On 8/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: I would put it like this: relying exclusively on primary sources doesn't give you much room to move without straying into original research. A good secondary source (they must exist for this topic) would give this article a solid base to stand on. Steve

Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote: So using a picture from the secondary source would be somehow more free than using a screen capture? If one draws from a Star Trek Encyclopedia, comparing what is said there with the original source is still important. How else are you going to know whether the Encyclopedia information is accurate? I seriously question the notion that using material from the original movie or book is original research. The original research was done by the author of the book. Ec

jayjg wrote: On TV. In the case of Star Trek in particular they've also been published on DVD. NOR explicitly allows the use of primary sources, which as far as I can tell a broadcast or DVD showing of a television episode is. The "is a TV episode a primary source?" debate was in full swing back when I left on vacation a couple weeks ago, good to see it wasn't resolved behind my back. :)

On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Copyright infringement? I don't know what you're talking about, I never mentioned copyright infringement. Um, you might not be aware of just how many crackpots there are that insist that the facts printed in books are wrong. Published in what sense? Huh? Writing a work of fiction is not "original research". Writing *about* a work of fiction *is* original research. When the authors of the Star Trek encyclopedia write about the series, they are engaging in original research. Ray, how could putting words in my mouth that you clearly know I don't mean help further a discussion? Jay.

On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Someone else. Sigh. Original research. Made public and being published are not synonyms. I have no idea what you're talking about any more. Novelists write novels. An encyclopedia is a secondary source, filled with original research. Jay.

Ray Saintonge wrote: <snip> That was me, and it's not a red herring. Every time we claim "fair use" on an image, it is because the image is not Free; that means, we are infringing someone's copyright. "Fair use" is something which exists under US law (presumably several others, but it's US law that we rely on) which we use to justify that infringement; I was making the point that with things like screenshots, we have to be careful that our claims are in fact fair and valid. -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

On 14/08/06, Bryan Derksen &lt;bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca&gt; wrote: Well, we're not infringing their copyright until it's ruled we are. The problem with "fair use" is that it's not a licence, it's a legal *defence*. i.e., if someone wants to sue us for quoting their copyrighted work or using their copyrighted picture, they can do so and we may win or not. If their case is egregiously overreaching, we would be likely to get attorneys' fees from them - and then we also have a LOT of friends on the Internet who would see an obviously egregious case of overreaching and throw a bit of cash our way and bury the plaintiff in oppobrium. If it's *not* egregiously overreaching, the Foundation has a decision to make on whether it's worth pursuing the issue on principle, e.g. a screencap for purposes of encyclopedic discussion is likely absolutely minimal copying and just the sort of thing the "fair use" doctrine is for. Same for a book cover in an article about the book. The tricky bit with fair use is that it's the use that is fair (or not), not the presence of the image. This is why IMO fair use image pages should list the articles they are fair use in, possibly with a detailed rationale (which we have for many via the various fair use templates). The reason to continue with fair use is that enclosure of culture by copyright to the point where it seriously hampers people talking about the subjects is odious. This particularly applies in the case of an encyclopedia, which is an example of the sort of thing fair use is for. (I think I have all that right ... corrections welcomed.) - d.

