[Foundation-l] Wikipedia Attribution and Relicensing

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Sam Johnston

15 Jan 2009 15 Jan '09

1:54 a.m.

Hi, I've been following with great interest the endeavour to relicense Wikipedia for some time, though this is my first meaningful contribution to it. Attribution is an important and sensitive issue but I think the discussions so far are missing a great opportunity to promote Wikipedia itself while further simplifying (and thus fostering) re-use. Focus so far has been on arduous processes for identifying authors and linking to revision histories which runs the risk of continuing to stifle adoption of content even after re-licensing. It appears that it would be adequate (as a minimum acceptable standard) to specify the CC-BY-SA license and refer to the Wikipedia article - certainly the license section 4(c) allows for significant flexibility in this regard. The attribution itself would then be something like "Wikipedia 'Widgets' article" which is enough in itself for a user to be able to find the article and associated revision history (concise attributions are critical especially for print work, on t-shirts, etc.). My primary concern is that it can be essentially impossible to reliably identify key contributers, and that doing so in an environment of stigmergic collaboration can be very misleading as to the value of each contribution (even the most minor of edits play a critical role in the building of trust). It is also a potential source of significant contention, both internally between editors and externally with editors individually seeking attribution from content consumers. Take for example the cloud computing<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing>article which I [re]wrote last year, the vast majority of which is to this day still my work. In this case it is clear from the statistics<http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=en.wikipedia&page=cloud%20computing>that I am the primary/original author but had I have confined my updates to a single edit there would be no way to reliably identify me, short of tracking the owner of each and every character (and even this is far from perfect). In any case my contribution was intended to further the objects of Wikipedia and if I need to derive recognition for my work then I will reference it directly myself. Please consider adopting as low a minimum acceptable standard for attributions as possible so as to derive the full benefit from this exciting transition by lowering the barriers to participation. Kind regards, Sam

Show replies by date

Erik Moeller

16 Jan 16 Jan

10:07 p.m.

2009/1/14 Sam Johnston <samj(a)samj.net>et>:

...

It appears that it would be adequate (as a minimum acceptable standard) to specify the CC-BY-SA license and refer to the Wikipedia article - certainly the license section 4(c) allows for significant flexibility in this regard. The attribution itself would then be something like "Wikipedia 'Widgets' article" which is enough in itself for a user to be able to find the article and associated revision history (concise attributions are critical especially for print work, on t-shirts, etc.).

There are a couple of counterpoints to this: * For pictures, sound files, etc., there is often just a single author. If you are the photographer of a high resolution panorama that you've contributed to Wikipedia, I think it's a reasonable expectation to be named ("Photo by Sam Johnston"), as opposed to being referred to as "Photo from Wikipedia". This is equally true, I think, for articles where there is just a single author, or for pictures which have been subsequently edited a few times. * The attribution terms should avoid requiring specific reference to Wikipedia, so that it's clear that there is not necessarily a tie between the project in which collaboration currently happens, and any future use of the content. If someone creates a better alternative to Wikipedia where the content is used, why should it be continued to be attributed to Wikipedia, rather than the authors? I think requiring attribution-by-history should be the best practice for heavily edited articles, at least until we more prominently point out the author credit in the article footer. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Brian

10:11 p.m.

I like Sam's point. Do you really want to print this on a t-shirt? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=history Also, it makes specific reference to Wikipedia. On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

2009/1/14 Sam Johnston <samj(a)samj.net>et>:

It appears that it would be adequate (as a minimum acceptable standard)

specify the CC-BY-SA license and refer to the Wikipedia article -

certainly

the license section 4(c) allows for significant flexibility in this

regard.

The attribution itself would then be something like "Wikipedia 'Widgets' article" which is enough in itself for a user to be able to find the

article

and associated revision history (concise attributions are critical especially for print work, on t-shirts, etc.).

geni

10:34 p.m.

2009/1/16 Brian <Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu>du>:

...

I like Sam's point. Do you really want to print this on a t-shirt? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=history Also, it makes specific reference to Wikipedia.

