http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/editor-of-wired-apologizes-...
Chris Anderson, the author, summarized the situation in two words: "Mea culpa."
Your thoughts?
William King (Willking1979)
Wired also used one of my featured picture restorations without credit.
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:15 PM, William King williamcarlking@gmail.comwrote:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/editor-of-wired-apologizes-...
Chris Anderson, the author, summarized the situation in two words: "Mea culpa."
Your thoughts?
William King (Willking1979)
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2009/6/24 Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com:
Wired also used one of my featured picture restorations without credit.
Credit for the original, or credit for the restoration?
- d.
Slight correction. It was Time Magazine that ran my Brandeis restoration uncredited. The one Wired ran uncredited was the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/dayintech_0418
Wired gives sole credit to the original source: *Image: H.D. Chadwick/National Archives and Records Administration* * *
Here's my restoration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sfearthquake3b.jpg
The unrestored version: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sfearthquake3.jpg
Any suggestions what to do about this?
-Lise
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:57 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/6/24 Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com:
Wired also used one of my featured picture restorations without credit.
Credit for the original, or credit for the restoration?
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Well, taking a first stab at this. Here's my letter to Wired: ----
Per the recent New York Times admission that one of your editors plagiarized content from Wikipedia uncredited, I respectfully request credit for media work of mine that Wired has reproduced without credit.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/editor-of-wired-apologizes-...
This reproduces a photograph in the digitally restored version I generated through painstaking restoration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sfearthquake3b.jpg
My restoration of this image was selected as a "featured picture", which designates Wikipedia's best content. It ran on Wikipedia's main page on 16 March 2008: one month before your uncredited reproduction of my volunteer labor.
I seek no compensation other than credit. Please post credit as follows: "Restoration by Lise Broer (Durova)".
Thank you very much,
Lise Broer
San Diego, California.
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
Slight correction. It was Time Magazine that ran my Brandeis restoration uncredited. The one Wired ran uncredited was the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/dayintech_0418
Wired gives sole credit to the original source: *Image: H.D. Chadwick/National Archives and Records Administration* * *
Here's my restoration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sfearthquake3b.jpg
The unrestored version: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sfearthquake3.jpg
Any suggestions what to do about this?
-Lise
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:57 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/6/24 Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com:
Wired also used one of my featured picture restorations without credit.
Credit for the original, or credit for the restoration?
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
As a brief aside, when you sign up at wired, they send you a verification email. In that verification email... they paste your password. Bizarre. You'd think something like "Wired" would be a bit more security conscious than to do that.
-----Original Message----- From: Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, Jun 24, 2009 3:28 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] NY Times: Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book
Well, taking a first stab at this. Here's my letter to Wired: ----
Per the recent New York Times admission that one of your editors plagiarized content from Wikipedia uncredited, I respectfully request credit for media work of mine that Wired has reproduced without credit.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/editor-of-wired-apologizes-...
This reproduces a photograph in the digitally restored version I generated through painstaking restoration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sfearthquake3b.jpg
My restoration of this image was selected as a "featured picture", which designates Wikipedia's best content. It ran on Wikipedia's main page on 16 March 2008: one month before your uncredited reproduction of my volunteer labor.
I seek no compensation other than credit. Please post credit as follows: "Restoration by Lise Broer (Durova)".
Thank you very much,
Lise Broer
San Diego, California.
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
Slight correction. It was Time Magazine that ran my Brandeis
restoration
uncredited. The one Wired ran uncredited was the San Francisco
Earthquake
of 1906.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/dayintech_0418
Wired gives sole credit to the original source: *Image: H.D. Chadwick/National Archives and Records Administration* *
*
Here's my restoration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sfearthquake3b.jpg
The unrestored version: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sfearthquake3.jpg
Any suggestions what to do about this?
-Lise
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:57 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
wrote:
2009/6/24 Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com:
Wired also used one of my featured picture restorations without
credit.
Credit for the original, or credit for the restoration?
