You know, the number of Wikipedia articles with pictures in them is really plummeting. I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
I know the reason(s), of course, but viewing Wikipedia as a user (as I was this morning), this really significantly decreases its quality and usefulness. I'm afraid I know the answer, but would there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the- most-rampantly-free-images trends?
Maybe not banning free image providers for the sake of The Bureaucracy (TM) would help.
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
You know, the number of Wikipedia articles with pictures in them is really plummeting. I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
I know the reason(s), of course, but viewing Wikipedia as a user (as I was this morning), this really significantly decreases its quality and usefulness. I'm afraid I know the answer, but would there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the- most-rampantly-free-images trends?
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On 9/24/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Maybe not banning free image providers for the sake of The Bureaucracy (TM) would help.
Which free image providers are banned for the sake of a bureaucracy?
When do you consider an image to be free? If it can't be legally used by someone making a DVD copy of Wikipedia to distribute in Kenya, is it free? If it can't be put into a YouTube video? If it can't be used in a blog post?
I know there's a difference between law and enforcement, and of course fair use can be fairly broadly applied. But focusing on acquiring resources without any potential problems like these seems very reasonable.
On 9/24/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Maybe not banning free image providers for the sake of The Bureaucracy (TM) would help.
On 24/09/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Which free image providers are banned for the sake of a bureaucracy?
I'm not dragging individuals into this. But surely you have noticed that if someone breaks some bureaucratic rule (most of which have nothing to do with legal issues) and someone else draws attention to it, it doesn't matter how much that person has contributed to the encyclopaedia (images, text, good articles, featured articles, whatever), and the person gets banned?
We've not banned anybody for contributing images to Wikipedia, be they freely licence or copyrighted and used under our fair use provisions, and I don't think we've blocked any users for uploading fair use material roughly in accordance with policy (copyright, source, rationale etc). People who are getting blocked are people who are claiming copyright on work that is not theirs, and we're not talking about the misguided souls who think because they've made a screenshot, they own the copyright, we're talking about people who continually claim ownership of stuff they're finding on the internet in a deliberate attempt to circumvent fair use and deletion policies.
Nick
On 24/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
On 9/24/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Maybe not banning free image providers for the sake of The Bureaucracy (TM) would help.
On 24/09/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Which free image providers are banned for the sake of a bureaucracy?
I'm not dragging individuals into this. But surely you have noticed that if someone breaks some bureaucratic rule (most of which have nothing to do with legal issues) and someone else draws attention to it, it doesn't matter how much that person has contributed to the encyclopaedia (images, text, good articles, featured articles, whatever), and the person gets banned?
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No, no, I'm saying they get banned for nitpicky reasons completely unrelated to whatever they contribute, such as images. Your loss.
On 24/09/2007, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
We've not banned anybody for contributing images to Wikipedia, be they freely licence or copyrighted and used under our fair use provisions, and I don't think we've blocked any users for uploading fair use material roughly in accordance with policy (copyright, source, rationale etc). People who are getting blocked are people who are claiming copyright on work that is not theirs, and we're not talking about the misguided souls who think because they've made a screenshot, they own the copyright, we're talking about people who continually claim ownership of stuff they're finding on the internet in a deliberate attempt to circumvent fair use and deletion policies.
Nick
Examples would be useful, and I'll look into the reasons for their ban.
On 24/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
No, no, I'm saying they get banned for nitpicky reasons completely unrelated to whatever they contribute, such as images. Your loss.
On 24/09/2007, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
We've not banned anybody for contributing images to Wikipedia, be they freely licence or copyrighted and used under our fair use provisions,
and I
don't think we've blocked any users for uploading fair use material
roughly
in accordance with policy (copyright, source, rationale etc). People who
are
getting blocked are people who are claiming copyright on work that is
not
theirs, and we're not talking about the misguided souls who think
because
they've made a screenshot, they own the copyright, we're talking about people who continually claim ownership of stuff they're finding on the internet in a deliberate attempt to circumvent fair use and deletion policies.
Nick
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On 24/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
No, no, I'm saying they get banned for nitpicky reasons completely unrelated to whatever they contribute, such as images. Your loss.
Is this "banned" as in conventional Wikipedia usage of the term, or "banned" in your personal usage of the term?
- d.
On 24/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
No, no, I'm saying they get banned for nitpicky reasons completely unrelated to whatever they contribute, such as images. Your loss.
Is this "banned" as in conventional Wikipedia usage of the term, or "banned" in your personal usage of the term?
- d.
Well, I assume the people on 'List of banned users' are there because they meet Wikipaedia's definition of the term. Hard assumption to on a website that only takes port 80 to edit, I know. As for people who have emailed me - how often does it make a difference, anyway?
On 24/09/2007, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
We've not banned anybody for contributing images to Wikipedia, be they freely licence or copyrighted and used under our fair use provisions, and I don't think we've blocked any users for uploading fair use material roughly in accordance with policy (copyright, source, rationale etc). People who are getting blocked are people who are claiming copyright on work that is not theirs, and we're not talking about the misguided souls who think because they've made a screenshot, they own the copyright, we're talking about people who continually claim ownership of stuff they're finding on the internet in a deliberate attempt to circumvent fair use and deletion policies.
I don't know, the image stuff is a total balls-up IMO. As an example I found an image of a Skylon tower on the internet. The image was *not* free, but I contacted the guy that owned copyright and he relicensed it, but to non commercial only. I had no choice, that was what he chose.
So I uploaded it on wikimedia.
An admin guy removed it on the grounds that it was not allowed to be sold commercially. The guy that did it also accused me of lying about having gone to the trouble of relicensing it; even when I had included the email permitting its use in the text when I uploaded it as well.
I have mixed feelings to say the least about deletions on the grounds of being non commercial, the article was left without any images at all, and there was and is no free replacement anywhere (in the end I uploaded a god-awful sketch I made). It would be much better just to strip out the non commercial images when appropriate.
Did anyone gain from the deletion? No; the wikipedia site itself lost an image, and we had a legitimate license to use it for non commercial reasons.
And the upload pages UI is a complete disaster, even when I'm uploading stuff that's completely legitimate half the time it gets put up for deletion on purely bureaucratic reasons; it's not at all obvious (or it wasn't I haven't uploaded recently) what the heck you were supposed to do?
All in all, I'm not surprised we don't have more pictures, the system is so very bad in loads of ways, unless the image is public domain, there's almost no chance in practice that you can use it.
Nick
Ian Woollard wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
We've not banned anybody for contributing images to Wikipedia, be they freely licence or copyrighted and used under our fair use provisions, and I don't think we've blocked any users for uploading fair use material roughly in accordance with policy (copyright, source, rationale etc). People who are getting blocked are people who are claiming copyright on work that is not theirs, and we're not talking about the misguided souls who think because they've made a screenshot, they own the copyright, we're talking about people who continually claim ownership of stuff they're finding on the internet in a deliberate attempt to circumvent fair use and deletion policies.
I don't know, the image stuff is a total balls-up IMO. As an example I found an image of a Skylon tower on the internet. The image was *not* free, but I contacted the guy that owned copyright and he relicensed it, but to non commercial only. I had no choice, that was what he chose.
So I uploaded it on wikimedia.
An admin guy removed it on the grounds that it was not allowed to be sold commercially. The guy that did it also accused me of lying about having gone to the trouble of relicensing it; even when I had included the email permitting its use in the text when I uploaded it as well.
I have mixed feelings to say the least about deletions on the grounds of being non commercial, the article was left without any images at all, and there was and is no free replacement anywhere (in the end I uploaded a god-awful sketch I made). It would be much better just to strip out the non commercial images when appropriate.
Did anyone gain from the deletion? No; the wikipedia site itself lost an image, and we had a legitimate license to use it for non commercial reasons.
If the non-free image you uploaded were to remain on the article, it significantly reduces the likelihood that someone else (or you) will obtain a free image for the article. Really, how hard will it be for someone to get a free image of the Skylon tower?
Of course, it's *easier* to just use an available non-free image. But the easy route is not necessarily the best route.
-Rich Holton
Rich Holton wrote:
If the non-free image you uploaded were to remain on the article, it significantly reduces the likelihood that someone else (or you) will obtain a free image for the article.
Is making the encyclopedia less useful the only way forward here?
For example, could photos insufficiently pure be marked as such with a special frame or notice, rather than by outright deletion?
I may be going out on a limb here, but I've always thought our primary purpose here was to make an encyclopedia for people to use, and that free content is the mechanism by which we do that, not the main point of the project.
Is there some practical purpose to what I gather is a recent wave of image deletions? And by practical, I mean described such that a named group of people will experience near-term benefits. I've only seen it explained in terms of ideological compliance or technical license compliance, which has always left me underwhelmed.
William
William Pietri wrote:
Rich Holton wrote:
If the non-free image you uploaded were to remain on the article, it significantly reduces the likelihood that someone else (or you) will obtain a free image for the article.
Is making the encyclopedia less useful the only way forward here?
For example, could photos insufficiently pure be marked as such with a special frame or notice, rather than by outright deletion?
It's tough to beat no image as an incentive to find one. And it's easy to ignore a frame or a notice. How ugly and intrusive a frame or notice would you be willing to accept?
I may be going out on a limb here, but I've always thought our primary purpose here was to make an encyclopedia for people to use, and that free content is the mechanism by which we do that, not the main point of the project.
As I and others have stated elsewhere, the primary purpose is to create a *free encyclopedia*.
Is there some practical purpose to what I gather is a recent wave of image deletions? And by practical, I mean described such that a named group of people will experience near-term benefits. I've only seen it explained in terms of ideological compliance or technical license compliance, which has always left me underwhelmed.
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge."
Every non-free image we have makes that goal more distant.
-Rich
Rich Holton wrote:
It's tough to beat no image as an incentive to find one. And it's easy to ignore a frame or a notice. How ugly and intrusive a frame or notice would you be willing to accept?
Yes, I agree that making the encyclopedia less useful is the most dramatic spur to making it more useful.
Must it be ugly and intrusive? If the notion is that people care about free images, I'd think a simple and reasonable notice would be enough. We could try that theory, anyhow, and see how it works.
The alternative theory seems to be that even the people who want free images believe that most people don't care, and so making things ugly is a way to force everybody else to conform to their standards, avoiding the hard work of persuasion, or the even harder work of actually taking the photos they want. That's not the theory, is it?
I may be going out on a limb here, but I've always thought our primary purpose here was to make an encyclopedia for people to use, and that free content is the mechanism by which we do that, not the main point of the project.
As I and others have stated elsewhere, the primary purpose is to create a *free encyclopedia*.
Ok. That's not inconsistent with what I said. I see a public encyclopedia as a goal, and Gnu-style freeness as the mechanism.
Is there some practical purpose to what I gather is a recent wave of image deletions? And by practical, I mean described such that a named group of people will experience near-term benefits. I've only seen it explained in terms of ideological compliance or technical license compliance, which has always left me underwhelmed.
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge."
Every non-free image we have makes that goal more distant.
Perhaps I was unclear, but you didn't answer my question. You gave me an ideology, not a practical reason to do this. And personally, I think "freely share" is not strongly related to Richard Stallman's particular definition of freedom. Let me try again:
Would you please name a group or groups of people who are prevented from learning from Wikipedia because of the not-completely-free nature of some images?
Thanks,
William
William Pietri wrote:
Rich Holton wrote:
It's tough to beat no image as an incentive to find one. And it's easy to ignore a frame or a notice. How ugly and intrusive a frame or notice would you be willing to accept?
Yes, I agree that making the encyclopedia less useful is the most dramatic spur to making it more useful.
Must it be ugly and intrusive? If the notion is that people care about free images, I'd think a simple and reasonable notice would be enough. We could try that theory, anyhow, and see how it works.
The alternative theory seems to be that even the people who want free images believe that most people don't care, and so making things ugly is a way to force everybody else to conform to their standards, avoiding the hard work of persuasion, or the even harder work of actually taking the photos they want. That's not the theory, is it?
I may be going out on a limb here, but I've always thought our primary purpose here was to make an encyclopedia for people to use, and that free content is the mechanism by which we do that, not the main point of the project.
As I and others have stated elsewhere, the primary purpose is to create a *free encyclopedia*.
Ok. That's not inconsistent with what I said. I see a public encyclopedia as a goal, and Gnu-style freeness as the mechanism.
Is there some practical purpose to what I gather is a recent wave of image deletions? And by practical, I mean described such that a named group of people will experience near-term benefits. I've only seen it explained in terms of ideological compliance or technical license compliance, which has always left me underwhelmed.
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge."
Every non-free image we have makes that goal more distant.
Perhaps I was unclear, but you didn't answer my question. You gave me an ideology, not a practical reason to do this. And personally, I think "freely share" is not strongly related to Richard Stallman's particular definition of freedom. Let me try again:
Would you please name a group or groups of people who are prevented from learning from Wikipedia because of the not-completely-free nature of some images?
Thanks,
William
Your question could just as easily be "What group or groups of people are prevented from learning from Wikipedia when blatant copyright violations are included?" Many authors would not care, and can always issue a take-down notice if they do.
Of course, with "fair-use", if the author would prefer we not use it, we can safely ignore their preferences.
Yes, this is a bit silly, because there is an underlying assumption that we are really about more than just letting people learn from Wikipedia.
We are also here to encourage the use of free licenses in the process of building a free encyclopedia.
The Mission Statement of the Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement) states:
The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
When we allow people to use non-free images where a free option exists, we are "preventing" them from using Wikipedia in the way that the mission of the foundation explicitly states is a goal. We are not educating our editors in the use of free materials.
I am not educated in all the legal issues, but I understand that "fair use" images creates more legal issues than free licensed images, especially when you go to distributing to those who do not have access to the internet. Is distributing to non-internet connected users not also part of our goal?
-Rich Holton
Rich Holton wrote:
Your question could just as easily be "What group or groups of people are prevented from learning from Wikipedia when blatant copyright violations are included?" Many authors would not care, and can always issue a take-down notice if they do.
Again, you haven't answered my question. This time you responded with a straw man. I don't think any serious participant is proposing we accept blatant copyright violations. I'm sure not.
If you can't name the group of people currently unable to benefit from Wikipedia content because it contains non-GFDL images, could you please just say so?
We are also here to encourage the use of free licenses in the process of building a free encyclopedia.
I accept that you're here for that. I just don't think most people are, and from the limited amount I've seen so far, it seems like people with that agenda are trying to force other people to comply with their desires by making the encyclopedia worse.
Personally, I don't have any problem with the agenda of promoting GNU-style freedom. Wikipedia aside, I've contributed to GPL projects and will continue to do so. I'm a fan of and contributor to various free-culture efforts. Free licenses are great. But not so great that it's worth harming Wikipedia articles.
And now that I think about it, I'm not sure that this current approach is really doing much to encourage people to get excited about free licenses. The people who were very excited about them are pleased, I'm sure. But from the comments I've seen, it doesn't sound like the image deletions are making anybody say, "Wow, now I see why GNU-style freedom is so great!"
The Mission Statement of the Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement) states:
The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
When we allow people to use non-free images where a free option exists, we are "preventing" them from using Wikipedia in the way that the mission of the foundation explicitly states is a goal. We are not educating our editors in the use of free materials.
Again, this seems consistent with my view that the GFDL is a mechanism to achieve an end, not an end in itself. Even if promoting the GFDL license were a major goal, it would still be a goal, like the goal of collecting all of human knowledge. I'm not seeing the case for harming the primary goal (development and distribution of educational content) in pursuit of a temporary boost to another goal.
I am not educated in all the legal issues, but I understand that "fair use" images creates more legal issues than free licensed images, especially when you go to distributing to those who do not have access to the internet. Is distributing to non-internet connected users not also part of our goal?
Well, you're getting closer to naming some actual real-world harm. Can you name people who have not received Wikipedia content because somebody was unable to filter out the images tagged as "fair use" while making an offline distribution?
And yes, I understand the theoretical issue. I'm just saying that I've not heard of any real-world impact to balance against the real-world impact of making articles worse.
William
On 26/09/2007, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Again, this seems consistent with my view that the GFDL is a mechanism to achieve an end, not an end in itself.
Well, uh, yeah. All FSF licenses are.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 26/09/2007, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Again, this seems consistent with my view that the GFDL is a mechanism to achieve an end, not an end in itself.
Well, uh, yeah. All FSF licenses are.
Sorry; I was unclear about the distinction I'm trying to draw.
Some people use FSF licenses because they're a good way to get done something they were trying to get done anyhow. E.g., I think Linus Torvalds is in that category; he set out to make an operating system. For some people, GNU-style freedom is a primary goal, an end in itself. E.g., Richard Stallman.
I think most people involved in Wikipedia are of the former sort. We're here to make an encyclopedia, one that is of, by, and for the world. Doing it with GNU-style freedom is a way to get contributions and perhaps widen distribution, not a primary motivator. For most, anyhow.
Is that clearer?
Thanks,
William
Surely we are capable of having a version available that filters out all images that have a fair use tag rather than a GFDL or PD free tag--not a separate fork, but a separate display, and a similar filter for a download, if someone wishes to prepare a derivative. with fair use images.
And in any case people who want to reuse our content are supposed to be intelligent about it. For image copyright, our obligation is to provide a correct indication of the copyright status of each image, and sufficient clear information to guide them in using it. It is not our obligation to prevent them from violating local copyright regulations, any more than it is our object to prevent hem from violating local obscenity regulations.
I share the feeling that as much content as possible in the world in general ought to be "libre" in the full sense of the word. But this does not mean that we refuse to use other legal content in order to encourage libre. Rather, we ought to use all legal content in order to encourage the use of the existing exceptions to exclusive copyright that fair use provides in the US, so that people in general will realize the advantages of liberal fair use provisions where they do not exist as a first step.
It also builds a more complete encyclopedia. At enWP, we are not trying to accomplish all the goals of the Foundation in general--we are trying to build an english-language encyclopedia. Other parts of the foundation mission are accomplished in other ways.
On 9/26/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Rich Holton wrote:
Your question could just as easily be "What group or groups of people are prevented from learning from Wikipedia when blatant copyright violations are included?" Many authors would not care, and can always issue a take-down notice if they do.
Again, you haven't answered my question. This time you responded with a straw man. I don't think any serious participant is proposing we accept blatant copyright violations. I'm sure not.
If you can't name the group of people currently unable to benefit from Wikipedia content because it contains non-GFDL images, could you please just say so?
We are also here to encourage the use of free licenses in the process of building a free encyclopedia.
I accept that you're here for that. I just don't think most people are, and from the limited amount I've seen so far, it seems like people with that agenda are trying to force other people to comply with their desires by making the encyclopedia worse.
Personally, I don't have any problem with the agenda of promoting GNU-style freedom. Wikipedia aside, I've contributed to GPL projects and will continue to do so. I'm a fan of and contributor to various free-culture efforts. Free licenses are great. But not so great that it's worth harming Wikipedia articles.