Since you would also have to include complete copies of the GFDL and GPL I wouldn't worry overmuch. -- geni

Brian

10:35 p.m.

I am talking about CC-BY-SA geni. On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 2:34 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

2009/1/16 Brian <Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu>du>:

I like Sam's point. Do you really want to print this on a t-shirt? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=history Also, it makes specific reference to Wikipedia.

Since you would also have to include complete copies of the GFDL and GPL I wouldn't worry overmuch. -- geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

10:31 p.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

I think requiring attribution-by-history should be the best practice for heavily edited articles, at least until we more prominently point out the author credit in the article footer.

Eh? Which should it be? A requirement, or a best practise? You can't have it both ways. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Erik Moeller

10:56 p.m.

2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

Erik Moeller wrote:

I think requiring attribution-by-history should be the best practice for heavily edited articles, at least until we more prominently point out the author credit in the article footer.

Eh? Which should it be? A requirement, or a best practise?

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

11:09 p.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

Erik Moeller wrote:

I think requiring attribution-by-history should be the best practice for heavily edited articles, at least until we more prominently point out the author credit in the article footer.

Eh? Which should it be? A requirement, or a best practise?

What I meant is, 'requiring attribution-by-history-reference seems like the most reasonable attribution requirement, at least unless/until attribution is more visible on the article page itself.'

If you are going to qualify things as finely as "seems like the most reasonable attribution requirement"; wouldn't it be much more useful to use language like "recommend" or "suggest" instead of "require"? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Brian

11:29 p.m.

What is an attribution-by-history-reference? How come it has to be a url and not something like: The term Bushism is a neologism that refers to a number of peculiar words, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms, and semantic or linguistic errors that have occurred in the public speaking of United States President George W. Bush. (Wikipedia, Bushism) Isn't this the spirit of the new license? It lets you know that somewhere in the history of the Wikipedia article on Bushism you can find the author(s) of this piece of text. You could make it easier to find the author by allowing per-article history search in the software. On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

Erik Moeller wrote:

I think requiring attribution-by-history should be the best practice for heavily edited articles, at least until we more prominently point out the author credit in the article footer.

Eh? Which should it be? A requirement, or a best practise?

What I meant is, 'requiring attribution-by-history-reference seems like the most reasonable attribution requirement, at least unless/until attribution is more visible on the article page itself.' -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

17 Jan 17 Jan

1:06 a.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

2009/1/14 Sam Johnston <samj(a)samj.net>et>:

I have no intention of in any shape or form binding myself to the views expounded by Anthony on this or any other list, but really, this goes beyond the pale. *Neither* of those options are right or just. That you are representing it as a choice between those two options is a great travesty. Attribution here can only be a very *minimal* requirement, I cannot see how the whole history of alterations could be somehow swept under the carpet... Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Erik Moeller

1:11 a.m.

2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

Attribution here can only be a very *minimal* requirement, I cannot see how the whole history of alterations could be somehow swept under the carpet...

Are you referring to indicating changes? Per CC-BY-SA, 3.b: ... to create and Reproduce Adaptations provided that any such Adaptation, including any translation in any medium, takes reasonable steps to clearly label, demarcate or otherwise identify that changes were made to the original Work. For example, a translation could be marked "The original work was translated from English to Spanish," or a modification could indicate "The original work has been modified."; -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

1:31 a.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

Attribution here can only be a very *minimal* requirement, I cannot see how the whole history of alterations could be somehow swept under the carpet...

That talks about translations, rather than editing images. I don't know if you are well acquainted with the long and arduous debate over whether translations are creative acts... Editing an image is not usually an act that even by pre-supposition is an adaptation or rendition that is intended to approach a faithfully "ad-equate" (as distinguished from "adequate") translation. When editing an image departs from being a faithful representation from what the original work of art presented, of course it would not be a mere "adaptation". Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

1:18 a.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

* The attribution terms should avoid requiring specific reference to Wikipedia, so that it's clear that there is not necessarily a tie between the project in which collaboration currently happens, and any future use of the content. If someone creates a better alternative to Wikipedia where the content is used, why should it be continued to be attributed to Wikipedia, rather than the authors?

