I once registered as a user of Wikipedia, and I know that anything I write there *may* be copied and re-used according to the GFDL. However, I did not sign up for the Pornopedia, Nazipe dia or Spamopedia.
What is written on user pages and user talkpages is also released under the GFDL, and if somebody wants to copy it or quote it, fine (as long as it is attributed)! But there is no reason to automate this process or make it easy for webspammers and other creeps to do so. I do not want my user page to be copied to various Wikipedia mirrors, as happened a while ago with the Nazi copy of Wikipedia. I would be even less happy if I had signed up under my real name. The appearance of a name in such a context may actually be harmful to somebody's reputation.
1. My first suggestion: just *make sure that when the database is copied, user information does not come along with it, including userpages, user talkpages and even the history of a page*. I notice from some of the mirrors out there, that the only contributor visible in the history of an article is the last one before the dump, somebody who may just have corrected a typo. As it doesn't give proper attribution in any case, we may just as well get rid of that too. Just make sure the history page of every downloaded article refers back to Wikipedia, where the full history can be found.
2. Second suggestion: is there any reason why *any* discussion pages need to come with the normal database dump? The nazi 'pedia (which is down now) took these and search-and-replaced "Wikipedia" with its own name everywhere, giving the misleading impression that a lot of Wikipedia users had been active in discussions on a Nazi website. This may be seriously harmful to somebody's reputation if found through a Google search by somebody not familiar with the GFDL and how Wikipedia works. It is probably illegal in some way to do what they did (as Wikipedia will no longer be properly credited) but I just don't see anybody going to court to stop it, and we certainly don't need to facilitate abuse of mirrored discussion pages with consequences for the reputation or privacy of individual users. Again, please *replace all discussion pages in the database dump with a very clear and visible link back to Wikipedia*, not just the miniscule one down at the bottom of every page. Most downloaders are not going to bother removing that link, as all they want Wikipedia content for, is to get Google hits and drive traffic to their websites.
3. Remove the user namespace from the reach of Google's indexing bots. It should be available to our internal search, but there is no reason it should get hits from Google. Userspace contains all kinds of semi-private conversations and unfinished drafts which are really only of internal use and interest.
I question whether some other type of free but non-commercial license wouldn't be more suitable for user pages, but that may not be realistic for various reasons. But the removal of these pages from the dump really shouldn't require a change in license. It will just force somebody who wants to copy the content to do so manually. The webspammers obviously won't bother with that.
User:Tupsharru
--------------------------------- Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year.
Tupsharru Tupsharru wrote:
I once registered as a user of Wikipedia, and I know that anything I write there *may* be copied and re-used according to the GFDL. However, I did not sign up for the Pornopedia, Nazipe dia or Spamopedia.
What is written on user pages and user talkpages is also released under the GFDL, and if somebody wants to copy it or quote it, fine (as long as it is attributed)! But there is no reason to automate this process or make it easy for webspammers and other creeps to do so. I do not want my user page to be copied to various Wikipedia mirrors, as happened a while ago with the Nazi copy of Wikipedia. I would be even less happy if I had signed up under my real name. The appearance of a name in such a context may actually be harmful to somebody's reputation.
My first suggestion: just *make sure that when the database is copied, user information does not come along with it, including userpages, user talkpages and even the history of a page*. I notice from some of the mirrors out there, that the only contributor visible in the history of an article is the last one before the dump, somebody who may just have corrected a typo. As it doesn't give proper attribution in any case, we may just as well get rid of that too. Just make sure the history page of every downloaded article refers back to Wikipedia, where the full history can be found.
Second suggestion: is there any reason why *any* discussion pages need to come with the normal database dump? The nazi 'pedia (which is down now) took these and search-and-replaced "Wikipedia" with its own name everywhere, giving the misleading impression that a lot of Wikipedia users had been active in discussions on a Nazi website. This may be seriously harmful to somebody's reputation if found through a Google search by somebody not familiar with the GFDL and how Wikipedia works. It is probably illegal in some way to do what they did (as Wikipedia will no longer be properly credited) but I just don't see anybody going to court to stop it, and we certainly don't need to facilitate abuse of mirrored discussion pages with consequences for the reputation or privacy of individual users. Again, please *replace all discussion pages in the database dump with a very clear and visible link back to Wikipedia*, not just the miniscule one down at the bottom of every page. Most do
wnl
oaders are not going to bother removing that link, as all they want Wikipedia content for, is to get Google hits and drive traffic to their websites.
