I found a few apparent legal problems while translating the license update documents. Apologies if these have already been discussed to death - I didn't follow earlier debates, and the archives are mostly useless as a knowledge base.
== revision not specified ==
The TOS says that reusers have to attribute the authors by linking to the article. The problem is that such a link will actually point to a different article after each edit (that is, the text and author list will have been changed). If you find a text copied from Wikipedia on the net, and there is no date information, it is very hard to find out which version of the article it is (and thus who the authors are); if the text is a derivative work from a Wikipedia article, then it's practically impossible.
Even if one argues that attributing bogus authors is not a problem as long as the real ones all appear on the list, the author list can change arbitrarily when the article is renamed or deleted and rewritten. (Neither of which is apparent even if one looks at the page history.)
A few possible solutions to that: - require reusers to permalink to the revision they used; change the totally unhelpful error message that is shown when one follows a link to a deleted version. (Probably not a very good idea as it messes up caching. Also, bad usability: most of the people who click such a link don't care about authors and original version one bit, and just want to see/edit the current version of the article.) - develop some syntax that shows the current version of the article, but with a little message on top saying "you have followed a link from a page reusing an older version of this article. You can see the most recent version of the article; if you want to see the original click here." (Maybe through some fragment id trick and javascript so it can go through the cache?) We would still have to address links to deleted versions. - require reusers to give date/revision of the page along with the url. Make some sort of search interface to find the text and/or author set of an article based on that information.
== CC version incompatibilities ==
Copyright policy now says "You may import any text from other sources that is available under the CC-BY-SA license", which is incorrect for to reasons. First, CC-BY-SA-1.0 (used, for example, by Wikitravel) is not compatible with anything but itself (as they forgot to include the ("or any later version" part). Second, different versions and jurisdictions of CC are not quite compatible: for example if a wiki has an article under CC-BY-SA-3.0-US, then uploading that to Wikipedia (which will use CC-BY-SA-3.0 unported) is actually a breach of the license. You could change the version or jurisdiction when you create an adaptation (that is, you make changes significant enough to be considered on of the authors), but not when you just redistribute the work. (I doubt anything could be done about this beyond prodding CC to release a saner version of their license soon.)
== edit summary cannot contain links ==
The currently proposed editing policy says:
"If you import text under the CC-BY-SA license, you must abide by the terms of the license; specifically, you must, in a reasonable fashion, credit the author(s). Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as wiki-to-wiki copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the content."
(which BTW should be rephrased more clearly - does it mean you can use the edit summary if you import text from another wiki, but not when you do it from any other web page?) The problem is that the edit summary does not allow external links: they will show as plain text, and it would be hard to argue that that is reasonable to the medium. (This one is easy to fix: allow them, and rely on rev_delete and capctha to stop edit summary spam instead.) Furthermore, a long link does not necessarily fit into the summary (which is 255 bytes long, and there are a number of web pages that use ugly links with loads GET parameters that are longer than that), so some sort of separate attribution log might be more reasonable.
the archives are mostly useless as a knowledge base.
This is false and you know it. Several of these questions *have* been debated here and with a few simple searches you could be well on your way to reading the discussions.
On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 7:35 AM, Tisza Gergő gtisza@gmail.com wrote:
I found a few apparent legal problems while translating the license update documents. Apologies if these have already been discussed to death - I didn't follow earlier debates, and the archives are mostly useless as a knowledge base.
== revision not specified ==
The TOS says that reusers have to attribute the authors by linking to the article. The problem is that such a link will actually point to a different article after each edit (that is, the text and author list will have been changed). If you find a text copied from Wikipedia on the net, and there is no date information, it is very hard to find out which version of the article it is (and thus who the authors are); if the text is a derivative work from a Wikipedia article, then it's practically impossible.
Even if one argues that attributing bogus authors is not a problem as long as the real ones all appear on the list, the author list can change arbitrarily when the article is renamed or deleted and rewritten. (Neither of which is apparent even if one looks at the page history.)
A few possible solutions to that:
- require reusers to permalink to the revision they used; change the
totally unhelpful error message that is shown when one follows a link to a deleted version. (Probably not a very good idea as it messes up caching. Also, bad usability: most of the people who click such a link don't care about authors and original version one bit, and just want to see/edit the current version of the article.)
- develop some syntax that shows the current version of the article,
but with a little message on top saying "you have followed a link from a page reusing an older version of this article. You can see the most recent version of the article; if you want to see the original click here." (Maybe through some fragment id trick and javascript so it can go through the cache?) We would still have to address links to deleted versions.
