We have the purpose of providing free access to information, information from any publicly accessible source, paid or free. Before we had the Wikipedia Library, sources of information from many extremely expensive paid sources were not readily available to our editors except for those having a connection to a major university library. Now that we do have it, at least some of this is accessible to at least some active editors, who can incorporate the information from them into our articles, and thus make it freely accessible to the world. That's enough justification.
If all we did was re-package information that was already freely available, our role would be very limited. The existence of restrictions on access to limitation is of course very unfortunate. Making a change in this system is on of the additional purposes of Wikipedia. We do this in multiple ways. Among them is providing an example of open publishing; among them is advocacy for the lessening of copyright and other restrictions, and also writing free material based on unfree. The principle of what we do is, what will be best for the encyclopedia.
On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 12:25 AM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Shani,
This blog post by Jake and the Library team might suffice. It's from last year and directly addresses this issue:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/09/16/open-access-in-a-closed-world/
~ Keegan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan On Feb 14, 2016 10:09 PM, "Shani" shani.even@gmail.com wrote:
Would love to hear what the Wikipedia Library Project team has to say on the issue.
Pinging Jake Orlowitz & Alex Stinson.
Shani.
On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 5:46 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
As the panel moderator, I felt there was a rather strong consensus
(from
the various communication channels -- wiki pages, blog & Facebook posts
and
discussions, and the panel) that went a bit beyond what Robert said
(which
is certainly an important piece.
A number of people also felt that, while the Elsevier deal may have
been
a
good one, there may also have been better ways to communicate it -- and specifically, ways to place restrictions on the kind of language
(entities
like) Elsevier could use around the Wikimedia trademarks. I believe
this
was all absorbed by Wikipedia Library staff, and I have no doubt that future announcements will be better suited to Wikimedia values.
I agree with Lodewijk that strong consensus would be needed to overturn
an
existing contract. Please note also that at least six Wikimedia
volunteers
would be impacted if Wikimedia were to renege on its contract: those
who
have gained access to Elsevier Science Direct through the program, and
are
presumably doing good Wikipedia work as a result. Have you checked in
with
them, or looked at their work, Milos? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Elsevier_ScienceDirect
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 5:25 PM, Robert Fernandez <
wikigamaliel@gmail.com>
wrote:
"No, WMF shouldn't morally support Elsevier by having any relation
with
them."
This was debated extensively last September. The opinion of many, including myself, was that the WMF's primary commitment should be to
the
encyclopedia and providing editors and readers the resources to
improve
the
encyclopedia, not making a moral stand against Elsevier by
withdrawing
those resources.
On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 5:01 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com
wrote:
On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 10:58 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Anyone can use Sci-Hub. Officially you cannot, legally you should
not.
The
WMF makes it possible for those who want to use Elsevier.
No problem; anyone can use Sci-Hub. Move on.
Dear Gerard,
You are again ignoring the point intentionally.
No, WMF shouldn't morally support Elsevier by having any relation
with
them.
Sincerely, Milos
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