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- http://durova.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2009/6/24 Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com:
Well, taking a first stab at this. Here's my letter to Wired: Per the recent New York Times admission that one of your editors plagiarized content from Wikipedia uncredited, I respectfully request credit for media work of mine that Wired has reproduced without credit.
Restoration is painstaking work on behalf of the cultural commons and well worth encouraging and crediting.
It's a different question whether it can use the same big stick of copyright that CC or GFDL can. Possibly not in the US, per Bridgeman vs Corel. (Though any actual statement on the subject would have to be in court.)
I would expect that asking nicely and encouraging credit of restorers is the best that can be done at this stage, and that it strikes me as worth doing.
I'm not entirely sure that I'd agree that not crediting a restorer (when crediting the original) would count as "plagiarism." That's a different kettle of fish, I think.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
2009/6/24 Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com:
Well, taking a first stab at this. Here's my letter to Wired: Per the recent New York Times admission that one of your editors plagiarized content from Wikipedia uncredited, I respectfully request credit for media work of mine that Wired has reproduced without credit.
Restoration is painstaking work on behalf of the cultural commons and well worth encouraging and crediting.
It's a different question whether it can use the same big stick of copyright that CC or GFDL can. Possibly not in the US, per Bridgeman vs Corel. (Though any actual statement on the subject would have to be in court.)
I would expect that asking nicely and encouraging credit of restorers is the best that can be done at this stage, and that it strikes me as worth doing.
I'm not entirely sure that I'd agree that not crediting a restorer (when crediting the original) would count as "plagiarism." That's a different kettle of fish, I think.
I agree. But on the moral rights angle, it does breach the inalienable right of paternity to a work. Paternity is there even for modifications.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
On Wednesday 24 June 2009, Durova wrote:
This file says its in the public domain.
[[ Permission (Reusing this image) Public domain ]]
[[ This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code. See Copyright. ... ]]
"This file says its in the public domain."
Yes Joe but. Durova's point, with which I agree, is that they improperly cited their source. They lifted the picture *from* Wikipedia, and then cited the underlying source. This normally implies "I actually went to the source and viewed the image directly there." Which Durova has shown they did not. In scholarship that is considered a no-no.? You must cite the source *YOU* actually used, not the source your source used.
Will Johnson
-----Original Message----- From: Joseph Reagle To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, Jun 24, 2009 4:06 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] NY Times: Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book
On Wednesday 24 June 2009, Durova wrote:
This file says its in the public domain.
[[ Permission (Reusing this image) Public domain ]]
[[ This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code. See Copyright. ... ]]
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Thursday 25 June 2009, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Yes Joe but. Durova's point, with which I agree, is that they improperly cited their source. They lifted the picture *from* Wikipedia, and then cited the underlying source. This normally implies "I actually went to the source and viewed the image directly there." Which Durova has shown they did not. In scholarship that is considered a no-no.? You must cite the source *YOU* actually used, not the source your source used.
True enough, and my point about Public Domain is really about copyright, and Durova's point was about plagiarism and credit. So I missed the mark. However, had I more carefully responded I would have expressed that I think I would've made the same mistake Wired made. I would've seen "oh, this is in the public domain" and "oh, here is the source" and "and there's the author" and gone happily on my way. My trusty copy of Chicago Manual of Style (15th) similarly only concerns itself with permissions for copyrighted illustrations and images. Plus, there's no "cite this page" links there to provide guidance. The "Reusing this image" link similarly says nothing.
So I expect this is in part a matter of education, and so we be very clear about we would want such things to be credited. Is this a mutual credit, does the second credit go to Durova or Wikipedia? (There's so much info on that page, it's quite easy to get confused.)
One would *hope* (although I'm not sure I expect it) that a writer at Wired would know how to properly cite a primary reference through a secondary citation.? I don't think this is an issue with our page, it is standard practice when citing.? Some people are sloppy I agree, but when found out they should be also called out.? I expect that they probably just thought they could "get away with it".? Lucky they have people like me to give them a slap-down ;)
Will
-----Original Message----- From: Joseph Reagle reagle@mit.edu To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: wjhonson@aol.com Sent: Thu, Jun 25, 2009 2:38 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] NY Times: Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book
On Thursday 25 June 2009, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Yes Joe but. Durova's point, with which I agree, is that they improperly cited their
source.
