work? Most Wikipedians work pseudonymously... Au contraire - the commons pictures of the day for the last month for example are almost all first names, last names, initials, or in most cases, full names. As I said, attribution is a meatspace thing that relates to entities being credited for their work and preventing others from passing it off as their own. Attribution by real name encourages certain people (e.g. photographers) to justify contributions when they otherwise might not, but with the benefit of attribution comes responsibility and accountability. While it may be possible to a pseudonym to build a reputation, the justification for it is less tangible (e.g. more narcissistic) and perhaps more importantly, less professional (an article on 'Cloud Computing' by 'JoeRandomHacker' is not going to be so reusable, yet there are far fewer unpalatable real names than what there are pseudonyms). Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:29 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: So far I have not heard any arguments why the CC-by-sa cannot do this. It can but can only do this when everyone agrees. Since wikipedia currently has 282,180,603 edits by people who have not agreed such a change is imposible. False. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and the [edits of the] minority who choose to disrupt the community will be quickly and efficiently purged from it (albeit wasting resources in the process that could have been better utilised elsewhere). It is clear that there is a small but vocal minority intent on spreading 'important' FUD and in my opinion these people can't see the forest for the trees. Fortunately it seems the leadership has a good grasp on community sentiment and sanity will prevail, with any luck sooner rather than later. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution made cleaner?
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: I advocate a much more flexible attribution scheme than listing the authors or printing a url to the history page. I think a simple (Wikipedia) is a sufficient attribution for text. If you have the text it is trivial to find the original author of that text. It's not so trivial with images, but a link to the history page of an image can be embedded in its metadata. Precisely, and once you have this as a minimum standard you can still do whatever you like on top of it. As significant bonuses we're not diluting/drowning out the promotion of Wikipedia and we're avoiding situations where authors can go after [re]users for infringement; effectively the power of enforcement would be vested in Wikipedia (but not the copyright itself so we don't have to worry about WMF turning evil, only new license releases which must be 'similar in spirit' anyway). The attribution instructions could go something like: You must attribute Wikipedia, should reference the name of the article (with hyperlinks where appropriate) and may also credit the authors which can be found on the history tab. I've also been thinking more about the possibility of identifying key contributors for attribution and I've come to my own conclusion that it's a non-starter. If you start attributing some people but not others then those who are not attributed (who would otherwise not care had the attribution have been for Wikipedia) will get justifiably upset and may well seek to enforce their 'right' to attribution. The only way to shake out some authors reliably (as Andrew just said) is to do it manually, which is another avenue for conflict and resource wastage. Summary: author attribution is an all or nothing thing; either you attribute a boundless list of 'names' in 2pt font or you attribute nobody. Anyway I have to get back to writing 'AttriBot' so I can stamp my name on any article with 5 authors ;) Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 12:53 PM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote: On Sunday 01 February 2009 10:22:23 Gerard Meijssen wrote: No, we want to create a free encyclopaedia. The restrictions imposed for narcissistic reasons do get in the way of making the encyclopaedia Free. No, they don't. Please, show how they do. By way of example, I am currently working on a short (8 slide), clean presentation, to be licensed under a free license. It contains a slide with 8 thumbnail photos of generic pictures (a house, a building, a government chamber, a few racks in a datacenter, etc.) and a few samples of text. It also contains a picture of one of the original google racks which would be less easy to replace. Some of the photos have been transformed by others so there are multiple authors. By imposing the attribution requirements (indeed even linking to individual articles rather than Wikipedia itself) you are making it significantly more difficult for me to make use of the work and more likely that I will 'take my business elsewhere'. That damages the community and thus the (apparently egotistical) needs of the few threaten to impose on the needs of many (both within our community and the general public as a whole). This type of piecemeal reuse/'remixing' is typical to that of an encyclopedia - for example in your average school project. The authors each contributed a small part to individual works which eventually became even smaller parts of a larger work. Their contribution at the end of the day is negligible and if they feel the need to have school kids quoting their name to teachers and the like then I suggest they would be better served by the various communities that cater for this 'need'. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 8:34 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: This is an important point. It is precisely why it is not a good idea to remove attribution. I wasn't aware that anyone was suggesting that we remove attribution altogether, just that we attribute Wikipedia as a whole for the sake of everyone's sanity, and in consideration of the extremely limited (if not negative) value that such mass attributions provide. While working for a large US software company I never received (nor expected) any credit whatsoever for my work. You might argue that I was well remunerated for my efforts, but when I wrote network quotas for the Linux kernel (where they have lived happily for the last decade or so) my name didn't start popping up in the boot messages either. Yes you can find it if you look at the source code or edit logs but I don't care - my contribution was in the name of the community. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Are model releases required for 'Free' content? (was: Sexual Content on Wikimedia)
