Answers.com response to my query (below):
On 31 Mar 2005, at 11:26 am, GuruNet Support wrote:
Dear Christiaan,
Thank you for contacting GuruNet.
We really appreciate your bringing this to our attention, Christiaan, and have forwarded your message to our Engineering Team. The problem is that we are working from a dump of Wikipedia content, but apparently, there is no dump of the Commons data. However, our engineers are aware of the problem and are looking into a solution that will work best all around.
We'll let you know when we've deployed a solution to this problem. Similarly, if you could keep us informed of any development at Wikipedia regarding this matter, we'd really appreciate it.
If we can be of any further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely yours, Alan Baklor GuruNet Customer Support http://www.gurunet.com The Answer Engine
On 28 Mar 2005, at 1:32 am, Christiaan Briggs wrote:
I sent them the following message via http://www.answers.com/main/contact_us.jsp
To whom it concerns,
I'm writing regarding copyright conditions of images from Wikipedia.org used on Answers.com
I noticed recently that many of the Wikipedia images used on Answers.com do not appear to follow copyright conditions (such as crediting authors): http://www.answers.com/library/Wikipedia+Images
From what I can tell this problem is restricted to images that are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org (rather than directly to Wikipedia), which results in there only being a link to the relevant Wikimedia Commons page rather than a full description on the Wikipedia page.
So for instance this image includes relevant info because it was uploaded directly to Wikipedia (and hence the description was added directly to its Wikipedia page): http://www.answers.com/topic/broads-jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Broads.jpg
However this image does not include image info (and nor, for that matter, does it include the link to the relevant Wikimedia Commons page): http://www.answers.com/topic/bees-collecting-pollen-2004-08-14-jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bees_Collecting_Pollen_2004-08 -14.jpg The info of which you will find by following the link on the page above to: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bees_Collecting_Pollen_2004 -08-14.jpg
This is obviously not an ideal situation from our point of view, as we'd like to have the image info on the Wikipedia image page and not have to direct people to another page, however, for various reasons, we're stuck with the current setup, which looks to have resulted in a technical hitch causing Answers.com not to follow licence conditions.
I'm wouldn't have a foggiest clue about the mechanics of this process but it seems to me that, until Wikipedia deals with this issue at their end, Answers.com still needs to deal with the issue at their end, meaning Answers.com needs to pull the relevant image info from Wikimedia Commons when appropriate (as per the second example above).
I'm in contact with administrators and other editors via a Wikipedia emailing list, so I will be sure to pass on any response you send me.
Thanks for your time, Christiaan Briggs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Christiaan