Stan Shebs wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
On
Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 03:55 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I think there is universal support for this
proposal, actually this
proposal:
1. Force the user to choose a license
2. Force the user to fill out a field (or more?) indicating the
source
3. Write this on the page: {{msg:<NameOfLicense>}}
4. Additionally store the license and source information in a
separate
database field
My only concern about this approach is that most people don't
understand anything about copyright. Asking them to choose a license
under those circumstances is like rolling dice. It would be nice if
the license choices were accompanied by a brief outline of the
implications of each choice.
Or simply a "don't know". If a person doesn't really know about this
stuff,
I'd rather them say they don't know, than to try to pick an approximate
match. A tricky way to help sniff out problem pics is to ask for the
date of
the picture too, then focus attention on "post-1923 don't knows".
A little admission of not knowing goes a long way. I agree that a
little data about where and when these pictures come from would be very
helpful. The failure to explain the origin of a submission is rapidly
becoming a problem at Wikisource. The contributor is in the best
position to know where his material comes from, and he owes a little due
dilligence to the rest of the community. Regretably, many of the
unsourced contributions probably are in the public domain, but anything
more than some very basic tests are beyond the scope of what a reviewer
should need to do.
Without going into details, I consider myself as having an aggressive
attitude about what should be treated as in the public domain, but even
an aggressive attitude needs facts to back it up.
Ec