- Remove the user namespace from the reach of Google's indexing bots. It should be available to our internal search, but there is no reason it should get hits from Google. Userspace contains all kinds of semi-private conversations and unfinished drafts which are really only of internal use and interest.
I question whether some other type of free but non-commercial license wouldn't be more suitable for user pages, but that may not be realistic for various reasons. But the removal of these pages from the dump really shouldn't require a change in license. It will just force somebody who wants to copy the content to do so manually. The webspammers obviously won't bother with that.
There are certain advantages to including everything in the dumps. For instance, if Wikipedia gets shut down for some reason, it would be much easier to start it up elsewhere if we had a full dump.
As for Google indexing, many of the pages in my User space, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SPUI/Amtrak_shite , are useful, and I would hope that Google does index it.
On 12/23/05, Tupsharru Tupsharru one_known_as_tupsharru@yahoo.com wrote:
I once registered as a user of Wikipedia, and I know that anything I write there *may* be copied and re-used according to the GFDL. However, I did not sign up for the Pornopedia, Nazipe dia or Spamopedia.
While I sympathise with your feelings, I don't see the problem here. You signed up with Wikipedia and someone copies your signup information on a copy of Wikipedia. So what?
Tony Sidaway wrote:
While I sympathise with your feelings, I don't see the problem here. You signed up with Wikipedia and someone copies your signup information on a copy of Wikipedia. So what?
It's a real issue, especially with the search & replace the Nazipedia did. Say I had the following text on my userpage:
I have been an administrator on Wikipedia since 2003.
On the Nazipedia, it would say:
I have been an administrator on Nazipedia since 2003.
(I'm aware that's not actually what they named it, but I don't recall what they called it.)
I contribute to Wikipedia under my real name, with my city of residence and certain current volunteer positions I hold listed.
If someone Googled me, they'd see an entry that made it look like I was an active contributor - an administrator, which many people not familiar with Wikipedia might assume meant a site founder/high-ranking person - to a Nazi project and proud of it.
Next thing you know, it'd be "political party officer secretly Nazi activist" on the news. Now, I'd have a legitimate claim of defamation and/or libel against someone, but I'd rather not go through all the work entailed in suing someone for it after the fact, and I shouldn't have to hide who I am on Wikipedia to prevent it.
The primary Wikipedia data dump for setting up mirror sites should not contain User: or User_talk: namespace pages, and ideally not Wikipedia: or any of the various Talk: namespaces. Usernames in page histories could be changed, say, to "Wikipedia" or "Wikipedian #000110" or something similar.
In some ways, this would be very handy for some other Wikis, who want the article content and such, but would see all the rest as random cruft they'd have to slog through deleting. How many downstream users want 5 zillion AFD history entries clogging up their DB?
The User:, Wikipedia:, and *_talk: namespaces could go in a second dump for actual Wikipedia backups, theoretically... in practice I see two dumps being an icky amount of work, of course.
(Sidenote: some people have a template they put on their userpages, about how this is a Wikipedia user page, if you see it anywhere else, it's not valid, etc... problem is, that's subject to the same search & replace as anything else with "Wikipedia" in it, and furthermore, most people don't subst: the template, meaning that if the downstreamer just deletes or changes that template, it goes away...)
-- Jake Nelson
On Dec 24, 2005, at 1:38 AM, Jake Nelson wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
While I sympathise with your feelings, I don't see the problem here. You signed up with Wikipedia and someone copies your signup information on a copy of Wikipedia. So what?
It's a real issue, especially with the search & replace the Nazipedia did. Say I had the following text on my userpage:
I have been an administrator on Wikipedia since 2003.
On the Nazipedia, it would say:
I have been an administrator on Nazipedia since 2003.
Yep. Sucks, doesn't it? Unfortunately, if it's a consequence you're unwilling to accept in any circumstances, you should probably think twice about releasing your contributions under the GFDL.
