Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 12:03:53 -0400 From: Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] RE: copyright and NOR policies re: math and science To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Message-ID: 98dd099a0510270903hb290f71p4456375b4dba13ee@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Two things:
And what about a proof? One can always paraphrase a proof, but at the end of the day, you're really violating copyright in spirit under the above interpretation as much as if you
copied
verbatim.
I'm pretty sure mathematical proofs would not be copyrightable.
That's funny...given that a lot of mathematical papers consist almost entirely of proofs, are you saying that copyright does not apply to them? I think the publisher would beg to differ.
I could write my own version of the same facts in a given book and have full claim to a copyright in this instance.
This is my point -- statements of theorems don't have different "versions" of themselves. (Maybe *equivalent* versions, that's another issue.) Or at least, there's very little room for tinkering.
I think a good line of work with NOR is to say that every fact which could be reasonably contested should be cited. That is, if I write an article the History of X, and I say that on such-and-such a date, so-and-so did something, I might from the get-go assume that this is common knowledge (at least among specialists). If someone comes to the talk page and says, "Hey, I don't know about that," then it is my duty to pull out some other source which says it. I think citation is allowed to be an evolving thing.
Yes, I understand; my point is that in math, there exists non-original research which cannot be cited. There is no "big book" containing every possible true statement and valid argument in math. Say someone comes up with a particularly nice proof of some calculus result, but can't find it in any reference in exactly the same way. And suppose it's not a terribly novel thing -- just a couple tweeks that make it more appealing. Is this original research? Most math people would say, "no". Even if it *were* original enough to publish in CMJ, say, if it were never submitted, it would *still* not require publication before being written up in wikipedia...because it is something easily verified by any professional in the field. The difference between, say, history and math, is that in history, the verification is the historical record (primary or secondary sources), whereas in math, the "verification" lives inside the mathematicians' brains. It's hard to cite that.
Really, this is has not been much of a problem, so far. In fact, the math people have kind of interpreted these "rules" as they went along, as they saw fit, collectively. So, you might wonder why I go on. I just want people to realize that policies and rules require a fair amount of latitude and interpretation from situation to situation. A lot of people seem to have the attitude that the way the policies are implemented and interpreted in their little domain of existence is the "right" way and should be imposed on everyone else. I would hesitate (I hope I have hesitated in the past) to tell the people in the biology project, or the history project, or a project on some hobby or craft, how the policies should be interpreted in their domain. But several times I've seen a math person raise an issue like this outside of the math community, and people just pounce on them -- imposing their own view of a policy to a situation they don't even understand.
darin