They lifted the picture *from* Wikipedia, and then cited the underlying
source.
This normally implies "I actually went to the source and viewed the image
directly there."
Which Durova has shown they did not. In scholarship that is considered a no-no.? You must cite the source *YOU*
actually used, not the source your source used.
True enough, and my point about Public Domain is really about copyright, and Durova's point was about plagiarism and credit. So I missed the mark. However, had I more carefully responded I would have expressed that I think I would've made the same mistake Wired made. I would've seen "oh, this is in the public domain" and "oh, here is the source" and "and there's the author" and gone happily on my way. My trusty copy of Chicago Manual of Style (15th) similarly only concerns itself with permissions for copyrighted illustrations and images. Plus, there's no "cite this page" links there to provide guidance. The "Reusing this image" link similarly says nothing.
So I expect this is in part a matter of education, and so we be very clear about we would want such things to be credited. Is this a mutual credit, does the second credit go to Durova or Wikipedia? (There's so much info on that page, it's quite easy to get confused.)
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Durovanadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
Any suggestions what to do about this?
After my recent perusals of reuses of my images, here's my take:
No one is ever going to pay attention to, let alone understand, let alone respect, let alone follow the CC-BY or GFDL requirement for credit. Soon, we will stop asking for it.
In order for it to happen, we would have to: a) Make the requirement really really prominent b) Respect it ourselves c) Vehemently complain in a very public manner when a few individuals fail to do so.
when d) we have far bigger fish to fry.
I think ultimately most organisations divide media into two categories: properietary or free. We can certainly label all our material as proprietary and tell people not to reuse it. Or we can tell people they can reuse it. But our message of "please reuse it, but ...." is not going to get through.
And why do you care anyway? Vanity? Curiosity? Is it that important? Is a little piece of text on some idiot's webpage the difference between you contributing your time next time and not? Is the gratification of your name in cyberspace your primary motivation for producing useful free images?
(These questions are rhetorical and deliberately inflammatory. Take the bait with caution.)
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote: ...
And why do you care anyway? Vanity? Curiosity? Is it that important? Is a little piece of text on some idiot's webpage the difference between you contributing your time next time and not? Is the gratification of your name in cyberspace your primary motivation for producing useful free images?
(These questions are rhetorical and deliberately inflammatory. Take the bait with caution.)
A less ego bound reason* for wanting to see some acknowledgment - especially through a link to Wikipedia or the like - is that it is advocacy for the intellectual commons. This could encourage others to get involved or to consider making their content free.
Also if the importance of free content isn't widely understood it will be harder for policy makers to come to good decisions about laws or other public support that might impact it.
Siobhan
*Not that I think there's anything wrong with wanting to see your name in lights - vanity can be a big motivator.
2009/6/25 Siobhan Hansa helenseal@gmail.com:
Steve Bennett wrote:
And why do you care anyway? Vanity? Curiosity? Is it that important? Is a little piece of text on some idiot's webpage the difference between you contributing your time next time and not? Is the gratification of your name in cyberspace your primary motivation for producing useful free images? (These questions are rhetorical and deliberately inflammatory. Take the bait with caution.)
A less ego bound reason* for wanting to see some acknowledgment - especially through a link to Wikipedia or the like - is that it is advocacy for the intellectual commons. This could encourage others to get involved or to consider making their content free. Also if the importance of free content isn't widely understood it will be harder for policy makers to come to good decisions about laws or other public support that might impact it.
Yes. It will help the commons considerably for free content licenses to visibly be out there and acknowledged. And it's not onerous for a newspaper to print "Photo by xxxx, CC by-sa 3.0". Or even "Photo by xxx, restored by xxx," even if the restoration wouldn't generate a fresh copyright.
- d.
There's an importance to this which needs to be communicated better, and quickly. Most of the world's image archives are not openly accessible. As some of them open their doors, Flickr is competing with Commons to become the primary point of deposit. We risk a situation where WMF loses out on valuable institutional relationships and our volunteers glean the crumbs from a commercial site.