-Phil Sandifer
Uh, you're being a bit of a hardliner here. We all accept the risk that someone will commit fraud and identity theft. What we're suggesting here is a simple solution- remove user/talk pages from database dumps. "Don't like it? Too bad!" isn't a very constructive attitude.
Ryan
On 12/24/05, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 24, 2005, at 1:38 AM, Jake Nelson wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
While I sympathise with your feelings, I don't see the problem here. You signed up with Wikipedia and someone copies your signup information on a copy of Wikipedia. So what?
It's a real issue, especially with the search & replace the Nazipedia did. Say I had the following text on my userpage:
I have been an administrator on Wikipedia since 2003.
On the Nazipedia, it would say:
I have been an administrator on Nazipedia since 2003.
Yep. Sucks, doesn't it? Unfortunately, if it's a consequence you're unwilling to accept in any circumstances, you should probably think twice about releasing your contributions under the GFDL.
-Phil Sandifer
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/24/05, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Yep. Sucks, doesn't it? Unfortunately, if it's a consequence you're unwilling to accept in any circumstances, you should probably think twice about releasing your contributions under the GFDL.
-Phil Sandifer
Are userspace edits automatically released under the GFDL? I have a note on my userpage (and others do too) saying that I multilicense all my contributions except those I make on my user pages. Is that pointless to include?
-- Nathaniel/Spangineer
On 29/12/05, Nathaniel Sheetz preparing@psu.edu wrote:
Are userspace edits automatically released under the GFDL? I have a note on my userpage (and others do too) saying that I multilicense all my contributions except those I make on my user pages. Is that pointless to include?
Everything to a Wikimedia wiki is, I believe. (Possible exception for some of the internal admin ones, and one project which I have a vague memory uses CC).
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Ryan Delaney wrote:
Uh, you're being a bit of a hardliner here. We all accept the risk that someone will commit fraud and identity theft. What we're suggesting here is a simple solution- remove user/talk pages from database dumps. "Don't like it? Too bad!" isn't a very constructive attitude.
But then there'd have to be a new separate database dump that _did_ include the user/talk pages. The purpose of the database dumps is not just to allow someone to toss up a mirror of the current article versions and make a few bucks from banner ads, it's to allow Wikipedia as a whole to be researched or recreated or otherwise manipulated in ways that can't be done just from the existing website. The user and talk pages are important parts of how Wikipedia functions, they should be available for historical reasons if nothing else.
On 12/29/05, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
But then there'd have to be a new separate database dump that _did_ include the user/talk pages. The purpose of the database dumps is not just to allow someone to toss up a mirror of the current article versions and make a few bucks from banner ads, it's to allow Wikipedia as a whole to be researched or recreated or otherwise manipulated in ways that can't be done just from the existing website. The user and talk pages are important parts of how Wikipedia functions, they should be available for historical reasons if nothing else.
I think that is very true: someone who wished to study the whole project (community and encyclopedia) as a whole would need those user, talk, and Wikipedia namespaces. However, having two seperate dumps would defeat the attempt to conceal some of the personal information of Wikipedia editors. Joe.Wikipedian could simply download the second dump including the userspace, and then stick some ads with the content on his own server.
The only way I could see a scheme like this working is if the Foundation somehow controlled who had access to the second dump. I believe that this would be too unwieldy, and probably defeat the spirit of the GFDL, if not the acutal letter of the law.
-- Ben Emmel Wikipedia - User:Bratsche bratsche1@gmail.com "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees." -- William Blake
On 12/29/05, Ben Emmel bratsche1@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/29/05, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
But then there'd have to be a new separate database dump that _did_ include the user/talk pages. The purpose of the database dumps is not just to allow someone to toss up a mirror of the current article versions and make a few bucks from banner ads, it's to allow Wikipedia as a whole to be researched or recreated or otherwise manipulated in ways that can't be done just from the existing website. The user and talk pages are important parts of how Wikipedia functions, they should be available for historical reasons if nothing else.
I think that is very true: someone who wished to study the whole project (community and encyclopedia) as a whole would need those user, talk, and Wikipedia namespaces. However, having two seperate dumps would defeat the attempt to conceal some of the personal information of Wikipedia editors. Joe.Wikipedian could simply download the second dump including the userspace, and then stick some ads with the content on his own server.
