I've seen it happen and I'm pretty sure it continues to happen. Sometimes websites disappear. Not that uncommon on the web, but it can be disastrous for Wikipedia articles when those sites happen to be the source for an article. I think there should be an organized effort to have pages for uncommon sources cached and to replace dead links with their archived counterparts. Is there such an effort yet?
Mgm
On 12/3/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I've seen it happen and I'm pretty sure it continues to happen. Sometimes websites disappear. Not that uncommon on the web, but it can be disastrous for Wikipedia articles when those sites happen to be the source for an article. I think there should be an organized effort to have pages for uncommon sources cached and to replace dead links with their archived counterparts. Is there such an effort yet?
Î've sometimes seen WP articles linking to web.archive.org-entries, when sites were missing. Don't know, whether this is what you meant... Michael
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On 12/3/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I've seen it happen and I'm pretty sure it continues to happen. Sometimes websites disappear. Not that uncommon on the web, but it can be disastrous for Wikipedia articles when those sites happen to be the source for an article. I think there should be an organized effort to have pages for uncommon sources cached and to replace dead links with their archived counterparts. Is there such an effort yet?
I believe we should also have a way of making dead-tree sources available (through scans etc) for verification. Currently, we don't seem to have any way of uploading a scan of a page or whatever, simply for the purpose of verification. It wouldn't be for inclusion in the article itself, and possibly restricted to logged in users, but I would have thought this would easily satisfy "fair use".
The same mechanism should apply for web pages, where we can copy the relevant bits of a webpage and store them somewhere in case the website is no longer available. Archive.org is only a partial solution to that - and what if archive.org itself disappears?
Steve
I believe we should also have a way of making dead-tree sources available (through scans etc) for verification. Currently, we don't seem to have any way of uploading a scan of a page or whatever, simply for the purpose of verification. It wouldn't be for inclusion in the article itself, and possibly restricted to logged in users, but I would have thought this would easily satisfy "fair use".
Fair use generally only applies if you are using the copyrighted material in an article about the material itself. Using it as a source isn't "fair". Most dead-tree sources can be found a good library, which should be enough to verify it if we need to.
On 12/4/06, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Fair use generally only applies if you are using the copyrighted material in an article about the material itself.
That's a very specific example of fair use which Wikipedia generally dictates as the only one it's willing to accept. I believe that lots of other uses can be "fair use". For example, it's generally acceptable for an academic to photocopy bits out of a journal so that they can study it at home, if the journal can't be borrowed - no violation of copyright takes place. I believe this would be in the same category. We would not be copying the material to avoid someone having to buy the book, we'd be copying it to enable readers to simply check that it says what someone is claiming it does. Perfectly fair, IMHO.
Using it as a source isn't "fair".
Don't get you.
Most dead-tree sources can be found a good library, which should be
enough to verify it if we need to.
Know anyone who has ever gone to a library to verify a Wikipedia citation? Ever had a suspicion about a dead-tree citation? Could you be bothered going to a library to check it out? Could you be bothered to click on a link?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/4/06, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Fair use generally only applies if you are using the copyrighted material in an article about the material itself.
That's a very specific example of fair use which Wikipedia generally dictates as the only one it's willing to accept. I believe that lots of other uses can be "fair use". For example, it's generally acceptable for an academic to photocopy bits out of a journal so that they can study it at home, if the journal can't be borrowed - no violation of copyright takes place. I believe this would be in the same category. We would not be copying the material to avoid someone having to buy the book, we'd be copying it to enable readers to simply check that it says what someone is claiming it does. Perfectly fair, IMHO.
I think that the theory that fair use is applicable in this is a dubious one. In any event the place for this kind of medium would be in Commons, and they don't allow fair use at all. The academic who photocopies an article for his own research does not normally make that article available to a broad range of people. Even limiting access to logged-on users is still making the article available to a very large number of people.
How much of an article would we keep? In some cases snippets may be enough, but in the really contentious material fact-checking may require a context for the material.
Most dead-tree sources can be found a good library, which should be
enough to verify it if we need to.
