Bryan,
Lets just stop there and think about is shall we?
When we started this project in 2006 we were rated as "easily highly compliant" by mirrors and forks group (and we do have a local copy of the license, which is still above "medium"). Would you like all the diffs on WP? That first version was online up on fixedreference.org/ /
Subsequent to that we were asked to add image pages and did, partly because Anthere is a sweetie and partly because we could see the argument logically. Creative Commons was explicit about local copies of names, it was unclear whether people you upload a file hitting a "GDFL" submit button can impose additional conditions like CC but fair enough. It is only 34500 additional pages to check for vandalism, swear words and clean up and include as disk space versus 5500 pages for the actual content.
So we are an "improved on an easily highly compliant position" basis original standard. The license hasn't changed since then.
So what has happened? People have just added their own ideas of what they'd like to the "interpretation", without reference to the license, including loads of stuff the license doesn't say. Can they do that legally? Of course not. And should we respect as a community standard all the additional "nice-to-haves" added on? Well, we are nice guys and we're trying to and we'd like to but I kind of think a little more apology for moving all the goalposts around and putting barriers to accessibility in would be in order. Insistence on the image pages is a series pain in the back-side to offline copies already.
We are comfortable we comply legally and the vast number of comments we have had over the years have been supportive of our interpretation of the licenses, and desirous to improve access to Wikipedia. This may be different to the intepretation of some people who lately edit the copyright pages but they haven't even produced a rationale for how the content relates to the licenses.
Currently we are more compliant at least in respect of image pages than the other offline "official" community projects (the Wikipedia Release Version series). And as far as we can see we comply completely with the actual text of the license. If you want more than that I am happy talking about what we can do but only on a basis which is reflective of the situation.
Andrew
On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 3:16 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Andrew Cates wrote:
Hi Guys,
I have left a fairly full reply to this on the WMF blog awaiting approval from Jay and also it is discussed on the project pages on Wikipedia, over several years. There is a gap between the wording of licenses and urban myths circulating about what they say.
I realize that the GFDL is a sucky licence and is poorly defined legally, but regardless of one's various personal interpretations of it schools-wikipedia still fails to be compliant by the standards that Wikipedia's community has settled on (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GFDL_Compliance - schools-wikipedia fits the "medium compliance" definition to a T). Since this project has received a WikiMedia seal of approval IMO it really should meet our own standards when it comes to GFDL compliance. What will all those other medium-compliance mirrors think if we let this particular one slide?
Andrew,
Something's been bugging me with the School's Wikipedia for a while now: why have all of the references been removed? From my point of view (currently-working-on-being-an-academic), references are fundamental; without them the School's Wikipedia needs a huge [citation needed].
To be more specific, my concern revolves around students thinking that writing things without referencing them is OK, which is a big problem at university level, as well as on Wikipedia itself. It also makes it a lot harder to spot which parts of the School's Wikipedia that may not be entirely correct.
BTW: I think you and everyone else involved with the School's Wikipedia have done a great job; I'm just curious as to why you made this decision.
Mike
On 24 Oct 2008, at 16:23, Andrew Cates wrote:
Bryan,
Lets just stop there and think about is shall we?
When we started this project in 2006 we were rated as "easily highly compliant" by mirrors and forks group (and we do have a local copy of the license, which is still above "medium"). Would you like all the diffs on WP? That first version was online up on fixedreference.org/ /
Subsequent to that we were asked to add image pages and did, partly because Anthere is a sweetie and partly because we could see the argument logically. Creative Commons was explicit about local copies of names, it was unclear whether people you upload a file hitting a "GDFL" submit button can impose additional conditions like CC but fair enough. It is only 34500 additional pages to check for vandalism, swear words and clean up and include as disk space versus 5500 pages for the actual content.
So we are an "improved on an easily highly compliant position" basis original standard. The license hasn't changed since then.
So what has happened? People have just added their own ideas of what they'd like to the "interpretation", without reference to the license, including loads of stuff the license doesn't say. Can they do that legally? Of course not. And should we respect as a community standard all the additional "nice-to-haves" added on? Well, we are nice guys and we're trying to and we'd like to but I kind of think a little more apology for moving all the goalposts around and putting barriers to accessibility in would be in order. Insistence on the image pages is a series pain in the back-side to offline copies already.
