Dear ladies and gentlemen, [Note:Mr. Christoph Hager asked us to place our apologies and questions here:] we have found out, that we have been listed as a live mirror and therefore have been blocked. We truly apologize for doing it the wrong way - we were unaware of the issue concerning "live mirrors" in 2005, when we implemented our solution. Therefore we really are sorry for the challenges we may have caused you, as we were unaware of the "live mirror" issue when we first implemented (autumn 2005) our encyclopedia, that was also using Wikipedia-contents. We really, really thought, that we were fully compliant. So to our knowledge the GFDL compliance was perfect (now it is not, as we've quickly turned off all links) and we were doing everything right, but we did not know, that we were not allowed to "parse" articles live, that we did not deem appropiate for our audience, but were linked in other articles we had saved on our server. We would love to solve this issue with you and would ask you for a contact, with whom we may sort out the best possible solution for you and us. Of course, we would also delete the entire thing and start building an own solution, if you ask us to. At the moment, we think a Wikimedia-conform solution might be the following: - we would check the articles concerning our project (koordinaten.de/.net) and save them into an own database - we assume at the moment, that this will be less than overall 1000 articles - we would get changed or new articles once a month to avoid bringing unnecessary traffic to your servers and would clearly state the necessary details for the GFDL-rules (as we did) and that our versions may be outdated in comparison the the Wikipedia - we will deny (already did) the robots to follow and therefore check these pages - we could get the articles in times you propose (if there are any less frequented times on wikipedia...) - we are not sure how to handle the image-issues - at the moment, we think it to be best, if we would also cache them on our server, but are not sure about the legal aspects here - if possible, we would also deny the possibility to change articles on our version as this function would best be linked to the original Wikipedia-version - any articles, that we did not cache but would have links to them in the cached articles would be transferred by a link to Wikipedia itself, though we would include a page, that makes the user aware of the transfer This way, we would avoid having to download the whole wikipedia files as proposed on some pages about live mirrors and at the same time, reduce any traffic for Wikipedia. But we could keep using the articles for our audience as an information to our site. Also through the GFDL compliance we already followed since 2005 all users would be aware, that the source for the articles is Wikipedia and the respective author. This way we would hope to reduce or avoid any harm for wikipedia, it's servers and the people making this great portal what it is today. As we were sure in 2005, that we understood how to do it in compliance with your informations, we now would like to ask for support/a confirmation how to best do it. As mentioned, we would also accept your denial of any use of Wikipedia contents, allthough we would greatly appreciate your acceptance of our apologies for the challenges we may have caused. We really were unaware and the last thing we had in mind was to harm Wikipedia! Best regards, __ Samater Liban - Consulting - Heret Informatik Service www.Koordinaten.net / www.Koordinaten.de Am Kühlen Grund 5 - 65835 Liederbach - Germany T: +49-(0)700 - 56673462 - M: +49-(0)175 - 544 71 67