Even if there wasn't a dump at all, someone could still scrape all the user pages and mirror them. You're not going to stop someone who is intentionally doing these types of things. But you can make it less likely that someone is going to do so accidently, and you can make things easier for those who want to include the articles but nothing else.
The only way I could see a scheme like this working is if the Foundation somehow controlled who had access to the second dump. I believe that this would be too unwieldy, and probably defeat the spirit of the GFDL, if not the acutal letter of the law.
I really don't see what this has to do with the GFDL. I guess you could argue that everything on the website is a single GFDL document, that Wikipedia must therefore distribute a transparent copy of the entire document, and that HTML isn't a suitable format for that transparent copy (even though the GFDL specifically says that it is).
But if you're going to get that technical (and even if you aren't), Wikipedia's database dumps already are horribly non-compliant with the letter and spirit of the GFDL. As was pointed out in the original post, they don't even contain a complete list of contributors. And the distributed copies don't point to the url for the dump anyway.
Anthony
Bryan Derksen wrote:
But then there'd have to be a new separate database dump that _did_ include the user/talk pages. The purpose of the database dumps is not just to allow someone to toss up a mirror of the current article versions and make a few bucks from banner ads, it's to allow Wikipedia as a whole to be researched or recreated or otherwise manipulated in ways that can't be done just from the existing website. The user and talk pages are important parts of how Wikipedia functions, they should be available for historical reasons if nothing else.
I think this is a reasonable solution. What would be glorious would be to have a standard package to allow people to throw up mirrors easily and *properly*, including what we want them to include, and not including what we don't want them to include.
--Jimbo
On 12/29/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
But then there'd have to be a new separate database dump that _did_ include the user/talk pages. The purpose of the database dumps is not just to allow someone to toss up a mirror of the current article versions and make a few bucks from banner ads, it's to allow Wikipedia as a whole to be researched or recreated or otherwise manipulated in ways that can't be done just from the existing website. The user and talk pages are important parts of how Wikipedia functions, they should be available for historical reasons if nothing else.
I think this is a reasonable solution. What would be glorious would be to have a standard package to allow people to throw up mirrors easily and *properly*, including what we want them to include, and not including what we don't want them to include.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________
What are we supposed to do about Nazipedia, they're basically twisting our words and still attributing those words to us. While separate dumps would solve future problems it does nothing to address the issue at hand.
I have no problem being on there, as long as they clearly state (VERY clearly) it's a copy of Wikipedia and don't change anything about the page.
Mgm
On 12/30/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
What are we supposed to do about Nazipedia, they're basically twisting our words and still attributing those words to us. While separate dumps would solve future problems it does nothing to address the issue at hand.
I have no problem being on there, as long as they clearly state (VERY clearly) it's a copy of Wikipedia and don't change anything about the page.
Users should be encouraged to subst [[Template:Userpage]] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Userpage) onto their user page, and should even modify the HTML that it generates. That should make it very difficult for people to search and replace "Wikipedia" with something else.
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
On 12/30/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
What are we supposed to do about Nazipedia, they're basically twisting our words and still attributing those words to us. While separate dumps would solve future problems it does nothing to address the issue at hand.
Well, to be fair, they ARE Nazis, but I don't think they did this deliberately. I can't really speculate on what they would have done if they had had the option of not copying over all our userpages, but I suspect they wouldn't have.
Ryan
I just realized that two replies I sent 12/24 on this topic just went to Philip, and not to the list. Figured I might as well resend them:
1
Philip Sandifer wrote:
Yep. Sucks, doesn't it? Unfortunately, if it's a consequence you're unwilling to accept in any circumstances, you should probably think twice about releasing your contributions under the GFDL.
That's not really much of a point: all the GFDL does is say that as long as the downstream users of the information comply with the GFDL, they won't be violating copyright. Even if my contributions were 100% public domain, editing them in such a way to say something about me that was untrue and damaging to my reputation would still be libel, and still be illegal.
GFDL does not make libel legal. It just makes the libelous edit not a violation of copyright. So GFDL is irrelevant to this issue.
What -is- an issue is which portions of the database are made available for download for sites wanting a copy of Wikipedia's article base to start from. And the User space and pages containing user discussion are of little use to Non-Wikipedia sites, while being potentially problematic for Wikipedia users.