And now that I think about it, I'm not sure that this current approach is really doing much to encourage people to get excited about free licenses. The people who were very excited about them are pleased, I'm sure. But from the comments I've seen, it doesn't sound like the image deletions are making anybody say, "Wow, now I see why GNU-style freedom is so great!"
The Mission Statement of the Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement) states:
The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
When we allow people to use non-free images where a free option exists, we are "preventing" them from using Wikipedia in the way that the mission of the foundation explicitly states is a goal. We are not educating our editors in the use of free materials.
Again, this seems consistent with my view that the GFDL is a mechanism to achieve an end, not an end in itself. Even if promoting the GFDL license were a major goal, it would still be a goal, like the goal of collecting all of human knowledge. I'm not seeing the case for harming the primary goal (development and distribution of educational content) in pursuit of a temporary boost to another goal.
I am not educated in all the legal issues, but I understand that "fair use" images creates more legal issues than free licensed images, especially when you go to distributing to those who do not have access to the internet. Is distributing to non-internet connected users not also part of our goal?
Well, you're getting closer to naming some actual real-world harm. Can you name people who have not received Wikipedia content because somebody was unable to filter out the images tagged as "fair use" while making an offline distribution?
And yes, I understand the theoretical issue. I'm just saying that I've not heard of any real-world impact to balance against the real-world impact of making articles worse.
William
-- William Pietri william@scissor.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri
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William Pietri wrote:
Rich Holton wrote:
Your question could just as easily be "What group or groups of people are prevented from learning from Wikipedia when blatant copyright violations are included?" Many authors would not care, and can always issue a take-down notice if they do.
Again, you haven't answered my question. This time you responded with a straw man. I don't think any serious participant is proposing we accept blatant copyright violations. I'm sure not.
If you can't name the group of people currently unable to benefit from Wikipedia content because it contains non-GFDL images, could you please just say so?
We are also here to encourage the use of free licenses in the process of building a free encyclopedia.
I accept that you're here for that. I just don't think most people are, and from the limited amount I've seen so far, it seems like people with that agenda are trying to force other people to comply with their desires by making the encyclopedia worse.
Your definition of worse. Not mine. Not the Foundation's.
Personally, I don't have any problem with the agenda of promoting GNU-style freedom. Wikipedia aside, I've contributed to GPL projects and will continue to do so. I'm a fan of and contributor to various free-culture efforts. Free licenses are great. But not so great that it's worth harming Wikipedia articles.
I don't see this as a matter of promoting GNU-style freedom, so much as promoting one particular instance of it: A free encyclopedia (or more broadly, free educational material).
And now that I think about it, I'm not sure that this current approach is really doing much to encourage people to get excited about free licenses. The people who were very excited about them are pleased, I'm sure. But from the comments I've seen, it doesn't sound like the image deletions are making anybody say, "Wow, now I see why GNU-style freedom is so great!"
So, because some people don't understand it, we should abandon it?
The Mission Statement of the Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement) states:
The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
When we allow people to use non-free images where a free option exists, we are "preventing" them from using Wikipedia in the way that the mission of the foundation explicitly states is a goal. We are not educating our editors in the use of free materials.
Again, this seems consistent with my view that the GFDL is a mechanism to achieve an end, not an end in itself. Even if promoting the GFDL license were a major goal, it would still be a goal, like the goal of collecting all of human knowledge. I'm not seeing the case for harming the primary goal (development and distribution of educational content) in pursuit of a temporary boost to another goal.
I am not educated in all the legal issues, but I understand that "fair use" images creates more legal issues than free licensed images, especially when you go to distributing to those who do not have access to the internet. Is distributing to non-internet connected users not also part of our goal?
Well, you're getting closer to naming some actual real-world harm. Can you name people who have not received Wikipedia content because somebody was unable to filter out the images tagged as "fair use" while making an offline distribution?
And yes, I understand the theoretical issue. I'm just saying that I've not heard of any real-world impact to balance against the real-world impact of making articles worse.
William
William,
*copied from the original context*
If you can't name the group of people currently unable to benefit from Wikipedia content because it contains non-GFDL images, could you please just say so?
Ok, I will answer your question. *I* cannot name a group of people who are currently unable to benefit from Wikipedia because it contains non-GFDL images. But then, I also cannot name a group of people who are currently unable to benefit from Wikipedia if it contained NO images, so I'm not certain that proves much.
There are many things that we *could* do that would not prevent people from benefiting from Wikipedia. But that does not mean that we should do them.
You question presumes that the most important factor is delivering encyclopedic content to people who want it. I disagree with that presumption. I, and others, believe that there are more important things than delivering encyclopedic content--namely the *development* and delivery of *free* encyclopedic content.
Let me ask you a question: How does including non-free images in Wikipedia help to accomplish the stated mission of the Wikimedia Foundation? Or are you effectively saying "screw the foundation"?
-Rich
Rich Holton wrote:
I accept that you're here for that. I just don't think most people are, and from the limited amount I've seen so far, it seems like people with that agenda are trying to force other people to comply with their desires by making the encyclopedia worse.
Your definition of worse. Not mine. Not the Foundation's.
Clearly, you believe that removing the photos in question makes the encyclopedia worse by a common definition. Otherwise you wouldn't use deletion as a prod to get people to add different photos.
I disagree that your definition of good and the Foundation are identical. Sorry.
*copied from the original context*
If you can't name the group of people currently unable to benefit from Wikipedia content because it contains non-GFDL images, could you please just say so?
Ok, I will answer your question. *I* cannot name a group of people who are currently unable to benefit from Wikipedia because it contains non-GFDL images. But then, I also cannot name a group of people who are currently unable to benefit from Wikipedia if it contained NO images, so I'm not certain that proves much.
What it proves to me is that this is then a religious question, not a practical one. If nobody is being hurt by leaving the images in, and readers are hurt by taking them out, then I'm seeing no practical point in deleting them rather than, leaving them alone or marking them visibly. We will get there eventually.
If Wikipedia contained no images, then the people who would benefit less are the current millions of readers. Maybe you don't use 'em, but I can guarantee that the vast majority of people will find them useful on at least some articles.
You question presumes that the most important factor is delivering encyclopedic content to people who want it. I disagree with that presumption. I, and others, believe that there are more important things than delivering encyclopedic content--namely the *development* and delivery of *free* encyclopedic content.
I'm saying that if adherence to some pretty technical definition of "free" means we make the encyclopedia less useful to readers, then something is wrong.
I'm not just presuming that delivering educational content is the primary goal. I'm saying so. I believe that the GFDL license is the means by which we achieve our goal. Promoting that license is at best a secondary goal.
Let me ask you a question: How does including non-free images in Wikipedia help to accomplish the stated mission of the Wikimedia Foundation? Or are you effectively saying "screw the foundation"?
Yes, and now that you mention it, that Wales guy is going to get a punch in the nose next time I see him, too.
No, Rich, I'm not saying that anybody should be screwed, and I ask you to ease up on the debate shenanigans.
To answer your question, look at the vision, which as you said is every human being sharing freely in the sum of all human knowledge. What somebody looks like is part of that human knowledge. If you delete usable pictures from Wikipedia, you are reducing the knowledge that we are sharing.
William
On 9/26/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Let me ask you a question: How does including non-free images in Wikipedia help to accomplish the stated mission of the Wikimedia Foundation? Or are you effectively saying "screw the foundation"?
Trivially answered: A picture is worth a thousand words (or more), and the liberal use of images in encyclopedia articles is commonly accepted to enhance the usability and learning content in any encyclopedia, which one must assume should include Wikipedia.
Denying us the ability to use non-free images where appropriate and ethical and legal is denying our readers the benefits of a better encyclopedia. Which is pretty much the point of being here in the first place.
Nobody here is against replacing fair-use images with free ones. I've added a fair number of images to WP since I joined, some fair number of which I created, and if there were pictures which needed taking and I could conveniently take, I would do so. There's an entire category of missing pictures I've put a few tens of hours negotiations into trying to be able to take (so far, with no luck).
But denying us the fair-use image category is unreasonable, from a content point of view. It's putting "free" before "encyclopedia" in an unacceptable manner to many of us.
On 9/26/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Your question could just as easily be "What group or groups of people are prevented from learning from Wikipedia when blatant copyright violations are included?" Many authors would not care, and can always issue a take-down notice if they do.
It could put downstream users of Wikipedia's supposedly "free" content in a legally sticky situation, particularly if they are profiting from said use.
I am not educated in all the legal issues, but I understand that "fair use" images creates more legal issues than free licensed images, especially when you go to distributing to those who do not have access to the internet. Is distributing to non-internet connected users not also part of our goal?
Yes, even the Chinese kids of popular cliche, but god help them if their 99c coloring books contain copyvios which were dumped/mirrored/whatever before being deleted from the article in question. —C.W.
On 25/09/2007, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
William Pietri wrote:
For example, could photos insufficiently pure be marked as such with a special frame or notice, rather than by outright deletion?
It's tough to beat no image as an incentive to find one. And it's easy to ignore a frame or a notice. How ugly and intrusive a frame or notice would you be willing to accept?
An icky coloured frame might be suitable. [[Image:Replace this image1.svg]] is plenty icky and intrusive, to the point where people remove it from articles for its ugliness despite its proven efficacy in securing us free images.
As I and others have stated elsewhere, the primary purpose is to create a *free encyclopedia*.
Yep. Gotta be both.
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." Every non-free image we have makes that goal more distant.
Particularly as images of living people are almost always RIDICULOUSLY replaceable. Apart from extreme cases like J.D. Salinger, there's pretty much no excuse for a non-free image on a living bio.
- d.
On 9/25/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Particularly as images of living people are almost always RIDICULOUSLY replaceable. Apart from extreme cases like J.D. Salinger, there's pretty much no excuse for a non-free image on a living bio.
In fact.. in this thread we've seen images so replaceable that we already had free images on commons.... But that didn't stop people from arguing that we were sacrificing the encyclopedia on the alter of freedom.
What do we have such an obsession with immediacy in the case of images? ... Other than a in few cases involving special users I don't recall any history of complaints that we were destroying the encyclopedia because we preferred the slow path of writing new freely licensed articles rather than just illicitly copying whatever we could get away with.
On 25/09/2007, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/25/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Particularly as images of living people are almost always RIDICULOUSLY replaceable. Apart from extreme cases like J.D. Salinger, there's pretty much no excuse for a non-free image on a living bio.
In fact.. in this thread we've seen images so replaceable that we already had free images on commons.... But that didn't stop people from arguing that we were sacrificing the encyclopedia on the alter of freedom.
What do we have such an obsession with immediacy in the case of images? ... Other than a in few cases involving special users I don't recall any history of complaints that we were destroying the encyclopedia because we preferred the slow path of writing new freely licensed articles rather than just illicitly copying whatever we could get away with.
Probably because there is a more obvious way to get more article. You write it. Photos have the potential to be harder. If you are in the wrong country you are likely to be relying on other people. In the case of the Skylon you would either need to be really lucky or know about some of the less well known areas of UK copyright law (actualy since the thing no longer exists we would have allowed a fair use image if it hadn't since been shown that free images likely exist).
On 25/09/2007, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
If the non-free image you uploaded were to remain on the article, it significantly reduces the likelihood that someone else (or you) will obtain a free image for the article. Really, how hard will it be for someone to get a free image of the Skylon tower?
Given that this particular Skylon tower was turned into ashtrays about 50 years ago, it may not be particularly easy. :-)
Of course, it's *easier* to just use an available non-free image. But
the easy route is not necessarily the best route.
Who knows?
I suspect that the use of tags on articles that employ such images would be better than outright deletion.
-Rich Holton
On 25/09/2007, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know, the image stuff is a total balls-up IMO. As an example I found an image of a Skylon tower on the internet. The image was *not* free, but I contacted the guy that owned copyright and he relicensed it, but to non commercial only. I had no choice, that was what he chose.
So I uploaded it on wikimedia.
An admin guy removed it on the grounds that it was not allowed to be sold commercially. The guy that did it also accused me of lying about having gone to the trouble of relicensing it; even when I had included the email permitting its use in the text when I uploaded it as well.
I have mixed feelings to say the least about deletions on the grounds of being non commercial, the article was left without any images at all, and there was and is no free replacement anywhere (in the end I uploaded a god-awful sketch I made). It would be much better just to strip out the non commercial images when appropriate.
Did anyone gain from the deletion? No; the wikipedia site itself lost an image, and we had a legitimate license to use it for non commercial reasons.
The term non commercial is legaly nightmareish
And the upload pages UI is a complete disaster, even when I'm uploading stuff that's completely legitimate half the time it gets put up for deletion on purely bureaucratic reasons; it's not at all obvious (or it wasn't I haven't uploaded recently) what the heck you were supposed to do?
All in all, I'm not surprised we don't have more pictures, the system is so very bad in loads of ways, unless the image is public domain, there's almost no chance in practice that you can use it.
The tower was built in 1951 and was a goverment project. As such PD photos almost certianly exist. Goverment drawings published prior to 1956 will be PD as will any goverment photo taken proir to 1956. So the problem becomes getting acess to such a photo.
Now the photo here is PD however the scan my not be
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/festival/list_details.asp?...
Generaly we counter the scan copyright issue by getting out friends in the US (where the scan is PD) to upload.
On 9/24/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
On 9/24/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Maybe not banning free image providers for the sake of The Bureaucracy (TM) would help.
On 24/09/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Which free image providers are banned for the sake of a bureaucracy?
I'm not dragging individuals into this. But surely you have noticed that if someone breaks some bureaucratic rule (most of which have nothing to do with legal issues) and someone else draws attention to it, it doesn't matter how much that person has contributed to the encyclopaedia (images, text, good articles, featured articles, whatever), and the person gets banned?
I haven't noticed. Most bans are often justified; we are not a democracy, we do not have due process (which is pretty much a legal concept specific to the US, as most other countries have different approaches - and besides, we are not a country). If the community consensus wants you gone, it does not matter whether you have done something wrong or broken any rules, you're tossed out.
We can debate whether this is desirable, but it's worked pretty well. If one admin does not like what's going on, then that admin unblocks (community bans only work if no admin is willing to lift the ban). Wheel warring and/or discussion may ensue, and after all the ridiculous crap that goes around comes around, we either ban or unban and get back to work on the encyclopaedia.
It's imperfect, it's definitely not what I like to see. But the point is, it works, and I've yet to see any ideas that would be more effective without causing so much controversy and chaos as to make the costs outweigh the benefits.
But this is off-topic. (Those replying to specific parts of this email can cut out the irrelevant bits, I suppose.)
Back on topic, I agree from a user's standpoint that the lack of pictures is pretty bad. But as David says, we should show we're aware of this and that we're working on getting freely reusable and redistributable pictures onto our articles. Kudos to those who came up with and worked on this ingenious solution (I believe geni was one of them?).
On another note, newbies replacing these with unfree uploads is a *major* problem. If there are free images on Commons, we should probably create a Commons page for the article's subject and use a commons template on the article to show that there is free content out there. Newbies will toss out the free image, but they rarely remove a Commons template at the same time.
Johnleemk
Wikipedia is for use, and there is a primary use and a secondary use. The primary use is for people linking to the site and reading the articles. The secondary use is for people who wish to reuse the content for other purposes.
WP is an encyclopedia, not a content distribution service, Commons, on the other hand, is a content distribution service. For a content distribution service for Foundation project operating under a variety of copyright regimes, it is reasonable to include only material which is free in all or almost all of them. For an encyclopedia, it is reasonable to include content which is legal at the country where the encyclopedia is published.
It is sometimes proposed that we fork enWP to have one with free images only, and one with more liberal rules. But a fork already exists, and it is between commons and enWP.
I know I am suggesting something against established policy. I suggest that it is time we changed the policy, for it is interfering with the production of a good contemporary English-language encyclopedia.
I know this will not be adopted now, but the alternative should be clearly stated: enWP should be open to all content legal in the US. (or alternative country if we find one with more liberal rules)
On 9/24/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/24/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
On 9/24/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Maybe not banning free image providers for the sake of The Bureaucracy (TM) would help.
On 24/09/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Which free image providers are banned for the sake of a bureaucracy?
I'm not dragging individuals into this. But surely you have noticed that if someone breaks some bureaucratic rule (most of which have nothing to do with legal issues) and someone else draws attention to it, it doesn't matter how much that person has contributed to the encyclopaedia (images, text, good articles, featured articles, whatever), and the person gets banned?
I haven't noticed. Most bans are often justified; we are not a democracy, we do not have due process (which is pretty much a legal concept specific to the US, as most other countries have different approaches - and besides, we are not a country). If the community consensus wants you gone, it does not matter whether you have done something wrong or broken any rules, you're tossed out.
We can debate whether this is desirable, but it's worked pretty well. If one admin does not like what's going on, then that admin unblocks (community bans only work if no admin is willing to lift the ban). Wheel warring and/or discussion may ensue, and after all the ridiculous crap that goes around comes around, we either ban or unban and get back to work on the encyclopaedia.
It's imperfect, it's definitely not what I like to see. But the point is, it works, and I've yet to see any ideas that would be more effective without causing so much controversy and chaos as to make the costs outweigh the benefits.
But this is off-topic. (Those replying to specific parts of this email can cut out the irrelevant bits, I suppose.)
Back on topic, I agree from a user's standpoint that the lack of pictures is pretty bad. But as David says, we should show we're aware of this and that we're working on getting freely reusable and redistributable pictures onto our articles. Kudos to those who came up with and worked on this ingenious solution (I believe geni was one of them?).
On another note, newbies replacing these with unfree uploads is a *major* problem. If there are free images on Commons, we should probably create a Commons page for the article's subject and use a commons template on the article to show that there is free content out there. Newbies will toss out the free image, but they rarely remove a Commons template at the same time.
Johnleemk _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
David Goodman wrote:
Wikipedia is for use, and there is a primary use and a secondary use. The primary use is for people linking to the site and reading the articles. The secondary use is for people who wish to reuse the content for other purposes.
WP is an encyclopedia, not a content distribution service, Commons, on the other hand, is a content distribution service. For a content distribution service for Foundation project operating under a variety of copyright regimes, it is reasonable to include only material which is free in all or almost all of them. For an encyclopedia, it is reasonable to include content which is legal at the country where the encyclopedia is published.
I've been involved in Wikipedia since fairly early on, and as far as I recall, it was *always* a major objective of Wikipedia to be reusable for other purposes. As soon as the decision was made to use the GFDL, that was a given.
I think that you are creating a false dichotomy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with content that is available for reuse. I know that many people don't like that, and it's certainly possible for policy to change over time. But that is and has always been the intent of Wikipedia.
-Rich Holton (English Wikipedia User:Rholton, first edit November 18, 2003)
Rich Holton wrote:
I've been involved in Wikipedia since fairly early on, and as far as I recall, it was *always* a major objective of Wikipedia to be reusable for other purposes. As soon as the decision was made to use the GFDL, that was a given.
