----- Original Message ----- From: Jens Ropers ropers@ropersonline.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 01:47:22 +0100 Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing
(1) While WP compatibility might seem like a real important and convenient thing, IMHO coming to that conclusion is fallacious (as in [[logical fallacy]]):
- WP compatibility is pretty much only needed if people want to
DUPLICATE (ie. not rewrite) content from the WP.
- Wikinews was was expressly advertised as a project that would NOT
simply duplicate WP content. Thus, I believe the "requirement" for WP license compatibility is much less than one might think.
Looking at the Wikinews articles I was involved in so far, it seems that taking materials from Wikipedia does not happen much.
If Wikinews articles can be incorporated into Wikipedia article, that would be good. I am guessing that the need for Wikinews to incorporate Wikipedia articles is quite limited.
Regarding the license poll, I noticed that the people who expressed their opinions are not necessarily the active participants on Wikinews so far. I am not sure what to make of it, but I wonder if only Wikinews participants will vote on the license issue, or any Wikimedian can vote. The former has some intuitive appeal, but there aren't that many active participants yet. I think it is okay to delay the vote until there will be more active users on Wikinews. For a while, Wikinews contents are under public domain - it is like a opening special give-away for potential re-users.
There is virtually no discussion on license issue on wikinews. The biggest discussion so far among the participants is if we would like to publish unreviewed articles on the main page (the community is really divided on this), and if and how we want to change the reveiw process.
Regards,
Tomos