Should we take no steps to protect people who have no wish to have their photos published worldwide on a site owned by a charity devoted to knowledge? Or to put it another way, is an identifiable image of a person really free if that person has not given a model release (irrespective of whether the image is sexual)? Virgin found out down under that this is not necessarily the case after being sued for using a 'free' (CC) picture on Flickr[1] (also discussed here[2] and here[3]). Creative Commons simply excludes publicity rights from its scope[4], but perhaps this is a good way for Commons (at least) to differentiate itself from Flickr and other 'dumping grounds'. A good analogy would be having the rights to a specific recording without the rights to the song itself. I'm sure it's not the first time this subject has been raised, but now the French chapter has dragged us into the world of commercial publishing it's probably worth [re]considering. Perhaps it is enough initially to tag images lacking releases accordingly, with a view to having them released or replaced? I note that this would also dispense with many concerns about minors by requiring a minor release by parents or guardians[5]. Sam 1. http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/virgin-sued-for-using-teens-photo/2007/09/21/1189881735928.html 2. http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7680 3. http://lessig.org/blog/2007/09/on_the_texas_suit_against_virg.html 4. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#When_are_publicity_rights_relevant.3F 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Are model releases required for 'Free' content? (was: Sexual Content on Wikimedia)
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Guillaume Paumier guillom@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Sam Johnston s...@samj.net wrote: ... now the French chapter has dragged us into the world of commercial publishing... As already pointed out by several people (including me [1]), this is blatantly false. Could you please stop spreading this deliberate misinformation? Your argument about merely accepting donations 'under the table' is weak and if anything issuing press releases impeaches the chapter further. As I said to GerardM off-list, selling drugs for charity is still selling drugs. Wikipedia's recent moves to both sell content commercially (even if simply by turning a blind eye to the practice) and attempt to filter it with flagged revisions (thus taking a big step from being a distributor towards being a publisher) are going to require some amount of review of existing practices. In any case this is all off-topic for the thread, Sam [1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-January/049571.html -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Are model releases required for 'Free' content? (was: Sexual Content on Wikimedia)
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 1:55 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/1/30 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net: I'm sure it's not the first time this subject has been raised, but now the French chapter has dragged us into the world of commercial publishing it's probably worth [re]considering. Perhaps it is enough initially to tag images lacking releases accordingly, with a view to having them released or replaced? I note that this would also dispense with many concerns about minors by requiring a minor release by parents or guardians[5]. At the moment pictures with people in are tagged with a warning that a reuser may have to consider model release and personality rights, and Commons guarantees nothing. It's not clear from your message why this is inadequate. It quite probably is, and provided the tags are used it answers some of the issues in the other (sexual content) thread too. Thanks, Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Content on Wikimedia
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org wrote: David Moran hett schreven: I think perhaps then the most fundamental disagreement we have is the idea that sexual images equal harm. Not the images themselves equal harm. But it can mean harm to people. As far as I have understood this discussion, we are not talking about deleting sexual images where it is clear, that the depicted person agrees to the depiction. Is it ever clear that the depicted person agrees to the depiction? Perhaps they did agree to the depiction but not to its public posting? Conversely, perhaps those who aren't facing and smiling at the camera agreed to the shot before/after it was taken? I tend to agree with David - there is no reason to treat sexual content differently from any other. A harmless photo taken at a political rally could well do more harm... Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Content on Wikimedia
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 12:39 AM, private musings thepmacco...@gmail.comwrote: This is a sort of 'essay spam' I guess, so for those aspects of this post, I apologise! I've also been criticised on some Wikimedia projects for proposing policy http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content, flooding and generally getting a bit boring about this issue, so I hope you'll forgive me one post to this list, on this issue. snip I'd love to hear your thoughts :-) Stop. Your latest proposal was comprehensively and unanimously rejected on commons[1] and the previous attempt received a similar response on en.wp[2]. This post mixes unrelated issues (policy vs permissions vs deletions), looks a lot like inappropriate canvassing[3], and it's not even clear that you have any justification for your assertion about hosting these images without the subject's permission. Thanks, Sam 1. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content#Oppose 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Sexual_content/old#Removed_this_yet_again 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing#Inappropriate_canvassing ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Sam Johnston wrote: My primary concern is that all the potential ramifications of such actions be properly considered - the income is irrelevant in the context of the WMF budget and yet the risk could be extreme. For example, deriving revenue directly from the content could cause problems for fair use[1], let alone the prospect of users uploading copyrighted or otherwise restricted (eg trademarked) content. Material in the public domain or under a fully free licence does not require any kind of fair use consideration. I'm not talking about genuinely free material, I'm talking about protected (copyrighted/trademarked) material being uploaded by others - for example a periodic table of elements or medical charts which would normally be subject to deletion (except that they are currently immediately available for sale!). Furthermore, while WMF *may* be safe from attack on the grounds that *it* is both non-profit and at arms length from the transaction itself, things are certainly less clear for the commercial printer who could well find themselves in serious trouble. What contract(s) are in place to cover WMF its chapter(s) in the case that such a supplier (rightly?) seeks recourse because we have made such material available to them? The WMF already takes a stricter position in fair use in its contents than I would ever consider necessary, by insisting that fair use material must be able to remain so when used by a downstream consumer. Albeit interesting, I'm unsure of the relevance. An important element of WMF's risk management is to *not* have general editorial participation in its contents. If it takes an official hand in such things it endangers the safe harbors it has as an ISP. While also true, that is more pertinent in the Flagged Revisions debate (and I have already raised it there[1]). It must respond to legal demands, but it cannot be faulted if it fails to notice an irregularity, or if it fails to accept the word of an uninterested third party that some content is a copyright violation. Of course, we must use common sense about such things, even when failing to do that would be technically legal. Previously this may have been true, but with content going 'on sale' the second it is uploaded I'm not so sure it still holds (assuming it ever did). I wouldn't take such a narrow reading of accredité. French Wikitionary, under accrediter shows Rendre crédible http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/cr%C3%A9dible, vraisemblable http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/vraisemblable, donner cours http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/cours. There's a lot of wiggle room with that word, and if I encountered it in a legal context the first thing I would ask is, What do they mean by that?. In the absence of a specific definition any of several reasonably applicable definitions can be applied. If necessary it would be easy to amend the disclaimer. Suggéré would be an even less stringent term. I just confirmed with my partner (who happens to be French) that 'accredité' is definitely a formal term like accredited. The problem with undefined terms is that it's another thing to argue about and you could find the definition ending up being something completely different to what you had intended (especially if the plaintiff has their say about it). Delivery problems are a matter of the contract between the printer and the consumer, and should not normally be a legal concern for WMF. If there is a reported history of bad service in multiple incidents we should not be recommending that printer, but even if there is such a history proving that kind of international complicity over the printing of a single book would be well beyond the capacity of a small-claims court. See now here is a significant difference between booksources and this initiative - BS if I understand well simply links our articles with the books they refer to. The books already exist and the content for them is sourced and vetted using existing processes and legal frameworks (author guarantees etc.). Here, on the other hand, we are delivering the actual content. Fortunately these issues are easily fixed via forming contracts (even clickthroughs) with the suppliers and the buyers. Questions about bias, quality, etc. can also be resolved by maintaining a transparent database of suppliers (including information about their contributions - average donation per print for example), ideally with user feedback and using techniques like random ordering, etc. This is arguably work that should be done once and made available for everyone. Sam 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection#Beware_increased_liability_.28Publisher_vs_Distributor.29 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation
Re: [Foundation-l] Agreement between WMF and O'Reilly Media about Wikipedia: The Missing Manual on Wikipedia?
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 1:14 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8...@gmail.comwrote: I'm obviously in favor of having more books at Wikibooks, but then again it does make some sense to keep the documentation close to the website it documents. If the book is GFDL, couldn't we just copy/fork it to Wikibooks too? Agreed - the Wikipedia version will likely have to be significantly adapted/integrated so it makes sense to keep a reasonably verbatim version at Wikibooks. That is to say that I wouldn't promote the idea of posting a book, intact, to Wikipedia (even as an exception), but anything which improves the help material is worth encouraging. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.ukwrote: 2009/1/28 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net: Material in the public domain or under a fully free licence does not require any kind of fair use consideration. I'm not talking about genuinely free material, I'm talking about protected (copyrighted/trademarked) material being uploaded by others - for example a periodic table of elements or medical charts which would normally be subject to deletion (except that they are currently immediately available for sale!). I'm a little confused - surely we would delete this stuff whether or not there's a buy a print now clickthrough button? I can't see anyone arguing to keep it because they want to run off a poster... (and to a degree this is rendered moot by that helpful lowest useful resolution requirement of the unfree material rules) 1. Upload high-resolution copyrighted image littered with trademarks as anonymous user. 2. Immediately order poster of said image. 3. File against WMF, its chapter(s) and the printer for good measure claiming [RI|MP]AA sized damages for copyright and trademark infringement, submitting said poster(s) and invoice(s) as evidence. 4. ??? 5. Profit! Note that these steps need not necessarily be completed by the same parties. I'm not sure that the courts would have much leeway here (as they might were the image not used commercially as was the case before this function was launched). Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture
Gerard, I find your response (which fails to address the issues I have raised) abrasive bordering on offensive. I also note that this will not be the first time *today* that someone has requested that you tone it down. What is clear though is that we have a snowflake's chance in hell of convincing you there is a problem, so I'm going to add you to a large (and growing) list of trolls and ignore your 'contributions' from now on. Presumably WMF has lawyer(s) somewhere. What would be the process of getting them to take a look at this with a view to having the French chapter put into place the requisite disclaimers? Sam Lennart: Illegal content results in individuals being pursued, arrested and charged and snarky articles being written by old media, not outrageous (albeit largely unjustified) claims for damages (and leverage via commercial third parties): http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/01/statutory-damages-not-high-enough.ars On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.comwrote: Hoi, What WMF server allows anonymous uploads of images ? Do you know if this makes any difference any way ? Who do you think you get an invoice from? Not the WMF not its chapters. So please THINK Why bother us with such tripe that is irrelevant to the thread anyway ? Thanks, GerardM 2009/1/28 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: 2009/1/28 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net: Material in the public domain or under a fully free licence does not require any kind of fair use consideration. I'm not talking about genuinely free material, I'm talking about protected (copyrighted/trademarked) material being uploaded by others - for example a periodic table of elements or medical charts which would normally be subject to deletion (except that they are currently immediately available for sale!). I'm a little confused - surely we would delete this stuff whether or not there's a buy a print now clickthrough button? I can't see anyone arguing to keep it because they want to run off a poster... (and to a degree this is rendered moot by that helpful lowest useful resolution requirement of the unfree material rules) 1. Upload high-resolution copyrighted image littered with trademarks as anonymous user. 2. Immediately order poster of said image. 3. File against WMF, its chapter(s) and the printer for good measure claiming [RI|MP]AA sized damages for copyright and trademark infringement, submitting said poster(s) and invoice(s) as evidence. 4. ??? 5. Profit! Note that these steps need not necessarily be completed by the same parties. I'm not sure that the courts would have much leeway here (as they might were the image not used commercially as was the case before this function was launched). Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.comwrote: Hoi, In your post the crucial bit is that a liability results as a consequence of an invoice from either the Wikimedia Foundation or from a WMF chapter. False. Furthermore, while WMF *may* be safe from attack on the grounds that *it* is both non-profit and at arms length from the transaction itself, things are certainly less clear for the commercial printer who could well find themselves in serious trouble. What contract(s) are in place to cover WMF its chapter(s) in the case that such a supplier (rightly?) seeks recourse because we have made such material available to them? Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 1:59 AM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Just how much control do you expect from the Central Committee? Sure, it's a given that some will-intentioned initiatives will go dreadfully awry. Bad things have happened in the past, and bad things will happen in the future; None of it will be prevented by imposing strict central control. Wikimedia is a resilient organisation, and it didn't get that way through paranoid musings about a tarnished reputation. It's not that fragile. My primary concern is that all the potential ramifications of such actions be properly considered - the income is irrelevant in the context of the WMF budget and yet the risk could be extreme. For example, deriving revenue directly from the content could cause problems for fair use[1], let alone the prospect of users uploading copyrighted or otherwise restricted (eg trademarked) content. Another liability to consider relates to problems with delivery. Normally such convenience services include strong disclaimers of warranty and liability but checking one of my contributions[2] shows offers to 'Choisissez un imprimeur *accrédité*'. By referring to these vendors as 'accredited' we are stating that they are officially approved and raising many questions about the accreditation process itself. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for this type of innovation and where better for it to come from than the chapters, but we also need to exercise caution. Sam 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_under_United_States_laws 2. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:CloudComputingStackLarge.svg 3. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/accredited ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 10:05 PM, Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 7:18 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: My view is that any restriction of distribution that is not absolutely and unquestionably legally necessary is a violation of the moral rights of the contributors. We contributed to a free encyclopedia, in the sense that the material could be used freely--and widely. We all explicitly agreed there could be commercial use, and most of us did not particularly concern ourselves with how other commercial or noncommercial sites would use or license the material, as long as what we put on Wikipedia could be used by anyone. Well said - I couldn't agree more. Personally, I care whether or not reusers attempt to follow the spirit of the copyleft and make their changes and contributions available for future reuse. You're mixing issues - nobody has a problem with 'follow[ing] the spirit of the copyleft', it's making them jump through arbitrary hoops to do so that is the problem. If we wanted to be truly free, we would all license our work into the public domain, but instead we work under a copyleft and I consider honoring that distinction to be important. Nobody is suggesting otherwise. There are plenty of good reasons not to use public domain and I for one certainly value the 'protection' of CC-BY-SA without the 'exclusion' of detailed (yet meaningless) attributions. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:46 AM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote: We can develop tools that would identify principal authors with sufficient accuracy; and this list of authors is likely to be short enough to be practically included in full. I disagree with this assertion regarding automation and can think of many situations both in which this does not hold true, giving false negatives (e.g. single/initial uploads of large contributions, uploads using multiple aliases, imports, IP numbers and not-logged-in contributions, etc.) and false positives (e.g. minor edits not marked as such, spam/vandalism, comprehensive rewrites, deletions, abuse/'attribution whoring', etc.). The only 'tool' I can see being effective for identifying principal authors is discussion, which will invariably lead to conflict, create unnecessary risk for reusers and waste our most precious resource (volunteer time) en masse. Oh, and I would place anyone who considers their own interests taking precedence over those of the community (both within Wikipedia and the greater public) into the category of 'tool' too :) Please consider this, especially in light of recent research that shows that most Wikipedia contributors contribute from egoistic reasons ;) Wikipedia is a community and those who contribute to it for egotistic rather than altruistic reasons (even if the two are often closely related) are deluding themselves given they were never promised anything, least of all grandeur. What value do they really think they will get from a 2pt credit with 5,000 other authors? If it is relevant to their field(s) of endeavour then they can draw attention to their contribution themselves (as I do) and if they don't like it then they ought to be off writing books or knols or contributing to something other than a community wiki. I might add that the argument that you ought not violate some individuals' rights for the good of some other (larger) group of individuals is weak in this context, and that exactly the same can be (and has been) said in reverse: Requiring even 2 pages of attributions be included after every article inclusion is a non-free tax on content reuse, and a violation of our author's expectations. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: It's by no means guaranteed that if we include http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dentistrycurid=8005action=history in a printed book in 2009 it will still be accessible in 2019. You're right, which is another great reason *not* to link to the history page URLs (which are as ugly as sin) but to the article directly (which is *significantly* more useful for the reusers' users). While I find it very hard to believe Wikipedia will cease to exist, the same can't necessarily be said for PHP and ugly GET requests are already a dying breed... If we do eventually find a sensible way to identify primary authors then we can always promote them to the article page, or a separate info/credits page (which could include other metadata like creation date, edit and editor counts, etc.). On the other hand if we *must* have a separate link then perhaps appending '/info', '/credit' or similar to the article URL would be a better choice. Alternatively we could set up something like a purl partial redirect or even run our own short link service (eg http://wikipedia.org/x9fd) which would reliably point at a specific version and survive moves etc. There are plenty of solutions - we just need to work out which one works best and offends the least people. Sam On the other hand, if we printed out the names in the book... then as long as you have the book you have the names, because they travel together. We may change the syntax of the history link, the most common method for locating content on the web may change (either structurally, or because of device evolution), or the sites might for some reason come down. We should also consider that ideally we want our content to be usefully credited in areas of the world where Internet access is very limited, or where Wikipedia is specifically blocked. Thinking ahead, these are the parts of the world most likely to be using a paper Wikipedia anyway. I do understand that there are mediums where this is impossible, and I think perhaps the solution requires an outline that describes different (but reasonable) standards based on medium category, broadly interpreted. Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Re-licensing (Import)
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 2:06 AM, Klaus Graf klausg...@googlemail.comwrote: His decision has to be respected by Wikipedia absolutely. And it will be... in the edit summary for the import which is in turn referenced either directly or indirectly in the attribution. The critical difference is that unlike your average Wikipedian, this author didn't deliberately and knowingly contribute to a collaborative effort and in doing so waive any real possibility of a meaningful attribution. So what's the better evil? Dealing with this once on the way in (that is, pinging the original author regarding your intention to include their content in a wiki where it will be relentlessly edited and reused with diluted attribution) or externalising the effort for all of our [re]users (and their [re]users and so on) forever by 'polluting' the article with a myriad differing long-lived attribution demands? Note that Citizendium have been doing something like what is proposed for ages (you must attribute the *Citizendium* and link to http://www.citizendium.org/ as well as the relevant *Citizendium* article), *including* for Wikipedia articles (Some content on this page may previously have [appeared on Wikipedia]). The sky hasn't fallen on them yet. Sam 1. http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Reusing_Citizendium_Content ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Attribution and Relicensing
