I've been thinking. If there's a legal issue on a copyleft material, who
is legally in charge?
a) *All* editors
b) Most recent editor
c) Original editor
d) Any editor(s)
If a), then copyleft is up shit-creek, 'cos all it needs is one
GNU-compliant editor who blocks all legal challenges to stop problems.
If b), we're also stuck, for all it takes is that one blocker to be the
last editor.
If c), then that's bad, 'cos if someone made a stub article, they're
effectively the legal guardian of that work.
If d), then that's great. All we do is get Bomis/Wikipedia/Nupedia or
whatever to be an editor of the work, ensuring that they can act as the
main guys should stuff go wrong.
As for un-copylefting, *ALL* authors are required - so Wikipedia content
can, effectively, NEVER be proprietary unless seventy years pass between
edits.
I may be completely wrong, however...
Hey Programmers,
How about running a cron job every 30 minutes or so
that refreshes the Most Wanted page instead of having
a Refresh link (and tell users the page updates every
30 minutes)? I have this feeling that some unkind
person will find that and run a script to load that
page every minute or so to really slow down the
server... I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't already
happening!
I had A LOT of trouble connecting today and I'm
thinking it would be best to follow our general rule
to do whatever would best benefit Wikipedia. I mean
Most Wanted is great, but not if it keeps people from
editing and writing articles... I know I would've
written a rather lengthy article today, but it was
down (of course I could've done it offline, but
hey...)
Chuck
=====
Venu al la senpaga, libera enciklopedio
esperanta reta! http://eo.wikipedia.com/
====
Junuloj! Filadelfio, Usono 15an-17an de Februaro
http://unumondo.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Filadelfia_JES
_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Información de Estados Unidos y América Latina, en Yahoo! Noticias.
Visítanos en http://noticias.espanol.yahoo.com
Why doesn't someone ask RMS/FSF for advice? I'm sure they'd be
happy to help clarify the proper application of copyright with (semi)
anonymous authors to the GFDL, with respect to defending the
license.
>http://www.publaw.com/joint.html
>
>Wikipedia is a clear case of co-authorship, and
>Bomis is not only the publisher but a co-author, since
>its employees are authors. Joint authorship standards assert
>that any co-author may claim authorship over the entire work,
>even if that author has only contributed to one particular
>section.
>
>In other words, any author (including Bomis) can sue in the
>case of infringement of any article in Wikipedia, even if they
>didn't contribute to that particular article.
That would be a tricky case to make in court. Clearly, any
article to which Jimbo or Larry has contributed directly could
be considered a "work for hire" by Bomis. But if /individual/
articles to which they have not contributed at all are
infringed, then their standing is problematic. The question
is what is the "work" being infringed? If the work being
infringed is a substantial part of Wikipedia, then there's no
problem because the collection comes into play and it's almost
certain that Larry or Jim contributed to some part. But if the
work being infringed is only one aticle by one or a few authors
not including Larry and/or Jim, their claim to be "co-author"
probably won't hold water.
0
>> So then it would be up to the individual contributors to do
>> something about it.
>This is the part that puzzles me. We don't know who the individual
>contributors are. The whole POINT of having Bomis (or a Nupedia
>Foundation) owning the copyrights is to have a clear entity with
>clear legal standing to sue in case of violations. You know how
>wikis work.
Unfortunately, we don't have much choice in the matter. If we
required authors to assign their copyrights to, say, Nupedia
Foundation, then we wouldn't be able to use work from other
open-content copyrighted sources, because our authors wouldn't
have the right to reassign those. I wouldn't, for example,
have been able to upload my optimized version of Cunc's logo,
because I neither owned the copyright to it nor was it public
domain. The current upload page text actually prevents me from
uploading it (which I pointed out at the time). I was a licensee
of that content, using it in accordance with Cunc's GFDL grant,
to make a derivative work and make that available to Wikipedia,
another licensee.
Jimbo's right: only the original content creators own the
copyrights to individual articles. In most cases, that will
be a group, and in some cases that will be hard to us to find.
If someone infringes an individual article or small group of
articles, only the author has legal standing to sue. Bomis
could do something like make an announcement that it has found
a case, and ask for the authors to step forward, but it has no
direct standing. If Bomis announces that, say, someone has
printed a math textbook with substantial pieces of text from
Wikipedia articles, then we'd have to ask (and perhaps search
through archives) to find authors. Alex wouldsay "I wrote
this paragraph, and this one..."; Ruth would say "I wrote that
article, and I think Magnus reorganized it.", etc. /They/
would either sue, or transfer their copyright at that point
as Jimbo suggests. On the other hand, if someone published
my Poker articles as a book, I could easily identify myself as
the primary author, but I would choose not to sue because my
stuff is public domain, and Bomis has no right to interfere
with that.
Bomis /does/ have standing to sue for infringement of the
collection as a whole, but otherwise Bomis is a licensee of the
articles, not a copyright holder.