-- Jake Nelson
2
Philip Sandifer wrote:
Except that the GFDL mandates that we distribute transparent copies of everything - if we did not distribute transparent copies of the userpages, we would violate the GFDL.
The GFDL only requires you either distribute, or provide a network address location for, Transparent copies if you distribute more than 100 Opaque copies. So besides legal quibbling about how many "copies" of Wikipedia we're distributing, there's the matter of whether or not Wikipedia user pages on the site are Opaque...
The GFDL says that standards-conforming HTML and XML with a publicly available DTD are considered Transparent. So it could legitimately be said that the Wikipedia User pages, /on the website/, not in a DB dump, are available in a transparent format.
Besides, I never said that we had to make it impossible to download the user space, just that it needn't be in the default dump for downstream users/content mirrors. If it's argued that the user pages as they are on the site aren't Transparent (which they are), providing a link to where the full dump can be had would keep us in compliance with the GFDL.
-- Jake Nelson
On 12/24/05, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 24, 2005, at 1:38 AM, Jake Nelson wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
While I sympathise with your feelings, I don't see the problem here. You signed up with Wikipedia and someone copies your signup information on a copy of Wikipedia. So what?
It's a real issue, especially with the search & replace the Nazipedia did. Say I had the following text on my userpage:
I have been an administrator on Wikipedia since 2003.
On the Nazipedia, it would say:
I have been an administrator on Nazipedia since 2003.
Yep. Sucks, doesn't it? Unfortunately, if it's a consequence you're unwilling to accept in any circumstances, you should probably think twice about releasing your contributions under the GFDL.
-Phil Sandifer
Surely there's something wrong with taking someone's words and materially changing them while still attributing the words to that person. I have to believe it's illegal too, and not because of copyright law (such a simple sentence as "I have been an administrator on Wikipedia since 2003" can't be copyrighted anyway). You mention libel laws, and they'd probably be relevant.
Anyway, the problem here seems to be that Nazipedia is making these changes to the user pages, not that the database of user pages are out there in the first place.
All that said, I agree that it'd be nice to at least have the option to download just the articles (I guess you'd have to include the templates and maybe some other spaces too). It should probably even be the default. I suspect the reason this isn't provided is simply that no one has bothered to create these dumps.
Does anyone know a free way to host a torrent?
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 12/24/05, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 24, 2005, at 1:38 AM, Jake Nelson wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
While I sympathise with your feelings, I don't see the problem here. You signed up with Wikipedia and someone copies your signup information on a copy of Wikipedia. So what?
It's a real issue, especially with the search & replace the Nazipedia did. Say I had the following text on my userpage:
I have been an administrator on Wikipedia since 2003.
On the Nazipedia, it would say:
I have been an administrator on Nazipedia since 2003.
Yep. Sucks, doesn't it? Unfortunately, if it's a consequence you're unwilling to accept in any circumstances, you should probably think twice about releasing your contributions under the GFDL.
-Phil Sandifer
Surely there's something wrong with taking someone's words and materially changing them while still attributing the words to that person. I have to believe it's illegal too, and not because of copyright law (such a simple sentence as "I have been an administrator on Wikipedia since 2003" can't be copyrighted anyway). You mention libel laws, and they'd probably be relevant.
Anyway, the problem here seems to be that Nazipedia is making these changes to the user pages, not that the database of user pages are out there in the first place.
I thought that issue had been solved already; after the Nazipedia regexed Wikipedia, a group of technical-minded people went around and inserted HTML comments in the wikitext to make it harder to do that.
Have they done it again?
Philip Sandifer wrote:
I have been an administrator on Nazipedia since 2003.
Yep. Sucks, doesn't it? Unfortunately, if it's a consequence you're unwilling to accept in any circumstances, you should probably think twice about releasing your contributions under the GFDL.
Even so, we could do more to discourage it by not including the user pages in the standard dumps.
--jimbo
On 12/29/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Philip Sandifer wrote:
I have been an administrator on Nazipedia since 2003.
Yep. Sucks, doesn't it? Unfortunately, if it's a consequence you're unwilling to accept in any circumstances, you should probably think twice about releasing your contributions under the GFDL.
