This is a strong argument for CC-by-sa whenever possible to push for verifiability and
traceability. The credit is secondary, almost irrelevant compared to being able to track
down the origins.
Cheers,
Peter
From: Andreas Kolbe [mailto:jayen466@gmail.com]
Sent: 25 November 2021 14:52
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: [Marketing Mail] [Wikimedia-l] Re: License for Wikifunctions and Abstract
Wikipedia
Thanks. The key question to my mind is whether abstract content and the resulting
foreign-language text output should be CC0 (like Wikidata) or CC BY-SA (like Wikipedia).
The difference is that with CC0, re-users do not have to credit Wikimedia or Wikipedia for
the material they use. Voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and Google's
Assistant along with search engines like Google and Bing would no longer have to say that
they got the material from a Wikimedia project. They would also be free to copyright any
derivative works.
I think both of these results are undesirable, for reasons aptly described by Heather Ford
in her Wikipedia@20 chapter, "The Rise of the Underdog".[1]
Here is one part of the chapter that speaks to this:
---o0o---
"... Wikipedia’s facts are now increasingly extracted without credit by artificial
intelligence processes that consume its knowledge and present it as objective fact.
"As one of most popular websites in the world, it is tempting in 2020 to see
Wikipedia as a top dog in the world of facts, but the consumption of Wikipedia’s knowledge
without credit introduces Wikipedia’s greatest existential threat to date. This is not
just because of the ways in which third-party actors appropriate Wikipedia content and
remove the links that might sustain the community in terms of contributions of donations
and volunteer time. More important is that unsourced Wikipedia content threatens the
principle of verifiability, one of the fundamental principles on which Wikipedia was
built.
"Verifiability sets up a series of rights and obligations by readers and editors of
Wikipedia to knowledge whose political and social status is transparent. By removing
direct links to the Wikipedia article where statements originate from, search engines and
digital assistants are removing the clues that readers could use to (a) evaluate the
veracity of claims and (b) take active steps to change that information through consensus
if they feel that it is false. Without the source of factual statements being attributed
to Wikipedia, users will see those facts as solid, incontrovertible truth, when in reality
they may have been extracted during a process of consensus building or at the moment in
which the article was vandalized.
"Until now, platform companies have been asked to contribute to the Wikimedia
Foundation’s annual fund-raising campaign to “give back” to what they are taking out of
the commons.[23]
<https://hfordsa.medium.com/rise-of-the-underdog-92565503e4af#_edn23> But
contributions of cash will not solve what amounts to Wikipedia’s greatest existential
threat to date. What is needed is a public campaign to reinstate the principle of
verifiability in the content that is extracted from Wikipedia by platform companies. Users
need to be able to understand (a) exactly where facts originate, (b) how stable or
unstable those statements are, (c) how they might become involved in improving the quality
of that information, and (d) the rules under which decisions about representation will be
made.
"Wikipedia was once recognized as the underdog not only because it was underresourced
but also, more importantly, because it represented the just fight against more powerful
media who sought to limit the possibilities of people around the world to build knowledge
products together. Today, the fight is a new one, and Wikipedia must adapt in order to
survive.
"Sitting back and allowing platform companies to ingest Wikipedia’s knowledge and
represent it as the incontrovertible truth rather than the messy and variable truths it
actually depicts is an injustice. It is an injustice not only for Wikipedians but also for
people around the world who use the resource — either directly on Wikimedia servers or
indirectly via other platforms like search."
---o0o---
There is a lot at stake in this discussion.
Andreas
[1]
https://hfordsa.medium.com/rise-of-the-underdog-92565503e4af
On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 9:25 PM Denny Vrandečić <dvrandecic(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hello all,
Here is a conversation and decision we need to have before launch of Wikifunctions:
How should the contents of Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions be licensed?
Since the discussion is expected to be potentially complicated, let us keep a single place
of record for discussing this question:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Licensing_discussion
We would like the discussion to go on for four weeks and that we have some form of
consensus by December 20th. This is not planned to be a vote (although it might have votes
in it and it might even be closed by a vote in case no other form of consensus finding
works out).
I hope to see you all on wiki!
Denny
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