I must be a moron or at least functionally illiterate, since I simply cannot parse the previous paragraph in a way that makes logical sense. Let me try though... Okay. Content should be attributed to authors... Ouch! Wait... Sorry, still can't parse it in context... Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Erik Moeller

1:45 a.m.

2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

Erik Moeller wrote:

I must be a moron or at least functionally illiterate, since I simply cannot parse the previous paragraph in a way that makes logical sense.

:-) Imagine that: 1) The Wikimedia Foundation is taken over by evil reptilian kitten eaters; 2) Wikipedians join forces to fork Wikipedia into Freependium, which has an explicit policy to not eat kittens (FP:DONOTEAT); 3) Two years later, nobody uses Wikipedia anymore except for a few die hard kitten eaters; 4) Yet, millions of Freependium users need to continue to reference the kitten eating Wikipedia because of the attribution requirements. Unlikely? Perhaps - though some people say that the evil reptilian kitten eater takeover has already begun. The way around this is to formulate attribution requirements that do not require specific reference to Wikipedia, but only to the individuals who contributed the text. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

1:55 a.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

Erik Moeller wrote:

I must be a moron or at least functionally illiterate, since I simply cannot parse the previous paragraph in a way that makes logical sense.

:-)

I whole-heartedly apologize to you for previously intimating that your ability at humour is at the native level of Germans everywhere around the globe. :-)))

...

Imagine that: 1) The Wikimedia Foundation is taken over by evil reptilian kitten eaters; 2) Wikipedians join forces to fork Wikipedia into Freependium, which has an explicit policy to not eat kittens (FP:DONOTEAT); 3) Two years later, nobody uses Wikipedia anymore except for a few die hard kitten eaters; 4) Yet, millions of Freependium users need to continue to reference the kitten eating Wikipedia because of the attribution requirements. Unlikely? Perhaps - though some people say that the evil reptilian kitten eater takeover has already begun. The way around this is to formulate attribution requirements that do not require specific reference to Wikipedia, but only to the individuals who contributed the text.

I really laughed at this. Still waiting for a substantive reply though. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Sam Johnston

2:03 a.m.

On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 1:45 AM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Unlikely? Perhaps - though some people say that the evil reptilian kitten eater takeover has already begun. The way around this is to formulate attribution requirements that do not require specific reference to Wikipedia, but only to the individuals who contributed the text.

I appreciate that it is difficult for Wikimeida Foundation to *require* others to credit Wikipedia, however what I have proposed is that this be *allowed* as a minimum acceptable standard. That is, you must at least reference Wikipedia and the article, but it may be appropriate to additionally *or* alternatively refer to individual contributor(s). In your example, this approach would allow Freependium to credit individuals rather than the kitten eaters, but would not require it so as not to raise the 'barrier to reuse'. Sam

Erik Moeller

2:25 a.m.

2009/1/16 Sam Johnston <samj(a)samj.net>et>:

...

That is, you must at least reference Wikipedia and the article, but it may be appropriate to additionally *or* alternatively refer to individual contributor(s).

Yes - I agree with this. The only question would be whether referring to the history or to the article are substantially different in terms of attribution. In community-developed guidelines regarding GFDL re-use, both standards have existed; re-use recommendations in en.wp's Wikipedia:Copyrights refer to the article URL, for example. The current recommendations are intended to be based on a lowest common denominator among WMF- and community-developed interpretations of reasonable GFDL attribution obligations for re-users, to ensure that the licensing regime we may implement in the future is consistent with the expectations of volunteers who have made contributions in the past. Let's broaden the question a bit: Provided that, - the site footer for articles is modified to name contributors if there are fewer than six; - the site footer also refers to the page history for credit - Are there participants in this discussion who would consider attribution-by-history-URL for pages with > 5 authors acceptable, but who would consider attribution-by-article-URL unacceptable? I think if we lower the requirements in this regard, it needs to be based on more than a discussion here, but it would be good to get some informal feedback on the question first. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Sam Johnston

3:19 a.m.