One of the arguments in favor of Wikimedia Commons is that we have a team of volunteers who restore historic material. There's a chance for the donating archive to get highlights from its collection designated as featured pictures, which run on the main page.
The fact that our restorations get reproduced in Time Magazine, in Wired, and elsewhere ought to be strengthening that argument. Credibility requires credit. We are competing against a well funded commercial enterprise for large institutional donations; we need every advantage we can muster.
-Durova
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 8:34 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/6/25 Siobhan Hansa helenseal@gmail.com:
Steve Bennett wrote:
And why do you care anyway? Vanity? Curiosity? Is it that important? Is a little piece of text on some idiot's webpage the difference between you contributing your time next time and not? Is the gratification of your name in cyberspace your primary motivation for producing useful free images? (These questions are rhetorical and deliberately inflammatory. Take the bait with caution.)
A less ego bound reason* for wanting to see some acknowledgment - especially through a link to Wikipedia or the like - is that it is advocacy for the intellectual commons. This could encourage others to get involved or to consider making their content free. Also if the importance of free content isn't widely understood it will be harder for policy makers to come to good decisions about laws or other public support that might impact it.
Yes. It will help the commons considerably for free content licenses to visibly be out there and acknowledged. And it's not onerous for a newspaper to print "Photo by xxxx, CC by-sa 3.0". Or even "Photo by xxx, restored by xxx," even if the restoration wouldn't generate a fresh copyright.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Steve Bennett wrote:
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Durovanadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
Any suggestions what to do about this?
After my recent perusals of reuses of my images, here's my take:
No one is ever going to pay attention to, let alone understand, let alone respect, let alone follow the CC-BY or GFDL requirement for credit. Soon, we will stop asking for it.
In order for it to happen, we would have to: a) Make the requirement really really prominent b) Respect it ourselves c) Vehemently complain in a very public manner when a few individuals fail to do so.
when d) we have far bigger fish to fry.
I think ultimately most organisations divide media into two categories: properietary or free. We can certainly label all our material as proprietary and tell people not to reuse it. Or we can tell people they can reuse it. But our message of "please reuse it, but ...." is not going to get through.
And why do you care anyway? Vanity? Curiosity? Is it that important? Is a little piece of text on some idiot's webpage the difference between you contributing your time next time and not? Is the gratification of your name in cyberspace your primary motivation for producing useful free images?
(These questions are rhetorical and deliberately inflammatory. Take the bait with caution.)
I won't take the bait. I will throw in a larger and tastier bait into the water instead. ;-)
Clearly we cannot take in GFDL only content any more, but to what extent if any, should we prevent people from adding in content previously published under CC-BY-SA?
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Steve Bennett wrote:
And why do you care anyway? Vanity? Curiosity? Is it that important? Is a little piece of text on some idiot's webpage the difference between you contributing your time next time and not? Is the gratification of your name in cyberspace your primary motivation for producing useful free images?
Heh, thinking about it, I *will* swallow the bait. :-)
Let me tell you a real story from my own life...
But before I do that, let me sort of eviscerate a bit of the rhetoric there above. "Primary motivation" is a bit of a red herring in terms of phrasing. There is absolutely no need for something to be a primary motivation, for it to be a net plus when put into the scales as to it's utility.
...but now to my tale:
I committed the cardinal sin of writing a little bit about the school I was attending at the time, albeit as staff, not as a student. And in my defence the school was one with a special mission (The Natural Sciences, to be clear).
One of the teachers in the school brought up the wikipedia article and who were in its history fully unprompted by me, while we and some other people were at the coffee table. I sort of mentioned the last editor she mentioned, was me.
I did not make my initial edit to the article because I thought somebody in the school would be impressed, but when she clearly showed she was sort of impressed to find out the editor was me, I have to admit, I do feel a sort of heightened responsibility for that article and am definitely motivated to look after it.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
---- "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
After my recent perusals of reuses of my images, here's my take:
No one is ever going to pay attention to, let alone understand, let alone respect, let alone follow the CC-BY or GFDL requirement for credit. Soon, we will stop asking for it.