G'day Ray, I can confirm that non-canon but official publications have been known to get things wrong from time-to-time. It's been a while since I hung out on the geekier side of USENET and listened to more financially well-off (i.e. able to afford such publications and all the eps on video etc.) Trekkies whinge, but I'm sure there's plenty of examples out there (maybe Trekkies on this list who can call up a few examples of their own?) Also, I'm not too sure how a Paramount-commissioned book becomes a "secondary source". When it describes stuff that doesn't actually appear in the episodes --- the standard non-canon starship specs, explanations for plot holes, etc. --- it's not a secondary source, as such, is it? It's a primary source. And when it describes stuff that's already appeared in the episodes, how is it more a secondary source than another episode? Let's say Captain Picard is captured by the Borg and forced to become their Official Spokesdroid to the Federation (far-fetched, I know, but it could happen). We'll call that episode "BOBW1". In a later episode, let's call it "BOBW2", Deanna Troi mentions that the Spokesdroid "sounds kinda stressed; probably that's Picard's mind suffering under the transformation the Borg subjected him to in BOBW1". A year later, the "/Star Trek: The Next Generation/ Yearbook" is released, and it describes, going into a LOT of non-canon detail, exactly what happened to Picard. Let's play "spot the source-related buzzword". Now, BOBW1 is a primary source, right? So basing an article on sitting down in front of the telly with some popcorns and a few mates who happen to love MST3k counts as "original research". However, reading through the Yearbook is *not* original research, since that's a "secondary source". Now, at what point does the Yearbook stop being a primary and become a secondary source? Is it the point where it starts regurgitating information already available by simply watching the episodes? If so, why is BOBW2 not a secondary source? What does this mean for programmes like /Babylon 5/, which (mostly) eschew standalone episodes? Not clear as day *as such*. A common misconception, and one that causes many copyright issues, is that screencaps are completely separate from the films from which they were taken. How often do we see film screencaps uploaded to Wikipedia with the uploader feeling justified in saying "self-made work, I release it under CC-BY-SA" because he went to all the trouble of pressing PrtScr on his keyboard? In such an environment, I wouldn't be getting too snarky at someone who got the idea that screencaps had to be separately published before we could refer to them. We're so oriented towards text and still pictures, it's hard to remember that screen caps are just us taking part of an existing, published and copyrighted film (much like copying and pasting text from a book, or cropping a photograph). It's a prefectly natural mistake. Err, not sure I'd go that far. My approach, which will surely have certain list members (if anyone bothers to scroll down this far) groaning and clutching at their foreheads, is: fuck policy. Or, to put it another way, "adopt a purposive and commonsense-oriented approach designed to increase flexibility and allow in-depth tailoring of resources towards specific project needs" (but I prefer "fuck policy", because it's shorter). The original research policy can be summarised as: "don't make shit up". Since a small but significant proportion of the editors who fall afoul of this policy don't tend to think of their activities as "making shit up"[0], we had to craft a new stick with a nail in it (sorry, "policy") and write "WP:NOR" on the side[1]. NOR exists to deal with physics crackpots and the like; however, in our enthusiasm to follow policy, however poorly-written, to the letter, we trip over ourselves to explain that articles on TV programmes must be deleted, Jimbo Wales can't advertise his own birthday, diagrams must be copied from textbooks, and high-quality GFDL pictures from amateur photographer Wikipedians cannot be accepted. I haven't read the /Star Trek/ uniforms article, but I can see several ways such an article could be written in a way that *isn't* in contravention of the spirit of the principle whilst still falling afoul of the letter of the policy. And in such cases, frankly: fuck policy. [0] Who can forget the LaRouchite's failed (but entertaining, in a teeth-grinding sort of way) attempts to argue that Chip Berlet's contributions were "original research" because he's also an investigative journalist (or something of that kidney)? [1] A similar procedure with "don't be a dick" led to WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

mboverload wrote: Quotes are factual (somebody said them), and facts cannot be copyrighted. A screenshot is one of several thousand (~= 24 * 60 * 45) copyrighted images, a story, the characters in the story, and an audio track which make up an episode of a TV show. -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

Bryan Derksen wrote: Filmed commercials (the most shameful of Canadian inventions) would face other hurdles besides copyright: -Is it notable? -Is it encyclopedic? -Is it spam? -Is it NPOV? Over the years some commercials have become creative classics in their own right. Ec

On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge &lt;saintonge(a)telus.net&gt; wrote: Ray, do you imagine that this kind of rudeness is helpful? Jay.

Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote: What I was saying was that the copyright issue is irrelevant to the original research issue. A quote taken directly from a novel or indirectly from an encyclopedia is still the same quote. Its copyright status, whether fair use or not, remains the same. It's no different for a picture. While the encyclopedia may very well present that it is a fact that the novel said what it said, this kind of meta-factual process does not change the nature of what is quoted. It is not justification for characterizing the clear application of fair use as something else. I did not say that quotes were copyrightable; you cannot claim copyright on something that is already copyright by someone else, or is in the public domain. I said, "...unless the work is in the public domain the use of any quotation from it is an example of fair use" Wikiquote can exist because of fair use. Ec

On 8/13/06, mboverload &lt;mboverload(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: The accuracy of a quote in a book can easily be verified by going to a library and looking it up; often the quotes can even be found online. How does one verify the accuracy of a screencap? Jay.