On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 2:25 AM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

2009/1/16 Sam Johnston <samj(a)samj.net>et>:

That is, you must at least reference Wikipedia and the article, but it

may

be appropriate to additionally *or* alternatively refer to individual contributor(s).

Yes - I agree with this. The only question would be whether referring to the history or to the article are substantially different in terms of attribution.

I don't think so - they are intrinsically linked like the cover of a book (where this stuff traditionally belongs), however it could be good to state the obvious ala: "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details *and History for contribut[ions|ors])." It would also be possible (but not necessarily sensible) to list everyone, even for large contributor lists: The following users have contributed to this article: X, Y, Z. Finally, one could introduce a concept of article 'owners' or 'editors' similar to open source projects, though that would be a significant deviation from the status quo and would likely cause more problems than it would fix. In community-developed guidelines regarding GFDL

...

re-use, both standards have existed; re-use recommendations in en.wp's Wikipedia:Copyrights refer to the article URL, for example.

That's fine for the Web but not so good elsewhere (like on t-shirts, articles, books, prints, etc.). Short URLs (ala http://tinyurl.com/) may help but better to avoid the problem altogether by being flexible. Brian's Bushism example before was a good one.

...

Let's broaden the question a bit: Provided that, - the site footer for articles is modified to name contributors if there are fewer than six; - the site footer also refers to the page history for credit - Are there participants in this discussion who would consider attribution-by-history-URL for pages with > 5 authors acceptable, but who would consider attribution-by-article-URL unacceptable? I think if we lower the requirements in this regard, it needs to be based on more than a discussion here, but it would be good to get some informal feedback on the question first.

Another important point to consider (aside from the fact that it would require non-trivial changes and promote useless edits for 'credit whoring') is that we're often not talking about 'Photo by Sam Johnston' but rather having to credit the likes of: - Fükenwulf - Bastard Soap - Justjihad - AnarcistPig - Cheesypoo And these are just some of the ones that were recently *allowed* on review. Reality is that many (most?) Wikipedia usernames are not suitable for public consumption and are often disassociated from real identities anyway. For a real life example, an ex-partner of mine recently referenced the cloud computing article in his blog, apparently without realising that I wrote it. I don't particularly care but apparently he does because the link is now nowhere to be found. There's a handful of people I wouldn't want to credit either for whatever reason (competitors in company documents for example) but that shouldn't preclude anyone from reusing Wikipedia content. Sam

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

2:40 a.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

I must be a moron or at least functionally illiterate, since I simply cannot parse the previous paragraph in a way that makes logical sense.

:-) Imagine that:

...

This actually looks fairly good on the surface, if that would in fact be all there was to it... If there really was a superordinate goal of requiring reference to the individuals who contributed the text, I would be the first to applaud you, Erik. It seems though that the _prospect_ of very speculative and indecisively defined new ways of showing editors _on_ wikipedia pages fringes (not requiring it downstream even), is what is really concretely even hinted at... So, come on... we just aren't buying the spiel. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Erik Moeller

2:55 a.m.

2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

It seems though that the _prospect_ of very speculative and indecisively defined new ways of showing editors _on_ wikipedia pages fringes (not requiring it downstream even), is what is really concretely even hinted at...

The downstream requirement that we're talking about right now is: a) If there are up to five authors, name them directly alongside the article; b) If there are more than five, you can refer to a copy of the history. The only issue here is that Wikipedia itself is not consistent with this principle of 'giving visible attribution when it can be reasonably expected to do so', because WP itself only ever attributes by link to the page history. So, the reason to add usernames to the WP footer in case of a) would be precisely to have consistent rules for all users of WP content. (It would also simplify determining the five names for re-users.) I don't view such a change as part of the proposed license update; I think it needs to be a separate discussion. In this thread, the argument has been made that these requirements are going too far, or not far enough. The reason they are formulated as they are is to be consistent with the expectations set forth by the GFDL itself, and the re-use guidelines implemented throughout WP and other WMF projects. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

3:44 a.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

In this thread, the argument has been made that these requirements are going too far, or not far enough. The reason they are formulated as they are is to be consistent with the expectations set forth by the GFDL itself, and the re-use guidelines implemented throughout WP and other WMF projects.

