Wikimania is looking for speakers, workshop/tutorial proposals, and
suggestions for discussion panels. If you don't want to speak
yourself, but there is someone you would really like to see speak or
present at Wikimania, you can suggest this as well.
Send abstracts or suggestions to : cfp(a)wikimedia.org
Please distribute the call for papers widely :
http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_papers
On a separate note, SurfWax, a metasearchenging, released a
Wikipedia-index tool this week with some cute autocompletion features:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikiwax_released
--
+sj+
Hi everyone,
As a researcher who is interested in the sociology of the wikipedia I
am writing to see if you can suggest links or leads on information
concerning research on wiki. Is there any central hub for 'wiki
analysts' whether academic or media-related?
I have been looking for links within wikimedia but it seems that the
information is quite scattered. Has anyone tried compiling a
wiki-page for wiki researchers that is similar to the MIT opensource
research center (http://opensource.mit.edu/)? Or is there any email
list for wiki-related researchers? I'll definitely appreciate any
advice or suggestion as I am still at a very preliminary phase of
research. Thanks a lot for your attention in advance.
Best,
Cathy
--
MA, P.S. Cathy
MPhil student,
Department of Sociology
The University of Hong Kong
http://cathyma.blogspot.com
Hi, as many of you know we are adding pronunciations on commons and link
them wherever this is possible.
Now there's one thing I don't like when inserting the link to the
soundfile on commons.
Just have a look here:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bushhttp://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush
After George Walker Bush we have this sign for outbound links, but
really it is not an oubound link - it is a pronunciation. We have the
same problems for the language courses on wikibooks and of course also
wiktionary.
Since the soundfiles are going to be more and more used it would be
great if we had a sign (maybe a music note or somethin similar) that
indicates that there is the pronucination. This will also help people to
immediately understand which one is the point to click on to "hear".
Do you see a solution for this?
Thank you and have a geat day!
Ciao, Sabine
--
Sabine Cretella
Translations
s.cretella(a)wordsandmore.it
Meetingplace for translators
http://www.wesolveitnet.com
*****
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>No, it's another argument in the case as to why the game genie isn't
>create a derrivitive work. If you take the part Anthony quoted out of
>context you'd think that you actually had to have some of the
>copyrighted text in order to be violating.. But this is clearly not
>the case because there have been cases where not a single word of the
>orignal work was taken (see the superman/wonderman case, or the
>fanfic case)... Sure, *ideas* were taken, but you keep arguing that
>copyright is still bound to a specific embodyment of an idea, and that
>is clearly not the case anymore.
You're missing the phrase "in some form". Copyright does not cover only
text. Copyright covers the story itself, and in some cases has been ruled
to cover even the characters. And as was said earlier, you can't copyright
non-fictional characters.
Another way to look at it, copyright law only covers *preparation* of
derivative works, not copying or distribution of derivative works. It
doesn't have to cover the latter, because when you copy a derivative work
you necessarily also copy the original work on which it is derived.
http://chillingeffects.org/fanfic/faq.cgi ("the infringing work must
incorporate some portion of the original work", "For example, a detailed
commentary on a work or a musical composition inspired by a book would not
usually constitute infringements of this right.")
http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise6.html "There is no
hard-and-fast rule determining when something is a substantially similar
copy, and when it is a derivative work, since both will incorporate the
original work in some way and also have changed material."
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/cases/Micro_Star_v_Formgen.html
"Nintendo sued, claiming that when the Game Genie modified the game system's
audiovisual display, it created an infringing derivative work. We rejected
this claim because 'derivative work must incorporate a protected work in
some concrete or permanent form.'"
Yes, the key for Nintendo was that the display was not in concrete or
permanent form, but that doesn't change the fact that the derivative work
must incorporate a protected work in some form the first place.
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Sl. wrote
> What can be done to see the statistics for the languages that
> already exist in Wikipedia, but are not on the SiteMatrix list
>(I mean the Ossetian one first of all)?
For each language there is a separate file with all messages.
You can send me a translation of
http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Statistics/WikiReports_XX.pl
Erik Zachte
We would like to make a retrospective on the most special events of
these past 4 years on Wikipedia, with a special interest for the first 2
years.
For doing so, we need oldbies :-)
We would like 10 oldbies (at least 3 years on wikipedia) and ask them to
cite between 1 to 10 special moments or special persons which they think
either impacted a lot the direction of the project, or of the community.
Fun moments, sad moments, critical moments, controversial moments,
special persons, special citations, still used 3 years later.... OR just
events which were strange and reflected a certain spirit at some point,
a spirit perhaps lost now ? Just make us remember...
I invite anyone who have been more than 3 years on the project to
reflect on his past, and help us to remember. The Quarto team will also
try to contact some people, which do not necessarily answer
spontaneously :-) If you think someone needs to be contacted, please ...
euh... be a denonciator.
A couple of examples I can think of myself (Anthere, which will consider
herself an oldbie)
* the letter of resignation of Larry Sanger
* the goatse on the english wikipedia
* the fork of the spanish project
* some citations by The Cunctator
* the major server break in december 2003
* Lir playing chess on her talk page
* the polish cities dispute
* Papot'ages on the french wikipedia
Of course, we will all have different special moments to cite :-) This
is what could make it real fun.