We are comfortable we comply legally and the vast number of comments we have had over the years have been supportive of our interpretation of the licenses, and desirous to improve access to Wikipedia. This may be different to the intepretation of some people who lately edit the copyright pages but they haven't even produced a rationale for how the content relates to the licenses.
Currently we are more compliant at least in respect of image pages than the other offline "official" community projects (the Wikipedia Release Version series). And as far as we can see we comply completely with the actual text of the license. If you want more than that I am happy talking about what we can do but only on a basis which is reflective of the situation.
Andrew
On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 3:16 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Andrew Cates wrote:
Hi Guys,
I have left a fairly full reply to this on the WMF blog awaiting approval from Jay and also it is discussed on the project pages on Wikipedia, over several years. There is a gap between the wording of licenses and urban myths circulating about what they say.
I realize that the GFDL is a sucky licence and is poorly defined legally, but regardless of one's various personal interpretations of it schools-wikipedia still fails to be compliant by the standards that Wikipedia's community has settled on (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GFDL_Compliance - schools-wikipedia fits the "medium compliance" definition to a T). Since this project has received a WikiMedia seal of approval IMO it really should meet our own standards when it comes to GFDL compliance. What will all those other medium-compliance mirrors think if we let this particular one slide?
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
Hey,
as far as I am aware it was because of not being able to check all references to make sure they were suitable for target group of school children.
Ian
[[User:Poeloq]]
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 7:33 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
Andrew,
Something's been bugging me with the School's Wikipedia for a while now: why have all of the references been removed? From my point of view (currently-working-on-being-an-academic), references are fundamental; without them the School's Wikipedia needs a huge [citation needed].
To be more specific, my concern revolves around students thinking that writing things without referencing them is OK, which is a big problem at university level, as well as on Wikipedia itself. It also makes it a lot harder to spot which parts of the School's Wikipedia that may not be entirely correct.
BTW: I think you and everyone else involved with the School's Wikipedia have done a great job; I'm just curious as to why you made this decision.
Mike
On 24 Oct 2008, at 16:23, Andrew Cates wrote:
Bryan,
Lets just stop there and think about is shall we?
When we started this project in 2006 we were rated as "easily highly compliant" by mirrors and forks group (and we do have a local copy of the license, which is still above "medium"). Would you like all the diffs on WP? That first version was online up on fixedreference.org/ /
Subsequent to that we were asked to add image pages and did, partly because Anthere is a sweetie and partly because we could see the argument logically. Creative Commons was explicit about local copies of names, it was unclear whether people you upload a file hitting a "GDFL" submit button can impose additional conditions like CC but fair enough. It is only 34500 additional pages to check for vandalism, swear words and clean up and include as disk space versus 5500 pages for the actual content.
So we are an "improved on an easily highly compliant position" basis original standard. The license hasn't changed since then.
So what has happened? People have just added their own ideas of what they'd like to the "interpretation", without reference to the license, including loads of stuff the license doesn't say. Can they do that legally? Of course not. And should we respect as a community standard all the additional "nice-to-haves" added on? Well, we are nice guys and we're trying to and we'd like to but I kind of think a little more apology for moving all the goalposts around and putting barriers to accessibility in would be in order. Insistence on the image pages is a series pain in the back-side to offline copies already.
We are comfortable we comply legally and the vast number of comments we have had over the years have been supportive of our interpretation of the licenses, and desirous to improve access to Wikipedia. This may be different to the intepretation of some people who lately edit the copyright pages but they haven't even produced a rationale for how the content relates to the licenses.
Currently we are more compliant at least in respect of image pages than the other offline "official" community projects (the Wikipedia Release Version series). And as far as we can see we comply completely with the actual text of the license. If you want more than that I am happy talking about what we can do but only on a basis which is reflective of the situation.
Andrew
On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 3:16 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Andrew Cates wrote:
Hi Guys,
I have left a fairly full reply to this on the WMF blog awaiting approval from Jay and also it is discussed on the project pages on Wikipedia, over several years. There is a gap between the wording of licenses and urban myths circulating about what they say.