Know anyone who has ever gone to a library to verify a Wikipedia citation? Ever had a suspicion about a dead-tree citation? Could you be bothered going to a library to check it out? Could you be bothered to click on a link?
Honest and thorough fact checkers are not about to cut corners by avoiding a trip to the library if they feel it is important enough. I have frequently had suspicions about citations. Nothing stops us from asking another Wikipedian to check it out when we don't have access to convenient material. For some going to a well-stocked library may be a 100 mile drive. Clicking on a link is obviously convenient, but it could also promote tunnel vision and diminish the possibility of editors looking for alternative sources that may view the issue differently.
Ec
On 12/4/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think that the theory that fair use is applicable in this is a dubious one. In any event the place for this kind of medium would be in Commons, and they don't allow fair use at all. The academic who photocopies an article for his own research does not normally make that article available to a broad range of people. Even limiting access to logged-on users is still making the article available to a very large number of people.
I'm talking about a small excerpt from an article, book or whatever - not necessarily the whole thing. We're not possibly taking copyright a little too seriously here are we...?
Honest and thorough fact checkers are not about to cut corners by avoiding a trip to the library if they feel it is important enough. I have frequently had suspicions about citations. Nothing stops us from asking another Wikipedian to check it out when we don't have access to convenient material. For some going to a well-stocked library may be a 100 mile drive. Clicking on a link is obviously convenient, but it could also promote tunnel vision and diminish the possibility of editors looking for alternative sources that may view the issue differently.
So overall do you think that, copyright issues aside, the idea of making snippets of source material available for verification is a bad thing, or just not a very good thing?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/4/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Honest and thorough fact checkers are not about to cut corners by avoiding a trip to the library if they feel it is important enough. I have frequently had suspicions about citations. Nothing stops us from asking another Wikipedian to check it out when we don't have access to convenient material. For some going to a well-stocked library may be a 100 mile drive. Clicking on a link is obviously convenient, but it could also promote tunnel vision and diminish the possibility of editors looking for alternative sources that may view the issue differently.
So overall do you think that, copyright issues aside, the idea of making snippets of source material available for verification is a bad thing, or just not a very good thing?
There is an essential contradiction here. I have no complaint about adding quotes or snippets, but that is not verification. The source gives us a context which is more than a mere snippet. We should want verification to be more than a rote exercise.
If we only use snippets you're probably right in saying that the copyright problem will go away.
Ec
On 12/4/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Most dead-tree sources can be found a good library, which should be
enough to verify it if we need to.
Know anyone who has ever gone to a library to verify a Wikipedia citation? Ever had a suspicion about a dead-tree citation? Could you be bothered going to a library to check it out? Could you be bothered to click on a link?
Steve
Unfortunately too few people do, but it's good academic practice in research so even if people don't do it, it should be encouraged to check dead tree sources.
Mgm
On 12/3/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
I believe we should also have a way of making dead-tree sources available (through scans etc) for verification.
This makes me very nervous, as I envision people challenging all sorts of what are now unchallenged, acceptable sources because they can't be bothered to go to the library and check out a widely available book. No way am I going to start scanning things in. This sort of thing should only be reserved for unavailable sources in controversial articles (things that probably shouldn't be used in controversial articles anyway, but that's another issue) and if we set up a system for it, it will encourage people to use and demand this sort of verification. AGF and a library card should suffice.
On 12/4/06, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
This makes me very nervous, as I envision people challenging all sorts of what are now unchallenged, acceptable sources because they can't be bothered to go to the library and check out a widely available book.
We already have the situation where some sources (ie, web sites) are obviously much more verifiable than others (books). Why would converting some of the latter into the former suddenly make the whole system implode?
No way am I going to start scanning things in. This sort of thing should only be reserved for unavailable sources in controversial articles (things that probably shouldn't be used in controversial articles anyway, but that's another issue) and if we set up a system for it, it will encourage people to use and demand this sort of verification. AGF and a library card should suffice.