Could you point me to more on that history?
Having spent a long-time soaking in the open-source software world, I assumed Wikipedia picked the GFDL for the same reason that devs often pick the GPL. Namely, that they want contributors to be assured that their work will stay free-as-in-speech.
If the goal were mainly to make Wikipedia reusable for other purposes, then wouldn't a BSD-ish license be more appropriate?
William
On 24/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
I'm not dragging individuals into this. But surely you have noticed that if someone breaks some bureaucratic rule (most of which have nothing to do with legal issues) and someone else draws attention to it, it doesn't matter how much that person has contributed to the encyclopaedia (images, text, good articles, featured articles, whatever), and the person gets banned?
You can end up with an entire talk page full of RFU and you will not be blocked. Heh even more serious stuff like NSD and NLD will generally not see you blocked. Those who inforce our copyright policies generally do not view blocks as a significant part of their arsenal.
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
You know, the number of Wikipedia articles with pictures in them is really plummeting. I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
Don't forget to add:
[[Image:Replace this image1.svg|right]] [[Image:Replace this image female.svg|right]] [[Image:Replace this image male.svg|right]]
Make the gap look more like a fillable thing.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
Don't forget to add: [[Image:Replace this image1.svg|right]] [[Image:Replace this image female.svg|right]] [[Image:Replace this image male.svg|right]] Make the gap look more like a fillable thing.
Aha. It was not so much "forgot", but rather, "didn't know to". Thanks for the tip.
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
You know, the number of Wikipedia articles with pictures in them is really plummeting.
No it isn't. Total number of media files on en is currently 758,221. It bounces around a fair bit but on average it seems to have been pretty much flatlineing
I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Matt_leblanc_1995_emmy_awards.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Matthew_Perry_by_David_Shankbone.jpg
I know the reason(s), of course, but viewing Wikipedia as a user (as I was this morning), this really significantly decreases its quality and usefulness. I'm afraid I know the answer, but would there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the- most-rampantly-free-images trends?
Yes. Is there a way that would widely be considered ethical? No.
On 9/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
You know, the number of Wikipedia articles with pictures in them is really plummeting.
No it isn't. Total number of media files on en is currently 758,221. It bounces around a fair bit but on average it seems to have been pretty much flatlineing
...and commons has two million images and a monthly a net-increase of around 150,000.
It would probably be more productive for Steve to narrow the scope of his complaint, since it seems unlikely that there is project-wide image supply problem.
On 24/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
I know the reason(s), of course, but viewing Wikipedia as a user (as I was this morning), this really significantly decreases its quality and usefulness. I'm afraid I know the answer, but would there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the- most-rampantly-free-images trends?
Yes. Is there a way that would widely be considered ethical? No.
People are at work on contacting entertainment publicists. "Relinquish control over just one good promo pic and you get a good pic on a top-10 website."
- d.
geni wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
You know, the number of Wikipedia articles with pictures in them is really plummeting.
No it isn't. Total number of media files on en is currently 758,221.
Thank you for a pedantic, literal answer which misses the point. I knew someone would.
I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Matt_leblanc_1995_emmy_awards.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Matthew_Perry_by_David_Shankbone.jpg
Splendid! Thank you. I will see about using those.
I'm afraid I know the answer, but would there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the-most-rampantly-free-images trends?
Yes. Is there a way that would widely be considered ethical? No.
Define "widely".
Considered ethical by a vocal few who have the stamina to impose their views everywhere? Certainly not. By a majority of Wikipedia editors? I don't know. By publicists who would love to have high-quality (if copyrighted) images disseminated widely? Certainly yes. By a majority of our readers? Certainly yes.
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Considered ethical by a vocal few who have the stamina to impose their views everywhere? Certainly not. By a majority of Wikipedia editors? I don't know. By publicists who would love to have high-quality (if copyrighted) images disseminated widely? Certainly yes. By a majority of our readers? Certainly yes.
So target the publicists. Show them an awful free-content shot, point out to them that releasing a good promo under this handy list of acceptable licenses means a better pic on a top-10 website and the number one reference site. See how long it takes them to work out that this is a good idea.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Considered ethical by a vocal few who have the stamina to impose their views everywhere? Certainly not. By a majority of Wikipedia editors? I don't know. By publicists who would love to have high-quality (if copyrighted) images disseminated widely? Certainly yes. By a majority of our readers? Certainly yes.
So target the publicists. Show them an awful free-content shot, point out to them that releasing a good promo under this handy list of acceptable licenses means a better pic on a top-10 website and the number one reference site.
Ayup. A fine idea.
The reason I don't do that is, well, because I'm too lazy. And while I could rouse myself if it was important, this particular task just seems so... unnecessary, both for me and those publicists.
I'm pretty sure most of them thought they'd given us (and all the rest of the media) high-quality press photos we could use already. Yeah, they were copyrighted, but with terms that said, "permission to use for publicity purposes hereby granted in advance." I'm pretty sure they didn't receive explicit permission requests from every little newspaper and magazine and concert promoter in the world that ever used one of those photos; I'm pretty sure they would have been annoyed and/or overwhelmed if they did.
But now we come along and say, "Oh, no, that's not good enough for *us*. We need you to choose new licensing terms from our handy list, here. What, you haven't heard of Creative Commons or the GFDL? We thought everyone had by now. But you should do it, it'll be better."
It's true, we're big enough now we'll increasingly get away with it. But (while I have no great love for some of those big entertainment companies) I can't help but think that they're going to have to spend thousands of dollars getting opinions from their high-priced lawyers before they can be sure it's better for *them*. Oh, well.
Anyway, I'll stop whining now. Most of the images I upload are PD-by-me, anyway. I don't care *that* much about pop-culture publicity photos, and while I think the encyclopedia is poorer without them, I've long known I don't have the stamina to lobby for them (and a few other seemingly reasonable fair-use cases) in the face of the indomitable few who are bound and determined to get rid of them.
Also, before I go, I'd like to apologize to readers of this list for the way half of this thread got sidetracked onto some bizarre tangent involving banned-editor craziness. I have no idea what that was all about, and it's certainly not what I was intending to bring up when I started the thread.
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
You know, the number of Wikipedia articles with pictures in them is really plummeting.
No it isn't. Total number of media files on en is currently 758,221.
Thank you for a pedantic, literal answer which misses the point. I knew someone would.
It suggests your point isn't well stated.
I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Matt_leblanc_1995_emmy_awards.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Matthew_Perry_by_David_Shankbone.jpg
Splendid! Thank you. I will see about using those.
On the other hand we don't have pic of David Schwimmer I'm not convinced our pic of Lisa Kudrow is free (in fact I'm pretty sure it isn't) and I had to dig our free pic of Courteney Cox out of the page history.
I'm afraid I know the answer, but would there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the-most-rampantly-free-images trends?
Yes. Is there a way that would widely be considered ethical? No.
Define "widely".
However many cultures consider murder to be unethical.
geni wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
I'm afraid I know the answer, but would there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the-most-rampantly-free-images trends?
Yes. Is there a way that would widely be considered ethical? No.
Define "widely".
However many cultures consider murder to be unethical.
Oh, *well* done! You wanna try dragging Naziism in next? :-)
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
I'm afraid I know the answer, but would there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the-most-rampantly-free-images trends?
Yes. Is there a way that would widely be considered ethical? No.
Define "widely".
However many cultures consider murder to be unethical.
Oh, *well* done! You wanna try dragging Naziism in next? :-)
Or you might want to consider I've used a rather convoluted version of the common English saying of "over my dead body" or in this case a number of people's dead bodies.
On 9/24/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
You know, the number of Wikipedia articles with pictures in them is really plummeting. I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
I know what you're saying, but really, is it that hard to find a picture of Matt LeBlanc? We're not hurting any readers by not having a photograph.
On 24/09/2007, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/24/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
You know, the number of Wikipedia articles with pictures in them is really plummeting. I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
I know what you're saying, but really, is it that hard to find a picture of Matt LeBlanc? We're not hurting any readers by not having a photograph.
We've got a photo of Matt LeBlanc
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Matt_leblanc_1995_emmy_awards.jpg
On 9/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I know what you're saying, but really, is it that hard to find a picture of Matt LeBlanc? We're not hurting any readers by not having a photograph.
We've got a photo of Matt LeBlanc
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Matt_leblanc_1995_emmy_awards.jpg
But Wikipedia doesn't display it... Images bit-rotting out of articles for various reasons (including replacement with non-free images) is a real problem.
Every month or two I sweep all my uploads to see which are still in use, every time I've done it I manage to find several that have fallen out due to vandalism or replacement with non-free images (or both: people often 'fix' unillustrated articles with non-free images).
Editorial judgement is one thing, but submitting photos seems like such a waste when they end up lost so easily.
Greg,
Dunno if this is a solution looking for a problem, but surely we could run a sweep once a (day/week/month) to see which free images have fallen out of use, see if they've been replaced by another free image or not, and perhaps revert or add the image back in if at all possible (I know it would need a fair bit of code).
Nick
On 24/09/2007, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I know what you're saying, but really, is it that hard to find a picture of Matt LeBlanc? We're not hurting any readers by not having a photograph.
We've got a photo of Matt LeBlanc
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Matt_leblanc_1995_emmy_awards.jpg
But Wikipedia doesn't display it... Images bit-rotting out of articles for various reasons (including replacement with non-free images) is a real problem.
Every month or two I sweep all my uploads to see which are still in use, every time I've done it I manage to find several that have fallen out due to vandalism or replacement with non-free images (or both: people often 'fix' unillustrated articles with non-free images).
Editorial judgement is one thing, but submitting photos seems like such a waste when they end up lost so easily.
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Stephen Bain wrote:
On 9/24/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
I know what you're saying, but really, is it that hard to find a picture of Matt LeBlanc? We're not hurting any readers by not having a photograph.
I know what you're saying, but I must respectfully disagree.
I'll give you the backstory, because I think it's illustrative. Bear in mind here that for the moment I'm speaking not as a Wikipedia editor, but as an ordinary user.
I needed the date of the first Rocky movie (which turns out to have been 1976). Not too long ago I would always have gone to imdb for this sort of question, but today, I automatically go to Wikipedia. It's faster, there are no ads to view, and, well, it's Wikipedia.
On the [[Rocky]] page, I was reminded of Talia Shire, and wondered what she was up to, so I clicked through. Huh. No picture. Too bad; she's pretty.
In the Trivia section at [[Talia Shire]], there's an interesting tidbit about some Friends dialogue. Not being much of a television watcher, I couldn't remember which character Joey was, so I clicked through. Huh. No picture. But surely there'll be one if I click one step further, to [[Matt LeBlanc]]? Huh! Nope. Dang.
(I'll save for another day a rant about how ugly and unnecessary that {{trivia}} template in the Trivia section at [[Talia Shire]] is.)
Yes, if I really cared, I could obviously find a picture of Matt LeBlanc. But I didn't, so I didn't try. In any case, it's all beside the point: Wikipedia failed me as a reader. That's too bad.
After I sent that first message, I looked a little further. Out of the six actors and actresses who starred in one of the world's most popular sitcoms, we've currently got pictures of: two. I found that remarkable. (And of those two, Lisa Kudrow's face is so badly lit she's almost unrecognizable, and Jennifer Aniston is pretty blurry and out of focus.)
I understand all the passionate arguments behind free images, really I do. But personally, I think we've cut off our nose to spite our face. And that's too bad.
(But I also didn't realize there were so many images sitting there on Commons just waiting to be integrated into Wikipedia. Thanks to those in this thread who've reminded me. Putting my editor's hat back on, I'll get to work.)
Stephen Bain wrote:
On 9/24/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
You know, the number of Wikipedia articles with pictures in them is really plummeting. I just went from [[Talia Shire]] to [[Joey Tribbiani]] to [[Matt LeBlanc]] and noticed that there were no pictures in any of them.
I know what you're saying, but really, is it that hard to find a picture of Matt LeBlanc? We're not hurting any readers by not having a photograph.
That's an intriguing argument. It's not hard to find almost any bit of information on Wikipedia, so by that reasoning we wouldn't be hurting anybody by shutting down entirely. All Wikipedia does is make existing information better available.
What somebody looks like is a pretty important piece of information to a lot of people. If you search for Matt LeBlanc on Google, of the top ten results, all of them display a picture, all but one prominently. One mentions pictures in the title. And Google even puts his picture on the search page.
And good thing they do, as I had no idea who "Matt LeBlanc" was until I saw those pictures.
So I'd say that from a user perspective, leaving the picture out is a pretty big deal.
William
On 9/24/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
I know the reason(s), of course, but viewing Wikipedia as a user (as I was this morning), this really significantly decreases its quality and usefulness. I'm afraid I know the answer, but would there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the- most-rampantly-free-images trends?
Yes. We should repeal the prohibition against "with permission only" and "non-commercial use only" images.
On 9/24/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
[[Image:Replace this image1.svg|right]] [[Image:Replace this image female.svg|right]] [[Image:Replace this image male.svg|right]]
Make the gap look more like a fillable thing.
Look through the links for those image description pages. That's not even all of them. How many of our biographies don't have images? How many of those are directly attributable to our licensing policies?
This policy is not benefiting our readers, it's not benefiting our users, and it's not benefiting our downstream users. It degrades the quality, coverage, and usefulness of our encyclopedia. A minority of ideologues are forcing their personal beliefs on the rest of the community without consensus or popular support.
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia; not a free image repository.
The criteria for inclusion of media files in articles should be based not on prohibiting certain "non-free" licenses, but on *preferring* certain licenses over others.
We should produce a list of licenses in order of preference, with more free licenses preferred over less free ones. Then, media should be used if:
1. It improves the quality or usefulness of the project to a typical reader 2. It is legal for us to reproduce on our site 3. There are no other media files on the servers with preferable licensing terms that fulfill the same purpose
If you don't like the non-free images, go right ahead and find or take more free ones to replace them. As soon as you've uploaded them to the servers, the less free versions will be deprecated and deleted. But in the meantime, we should use whatever we legally can.
On 24/09/2007, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/24/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
I know the reason(s), of course, but viewing Wikipedia as a user (as I was this morning), this really significantly decreases its quality and usefulness. I'm afraid I know the answer, but would there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the- most-rampantly-free-images trends?
Yes. We should repeal the prohibition against "with permission only" and "non-commercial use only" images.
Both of those have legal issues within wikimedia never mind re users.
On 9/24/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
[[Image:Replace this image1.svg|right]] [[Image:Replace this image female.svg|right]] [[Image:Replace this image male.svg|right]]
Make the gap look more like a fillable thing.
Look through the links for those image description pages. That's not even all of them. How many of our biographies don't have images? How many of those are directly attributable to our licensing policies?
Hard to say. Raw deletion numbers would be a few 100K but we have no idea how many extra free images have turned up since.
This policy is not benefiting our readers,
It tends to produce novel content. Tends to produce bigger images. Compare
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Edna_Parker.JPG
With the average stolen AP image.
it's not benefiting our users, and it's not benefiting our downstream users.
That various produces of static CD versions would beg to differ,
It degrades the quality, coverage, and usefulness of our encyclopedia.
Given that conventional encyclopedia tended not to be too pic heavy I'm not so worried.
A minority of ideologues are forcing their personal beliefs on the rest of the community without consensus or popular support.
"Personal beliefs" not so much the positions of those that deal with copyright are complex and tend to disagree with one another.. Wikipedia and board policy? Yes.
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia; not a free image repository.
Free encyclopedia means free images.
The criteria for inclusion of media files in articles should be based not on prohibiting certain "non-free" licenses, but on *preferring* certain licenses over others.
That is already the case as far is allowed within US law.
We should produce a list of licenses in order of preference, with more free licenses preferred over less free ones. Then, media should be used if:
- It improves the quality or usefulness of the project to a typical reader
Look the "Reasonable person" situation is bad enough.
- It is legal for us to reproduce on our site
Oh dear. Not good not good at all. Not your fault of course we can't expect people to have a working knowledge of over 100 legal and copyright systems but generally policy proposals that would reduce us to to attributed PD due to age content are not a good idea.
Most of our policies are setup to sidestep as much as possible that very question.
- There are no other media files on the servers with preferable
licensing terms that fulfill the same purpose
If you don't like the non-free images, go right ahead and find or take more free ones to replace them. As soon as you've uploaded them to the servers, the less free versions will be deprecated and deleted. But in the meantime, we should use whatever we legally can.
Tried that. Result is a bunch of non free media of questionable legality.
On 24/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Free encyclopedia means free images.
What we appear to have is an argument between two camps as to whether we are producing a FREE encyclopaedia, or a free ENCYCLOPAEDIA.
On 9/24/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Free encyclopedia means free images.
What we appear to have is an argument between two camps as to whether we are producing a FREE encyclopaedia, or a free ENCYCLOPAEDIA.
I prefer the FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA approach :)
On 24/09/2007, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
On 9/24/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Free encyclopedia means free images.
What we appear to have is an argument between two camps as to whether we are producing a FREE encyclopaedia, or a free ENCYCLOPAEDIA.
I prefer the FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA approach :)
The whole point, just in case the smiley indicates that it went over your head, is that we can't actually give equal priority to both; we need choose either eliminating free content or producing the best encyclopaedia we can.
On 24/09/2007, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/09/2007, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
On 9/24/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Free encyclopedia means free images.
What we appear to have is an argument between two camps as to whether we are producing a FREE encyclopaedia, or a free ENCYCLOPAEDIA.
I prefer the FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA approach :)
The whole point, just in case the smiley indicates that it went over your head, is that we can't actually give equal priority to both; we need choose either eliminating free content or producing the best
Erm, "non-free content". *blush*
On 9/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Yes. We should repeal the prohibition against "with permission only" and "non-commercial use only" images.
Both of those have legal issues within wikimedia never mind re users.
No they don't.
Hard to say. Raw deletion numbers would be a few 100K but we have no idea how many extra free images have turned up since.
It tends to produce novel content.
So do you or do you not have actual evidence? I want to see the number of non-free images being replaced with free ones vs the number of non-free images being deleted and never replaced.
This restriction doesn't produce any more novel content than would have been produced without it.
(Proof by assertion is great, isn't it?)
If you want to promote the creation of free content or the finding of free images, go right ahead. I'll gladly help. Just stop deleting the non-free content in the meantime.
Tends to produce bigger images. Compare
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Edna_Parker.JPG
With the average stolen AP image.
One down, a few 100K to go?
Given that conventional encyclopedia tended not to be too pic heavy I'm not so worried.
There's a great attitude. The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica didn't have an article on Linux, so why should we?
it's not benefiting our users, and it's not benefiting our downstream users.
That various produces of static CD versions would beg to differ,
Please provide concrete evidence of an actual problem. Not just "it might theoretically cause problems for some downstream users". Lots of things might cause problems for downstream users. Good thing we don't cripple the project for their benefit.
That is already the case as far is allowed within US law.
