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
Hey everybody! I've been lurking around here for awhile, but haven't posted
before.
I just wanted to bring something to the attention of this list. It seems the
website thefreedictionary.com, which has been mirroring wikipedia content
for awhile now, has produced some sort of widget that gives an "article of
the day" with a link back to a wikipedia they are mirroring.
Here's the thing, the widget doesn't credit wikipedia. It just says "Free
content provided by The Free Dictionary." Isn't the widget a derivative work
based on the wikipedia article (it includes a preview paragraph of text)? As
such, shouldn't it have to credit wikipedia under the terms of the GFDL?
What do people think about this? Is it a bad thing? Is it a GFDL violation?
You can see lots of examples of the widget in action if you google "Free
content provided by The Free Dictionary." Or you can go to:
http://www.malaspina.com/home.htm to see one example.
-Andy
In regards to the "wikiunderground" site, I have a couple questions.
Is it directly tied-in to the Wikimedia software? Or is it just a fast-refreshing crawler? If the latter, is it sufficiently equipped to handle all article deletions?
Secondly, this concept raises a lot of possibilities. First of all, the question of deletion itself. Is there a need to permanently delete pages so that only administrators can view them? Or could we have another userlevel (somewhere between autoconfirmed and admin) called "Pageview" where you could view deleted pages? I mean, this might be a bad idea because it would remove the importance of deletion (why bother deleting a page if some users will be able to view it) but this level might require 6 months and 500 edits.
Thirdly, a developer might even want to automate this process, wherein all deleted pages are transfered to a subdomain, perhaps deleted.wikipedia.org or something to that effect.
Just some thoughts.
Just a thought.
It has came to my attention that closed wikis can be the source of problems
particularly for IW links.
When a wiki is locked down (generally for inactivity) edits to the site are
completely blocked.
This is a problem because IW links can no longer be fixed meaning there is a
permanent invalid IW linkage which may mislead bots and humans (visitors
reading articles) alike.
In addition it creates a backlog as the wikis in question will be unlocked
eventualy. Admittedly the locked wikis are small so backlog isnt exactly too
big of a deal.
In adition locked wikis also need to be edited for SUL unifications,
username renames (can relate to SUL), leftover spam deletions and etc.
I really think certain usergroups and/or global usergroups should be allowed
to edit such wikis.
- White Cat
[If "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", I'm thinking
close paraphrase is a pretty good second.]
Liberal commentators are of course having a field day with the
nomination of [[Sarah Palin]] for the U.S. vice-presidency.
The NYT's dishy Maureen Dowd compared the situation to a
deliciously hokey chick flick, including this description
of the heroine's kids:
Track (named after high school track meets), Bristol
(after Bristol Bay where they did commercial fishing),
Willow (after a community in Alaska), Piper
(just a cool name) and Trig (Norse for "strength.")
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/opinion/31dowd.html]
Now, was this fantastic satire, or based on truth? A quick check
of our article reveals not only that it's truth, but also where
Dowd got her facts from.
In a message dated 8/29/2008 4:11:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
snowspinner(a)gmail.com writes:
Again, the larger problem here, to me, is that it's unclear Find A
Grave is free content.>>
------------------
But of couse that goes back to your desire that we should be promoting free
content in a way that "quality" content is not. Personally I think our
readers would be more inclined to favor us, if we were to promote the highest
standards of quality, not just the free-est ones.
Find-a-grave is free in the sense that a reader doesn't have to pay to use
it, and an editor doesn't have to pay to edit it. As to whether its free in
the sense that the contents can be copied and re-hosted elsewhere, or sold for
a profit, I'm not sure.
I'm a bit ambivalent about templating find-a-grave. On the one hand, it's
nice to promote sites which aim to be, or have the potential to be,
comprehensive (even if they are not currently), and sites which allow readers
free-access to all the content. I would, for example have been against a template for
EB except their new policy allowing deep-linking direct-to-content for
"bloggers" (which means any online mass linker in their view). I would be against
any template for JSTOR for example or Lexis-Nexis or Ancestry which all
require payment.
On the other hand, I can't help but wonder where the line would be drawn
toward this sort of "preferential" (if you will) approach. Template for
Rootsweb's World Connect? Template for Marvel Universe ? Template for Huffington
Post Articles ?
I'm not sure how we'd justify some against others. Or do we need to? Just
allow the free creation of any priveledged link that can stand scrutiny.
**************It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel
deal here.
