I would like a few things to be decided/ clarified regarding GFDL, partly because I received some complaint by another Wikipedian that GFDL is so difficult to understand that there needs to be an unofficial guide to how to use Wikimedia contents in compliance with GFDL.
1. Is Wikimedia Foundation the "Publisher" as in GFDL of Wikimedia contents?
2. When people modify documents, one of the requirements is to change the title, as in 4-A. The publisher of the original version may permit the licensee to use the same title. Does Wikimedia Foundation permit that?
3. Another requirement is 4-J, the preservation of network locations of previous versions. Does Wikimedia Foundation give permission not to preserve the network locations?
My understanding is that answers to all three questions are yes. But I am a bit unsure about the last one.
People tend to think link to the live article is important, as I understand. Some people, based on American law, think this is a good substitute for the requirement 4-I, the preservation of History section. That aside, link back to individual articles are important for us to keep google rank.
I personally think this is not the part of contract, because the live article is not necessarily the "previous version." But Wikimedia Foundation's enforcement policy would be that if live articles are linked back from individual pages, and some other important conditions are met, WMF does not make a big noise about violation of 4-I.
In other words, my understanding is that WMF does not change the terms of GFDL, but simply has some policy as a publisher regarding what type of violations are bad enough for WMF to take actions.
I am not a lawyer, so my guesses and assumptions could well be wrong. I appreciate your comments and clarifications.
Thanks,
Tomos
You know the great thing about PD, there is no clause 4-J that requires a law degree to understand
On 7 Dec 2004 10:01:01 +0900, wiki_tomos wiki_tomos@inter7.jp wrote:
I would like a few things to be decided/ clarified regarding GFDL, partly because I received some complaint by another Wikipedian that GFDL is so difficult to understand that there needs to be an unofficial guide to how to use Wikimedia contents in compliance with GFDL.
Is Wikimedia Foundation the "Publisher" as in GFDL of Wikimedia contents?
When people modify documents, one of the requirements is to change the title,
as in 4-A. The publisher of the original version may permit the licensee to use the same title. Does Wikimedia Foundation permit that?
- Another requirement is 4-J, the preservation of network locations of
previous versions. Does Wikimedia Foundation give permission not to preserve the network locations?
My understanding is that answers to all three questions are yes. But I am a bit unsure about the last one.
People tend to think link to the live article is important, as I understand. Some people, based on American law, think this is a good substitute for the requirement 4-I, the preservation of History section. That aside, link back to individual articles are important for us to keep google rank.
I personally think this is not the part of contract, because the live article is not necessarily the "previous version." But Wikimedia Foundation's enforcement policy would be that if live articles are linked back from individual pages, and some other important conditions are met, WMF does not make a big noise about violation of 4-I.
In other words, my understanding is that WMF does not change the terms of GFDL, but simply has some policy as a publisher regarding what type of violations are bad enough for WMF to take actions.
I am not a lawyer, so my guesses and assumptions could well be wrong. I appreciate your comments and clarifications.
Thanks,
Tomos _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
wiki_tomos wrote:
I would like a few things to be decided/ clarified regarding GFDL, partly because I received some complaint by another Wikipedian that GFDL is so difficult to understand that there needs to be an unofficial guide to how to use Wikimedia contents in compliance with GFDL.
- Is Wikimedia Foundation the "Publisher" as in GFDL of Wikimedia
contents?
That would be my interpretation. For items published before the Wikimedia Foundation came into existence, you could probably consider the publisher to be either Bomis or Jimbo Wales.
- When people modify documents, one of the requirements is to change
the title, as in 4-A. The publisher of the original version may permit the licensee to use the same title. Does Wikimedia Foundation permit that?
No, not if you consider the entire project to be the document. It has registered the various project names as trademarks to reinforce its exclusive ownership. If it gave any contributor permission to use the same title, then anyone could start a fork of Wikipedia with the same name.
- Another requirement is 4-J, the preservation of network locations
of previous versions. Does Wikimedia Foundation give permission not to preserve the network locations?