Our current rules are much more strict than US law, since fair use is not a license; it's a shaky, undefined legal defense. Relying entirely on fair use without even asking permission is very dangerous from a legal standpoint.
It would be infinitely safer and more rational to ask copyright holders for permission to use their images, like every other normal publication. If we're lucky (or persuasive), they might even agree to freely license them.
Most of our policies are setup to sidestep as much as possible that very question.
Why?
On 9/24/07, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
Just thinking about it, how long does it take to track down a photo of a celebrity on Flickr and ask the photographer for him to relicence one or two images under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA licences on Flickr ?
If said photographer is willing to release that image for redistribution, modification, and resale by anyone...
Small "if".
On 9/24/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
What we appear to have is an argument between two camps as to whether we are producing a FREE encyclopaedia, or a free ENCYCLOPAEDIA.
Is someone advocating for a non-free encyclopedia?
Using non-free images in our articles does not make the encyclopedia any less free. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, not a free image repository.
On 9/24/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
Erm, "non-free content". *blush*
Which includes images, sound clips, videos, and text excerpts and quotations. Images are just the most common type.
On 13/10/2007, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Yes. We should repeal the prohibition against "with permission only" and "non-commercial use only" images.
Both of those have legal issues within wikimedia never mind re users.
No they don't.
Define precisely non-commercial does with permission allow for resizing or moving to projects other than the one it was uploaded onto.
Hard to say. Raw deletion numbers would be a few 100K but we have no idea how many extra free images have turned up since.
It tends to produce novel content.
So do you or do you not have actual evidence? I want to see the number of non-free images being replaced with free ones vs the number of non-free images being deleted and never replaced.
You are free to compile them.
This restriction doesn't produce any more novel content than would have been produced without it.
(Proof by assertion is great, isn't it?)
My assertions are based on my experience from spending large amounts of time dealing with en's images.
Still random example see [[Henry Allingham]]
Note free image does not appear until after non free has been vaporised
If you want to promote the creation of free content or the finding of free images, go right ahead. I'll gladly help. Just stop deleting the non-free content in the meantime.
Find enough free content and it will cease to be an issue.
Tends to produce bigger images. Compare
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Edna_Parker.JPG
With the average stolen AP image.
One down, a few 100K to go?
Eh I'm young I can wait.
Given that conventional encyclopedia tended not to be too pic heavy I'm not so worried.
There's a great attitude. The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica didn't have an article on Linux, so why should we?
I was considering the context of more modern works.
it's not benefiting our users, and it's not benefiting our downstream users.
That various produces of static CD versions would beg to differ,
Please provide concrete evidence of an actual problem. Not just "it might theoretically cause problems for some downstream users". Lots of things might cause problems for downstream users. Good thing we don't cripple the project for their benefit.
SOS children
That is already the case as far is allowed within US law.
Our current rules are much more strict than US law, since fair use is not a license; it's a shaky, undefined legal defense. Relying entirely on fair use without even asking permission is very dangerous from a legal standpoint.
Asking permission has no impact on fair use.
It would be infinitely safer and more rational to ask copyright holders for permission to use their images, like every other normal publication. If we're lucky (or persuasive), they might even agree to freely license them.
Not if they can get away with less free options.
Most of our policies are setup to sidestep as much as possible that very question.
Why?
Because if I were to say that per Rogers v. Koons your fair use case is probably invalid: a) rather a lot of people won't know what I'm talking about b)Someone will claim I'm illegally giving legal advice
There are far more effective ways of keeping fair use under control.
On 9/24/07, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
Just thinking about it, how long does it take to track down a photo of a celebrity on Flickr and ask the photographer for him to relicence one or two images under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA licences on Flickr ?
If said photographer is willing to release that image for redistribution, modification, and resale by anyone...
Small "if".
For a fair number yes.
On 9/24/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
What we appear to have is an argument between two camps as to whether we are producing a FREE encyclopaedia, or a free ENCYCLOPAEDIA.
Is someone advocating for a non-free encyclopedia?
Using non-free images in our articles does not make the encyclopedia any less free. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, not a free image repository.
Are you now trying to claim that images are not part of the encyclopedia?
On 9/24/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
I prefer the FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA approach :)
The whole point, just in case the smiley indicates that it went over your head, is that we can't actually give equal priority to both; we need choose either eliminating non-free content or producing the best encyclopaedia we can.
No, I don't use smilies to mean I'm confused. ;)
I am very familiar with your argument, but reject it. We can give equal priority to both. Things we do should support a "free encyclopedia". Both. If there is something we are thinking about doing that fails either of those, for example becoming a free travel website or becoming a non-free encyclopedia we should reject it. A red ball is both a ball, and red. There is no choosing.
We don't need to choose between our free-content ideology and creating the best encyclopedia we can, rather we should create the best free encyclopedia that we can.
On 24/09/2007, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
We don't need to choose between our free-content ideology and creating the best encyclopedia we can, rather we should create the best free encyclopedia that we can.
But this is necessarily a compromise between the most free and the best enyclopaedia.
On 9/24/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
I am very familiar with your argument, but reject it. We can give equal priority to both. Things we do should support a "free encyclopedia". Both. If there is something we are thinking about doing that fails either of those, for example becoming a free travel website or becoming a non-free encyclopedia we should reject it. A red ball is both a ball, and red. There is no choosing.
Thank you.
-Kat
On 24/09/2007, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/24/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
I am very familiar with your argument, but reject it. We can give equal priority to both. Things we do should support a "free encyclopedia". Both. If there is something we are thinking about doing that fails either of those, for example becoming a free travel website or becoming a non-free encyclopedia we should reject it. A red ball is both a ball, and red. There is no choosing.
Thank you.
Free over encyclopaedia, then.
James Farrar wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/24/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
I am very familiar with your argument, but reject it. We can give equal priority to both. Things we do should support a "free encyclopedia". Both. If there is something we are thinking about doing that fails either of those, for example becoming a free travel website or becoming a non-free encyclopedia we should reject it. A red ball is both a ball, and red. There is no choosing.
Thank you.
Free over encyclopaedia, then.
How about encyclopedia over free, but with the less-free stuff marked in such a way that it's easy for a downstream user to choose to strip the less-free stuff out in an automated manner? That way you _can_ have both cake and the eating thereof.
On 25/09/2007, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
How about encyclopedia over free, but with the less-free stuff marked in such a way that it's easy for a downstream user to choose to strip the less-free stuff out in an automated manner? That way you _can_ have both cake and the eating thereof.
That would describe the current situation.
geni wrote:
On 25/09/2007, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
How about encyclopedia over free, but with the less-free stuff marked in such a way that it's easy for a downstream user to choose to strip the less-free stuff out in an automated manner? That way you _can_ have both cake and the eating thereof.
That would describe the current situation.
Exactly.
Before we massively change things one way or the other, we should consider that the way things work is already pretty darn good. It's a compromise that's been hammered out over years of time and the efforts of thousands of participants pushing in various different ways.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Before we massively change things one way or the other, we should consider that the way things work is already pretty darn good. It's a compromise that's been hammered out over years of time and the efforts of thousands of participants pushing in various different ways.
Point well taken.
What's troubling is that lots and lots of not egregiously infringing nonfree images, uploaded and integrated over years of time by thousands of participants, and hitherto accepted under those hammered-out compromises, seem to have disappeared over the past couple of months (due to the efforts of just a few).
geni wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
The criteria for inclusion of media files in articles should be based not on prohibiting certain "non-free" licenses, but on *preferring* certain licenses over others.
That is already the case as far is allowed within US law.
Based on one reading of our various policies and guidelines, maybe. But in practice, certainly not.
It is widely acknowledged that our policy on fair use is considerably stricter than required by U.S. law. And we have several editors whose self-proclaimed goal is to eradicate every last fair-use image, no matter what. There seem to be two underlying motives.
One is that we have to be nice to the downstream feeds; we have to make it maximally easy for them to use our content under their own perhaps even-stricter policies. Why it's our job to help them do this is never adequately explained. It's also never explained why we have to keep doing this in spite of our comprehensively fine-grained image licensing tags, which ought to allow any given downstream to filter out anything and everything they don't like. But that motive *does* keep getting mentioned, despite the existence of the tags. But it probably doesn't even matter in the end, given the existence of the second motive.
I'll be roundly condemned for saying this, but I believe that the second and stronger motive for being so rampantly anti-fair-use, for deleting all fair-use images now (instead of leaving them around until truly-free alternatives can be found), is that it helps push a POV agenda that the world's copyright laws and attitudes about copyright are wrong and need to be changed. Wikipedia is now influential enough, and its GFDL ideals are already consonant enough with those which the anti-copyright brigade wants to pursue, that it's an extremely attractive venue for this agenda. In fact, it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the anti-copyright brigade has effectively hijacked Wikipedia for this purpose. Which is pretty interesting, because we're normally extremely resistant to that kind of abuse. When someone tries to use Wikipedia to push the agenda that, say, Turkey did or didn't commit genocide against the Armenians, we swiftly and firmly show them the exit. But if you declare that fair-use images have to go, in defiance of U.S. law, common sense, and the needs of the readers, you're pretty widely hailed as a hero.
But I really shouldn't have said this, because besides the fact that I'll be roundly condemned for it, it makes me sound like one of those paranoid conspiracy theorists. So here's an olive branch: to all the tireless free-image defenders who I've unfairly labeled as being part of an "anti-copyright brigade", you can have the last word here: follow up to say how badly I've misinterpreted and wronged you, and I'll spare everyone any further response from me on this subject.
On 25/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
The criteria for inclusion of media files in articles should be based not on prohibiting certain "non-free" licenses, but on *preferring* certain licenses over others.
That is already the case as far is allowed within US law.
Based on one reading of our various policies and guidelines, maybe. But in practice, certainly not.
It is widely acknowledged that our policy on fair use is considerably stricter than required by U.S. law.
That may not actually be true though. Album cover use in particular may be an issue. However CDCovers.cc didn't take the issue to court so I don't think there is any case law.
And we have several editors whose self-proclaimed goal is to eradicate every last fair-use image, no matter what. There seem to be two underlying motives.
And we have a rather larger number who disagree with them. Assuming no significant developments in case law I doubt we will see any further changes in our day to day fair use situation.
One is that we have to be nice to the downstream feeds; we have to make it maximally easy for them to use our content under their own perhaps even-stricter policies. Why it's our job to help them do this is never adequately explained. It's also never explained why we have to keep doing this in spite of our comprehensively fine-grained image licensing tags, which ought to allow any given downstream to filter out anything and everything they don't like. But that motive *does* keep getting mentioned, despite the existence of the tags. But it probably doesn't even matter in the end, given the existence of the second motive.
The more use able an encyclopedia is the better it is.
I'll be roundly condemned for saying this, but I believe that the second and stronger motive for being so rampantly anti-fair-use, for deleting all fair-use images now (instead of leaving them around until truly-free alternatives can be found), is that it helps push a POV agenda that the world's copyright laws and attitudes about copyright are wrong and need to be changed.
Nope. Most of the world doesn't have fair use. If you wanted a better conspiracy theory you might wish to consider the match between fair dealing and our fair use polices.
On a local level we have found we are more likely to get free media where non free media is forbidden.
That isn't to say we don't have a copyright agenda we do. We need to make sure that free licenses remain legal and that the public domain is not reduced any further in the US.
Wikipedia is now influential enough, and its GFDL ideals are already consonant enough with those which the anti-copyright brigade wants to pursue, that it's an extremely attractive venue for this agenda.
We accept copyright as is. The GFDL doesn't really work otherwise.
In fact, it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the anti-copyright brigade has effectively hijacked Wikipedia for this purpose.
No we are not anti-copyright. By not accepting widespread fair use we say to traditional copyright holders "okey here's your ball we are going to play our game". We accept traditional copyright and in effect sidestep it.
On 9/25/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/09/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
The criteria for inclusion of media files in articles should be based not on prohibiting certain "non-free" licenses, but on *preferring* certain licenses over others.
That is already the case as far is allowed within US law.
Based on one reading of our various policies and guidelines, maybe. But in practice, certainly not.
It is widely acknowledged that our policy on fair use is considerably stricter than required by U.S. law.
That may not actually be true though. Album cover use in particular may be an issue. However CDCovers.cc didn't take the issue to court so I don't think there is any case law.
In what way are they an issue?
Have we had any complaints?
Honestly interested..
And we have several editors whose self-proclaimed goal is to eradicate every last fair-use image, no matter what. There seem to be two underlying motives.
And we have a rather larger number who disagree with them. Assuming no significant developments in case law I doubt we will see any further changes in our day to day fair use situation.
However, the recent practise is to replace AGF with bots because they cant assume, judging good in black and white, and dont have time for the messy business of intentions. The balance has shifted without consensus due to the efficiency of the bots, and the backlogs they cause. Admins clearing those backlogs on Wikipedia rarely spare the time for the easy cases such as logos, PD images that can be detected with the human eye and brain and user contributed images that are almost certainly intended to be donated to Wikipedia under any license, except that the new user has no idea how to do that. Whenever I work on clearing one of these categories (orfud, nld, etc), within an hour I start running into boilerplate deletions by another admin. When this happens, the entire category will usually be deleted within 5-10 minutes. I am not annoyed so much at the bots, or the admins that are acting as automations, as I can see it is an out of control problem that we have yet to adjust to, but this trendy new approach is wasting time and disk space, and we are biting new contributors with every template.
One is that we have to be nice to the downstream feeds; we have to make it maximally easy for them to use our content under their own perhaps even-stricter policies. Why it's our job to help them do this is never adequately explained. It's also never explained why we have to keep doing this in spite of our comprehensively fine-grained image licensing tags, which ought to allow any given downstream to filter out anything and everything they don't like. But that motive *does* keep getting mentioned, despite the existence of the tags. But it probably doesn't even matter in the end, given the existence of the second motive.
The more use able an encyclopedia is the better it is.
In context of the email you responded to, this is an argument for gracefully degrading when images cant be used. We can, and should, have the 1000 words as well as the image. Free images are of no use to the blind.
I'll be roundly condemned for saying this, but I believe that the second and stronger motive for being so rampantly anti-fair-use, for deleting all fair-use images now (instead of leaving them around until truly-free alternatives can be found), is that it helps push a POV agenda that the world's copyright laws and attitudes about copyright are wrong and need to be changed.
Nope. Most of the world doesn't have fair use. If you wanted a better conspiracy theory you might wish to consider the match between fair dealing and our fair use polices.
Does this mean then that you want the English Wikipedia to have our non-free media limited to the intersection of all non-free laws across the globe? Has an analysis been done on what provisions for non-free will be left if that was adopted ? I expect that this would exclude all satire, and probably many other types of reuse allow for by common law. A more workable approach would be to limit non-free to the provisions in the country of origin where also permissible in the host country USA. A lot of our fair-use media originates from the USA, so this would mean that fair-_use_ is still acceptable in those cases.
Again, I think that dragons be there, and we are on safer ground by finding ways to include most image where USA fair-use applies, and ensure that the encyclopedia gracefully degrades where an image may not be used. This would of course be coupled with measures to tag images that are replaceable and try to find replacements as soon as possible.
On a local level we have found we are more likely to get free media where non free media is forbidden.
{{fact}}
Forbidding non-free media has a cost of churning through non-free images, and even the effort to acquire free media where non-free would be sufficient, in the short term, is time that could have been spent creating free media where there is no non-free equivalent, or uploading historically valuable works to Wikisource, or writing more free content on Wiktionary, Wikipedia and Wikibooks. As you know, putting works on Wikisource also usually involves adding free media to the commons, and expanding Wikipedia increases the visibility of Wikimedia, in turn promoting the addition of free media by new contributors. We need to be careful not to put free media ahead of the other free content.
That isn't to say we don't have a copyright agenda we do. We need to make sure that free licenses remain legal and that the public domain is not reduced any further in the US.
Wikipedia is now influential enough, and its GFDL ideals are already consonant enough with those which the anti-copyright brigade wants to pursue, that it's an extremely attractive venue for this agenda.
We accept copyright as is. The GFDL doesn't really work otherwise.
Right, nobody who is well informed in this debate is against copyright; we all know that it underpins our daily contributions. Most of us have been around long enough to intimately understand the basis, motivations and long term effects of different copyleft strategies. The debate here is similar to the nature of the "open source" vs "free software" debate, only in this case it is "fair use/dealing is a human right" vs "free content". We are all on the same side, but have differences on the priorities and how we should act in the short term in order to promote the same long term goals.
For my part, it is the current practices for removing fair-use that concern me, as I am happy with the policy of limiting replaceable fair-use. I think upload limitations may even be necessary to keep fair-use manageable, perhaps using the upcoming flagged revisions improvements to build better heuristics into MediaWiki to determine when a user should be prevented from uploading more images.
Another solution is to put more eyes onto the problem sooner by enhancing the upload function so that, on enwiki, it is an action associated with articles. All new images could initially be placed onto a gallery tab of the associated article, and these uploads would then appear on the Watchlist of people who potentially care about the image. This would hopefully ensure that images are quickly investigated, cleaned up, properly tagged and put to good use, or pushed into the deletion queue because the image itself isnt desirable. A natural extension of this would be to limit the image to that one article until it can be verified as free content, or a fair-use rationale's for another article has been assessed & approved.
-- John
On 9/25/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
However, the recent practise is to replace AGF with bots because they cant assume, judging good in black and white, and dont have time for the messy business of intentions. The balance has shifted without consensus due to the efficiency of the bots, and the backlogs they cause. Admins clearing those backlogs on Wikipedia rarely spare the time for the easy cases such as logos, PD images that can be detected with the human eye and brain and user contributed images that are almost certainly intended to be donated to Wikipedia under any license, except that the new user has no idea how to do that.>
We always warned people: "hey , don't abuse with fair use!", but they didnt listen, they kept inserting nonfree media as much as possible, to decorate every single article, ven if it wasnt' really necessary, we told "use nonfree media only when you need to", but they didn't listen, they use it whenever they wanted it, necesary or not, why bother looking for a free replacement? instant gratification is easier
So, where did that go? Good cases for using nonfreemedia are now the exception instead of the rule. Now, instead of just looking for the few misuses and remove them, we're swamped, and now it's easier to remove and restore the few exceptions
Good cases are now the exception, so let's treat them like exceptions
On 25/09/2007, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
In what way are they an issue?
1)there appears to be a market for low res album covers 2)the shear number of them we use 3)the lack of commentry on the cover art in articles.
Things like [[Abbey Road (album)]] are not a problem but [[Endless_Love_soundtracks]] is (ignoreing the other problems with that article).
Have we had any complaints?
Honestly interested..
I don't belive so. However sites with simular content have had issues in the past:
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/3608.cfm
However, the recent practise is to replace AGF with bots because they cant assume, judging good in black and white, and dont have time for the messy business of intentions. The balance has shifted without consensus due to the efficiency of the bots, and the backlogs they cause. Admins clearing those backlogs on Wikipedia rarely spare the time for the easy cases such as logos, PD images that can be detected with the human eye and brain
PD images should not be turning up in the fair use pile.
and user contributed images that are almost certainly intended to be donated to Wikipedia under any license, except that the new user has no idea how to do that.