On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 8:26 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: If the change to CC-BY-SA goes through I will be proposing a new wikimedia project to record what authors and reuses consider acceptable (and what people actually do if that happens) in terms of attribution for every form of reuse we can think of. This is an interesting suggestion for a thread calling for Wikipedia to keep it simple :) If the rules are too complex they will be either ignored (and broken) or avoided (eg users will go elsewhere). In particular, anything which involves attempting to extract meaning from the (arbitrarily long and constantly growing) edit histories or refer to a table of 'reuse scenarios' almost certainly falls into the 'too complex for your average [re]user' category. To use the cloud computing article again, there are almost 500 unique editors including chestnuts like 'RealWorldExperience, CanadianLinuxUser, MonkeyBounce, TutterMouse, Onmytoes4eva, Chadastrophic, Tree Hugger, Kibbled Bits and Technobadger'. About half are IPs (which probably still need to be credited) and there's even a few people I'd rather not credit were I to reuse it myself. In this case at least, attempting to credit individuals as currently proposed dilutes the value of attributions altogether and actually does more harm than good - I would much rather 'contribute' my attribution to Wikipedia. Allowing users to discuss 'recommended' attributions eg on the talk page could be another simple, effective solution. That way such claims could be discussed and a concise list of authors maintained (subject to peer review). It would ultimately be for the reuser to determine above and beyond the base 'Wikipedia' credit. I would hope to see something like this emerge, which is not far from Citizendium's relatively good example: *If you reuse Wikipedia content you must at least reference the license and attribute Wikipedia. You should also refer to the article itself and may include individual author(s) from the history and/or attribution requests on the talk page, using URLs where appropriate for the medium. * Unfortunately with wording like '*To re-distribute a page in any form, provide credit to all the contributors.*' in the draft it seems I shouldn't be holding my breath. In any case I hope this doesn't derail the migration - perhaps asking the question about CC-BY-SA separately from the implementation details would be best? Sam 1. http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=en.wikipediapage=cloud%20computing ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Hear hear! Das Wikipedia Lexikon in einem Band[1] is another stunning example of attribution gone mad and reusers would always have the option of crediting authors anyway (perhaps guided by author preferences expressed on the talk page or some other interface). Most critically however, the benefit of free knowledge weighs greater than the benefit of credit to largely pseudonymous individuals who have never, at any point, been promised [anything]. Well said - thanks for this enlightening and comprehensive review of the situation. I would hope that URLs point to the article itself which is far more useful (and cleaner) than the history page, and that they would be optional depending on the medium (eg web/pdf vs paper/print). Aside from that agree 100% with everything you've said and look forward to seeing what the poll and/or vote. Sam http://books.google.com/books?id=BaWKVqiUH-4Cpg=PT979 On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 1:11 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Because I don't think it's good to discuss attribution as an abstract principle, just as an example, the author attribution for the article [[France]] is below, excluding IP addresses. According to the view that attribution needs to be given to each pseudonym, this entire history would have to be included with every copy of the article. Needless to say, in a print product, this would occupy a very significant amount of space. Needless to say, equally, it's a significant obligation for a re-user. And, of course, Wikipedia keeps growing and so do its attribution records. The notion that it's actually useful to anyone in that list is dubious at best. A vast number of pseudonyms below have no meaning except for their context in Wikipedia. I think requiring this for, e.g., a wiki-reader on countries makes it significantly less likely for people to create such products, and I think that the benefit of free knowledge weighs greater than the benefit of credit to largely pseudonymous individuals who have never, at any point, been promised or given to understand that their name would be given a significant degree of visibility through the lifetime of the article they contribute to. The idea that we can meaningfully define the number of cases where this requirement is onerous and the number where it isn't through simple language is not at all obvious to me. Whether something is onerous is in part a function of someone's willingness and ability to invest effort, not whether they are creating something that's intended for online and offline use. Ironically, heavy attribution requirements advantage publishing houses with armies of lawyers over individuals. People who don't care about rules will ignore any requirement we set (and realistically we have no energy or ability to enforce those requirements in most cases); unreasonable requirements primarily affect people who are trying to do the right thing, like any unnecessary emergence of bureaucracy. But, I do not want to rehash every single argument a hundred times. As I said in a different thread, I think it may be useful to include at least a preference poll in the licensing vote to better understand where different people are on this issue. Attribution-by-URL under certain circumstances is consistent with many people's expectations and preference, but clearly not with everyone's. If there's a predominant conception of an acceptable attribution regime, that would make developing a consistent model easier. Erik (aeropagitica), - 45, -Midorihana-, ..p, 03md, 6ty7u89i, 14 tom 1406, 334a, 041744, ^demon, Aaker, Abeg92, Abilityfun, Academic Challenger, Acadienne, Acemaroon, Acroterion, ACV777, Addshore, Adrian