- require reusers to give date/revision of the page along with the
url. Make some sort of search interface to find the text and/or author set of an article based on that information.
== CC version incompatibilities ==
Copyright policy now says "You may import any text from other sources that is available under the CC-BY-SA license", which is incorrect for to reasons. First, CC-BY-SA-1.0 (used, for example, by Wikitravel) is not compatible with anything but itself (as they forgot to include the ("or any later version" part). Second, different versions and jurisdictions of CC are not quite compatible: for example if a wiki has an article under CC-BY-SA-3.0-US, then uploading that to Wikipedia (which will use CC-BY-SA-3.0 unported) is actually a breach of the license. You could change the version or jurisdiction when you create an adaptation (that is, you make changes significant enough to be considered on of the authors), but not when you just redistribute the work. (I doubt anything could be done about this beyond prodding CC to release a saner version of their license soon.)
== edit summary cannot contain links ==
The currently proposed editing policy says:
"If you import text under the CC-BY-SA license, you must abide by the terms of the license; specifically, you must, in a reasonable fashion, credit the author(s). Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as wiki-to-wiki copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the content."
(which BTW should be rephrased more clearly - does it mean you can use the edit summary if you import text from another wiki, but not when you do it from any other web page?) The problem is that the edit summary does not allow external links: they will show as plain text, and it would be hard to argue that that is reasonable to the medium. (This one is easy to fix: allow them, and rely on rev_delete and capctha to stop edit summary spam instead.) Furthermore, a long link does not necessarily fit into the summary (which is 255 bytes long, and there are a number of web pages that use ugly links with loads GET parameters that are longer than that), so some sort of separate attribution log might be more reasonable.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
A pet peeve of mine; I don't think telling anyone what THEY know or don't know over the internet is worthwhile in most cases.
-Dan On Apr 14, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Brian wrote:
the archives are mostly useless as a knowledge base.
This is false and you know it. Several of these questions *have* been debated here and with a few simple searches you could be well on your way to reading the discussions.
On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 7:35 AM, Tisza Gergő gtisza@gmail.com wrote:
I found a few apparent legal problems while translating the license update documents. Apologies if these have already been discussed to death - I didn't follow earlier debates, and the archives are mostly useless as a knowledge base.
== revision not specified ==
The TOS says that reusers have to attribute the authors by linking to the article. The problem is that such a link will actually point to a different article after each edit (that is, the text and author list will have been changed). If you find a text copied from Wikipedia on the net, and there is no date information, it is very hard to find out which version of the article it is (and thus who the authors are); if the text is a derivative work from a Wikipedia article, then it's practically impossible.
Even if one argues that attributing bogus authors is not a problem as long as the real ones all appear on the list, the author list can change arbitrarily when the article is renamed or deleted and rewritten. (Neither of which is apparent even if one looks at the page history.)
A few possible solutions to that:
- require reusers to permalink to the revision they used; change the
totally unhelpful error message that is shown when one follows a link to a deleted version. (Probably not a very good idea as it messes up caching. Also, bad usability: most of the people who click such a link don't care about authors and original version one bit, and just want to see/edit the current version of the article.)
- develop some syntax that shows the current version of the article,
but with a little message on top saying "you have followed a link from a page reusing an older version of this article. You can see the most recent version of the article; if you want to see the original click here." (Maybe through some fragment id trick and javascript so it can go through the cache?) We would still have to address links to deleted versions.
- require reusers to give date/revision of the page along with the
url. Make some sort of search interface to find the text and/or author set of an article based on that information.
== CC version incompatibilities ==
Copyright policy now says "You may import any text from other sources that is available under the CC-BY-SA license", which is incorrect for to reasons. First, CC-BY-SA-1.0 (used, for example, by Wikitravel) is not compatible with anything but itself (as they forgot to include the ("or any later version" part). Second, different versions and jurisdictions of CC are not quite compatible: for example if a wiki has an article under CC-BY-SA-3.0-US, then uploading that to Wikipedia (which will use CC-BY-SA-3.0 unported) is actually a breach of the license. You could change the version or jurisdiction when you create an adaptation (that is, you make changes significant enough to be considered on of the authors), but not when you just redistribute the work. (I doubt anything could be done about this beyond prodding CC to release a saner version of their license soon.)
== edit summary cannot contain links ==
The currently proposed editing policy says:
"If you import text under the CC-BY-SA license, you must abide by the terms of the license; specifically, you must, in a reasonable fashion, credit the author(s). Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as wiki-to-wiki copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the content."