I think the argument that I have been making consistently is that you have been dancing all around the field about where you actually stand on these issues, and persistently refuse to state your real preferences, much less where your "red lines" are set. And that furthermore, many of your statements flatly contradict each other logically. Sadly. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Anthony

18 Jan 18 Jan

3:40 p.m.

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 8:55 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>:

What about text works which were licensed under CC-BY-SA but were released somewhere other than Wikipedia? Can these be incorporated into Wikipedia? How will their right to attribution be respected? Is this allowance of "reference by history URL" built in to CC-BY-SA, or is it specific to Wikipedia?

Sam Johnston

20 Jan 20 Jan

12:59 p.m.

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:

...

The CC licenses give us a fair bit of room to move with regards to attribution, allowing for pseudonums, taking into account the medium, delegates (incl. publishing entities eg Wikipedia), etc. I also stumbled on this[1] in commons which is interesting in the context of the discussion about certain types of contribution (photographs) inexplicably requiring stronger attribution: "Visible tags or watermarks<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking>inside images are strongly discouraged at Wikimedia Commons. So information like "Mr. Foobar, May 2005, CC-BY-SA" shall not be written directly in the image but in EXIF fields, which is technically even superior. The reasons are: - We don't tag our Wikipedia articles with our names in a prominent way inside the article text *in order to step behind the work and let it speak for itself*, the same applies to the images (stepping behind own work and thus reducing personal vanity is crucial for neutrality<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV> )." Cheers, Sam 1. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Manipulating_meta_data#Purpose_fo…

Anthony

4:35 p.m.

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 6:59 AM, Sam Johnston <samj(a)samj.net> wrote:

...

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:

What about text works which were licensed under CC-BY-SA but were

released

somewhere other than Wikipedia? Can these be incorporated into

Wikipedia?

How will their right to attribution be respected? Is this allowance of "reference by history URL" built in to CC-BY-SA, or is it specific to Wikipedia?

The CC licenses give us a fair bit of room to move with regards to attribution, allowing for pseudonums, taking into account the medium, delegates (incl. publishing entities eg Wikipedia), etc.

That doesn't really any of my questions, though I was more looking for an answer from Erik or Mike anyway. It's a fairly important question, since compatibility with other works under CC-BY-SA is allegedly the main reason for the relicensing. Is the question clear? Maybe I should be even more specific. How would one go about using content from Citizendium in Wikipedia, if Wikipedia relicenses content under CC-BY-SA? How would a third party go about using the combined work? How would the attribution rights of the Citizendium contributors be respected? I'm going to copy Larry Sanger on this message, because I'd like to hear his input, and I hope he can poll the CZ community to see what type of attribution they expect. But Citizendium is, of course, only one example among many. Larry, do you understand the context or should I explain further?

geni

7:55 p.m.

2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>rg>:

...

Assuming a large number of authors on Citizendium. Use the export function there to provide the file in a useful format and reactivate the import function on en to export it (at a pinch is should be possible to put together a script that can grab the relevant information and turn it into a file suitable for import to wikipedia without having to use the export function). For smaller numbers of authors there are workarounds.

...

How would a third party go about using the combined work?

Depends on the context. -- geni

Anthony

8:05 p.m.

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 1:55 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>rg>:

That doesn't really any of my questions, though I was more looking for an answer from Erik or Mike anyway. It's a fairly important question, since compatibility with other works

under

CC-BY-SA is allegedly the main reason for the relicensing. Is the question clear? Maybe I should be even more specific. How would

one

go about using content from Citizendium in Wikipedia, if Wikipedia relicenses content under CC-BY-SA?

That would destroy the usability of diffs.

...

How would a third party go about using

the combined work?

Depends on the context.

In the context of a printed book using an article which was 60% originated in Wikipedia, 20% originated in Citizendium, and 20% originated by the book authors?

geni

8:26 p.m.

2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>rg>:

...

That would destroy the usability of diffs.

Can be got around by editing the date entries in the XLM file

...

How would a third party go about using

the combined work?

Depends on the context.