Robson, AdrianCo, Adrille, Aesopos, Aeusoes1, Aflin, AgarwalSumeet, Agateller, Agillet, Ahoerstemeier, AirdishStraus, Airhead5, Aitias, Akanemoto, AkifSarwar, Alcatar, AlefZet, Alensha, Alethiophile, AlexisMichaud, AlexiusHoratius, AlexLibman, Alientraveller, AlleborgoBot, Alll, AlnoktaBOT, Alopex, Alphachimp, Alphachimpbot, Alphador, Amateaurhistorian411, Ambafrance, AndersBot, AndonicO, Andrew Levine, Andrewhalim, AndrewHowse, Andrewpmk, Andy Marchbanks, Andy wakey, Andygharvey, Angela, Angelo De La Paz, Anger22, Angusmclellan, Ann O'nyme, Annalaurab, Antandrus, Antennaman, AnthroGael, AntiSpamBot, AntiVandalBot, Antonrojo, Antwon Galante, Aol kid, Appleseed, Aquarelle, Aranherunar, ARC Gritt, AreJay, Arenrce, ArmenG, Arnehalbakken, Arnoutf, Aronlevin, Arpingstone, Arsenal666, Arthur Rubin, Arwack, ASDFGH, Asidemes, Asm82, Asterion, Atlant, Aude, Avala, Avenue, Awien, AxG, AySz88, Azertymenneke, Backburner001, Bahaab, BalkanFever, Bamsucks123, Bangvang, Bardhylius, Baristarim, Baronnet, Barryob, Basawala, Baseballnut290, Bathrobe, Bazonka, Bcnviajero, BdB-18, BDpill359, BECASC, Beerus, Behemoth, Bellahdoll, Benhealy, BenoniBot, Bertilvidet, Betacommand, BetacommandBot, Beyond silence, BigBrotherIsWatchingYou, Bigordo11, Bigtimepeace,
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 2:07 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: Das Wikipedia Lexikon in einem Band[1] is another stunning example of attribution gone mad A few pages of names in a 1000 page book doesn't seem that mad to me. I think it makes an excellent point about how Wikipedia works. Perhaps, but it delivers ZERO benefit to the pseudonymous individuals listed and exacts a non-trivial toll on the reuser. This is further amplified for partial reuse of a resource, reuse of multiple resources, reuse with tangible mediums (esp non-print e.g. t-shirts) and so on. Carrying on with the France example[1], you can double the length of that list with IP numbers (which would likely have to be included too) and consider that if the article has accrued 5,000 contributors over the last 5 years or so, how many will it have in 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? While the toll can be reduced by automation it cannot be removed altogether and this does not change the fact that the result delivers ZERO value to anyone (authors, readers, reusers, the environment and Wikipedia as a whole). Sam 1. http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=en.wikipediapage=france ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Attribution and Relicensing
On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: What about text works which were licensed under CC-BY-SA but were released somewhere other than Wikipedia? Can these be incorporated into Wikipedia? How will their right to attribution be respected? Is this allowance of reference by history URL built in to CC-BY-SA, or is it specific to Wikipedia? The CC licenses give us a fair bit of room to move with regards to attribution, allowing for pseudonums, taking into account the medium, delegates (incl. publishing entities eg Wikipedia), etc. I also stumbled on this[1] in commons which is interesting in the context of the discussion about certain types of contribution (photographs) inexplicably requiring stronger attribution: Visible tags or watermarkshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarkinginside images are strongly discouraged at Wikimedia Commons. So information like Mr. Foobar, May 2005, CC-BY-SA shall not be written directly in the image but in EXIF fields, which is technically even superior. The reasons are: - We don't tag our Wikipedia articles with our names in a prominent way inside the article text *in order to step behind the work and let it speak for itself*, the same applies to the images (stepping behind own work and thus reducing personal vanity is crucial for neutralityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV ). Cheers, Sam 1. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Manipulating_meta_data#Purpose_for_using_EXIF_at_Commons ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] GFDL QA update and question
On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 10:14 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: I'm curious: why isn't a copyright notice displayed at the bottom of each article, stating the copyright owners of the material? Because the copyright owners is often a very long list. The notice: All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) is displayed, and that's pretty much all that is practical. Another link to the history page might be good, I guess. Perhaps this could read something like: All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details and History for contribut[ions|ors].) I hope we can get to the point where referencing the article itself is enough both for the copyright notices and the attribution(s) - refer to other thread. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Attribution and Relicensing
On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: * For pictures, sound files, etc., there is often just a single author. If you are the photographer of a high resolution panorama that you've contributed to Wikipedia, I think it's a reasonable expectation to be named (Photo by Sam Johnston), as opposed to being referred to as Photo from Wikipedia. This is equally true, I think, for articles where there is just a single author, or for pictures which have been subsequently edited a few times. I would consider this an exception rather than the rule and in any case the content author could always approach a content consumer to request attribution. The consumer then has the option to cater to the author's request but doesn't have to stop the presses for fear of an injunction as giving them the option avoids any possibility for conflict. If contributors are more interested in self-promotion than the community then they should probably be selling on stock photo sites and writing Knols ;) I do think the potential for internal and external conflict needs to be carefully considered as there could be serious repurcussions in terms of injunctions, bad will, etc. * The attribution terms should avoid requiring specific reference to Wikipedia, so that it's clear that there is not necessarily a tie between the project in which collaboration currently happens, and any future use of the content. If someone creates a better alternative to Wikipedia where the content is used, why should it be continued to be attributed to Wikipedia, rather than the authors? I was not proposing to *require* attribution to Wikipedia (indeed there would be Wikipedians bearing pitchforks were WMF to try this on), rather merely to *allow* it in order to foster re-use and avoid conflicts. I think requiring attribution-by-history should be the best practice for heavily edited articles, at least until we more prominently point out the author credit in the article footer. The history for heavily edited articles is essentially opaque and claiming that there is value to be derived from it is likely to mislead consumers. Even if we were to provide statistics (say under a new 'Contribut[ions|ors]' tab) we all know that edit counts are notoriously unreliable indicators and besides, all legitimate edits are valuable. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Attribution and Relicensing