The legal situation with regards to these is so messy such images are best deleted.
The more use able an encyclopedia is the better it is.
In context of the email you responded to, this is an argument for gracefully degrading when images cant be used. We can, and should, have the 1000 words as well as the image. Free images are of no use to the blind.
That is not a copyright issue.
I'll be roundly condemned for saying this, but I believe that the second and stronger motive for being so rampantly anti-fair-use, for deleting all fair-use images now (instead of leaving them around until truly-free alternatives can be found), is that it helps push a POV agenda that the world's copyright laws and attitudes about copyright are wrong and need to be changed.
Nope. Most of the world doesn't have fair use. If you wanted a better conspiracy theory you might wish to consider the match between fair dealing and our fair use polices.
Does this mean then that you want the English Wikipedia to have our non-free media limited to the intersection of all non-free laws across the globe?
No
Has an analysis been done on what provisions for non-free will be left if that was adopted ?
No because no one has suggested it.
I expect that this would exclude all satire, and probably many other types of reuse allow for by common law. A more workable approach would be to limit non-free to the provisions in the country of origin where also permissible in the host country USA. A lot of our fair-use media originates from the USA, so this would mean that fair-_use_ is still acceptable in those cases.
I really really don't feel like trying to trace all unfree images to country of origin and then haveing to learn any more elements of french law than I've already needed to.
Again, I think that dragons be there, and we are on safer ground by finding ways to include most image where USA fair-use applies, and ensure that the encyclopedia gracefully degrades where an image may not be used.
There are over 100 legal systems on this planet. Have fun working that one out. While most of the former british empire has fair dealing based systems there are the other european empires to consider as well as all the local modifications.
This would of course be coupled with measures to tag images that are replaceable and try to find replacements as soon as possible.
Been suggested from time to time.
On a local level we have found we are more likely to get free media where non free media is forbidden.
{{fact}}
See our living people bios. Used to be almost every pic of non US gov person was non free. Now this is not the case and images numbers in that area are riseing again.
Forbidding non-free media has a cost of churning through non-free images,
Fairly low once people get that we are serious about this free media thing.
and even the effort to acquire free media where non-free would be sufficient, in the short term,
What you accept in the sort term you will accept image copyright wise in the long term and before long people will be argueing that they have some right to it.
is time that could have been spent creating free media where there is no non-free equivalent,
Generaly the people who do that are not the same people.
or uploading historically valuable works to Wikisource, or writing more free content on Wiktionary, Wikipedia and Wikibooks. As you know, putting works on Wikisource also usually involves adding free media to the commons, and expanding Wikipedia increases the visibility of Wikimedia, in turn promoting the addition of free media by new contributors.
No. You get free media from new contributers by sending a clear signal. Allowing unfree media does not help with that.
We need to be careful not to put free media ahead of the other free content.
We put it considerable behind.
We accept copyright as is. The GFDL doesn't really work otherwise.
Right, nobody who is well informed in this debate is against copyright; we all know that it underpins our daily contributions. Most of us have been around long enough to intimately understand the basis, motivations and long term effects of different copyleft strategies. The debate here is similar to the nature of the "open source" vs "free software" debate, only in this case it is "fair use/dealing is a human right" vs "free content".
That would suggest that I accept that "human rights" have some kind of real existance beyond people's power to enforce them. I do not.
We are all on the same side, but have differences on the priorities and how we should act in the short term in order to promote the same long term goals.
For my part, it is the current practices for removing fair-use that concern me, as I am happy with the policy of limiting replaceable fair-use. I think upload limitations may even be necessary to keep fair-use manageable, perhaps using the upcoming flagged revisions improvements to build better heuristics into MediaWiki to determine when a user should be prevented from uploading more images.
We do not have the ability to only block people from uploading.
Another solution is to put more eyes onto the problem sooner by enhancing the upload function so that, on enwiki, it is an action associated with articles. All new images could initially be placed onto a gallery tab of the associated article, and these uploads would then appear on the Watchlist of people who potentially care about the image. This would hopefully ensure that images are quickly investigated, cleaned up, properly tagged and put to good use, or pushed into the deletion queue because the image itself isnt desirable.
Generaly experence suggests that copyright is best delt with by people who don't otherwise generaly interact with the article. See wikiproject clasical music's attempt at a copyright policy or the issues that complicated what was copyright wise a fairly straightforward case with regards to [[:Image:AntiWarRallyFeb162003.jpg]]
A natural extension of this would be to limit the image to that one article until it can be verified as free content, or a fair-use rationale's for another article has been assessed & approved.
So people upload it twice under different names.
On 9/25/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
That would suggest that I accept that "human rights" have some kind of real existance beyond people's power to enforce them. I do not.
Hope this isn't too off-topic here, but do you really mean this about human rights?
Do you mean that in the sense of the rhetorical flourish, that human rights don't exist if we don't enforce them, so lobby your government?
Or do you literally mean that there is nothing more to human rights but our enforcement of them?
Because if it is the second, then what human rights we have depend entirely on the local governments willingness and ability to enforce them. If a government doesn't enforce a right not to be murdered, for example, how can you make the argument that they should, if the right has no existence? To what principle can you appeal, if not the prior existence of a right?
On 25/09/2007, Charlie charles.baker@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/25/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
That would suggest that I accept that "human rights" have some kind of real existance beyond people's power to enforce them. I do not.
Hope this isn't too off-topic here, but do you really mean this about human rights?
Do you mean that in the sense of the rhetorical flourish, that human rights don't exist if we don't enforce them, so lobby your government?
Or do you literally mean that there is nothing more to human rights but our enforcement of them?
Yes. This can be demonstrated by examining the situations where enforcement breaks down.
Because if it is the second, then what human rights we have depend entirely on the local governments willingness and ability to enforce them. If a government doesn't enforce a right not to be murdered, for example, how can you make the argument that they should, if the right has no existence? To what principle can you appeal, if not the prior existence of a right?
The principle that I personally don't want to get killed and I'd rather those who I chose to care about don't get killed. Thus it is in my personal interests to work with others who don't want to get killed to neutralise those who go around killing people.
Enlightened self interest. It gets more complex with balanced interests and the like but this isn't the time or place.
On 9/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/09/2007, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
In what way are they an issue?
1)there appears to be a market for low res album covers
How does this impact our use of album covers under fair-use?
2)the shear number of them we use
This is due to the the shear number of albums in Wikipedia.
3)the lack of commentry on the cover art in articles.
The majority of our hosted cover art are due to us having an article about the work. Fair-use on the article about the album can be minimally justified as for identification purposes. Not ideal, but also not disputable. As a result, it should be clearly undesirable to delete images of album covers where we have an article about the album, or expect to in the near future. Yet they are deleted from the fair-use pile on a daily basis. Of the 100 images in [[Category:mages with unknown copyright status as of 18 September 2007]] when I looked this morning, five appeared to be album covers, and they were all deleted (as many logos were also deleted):
[[Image:Trapt LIVE!.jpg]] [[Image:Sugababeschangeofficial.jpg]] [[Image:Thevines highlyevolved.jpg]] [[Image:Evanescencecover.jpg]] [[Image:66 chobits002.jpg]]
Obviously we would prefer a commentary to strengthen our fair-use claims and to improve our encyclopedia. Necessary improvements in articles can be noted and managed with tags. I wouldnt be surprised if there was a group of Wikipedians that would love to work on [[Category:Album articles with cover art in need of commentary]].
Things like [[Abbey Road (album)]] are not a problem but [[Endless_Love_soundtracks]] is (ignoreing the other problems with that article).
Obviously unnecessary. Do we have bots/tools tracking cases like this where non-free media is being used on articles without a fair-use rationale?
Have we had any complaints?
Honestly interested..
I don't belive so. However sites with simular content have had issues in the past:
Thanks. That does look like a concern. Where they hosting high res images? Do we know why they were targeted?
However, the recent practise is to replace AGF with bots because they cant assume, judging good in black and white, and dont have time for the messy business of intentions. The balance has shifted without consensus due to the efficiency of the bots, and the backlogs they cause. Admins clearing those backlogs on Wikipedia rarely spare the time for the easy cases such as logos, PD images that can be detected with the human eye and brain
PD images should not be turning up in the fair use pile.
I have seen them in the fair-use pile, and I have put some in the fair-use pile because I wasnt adequately confident that PD applied.
The "no license pile" is treated with even less care. Automating the tossing of images onto piles considered to be junk inevitably leads to this, and taking them off that pile is difficult work.
For example, before breakfast [[en:Image:Edward_Ginn.jpg]] ([[Edwin Ginn]]) was also in the nld pile for September 18; not surprisingly it was deleted by the time I came back from breakfast. It takes time to figure out whether an image is PD, or failing that to justify that the image is not replaceable.
and user contributed images that are almost certainly intended to be donated to Wikipedia under any license, except that the new user has no idea how to do that.
The legal situation with regards to these is so messy such images are best deleted.
No. We should require that they are put onto a separate pile, and reasonable attempts are made to contact the uploading user. As it is, there is little point contacting the user as another admin will delete the image before the user has responded and understands how to address the license problem.
The more use able an encyclopedia is the better it is.
In context of the email you responded to, this is an argument for gracefully degrading when images cant be used. We can, and should, have the 1000 words as well as the image. Free images are of no use to the blind.
That is not a copyright issue.
Only if you dont want it to be.
The context was that we do not need to be responsible for all possible downstream copyright limitations. We can and should do everything possible to ensure that where there are limitations, downstream users are able to use our metadata to easily comply.
Adding this metadata makes our encyclopedia more re usable.
I'll be roundly condemned for saying this, but I believe that the second and stronger motive for being so rampantly anti-fair-use, for deleting all fair-use images now (instead of leaving them around until truly-free alternatives can be found), is that it helps push a POV agenda that the world's copyright laws and attitudes about copyright are wrong and need to be changed.
Nope. Most of the world doesn't have fair use. If you wanted a better conspiracy theory you might wish to consider the match between fair dealing and our fair use polices.
Does this mean then that you want the English Wikipedia to have our non-free media limited to the intersection of all non-free laws across the globe?
No
Then I misunderstood your comment. What type of non-free do you want protected and encouraged on English Wikipedia?
Has an analysis been done on what provisions for non-free will be left if that was adopted ?
No because no one has suggested it.
I expect that this would exclude all satire, and probably many other types of reuse allow for by common law. A more workable approach would be to limit non-free to the provisions in the country of origin where also permissible in the host country USA. A lot of our fair-use media originates from the USA, so this would mean that fair-_use_ is still acceptable in those cases.
I really really don't feel like trying to trace all unfree images to country of origin and then haveing to learn any more elements of french law than I've already needed to.
You personally don't need do all this for my suggestion to be workable. We have residents of France amongst us, and it only takes a few copyright savvy people in each country for the rest of us to know the clear cases. For jurisdictions where we dont (yet) know the boundaries of acceptable non-free, we would err on the side of caution and reject dubious non-free.
Again, I think that dragons be there, and we are on safer ground by finding ways to include most image where USA fair-use applies, and ensure that the encyclopedia gracefully degrades where an image may not be used.
There are over 100 legal systems on this planet. Have fun working that one out. While most of the former british empire has fair dealing based systems there are the other european empires to consider as well as all the local modifications.
Time is on our side.
This would of course be coupled with measures to tag images that are replaceable and try to find replacements as soon as possible.
Been suggested from time to time.
On a local level we have found we are more likely to get free media where non free media is forbidden.
{{fact}}
See our living people bios. Used to be almost every pic of non US gov person was non free. Now this is not the case and images numbers in that area are riseing again.
I attribute that more to the growth of our Commons project; the body of readily accessible knowledge about what is "free" in other countries, and a strong team of people dedicated to finding assisting people find and upload free content. Deleting a set of non-free images "resets" the project a little, and of course the second time Wikipedians are likely to do a better job, and will try to find a free image with assistance of the Commons community.
The same result could also be achieved by identifying types of readily replaceable free images, listing them all and driving the list down to zero.
Forbidding non-free media has a cost of churning through non-free images,
Fairly low once people get that we are serious about this free media thing.
We are serious about it. There is a project dedicated to it.
or uploading historically valuable works to Wikisource, or writing more free content on Wiktionary, Wikipedia and Wikibooks. As you know, putting works on Wikisource also usually involves adding free media to the commons, and expanding Wikipedia increases the visibility of Wikimedia, in turn promoting the addition of free media by new contributors.
No. You get free media from new contributers by sending a clear signal. Allowing unfree media does not help with that.
At present, we scare new contributors away. Even if a new user makes it through the upload form, it is quite probable that they wont tag it sufficiently or be able to work out how to add it onto the article, and it will probably be deleted anyway.
We need to be careful not to put free media ahead of the other free content.
We put it considerable behind.
No; we strongly prefer free media, and have a project dedicated to cultivating it.
We accept copyright as is. The GFDL doesn't really work otherwise.
Right, nobody who is well informed in this debate is against copyright; we all know that it underpins our daily contributions. Most of us have been around long enough to intimately understand the basis, motivations and long term effects of different copyleft strategies. The debate here is similar to the nature of the "open source" vs "free software" debate, only in this case it is "fair use/dealing is a human right" vs "free content".
That would suggest that I accept that "human rights" have some kind of real existance beyond people's power to enforce them. I do not.
By qualifying and using them appropriately, we strengthen the ability and resolve of the wider public to keep fair-use alive. This in turn keeps copyright laws in check and ensures that copyright holders know that if they want to control all access, they should keep their works out of the public eye.
We are all on the same side, but have differences on the priorities and how we should act in the short term in order to promote the same long term goals.
For my part, it is the current practices for removing fair-use that concern me, as I am happy with the policy of limiting replaceable fair-use. I think upload limitations may even be necessary to keep fair-use manageable, perhaps using the upcoming flagged revisions improvements to build better heuristics into MediaWiki to determine when a user should be prevented from uploading more images.
We do not have the ability to only block people from uploading.
Software can change. What limitations on uploading would you like to see in the software?
Another solution is to put more eyes onto the problem sooner by enhancing the upload function so that, on enwiki, it is an action associated with articles. All new images could initially be placed onto a gallery tab of the associated article, and these uploads would then appear on the Watchlist of people who potentially care about the image. This would hopefully ensure that images are quickly investigated, cleaned up, properly tagged and put to good use, or pushed into the deletion queue because the image itself isnt desirable.
Generaly experence suggests that copyright is best delt with by people who don't otherwise generaly interact with the article. See wikiproject clasical music's attempt at a copyright policy or the issues that complicated what was copyright wise a fairly straightforward case with regards to [[:Image:AntiWarRallyFeb162003.jpg]]
Strong opinions from motivated individuals are not avoidable. Deleting images before they notice only results in churn and resentment. It is better that they are aware of new images as they are uploaded, and are forced to pick and choose. Also if new images are seen by more eyes on upload, and they are tied to a specific article, we can strengthen the image CSD to allow deletion of unjustified fair-use on sight rather than wait seven days.
A natural extension of this would be to limit the image to that one article until it can be verified as free content, or a fair-use rationale's for another article has been assessed & approved.
So people upload it twice under different names.
This is a lesser evil that can be discouraged, identified easily and fixed with no harm done.
-- John
On 26/09/2007, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/09/2007, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
In what way are they an issue?
1)there appears to be a market for low res album covers
How does this impact our use of album covers under fair-use?
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
2)the shear number of them we use
This is due to the the shear number of albums in Wikipedia.
Doesn't help.
3)the lack of commentry on the cover art in articles.
The majority of our hosted cover art are due to us having an article about the work. Fair-use on the article about the album can be minimally justified as for identification purposes. Not ideal, but also not disputable.
Please don't say things like not disputable with regards to fair use. The closest you can get is consistent with piece of case law X in this case there isn't any.
As a result, it should be clearly undesirable to delete images of album covers where we have an article about the album, or expect to in the near future. Yet they are deleted from the fair-use pile on a daily basis. Of the 100 images in [[Category:mages with unknown copyright status as of 18 September 2007]] when I looked this morning, five appeared to be album covers, and they were all deleted (as many logos were also deleted):
[[Image:Trapt LIVE!.jpg]] [[Image:Sugababeschangeofficial.jpg]] [[Image:Thevines highlyevolved.jpg]] [[Image:Evanescencecover.jpg]] [[Image:66 chobits002.jpg]]
Obviously we would prefer a commentary to strengthen our fair-use claims and to improve our encyclopedia. Necessary improvements in articles can be noted and managed with tags. I wouldnt be surprised if there was a group of Wikipedians that would love to work on [[Category:Album articles with cover art in need of commentary]].
Been tried. How many of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Album_covers_with_no_commentary
Have been improved since they were added to the cat?
Things like [[Abbey Road (album)]] are not a problem but [[Endless_Love_soundtracks]] is (ignoreing the other problems with that article).
Obviously unnecessary. Do we have bots/tools tracking cases like this where non-free media is being used on articles without a fair-use rationale?
Yes.
Have we had any complaints?
Honestly interested..
I don't belive so. However sites with simular content have had issues in the past:
Thanks. That does look like a concern. Where they hosting high res images? Do we know why they were targeted?
Speculating on the motives of the RIAA is risky.
However, the recent practise is to replace AGF with bots because they cant assume, judging good in black and white, and dont have time for the messy business of intentions. The balance has shifted without consensus due to the efficiency of the bots, and the backlogs they cause. Admins clearing those backlogs on Wikipedia rarely spare the time for the easy cases such as logos, PD images that can be detected with the human eye and brain
PD images should not be turning up in the fair use pile.
I have seen them in the fair-use pile, and I have put some in the fair-use pile because I wasnt adequately confident that PD applied.
Then don't call them PD images.
The "no license pile" is treated with even less care. Automating the tossing of images onto piles considered to be junk inevitably leads to this, and taking them off that pile is difficult work.
Just need to show that the image is under a valid license. If it isn't it needs to be processed.
For example, before breakfast [[en:Image:Edward_Ginn.jpg]] ([[Edwin Ginn]]) was also in the nld pile for September 18; not surprisingly it was deleted by the time I came back from breakfast. It takes time to figure out whether an image is PD, or failing that to justify that the image is not replaceable.
You had 7 days.
and user contributed images that are almost certainly intended to be donated to Wikipedia under any license, except that the new user has no idea how to do that.
The legal situation with regards to these is so messy such images are best deleted.
No. We should require that they are put onto a separate pile, and reasonable attempts are made to contact the uploading user. As it is, there is little point contacting the user as another admin will delete the image before the user has responded and understands how to address the license problem.
If the user doesn't respond within 7 days they are unlikely to respond ever.
The more use able an encyclopedia is the better it is.
In context of the email you responded to, this is an argument for gracefully degrading when images cant be used. We can, and should, have the 1000 words as well as the image. Free images are of no use to the blind.