In the context of a printed book using an article which was 60% originated in Wikipedia, 20% originated in Citizendium, and 20% originated by the book authors?

The oversimplified answer is the same credit as the authors of the original content get. You still don't provide enough detail (book is a very imprecise term in some respects) to answer the less oversimplified version. So: Is the book continuous prose or broken into separate sections? If separate sections do the sections have content from more than one wikipedia/Citizendium article in them? Is the wikipedia/Citizendium content text or pics (or sound there are a couple of ways to do it)? Is the wikipedia/Citizendium content integrated into the rest of the text or more standalone? There are probably other issues to consider. If the change to CC-BY-SA goes through I will be proposing a new wikimedia project to record what authors and reuses consider acceptable (and what people actually do if that happens) in terms of attribution for every form of reuse we can think of. -- geni

Sam Johnston

21 Jan 21 Jan

6:31 p.m.

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 8:26 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

If the change to CC-BY-SA goes through I will be proposing a new wikimedia project to record what authors and reuses consider acceptable (and what people actually do if that happens) in terms of attribution for every form of reuse we can think of.

This is an interesting suggestion for a thread calling for Wikipedia to keep it simple :) If the rules are too complex they will be either ignored (and broken) or avoided (eg users will go elsewhere). In particular, anything which involves attempting to extract meaning from the (arbitrarily long and constantly growing) edit histories or refer to a table of 'reuse scenarios' almost certainly falls into the 'too complex for your average [re]user' category. To use the cloud computing article again, there are almost 500 unique editors including chestnuts like 'RealWorldExperience, CanadianLinuxUser, MonkeyBounce, TutterMouse, Onmytoes4eva, Chadastrophic, Tree Hugger, Kibbled Bits and Technobadger'. About half are IPs (which probably still need to be credited) and there's even a few people I'd rather not credit were I to reuse it myself. In this case at least, attempting to credit individuals as currently proposed dilutes the value of attributions altogether and actually does more harm than good - I would much rather 'contribute' my attribution to Wikipedia. Allowing users to discuss 'recommended' attributions eg on the talk page could be another simple, effective solution. That way such claims could be discussed and a concise list of authors maintained (subject to peer review). It would ultimately be for the reuser to determine above and beyond the base 'Wikipedia' credit. I would hope to see something like this emerge, which is not far from Citizendium's relatively good example: *If you reuse Wikipedia content you must at least reference the license and attribute Wikipedia. You should also refer to the article itself and may include individual author(s) from the history and/or attribution requests on the talk page, using URLs where appropriate for the medium. * Unfortunately with wording like '*To re-distribute a page in any form, provide credit to all the contributors.*' in the draft it seems I shouldn't be holding my breath. In any case I hope this doesn't derail the migration - perhaps asking the question about CC-BY-SA separately from the implementation details would be best? Sam 1. http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=en.wikipedia&pag…

Falcorian

8:59 p.m.

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:55 AM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>rg>:

That doesn't really any of my questions, though I was more looking for an answer from Erik or Mike anyway. It's a fairly important question, since compatibility with other works

under

CC-BY-SA is allegedly the main reason for the relicensing. Is the question clear? Maybe I should be even more specific. How would

one

go about using content from Citizendium in Wikipedia, if Wikipedia relicenses content under CC-BY-SA?

I actually have such a script written in python already, and it would be trivial for others to wirite similar ones. I suppoose my point is that reusing content from other Wikis is easy if Import is turned back on (as you keep full edit histories). --Falcorian

Erik Moeller

2:55 a.m.

2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>rg>:

...

Is the question clear? Maybe I should be even more specific. How would one go about using content from Citizendium in Wikipedia, if Wikipedia relicenses content under CC-BY-SA? How would a third party go about using the combined work? How would the attribution rights of the Citizendium contributors be respected?