Even so, we could do more to discourage it by not including the user pages in the standard dumps.
We already offer a dump that's almost specifically made for mirrors, the _articles dump which is the smallest of the lot and doesn't include user pages. I don't see why anyone interested in hosting a mirror wouldn't grab that as it's the smallest of them all and the only one you'd really care about if you wanted to host a mirror of the article namespace.
I personally don't think "Sucks, don't it?" is the right answer here.
Two possible solutions, neither very easy, come to mind:
1. Make database dumps include user data material OPTIONALLY. Most people replicating our content have no need and probably no interest in such pages, but they don't have an option when doing a dump. But filtering by namespace would probably require a far more sophisticated dumping script than we currently use.
2. Add a clause to our license somelike the the ones that certain CC licenses have, that allow someone to be REMOVED from an author list of a re-user if they request it. For example, if I wrote an essay about the Holocaust and released under CC-BY-SA, I would not be helpless if someone took it, changed its wording in a few places to turn it into a Holocaust denial piece, and re-published it. Now, I couldn't tell them not to print the piece -- I did, after all, release it to public use and I that means I accept the fact that it could be used in ways I don't approve -- but I could force them to take my name off of it as an author.
If the two of these were implemented, it would solve a lot of things. Of course at least point number two could not be done lightly and would take a lot of thinking out by people who know about such things, and it would probably also require the ability in Mediawiki to remove individual author names from edit histories.
I don't think my name should have to be attached to things which are used in ways radically different than how I intended them or would want to be associated with. I happy with people using the content itself however they want -- that's part of the free-content deal -- but that doesn't necessitate claiming me as an active collaborator with their derivative work if I'd rather not be associated with it.
FF
On 12/24/05, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 24, 2005, at 1:38 AM, Jake Nelson wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
While I sympathise with your feelings, I don't see the problem here. You signed up with Wikipedia and someone copies your signup information on a copy of Wikipedia. So what?
It's a real issue, especially with the search & replace the Nazipedia did. Say I had the following text on my userpage:
I have been an administrator on Wikipedia since 2003.
On the Nazipedia, it would say:
I have been an administrator on Nazipedia since 2003.
Yep. Sucks, doesn't it? Unfortunately, if it's a consequence you're unwilling to accept in any circumstances, you should probably think twice about releasing your contributions under the GFDL.
-Phil Sandifer
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/30/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
I personally don't think "Sucks, don't it?" is the right answer here.
Two possible solutions, neither very easy, come to mind:
- Make database dumps include user data material OPTIONALLY. Most people
replicating our content have no need and probably no interest in such pages, but they don't have an option when doing a dump. But filtering by namespace would probably require a far more sophisticated dumping script than we currently use.
We already do that, see my previous reply, and we already filter by namespace for that dump.
- Add a clause to our license somelike the the ones that certain CC
licenses have, that allow someone to be REMOVED from an author list of a
Read the license we use, this is not a practical option as we can't change it.
The license does say that new versions of the GFDL can come out in the same spirit. Now whether we have the ability to do that or whether that is something we'd have to lobby for with the FSF, I don't know. But I don't think that the option I've suggested is in any way out of the spirit of the original license. It does not at all reduce the "freedom" of the content. I imagine it is the sort of feature that wouldn't have been obvious for people making software as compared to people making an encyclopedia.
I'm also aware that many people seem to think that one can multi-license in certain cases. Again, I'm not a legal expert in licenses or copyrights or anything else but it seems to me that some sort of arrangement could probably be discovered if some capable people meditated on it for awhile.
FF
On 12/30/05, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/30/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
I personally don't think "Sucks, don't it?" is the right answer here.
Two possible solutions, neither very easy, come to mind:
- Make database dumps include user data material OPTIONALLY. Most
people
replicating our content have no need and probably no interest in such
pages,
but they don't have an option when doing a dump. But filtering by
namespace
would probably require a far more sophisticated dumping script than we currently use.
We already do that, see my previous reply, and we already filter by namespace for that dump.
- Add a clause to our license somelike the the ones that certain CC
licenses have, that allow someone to be REMOVED from an author list of a
Read the license we use, this is not a practical option as we can't change it.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l