(which BTW should be rephrased more clearly - does it mean you can use the edit summary if you import text from another wiki, but not when you do it from any other web page?) The problem is that the edit summary does not allow external links: they will show as plain text, and it would be hard to argue that that is reasonable to the medium. (This one is easy to fix: allow them, and rely on rev_delete and capctha to stop edit summary spam instead.) Furthermore, a long link does not necessarily fit into the summary (which is 255 bytes long, and there are a number of web pages that use ugly links with loads GET parameters that are longer than that), so some sort of separate attribution log might be more reasonable.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ foundation-l
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The only way to conclude that the archives are a worthless knowledge base would be to attempt several search queries over them and find no relevant results. Since results would have been found had reasonable searches been attempted we know that the complaint is likely to be fake.
On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.comwrote:
A pet peeve of mine; I don't think telling anyone what THEY know or don't know over the internet is worthwhile in most cases.
-Dan On Apr 14, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Brian wrote:
the archives are mostly useless as a knowledge base.
This is false and you know it. Several of these questions *have* been debated here and with a few simple searches you could be well on your way to reading the discussions.
On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 7:35 AM, Tisza Gergő gtisza@gmail.com wrote:
I found a few apparent legal problems while translating the license update documents. Apologies if these have already been discussed to death - I didn't follow earlier debates, and the archives are mostly useless as a knowledge base.
== revision not specified ==
The TOS says that reusers have to attribute the authors by linking to the article. The problem is that such a link will actually point to a different article after each edit (that is, the text and author list will have been changed). If you find a text copied from Wikipedia on the net, and there is no date information, it is very hard to find out which version of the article it is (and thus who the authors are); if the text is a derivative work from a Wikipedia article, then it's practically impossible.
Even if one argues that attributing bogus authors is not a problem as long as the real ones all appear on the list, the author list can change arbitrarily when the article is renamed or deleted and rewritten. (Neither of which is apparent even if one looks at the page history.)
A few possible solutions to that:
- require reusers to permalink to the revision they used; change the
totally unhelpful error message that is shown when one follows a link to a deleted version. (Probably not a very good idea as it messes up caching. Also, bad usability: most of the people who click such a link don't care about authors and original version one bit, and just want to see/edit the current version of the article.)
- develop some syntax that shows the current version of the article,
but with a little message on top saying "you have followed a link from a page reusing an older version of this article. You can see the most recent version of the article; if you want to see the original click here." (Maybe through some fragment id trick and javascript so it can go through the cache?) We would still have to address links to deleted versions.
- require reusers to give date/revision of the page along with the
url. Make some sort of search interface to find the text and/or author set of an article based on that information.
== CC version incompatibilities ==
Copyright policy now says "You may import any text from other sources that is available under the CC-BY-SA license", which is incorrect for to reasons. First, CC-BY-SA-1.0 (used, for example, by Wikitravel) is not compatible with anything but itself (as they forgot to include the ("or any later version" part). Second, different versions and jurisdictions of CC are not quite compatible: for example if a wiki has an article under CC-BY-SA-3.0-US, then uploading that to Wikipedia (which will use CC-BY-SA-3.0 unported) is actually a breach of the license. You could change the version or jurisdiction when you create an adaptation (that is, you make changes significant enough to be considered on of the authors), but not when you just redistribute the work. (I doubt anything could be done about this beyond prodding CC to release a saner version of their license soon.)
== edit summary cannot contain links ==
The currently proposed editing policy says:
"If you import text under the CC-BY-SA license, you must abide by the terms of the license; specifically, you must, in a reasonable fashion, credit the author(s). Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as wiki-to-wiki copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the content."
(which BTW should be rephrased more clearly - does it mean you can use the edit summary if you import text from another wiki, but not when you do it from any other web page?) The problem is that the edit summary does not allow external links: they will show as plain text, and it would be hard to argue that that is reasonable to the medium. (This one is easy to fix: allow them, and rely on rev_delete and capctha to stop edit summary spam instead.) Furthermore, a long link does not necessarily fit into the summary (which is 255 bytes long, and there are a number of web pages that use ugly links with loads GET parameters that are longer than that), so some sort of separate attribution log might be more reasonable.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Hi all, Could we please summarize the outcome of the long discussions on this subject instead of discussing different external search services to the mailing list? (No doubt one can learn a lot about the different external possibilities not offered via the list.wikimedia.org site, yet I would like to learn at least as much about the answers to the actual issues posed in the original post [even at the price of repeating previously stated conclusions])
These questions have apparently been discussed before and I am confident that they will come up again: it might be a good idea to collect the answers that came out of long, fast-paced and hard to follow mailing list threads. The FAQ and the oppositional arguments pages (cited in this thread) in my opinion don't serve the purpose and audience of the questions of this thread (the FAQ in my opinion is aimed at a less initiated audience, while the oppositional arguments deal with outright refusing this change; these questions on the other hand might stir the fantasy of those that are "advanced" licencwise and want to make this migration work and thus have questions that will inevitably come up in practice once the licence update has been followed through).