(http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)
In a message dated 8/29/2008 2:30:05 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
snowspinner(a)gmail.com writes:
I'm open to other ways of distinguishing the two, but the basic
functionality - interfacing ourselves with other free content projects
- still seems to me valuable.>>
----------------
Well for example see
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Find_A_Grave_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Find_A_Grave)
An interesting problem or solution depending on how you look at it.
Find A Grave is created by thousands of "entries" submit by anyone, just
like Wikipedia.
Supposedly or hopefully, the entries are accurate and relatively detailed.
It's not a wiki program however, but then neither is IMDb.
So what about that?
Will Johnson
**************It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel
deal here.
(http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)
One of the positive things to come from our prominence has been the
rise of similar subject-specific resources - many clustered around
Wikia, but not all. For any supporter of free culture it is a deeply
heartening thing to see a genuine focus on creating free content for a
variety of purposes.
There are obvious benefits to finding ways to work closely with these
projects. For one thing, it promotes free culture, and that is our
goal. For another, these projects often fill in gaps in our coverage.
It's a simple fact of life that our most-read articles are often ones
on fictional subjects. And we have major controversies in this area as
people seek to restrain our coverage due to notability. If we can
interface ourselves with fan wikis for various shows we can also
better police the boundary between what we want to cover and what we
don't want to cover without leaving our readers short-changed.
In fact, this is often a major argument raised in notability
discussions - if people want plot summaries they should go to X Wiki.
Years ago, I created http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:FreeContentMeta
to help with this - it was a base template that could be used to
create sister-project like boxes for other wikis. This let us, on
fictional characters, have a link much like we have for Wikiquote or
Wikisource that basically said "If you want detailed in-universe
information, here's where to go." This struck me as common sense - it
helped with the problem of getting readers to expect us to provide
what we actually provide, it helped editors have a better sense of
where to put different types of information, and it helped free
content by creating prominent and crawlable links to free content
resources (since Wikia is on the interwiki map, and thus links are not
nofollow).
Unfortunately, the templates are pretty near to being deprecated with
no real replacement in mind. This strikes me as very, very unfortunate
- the attitude, which seems to be that we ought never promote
anything, ever, and that we have no obligation to help other free
content resources, seems to me both a case of pulling up the ladder
and of situating ourselves as a walled garden. We want people to go to
other resources instead of us, but we are unwilling, it seems, even to
tightly integrate with those resources to make that leap easy for
readers. The idea that we have an obligation to help free culture is
roundly and dismissively rejected, and the very idea of providing
prominent links to free content sites is decried as an NPOV violation
(though nobody, to date, has explained what viewpoint it unfairly
advances...)
What can or should we do in this area? How can we best use the
existence of a much larger galaxy of free content resources to improve
ourselves and improve them? What role do we play in the larger free
culture community? Are we a walled garden that is only to be imitated?
Or are we the leaders who can and should use our prominence and our
muscle to help create free sources of knowledge for anything that
people want to know?
For me, this is a no-brainer. So how do we do it?
Best,
Phil
In a message dated 8/29/2008 1:24:06 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
wilydoppelganger(a)gmail.com writes:
the correct answer is probably "Propose a new
project". Wikicompendium, or something.
--------
If by this you mean something like, a wiki which includes (at least links)
to fan details, non-notable characters and episodes, obscure rock rocks,
authors of single papers, etc etc
The only way a wiki like this would survive as an "overview" is if one of
the core policies were stated at the outset to be "We we never have any
notability requirement". In addition imho we would need to drop the requirement
that only third-party sources be used, since the vast majority of fancruft for
example, is first or second party, but not third. And then what about BLP?
I just don't see the possibility of being a "compendium" *with* a blp.
There are just too many things that certain "focus groups" want to exclude on the
basis of BLP. If the people of San Francisco know the Mayor cheated on his
wife, we can't include it, unless 35 other newspaper pick it up and he
appears on 5 talk shows denouncing it.
If I find something in a newspaper 30 years ago, but no one since has
mentioned it, I can't include it, because no one else has mentioned it? That's a
ridiculous bar that bears no relationship to standards of journalism and
writing.
By the way, "Nikko" was King of the Flying Monkeys. The *sole* place you
will find this, is in old newspapers. Obviously everyone since then has
suppressed the information.
My biography of Henry Fonda, corrects dozens of inaccurate statements, some
appearing in otherwise good print biographies, based on contemporary newspaper
quotes.
IN Biography, this sort of source-based research would be considered what we
*want* to present, not what we want to suppress. And that's exactly the way
other print encyclopedias do it. If they find evidence outside of print
biographies, yet published, they include it.
I'm venting :)
Will Johnson
**************It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel
deal here.
(http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)