Nupedia might want to be different, and more formally request
authors to assign their copyrights like FSF does.
0
You Wrote:
>AFAIK, we all agree on now:
>* No magic character at all in page titles (thus, no real subpages)
>* Avoid "/" character in page titles
>* Some topics need an easy method of grouping related subtopics
>* The obvious soultion is to use "Y (X)" instead of "X/Y"
>* Linking within related pages should be simplyfied
>
>Two basic ways to do that:
>1. Use the parser to display links differently
>2. Change certain "shortcuts" on save
>
>---- Now, for my own opinion:
>
>Personally, I am much in favor of #2, as there will be no special
behaviour
>added that complicates both the software and the understanding of
rules for
>newcomers. "Old hands" will know how to use this, other won't bother
and
>will, eventually, have to type the long title.
>
>IF we could agree on #2, all we need to agree on otherwise is what
kind of
>shortcut should be used. It should be
>* Simple
>* Fast to type
>* Unusual enough to not be used in a real page title
>
>So, how about
>* [[Elves()]] on [[Middle Earth]] becomes [[Elves (Middle Earth)]]
>
>I guess no real article would ever end on "()", except you try to
write
>articles about functions with no parameter list ;)
>
>Magnus
That's pretty close to my understanding as well except that
(1) "/" _should_ be usable in article titles, like "OS/2",
without any unexpected results; and (2) [[elves()]] on page
"Middle Earth" should become [[Elves (Middle Earth)|elves]];
take careful note of display form and canonization.
0
This would seem to be very important. If you can, please give this your
full attention!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2002 12:49:47 -0500
From: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn(a)fsf.org>
Reply-To: fdl-comments(a)fsf.org
To: comments(a)nupedia.com
Subject: FSF seeks comments on draft 1.2 of the FDL
I am sending this announcement to this mailing list directly because many
of you likely have a great interest in commenting on this draft, and I
wanted to make sure that you didn't miss it.
A draft of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), Version 1.2 is now
available on our website. We are asking for feedback from the Free
Software community on this draft. Please send comments to
<fdl-comments(a)fsf.org>. The comment period is open until 1 March 2002.
Related URLs:
FDL Main page:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html
FDL 1.2 Draft:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.2-draft.txt
Unified diff of FDL 1.1 and FDL 1.2:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.1-to-1.2-draft.diff
--
Bradley M. Kuhn, Vice President
Free Software Foundation | Phone: +1-617-542-5942
59 Temple Place, Suite 330 | Fax: +1-617-542-2652
Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA | Web: http://www.gnu.org
I am sending this announcement to this mailing list directly because many
of you likely have a great interest in commenting on this draft, and I
wanted to make sure that you didn't miss it.
A draft of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), Version 1.2 is now
available on our website. We are asking for feedback from the Free
Software community on this draft. Please send comments to
<fdl-comments(a)fsf.org>. The comment period is open until 1 March 2002.
Related URLs:
FDL Main page:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html
FDL 1.2 Draft:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.2-draft.txt
Unified diff of FDL 1.1 and FDL 1.2:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.1-to-1.2-draft.diff
--
Bradley M. Kuhn, Vice President
Free Software Foundation | Phone: +1-617-542-5942
59 Temple Place, Suite 330 | Fax: +1-617-542-2652
Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA | Web: http://www.gnu.org
Right. Talk about private clubs. I understand that
the list serves mostly to facilitate improvements on
the site, and therefore runs to programming
conversations. HOWEVER, even though I have worked on
a development team where I had to deal with SQL
developers on a regular basis, I can't follow you guys
at all.
This is all in the way of showing that the geekspeak
is a bit exclusionary. Probably not in and of itself
a problem -- except that you guys are talking about
changes (and in the case of the new site, implementing
changes) that affect all of us other users -- AND YOU
AREN'T COMMUNICATING THEM. The FAQ's haven't really
been updated, lots of people seem unaware that the
/subpage no longer exists.... and even those of us
who would be happy to help document changes and spread
the word can't, because we don't speak programmer well
enough to be sure.
For pity's sake -- can we please clean up the
documentation for rev2 before going to rev2a? I'll
help -- but not unless somebody helps me first!
