[WikiEN-l] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model

[wjhonson at aol.com]

You're right.  Several years ago, we had discussed this very issue.
That nothing "free" is really free is you have to pay to travel *to* it.
IIRC we basically agreed that traveling about, is just part of your 
normal life.  Perhaps the advent of the internet people's only recourse 
to "free sources" was to go to the library.  Using that as our 
basement, we can truly state that we're not making it harder than it 
was.  We're making it easier, in most cases, or even just in some cases.

On the other balancing arm, we're creating a work with thousands of 
footnotes, which may be difficult to verify.  Most people will be able 
to verify some of them.  Some people will be able to verify most of 
them.  But probably nobody is going to be able to verify all of them.  
So there you go.  Now what?

At some point, we had a project page where you could list your services 
to do lookups in various sources.  I don't really know if that got a 
head of steam or died the death of obscurity.  I thought I had posted 
myself there, but I've never gotten a request for anything.  However, 
that might solve the problem.

I personally don't like the idea of requesting or requiring a 
wikipedian to upload images of their source.  It sounds an awful lot 
like that would violate licensing agreements here and there.  And 
possibly copyright issues.  *However* perhaps we could create a tag, 
coincidental with20{{fact}} something like {{verify?}} which would cross 
over to a page like "Verification Requests By Date".  Any established 
Wikipedia could take a request, do the lookup, and clear the tag.  It 
is entirely possible that the number of requests would swamp the number 
of clearances, but it's a possible solution.  I'd be willing to clear 
say five or ten a day.

Will Johnson



-----Original Message-----
From: Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at gmail.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Fri, Aug 7, 2009 6:12 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model










On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 1:04 AM, <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:

> You have completely ignored the requirement that I am here *solely*
> referring to items which live, online, behind subscription walls.  If
> the item is free, then it does not.  So that removes the majority of
> your counter-argument.

I'm honestly not trying to ignore any point. But that does not mean
that I am not ignorant. It's been a long day. But I guess what you're
referring to is this bit of what you said:

> Part A or 1) *If* the article lives exclusively online, then it gets
> removed. We should not be requiring or pandering for, commercial
> activity, we as verifiers should have a choice in the matter.  There
> must always be a "free" alternative of some sort.

If that's the case (and I'm by no m
eans sure), then you didn't mention
(or, perhaps, reiterate) subscription walls. And that's where I got
confused.

< pauses for thought >

Yes, I think you felt that the 'subscription wall' bit went without
saying because of the context of the argument, but I just took you as
if your words were in a new realm.

Still, it raises another interesting question...

My local library may be free. With access to microfilm for the
newspaper archives. But my local bus fair is £2. And I need a bus to
get to the library. And back. So that's £4. Murdoch's subscription
might charge me 10 pence to look at the article.

But anyway... I'm taking us very off track.

I'm sorry, I did misunderstand you. I see where you're aiming at now.

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