On 8/13/06, Matt Brown &lt;morven(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 24 frames per second, times 2 hours? That works out to over 170,000 frames. Is the fact-checker supposed to skip through a frame at a time? And even then how can one assure that the screencap hasn't been altered in some subtle way? And then one must actually describe what one sees in the screencap, which, of course, is open to many different interpretations (i.e. original research). With a quotation, it's quite simple - get the book, open up to the page number listed, and read a couple of hundred words. Do the words in the article match what's in the book? Verified. In my view *all* screencaps are effectively unverifiable. Jay.

On 8/13/06, maru dubshinki &lt;marudubshinki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Proper footnotes give the exact edition, and date. The Bible is usually considered a primary source, and many differing versions of quotations are all acceptable. If one wants to build some sort of claim or theory based on those quotes, that would be, of course, original research, and one would have to use some secondary or tertiary source discussing that theory instead. Why would one have to, unless one was trying to build a novel theory? And if one was doing so, then that would be original research. Assuming one is not trying to build a novel theory, any quotation from any version would do in general, so long as it is properly attributed. In fact, the exact opposite. What "tool" actually does the verification - does one compare pixels between the original and the uploaded version? Jay.

geni wrote: For an example of a project that is still in its early stages see http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible/Obadiah/1/19 Ec

On 14/08/06, Matt Brown &lt;morven(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: No, that's not what 'verifiable' means. It's like deleting a book reference from an article because it's out of print and your own library doesn't happen to have it. - d.

Im not exactly the most citatious Wikipedian, but nor do I have any tendency to make claims which arent easily verifiable. Over the years though Ive encountered a number of Wikipedians (I wont name names) who abuse or violate a clean interpretation of CIVIL by referring to CITE or V as a basis for what is essentially ownership of an article; in the form of a revert, rather than a constructive edit, correction, or (gasp!) a collaborative and helpful attempt to find a source. Im not sure on the stats, but it is my impression that this demand for verifiability is 1) deletionistic 2) one sided, and not applied to one's own person and 3) comes with some attached notion of "reliable sources" by which material from any deemed "unreliable" sources can be deleted. Thats the topic. Discuss. Wikilove, -Stevertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On Aug 14, 2006, at 11:04 AM, stevertigo wrote: That is certainly the subtext of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/ His excellency. Nothing met the standards of the POV editors. Fred

Matt Brown wrote: In many cases, the issue is further complicated by the question of exactly _how_ a source is used. Consider a claim: "X is Y" 1. "X is Y"<1> --- that is, we assert the claim, using the authority of the cite as a reason, with the cite being to, for example, the New York Times. Usually this is fine if the claim is not really controversial. 2. "According to the New York Times, X is Y" --- we do not assert the claim, but rather assert something which is much less controversial, i.e. that the NYT said so, leaving the reader to judge it. This is much better when the claim is controversial. 3. "X is Y"<2> --- we assert the claim, only this time, the source is the Weekly World News (a tabloid of perhaps questionable authority). Very bad. 4. "According to the Weekly World News, X is Y" -- less bad, but probably still awful in most contexts And the NYT and Weekly World News are both more or less easy cases. The difficult cases are partisan publications writing "factually" about political events, and things of that nature. --Jimbo