I realize that the GFDL is a sucky licence and is poorly defined legally, but regardless of one's various personal interpretations of it schools-wikipedia still fails to be compliant by the standards that Wikipedia's community has settled on (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GFDL_Compliance - schools-wikipedia fits the "medium compliance" definition to a T). Since this project has received a WikiMedia seal of approval IMO it really should meet our own standards when it comes to GFDL compliance. What will all those other medium-compliance mirrors think if we let this particular one slide?
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
Michael,
Ian is right. Basically only because the job of checking and cleaning the references was too big a manual task. Or at least it was when we started but perhaps it is getting better. There was still a load of in text spam links, outgoing links to non child friendly or blatantly non reliable blog sites, etc etc. but it is much better than when we took the decision two years ago though.
Whether child expect them depends on the age of the child of course. An 8 year old does not expect references (and my nine year can read most WP articles fine because although everyone says the reading age is 16+, the odd unfamiliar word she gets from context). A 17 year old does need to understand what references are. But we cannot teach everything: the vast volume of information is gain enough, the subjective nature of truth can be an obstacle when children are too young.
It is the kind of decision which could have gone either way.
Andrew
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
Andrew,
Something's been bugging me with the School's Wikipedia for a while now: why have all of the references been removed? From my point of view (currently-working-on-being-an-academic), references are fundamental; without them the School's Wikipedia needs a huge [citation needed].
To be more specific, my concern revolves around students thinking that writing things without referencing them is OK, which is a big problem at university level, as well as on Wikipedia itself. It also makes it a lot harder to spot which parts of the School's Wikipedia that may not be entirely correct.
BTW: I think you and everyone else involved with the School's Wikipedia have done a great job; I'm just curious as to why you made this decision.
Mike
On 24 Oct 2008, at 16:23, Andrew Cates wrote:
Bryan,
Lets just stop there and think about is shall we?
When we started this project in 2006 we were rated as "easily highly compliant" by mirrors and forks group (and we do have a local copy of the license, which is still above "medium"). Would you like all the diffs on WP? That first version was online up on fixedreference.org/ /
Subsequent to that we were asked to add image pages and did, partly because Anthere is a sweetie and partly because we could see the argument logically. Creative Commons was explicit about local copies of names, it was unclear whether people you upload a file hitting a "GDFL" submit button can impose additional conditions like CC but fair enough. It is only 34500 additional pages to check for vandalism, swear words and clean up and include as disk space versus 5500 pages for the actual content.
So we are an "improved on an easily highly compliant position" basis original standard. The license hasn't changed since then.
So what has happened? People have just added their own ideas of what they'd like to the "interpretation", without reference to the license, including loads of stuff the license doesn't say. Can they do that legally? Of course not. And should we respect as a community standard all the additional "nice-to-haves" added on? Well, we are nice guys and we're trying to and we'd like to but I kind of think a little more apology for moving all the goalposts around and putting barriers to accessibility in would be in order. Insistence on the image pages is a series pain in the back-side to offline copies already.
We are comfortable we comply legally and the vast number of comments we have had over the years have been supportive of our interpretation of the licenses, and desirous to improve access to Wikipedia. This may be different to the intepretation of some people who lately edit the copyright pages but they haven't even produced a rationale for how the content relates to the licenses.
Currently we are more compliant at least in respect of image pages than the other offline "official" community projects (the Wikipedia Release Version series). And as far as we can see we comply completely with the actual text of the license. If you want more than that I am happy talking about what we can do but only on a basis which is reflective of the situation.
Andrew
On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 3:16 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Andrew Cates wrote:
Hi Guys,
I have left a fairly full reply to this on the WMF blog awaiting approval from Jay and also it is discussed on the project pages on Wikipedia, over several years. There is a gap between the wording of licenses and urban myths circulating about what they say.
I realize that the GFDL is a sucky licence and is poorly defined legally, but regardless of one's various personal interpretations of it schools-wikipedia still fails to be compliant by the standards that Wikipedia's community has settled on (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GFDL_Compliance - schools-wikipedia fits the "medium compliance" definition to a T). Since this project has received a WikiMedia seal of approval IMO it really should meet our own standards when it comes to GFDL compliance. What will all those other medium-compliance mirrors think if we let this particular one slide?
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org