New subject: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

1 Dec 2017

Le 01/12/2017 à 09:34, Markus Kroetzsch a écrit :
...
  Dear Mathieu,

 You are in an impossible position. Either you want to be an objective 
 researcher who tries to reconstruct past events as they happened, or 
 you are pursuing an agenda to criticise and change some aspects of 
 Wikidata. The way you do it, you are making yourself part of the 
 debate that you claim you want to reconstruct. Well, I guess this is a dilemma that
many sociologists and 
anthropologists have to deal with. That's a really hard epistemic 
problem you are raising here, and I don't think this list is the place 
to discuss it extensively. So to make it short, I fully agree that your 
concern is legitimate, but if your implied conclusion is that it would 
be better to do nothing rather than going into a difficult epistemic 
position, I don't share this conclusion. Also, to my mind belief in 
absolute objectiveness is only delusion. I prefer to expose clearly what 
I can myself identify as my starting point of view and let audience take 
my biases into account rather than pretending that I aim presenting the 
ultimate objective truth.

So I recognize I have a strong bias toward copyleft licenses as general 
solution. But as I already stated in this thread, I am also for 
promoting solutions with less legal constraints depending on the context 
of production and fixed goals. And this nothing new, I surely might be 
able to provide links or get some testimony that here and there I do 
promote and myself use solutions with less legal constraints.

For this project, believe it or not, I had no pre-established agenda to 
criticise and change Wikidata in a predetermined fashion as point of 
departure. Of course before starting this project I had an opinion, and 
yes CC0 for Wikidata didn't look appealing to me. But a strong 
motivation behind this project was to give me a chance to change my mind 
with a broader view of this choice of CC0 as unique license. Its origin, 
its impact, and opinion of the Wikimedia community regarding this topic. 
And I stay in this open minded dynamic.

Now while doing my research with this goal, I found strong hints of 
potential conflict of interest, which was absolutely not what I was 
looking for. Now strong hints and potential conflict of interest are not 
proof of conflict of interest. If there was no such a thing, then it's 
great and I'll document that in this way.

Finally note that while I'm taking part of the debate right now won't 
change the fact that I didn't at the moment that the decision was took. 
That is, I don't have the power to change the past, and I am aiming at 
documenting past events on the topic using verifiable available sources. 
I don't expect anyone to blindly trust me. Don't blindly trust me. 
Everybody should really interested in the subject should check sources 
on which claims are done and possibly draw a different conclusion and be 
bold and make evolve the project or at least provide feedback.
...
  From a research perspective, any material you gather
in this way comes 
 with a big question mark. You are not doing us much of a favour 
 either, because by forcing us to refute accusations, you are placing 
 our memories of the past events in a doubtful, heavily biased context. Well,
I'm sorry for that. But it's not nothing new that our community is 
full of freaks obsessed with transparency, "respect the license" and 
"reference needed", is it? So how possibly it wasn't envisioned that one 
day it would be embarrassing to not have a documented information about 
how exactly was done this license choice and by who? My guess is that 
the simple answer is that human make errors. I do errors. A lot of it. 
Many reply in this thread surely can attest that, doesn't it? But may be 
it would be good to recognize that you too can make errors, rather than 
trying to put all the shame on me for asking information about such an 
important topic so many time after the decision occurred.
...
  Your overall approach of considering a theory to be
true (or at least 
 equally likely to be true) unless you are given "proofs that this 
 claim is completely wrong" is not scientific.  Claiming that some approach is
the one I'm following, discrediting this 
approach and conclude that anything I say is then wrong is not fair either.

Contemporary scientific method mostly agree that you have to come with a 
falsifiable theory, as exposed in by Thomas Kuhn in /The Structure of 
Scientific Revolutions/. So this is a condition to have any chance to 
have some scientific value. But of course this is not a guarantee that 
the theory is true. At best it makes the theory not proven wrong by any 
evidence.