In order for it to happen, we would have to: a) Make the requirement really really prominent b) Respect it ourselves c) Vehemently complain in a very public manner when a few individuals fail to do so.
when d) we have far bigger fish to fry.
Open question: do you think the Foundation and/or local chapters should complain more when their local media fail to respect Wikimedia copyrights?
Andrew
A more proactive approach would be very welcome where it comes to featured pictures. WMF photographers have occasionally discovered their work reused without credit in commercial advertising.
-Durova
On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Andrew Turvey <andrewrturvey@googlemail.com
wrote:
---- "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
After my recent perusals of reuses of my images, here's my take:
No one is ever going to pay attention to, let alone understand, let alone respect, let alone follow the CC-BY or GFDL requirement for credit. Soon, we will stop asking for it.
In order for it to happen, we would have to: a) Make the requirement really really prominent b) Respect it ourselves c) Vehemently complain in a very public manner when a few individuals fail to do so.
when d) we have far bigger fish to fry.
Open question: do you think the Foundation and/or local chapters should complain more when their local media fail to respect Wikimedia copyrights?
Andrew _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2009/6/28 Andrew Turvey andrewrturvey@googlemail.com:
Open question: do you think the Foundation and/or local chapters should complain more when their local media fail to respect Wikimedia copyrights?
I think actively asking nicely would be a good idea. Particularly when several people ask them. Eventually they will get the idea: FREE STOCK PHOTOS just give credit and licence.
- d.
2009/6/29 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/6/28 Andrew Turvey andrewrturvey@googlemail.com:
Open question: do you think the Foundation and/or local chapters should complain more when their local media fail to respect Wikimedia copyrights?
I think actively asking nicely would be a good idea. Particularly when several people ask them. Eventually they will get the idea: FREE STOCK PHOTOS just give credit and licence.
Only if you consider CC-BY-SA to be weak copyleft.
2009/6/29 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2009/6/29 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
I think actively asking nicely would be a good idea. Particularly when several people ask them. Eventually they will get the idea: FREE STOCK PHOTOS just give credit and licence.
Only if you consider CC-BY-SA to be weak copyleft.
Do let us know how taking them to court for using your stuff works out.
- d.
2009/6/29 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/6/29 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2009/6/29 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
I think actively asking nicely would be a good idea. Particularly when several people ask them. Eventually they will get the idea: FREE STOCK PHOTOS just give credit and licence.
Only if you consider CC-BY-SA to be weak copyleft.
Do let us know how taking them to court for using your stuff works out.
In the UK the case would be extremely unlikely to ever reach court. Due to the way copyright is treated by UK courts unless you are very sure of you case it's almost always cheaper to throw say £50-100 at the person then never use their work again.
In practice you can argue it either way.
The critical line of the license is:
"Each constituting separate and independent works in themselves"
So I suspect it would be fairly easy to defend say a random sports pic as long as you CCed the caption but if the pic is referred to within the article it is a bit hard to see how the article would count as an independent work
William King wrote:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/editor-of-wired-apologizes-...
Chris Anderson, the author, summarized the situation in two words: "Mea culpa."
Somewhat cynical: they thought they could just cite, looked at the GFDL and thought "damn, doesn't work that way", and then just went ahead.
Charles
Joseph Reagle wrote:
On Wednesday 24 June 2009, Charles Matthews wrote:
Somewhat cynical: they thought they could just cite, looked at the GFDL and thought "damn, doesn't work that way", and then just went ahead.
Particularly ironic given the title and perhaps subject of the book.
My comment was written late at night. But I don't really understand why the author thought (a) permalinks are uncool, but (b) paraphrasing this WP stuff and passing it off as my own and copyright is clearly cool. And issues this as an apology.
Charles
On Thursday 25 June 2009, Charles Matthews wrote:
My comment was written late at night. But I don't really understand why the author thought (a) permalinks are uncool, but (b) paraphrasing this WP stuff and passing it off as my own and copyright is clearly cool. And issues this as an apology.