That is not a copyright issue.
Only if you dont want it to be.
No I'm aware of the copyright issues around blind people. What you list is not one of them
No
Then I misunderstood your comment. What type of non-free do you want protected and encouraged on English Wikipedia?
I'm reasonably happy with the status quo for the time being.
I really really don't feel like trying to trace all unfree images to country of origin and then haveing to learn any more elements of french law than I've already needed to.
You personally don't need do all this for my suggestion to be workable. We have residents of France amongst us, and it only takes a few copyright savvy people in each country for the rest of us to know the clear cases.
Clear cases?
For jurisdictions where we dont (yet) know the boundaries of acceptable non-free, we would err on the side of caution and reject dubious non-free.
That would be our current system except we only worry about US law.
There are over 100 legal systems on this planet. Have fun working that one out. While most of the former british empire has fair dealing based systems there are the other european empires to consider as well as all the local modifications.
Time is on our side.
Copyright law isn't static.
This would of course be coupled with measures to tag images that are replaceable and try to find replacements as soon as possible.
Been suggested from time to time.
On a local level we have found we are more likely to get free media where non free media is forbidden.
{{fact}}
See our living people bios. Used to be almost every pic of non US gov person was non free. Now this is not the case and images numbers in that area are riseing again.
I attribute that more to the growth of our Commons project;
Going by the size of the image flow to commons I suspect the impact has been limited.
the body of readily accessible knowledge about what is "free" in other countries,
Not really. Since the US doesn't use the rule of the shorter term and non US countries tend not to put PD stuff online effect of that is limited.
and a strong team of people dedicated to finding assisting people find and upload free content. Deleting a set of non-free images "resets" the project a little, and of course the second time Wikipedians are likely to do a better job, and will try to find a free image with assistance of the Commons community.
The same result could also be achieved by identifying types of readily replaceable free images, listing them all and driving the list down to zero.
No. Because you see people view unfree images as good enough and thus see little reason to replace them.
Forbidding non-free media has a cost of churning through non-free images,
Fairly low once people get that we are serious about this free media thing.
We are serious about it. There is a project dedicated to it.
We are now. Back when we were not the number of invalid fair use uploads was much higher.
or uploading historically valuable works to Wikisource, or writing more free content on Wiktionary, Wikipedia and Wikibooks. As you know, putting works on Wikisource also usually involves adding free media to the commons, and expanding Wikipedia increases the visibility of Wikimedia, in turn promoting the addition of free media by new contributors.
No. You get free media from new contributers by sending a clear signal. Allowing unfree media does not help with that.
At present, we scare new contributors away.
If people are only here to upload images they found on a google search we don't have much choice.
Even if a new user makes it through the upload form, it is quite probable that they wont tag it sufficiently or be able to work out how to add it onto the article, and it will probably be deleted anyway.
Free media does not need to be in an article to avoid deletion.
We need to be careful not to put free media ahead of the other free content.
We put it considerable behind.
No; we strongly prefer free media, and have a project dedicated to cultivating it.
We do not tolerate unfree text to any significant extent. We do tolerate a level of unfree media. Thus we put free media behind other content.
We accept copyright as is. The GFDL doesn't really work otherwise.
Right, nobody who is well informed in this debate is against copyright; we all know that it underpins our daily contributions. Most of us have been around long enough to intimately understand the basis, motivations and long term effects of different copyleft strategies. The debate here is similar to the nature of the "open source" vs "free software" debate, only in this case it is "fair use/dealing is a human right" vs "free content".
That would suggest that I accept that "human rights" have some kind of real existance beyond people's power to enforce them. I do not.
By qualifying and using them appropriately, we strengthen the ability and resolve of the wider public to keep fair-use alive. This in turn keeps copyright laws in check and ensures that copyright holders know that if they want to control all access, they should keep their works out of the public eye.
US with fair use recently extended copyright through the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. The UK without fair use appears to be rejecting any further extension of copyright.
In any case wikipedia is not interested in political campaigning.
If you want to bolster fair use join the EFF.
We do not have the ability to only block people from uploading.
Software can change. What limitations on uploading would you like to see in the software?
Experence suggests that if your solution to a problem requires a software change you are wasting your time unless the problem causes mediawiki to crash.
Strong opinions from motivated individuals are not avoidable.
Actually the current system is pretty good at dealing with that.
Deleting images before they notice only results in churn and resentment.
I can live with that.
It is better that they are aware of new images as they are uploaded, and are forced to pick and choose.
Who is this they?
Also if new images are seen by more eyes on upload, and they are tied to a specific article, we can strengthen the image CSD to allow deletion of unjustified fair-use on sight rather than wait seven days.
It doesn't matter how many eyes you have. One admin with fast reactions can make all other eyes meaningless. No the 7 days is there for a reason.
So people upload it twice under different names.
This is a lesser evil that can be discouraged, identified easily and fixed with no harm done.
You really feel like explaining to a new user why the pic is perfectly okey on one article but we are deleting the second image even though it has a legit fair use case?
At least the current system is internally consistent.
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We do not tolerate unfree text to any significant extent. We do tolerate a level of unfree media. Thus we put free media behind other content.
This is simply not true; we have significant (important informational content, useful) quotations from other works sprinkled liberally throughout the Encyclopedia.
And this is a good thing.
And this is entirely and unquestionably (by any reasonable person) legal under fair use.
Deleting images before they notice only results in churn and resentment.
I can live with that.
With all due respect, that's an extremely dangerous sentiment for anyone in the community.
On 9/27/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We do not tolerate unfree text to any significant extent. We do tolerate a level of unfree media. Thus we put free media behind other content.
This is simply not true; we have significant (important informational content, useful) quotations from other works sprinkled liberally throughout the Encyclopedia.
And this is a good thing.
And this is entirely and unquestionably (by any reasonable person) legal under fair use.
Indeed, the whole reason fair use (or for example, in my jurisdiction fair dealing) exists is because governments recognise we cannot do things like write encyclopaedias or newspapers without invoking the principle of fair use.
That's probably worth repeating.
We cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia without invoking the principles of fair use, or fair dealings. Doesn't mean we need to invoke it to the maximum extent provided for by law, but without any at all, we cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia.
WilyD
On 9/27/07, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We do not tolerate unfree text to any significant extent. We do tolerate a level of unfree media. Thus we put free media behind other content.
This is simply not true; we have significant (important informational content, useful) quotations from other works sprinkled liberally throughout the Encyclopedia.
And this is a good thing.
And this is entirely and unquestionably (by any reasonable person) legal under fair use.
Indeed, the whole reason fair use (or for example, in my jurisdiction fair dealing) exists is because governments recognise we cannot do things like write encyclopaedias or newspapers without invoking the principle of fair use.
That's probably worth repeating.
We cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia without invoking the principles of fair use, or fair dealings. Doesn't mean we need to invoke it to the maximum extent provided for by law, but without any at all, we cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia.
Amen. Unlike some others, what concerns me is that we are using unfree content unnecessarily, in uses suitable for free use but not unfree use. There are legal circumstances where we could theoretically decorate, say, [[List of Lost episodes]] with unfree content. That doesn't mean we should be doing that.
Johnleemk
Wily D wrote:
On 9/27/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We do not tolerate unfree text to any significant extent. We do tolerate a level of unfree media. Thus we put free media behind other content.
This is simply not true; we have significant (important informational content, useful) quotations from other works sprinkled liberally throughout the Encyclopedia.
And this is a good thing.
And this is entirely and unquestionably (by any reasonable person) legal under fair use
Indeed, the whole reason fair use (or for example, in my jurisdiction fair dealing) exists is because governments recognise we cannot do things like write encyclopaedias or newspapers without invoking the principle of fair use.
That's probably worth repeating.
We cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia without invoking the principles of fair use, or fair dealings. Doesn't mean we need to invoke it to the maximum extent provided for by law, but without any at all, we cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia.
Certainly. And one reason why this debating topic never seems to end is that we have people who take extreme views on both ends of the spectrum. On the one hand we have those whose only excuse for a fair use rationale is that they like the picture, and on the other hand those whose free site purism verges on paranoia. The mantra of fair use from those who know nothing else about copyright gets tiresome.
The answer should be somewhere in the middle, and somehow we should also make accommodation for the fact that "free" is also a verb, and that it implies the need to make an effort to make something free even if it isn't free now. As long as we keep mucking about arguing about inconsequential specifics we'll never take Wikipedia to the next level.
Somehow we have ended up accepting responsibility for what everybody else does with Wikipedia material. We have no real control over how others use Wikipedia material. We have no real control over what sites that we link to include; those sites must accept responsibility for what happens there. It is not up to us to go into great detail about whether theirs is an infringing site. If they get forced to take down the material the link will simply not work anymore.
We should be looking for ways to legally expand our holdings, not restrict them.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Wily D wrote:
On 9/27/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We do not tolerate unfree text to any significant extent. We do tolerate a level of unfree media. Thus we put free media behind other content.
This is simply not true; we have significant (important informational content, useful) quotations from other works sprinkled liberally throughout the Encyclopedia.
And this is a good thing.
And this is entirely and unquestionably (by any reasonable person) legal under fair use
Indeed, the whole reason fair use (or for example, in my jurisdiction fair dealing) exists is because governments recognise we cannot do things like write encyclopaedias or newspapers without invoking the principle of fair use.
That's probably worth repeating.
We cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia without invoking the principles of fair use, or fair dealings. Doesn't mean we need to invoke it to the maximum extent provided for by law, but without any at all, we cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia.
Certainly. And one reason why this debating topic never seems to end is that we have people who take extreme views on both ends of the spectrum. On the one hand we have those whose only excuse for a fair use rationale is that they like the picture, and on the other hand those whose free site purism verges on paranoia. The mantra of fair use from those who know nothing else about copyright gets tiresome.
The answer should be somewhere in the middle, and somehow we should also make accommodation for the fact that "free" is also a verb, and that it implies the need to make an effort to make something free even if it isn't free now. As long as we keep mucking about arguing about inconsequential specifics we'll never take Wikipedia to the next level.
Somehow we have ended up accepting responsibility for what everybody else does with Wikipedia material. We have no real control over how others use Wikipedia material. We have no real control over what sites that we link to include; those sites must accept responsibility for what happens there. It is not up to us to go into great detail about whether theirs is an infringing site. If they get forced to take down the material the link will simply not work anymore.
We should be looking for ways to legally expand our holdings, not restrict them.
Ec
Ray,
I agree with everything you say. But which are the "inconsequential specifics"?
Is using a fair use image of a very public living person a good thing, or is it better to remove that image so that there is more incentive for someone to obtain a free image? Or is this question an "inconsequential specific"?
I'm asking, because I really don't know. I know what my opinion is on that specific question, and it seems to be the current practice to reject fair use images in those cases.
It seems to me that *ideally* at least, we should come to some sort of consensus on the question, so there isn't this continual battling.
-Rich Holton
Rich Holton wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Wily D wrote:
On 9/27/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We do not tolerate unfree text to any significant extent. We do tolerate a level of unfree media. Thus we put free media behind other content.
This is simply not true; we have significant (important informational content, useful) quotations from other works sprinkled liberally throughout the Encyclopedia.
And this is a good thing.
And this is entirely and unquestionably (by any reasonable person) legal under fair use
Indeed, the whole reason fair use (or for example, in my jurisdiction fair dealing) exists is because governments recognise we cannot do things like write encyclopaedias or newspapers without invoking the principle of fair use.
That's probably worth repeating.
We cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia without invoking the principles of fair use, or fair dealings. Doesn't mean we need to invoke it to the maximum extent provided for by law, but without any at all, we cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia.
Certainly. And one reason why this debating topic never seems to end is that we have people who take extreme views on both ends of the spectrum. On the one hand we have those whose only excuse for a fair use rationale is that they like the picture, and on the other hand those whose free site purism verges on paranoia. The mantra of fair use from those who know nothing else about copyright gets tiresome.
The answer should be somewhere in the middle, and somehow we should also make accommodation for the fact that "free" is also a verb, and that it implies the need to make an effort to make something free even if it isn't free now. As long as we keep mucking about arguing about inconsequential specifics we'll never take Wikipedia to the next level.
Somehow we have ended up accepting responsibility for what everybody else does with Wikipedia material. We have no real control over how others use Wikipedia material. We have no real control over what sites that we link to include; those sites must accept responsibility for what happens there. It is not up to us to go into great detail about whether theirs is an infringing site. If they get forced to take down the material the link will simply not work anymore.
We should be looking for ways to legally expand our holdings, not restrict them.
Ec
Ray,
I agree with everything you say. But which are the "inconsequential specifics"?
Is using a fair use image of a very public living person a good thing, or is it better to remove that image so that there is more incentive for someone to obtain a free image? Or is this question an "inconsequential specific"?
I'm asking, because I really don't know. I know what my opinion is on that specific question, and it seems to be the current practice to reject fair use images in those cases.
It seems to me that *ideally* at least, we should come to some sort of consensus on the question, so there isn't this continual battling.
-Rich Holton
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
With a "very public" living person, the image is clearly replaceable (snap a picture, or ask the holders of the hundreds of images of said celebrity on Flickr for a release, at least one will likely be amenable, or one may already be CC-BY or CC-BY-SA). So the answer is clear enough there.
As to the rest, it's unfortunate that the Foundation's resolution was so damnably vague. They argue for "minimal" use. Well, that should have always been the case, though it took a bit of a boot in the ass from them to get us actually moving toward that.
In my opinion, "minimal" means "the image is so essential to the article that the article cannot get its point across without it." Does that apply to [[Guernica]] or [[Kim Phuc]]? Absolutely. Does it apply to a movie for which a screenshot is included to show its unique filming style? It 100% does. Does it apply to the iconic logos of [[Nike]] and [[Coca-Cola]]? Of course. To every corporate logo, most of which do not have that iconic status? Nope. Does it apply to every CD in the world? Well, now we're into the area of decoration. For most CDs, seeing the cover art is not important or essential to understanding it. But that's what we run into. What we really need in this area is clearer direction from the Foundation, not nice-sounding but essentially meaningless terms.
Rich Holton wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Wily D wrote:
On 9/27/07, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni wrote:
We do not tolerate unfree text to any significant extent. We do tolerate a level of unfree media. Thus we put free media behind other content.
This is simply not true; we have significant (important informational content, useful) quotations from other works sprinkled liberally throughout the Encyclopedia.
And this is a good thing.
And this is entirely and unquestionably (by any reasonable person) legal under fair use
Indeed, the whole reason fair use (or for example, in my jurisdiction fair dealing) exists is because governments recognise we cannot do things like write encyclopaedias or newspapers without invoking the principle of fair use.
That's probably worth repeating.
We cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia without invoking the principles of fair use, or fair dealings. Doesn't mean we need to invoke it to the maximum extent provided for by law, but without any at all, we cannot hope to write an encyclopaedia.
Certainly. And one reason why this debating topic never seems to end is that we have people who take extreme views on both ends of the spectrum. On the one hand we have those whose only excuse for a fair use rationale is that they like the picture, and on the other hand those whose free site purism verges on paranoia. The mantra of fair use from those who know nothing else about copyright gets tiresome.
The answer should be somewhere in the middle, and somehow we should also make accommodation for the fact that "free" is also a verb, and that it implies the need to make an effort to make something free even if it isn't free now. As long as we keep mucking about arguing about inconsequential specifics we'll never take Wikipedia to the next level.
Somehow we have ended up accepting responsibility for what everybody else does with Wikipedia material. We have no real control over how others use Wikipedia material. We have no real control over what sites that we link to include; those sites must accept responsibility for what happens there. It is not up to us to go into great detail about whether theirs is an infringing site. If they get forced to take down the material the link will simply not work anymore.
We should be looking for ways to legally expand our holdings, not restrict them.
Ray,
I agree with everything you say. But which are the "inconsequential specifics"?
A reasonable question. If we consider publicity shots of celebrities, we could come to an agreement that these are proper fair use (or not), or otherwise establish a general principle about them. However, if we are dealing with a specific celebrity the results of the discussion are likely to only affect that celebrity, and as such will be inconsequential to what happens anywhere else. The real question in relation to a specific celebrity should be, "Why should our treatment of this celebrity picture deviate from general policy?" It would be illogical to extrapolate a specific decision into general policy.
Is using a fair use image of a very public living person a good thing, or is it better to remove that image so that there is more incentive for someone to obtain a free image? Or is this question an "inconsequential specific"?
That's not at all what I had in mind with "inconsequential specific".
I'm asking, because I really don't know. I know what my opinion is on that specific question, and it seems to be the current practice to reject fair use images in those cases.
It seems to me that *ideally* at least, we should come to some sort of consensus on the question, so there isn't this continual battling.
Personally, I have no objection in general to using fair use images, as long as they really are fair use. I don't even think that "living person" is the proper criterion. Copyright is more about the photographer than the person being photographed. There are bigger problems with just figuring out who owns the copyright. A musician performs on stage, and throughout the performance the flash-bulbs keep popping. Some of these get on line, others are officially published, and still others remain undeveloped in somebody's camera. By the time we get the photo it's probably already gone through several hands, and nobody can properly source it.
Publicity shots are meant to be widely distributed. Yet there is a strategic difference between a company giving direct permission (GFDL or any other) and quietly letting people use the same material. Granting permission means losing control. By simply not complaining about somebody's use the company retains the option of suing even when it has absolutely no intention to do so.
Publishers and other copyright owners need to accept more responsibility for the protection of their own rights. If we give them the quick benefit of the doubt they'll take it, but I'm afraid that we have the presumptions all turned around. The basic presumption that a picture is copyrighted reinforces the current way that the system works. The more we restrict usage, the more restrictions will be applied. If we use pictures with uncertain copyright status, and we state our uncertainties in the image file, we should be equally prepared to take them down when the owner properly identifies himself. If the owner fails to do this for an extended period of time he needs to accept the consequences of his inaction.
It makes no sense to analyse these situations in terms of the legal costs of a potential suit. Those costs are easily offset by the low probability of such a suit. It would be only the most foolhardy of copyright holders who would want to proceed directly to court when he spots an infringement of his rights ... particularly when we make a statement that we are willing to accommodate the desires of the owner to have the legally offending material removed.
This may all seem a little radical, but unless we take some proactive steps things won't progress. I don't even think that "fair use" is the proper stand in many of these cases. It is more important that something apparently unfree be made free through perfectly legal means.
Ec
On 28/09/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We do not tolerate unfree text to any significant extent. We do tolerate a level of unfree media. Thus we put free media behind other content.
This is simply not true; we have significant (important informational content, useful) quotations from other works sprinkled liberally throughout the Encyclopedia.
And this is a good thing.
And this is entirely and unquestionably (by any reasonable person) legal under fair use.
Close on 50% of the images on en are non free. Text on the other hand? A few percent maybe.
Deleting images before they notice only results in churn and resentment.
