I think we have too many tags to list them all. Also, they are not mutually
exclusive, and in some cases I'm not sure the uploader will necessarily
understand them (we certainly have a lot of dubious claims of "public
domain").
I'd rather see a simple choice: 1) I have created this work and agree to
license it under the terms of the GFDL. 2) I have not created this work,
however I am permitted to incorporate it into Wikipedia under the following
license: [text box]. 3) I have not created this work, however it is public
domain due to the following reason: [text box]. 4) I have not created this
work, however I believe it can be incorporated into Wikipedia under the
doctrine of fair use.
For those choosing 2 or 3 (which I assume is a minority), we can have new
tags which can be made more specific after being analysed. We should also
have a text box for author information.
This would go a long way toward speeding up the tagging process. I'm not
even sure if the rate of new untagged images is greater than the rate of
image tagging at this point.
Anthony
It's probably been suggested a quadzillion times, but what with all the
image and tagging issues we're currently ruminating on:
Why don't we simply make tags mandatory ''when uploading''?
Add a ''mandatory'' list form to [[Special:Upload]] -- so that you can
''only'' upload if you pick a choice.
Then automatically insert the corresponding tag depending on what the
user picks (the tag should still remain editable later, of course, but
at least it's there for starters).
Let's be generous at first and include ''all'' the tags in that list,
even the ones we don't really like that much. -- At least we're going
to ''have'' tags (where we previously often had none.)
I'd even add a choice of "Other" to the list, whereby, if you pick
that, you gotta make a mandatory entry into a freeform field and, say,
an {{other}} tag will then be attached as well.
We can still become more restrictive later, but isn't it high time we
took this simple step?
I for one was just about to upload some image and I shamefully realized
that I've often simply forgotten a tag in the past -- simply because
it's not mandatory.
Thoughts?
- Jens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion
Snowspinner created this, I thought "what a good idea" and nominated
a few IMO deserving contenders. Not a peep since ... so I thought I'd
call it to your attention, for wild cheers of agreement, curses of
its name, etc. Vote for/against, diss the whole concept on the talk
page, etc.
- d.
On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 11:51:22 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
*Snip*
>
> > Should it be free for commercial redistribution?
>
> Yes.
>
*Snip*
Well, for anyone to commercially redistribute wikipedia, they would have to go through and remove all of the non-GNU copyrighted material. They could rely on the current community created labeling scheme to remove any labeled free-use images, but there is always the off chance of an image that wasn't labeled properly would stay in. This means that to commercially redistribute wikipedia, someone would have to look through every image, and make sure they are not copyrighted. Now, maybe this is desirable to some wikipedians, to make it harder for someone to profit off of our work. However, I personally think that it would benefit our cause for us to have commercial distributions of our work; it would help spread the word of our cause. In any case, I think it would be beneficial for us to come up with a better system for including non-GNU copyrighted material. We never know who in the future is going to want to use our content, and it is going to be much easier to separate the non-GNU material out now than 10 years from now.
--
Michael Becker
> > Does the entire encyclopedia need to be editable? What types of
> > edits must be allowed? Can there be centralized control, for
> > instance linkback requirements?
> None of these questions have anything at all to do with the question
> of GNU-freedom. These are internal policies of administration, and we
> have pretty well-developed answers for all of them, right?
I think you misunderstood the question, as it was related to what types of
edits, and linkback requirements are required under copyright law, but I can
guess your answer, anyway.
> > All this talk of whether or not things are "free enough" led me to
believe
> > that there was a lot of grey area. Maybe I'm wrong, and we do agree on
what
> > it means to be a free encyclopedia, we just haven't agreed that we want
to
> > be a free encyclopedia.
> With all due respect, Anthony, I think you're just trolling here.
My comments were rhetorical. If that makes them trolling, then I guess I
was trolling. But I wasn't *just* trolling.
> We know what it means to be a free encyclopedia, and we draw on
> longstanding traditions in the free software community to flesh out
> the details of that meaning. We have been committed from day one (day
> one of Nupedia, even) to be a free encyclopedia in the sense of
> GNU-freedom.
You have been. Most of the other early members have been. But much of the
community is not. This isn't to say that many people reject having a free
encyclopedia, but there are many who just don't understand what that means
to Wikipedia. For example, it was only when you made an official statement
that noncommercial only images weren't allowed in Wikipedia that many
Wikipedians would even consider them to be a bad thing, and even now there
is no effort to remove these images and there are people actively fighting
against their removal. I don't see how you can say that the community is on
the same page on this. It's clearly not true.
> Acting as if there's some deep philosophical division within the
> project, or some less-than-complete commitment to freedom is an insult
> to many of us who have been working so hard for so long to achieve
> exactly that.
I'm sorry that you're insulted by this. But at this point the amount of
work that is necessary to legally redistribute Wikipedia, even in the United
States for non-commercial purposes, is enormous, and so in that sense
freedom has not been achieved.
As you've been insulted and don't even believe I'm being serious, I'll
continue this discussion no further. Feel free to reply publically and/or
privately if you'd like, but I give up.
> --Jimbo
Anthony
Michael Becker wrote:
> Pointing this out has brought up an interesting point to me
>though. How can we morally justify using other peoples copyrighted
>material, against their copyright agreement, and then expect others to
>respect our copyright agreement? Wouldn't people also be able to make
>a case of fair use when using our content? I for one have for a long
>time opposed other websites using our content without following our
>copyright agreement (i.e. the GFDL). However, I don't find it moralËly
>justifiable for us to in one breath say, we have a right to break
>other peoples copyright agreements, and then in the next, attack
>people who break ours, Ëeven though they often too have a case for
>fair use.
I find this line of argument confusing and not very compelling.