--- Jimmy Wales &lt;jwales(a)wikia.com&gt; wrote: Right. There are plenty of out unreliable "reliable sources" out there (The Pentagon, etc.). Even after tracing back --from blog to local TV page to major news media to an anonymous source somewhere high up in the Eskimo government --even deriving an "original source" is often just linking to some political page with somebody's claims and interpretations on it. As I said before sources are often just claims and interpretations, and virtually none of it is "facts." So why should Wikipedia expect to be a higher standard? And of we want to introduce some value judgements about who's interpretations are more correct, we need to understand that such is often too close to POV to deal with without some broader editorial policy (and heirarchy). The case in point which brought me to post the thread had nothing to do with particular claims though, and had everything to do with OWN (incivil abuse of reverts) with regard to how certain material is presented: as somebody's clinical interpretation, or or as an actual human-readable explanation of a human event or concept. Calls to CITE are too often just smokescreen for a weak or incivil or POV argument, and if you do give a source (some famous intellectual, for example), they say "get a real source" (a 'The Pentagon' spokeswoman for example.) I pay no attention to such calls for "CITE." The way I interpret that policy is simply as a "give us something, anything" (to click on) policy --it does'nt establish *veracity* (just as reading the lede to [[Truth]] doesnt inspire one to read any more of the article) but it does give people something to click on and feel good about the truthiness of the spun interpretation of facts they are reading. A claims X, B claims Y, C claims Z, [some links at the bottom] is about as good as it gets for any news source at any particular snapshot of time. The "higher standard" is NPOV, not veracity. -SV __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

--- Ray Saintonge &lt;saintonge(a)telus.net&gt; wrote: Youre such an Inclusionazi Ray, ;) -SV __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm &lt;macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I feel the same way, but I think that reverts arent so much as "harsh action" as they are "incivil inaction." Thats a big difference IMHO. --- Steve Summit &lt;scs(a)eskimo.com&gt; wrote: So are you saying AGF (a subpolicy of CIVIL, (predecessor too, actually)) is out the window too? --- Matt Brown &lt;morven(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Do you agree then that 'beating one's opponents with a club' violates WP:CIVIL? -SV : Wikipedia:Policy difecta : "If its not NPOV or CIVIL, is crap." __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On 14/08/06, stevertigo &lt;vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: Er, what on earth? An RFC existing in existential space with no actual signers or detailed conflict? On two editors who agree on lots and don't agree on lots? Is this an attempt to outdo [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tony Sidaway 3]] for sheer artistic wonder? - d.

On 15/08/06, stevertigo &lt;vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: Assuming good faith does not go so far as to say that we assume perfection of edits. As long as the person is civil and not abusive of the editor who put in the unverified statement it should fit within all the policies. Peter Ansell

On 15/08/06, stevertigo &lt;vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: If what you are refering to is bullying of users than I definitely do not agree to it happening. However, this situation has to be contrasted against the fact that Wikipedia should only contain what someone can verify using outside sources. Making Wikipedia into anything else is not what it was designed to be, and from the viewpoint of the reverters they are simply keeping Wikipedia in a verifiable (or at least noting where verification is needed) state. Using obtuse references to policies is not what I would say referring to the Verifiability policy is. I would say that a direct reference to a core policy, which when stated objectively does not go against the civility policy. Peter Ansell

On 14/08/06, stevertigo &lt;vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: e.g. the War on Blogs, wherein some editors have got it into their heads that ALL BLOGS ARE EVIL AND MUST NEVER BE USED IN REFERENCES rather than e.g. regarding them as, say, lesser sources than peer-reviewed academic papers and assuming the reader can read. The response to crap sources is to say "those are crap sources, cut it out" rather than countering foolishness with foolishness. On non-contentious topics, the right way to do it would be to shift it to the talk page for discussion and an attempt at sourcing, e.g. the stuff on the early [[Casio Exilim]]s being crap in low light is observed by a pile of Exilim owners (e.g. me) but I can't find a good source - so out it goes as original research, but it's on the talk page should I or someone find something verifiable showing this to be an issue. On contentious topics, there is good reason to be hard-arsed about sources. But that doesn't mean you go overboard and legalistic because someone who hates blogs edit-warred that wording into WP:V. - d.

On 14/08/06, stevertigo &lt;vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: No indeed it doesn't, and you should always warm the pot when making tea.# (i.e. I have no idea how your comment follows from what I wrote.) - d.

It's obvious why, isn't it? Editors hide behind policy in order to hide their ulterior motives when they have an agenda......this is why we have the "Ignore all rules" corollary, to protect the integrity of the encyclopedia when policy threatens to compromise it.