I can live with that.
With all due respect, that's an extremely dangerous sentiment for anyone in the community.
Depends on how you handle the resentment.
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/09/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We do not tolerate unfree text to any significant extent. We do tolerate a level of unfree media. Thus we put free media behind other content.
This is simply not true; we have significant (important informational content, useful) quotations from other works sprinkled liberally throughout the Encyclopedia.
And this is a good thing.
And this is entirely and unquestionably (by any reasonable person) legal under fair use.
Close on 50% of the images on en are non free. Text on the other hand? A few percent maybe.
Of course, 100% of the images on en. should be nonfree - any free image should be on commons. Combine with a host of bias factors (depth of coverage, the fact that it's much easier to obtain unfree images than free images, et cetera) means that we're probably looking at a real fraction of images that's much smaller.
WilyD
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Close on 50% of the images on en are non free. Text on the other hand? A few percent maybe.
Maybe you mean "a few percent" of all articles contain unfree exerpts of a larger published work... I could stomach that.
But saying "a few percent" of all article text is unfree... that seems excessive, and hopefully incorrect.
—C.W.
On 9/28/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Close on 50% of the images on en are non free. Text on the other hand? A few percent maybe.
Maybe you mean "a few percent" of all articles contain unfree exerpts of a larger published work... I could stomach that.
But saying "a few percent" of all article text is unfree... that seems excessive, and hopefully incorrect.
Well, it depends on what we're looking at, but I assume most articles contain at the very least quotations under copyright. I would be surprised if the absolute number of articles with copyrighted text in them is only a few percent. I would not be surprised if the overall proportion of copyrighted text in Wikipedia, however, is a few percent - that seems about right. You can't write a proper, comprehensive encyclopaedia article without quoting someone (be it a historian, the article's subject, etc.), unless you're intentionally going out of your way to make life difficult for yourself and your readership.
Johnleemk
On 9/28/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/28/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Close on 50% of the images on en are non free. Text on the other hand? A few percent maybe.
Maybe you mean "a few percent" of all articles contain unfree exerpts of a larger published work... I could stomach that.
But saying "a few percent" of all article text is unfree... that seems excessive, and hopefully incorrect.
Well, it depends on what we're looking at, but I assume most articles contain at the very least quotations under copyright. I would be surprised if the absolute number of articles with copyrighted text in them is only a few percent. I would not be surprised if the overall proportion of copyrighted text in Wikipedia, however, is a few percent - that seems about right. You can't write a proper, comprehensive encyclopaedia article without quoting someone (be it a historian, the article's subject, etc.), unless you're intentionally going out of your way to make life difficult for yourself and your readership.
I think this is untrue in many subject areas; in practice, no quotes are needed for most technical articles and many popular culture articles. They should be more common in history and so forth.
I don't mean to overemphasize the use of fair-use quotes in the encyclopedia; I try to be realistic about it. My point is that whatever that use is, it is enthusiastically embraced as necessary and proper.
My derived point is that it's somewhat hypocritical to have a different stance regarding appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use images than for appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use text.
We would probably do better to have more of both, rather than less, as an Encyclopedia, for the Readers.
On 9/28/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/28/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/28/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Close on 50% of the images on en are non free. Text on the other
hand?
A few percent maybe.
Maybe you mean "a few percent" of all articles contain unfree exerpts of a larger published work... I could stomach that.
But saying "a few percent" of all article text is unfree... that seems excessive, and hopefully incorrect.
Well, it depends on what we're looking at, but I assume most articles contain at the very least quotations under copyright. I would be
surprised
if the absolute number of articles with copyrighted text in them is only
a
few percent. I would not be surprised if the overall proportion of copyrighted text in Wikipedia, however, is a few percent - that seems
about
right. You can't write a proper, comprehensive encyclopaedia article
without
quoting someone (be it a historian, the article's subject, etc.), unless you're intentionally going out of your way to make life difficult for yourself and your readership.
I think this is untrue in many subject areas; in practice, no quotes are needed for most technical articles and many popular culture articles. They should be more common in history and so forth.
Haha, FA/GA reviewers these days are pretty strict about quoting critics in popular culture articles; in fact, I suspect the vast bulk of our unfree content, both text and images, is concentrated in this category.
I don't mean to overemphasize the use of fair-use quotes in the
encyclopedia; I try to be realistic about it. My point is that whatever that use is, it is enthusiastically embraced as necessary and proper.
Yes. Unfortunately some people have gone overboard with the images; I'm by no means a "make everything free!" kind of guy, but sometimes seeing pop culture articles full of unnecessary imagery makes me wonder if we really need all this.
My derived point is that it's somewhat hypocritical to have a
different stance regarding appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use images than for appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use text.
Indeed it is.
We would probably do better to have more of both, rather than less, as
an Encyclopedia, for the Readers.
The most important thing is to use them as necessary and appropriate; as far as possible, we must avoid any less (which harms the encyclopaedia) and any more (which harms the free nature of our encyclopaedia).
Johnleemk
On 9/28/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/28/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/28/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/28/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Close on 50% of the images on en are non free. Text on the other
hand?
A few percent maybe.
Maybe you mean "a few percent" of all articles contain unfree exerpts of a larger published work... I could stomach that.
But saying "a few percent" of all article text is unfree... that seems excessive, and hopefully incorrect.
Well, it depends on what we're looking at, but I assume most articles contain at the very least quotations under copyright. I would be
surprised
if the absolute number of articles with copyrighted text in them is only
a
few percent. I would not be surprised if the overall proportion of copyrighted text in Wikipedia, however, is a few percent - that seems
about
right. You can't write a proper, comprehensive encyclopaedia article
without
quoting someone (be it a historian, the article's subject, etc.), unless you're intentionally going out of your way to make life difficult for yourself and your readership.
I think this is untrue in many subject areas; in practice, no quotes are needed for most technical articles and many popular culture articles. They should be more common in history and so forth.
Haha, FA/GA reviewers these days are pretty strict about quoting critics in popular culture articles; in fact, I suspect the vast bulk of our unfree content, both text and images, is concentrated in this category.
Very few of our popular culture articles could make FA or GA now. Eventually everything should aspire to that status (hah, maybe next millennium, when we catch up with the article creation rate? 8-).
I don't mean to overemphasize the use of fair-use quotes in the encyclopedia; I try to be realistic about it. My point is that whatever that use is, it is enthusiastically embraced as necessary and proper.
Yes. Unfortunately some people have gone overboard with the images; I'm by no means a "make everything free!" kind of guy, but sometimes seeing pop culture articles full of unnecessary imagery makes me wonder if we really need all this.
Right. We're not a comic book, we're an Encyclopedia. The Images should inform (show what the thing looks like) and encourage interest (look good, be placed well, not overwhelm the text or be overwhelmed by it, but draw someone into the article as a whole).
Album covers are a very good balance, as standardly used.
A couple of images of a character, one by themselves to identify, perhaps another in context with other characters or some key event, in a popular culture character article, will help.
The ones that are image-happy are a detriment to themselves and the Encyclopedia, from an encyclopedia standpoint much less an image-fair-use-policy one.
My derived point is that it's somewhat hypocritical to have a different stance regarding appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use images than for appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use text.
Indeed it is.
We would probably do better to have more of both, rather than less, as an Encyclopedia, for the Readers.
The most important thing is to use them as necessary and appropriate; as far as possible, we must avoid any less (which harms the encyclopaedia) and any more (which harms the free nature of our encyclopaedia).
Right. We generally have a functional balance at the medium, with a limited usage which most people agree on.
There are articles with both too many and too few. Both of those should be corrected.
If image deletionists did the tag-and-rationale-as-required and deleted only excess images, leaving the appropriate ones, I would be happy. There is a tendency to delete to excess in the hope that they can push the balance point overall, which is merely destructive to the community and the article value.
If image adders just added appropriate ones, I would be happy. There is a tendency for many of them (and the bulk of new images, I think) to be added to excess in the hope that they can create cartoonish image articles rather than enhance and attract and inform mostly textual articles. I don't think that they generally are as intentionally trying to push the overall balance point but are effectively doing so, and that's also merely destructive to the community and the article value.
Blocking both sides equally would perhaps help establish the balance point more effectively; however, the problem is identifying those doing both to true excess and constantly enough to make it worth pursuing.
On 28/09/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/28/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Haha, FA/GA reviewers these days are pretty strict about quoting critics in popular culture articles; in fact, I suspect the vast bulk of our unfree content, both text and images, is concentrated in this category.
Very few of our popular culture articles could make FA or GA now.
I'm surprised how many of our FAs are on recent popular culture.
Eventually everything should aspire to that status (hah, maybe next millennium, when we catch up with the article creation rate? 8-).
We'll see if the S-curve in article creation (as noted by Andrew Lih) really does top off at about 2.5-3 million. Or if there's some systemic deletionism going overboard that can be corrected.
I'd expect our article totals to go through the roof as the internet rolls out into India, for example. Nearly a billion people who have English as the language of learning. How many topics are there in India?
- d.
On 9/28/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'd expect our article totals to go through the roof as the internet rolls out into India, for example. Nearly a billion people who have English as the language of learning. How many topics are there in India?
Do we have an article on every municipality, Rambot-style? And if we have that for India, how about China? Russia? Argentina? Brazil? ISTR Italy gave us 10,000 articles at once, and Italy is a pretty middle-sized country, geographically.
Michael Noda schreef:
On 9/28/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'd expect our article totals to go through the roof as the internet rolls out into India, for example. Nearly a billion people who have English as the language of learning. How many topics are there in India?
Do we have an article on every municipality, Rambot-style? And if we have that for India, how about China? Russia? Argentina? Brazil? ISTR Italy gave us 10,000 articles at once, and Italy is a pretty middle-sized country, geographically.
[[User:Ganeshbot]] has added a large number of articles on cities, towns and villages, but I don't think it's even close to being complete. The list of created articles is only 94 kB, so it cannot be more than ~6000.
But even France, for example, still has a lot of missing communes. See for example the list of [[Communes of the Orne department]]. And there are 35,000 of them. Italy had ~8000.
Unfortunately, many countries do not publish enough local statistics in a format that is easy to process by bots; or at least, it is difficult to find. We could perhaps copy the information from other languages; France for example seems to be complete in frwiki.
Eugene
On 28/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Eventually everything should aspire to that status (hah, maybe next millennium, when we catch up with the article creation rate? 8-).
We'll see if the S-curve in article creation (as noted by Andrew Lih) really does top off at about 2.5-3 million. Or if there's some systemic deletionism going overboard that can be corrected.
I'd be interested to see these notes... do we have a link?
On 29/09/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
We'll see if the S-curve in article creation (as noted by Andrew Lih) really does top off at about 2.5-3 million. Or if there's some systemic deletionism going overboard that can be corrected.
I'd be interested to see these notes... do we have a link?
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/10/unwanted-new-articles-in-wikipedia/ http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/09/10/two-million-english-wikipedia-artic...
Precis: the deletionists are going way fucking overboard, and he has the numbers and quotes to demonstrate it.
- d.
On 29/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/09/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
We'll see if the S-curve in article creation (as noted by Andrew Lih) really does top off at about 2.5-3 million. Or if there's some systemic deletionism going overboard that can be corrected.
I'd be interested to see these notes... do we have a link?
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/10/unwanted-new-articles-in-wikipedia/ http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/09/10/two-million-english-wikipedia-artic... Precis: the deletionists are going way fucking overboard, and he has the numbers and quotes to demonstrate it.
In an effort to hold back the tide of goldfarming speedy-tagging, I've been going to these page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Templat... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Templat...
and removing clearly bogus speedy tags, and leaving a commenter on the tagger's page something like:
==Clearly erroneous A7==
The speedy criteria are hard and don't stretch - please take more care with these. (This is becoming a matter of [http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/09/10/two-million-english-wikipedia-artic... public] [http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/10/unwanted-new-articles-in-wikipedia/ concern] and PR problems, so a few people are looking at all CSDs and particularly A7s lately.) Thanks! - ~~~~
I doubt it will kick over a hornet's nest, but others are heartily invited to join in.
ps: about 1/3 were bogus, the other 2/3 thoroughly deserved to die and I shot several of them myself.
pps: best not to say "I was an admin on Wikipedia when your mum still wouldn't let you use the computer unsupervised", even if it is true. May be undiplomatic and less than persuasive.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
I'd expect our article totals to go through the roof as the internet rolls out into India, for example. Nearly a billion people who have English as the language of learning. How many topics are there in India?
Then we can do battle with those who regard such things as non-notable.
Ec
On 30/09/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I'd expect our article totals to go through the roof as the internet rolls out into India, for example. Nearly a billion people who have English as the language of learning. How many topics are there in India?
Then we can do battle with those who regard such things as non-notable.
Hang around AFD noting US-POV-centric nominations?
- d.
On 30/09/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I'd expect our article totals to go through the roof as the internet rolls out into India, for example. Nearly a billion people who have English as the language of learning. How many topics are there in India?
Then we can do battle with those who regard such things as non-notable.
Ec
You could but given the likely lack of sources you will run into I'm not sure you will get very far.
On 9/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
You could but given the likely lack of sources you will run into I'm not sure you will get very far.
I'm sure there are plenty of sources in India.
-Matt
On 30/09/2007, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
You could but given the likely lack of sources you will run into I'm not sure you will get very far.
I'm sure there are plenty of sources in India.
On what basis?
On 9/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/09/2007, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
You could but given the likely lack of sources you will run into I'm not sure you will get very far.
I'm sure there are plenty of sources in India.
On what basis?
On what basis do you think there won't be sources in India for topics related to India?
-Matt
On 30/09/2007, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/09/2007, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
You could but given the likely lack of sources you will run into I'm not sure you will get very far.
I'm sure there are plenty of sources in India.
On what basis?
On what basis do you think there won't be sources in India for topics related to India?
-Matt
1)Lack of publishing infrastructure. In say the UK something will have been published on pretty much any human settlement because it is easy to do.
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70% small pool to do the writing
3)Different cultures. One of the few things considered respectable in British retirement is to research your local history
4)Raw numbers. British libiary has at 25 million books one book per 2.4 people in Britain (and a bit over 2 items per person). Now a lot of that will be international but also suggests a decent coverage of UK topics. National library of India has about 2 million books. 1 book per 560 people.
5)Systemic bias. [[WP:V]] [[WP:RS]] [[WP:BLP]] yeah all kinda written assuming a western setup in terms of documentation.
On 9/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/09/2007, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/09/2007, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
You could but given the likely lack of sources you will run into
I'm
not sure you will get very far.
I'm sure there are plenty of sources in India.
On what basis?
On what basis do you think there won't be sources in India for topics related to India?
-Matt
1)Lack of publishing infrastructure. In say the UK something will have been published on pretty much any human settlement because it is easy to do.
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70% small pool to do the writing
3)Different cultures. One of the few things considered respectable in British retirement is to research your local history
4)Raw numbers. British libiary has at 25 million books one book per 2.4 people in Britain (and a bit over 2 items per person). Now a lot of that will be international but also suggests a decent coverage of UK topics. National library of India has about 2 million books. 1 book per 560 people.
5)Systemic bias. [[WP:V]] [[WP:RS]] [[WP:BLP]] yeah all kinda written assuming a western setup in terms of documentation.
That last point is so true. I wrote an article on one of the foremost figures in fighting communism in Southeast Asia based solely on a self-published book, which would automatically be tossed out by those policies/guidelines. The problem? That book was his authorised biography. Formulaic and mechanical applications of these rules simply do not work, especially in a context outside that of the developed or Western world.
Johnleemk
On 30/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70%
Out of a population of 1.14 billion [1], that leaves us a mere 798 million people. Of whom (if we take a naïve view and assume literacy as a prerequisite) some 65 million speak English as a second language... [2]
small pool to do the writing
...and over forty million of those people have access to the internet. [3]
I don't think we're going to be short of willing writers any time soon.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_populatio... [2] Ibid. [3] http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm
On 01/10/2007, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
On 30/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70%
Out of a population of 1.14 billion [1], that leaves us a mere 798 million people. Of whom (if we take a naïve view and assume literacy as a prerequisite) some 65 million speak English as a second language... [2]
small pool to do the writing
...and over forty million of those people have access to the internet. [3]
I don't think we're going to be short of willing writers any time soon.
Not our writers. Writers to write the local history books. Writers to write the detailed history of every train used on the Indian lines ever. Writers to write books on local football and cricket teams.
perhaps it will soon be just as likely and authoritative that people will write this material directly here. To think we are always going to remain a secondary or tertiary medium is perhaps looking a little narrowly. I know we're trying to resist this, but things will proceed in any case. Or, if we resist strongly enough, they will proceed in such a way that we may soon be forgotten except for the specialists--like usenet, perhaps.
On 10/1/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 01/10/2007, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
On 30/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70%
Out of a population of 1.14 billion [1], that leaves us a mere 798 million people. Of whom (if we take a naïve view and assume literacy as a prerequisite) some 65 million speak English as a second language... [2]
small pool to do the writing
...and over forty million of those people have access to the internet. [3]
I don't think we're going to be short of willing writers any time soon.
Not our writers. Writers to write the local history books. Writers to write the detailed history of every train used on the Indian lines ever. Writers to write books on local football and cricket teams.
-- geni
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
David Goodman wrote:
perhaps it will soon be just as likely and authoritative that people will write this material directly here. To think we are always going to remain a secondary or tertiary medium is perhaps looking a little narrowly. I know we're trying to resist this, but things will proceed in any case. Or, if we resist strongly enough, they will proceed in such a way that we may soon be forgotten except for the specialists--like usenet, perhaps.
Indeed. The No Original Research principle was developed to deal with a specific problem; it has never been a core principle. When we get away from writing about modern industrial societies we need to recognize that these other countries just to not have the intellectual and literary infrastructures. India is still relatively well-off in this regard, but there are English speaking countries like Sierra Leone where recent history has not been at all kind to the infrastructure.
Ec
geni wrote:
On 01/10/2007, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
On 30/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70%
Out of a population of 1.14 billion [1], that leaves us a mere 798 million people. Of whom (if we take a naïve view and assume literacy as a prerequisite) some 65 million speak English as a second language... [2]
small pool to do the writing
...and over forty million of those people have access to the internet. [3]
I don't think we're going to be short of willing writers any time soon.
Not our writers. Writers to write the local history books. Writers to write the detailed history of every train used on the Indian lines ever. Writers to write books on local football and cricket teams.
What makes you think that those books don't already exist?
Ec
On 01/10/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
What makes you think that those books don't already exist?
1)Lack of publishing infrastructure. In say the UK something will have been published on pretty much any human settlement because it is easy to do.
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70% small pool to do the writing
3)Different cultures. One of the few things considered respectable in British retirement is to research your local history
4)Raw numbers. British libiary has at 25 million books one book per 2.4 people in Britain (and a bit over 2 items per person). Now a lot of that will be international but also suggests a decent coverage of UK topics. National library of India has about 2 million books. 1 book per 560 people.