On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 2:25 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: 2009/1/16 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net: That is, you must at least reference Wikipedia and the article, but it may be appropriate to additionally *or* alternatively refer to individual contributor(s). Yes - I agree with this. The only question would be whether referring to the history or to the article are substantially different in terms of attribution. I don't think so - they are intrinsically linked like the cover of a book (where this stuff traditionally belongs), however it could be good to state the obvious ala: All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details *and History for contribut[ions|ors]). It would also be possible (but not necessarily sensible) to list everyone, even for large contributor lists: The following users have contributed to this article: X, Y, Z. Finally, one could introduce a concept of article 'owners' or 'editors' similar to open source projects, though that would be a significant deviation from the status quo and would likely cause more problems than it would fix. In community-developed guidelines regarding GFDL re-use, both standards have existed; re-use recommendations in en.wp's Wikipedia:Copyrights refer to the article URL, for example. That's fine for the Web but not so good elsewhere (like on t-shirts, articles, books, prints, etc.). Short URLs (ala http://tinyurl.com/) may help but better to avoid the problem altogether by being flexible. Brian's Bushism example before was a good one. Let's broaden the question a bit: Provided that, - the site footer for articles is modified to name contributors if there are fewer than six; - the site footer also refers to the page history for credit - Are there participants in this discussion who would consider attribution-by-history-URL for pages with 5 authors acceptable, but who would consider attribution-by-article-URL unacceptable? I think if we lower the requirements in this regard, it needs to be based on more than a discussion here, but it would be good to get some informal feedback on the question first. Another important point to consider (aside from the fact that it would require non-trivial changes and promote useless edits for 'credit whoring') is that we're often not talking about 'Photo by Sam Johnston' but rather having to credit the likes of: - Fükenwulf - Bastard Soap - Justjihad - AnarcistPig - Cheesypoo And these are just some of the ones that were recently *allowed* on review. Reality is that many (most?) Wikipedia usernames are not suitable for public consumption and are often disassociated from real identities anyway. For a real life example, an ex-partner of mine recently referenced the cloud computing article in his blog, apparently without realising that I wrote it. I don't particularly care but apparently he does because the link is now nowhere to be found. There's a handful of people I wouldn't want to credit either for whatever reason (competitors in company documents for example) but that shouldn't preclude anyone from reusing Wikipedia content. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia Attribution and Relicensing
Hi, I've been following with great interest the endeavour to relicense Wikipedia for some time, though this is my first meaningful contribution to it. Attribution is an important and sensitive issue but I think the discussions so far are missing a great opportunity to promote Wikipedia itself while further simplifying (and thus fostering) re-use. Focus so far has been on arduous processes for identifying authors and linking to revision histories which runs the risk of continuing to stifle adoption of content even after re-licensing. It appears that it would be adequate (as a minimum acceptable standard) to specify the CC-BY-SA license and refer to the Wikipedia article - certainly the license section 4(c) allows for significant flexibility in this regard. The attribution itself would then be something like Wikipedia 'Widgets' article which is enough in itself for a user to be able to find the article and associated revision history (concise attributions are critical especially for print work, on t-shirts, etc.). My primary concern is that it can be essentially impossible to reliably identify key contributers, and that doing so in an environment of stigmergic collaboration can be very misleading as to the value of each contribution (even the most minor of edits play a critical role in the building of trust). It is also a potential source of significant contention, both internally between editors and externally with editors individually seeking attribution from content consumers. Take for example the cloud computinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computingarticle which I [re]wrote last year, the vast majority of which is to this day still my work. In this case it is clear from the statisticshttp://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=en.wikipediapage=cloud%20computingthat I am the primary/original author but had I have confined my updates to a single edit there would be no way to reliably identify me, short of tracking the owner of each and every character (and even this is far from perfect). In any case my contribution was intended to further the objects of Wikipedia and if I need to derive recognition for my work then I will reference it directly myself. Please consider adopting as low a minimum acceptable standard for attributions as possible so as to derive the full benefit from this exciting transition by lowering the barriers to participation. Kind regards, Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
