On 1/28/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I mean there are many free quotations (a bit over 4000 years worth). It would not be impossible to create a wikiquote that used only free quotations.
Are you in favor of removing all non-free quotations from Wikipedia?
I tend to feel that the foundation has a valid case for not releasing the logo under a free licence. Even debian initialy didn't although I understand that has rather broken down.
Are you in favor of removing all non-free content from Wikipedia except the Wikimedia logos?
But it hadn't been even though I was able to find free images inside 30 seconds. Why do you think that was?
I'm pretty sure it's because a lot of people are indifferent about replacing legal non-free images with free ones.
Do you think that deleting huge amounts of such non-free content solves this problem?
Does it cause the majority of deleted content to be replaced with free content?
Does it improve the coverage, reliability, neutrality, or relevance of the encyclopedia?
Does it improve the net usefulness of the encyclopedia to downstream users?
On 1/29/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
You could do that, but that would mean leaving out many of the juiciest ones used to describe modern society. :-)
"Juiciness" is irrelevant. Modern society is not released under a free license and therefore must be immediately removed from our free <s>encyclopedia</s>!
On 1/29/07, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Yes, and we're "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".
Yep. Why do you think it says that?
Sorry to be blunt,
Classic.
We need to discuss fair use policy from the basis that freedom is an aspect of our goal, and not just a useful means to an end.
I'm basing this concept of "primary and secondary goals" on the wording of the fair use policy page itself. The way the page is currently worded, writing a high-quality encyclopedia is a means to the end of creating free content. This is quite a silly notion, to me at least.
These arguments that free content is our primary goal is like an argument that our primary goal is to be a wiki, because hey, it's right there in the title of the project, right? This is, of course, demonstrably false. The wiki/"anyone can edit" aspect of the project, while highly important, is regularly ignored when it doesn't serve the primary purpose of writing a high-quality encyclopedia and making it available to as many people as possible.
The "wiki" in "Wikipedia" is a means to the end of writing a high-quality encyclopedia. The rationale is that breadth and quality will arise through the contributions of a great number of users. Unfortunately, allowing anyone to edit *anything* sometimes prevents high-quality articles from forming, so we block certain people from editing or (semi-)protect certain pages.
The "free" in "free encyclopedia" is a means to the end of making that high-quality encyclopedia useful and accessible to as many people as possible. The rationale is that free content can be redistributed free of charge, and continually shared and improved by downstream users. Unfortunately, there is a lot of encyclopedic content that will never be released under a free license, and limiting ourselves to *only* free content would also limit the breadth, usefulness, and neutrality of our encyclopedia. So we allow non-free content whenever it is encyclopedic, legal and doesn't displace equivalent free content.
It seems fruitless to argue about the details of any particular policy if we disagree on the purpose of the project.
I think you mean "It's fruitless to try to reach a consensus about the details of any particular policy when a small group of users have modified it to suit their ideals and are unwilling to compromise".