...
  This is not how research works. For a start,
Occam's Razor should make 
 you disregard overly complex theories for things that have much 
 simpler explanations (in our case: CC0 is a respected license chosen 
 by many other projects for good reasons, so it is entirely plausible 
 that the founders of Wikidata also just picked it for the usual 
 reasons, without any secret conspiracy). Occam's Razor states that you should
always prefer the theory which 
requires the smallest set of entities/rules couple available to explain 
a phenomena in regard of empirical data. It's completely different from 
opting for the simplest explanation. The possibility of conflict of 
interest require no hidden conspiracy, no additional entity, and simply 
consider the possibility of occurrence of a phenomena which is widely 
documented in social science fields.

Maybe at this point it might also be interesting to explicitly state 
that knowing that there was no conflict of interest intervening in this 
decision is interesting for the sake of governance transparency. But 
going with this hypothesis don't really have much importance with the 
rather independent question of whether using CC0 as unique license for 
Wikidata is the best choice for reaching the goal of the Wikimedia 
movement in a sustainable manner.

...
  And once you have an interesting theory formed, you
need to gather 
 evidence for or against it in a way that is not affected by the theory 
 (i.e., in particular, don't start calls for information with an 
 emotional discussion of whether or not you would personally like the 
 theory to turn out true). I totally recognize that on this point I've
misbehaved in this post, I 
should have refrain of adding so much emotional emphaze in my message.
...
  What you are doing here is completely unscientific and
I hope that 
 your supervisor (?) will also point this out to you at some point. 
 Moreover, I am afraid that you cannot really get back to the position 
 of an objective observer from where you are now. Better leave this 
 research to others who are not in publicly documented disagreement 
 with the main historic witnesses. This research don't have a supervisor. This
is a Wikiversity research 
project. Anyone can join and improve it.
...
  So you should understand that I don't feel
compelled to give you a 
 detailed account of every Wikidata-related discussion I had as if I 
 were on some trial here. As a "researcher", it is you who has to prove 
 your theories, not the rest of the world who has to disprove them. I 
 already told you that your main guesses as far as they concern things 
 I have witnessed are not true, and that's all from me for now. The question is
not whether you want to give me that kind of details. Me 
and the feelings I might inspire doesn't matter here. The question is 
whether you are willing to comply with the exigence of transparency that 
the Wikimedia movement is attached to, on a topic which directly impact 
its governance and future on a large scale.

Kind regards,
mathieu

...
  Kind regards,

 Markus

 On 01.12.2017 03:43, mathieu stumpf guntz wrote:
  Hello Markus,

 First rest assured that any feedback provided will be integrated in 
 the research project on the topic with proper references, including 
 this email. It might not come before beginning of next week however, 
 as I'm already more than fully booked until then. But once again it's 
 on a wiki, be bold.

 Le 01/12/2017 à 01:18, Markus Krötzsch a écrit :
  Dear Mathieu,

 Your post demands my response since I was there when CC0 was first 
 chosen (i.e., in the April meeting). I won't discuss your other 
 claims here -- the discussions on the Wikidata list are already 
 doing this, and I agree with Lydia that no shouting is necessary here.

 Nevertheless, I must at least testify to what John wrote in his 
 earlier message (quote included below this email for reference): it 
 was not Denny's decision to go for CC0, but the outcome of a 
 discussion among several people who had worked with open data for 
 some time before Wikidata was born. I have personally supported this 
 choice and still do. I have never received any money directly or 
 indirectly from Google, though -- full disclosure -- I got several 
 T-shirts for supervising in Summer of Code projects. 
 Maybe I wasn't clear enough on that too, but to my mind the problem 
 is not money but governance. Anyone with too much cash can throw it 
 wherever wanted, and if some fall into Wikimedia pocket, that's fine.

 But the moment a decision that impact so deeply Wikimedia governance 
 and future happen, then maximum transparency must be present, 
 communication must be extensive, and taking into account community 
 feedback is extremely preferable. No one is perfect, myself included, 
 so its all the more important to listen to external feedback. I said 
 earlier that I found the knowledge engine was a good idea, but for 
 what I red it seems that transparency didn't reach expectation of the 
 community.

