----- Original Message ----- From: Jens Ropers <ropers(a)ropersonline.com> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Sent: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 01:47:22 +0100 Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing and convenient in [[logical want to that would NOT compatibility is much Looking at the Wikinews articles I was involved in so far, it seems that taking materials from Wikipedia does not happen much. If Wikinews articles can be incorporated into Wikipedia article, that would be good. I am guessing that the need for Wikinews to incorporate Wikipedia articles is quite limited. Regarding the license poll, I noticed that the people who expressed their opinions are not necessarily the active participants on Wikinews so far. I am not sure what to make of it, but I wonder if only Wikinews participants will vote on the license issue, or any Wikimedian can vote. The former has some intuitive appeal, but there aren't that many active participants yet. I think it is okay to delay the vote until there will be more active users on Wikinews. For a while, Wikinews contents are under public domain - it is like a opening special give-away for potential re-users. There is virtually no discussion on license issue on wikinews. The biggest discussion so far among the participants is if we would like to publish unreviewed articles on the main page (the community is really divided on this), and if and how we want to change the reveiw process. Regards, Tomos thanks a million for that bit of news.it is really

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Jens Ropers (ropers(a)ropersonline.com) [041203 11:47]:

> (1) > While WP compatibility might seem like a real important and convenient > thing, IMHO coming to that conclusion is fallacious (as in [[logical > fallacy]]): > - WP compatibility is pretty much only needed if people want to > DUPLICATE (ie. not rewrite) content from the WP. > - Wikinews was was expressly advertised as a project that would NOT > simply duplicate WP content. > Thus, I believe the "requirement" for WP license compatibility is much > less than one might think.

I'd disagree, actually. Have you noticed how a breaking news story article comes together on Wikipedia? It's like seeing a newsmagazine feature being composed before your eyes. And a lot of stuff on wikinews-l is actually newsmagazine-quality writing, not necessarily simple-grammar inverted-pyramid newspaper-style information. So I think a lot of the stuff on wikinews, we really will want to just copy from Wikinews to Wikipedia.

Well i have contributed 2 articles to wikinews so far, and one of them i lifted (more or less) straight from wikipedia (from an article that was written about 5 minutes before i sat down to write). I can think that there would be plenty of times when lifting a paragraph or so from wikipedia would be useful in wikinews. Hence while i would like it to be PD, i think that GFDL (provided that becomes CC-BY-SA complient sometime) would be the most practical.

I agree, but I hope you'll participate on a short-term basis with it being PD, since the purpose of being PD right now is just to enable us to have some time to really think through the licensing issues more carefully.

Jens Ropers (ropers(a)ropersonline.com) [041203 11:47]: I'd disagree, actually. Have you noticed how a breaking news story article comes together on Wikipedia? It's like seeing a newsmagazine feature being composed before your eyes. And a lot of stuff on wikinews-l is actually newsmagazine-quality writing, not necessarily simple-grammar inverted-pyramid newspaper-style information. So I think a lot of the stuff on wikinews, we really will want to just copy from Wikinews to Wikipedia.