Gareth Owen writes:
> Well it would be, if the legal settlement had been something other
> than "Eric gets the shaft from CRC publishing"
And it's not just Eric. I contributed to mathworld over the years here
and there. I never signed over my copyrights. CRC have published my
materials without permission. They will get a threatening letter from
me soon. CRC textbooks are dead in our department.
Axel
<lsanger(a)nupedia.com> writes:
> This is all great news about MathWorld.
Well it would be, if the legal settlement had been something other than
"Eric gets the shaft from CRC publishing". From a wikipedia standpoint, this
is a hard lesson to the contributors of mathworld that their contributions
need protection to remain free.
(http://www.mathworld.com/erics_commentary.html)
Their new contribution copyright waiver makes me feel mildly nauseous.
(http://www.mathworld.com/permission_form.html)
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12/1/01)
Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> writes:
> Did someone say that some of their content is under GNU FDL?
> In reading all about this lawsuit and the resolution of it, I don't see that
> anywhere.
planetmath is not mathworld, but a free replacement.
See http://planetmath.org/?op=license
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)
>> I'm going to wait about a week for him to calm down before writing
>> to him again. But if anyone has their own conciliatory words to
>> send to him, I confirmed his e-mail: corvus13(a)hotmail.com.
> Can someone give me a brief resume (by private email if you don't
> want to stir old coals) as to what happened.
Corvus added a bunch of "folklore" sections to articles about
minerals, containing a lot of new age crystal healing stuff.
The text was not attributed to any particular school of belief or
source. Also, it looked like a cut-and-paste job, since the English
looked archaic and had odd capitalization. A few of us asked Corvus
to identify a non-copyrighted source, to rewrite the stuff in modern
English, and to identify where the beliefs come from. He took that
personally for some reason (as if we were "accusing" him of something-
-which was manifestly not the case), and stomped off.
I'm not sure we should waste any time on these folks (i.e., those
Wikipedians who occasionally take offense and leave). Being able to
see your own ideas from other points of view is a necessary skill
here, as is having a thick skin. If people are upset by aspects of
the process we have deemed important, then trying to attract them
back will have one of three results: (1) We just piss him off again;
(2) We compromise the process out of misplaced guilt to keep him from
leaving; or (3) He grows a spine, gets with the program, and stays.
Obviously, we want (3). But if the person is capable of that and
has stuff to say, he'll come back after he cools off regardless of
what we do, as Manning apparently did. Anything we do is more likely
to lead to (1) or (2). So if people leave, let 'em. If they come
back, welcome them back. But let's not go out of our way to analyze
every reason some person leaves and beat ourselves up. If we do
everything right, some people will still get pissed off and leave.
That's life.
0
Tim Chambers <tbchambers(a)yahoo.com> writes:
> I'm going to wait about a week for him to calm down before writing to
> him again. But if anyone has their own conciliatory words to send to
> him, I confirmed his e-mail: corvus13(a)hotmail.com.
Can someone give me a brief resume (by private email if you don't want to stir
old coals) as to what happened.
--
Gareth Owen
(who likes translating articles written in broken English
into his own variant of broken English)
Those of a mathematical bent may be pleased to know that the excellent
resource at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ is back online. Whilst the text is
copyright, the ideas can't be.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12/1/01)
You might or might not know that on
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Larry_Sanger/Moving_commentary_out_of_Wik…
I proposed to move the contents of [[Wikipedia commentary]], personal
essays, and perhaps some other pages to a different wiki altogether.
This proposal seems to have broad support, but there has been some
disagreement over details. So, maybe we can talk about those details here
a bit.
First, should we put these materials on a completely separate wiki or just
in a "commentary:" namespace of the new wiki?
I'm in favor of a completely separate wiki. Why? A different namespace
on the same wiki would use the same [[Recent Changes]] page that we're now
using (unless Magnus rewrites the software :-) ), which just wouldn't
solve the problem. (The problem, as I see it, is that we get rather too
easily distracted by debate over policy proposals and personal essays on
the main wiki. We should relegate the discussion and essays to a separate
place that we understand is not the top priority.) Moreover, with a
separate namespace, it'd be slightly too convenient for my comfort to
interlink the encyclopedia and the discussion section. That, again,
wouldn't solve the problem.
Second, what should we put on the commentary wiki (call it the "metawiki"
for short)?
It seems everyone who is at all in favor of the proposal agrees that at
least these things should live on the metawiki:
* [[Wikipedia commentary]]
* Personal essays, such as those linked to from [[Larry Sanger/Columns]]
* Other personal page content other than what most people have on their
personal pages (such as what I have on [[Larry Sanger]]). In other words,
all we need on our personal pages on the main wiki is something about
ourselves, maybe the articles we've worked on, and a space for talk.
There are other possibilities:
* Announcements
* How to edit a page
* Policy pages
* Feature requests
* Bug reports
etc.
Axel Boldt said we should include *all* such stuff on a separate wiki or
namespace, which is something I could live with, I think, as long that
namespace (or those namespaces) had a different [[Recent Changes]] page.
But I prefer a separate wiki altogether for the commentary.
Basically, I think the policy, procedure, and propaganda pages (PPP!) are
important to have right there at our fingertips, particularly for new
people. The PPP pages are important in a way that the commentary is not.
For instance, it's really important that people come to grips with "the
neutral point of view" if they want to write many articles for Wikipedia,
but not so important that they see my latest essay about the perfect
such-and-such.
But the PPP pages should be separate from the encyclopedia articles for
purposes of counting articles and specifically designating encyclopedic
content. So, that's what we could use the other namespaces for. The PPP
pages could go in the "Wikipedia:" (or "w:") namespace. You might wonder,
in that case, what the specific difference is between the metawiki
commentary pages and the "Wikipedia:" namespace policy pages. Why not
have them all in the "Wikipedia:" namespace (and the "User:" namespace)?
Well, as I see it, it's a matter of officialness. The "official" policy
statements go on the "Wikipedia:" namespace. New policy proposals,
debate, and long-winded essays--and y'know, this stuff isn't *that* hard
to spot :-) --would go on the metawiki. Moreover, all manner of our dirty
laundry could be archived on the metawiki, and, depending on how hard the
envelope were pushed, probably no one would have any objection at all.
Third, so how would we create this? In four steps. Jimbo creates the
wiki. We move commentary and essays to the new wiki. We add links to the
new wiki in a few (but not too many) prominent, relevant spots. Then we
delete the commentary and essays from the old wiki. It'll be pretty easy
--no heavy lifting required.
What do ya'll think?
Larry
On http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_utilities/Talk, Larry wrote:
Manning, this is very useful, but the new Wikipedia PHP script will
allow
us to have all "about Wikipedia" pages in a separate "Wikipedia:"
namespace. Moreover, the new script isn't going to permit subpages.
Soo....
--LMS
I was unaware that a final decision (which, of course, LMS has authority
to make--I'm no raving anarchist) had been made about subpages.
Is this a final decision, or just advocacy?
--
The Cunctator
cunctator(a)kband.com www.kband.comwww.wikipedia.com/wiki/September_11,_2001_Terrorist_Attack/In_Memoriam
He wrote back to me, "I think I'm through with wikipedia. Do what you
want with any entries I may have left."
I'm going to wait about a week for him to calm down before writing to
him again. But if anyone has their own conciliatory words to send to
him, I confirmed his e-mail: corvus13(a)hotmail.com.
<>< [[tbc]]
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