At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cool_Wall we had a complete list
of cars which appear on the BBC Top Gear "Cool Wall". I removed this
as being almost certainly a violation of copyright. It is now being
argued that reproducing the list in full does not violate copyright,
because it is not published in the show's magazine or on the website
and has been compiled by collating the lists from numerous shows. It
is further asserted that compiling the list from these shows does not
constitute original research, although there is no known reliable
secondary source for any of the data, let alone the complete collated
list
Original research? You decide.
Copyright? I think so, but what do I know?
Fancruft? Ooooh, tricky :-)
Guidance appreciated.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.ukhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
It worries me a little that I can spot Wikipedia text a mile off - our
house style isn't that obvious, is it? - but it seems to be one of
those little skills you pick up after a while. Very useful for marking
school essays, I'm sure.
Anyhow, I was packing up some boxes today, and happened across the box
for the Nokia 770 (a really useful little bit of kit, incidentally),
which shows someone merrily using the device to chatter away to a
friend on an instant messenger. For some reason, the friend is writing
something to them about poetry.
I looked at the sentence. Something went click.
"Kim: A poem is a composition usually written in verse. Poems rely
heavily on imagery, precise word choice, and metaphor, may be written
in measures consisting of" [...]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Literature&oldid=3562677
I'm used to seeing our content reused all over the place, but somehow
I didn't expect to see fragments used as lorem-ipsum filler on a box
cover...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
It's about time we had this debate again. Morally, ethically, legally: what
are we required to do to meet the "attribution required" aspect of certain
free images we acquire from Flickr or other sources, including our own
contributors?
Viewpoint #1: Provided the information is available on the image information
page, which can be reached by clicking the image, then attribution
information is available to anyone who wants it.
Viewpoint #2: The attribution should be more visible, such as beneath the
image in articles. This is the standard used by newspapers, for instance.
People who licence their work under "attribution required" licences are
expecting a bit more than a begruding source tag hidden behind a mouse
click.
Personally I am of viewpoint #2, and feel that we are short-changing
photographers who generously release
their work for virtually no recompense. I feel that if we are not
willing to attribute the photo properly, by putting the owner's name
at the same level
as the photo, then we should bar the use of these kinds of images.
Some powerful persuasive arguments for either of the above viewpoints, or
any other, would be nice.
(Why this has arisen now: I created a {{credit}} template for this purpose
and used it in a couple of places. I was reverted. So more opinions are
needed.)
Steve
PS http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ states that "You must
attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but
not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the
work)." but in practice no one seems to specify a particular method.
The ramifications of that practice are open for discussion.
In December 2005 during the John Seigenthaler biography controversy
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr._Wikipedia_biography_cont…)
it was decided to require that users create an account and log in
before starting a new article. The ability of people to make changes
without logging in remained unchanged.
Some people believed that Wikipedia's the high rate of growth may have
outpaced its community's ability to monitor new articles, contributing
to the Seigenthaler problem. It was hoped that the limitation of page
creation would increase the quality of newly created pages, increase
oversight over newly created pages, and avoid the creation of hoax
articles. Since that point several attempts to study the impact of
the change have been conducted. These studies have been unable to
produce conclusive findings.
Around the time of the Seigenthaler controversy Wikipedia underwent a
dramatic and discontinuous increase in traffic and editing activity
beyond the high rate of growth Wikipedia had long been experiencing.
It is very likely that the press surrounding this incident contributed
to this increase. This increase had made it impossible to make
conclusive statements about the impact limiting page creation.
Furthermore, if we ignore the growth effects the data suggests that
the change has been harmful to the quality of Wikipedia. I must
emphasize that all results have been inconclusive. We just can't tell.
Numerous discussions with Wikipedians, Foundation leaders, and
Foundation staff going back for more than a year have generally been
positive about the idea of re-enabling anonymous page creation.
In the time since late 2005 the English Wikipedia community has grown
substantially. The nearly exponential growth rate in articles we
previously experienced has stopped. Even if disabling anon page
creation was beneficial then, there is no current evidence suggesting
that the change continues to be beneficial. As such, barring
complications, anonymous page creation will be re-enabled on English
Wikipedia on Friday November 9th.
After a one month period, on December 9th, we will re-evaluate this
decision using previously established methods (average article
lifespan, rate of deletion, manual quality classification, random
samplings of newly created articles, and most importantly, community
discussion). If there is evidence of harm, anonymous page creation
will be disabled to collect more data and provide time for discussion.
If there is no significant evidence of harm, the issue will be
evaluated again after six months. Further milestones and actions may
be proposed at that time.
Finally the community will have the chance to make an informed
decision on this subject. It would have been best if that had happened
initially, but it wasn't possible then.
I hope that we can all look at this matter with optimism. If you are
aware of a strong factually-grounded reason why this should not be
done please provide it as soon as possible, either as a response to
this list or emailed to me privately. If you have ideas on additional
measurements we can perform after making this change or if you'd like
to volunteer your effort for helping to perform a manual new article
quality study next month, please let me know.
"David Gerard" wrote
> There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here
> before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just
> waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an
> article.
Bah. I still dispute this.
>Someone with university-level research facilities should be
> able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much
> more time.
A proper library for writing a proper article, OK. But let's not propagate the fallacy that one can't write a good stub any more.
Charles
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Sorry if this has already been posted... perhaps not useful, but certainly
fun to watch!
http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/index.html
And good for a plasma screen party backdrop, as someone on the AIR list
pointed out... perhaps for next year's Wikimania.
-- phoebe
With the risk of sounding like a broken record... :-) Mozilla announced
(confirmed) they are making over $50M a year from their search box while
Wikipedia struggles over fund raising on a regular basis.
Some thoughts:
1. Wikipedia would make $100M+ if they put on Google Adsense on every
page--easily.
2. Wikipedia could let users choose to turn ads on or off.
3. Wikipedia would make at least 20M if Wikipedia used Google Adsense for
just search (which, ironically is what many wikipedia folks do anyway...
search google for site:wikipedia.com).
4. If Wikipedia folks were concerned about being beholden to just Google we
could setup a system to rotate ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. randomly
(text ads of course).
5. If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to
block certain advertisers.
More here:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainabil…
Anyway, if folks from the foundation ever want help on these things I'm
available to consult for free and have setup deals like these (i.e. between
Netscape/AOL/Weblogs, Inc. and Google)
Thoughts?
Best j
---------------------
Jason McCabe Calacanis
CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com
Mobile: 310-456-4900
My blog: http://www.calacanis.com
AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis
My admin: admin(a)calacanis.com
> Earlier: "... we were absolutely savaged by the editors..."
Peter Blaise responds: Yes, that's it exactly. The editors admins
sysops moderators developers whatever seem all too often in an angry
mood, as if we mere contributors were interrupting their otherwise fine
day. "If it wasn't for those dang customers, this job would run
smoothly!" =8^o
I keep harping on
- patience,
- tolerance,
- acceptance
- and equivalent consideration,
... but I do see them as the "count to 100 before replying" cool down
opportunity.
For instance, I suggested on another mediawiki list that folks could
simply scroll-on if they're not interested in a post, or if they must
take responsive action, they could set an example of the kind of post
they would prefer, instead of merely complaining. One of "them"
immediately ripped my head off for my insensitivity to the difficult job
"they" have. I guess that was an example of the kind of post they
prefer! Doh!
"We have seen the enemy, and it's us" - Pogo