On 7/21/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 7/21/07, quiddity <blanketfort(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I've read through these 2 threads again, and
I think Durin's initial
post (
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-July/077358.html)
and George Herbert's reply
(
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-July/077966.html)
are excellent summations of the issue.
(I'm a reductionist by nature, so, to synopsize even further...)
This seems to be a fundamental disagreement between 2 philosophies:
*The "open-content-first" folks (idealists), and the immediatists
(
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Immediatism)
and
*The "encyclopedia-first" folks (utilitarians?), and the eventualists
(
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Eventualism)
Does that sound about right?
Sadly not quite.
There are eventualists who want us to be *eventually* strictly open
content, and eventualists who don't really care as long as we are
eventually a quality encyclopaedia, under what ever IP Regime.
There are also people who are in an unsconcionable hurry to make sure
nothing that is of low quality *at the moment* remain on wikipedia,
but who don't really
register IP issues on their radar.
I don't really don't think you can make a case for such alignments.
Wikiphilosophical attitudes are very much pick and choose. You won't
be able to make "two parties" of wikipedians no matter how hard you
try to massage the statistics.
some thoughts:
1) I realize that nobody *is* an archetype, I'm just trying to reframe
the problem from another perspective (using
over-generalizations/meta-labels/abstract archetypes (simply because
my thought patterns gravitate towards point-form taxonomies)).
There doesn't seem to be a consensus forming, and from what I
understand of the issues, consensus isn't likely to form, as the two
viewpoints are fundamentally opposed.
2) I was specifically thinking of [[Image:Einstein tongue.jpg]] as an
example. The immediatists/idealists wanted it gone or fixed instantly;
whereas the eventualists were happy with the initial short description
under the assumption that it would get expanded at some point in the
future. (with many other factors, disclaimer disclaimer, but that was
the gist)
3) I was going to suggest what Bryan Derkson wrote:
I'm suggesting that there's a _balance_ to be
found here. Since we keep
everything non-free tagged with explicit non-free labels, people who
wish to create derivative works that can't make use of fair use
exemptions the way we do can easily strip out the content that they
can't use.
(much like the {{selfref}} template does)
though it does get more complicated when one takes into account the
non-free images that *are* explicitly discussed within an article.
Those sections wouldn't make sense if the images were stripped out.
4) My unhappiness/interest in the issue is primarily due to the harm
that it's causing - Good editors are being
discouraged/disgruntled/dismayed, on a wide scale.
Both sides have intelligent, rational, and positive positions, and
we're an idealistic project to begin with, so it's always going to be
more complex than a summary can do justice. But the more
clearly/simply we define the legal/philosophical/opinion based
stances, the easier it might be (for me at least) to discuss them.
(Though I'm leaning towards agreeing that we need an official policy
"from above", whatever that might be.)
Just thinking out-loud, in case it helps anyone :)
Quiddity