I agree, permalinks are the way to go. However, I can sympathize with the ugliness of permalinks and access requirements, which are standard Chicago. If you have more than one Web resource referenced in a note (if you don't want every sentence to have a footnote), it's really difficult to read:
[[ 53. Wikipedia, “Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View,” Wikimedia, September 16, 2004, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia: Neutral point of view & oldid = 6042007 (accessed March 5, 2004); Wikipedia, “Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View,” Wikimedia, November 3, 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia: Neutral point of view&oldid=249390830 (accessed November 3, 2008). ... 63. Wikipedia, “Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View (oldid=249390830).” ]]
In the context of the two Chicago notes variants, I've made the following experiment in my manuscript:
1. Long (end) notes upon first instance (including URL) and subsequent short notes (with version number noted in title of Wikipedia pages, such as in note 63 above) subsequently yields 396 pages. 2. Short (end) notes (such as note 63 above) followed by bibliography with full citation (including URL) yields 452 pages.
Option 2 is more readable, but requires a redirection by the reader if they want full bibliographic detail, and adds pages (and weight and cost) to a book. Another option is to use an adaptation of Option 1: standard long-then-short Chicago without URLs, which are provided online. This make a practical sort of sense (and this is what Anderson *says* he was planning to do), but is non-standard and I'm not sure how it would be received.
*However*, this difficulty doesn't mean that one should simply "write through" one's sources (whatever that means) and remove the attribution all together.
This thread also inspired a blog post: http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/method/anderson-and-citing-wikipedia
Joseph Reagle wrote:
On Thursday 25 June 2009, Charles Matthews wrote:
My comment was written late at night. But I don't really understand why the author thought (a) permalinks are uncool, but (b) paraphrasing this WP stuff and passing it off as my own and copyright is clearly cool. And issues this as an apology.
I agree, permalinks are the way to go. However, I can sympathize with the ugliness of permalinks and access requirements, which are standard Chicago. If you have more than one Web resource referenced in a note (if you don't want every sentence to have a footnote), it's really difficult to read:
[[TinyURL]], I would say. Do we take this into account in any advice "how to cite Wikipedia"?
Charles
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 5:54 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Joseph Reagle wrote:
On Thursday 25 June 2009, Charles Matthews wrote:
My comment was written late at night. But I don't really understand why the author thought (a) permalinks are uncool, but (b) paraphrasing this WP stuff and passing it off as my own and copyright is clearly cool. And issues this as an apology.
I agree, permalinks are the way to go. However, I can sympathize with the
ugliness of permalinks and access requirements, which are standard Chicago. If you have more than one Web resource referenced in a note (if you don't want every sentence to have a footnote), it's really difficult to read:
[[TinyURL]], I would say. Do we take this into account in any advice "how to cite Wikipedia"?
We want people to have to rely on an external URL redirecting service to cite us?
Online, I would go for maximum convenience of links. In print, I'd go for readability and put citations at the back of the document or the end of the chapters. Footnotes that might need to be read with the text, can be put at the foot of the page or end of the chapters.
Carcharoth
On Thursday 25 June 2009, Charles Matthews wrote:
[[TinyURL]], I would say. Do we take this into account in any advice "how to cite Wikipedia"?
I would not make my references dependent upon a commercial service. (It's fine for Twitter in the short term, but what happens when they go under and now all those URLs point to porn?) However, institutions should give thought to their URI architecture, including stability, terseness, etc. The ACM provides a relatively short URL for everything it publishes, and there are other DOI services.
Joseph Reagle wrote:
On Thursday 25 June 2009, Charles Matthews wrote:
[[TinyURL]], I would say. Do we take this into account in any advice "how to cite Wikipedia"?
I would not make my references dependent upon a commercial service. (It's fine for Twitter in the short term, but what happens when they go under and now all those URLs point to porn?) However, institutions should give thought to their URI architecture, including stability, terseness, etc. The ACM provides a relatively short URL for everything it publishes, and there are other DOI services.