Thank you, Bence Damokos
2009/4/14 Tisza Gergő gtisza@gmail.com
I found a few apparent legal problems while translating the license update documents. Apologies if these have already been discussed to death - I didn't follow earlier debates, and the archives are mostly useless as a knowledge base.
== revision not specified ==
The TOS says that reusers have to attribute the authors by linking to the article. The problem is that such a link will actually point to a different article after each edit (that is, the text and author list will have been changed). If you find a text copied from Wikipedia on the net, and there is no date information, it is very hard to find out which version of the article it is (and thus who the authors are); if the text is a derivative work from a Wikipedia article, then it's practically impossible.
Even if one argues that attributing bogus authors is not a problem as long as the real ones all appear on the list, the author list can change arbitrarily when the article is renamed or deleted and rewritten. (Neither of which is apparent even if one looks at the page history.)
A few possible solutions to that:
- require reusers to permalink to the revision they used; change the
totally unhelpful error message that is shown when one follows a link to a deleted version. (Probably not a very good idea as it messes up caching. Also, bad usability: most of the people who click such a link don't care about authors and original version one bit, and just want to see/edit the current version of the article.)
- develop some syntax that shows the current version of the article,
but with a little message on top saying "you have followed a link from a page reusing an older version of this article. You can see the most recent version of the article; if you want to see the original click here." (Maybe through some fragment id trick and javascript so it can go through the cache?) We would still have to address links to deleted versions.
- require reusers to give date/revision of the page along with the
url. Make some sort of search interface to find the text and/or author set of an article based on that information.
== CC version incompatibilities ==
Copyright policy now says "You may import any text from other sources that is available under the CC-BY-SA license", which is incorrect for to reasons. First, CC-BY-SA-1.0 (used, for example, by Wikitravel) is not compatible with anything but itself (as they forgot to include the ("or any later version" part). Second, different versions and jurisdictions of CC are not quite compatible: for example if a wiki has an article under CC-BY-SA-3.0-US, then uploading that to Wikipedia (which will use CC-BY-SA-3.0 unported) is actually a breach of the license. You could change the version or jurisdiction when you create an adaptation (that is, you make changes significant enough to be considered on of the authors), but not when you just redistribute the work. (I doubt anything could be done about this beyond prodding CC to release a saner version of their license soon.)
== edit summary cannot contain links ==
The currently proposed editing policy says:
"If you import text under the CC-BY-SA license, you must abide by the terms of the license; specifically, you must, in a reasonable fashion, credit the author(s). Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as wiki-to-wiki copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the content."
(which BTW should be rephrased more clearly - does it mean you can use the edit summary if you import text from another wiki, but not when you do it from any other web page?) The problem is that the edit summary does not allow external links: they will show as plain text, and it would be hard to argue that that is reasonable to the medium. (This one is easy to fix: allow them, and rely on rev_delete and capctha to stop edit summary spam instead.) Furthermore, a long link does not necessarily fit into the summary (which is 255 bytes long, and there are a number of web pages that use ugly links with loads GET parameters that are longer than that), so some sort of separate attribution log might be more reasonable.
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http://www.google.com/search?q=foundation-l+summary
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 12:44 AM, Bence Damokos bdamokos@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all, Could we please summarize the outcome of the long discussions on this subject instead of discussing different external search services to the mailing list? (No doubt one can learn a lot about the different external possibilities not offered via the list.wikimedia.org site, yet I would like to learn at least as much about the answers to the actual issues posed in the original post [even at the price of repeating previously stated conclusions])
These questions have apparently been discussed before and I am confident that they will come up again: it might be a good idea to collect the answers that came out of long, fast-paced and hard to follow mailing list threads. The FAQ and the oppositional arguments pages (cited in this thread) in my opinion don't serve the purpose and audience of the questions of this thread (the FAQ in my opinion is aimed at a less initiated audience, while the oppositional arguments deal with outright refusing this change; these questions on the other hand might stir the fantasy of those that are "advanced" licencwise and want to make this migration work and thus have questions that will inevitably come up in practice once the licence update has been followed through).
