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(a)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(a)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(a)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(a)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(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 10:58 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen(a)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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