On 8/14/06, Matt Brown &lt;morven(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: To follow up to my own posting, one of my concerns about pushing too hard about 'reliable sources' is that it discourages people from sourcing AT ALL and encourages mis-sourcing. -Matt

I think it's most useful to detect original research and speculation. For example, in [[Colonization of Mars]], I noticed two recent additions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colonization_of_Mars&diff=669… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colonization_of_Mars&diff=669…) that weren't common knowledge and I was wondering where the heck they found this information. I added the dreaded {{fact}} template: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colonization_of_Mars&diff=670… Another editor found the sources and put it in. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colonization_of_Mars&diff=670… I don't see how this would be the actions of a CITE Nazi, and indeed, it prevented me from simply reverting the two additions. On 8/14/06, stevertigo &lt;vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote:

On 8/14/06, Death Phoenix &lt;originaldeathphoenix(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: <snip> You've got it in one. Asking for references is one thing - and a good thing, often. Reverting what is probably an accurate addition out of sheer bloody mindedness is another thing altogether... Steve

On 15/08/06, Dabljuh &lt;dabljuh(a)gmx.net&gt; wrote: http://www.wikinfo.org/ I think a better idea is to write NPOV articles, not to mess up the encyclopedia to appease those editors who are here to push a POV. So why not do this elsewhere, rather than using Wikipedia's name? - d.

--- Dabljuh &lt;dabljuh(a)gmx.net&gt; wrote: I think this is a valid point. The rest however fails float test, if only because having twenty articles about the same thing is as pointless as anything Ive ever heard. The proplem is ownership, how does instituting *formal ownership* solve that problem? Somebody mentioned Wikinfo, which IIRC splits its articles according different general points of view. That's at least workable and in extreme cases might resemble our /draft method, but ultimately the goal is integration according to NPOV. A lot of people can't handle that basic old NPOV rule which is why we have citenazis in the first place. Cite, V, etc. are part of a static model of Wikipedia which strives for "perfection" but fails to the dynamic communal process by which we built the Wikipedia to begin with. At one point, our most sophisticated policy after NPOV was the "leave something for people to do" guideline. Wikipedia of course has a bigger "ownership problem" than just the ownership of articles. -Stevertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On 16/08/06, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: In that particular case, I also like what actually happened: activists put out calls to action on mailing lists to push a POV, and ... a lot of the people came to Wikipedia, liked what they saw and started contributing with a view to NPOV. Informed by their POV, but not under its spell. The perennial proposals to run article forks seem to me to embrace pathological behaviour. Most articles really aren't problematic. - d.

On 16/08/06, Dabljuh &lt;dabljuh(a)gmx.net&gt; wrote: Yeah, but I'm entirely unconvinced the result, even in the pathological cases, would be better for the reader. The previous example you gave - anti-circumcision activism - was dealt with not by forking the articles, but by dealing with the problem editors. Since they were the problem. Editors who can't cope with having to work effectively with people of a different POV really shouldn't be editing while they can't cope with it. In cases like Israel-Palestine, the article conflict won't be solved unless and until the real-world conflict is solved, and even then. Probably it needs a permanent "current event" tag ;-) I'm really not convinced that examples like this warrant throwing away NPOV. I really think NPOV is Wikipedia's secret sauce. Not just the wiki editing model - NPOV is the radically new thing Wikpedia does in terms of the actual content. - d.

On 16/08/06, Dabljuh &lt;dabljuh(a)gmx.net&gt; wrote: You keep writing suggesting this. But the fact is, intentionally POV-forked articles are simply never going to exist on the Wikipedia project. The culture just won't accept it; the basic operating rules just won't extend to it. If you feel it is so essential, please feel free to take the database, fork it, and go work on another project. But continually harping on about forked! articles! solution! to! all! problems! achieves nothing. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:26:56 +0200 "Steve Bennett" &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Disagree. An article is an argument (a presentation thereof) and two people editing the same article is like two people talking at the same time, never letting the other ever talk. With two separate articles, there is of course still interaction - but now, the two people are trying to outdo each other who has the better article. Think about THAT.

Mark Gallagher wrote: Excellent! I'm glad to read that classical Australian bullshit detection is alive and well. :-) Ec

On 8/11/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm &lt;macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Oh, I interpreted the "using a book is not canonical" to mean "using a Star Trek novel is not describing the same universe as the TV series". What you said is definitely correct. Steve