Fair use (and fair dealing) is a limitation on the bounds of
copyright. Using something under fair use is not a violation of
copyright at all. Fair use is not (and must not be) just a handwaving
justification -- there are specific (though maddeningly vague and hard
to apply) conditions for fair use. (And for fair dealing, which is
not quite the same thing.)
If someone finds something in Wikipedia and has a fair use defense for
using it without our permission, then more power to them. This is not
a violation of our rights in any way.
Fair use is a very good aspect of copyright law, and it should be
relied upon by us (though, it should be relied upon carefully, we are
not legal risk takers). And if someone takes some of our content
under fair use, we should be glad of it. This is not an invitation
for people to violate the GNU FDL -- fair use is not a violation of
the GNU FDL.
--Jimbo
> Well, the email has been sent already, so why don't we see what they
> reply with? I hardly see how any kind of permission (or refusal) from AP
> could [be] bad for us: It clarifies our options, but we don't /have/ to
avail
> of them if we don't want.
First of all, refusal wouldn't clarify our options. If the image is being
used in a way which is fair use, then it's fair use regardless of whether or
not AP has refused to allow us to use it. Secondly, clarifying our options
doesn't resolve the dispute. Having options is exactly the reason we have
the dispute. If we didn't have any options, we wouldn't have a dispute.
> Besides, the root of the problem _as I perceive it_ is that this is a
> proxy political dispute:
> The very people pushing hardest against that picture's use and for its
> removal on copyright grounds made edits that would seem to hint at a
> political affiliation which might make them feel uncomfortable about
> this picture. (That's not a judgment, just an observation.)
That's certainly not the *root* of the problem. It may be why the problem
came to light in this particular instance, but the root of the problem has
nothing to do with these details. The root of the problem is that we
haven't decided what it means to be a *free* encyclopedia. This needs to be
resolved in a way which provides objective criteria for inclusion. We've
started along on that path, but we've still got a long way to go.
Incidently, this is somewhat analogous to the problem of deciding what it
means to be a free *encyclopedia*. We're farther along with that
definition, and have already come up with somewhat objective criteria at
[[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]]. But we still resort to
[[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]], still have ongoing inclusion disputes, and
people still abuse the abiguities for political purposes.
> My motivation was to settle the copyright situation, yay or nay, so
> people can THEN deal with it.
> If we first wanted to wait till we had agreement, we'd wait till
> kingdom come.
I don't think that's at all the case. I'm probably one of the biggest
objectors to having non-free images on Wikipedia, and I've come a long way
toward accepting some non-GFDL images as being "free enough". I actually
think the majority of the problem is a lack of understanding rather than
diametrically opposed viewpoints.
I think we can come to an agreement on what it means to be a *free*
*encyclopedia*. It would probably speed things up to organize the effort,
and that's why I proposed as part of my platform when I ran for the
Wikimedia board to start a committee with the task of defining those terms
by community consensus (i.e. what the term means to us). I think a
definition of the term "Free Encyclopedia", similar in concept and spirit to
the GNU Projects definition of Free Software (see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html), formed by the community as a
whole and ratified by the board, would *be* an agreement, and I think it
could be reached. Maybe I'm just overly optimistic.
> Thanks and regards,
> Jens Ropers
Anthony
I have now started a poll at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:
Village_pump#Domain_donation_.26mdash.3B_please_vote.21
about whether or not the Wikipedia Foundation should accept my donation
of the wikipaedia.net domain name and make it a working redirect to
wikipedia.org.
You are kindly asked to contribute your vote.
Thanks and regards,
Jens Ropers
There are two types of IT techs: The ones who watch soap operas and the
ones who watch progress bars.
http://www.ropersonline.com/elmo/#108681741955837683
Yes, if you read my last post to the wiken list, viewable here: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-August/029985.html, I think I made it clear that I was using the term copyright too loosely. What I meant, was material released under a non-gnu-compatible license. We should draw a line between gnu-compatable content, and non-gnu-compatable content on the software side, to better facilitate removal of that content by future users of our content. Otherwise, we are sacrificing the freeness of our encyclopedia. If we leave things the way they are, there is no telling how hard it will actually be to remove this non-free content in the future.
On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:23:55 -0300, Jeff Warnica <jeffw(a)chebucto.ns.ca> wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-20-08 at 12:58 -0400, Michael Becker wrote:
> > I'm forwarding my message to the wikitech list because I think this
> > might be of more interest to you people than wikipedians at large.
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Michael Becker <mbecker(a)jumpingjackweb.com>
> > Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 09:43:09 -0400
> > Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] defining Free Encyclopedia
> > To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org
> >
> > though, as long as there is a hard line drawn between copyrighted and
> > GPL material, it should be easy enough to remove. If we don't
> > facilitate the easy removal of this content, the wikipedia is no
>
> The opposite of copyrighted is "public domain". Works covered by the
> GPL, and the FDL ARE copyrighted. It is copyright law that provides for
> the legal backing of the GPL/FDL (and for that matter, _any_ license).
>
>
--
Michael Becker
On Fri, 2004-20-08 at 12:58 -0400, Michael Becker wrote:
> I'm forwarding my message to the wikitech list because I think this
> might be of more interest to you people than wikipedians at large.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Michael Becker <mbecker(a)jumpingjackweb.com>
> Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 09:43:09 -0400
> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] defining Free Encyclopedia
> To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org
>
> though, as long as there is a hard line drawn between copyrighted and
> GPL material, it should be easy enough to remove. If we don't
> facilitate the easy removal of this content, the wikipedia is no
The opposite of copyrighted is "public domain". Works covered by the
GPL, and the FDL ARE copyrighted. It is copyright law that provides for
the legal backing of the GPL/FDL (and for that matter, _any_ license).