Thank you, Bence Damokos
2009/4/14 Tisza Gergő gtisza@gmail.com
I found a few apparent legal problems while translating the license update documents. Apologies if these have already been discussed to death - I didn't follow earlier debates, and the archives are mostly useless as a knowledge base.
== revision not specified ==
The TOS says that reusers have to attribute the authors by linking to the article. The problem is that such a link will actually point to a different article after each edit (that is, the text and author list will have been changed). If you find a text copied from Wikipedia on the net, and there is no date information, it is very hard to find out which version of the article it is (and thus who the authors are); if the text is a derivative work from a Wikipedia article, then it's practically impossible.
Even if one argues that attributing bogus authors is not a problem as long as the real ones all appear on the list, the author list can change arbitrarily when the article is renamed or deleted and rewritten. (Neither of which is apparent even if one looks at the page history.)
A few possible solutions to that:
- require reusers to permalink to the revision they used; change the
totally unhelpful error message that is shown when one follows a link to a deleted version. (Probably not a very good idea as it messes up caching. Also, bad usability: most of the people who click such a link don't care about authors and original version one bit, and just want to see/edit the current version of the article.)
- develop some syntax that shows the current version of the article,
but with a little message on top saying "you have followed a link from a page reusing an older version of this article. You can see the most recent version of the article; if you want to see the original click here." (Maybe through some fragment id trick and javascript so it can go through the cache?) We would still have to address links to deleted versions.
- require reusers to give date/revision of the page along with the
url. Make some sort of search interface to find the text and/or author set of an article based on that information.
== CC version incompatibilities ==
Copyright policy now says "You may import any text from other sources that is available under the CC-BY-SA license", which is incorrect for to reasons. First, CC-BY-SA-1.0 (used, for example, by Wikitravel) is not compatible with anything but itself (as they forgot to include the ("or any later version" part). Second, different versions and jurisdictions of CC are not quite compatible: for example if a wiki has an article under CC-BY-SA-3.0-US, then uploading that to Wikipedia (which will use CC-BY-SA-3.0 unported) is actually a breach of the license. You could change the version or jurisdiction when you create an adaptation (that is, you make changes significant enough to be considered on of the authors), but not when you just redistribute the work. (I doubt anything could be done about this beyond prodding CC to release a saner version of their license soon.)
== edit summary cannot contain links ==
The currently proposed editing policy says:
"If you import text under the CC-BY-SA license, you must abide by the terms of the license; specifically, you must, in a reasonable fashion, credit the author(s). Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as wiki-to-wiki copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the content."
(which BTW should be rephrased more clearly - does it mean you can use the edit summary if you import text from another wiki, but not when you do it from any other web page?) The problem is that the edit summary does not allow external links: they will show as plain text, and it would be hard to argue that that is reasonable to the medium. (This one is easy to fix: allow them, and rely on rev_delete and capctha to stop edit summary spam instead.) Furthermore, a long link does not necessarily fit into the summary (which is 255 bytes long, and there are a number of web pages that use ugly links with loads GET parameters that are longer than that), so some sort of separate attribution log might be more reasonable.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 2:44 AM, Bence Damokos bdamokos@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all, Could we please summarize the outcome of the long discussions on this subject instead of discussing different external search services to the mailing list?
What is it specifically that you want to know? The discussions on this mailing list were largely for the benefit of those involved in the discussion, not for others to get a summary afterward. Furthermore, they were censored to the point where they weren't able to get to the heart of the matter, which is a fundamental difference on the moral issues surrounding copyright law, attribution, integrity rights, etc.
Are you strongly opposed to all types of "intellectual property"? Vote for the change. Do you believe that the right to attribution is a fundamental natural right which is held by individuals and cannot be alienated by majority vote? Vote against the change, or refuse to vote at all. Have you not decided on whether or not you want to live in a society in which individuals have the right to their creations? Vote "no opinion", or don't vote, or hurry up and form an opinion already.
Most of all, don't worry so much about this vote. It's fairly meaningless. We all know how it's going to turn out, after all. If you're not sure how to vote, that indicates that you haven't decided on some fundamental principles, which is a much bigger issue than whether or not to skew the vote a couple hundredths of a percent one way or the other.
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 9:04 AM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 2:44 AM, Bence Damokos bdamokos@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all, Could we please summarize the outcome of the long discussions on this subject instead of discussing different external search services to the mailing list?
What is it specifically that you want to know?
I think he was telling us to get back on the subject at hand... someone made a few comments and another person said "well, this has already been discussed!" So... it would be useful to tell the original poster what happened in those discussions, so that he can participate. :-) Either that, or point him to the threads where it was discussed.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org