Birgitte SB wrote:
The main difference as I see is this. Wikipedia is creating content. WP could chose to make it's content free or not; they chose to make it free. Wikisource has no control on whether our content is free or where it is free. We can only choose whether or not to make it available. Downstream users are going to have to evaluate whether they are free to use Wikisource contect individually unless they are in the United States. Our material is under various licenses as well as public domain (as applicable in the US). We cannot give anyone a blanket guarantee the content is free for them to use whether we include non-commercial or not. They are still going to have to evaluate each license category and judge based on the laws they must abide by.
Absolutely. It's important to have broad principles like NPOV to guide all projects, but it's also important to recognize that not all projects will have the same priorities as Wikipedia. For most of Wikisource NPOV is meaningless, as is the ability of downstream users to modify the material. If the material is modified it is no longer the same material. We can permit editing, translating and other commentary, and that will be subject to the usual rules for NPOV and modifiability, but unless there is a clear recognition of an inviolable source text it is all meaningless. When a vandal wanted change a string of digits in the middle of "Pi to 1,000,000 places" on Wikisource I suppose it could be explained in terms of the right to modify, but the result was no longer pi.
It's also important to trust the leadership in each project. Those who have taken on leadership roles in established projects are going to be known quantities who are not going to rush headlong into radical stands. (This may be different in newer or smaller projects, but even there as time goes on trust can be built.) Trusted leaders are not about to allow others to recklessly ignore copyrights, but at the same time they are not going to take such disadvantageously narrow interpretations of copyright that would bar any material with a mere suggestion of a violation. Removing the Security Council Resolutions would be a clear act of copyright paranoia. I have heard of no complaint from the United Nations about it, and I'm sure that an understanding could be reached if they did complain. The concern of governmental or quasi-governmental bodies about the republication of such documents has nothing to do with the loss of revenue, but with a belief that they might be reproduced inaccurately.
Going out of our way to ensure that downstream users will be able to copy this material is ultimately an untenable position. People must accept responsibility for their own actions. We do well to warn them of possible problems, but we should have no obligation to hold their hands in the way that we would hold those of a child. We can say that we have reasonable and supportable grounds for saying that a given document is in the public domain, or that it is covered by fair use (or dealing) in the server jurisdiction, and that we cannot vouch for its legal status in some other jurisdiction. In saying this I make a specific statement that I do not consider public interest alone to be grounds for publishing most documents.
Too little attention has been paid to the perils of Wikipedia's success, a success that has also dragged the rest of the projects along with it. Protecting the Foundation from legal liability is a fine ideal, but the tone of that protection has changed in the 4+ years that I have participated. An operation with a $1,000,000 annual hardware budget is not the same as one with a $10,000 annual hardware budget. The willingness to take risks is replaced by the fear that we really could lose something, and that stiffles innovation. The corporate world often protects itself through a series of corporate structures that would have the effect of creating firewalls between divisions to protect the others from collateral damage when any one of them runs into trouble. Perhaps it's something the Foundation should be thinking about.
I think new languages should be supported if they seem likely to suceed establishing an active community. Before we can judge that or set up any guidelines we really need more information. I would very much like to take the first step in this. Which I believe is analizing what has worked or not in the past. But right now some of the stats pages are months old and Wikisource has none at all for individual languages. I don't know that the information I can get from any updated stats would really tell what makes a community sucessfull. However it should allow us to see what communities have a certain level of activity. Then I think we should ask people from various communities to fill out a survey about the beginings of their community and maybe we can find some indicators we can use to answer your points.
I don't know that a survey will accomplish anything. I still think that dividing Wikisource into separate language communities was a big mistake; that's the one issue that most influenced me to drift away from it and back to where most of my time is now spent dealing with Wiktionary.
The leader in a project, as you now appear to be in Wikisource, needs vision. That person needs an instinct to recognize what would divert the project into unproductive paths. Of course, it takes great skill to shape an army of dilletentes into a productive force.
Formats can be a big time waster. Some people are obsessed with the sense of order that clearly defined formats can bring into a project. For them having the world well ordered brings them a sense of professionalism, forgetting at the same time that we are all amateurs here. For the most part that really doesn't matter. The substantive content and information are what matter; a format is nothing more than a tool for making that information more accessible. If the format fails in that mission it's not much good.
Ec