I would say in part this is a problem that the community can collectively solve, as it has historically: We've incorporated information from other GFDL works and attributed them, for example. And we can apply common sense. Contributors to wikis typically have different attribution expectations than authors of monographs who have no connection to the wiki world. Both authors and re-users will express objections or support for different models. And wikis will probably want to develop reasonable standards between them that facilitate their mutual goals. I do believe there are probably technical improvements that we can make to further support free information exchange, such as a richer page history feature, or a metadata blob for this kind of information. But I don't think that such improvements are a necessary precondition: people will continue to use footers, page histories, and talk pages to denote such information. Attribution standards can always be revised based on the respectful dialog between the involved parties. Resolving legal incompatibility, on the other hand, is a necessary precondition for even having these conversations. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

17 Jan 17 Jan

1:51 a.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

* For pictures, sound files, etc., there is often just a single author.

This is of course very far from the truth. If you did create the media file from your very own brain-pan, yes, this would be accurate, but to say that that this is "often" the case, is somewhat quizzical to say the least. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Delirium

2:50 a.m.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

...

Erik Moeller wrote:

* For pictures, sound files, etc., there is often just a single author.

I can see that for music---there's often songwriting, performance, etc. copyrights. But for photographs I would think it's not only "often" the case, but "usually" the case, that there is a single author, the photographer. The only common exceptions I can think of are photographs of copyrighted works, which have the copyright of the work being photographed attached to them also. There's also the relatively rare case of derivative works of free-licensed photographs, where the editing is creative enough to qualify for an independent copyright (i.e. not just resizing or applying a Photoshop filter). -Mark

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

3:34 a.m.

Delirium wrote:

...

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

Erik Moeller wrote:

* For pictures, sound files, etc., there is often just a single author.

First of all, even though you grant my thesis in terms of music, that is still not even a major segment of sound files, though perhaps the segment with the highest profile in terms of intellectual property rights contentiousness. But in terms of pictures, photographs is a very very minor segment indeed. Discussing the matter solely in terms of photographs is very diversionary. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Delirium

18 Jan 18 Jan

6:46 a.m.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

...

But in terms of pictures, photographs is a very very minor segment indeed. Discussing the matter solely in terms of photographs is very diversionary.

I certainly didn't intend to be diversionary; rather, I'm a bit confused as to what the vast majority of non-photograph pictures I've mised are. Aren't the vast majority of the pictures on Wikimedia commons photographs? How is that a "very very minor segment"? We're discussing licensing for media files that are part of the Wikimedia project, after all. What pictures *do* you mean? Heck, our diagrams almost always have a single author too, from some spot-checking I've done, as do our maps. I can't think of a single category of works that make up a significant proportion of Wikimedia-distributed media files that usually have multiple authors. -Mark

Sam Johnston

17 Jan 17 Jan

2:28 a.m.

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

* For pictures, sound files, etc., there is often just a single author. If you are the photographer of a high resolution panorama that you've contributed to Wikipedia, I think it's a reasonable expectation to be named ("Photo by Sam Johnston"), as opposed to being referred to as "Photo from Wikipedia". This is equally true, I think, for articles where there is just a single author, or for pictures which have been subsequently edited a few times.

I would consider this an exception rather than the rule and in any case the content author could always approach a content consumer to request attribution. The consumer then has the option to cater to the author's request but doesn't have to stop the presses for fear of an injunction as giving them the option avoids any possibility for conflict. If contributors are more interested in self-promotion than the community then they should probably be selling on stock photo sites and writing Knols ;) I do think the potential for internal and external conflict needs to be carefully considered as there could be serious repurcussions in terms of injunctions, bad will, etc.

...

I was not proposing to *require* attribution to Wikipedia (indeed there would be Wikipedians bearing pitchforks were WMF to try this on), rather merely to *allow* it in order to foster re-use and avoid conflicts.

...

I think requiring attribution-by-history should be the best practice for heavily edited articles, at least until we more prominently point out the author credit in the article footer.

The history for heavily edited articles is essentially opaque and claiming that there is value to be derived from it is likely to mislead consumers. Even if we were to provide statistics (say under a new 'Contribut[ions|ors]' tab) we all know that edit counts are notoriously unreliable indicators and besides, all legitimate edits are valuable. Sam

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participants (8)

Anthony
Brian
Delirium
Erik Moeller
Falcorian
geni
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Sam Johnston