Each point reported could be either
* a link, which could be self-sustainable or be accompanied with
one sentence explanation (example : link to Larry Resignation on the
mailing list. Example : a link to an old version of the project)
* an image, with a legend or no legend at all (example : the first
wikipedia logo. Example : a screen shot of Lir chess game)
* a short story (Example : a summary of the spanish fork). This
could be proposed by the oldbie himself
* A citation
Please, make it short, make it patchwork, and make it non politically
correct if you wish :-) (but stay civil).
-------
See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/Retro
Thank you
Anthere
There is a lot of misunderstanding here as to what constitutes a derivative
work. But one need only look at Galoob v. Nintendo to dispel most of it:
"The examples of derivative works provided by the Act all physically
incorporate the underlying work or works. The Act's legislative history
similarly indicates that 'the infringing work must incorporate a portion of
the copyrighted work in some form.'"
The infringing work must incorporate a portion of the copyrighted work in
some form. This might be the storyline, as in the case of fan fiction, but
if there is no incoporation of the copyrighted work in the alleged
infringing work, then there is no case, and a jury wouldn't even hear the
case because it would be dismissed by a judge before a jury was even
selected.
Oh yeah, and by the way, the Database and Collections of Information
Misappropriation Act of 2003 never passed, and phone books are generally
*not* subject to copyright.
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I am concerned that the current handling of copyright problems on
wikipedia may be insufficient. As it stands, after detection the
offending text is completely removed.
Unfortunately, if there has been a long time span since the insertion
of the infringing text there may have been a substantial number of
valuable contributions to the article. With the way that most content
grows organically over time, it may be very difficult to say if the
new text would have been created without the infringing text with any
certainty.
In the United States the recent tendency in court appears to be to
favor the most expansive definition of a derived work possible.
Because of this, I suspect that it would be likely that at least some
of the contributions made to an article after the insertion of
infringing text would be found by a US court to be derived, thus
placing their ownership in question. This interpretation of derived
isn't necessitated by current international treaty, and would likely
be different (and possibly more sane) in other locations, but I
suspect that US legality is a substantial concern.
Determining if a piece of text is derived from another, at least in
the over broad sense favored by US courts, is an intractable problem,
but the policy could do a better job of avoiding these concerns.
Reverting to the point where a substantial amount of infringing text
was added, and deleting *all* modifications after that point would be
much more certain to avoid impinging on the intellectual property
rights of others.
The cost of destroyed improvements might be mitigated by the benefit
of creating a greater incentive for frequently contributors to quickly
catch and remove violating text.
Of course, none of this is legal advice...
After thinking some more about the merits of the augmenting the
category system or creating a new system, I thought of the following:
The Category tag can only ever represent an "is a" relationship.
By adding the Category:Human tag to Liam Neeson, we are really trying
to convey that Liam Neeson IS A human. The category system is perfect
for defining this kind of information. However, the category system
cannot be used to define any other kind of relationship. For example,
in the Anne Frank article, it is not currently possible in wikipedia
to have an "author of" relationship.
It would therefore be a good idea to add an AuthorOf tag to wikipedia.
There are many other relationships like this that could be defined.
Each such relationship should have a well defined domain and co-domain
(For those that are unfamiliar with these terms, I will explain them
with an example). Consider the "Author of" relationship:
(Lewis Carroll) AuthorOf (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
AuthorOf is a relation, that maps a Person to a Book.
We say that the domain of AuthorOf is People, and the co-domain of
AuthorOf is Books.
Each new relation defined in wikipedia would have to have a domain and
a co-domain associated with it. For the sake of example, I will create
the following syntax to define a new relationship:
Relation: AuthorOf
Domain: Person
CoDomain: Book
Because we have defined the domains of the AuthorOf relation, we can
now do some very powerfull stuff with wikipedia:
Imagine Dave is a user of wikipedia, who does not know about defining
categories. He is doing some research on the web on his favourite
author, Lewis Carroll, and notices that there is no page on wikipedia
about him. He goes ahead and creates the page, and he also creates two
pages for Lewis' most famour books: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
and Through the Looking Glass. Dave does not add his new pages to any
category.
At the same time Mike is looking at the recent changes, and sees the
new editions on Lewis Caroll, and decides to have a look at the pages.
He notices that Dave has not defined the AuthorOf relationship, so on
the Lewis Caroll page Mike adds:
[[AuthorOf:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]
[[AuthorOf:Through the Looking Glass]]
Remember that Wikipedia knows that the domain of the AuthorOf relation
is Person, and that the co-domain is Book, so it can automatically add
Category:Person to Lewis Caroll, and Category:Book to Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
We can also define an inverse of AuthorOf: consider the revised syntax:
Relation: AuthorOf
Inverse: WrittenBy
Domain: Person
CoDomain: Book
Now when someone defines that Lewis Carroll was the AuthorOf Through
the Looking Glass, Wikipedia will automatically know that Through the
Looking Glass was written by Lewis Carroll.
Mikes adds the tag [[AuthorOf:Through the Looking Glass]] to Lewis
Caroll, and Wikipedia will automatically add [[WrittenBy:Lewis
Carrol]] to the Through the Looking Glass page.
What does anyone else think?
--
Marc O'Morain