I wasn't actually suggesting forcing or even encouraging people to scan stuff in. But for people who already *have* it, or *want* to, there is actually no way to do this.
The situation that crops up more often for me is taking photos of information plaques at tourist sites - I use the information on them later on to write the article, and would like to make the image available for someone who wants to verify what I've done, or possibly to expand on it. I don't think copyright is an issue. Nor is anyone going to travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres to do it, for what is a pretty trivial article.
Now, I *have* the image. Where do I put it?
Steve
On 04/12/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
The situation that crops up more often for me is taking photos of information plaques at tourist sites - I use the information on them later on to write the article, and would like to make the image available for someone who wants to verify what I've done, or possibly to expand on it. I don't think copyright is an issue. Nor is anyone going to travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres to do it, for what is a pretty trivial article. Now, I *have* the image. Where do I put it?
On Commons! Make sure it's a nice image.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 04/12/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
The situation that crops up more often for me is taking photos of information plaques at tourist sites - I use the information on them later on to write the article, and would like to make the image available for someone who wants to verify what I've done, or possibly to expand on it. I don't think copyright is an issue. Nor is anyone going to travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres to do it, for what is a pretty trivial article. Now, I *have* the image. Where do I put it?
On Commons! Make sure it's a nice image.
Hmmm! I've never really thought about the copyrightability of text on historical or tourist plaques, or epitaphs on tombstones. ;-)
Ec
Hmmm! I've never really thought about the copyrightability of text on historical or tourist plaques, or epitaphs on tombstones. ;-)
The text is definitely copyrighted. I guess taking a picture of it would be a derivative work at best (at worst, it would simply be a copy), so you wouldn't be able to release it under any license acceptable on commons without the permission of whoever wrote it (which they might well grant in exchange for the free publicity).
As far as I know, making something easy for the public to read doesn't effect the copyright you can claim on it.
On 12/3/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
The same mechanism should apply for web pages, where we can copy the relevant bits of a webpage and store them somewhere in case the website is no longer available. Archive.org is only a partial solution to that - and what if archive.org itself disappears?
One could just as easily wonder if wikipedia.org might one day dissapear.
A friend of mine works for the Internet Archive. They believe they're stable and mostly technically/talent limited on growth.
If there's significant concern on these points, then the Wikimedia Foundation could form an exchange agreement with the IA, trading copies of the respective databases, for redundancy.
Or send some of the $1 billion everyone keeps talking about thataway ;-)
On 12/4/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
One could just as easily wonder if wikipedia.org might one day dissapear.
Wikipedia at least has the advantage that it's actively mirrored in several places, probably has hundreds of other copies floating around, and explicitly encourages further replication.
A friend of mine works for the Internet Archive. They believe they're stable and mostly technically/talent limited on growth.
Yeah, I don't think it's really likely to disappear soon, but it would be nice not to have to rely on third party organisations with which we have no affiliation. And as I said, it's only a partial solution anyway - that only works for websites, and ones that were archived at the right time, at that.
If there's significant concern on these points, then the Wikimedia Foundation could form an exchange agreement with the IA, trading copies of the respective databases, for redundancy.
Hmm, you're suggesting taking a copy of a database consisting of several terabytes of data is preferable to copying a few webpages? Think of all that hardware...
Or send some of the $1 billion everyone keeps talking about thataway ;-)
$0.1 billion, but anyway...
Steve
On 12/3/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
If there's significant concern on these points, then the Wikimedia Foundation could form an exchange agreement with the IA, trading copies of the respective databases, for redundancy.
Hmm, you're suggesting taking a copy of a database consisting of several terabytes of data is preferable to copying a few webpages? Think of all that hardware...
Several petabytes, not terabytes. Several terabytes will fit in one 2U server already.
These are not large quantities of hardware, in terms of enterprise systems.
On 12/4/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Several petabytes, not terabytes. Several terabytes will fit in one 2U server already.
These are not large quantities of hardware, in terms of enterprise systems.
But in terms of Wikipedia?
Anyway, why are we talking about buying out archive.org again? :)
Steve