No statement has been made that I'm aware of.
My understanding is that answers to all three questions are yes. But I am a bit unsure about the last one.
People tend to think link to the live article is important, as I understand. Some people, based on American law, think this is a good substitute for the requirement 4-I, the preservation of History section. That aside, link back to individual articles are important for us to keep google rank.
I personally think this is not the part of contract, because the live article is not necessarily the "previous version." But Wikimedia Foundation's enforcement policy would be that if live articles are linked back from individual pages, and some other important conditions are met, WMF does not make a big noise about violation of 4-I.
In other words, my understanding is that WMF does not change the terms of GFDL, but simply has some policy as a publisher regarding what type of violations are bad enough for WMF to take actions.
Wikipedia's policy (not Wikimedia's) has been to coerce mirrors and forks into providing a link back by huffing and puffing about license violations, even though a link back is not required by the license. All you need to do to fulfill 4-I is create a "History" section like this:
HISTORY * Some Mirror, 2004, John Copier, http://somemirror.org * Wikipedia, 2000-2002, Wikipedia contributors, http://www.wikipedia.org * Marxists Internet Archive, 2002, MIA volunteers, http://www.marxists.org * Nupedia, 2000-2001, Nupedia contributors, http://www.nupedia.org (see Wikipedia:Nupedia and Wikipedia for a list of articles this applies to)
That's taken from [[Wikipedia:GFDL History (unofficial)]]. Since it's unofficial, you could assume it doesn't exist and just start your own section, omitting the 3rd and 4th entries.
Wikimedia doesn't have any policy on this. The link back policy appears to have destroyed our Google ranking, triggering spam heuristics. In many cases we are ranked below the mirrors. This has forced Google to consider a change to their ranking algorithm.
I am not a lawyer, so my guesses and assumptions could well be wrong. I appreciate your comments and clarifications.
Same here.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia's policy (not Wikimedia's) has been to coerce mirrors and forks into providing a link back by huffing and puffing about license violations, even though a link back is not required by the license. All you need to do to fulfill 4-I is create a "History" section like this:
HISTORY * Some Mirror, 2004, John Copier, http://somemirror.org * Wikipedia, 2000-2002, Wikipedia contributors, http://www.wikipedia.org * Marxists Internet Archive, 2002, MIA volunteers, http://www.marxists.org * Nupedia, 2000-2001, Nupedia contributors, http://www.nupedia.org (see Wikipedia:Nupedia and Wikipedia for a list of articles this applies to)
That's taken from [[Wikipedia:GFDL History (unofficial)]]. Since it's unofficial, you could assume it doesn't exist and just start your own section, omitting the 3rd and 4th entries.
Wikimedia doesn't have any policy on this. The link back policy appears to have destroyed our Google ranking, triggering spam heuristics. In many cases we are ranked below the mirrors. This has forced Google to consider a change to their ranking algorithm.
what? sorry, why has the link back destroyed our ranking? isnt it that the more places that link to us the better our rating, and also what do you mean by spam heuristics? Why are we ranked below our mirrors?
gah, im confused,
paz y amor, rjs
Robin Shannon wrote: <snip>
Wikimedia doesn't have any policy on this. The link back policy appears to have destroyed our Google ranking, triggering spam heuristics. In many cases we are ranked below the mirrors. This has forced Google to consider a change to their ranking algorithm.
what? sorry, why has the link back destroyed our ranking? isnt it that the more places that link to us the better our rating, and also what do you mean by spam heuristics? Why are we ranked below our mirrors?
gah, im confused,
paz y amor, rjs
hello,
Having hundred of website having hundred thousand of links poiting to www.wikipedia.org somehow trigger a "rank spam" alert in google engine.
Then google lower our ranking believing we set mirrors to raise our rank wich is link spamming. Our mirrors get less link back but are still used as a reference by other website.
Basicly:
(Wikipedia_rank - googleantispam) < random_mirror_rank
cheers,
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org