5)Systemic bias. [[WP:V]] [[WP:RS]] [[WP:BLP]] yeah all kinda written assuming a western setup in terms of documentation.
geni wrote:
On 01/10/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
What makes you think that those books don't already exist?
1)Lack of publishing infrastructure. In say the UK something will have been published on pretty much any human settlement because it is easy to do.
The lack of such infrastructure suggests that we should be more flexible.
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70% small pool to do the writing
That's actually quite high.
3)Different cultures. One of the few things considered respectable in British retirement is to research your local history
And in Indian culture?
4)Raw numbers. British libiary has at 25 million books one book per 2.4 people in Britain (and a bit over 2 items per person). Now a lot of that will be international but also suggests a decent coverage of UK topics. National library of India has about 2 million books. 1 book per 560 people.
Either national library still has a limitation on how many people can go there to use it at any one time. This favours the residents of either capital.
5)Systemic bias. [[WP:V]] [[WP:RS]] [[WP:BLP]] yeah all kinda written assuming a western setup in terms of documentation.
How many Indians participated in writing those?
From the site of an Indian bookstore that I have used: https://www.alltimebooks.com/shop/index.php?searchstring=Cricket&email=E... - 116 books about cricket! There must be at least one that fills your criteria. Football only gave me 27 books, but then India does not have much of a football reputation. I got 78 hits for "railway", but there are other related search words that could give further hits.
Ec
On 02/10/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
geni wrote:
On 01/10/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
What makes you think that those books don't already exist?
1)Lack of publishing infrastructure. In say the UK something will have been published on pretty much any human settlement because it is easy to do.
The lack of such infrastructure suggests that we should be more flexible.
You want to weaken [[WP:V]]?
2)Literacy levels. India has a literacy rate of a bit under 70% small pool to do the writing
That's actually quite high.
Not compared to say Europe or old soviet countries
4)Raw numbers. British libiary has at 25 million books one book per 2.4 people in Britain (and a bit over 2 items per person). Now a lot of that will be international but also suggests a decent coverage of UK topics. National library of India has about 2 million books. 1 book per 560 people.
Either national library still has a limitation on how many people can go there to use it at any one time. This favours the residents of either capital.
UK is smaller so London tends to be more reachable (and the various train companies seem deterimed to send you through it regardless of real intent.
5)Systemic bias. [[WP:V]] [[WP:RS]] [[WP:BLP]] yeah all kinda written assuming a western setup in terms of documentation.
How many Indians participated in writing those?
I'm not aware of any.
From the site of an Indian bookstore that I have used: https://www.alltimebooks.com/shop/index.php?searchstring=Cricket&email=E...
- 116 books about cricket! There must be at least one that fills your
criteria.
For a country the size of India with cricket as popular as it is?
Football only gave me 27 books, but then India does not have much of a football reputation. I got 78 hits for "railway", but there are other related search words that could give further hits.
But even local UK libraries seem to have that many railway books (and then about 3 token ones on canals although that is mostly due to canals falling into the local history trap).
geni wrote:
On 30/09/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I'd expect our article totals to go through the roof as the internet rolls out into India, for example. Nearly a billion people who have English as the language of learning. How many topics are there in India?
Then we can do battle with those who regard such things as non-notable.
You could but given the likely lack of sources you will run into I'm not sure you will get very far.
Oh?? Then we are judging third world sources by first world standards?
Ec
On 01/10/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
geni wrote:
You could but given the likely lack of sources you will run into I'm not sure you will get very far.
Oh?? Then we are judging third world sources by first world standards?
Yep. Check the deletion logs.
- d.
On 01/10/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
geni wrote:
On 30/09/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I'd expect our article totals to go through the roof as the internet rolls out into India, for example. Nearly a billion people who have English as the language of learning. How many topics are there in India?
Then we can do battle with those who regard such things as non-notable.
You could but given the likely lack of sources you will run into I'm not sure you will get very far.
Oh?? Then we are judging third world sources by first world standards?
Ec
There are other standards? Either you accept our standards as universally correct or they are flawed and need to be reworked.
On 10/1/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
There are other standards? Either you accept our standards as universally correct or they are flawed and need to be reworked.
Our /de facto/ standards are flawed, at least. "If I can't find it on Google, it doesn't exist", which is a de facto standard I see applied quite often, is a standard biased towards certain subjects. The somewhat related standard "If I can't find a reference in English, it doesn't exist" is also biased.
-Matt
On 10/1/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/1/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
There are other standards? Either you accept our standards as universally correct or they are flawed and need to be reworked.
Our /de facto/ standards are flawed, at least. "If I can't find it on Google, it doesn't exist", which is a de facto standard I see applied quite often, is a standard biased towards certain subjects. The somewhat related standard "If I can't find a reference in English, it doesn't exist" is also biased.
I think that both of these have been effectively rebuttable on AFDs, but that assumes that someone who cares noticed that particular AFD and the reasoning in detail.
If I spent all day working on Wikipedia, I'd spend an hour or two a day patrolling AFD and PROD deletions (and MFD and DRV and so forth). I have a life, however, and most of this stuff slips by most of the time.
I am considering proposing a deletion process change - Increase AFD run time so that they run for six business days, ensuring that at least one weekend is in the AFDs run time so that people who have work during the week and a bit more bandwidth on weekends are sure to have a chance to see it.
George Herbert wrote:
I am considering proposing a deletion process change - Increase AFD run time so that they run for six business days, ensuring that at least one weekend is in the AFDs run time so that people who have work during the week and a bit more bandwidth on weekends are sure to have a chance to see it.
Good. I was about to suggest a full week until I reread your comment to see that you said "business days". We may still need to educate the deletionists so that they understand that the concepts "day" and "business day" are not identical.
Ec
On 10/1/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
I am considering proposing a deletion process change - Increase AFD run time so that they run for six business days, ensuring that at least one weekend is in the AFDs run time so that people who have work during the week and a bit more bandwidth on weekends are sure to have a chance to see it.
Good. I was about to suggest a full week until I reread your comment to see that you said "business days". We may still need to educate the deletionists so that they understand that the concepts "day" and "business day" are not identical.
Actually, on reflection, "business day" might be confusing enough to people that it could cause problems. It probably shouldn't be, but I have seen a lot of non-english speakers and non-business people who didn't get the idiom. Perhaps just making it run for 7 days or 8 days from time/date of listing is better...
John Lee wrote:
Yes. Unfortunately some people have gone overboard with the images; I'm by no means a "make everything free!" kind of guy, but sometimes seeing pop culture articles full of unnecessary imagery makes me wonder if we really need all this.
Sure enough. But making things free requires a little more sophistication than plugging something in and boldly claiming that it is now free. Those indiscriminate louts make it very difficult for those of us who would take a more permissive attitude.
My derived point is that it's somewhat hypocritical to have a
different stance regarding appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use images than for appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use text.
Indeed it is.
We would probably do better to have more of both, rather than less, as
an Encyclopedia, for the Readers.
The most important thing is to use them as necessary and appropriate; as far as possible, we must avoid any less (which harms the encyclopaedia) and any more (which harms the free nature of our encyclopaedia).
The difficulty with this is that it requires an ability to have a global outlook on the subject. It's about the overall result, and not about whether this or that specific item is fair use, and that's a tough transition for some people. Where would Wikiquote be without fair use? Paper books of modern quotation can be had at any book store, and I don't see a lot of fuss from publishers about these collections.
Ec
On 28/09/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
My derived point is that it's somewhat hypocritical to have a different stance regarding appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use images than for appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use text. We would probably do better to have more of both, rather than less, as an Encyclopedia, for the Readers.
I mostly agree with you - quoting images is as important as quoting text, for the same reasons. I think it would be a very bad thing indeed for en:wp to completely abandon fair use.
However, there are tons and buckets and arseloads of "fair use" images which are only "fair use" under the hitherto-unknown "I wanna" provision of US copyright law.
And as I noted before, if it's a living person who's famous enough to have an article then in almost all cases it's ridiculous not to require a proper free-content image. (Whenever I talk to people about "how do I get my stuff into Wikipedia?" I try to get properly-released images out of them!) It's important to Wikipedia's mission to show that we can do all this using free content, and make free content the only sensible way to do a wide-ranging general reference work.
I personally think record and book articles *should* feature the covers routinely - low-res covers are blatantly academic fair use in an encyclopedia article on that actual item, and (though the risk does exist) no reasonable judge in a Berne convention country could IMO reasonably rule otherwise. But, I'm not going to cry even one tear if a record or book cover that isn't actually a subject of discussion is zapped.
Fair use is good, abuse of it under the "I wanna" clause is why it's very nice indeed to have WP:NONFREE to point to.
- d.
On 9/28/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/09/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
My derived point is that it's somewhat hypocritical to have a different stance regarding appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use images than for appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use text. We would probably do better to have more of both, rather than less, as an Encyclopedia, for the Readers.
I mostly agree with you - quoting images is as important as quoting text, for the same reasons. I think it would be a very bad thing indeed for en:wp to completely abandon fair use.
However, there are tons and buckets and arseloads of "fair use" images which are only "fair use" under the hitherto-unknown "I wanna" provision of US copyright law.
And as I noted before, if it's a living person who's famous enough to have an article then in almost all cases it's ridiculous not to require a proper free-content image. (Whenever I talk to people about "how do I get my stuff into Wikipedia?" I try to get properly-released images out of them!) It's important to Wikipedia's mission to show that we can do all this using free content, and make free content the only sensible way to do a wide-ranging general reference work.
I personally think record and book articles *should* feature the covers routinely - low-res covers are blatantly academic fair use in an encyclopedia article on that actual item, and (though the risk does exist) no reasonable judge in a Berne convention country could IMO reasonably rule otherwise. But, I'm not going to cry even one tear if a record or book cover that isn't actually a subject of discussion is zapped.
Fair use is good, abuse of it under the "I wanna" clause is why it's very nice indeed to have WP:NONFREE to point to.
I agree.
A reasonable image-pruning project, whose members vow to reduce excess images but leave the appropriate minimal appropriately balanced number required to inform and attract on the pages, and make sure that those images are tagged and rationale-ed appropriately, would be an excellent thing. Especially as a contrast to the rabid deletionists.
Letting the naive image adders (or few cartoonish-encyclopedia-preferred nuts) duke it out with the rabid deletionists isn't working. I think those of us in the center have to be a bit more assertive.
On 28/09/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
A reasonable image-pruning project, whose members vow to reduce excess images but leave the appropriate minimal appropriately balanced number required to inform and attract on the pages, and make sure that those images are tagged and rationale-ed appropriately, would be an excellent thing. Especially as a contrast to the rabid deletionists. Letting the naive image adders (or few cartoonish-encyclopedia-preferred nuts) duke it out with the rabid deletionists isn't working. I think those of us in the center have to be a bit more assertive.
I like to reduce resolution on excessively huge comic scans and screenshots (they should be no bigger than to provide a decent image in the article; 250-300px in most cases IMO), and will sometimes write rationales for album covers. (All it takes is a sentence or two in the text! And some album and book covers are really encyclopedic subjects, e.g. Peter Saville's work for Factory Records, or the post-1968 covers of Scientology books with covers straight out of the Xenu story. And that includes the volcano on 'Dianetics.') I figure that's reasonable work on both ends of that score.
- d.
On 9/25/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote: <snip>
cause. Admins clearing those backlogs on Wikipedia rarely spare the
time for the easy cases such as logos, PD images that can be detected with the human eye and brain and user contributed images that are almost certainly intended to be donated to Wikipedia under any license, except that the new user has no idea how to do that.
<snip>
Having watched the free image/fair use debate go more than a few rounds, it seems like one non-controversial way of improving things could be to take a long hard look at the image uploading process and instruction pages. If any part of the site is a candidate for having a professional work on the UI, this seems like a good one. The pages are better than they used to be, but still *I* get confused and overwhelmed by the current upload pages, and I know what they're trying to say. Remember that the copyright concepts we're talking about are poorly understood or completely unfamiliar to most people; little wonder that folks keep uploading unacceptable images. Maybe at the least a multipage uploading wizard like the Articles for creation wizard would be useful, to break up all the "step 1, step 2" pages into something readable.
-- phoebe
On 25/09/2007, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Having watched the free image/fair use debate go more than a few rounds, it seems like one non-controversial way of improving things could be to take a long hard look at the image uploading process and instruction pages. If any part of the site is a candidate for having a professional work on the UI, this seems like a good one. The pages are better than they used to be, but still *I* get confused and overwhelmed by the current upload pages, and I know what they're trying to say. Remember that the copyright concepts we're talking about are poorly understood or completely unfamiliar to most people; little wonder that folks keep uploading unacceptable images. Maybe at the least a multipage uploading wizard like the Articles for creation wizard would be useful, to break up all the "step 1, step 2" pages into something readable.
-- phoebe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Upload is multi step. And I don't think you can go beyond that within the limits of the software
On 25/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Upload is multi step. And I don't think you can go beyond that within the limits of the software
Yeah. The image interface in general really sucks, I believe we have a usability report to hand that details how it sucks, so if there's any coders with a good feel for UI who are keen on making things easier then they should hop onto wikitech-l and #wikimedia-tech for a chat with the devs.
- d.
On 9/25/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I believe we have a usability report to hand that details how it sucks,
One usability expert was quite insistent that we remove all mention of copyright and licensing, and was quick to point out how some other sites don't trouble users with those sort of details..
*facepalm*
On 25/09/2007, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/25/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I believe we have a usability report to hand that details how it sucks,
One usability expert was quite insistent that we remove all mention of copyright and licensing, and was quick to point out how some other sites don't trouble users with those sort of details.. *facepalm*
OK: Coders who are usability enthusiasts *and* know the projects *and* know copyright then.
/me glances in Greg's direction
- d.
On 25/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
OK: Coders who are usability enthusiasts *and* know the projects *and* know copyright then.
/me glances in Greg's direction
- d.
You don't need all of that wrapped up into one person. Just tell the coders precisely what you want, not just vague 'it isn't usable enough'. In what way is it not usable enough? What would make it better?
(Disclaimer: I probably have no interest in coding this, I'm just saying, tell the coders specifically what you want....)
On 25/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
On 25/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
OK: Coders who are usability enthusiasts *and* know the projects *and* know copyright then. /me glances in Greg's direction
You don't need all of that wrapped up into one person.
No, but I think it's handy when we happen to!
- d.
I'm sure it was Greg who first mentioned this, but we really should have an IRC client or similar real time chatty thing built into the upload page then people can contact an experienced user and ask "what tag do I need ?", or "I've just uploaded image xyz.jpg, can you help me please." and we can deal with everything whilst we've still got access to the uploader, we can get source information, we can ask discreet questions if we think something is wrong.
Also, in response to someone above, PD work is likely being deleted as unused non free stuff because we don't know all the details and can't easily confirm dates and such. You could spend an hour trying to track down one image and it might be a wild goose chase, it might be a waste of time as it still needs deleted, or it might occasionally pay off, but there's simply not enough volunteer time available to try and find the source of a B&W image, find all the creator information and determine whether it's PD or not. There are more important things to do, like reference stuff, or categorise stuff or such. Images are important, but they're not the be all and end all people are making out here.
On 25/09/2007, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
I'm sure it was Greg who first mentioned this, but we really should have an IRC client or similar real time chatty thing built into the upload page then people can contact an experienced user and ask "what tag do I need ?", or "I've just uploaded image xyz.jpg, can you help me please." and we can deal with everything whilst we've still got access to the uploader, we can get source information, we can ask discreet questions if we think something is wrong.
http://www.resonatorsoft.org/software/htmlspeak/
HTML/JavaScript/Perl chat client, designed to be low-bandwidth (better than those Java clients), refreshes every 20 seconds by default.
As a footnote to this conversation, I'd like to point out the aesthetic issues involved in using any standard image; particularly one who's purpose is replacement. Certainly it cannot be pretty, as such would be pleasing and therefore incongruent to the purpose of replacement. The current image takes this into account and is indeed quite ugly, I don't think its particularly ugly enough to make people want to replace it immediately.
Perhaps we can have a contest to produce, within suitable boundaries, the ugliest possible image with the utmost of replaceable qualities.
-steven
On 25/09/2007, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
As a footnote to this conversation, I'd like to point out the aesthetic issues involved in using any standard image; particularly one who's purpose is replacement. Certainly it cannot be pretty, as such would be pleasing and therefore incongruent to the purpose of replacement. The current image takes this into account and is indeed quite ugly, I don't think its particularly ugly enough to make people want to replace it immediately.
Perhaps we can have a contest to produce, within suitable boundaries, the ugliest possible image with the utmost of replaceable qualities.
-steven
No. We accept that the place holder will be there for some time thus it must be something regulars are able to tune out and must not particularly lower our audence experence.
The last thing we want to do is make the thing so damn ugly people replace it with "an image from Google". It needs to be an "oh, I've got an image of Joe Celeb, I'll go upload it" rather than "jesus that's so damn ugly I'll go find any old image to get rid of it".
On 25/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/09/2007, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
As a footnote to this conversation, I'd like to point out the aesthetic issues involved in using any standard image; particularly one who's purpose is replacement. Certainly it cannot be pretty, as such would be pleasing and therefore incongruent to the purpose of replacement. The current image takes this into account and is indeed quite ugly, I don't think its particularly ugly enough to make people want to replace it immediately.
Perhaps we can have a contest to produce, within suitable boundaries, the ugliest possible image with the utmost of replaceable qualities.
-steven
No. We accept that the place holder will be there for some time thus it must be something regulars are able to tune out and must not particularly lower our audence experence.
-- geni
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On 25/09/2007, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
As a footnote to this conversation, I'd like to point out the aesthetic issues involved in using any standard image; particularly one who's purpose is replacement. Certainly it cannot be pretty, as such would be pleasing and therefore incongruent to the purpose of replacement. The current image takes this into account and is indeed quite ugly, I don't think its particularly ugly enough to make people want to replace it immediately.
People do want to remove it as too ugly immediately. So I'd say it's already going too far on that score.
- d.
On 25/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Upload is multi step. And I don't think you can go beyond that within the limits of the software
Yeah. The image interface in general really sucks, I believe we have a usability report to hand that details how it sucks, so if there's any coders with a good feel for UI who are keen on making things easier then they should hop onto wikitech-l and #wikimedia-tech for a chat with the devs.
- d.
Link?
On 25/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
On 25/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Yeah. The image interface in general really sucks, I believe we have a usability report to hand that details how it sucks, so if there's any coders with a good feel for UI who are keen on making things easier then they should hop onto wikitech-l and #wikimedia-tech for a chat with the devs.
Link?
On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Usability , I believe it's one of the two PDFs linked at the bottom.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Usability/Test_Februar_20... is on de:wp, but is in English. I think this is the report in question.
There's lots and lots of things wrong other than the image interface, of course.
Wwwolf has a page here too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wwwwolf/MediaWiki_Usability
- d.