So any particular reason the WMF couldn't provide its own [[URL shortening]] in-house? How hard is it to do a bares-bones service?
Charles
2009/6/25 Joseph Reagle reagle@mit.edu:
Option 2 is more readable, but requires a redirection by the reader if they want full bibliographic detail, and adds pages (and weight and cost) to a book. Another option is to use an adaptation of Option 1: standard long-then-short Chicago without URLs, which are provided online. This make a practical sort of sense (and this is what Anderson *says* he was planning to do), but is non-standard and I'm not sure how it would be received.
This reminds me of a thought I've been having for a while. *We* can pro-actively take steps to make citation easier for our users, at least in theory; we can provide more elegant URLs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&am...
can be rendered as
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=6042007
Can we make that even more succinct? Well, we could take a leaf from the DOI playbook, and set up something like:
http://%5Bsite%5D/wp:en/6042007
At first glance, this doesn't seem to actually add very much - it's just a shorter URL. But we could then use it as a platform to help our reusers...
a) if that revision is deleted, we could generate a page saying so and identifying the next live revision *on that page*.
b) if one day we get a marvellous system for identifying authors, this would be an obvious place to display the generated list of them for a given revision.
I'd be curious as to any other applications people can think of.
On Thursday 25 June 2009, Andrew Gray wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&am...
can be rendered as
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=6042007
Can we make that even more succinct? Well, we could take a leaf from the DOI playbook, and set up something like:
So the oldid's are globally unique (among a language subdomain)? If that's the case, the answer to Charles' question of how hard it is could be not hard at all. (Perhaps even doable with some simple Apache rewrites, but WP is a complex architecture.)
As an aside the MARC archivists we're very helpful to me so that I could easily cite conversations on this list by creating a email msgid referrer. So for example, one of Charles' earlier messages is:
http://marc.info/?i=4A433110.2000606@ntlworld.com
dereferences to:
http://marc.info/?l=wikien-l&m=124591771510938
Granted, the msgid version is slightly longer, but it's stable (a lot of archives regenerate and break links) and corresponds to the thing in my mbox. Similar tricks can be done for identifiers. (At the W3C, we used shorter URIs to define algorithms, schema, and namespaces with the rewrite approach.)
2009/6/25 Joseph Reagle reagle@mit.edu:
Can we make that even more succinct? Well, we could take a leaf from the DOI playbook, and set up something like:
So the oldid's are globally unique (among a language subdomain)? If that's the case, the answer to Charles' question of how hard it is could be not hard at all. (Perhaps even doable with some simple Apache rewrites, but WP is a complex architecture.)
My understanding is that the revision id is globally unique for a given wiki, yes. Handily, it also works for images - uploading an image generates a new revision id for the description page, so we can link to a specific version of the image without having to go for the bare URL.
(When I noted [site] there, incidentally, I was thinking of something which we manage inhouse, but operating through a new and shorter domain name for simplicity.)
I want to remind everything that the issue as to why the URL's weren't included *supposedly* wasn't that the standard URL is too long, but rather just that one side wanted the "timestamp" as they say, and the other didn't. Personally it sounds to me like they are completely fudging the situation. That's just my opinion and you can't sue me over it :)
I really doubt that any reader (whatsoever) is going to laboriously type in the oldid in the first place to see that article "as it was" when it was quoted. We can hardly even get anyone to cite to the historical articles in the first place or they do something weird like say "accessed on..." which doesn't do anything automagically anyway.
Any factoid worth quoting off-project is probably ref'fed anyway, and the full cite should include the underlying source as well making a cite to the historical version redundant it would seem to me.
That brings up another thing in my mind. The ability to search the history of one article *solely*, or one single talk page history. Can we do that?
Will
On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 3:06 AM, Andrew Grayandrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&am...
can be rendered as
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=6042007
Can we make that even more succinct?
http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=6042007 also works. For book purposes, this is already shorter than most URLs, so shouldn't need to be shortened anymore which would remove information about where the link goes.
