zoe writes:
I twice deleted a newbie's article called [[First Bull Run]]. The first time, it was deleted because it was a copright violation.
Yes, that's all well and good, but sometimes apparent copyright violations are actually not violations at all. That happened today with a Czech Republic article--someone at another site had claimed copyright on writeups from the U.S. State Department, which are in the public domain. The text was removed, listed for deletion, and restored. I thought you noticed when that happened. :-)
Again, let me stress: I'm as concerned about copyright violations as anyone else, if not moreso: personally, I have misgivings about all the "fair use" photographs and would prefer not to have them. But we must give people time to explain themselves when they upload apparently "copyrighted" material. In some cases, the copyright is theirs. In others, they're claiming copyright on something that's in the public domain. And then, in yet other cases, it's a violation that needs to be taken down or rewritten completely.
kq
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--- koyaanis qatsi obchodnakorze@yahoo.com wrote:
Yes, that's all well and good, but sometimes apparent copyright violations are actually not violations at all. That happened today with a Czech Republic article--someone at another site had claimed copyright on writeups from the U.S. State Department, which are in the public domain. The text was removed, listed for deletion, and restored. I thought you noticed when that happened. :-)
Again, let me stress: I'm as concerned about copyright violations as anyone else, if not moreso: personally, I have misgivings about all the "fair use" photographs and would prefer not to have them. But we must give people time to explain themselves when they upload apparently "copyrighted" material. In some cases, the copyright is theirs. In others, they're claiming copyright on something that's in the public domain. And then, in yet other cases, it's a violation that needs to be taken down or rewritten completely.
kq
==What Wikipedia is not==
14. Mere collections of public domain or other source material; such as entire books, original historical documents, letters, laws, proclamations and other source material that are only useful when presented with their original, un-modified wording.
from [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]]
We shouldn't copy content from public domain sources, only the information from them.
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Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
==What Wikipedia is not==
- Mere collections of public domain or other source
material; such as entire books, original historical documents, letters, laws, proclamations and other source material that are only useful when presented with their original, un-modified wording.
For me, the key phrase is "only useful". For instance, we've sucked in quite a bit from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships; the content is about as authoritative as one can get, and is frequently written as well as anything else in wikipedia, in which case there's not much to improve on once links are added. However, there are times when we have to prune out the anti-communist rah-rah left over from the 50s, update with ship info postdating a DANFS volume, and in a very very few cases - fix an actual mistake. Over time I expect that the wikipedia ship articles will become better than their DANFS ancestors.
So use of the PD info gives us a leg up in the goal of producing a reference superior to all others; by cutting out some typing and fact-collecting time, we get more cycles to spend on areas for which the info isn't as well-organized already.
Stan
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Stan Shebs wrote: | For instance, we've | sucked in quite a bit from the Dictionary of American Naval | Fighting Ships; the content is about as authoritative as one | can get, and is frequently written as well as anything else | in wikipedia, in which case there's not much to improve on | once links are added. However, there are times when we have | to prune out the anti-communist rah-rah left over from the 50s, | update with ship info postdating a DANFS volume, and in a very | very few cases - fix an actual mistake. Over time I expect | that the wikipedia ship articles will become better than their | DANFS ancestors. | | Stan
Those links immediately make our articles better than the DANFS originals. You don't have to wonder how [[Abner Read]] served on both the aircraft carrier ''Enterprise'' and the submarine ''Dolphin'' -- you can click on the links and realize that he served on the schooner ''Enterprise'' and the brig ''Dolphin''. A DANFS article may specify that a ship visited a foreign country and was reviewed by "the king"; once I've imported it, you will not only see the King's name, but you can also click on it.
On another tentacle, refusing to reuse anything ever written, no matter how authoritative, is silly. The public domain is a Good Thing[tm], and I intend to make full use of it.
- -- ~ Sean Barrett | The pellet with the poison's in the flagon ~ sean@epoptic.com | with the dragon; the vessel with the pestle ~ | has the brew that is true. --The Court Jester