 So, I was wrong my inferences around Denny, good news. Of course I 
 would prefer to have other archived sources to confirm that. No 
 mistrust intended, I think most of us are accustomed to put claims in 
 perspective with sources and think critically.

 For completeness, was this discussion online or – to bring bag the 
 earlier stated testimony – around a pizza? If possible, could you 
 provide a list of involved people? Did a single person took the final 
 decision, or was it a show of hands, or some consensus emerged from 
 discussion? Or maybe the community was consulted with a vote, and if 
 yes, where can I find the archive?

 Also archives show that lawyers were consulted on the topic, could we 
 have a copy of their report?

  At no time did Google or any other company take
part in our 
 discussions in the zeroth hour of Wikidata. And why should they? 
 From what I can see on their web page, Google has no problem with 
 all kinds of different license terms in the data they display.  Because they are
more and more moving to a business model of 
 providing themselves what people are looking for to keep users in 
 their sphere of tracking and influence, probably with the sole idea 
 of generating more revenue I guess.
  Also, I can tell you that we would have reacted
in a very allergic 
 way to such attempts, so if any company had approached us, this 
 would quite likely have backfired. But, believe it or not, when we 
 started it was all but clear that this would become a relevant 
 project at all, and no major company even cared to lobby us. It was 
 still mostly a few hackers getting together in varying locations in 
 Berlin. There was a lot of fun, optimism, and excitement in this 
 early phase of Wikidata (well, I guess we are still in this phase).  Please situate
that in time so we can place that in a timeline. In 
 March 2012 Wikimedia DE announced the initial funding of 1.3 million 
 Euros by Google, Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence 
 and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

 So please do not start emails with made-up stories around past 
 events that you have not even been close to (calling something 
 "research" is no substitute for methodology and rigour).   But that's
all the problem here, no one should have to carry the pain 
 of trying to reconstruct what happened through such a research. 
 Process of this kind of decision should have been documented and 
 should be easily be found in archives. If you have suggestion in 
 methods, please provide them. Just denigrating the work don't help in 
 any way to improve it. If there are additional sources that I missed, 
 please provide them. If there are methodologies that would help 
 improve the work, references are welcome.

  Putting unsourced personal attacks against
community members before 
 all other arguments is a reckless way of maximising effect, and such 
 rhetoric can damage our movement beyond this thread or topic.   All this is built
on references. If the analyze is wrong, for example 
 because it missed crucial undocumented information this must be 
 corrected with additional sources. Wikidata team, as far as I can 
 tell, was perfectly aware of this project for weeks. So if there was 
 some sources that the team considered that it merited my attention to 
 complete my thoughts on the topic, there was plenty of time to 
 provide them before I posted this message.

  Our main strength is not our content but our
community, and I am 
 glad to see that many have already responded to you in such a 
 measured and polite way.  We completely agree on that. This is a wonderful
community. And 
 that's concerns for future of this very community which fueled this 
 project.

 I only can reiterate all apologies to anyone that might have felt 
 personally attacked. I can go back to reformulate my message.

 I hope you will help me to improve the research, or call it as you 
 like, with more relevant feedback and references.

 Peace

 Peace,

 Markus

 On 30.11.2017 09:55, John Erling Blad wrote:
  Licensing was discussed in the start of the
project, as in start of
 developing code for the project, and as I recall it the arguments for
 CC0 was valid and sound. That was long before Danny started   working for
  Google.

 As I recall it was mention during first week of the project (first   week
  of april), and the duscussion reemerged during
first week of
 development. That must have been week 4 or 5 (first week of may),   as the
  delivery of the laptoppen was delayed. I was
against CC0 as I   expected
  problems with reuse og external data. The
arguments for CC0   convinced me.

 And yes, Denny argued for CC0 AS did Daniel and I believe Jeroen and
 Jens did too. 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0