Angela
On Thursday 25 June 2009, Angela wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=6042007 also works. For book purposes, this is already shorter than most URLs, so shouldn't need to be shortened anymore which would remove information about where the link goes.
I did not know that, that's great.
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Joseph Reaglereagle@mit.edu wrote:
On Thursday 25 June 2009, Angela wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=6042007 also works. For book purposes, this is already shorter than most URLs, so shouldn't need to be shortened anymore which would remove information about where the link goes.
I did not know that, that's great.
Perhaps this could be included as an output format under "cite this page"? Provide the full permanent URL, then the short version for citation purposes.
As an aside, what bugs me the most about this is that according to the note reproduced in this story: http://www.vqronline.org/blog/2009/06/23/chris-anderson-free/ Anderson said that "All those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources…"
We give people a lovely pre-made citation on each and every page! Every major style manual includes explicit directions on how to cite websites! Every academic paper ever published about Wikipedia has grappled with this problem and come up with some sort of solution! Sheesh.
-- Phoebe
It's hard to imagine someone thinking "I bet no one will notice if I just paste in this paragraph from a Wikipedia article." At the same time, some users, perhaps even some apparently sophisticated users, may misunderstand just what exactly is meant by "free encyclopedia." And not to his credit directly, but certainly somewhat in his favor, it is simply not possible to cite an article such that you refer to it exactly the way it looked on a particular day. This is because there is no software that can use the revision number to pull in the correct revision of templates etc.
There really isn't any excuse though. A URL suitable for use in a book can be as short as Wikipedia.org/Article (you're redirected to the article after 5 seconds). That's really, minimal attribution - who wouldn't be able to agree on that??:)
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 4:53 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Joseph Reaglereagle@mit.edu wrote:
On Thursday 25 June 2009, Angela wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=6042007 also works. For book purposes, this is already shorter than most URLs, so shouldn't need to be shortened anymore which would remove information about where the link goes.
I did not know that, that's great.
Perhaps this could be included as an output format under "cite this page"? Provide the full permanent URL, then the short version for citation purposes.
As an aside, what bugs me the most about this is that according to the note reproduced in this story: http://www.vqronline.org/blog/2009/06/23/chris-anderson-free/ Anderson said that "All those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources…"
We give people a lovely pre-made citation on each and every page! Every major style manual includes explicit directions on how to cite websites! Every academic paper ever published about Wikipedia has grappled with this problem and come up with some sort of solution! Sheesh.
-- Phoebe
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On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 12:10 AM, BrianBrian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
It's hard to imagine someone thinking "I bet no one will notice if I just paste in this paragraph from a Wikipedia article." At the same time, some users, perhaps even some apparently sophisticated users, may misunderstand just what exactly is meant by "free encyclopedia." And not to his credit directly, but certainly somewhat in his favor, it is simply not possible to cite an article such that you refer to it exactly the way it looked on a particular day. This is because there is no software that can use the revision number to pull in the correct revision of templates etc.
<snip>
This is indeed a problem. I've sometimes gone to an old version of a page and thought "this looks wrong", and then realised that the templates I'm seeing are the current ones, not the old ones (the same applies when an image has been overwritten or deleted and recreated). Sometimes a screenshot or true archive version is needed as well. As for software to detect "dynamic" parts of the page and to go and grab (even from deleted revisions) the older version of that dynamic element, surely *someone* can do that? On the other hand, the bit about the older dynamic parts of the page having been deleted is a real problem as well.
Imagine an old citation leading to a page version that somehow shows a shock image. Some of our more creative vandals would have little problem doing that, especially if the deleted page or template no longer existed, or something clever was done with template coding.
Ultimately, if a page relies heavily on templates or images, a screenshot or *real* permanent link is needed.
Carcharoth
2009/6/25 phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com:
We give people a lovely pre-made citation on each and every page! Every major style manual includes explicit directions on how to cite websites! Every academic paper ever published about Wikipedia has grappled with this problem and come up with some sort of solution! Sheesh.
I asked him directly on his blog what was so difficult about citing us and what we could do to make it easier. I look forward to a response.
- d.