Thanks for letting me rant -- [[JHK]]
--- wikipedia-l-request(a)nupedia.com wrote:
> Send Wikipedia-l mailing list submissions to
> wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web,
> visit
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body
> 'help' to
> wikipedia-l-request(a)nupedia.com
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> wikipedia-l-admin(a)nupedia.com
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it
> is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikipedia-l digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: Modest proposals (Uri Yanover)
> 2. Re: Modest proposals (Tim Chambers)
> 3. Re: Copyrights (Larry Sanger)
> 4. Re: Copyrights (Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen)
> 5. Re: Modest proposals (Uri Yanover)
> 6. Re: Re: Modest proposals (Jan Hidders)
> 7. Re: Modest proposals (Jan Hidders)
> 8. Re: Modest proposals (Uri Yanover)
> 9. Re: Re: Modest proposals (Jan Hidders)
> 10. MySQL dump available (Jan Hidders)
> 11. File upload Copyright notice (Axel Boldt)
> 12. Re: MySQL dump available (Jimmy Wales)
> 13. Summary of pseudo-subpage discussion (Magnus
> Manske)
> 14. RE: MySQL dump available (Magnus Manske)
> 15. Re: Summary of pseudo-subpage discussion
> (Michel Clasquin)
>
> --__--__--
>
> Message: 1
> From: "Uri Yanover" <uriyan_subscribe(a)yahoo.com>
> To: <wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Modest proposals
> Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 22:00:20 +0200
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com
>
> > (4) When we think about policy options, it often
> helps to consider
> > carefully what problem we're trying to solve, and
> to make sure that our
> > solution is the most elegant solution to that
> problem. It is not entirely
> > clear to me what the problem is, in this case.
> Originally, Uri Yanover
> > said:
> >
> > >The problem is in the following: it is extremely
> inconvenient
> > >(as a policy) to write "[[Middle
> Earth/Elrond|Elrond]] was
> > >the lord of [[Middle Earth/Rivendell|Rivendell]]"
> than it is
> > >to write "[[Elrond]] was the lord of
> [[Rivendell]]"
> >
> > This suggests that the problem is *just* one
> involved in typing long page
> > titles in order to create a link, but the solution
> offered by Uri solves a
> > lot more than that, so I'm not sure this is
> exactly the problem he wants
> > to solve.
>
> I used to think so when I'd written that post, but I
> no longer do.
> Having considered the subject for long enough, I
> reached the
> concept of aliases (more details in the mailing
> list). The general
> usefullness of aliases is for disambiguating (that
> is, making [[root]]
> point at [[root (mathematics)]] on pages concerning
> with algebra
> and at [[root (botanics)]] at pages concerning with
> plants).
>
> However, the other useful thing that could be done
> with aliases
> is facilitating the editing of pages like [[Middle
> Earth]], so that
> ineed [[Elrond]] on an a page that uses aliases
> becomes
> [[Elrond (Middle Earth)]]. But this use is
> secondary, and
> confined only to pages that describe a specific
> universe.
> The fact that the vast majority of the other
> articles does not
> use subpaging indicates that probably there won't be
> too much
> abuse of aliasing in this way.
>
> What I don't like about Tim's idea is the fact that
> it converts
> the link automatically basing on parsing of the
> article title.
> But not only that would be inconvenient (making it
> more
> difficult to edit the article afterwards and
> sometimes creating
> links that the author doesn't want), it would also
> be out
> of policy, as it would essentially be a substitute
> for subpages.
>
> Sincerely yours,
> Uri Yanover
>
>
>
> --__--__--
>
> Message: 2
> From: "Tim Chambers" <tbchambers(a)yahoo.com>
> To: "Wikipedia List" <wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Modest proposals
> Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 15:28:33 -0700
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com
>
> I haven't seen a need to write again since making my
> proposal, but today Uri
> Yanover <uriyan_subscribe(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >What I don't like about Tim's idea is the fact that
> it converts
> >the link automatically basing on parsing of the
> article title.
>
> My proposal is archived at
>
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/001230.html
>
> There it can be seen that in addition to the simple
> solution that does
> convert links based on the article title, I did
> include Uri's idea. To
> summarize:
>
> #base [[Fantasy Fiction]]
>
> [[/elves]]
>
> could be translated into this:
>
> See also: [[Fantasy Fiction]].
>
> [[elves (Fantasy Fiction)|elves]]
>
> The system could remove the #base line completely
> instead of translating it,
> but I think it's useful to reflect by default that
> there's a relationship
> between the content of a given page and some other
> related page. After all,
> if the author doesn't like that behavior, he or she
> can simply type the
> links manually instead of using #base. Or the author
> can edit twice: the
> first is a major edit, and the second is a minor
> edit to remove the See
> also: line.
>
> Uri's original #base idea is archived at
>
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/001220.html.
> He
> also proposed an Alias: namespace
>
(http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/001218.html),
> but
> the features are very similar.
>
> The key differences between my proposal and his are:
>
> 1. I propose a solution that converts text during
> save, while Uri proposed
> adding to the wikipedia's source syntax.
> 2. I propose the disambiguating syntax -- [[title
> (context)]] -- while Uri
> proposed subpage syntax -- [[context/title]].
>
> However, Uri also said yesterday in
>
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-February/001288.html
> that
> he "didn't mean to use aliaes mainly to categorize,
> but rather to
> _disambiguate_ (e.g. [[root (botanics)]] vs. [[root
> (mathematics)]])." So I
> assume he's flexible on #2.
>
> I take it that there's consensus on the part that
> deals with link
> conversion.
>
=== message truncated ===
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings!
http://greetings.yahoo.com