I think it would be great if we could make attempts to cooperate with large, proprietary and open content suppliers that do not directly compete with us. I am specifically referring to databases like
- IMDB.com for movies, games, TV - freedb.org for albums - Amazon.com for books and .. lots of other stuff.
We would ask these groups to provide a link for each entry in their database to the Wikipedia article about that entry, whether it exists or not. For example, if I looked up "Bowling for Columbine" in IMDB I would get "Description at Wikipedia: 'Bowling for Columbine is a Academy Award- winning documentary film starring Michael Moore. It opened ..' (more)"
If I looked up a non-existent movie, I would get "Describe this movie at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia."
Links to existing articles would point to locally stored copies at IMDB, with an "edit the current revision of this article at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" link at the bottom.
Why would IMDB do this?
1) IMDB doesn't have many good movie summaries because they lack a collaborative writing module. They could implement one, but why not just use existing resources? 2) IMDB visitors would only leave IMDB when following an explicit link to Wikipedia. Otherwise they would stay within the site. 3) With some Sifter-like interface, we could make sure that IMDB always has the latest trusted copy, thereby giving them an advantage even over Wikipedia proper. 4) Because of the FDL, they can tear their bonds with us whenever they want, without losing the content. 5) Wikipedia already has some brand name recognition. We have a positive image that might rub off on those who cooperate with us.
Why would we do this?
1) IMDB has a huge community of movie enthusiasts who could contribute much useful information. 2) Similarly, in the case of freedb, instead of just importing tracklists, we would invite people to actually describe the content of albums, to write real articles about them. 3) Being linked prominently from large sites like these would strengthen our brand substantially and increasingly turn Wikipedia into a household name.
There are some possible problems:
- Free databases tend to list lots of obscure stuff that probably does not warrant encyclopedic inclusion. Similarly, we would not want an article about every toy or product listed at Amazon.com. We would have to negotiate with each database supplier the criteria for when the Wikipedia link/copy is shown. For example, we could ask IMDB to only do it on movies that have a gross earnings listing (usually only the larger ones), or FreeDB to only do it on albums that have all data fields filled etc.
- We might not want to be associated with shady businesses bent for world domination like Amazon.com. However, sooner or later we will have to think about with whom we want to cooperate, and IMHO "only open content people" is too tight a rule.
- The mere inquiry might inspire these groups to think about creating their own, proprietary content collaborative writing modules, e.g. an IMDB article writing module whose contents are copyrighted by their authors and cannot be used by us. However, if that is a real threat, then it will probably happen sooner or later anyway, and it could be argued that we should give these people an alternative *before* they do it.
What do you think? Perhaps we should wait with more concrete inquiries until we have more resources to handle the traffic, but in general I believe it's worth giving it a shot.
Regards,
Erik
I hate to be a naysayer, but although your idea appeals to me in a generic way (perfect world kind of way, where everything is interconnected), I doubt this would be feasible, and even desired by either party. The problem is politics (well, "religion" would be the better euphemism): commercial sites generally hate to share their resources (which they'd have to do, even if in a small measure, by providing identifiable links to free resources, which in turn could be back-tracked to build free databases of their content, and nobody could object). On the other hand there's Wikipedia, for which I don't think it's such a good idea to associate with commercial sites just yet. And I'm not referring specifically to your 2nd point in the "possible problems" section below ("associating with shady businesses bent for world domination"), it's just the fact that in the post-dot com era, anyone associating in any way with a commercial *anything* is seen more or less as having a tendency to go per-pay. That's why I say "I don't think it's such a good idea just yet" -- maybe some time from now... But then again, I personally would love the idea. :D
Obviously just my 2c, Gutza
Erik Moeller wrote:
I think it would be great if we could make attempts to cooperate with large, proprietary and open content suppliers that do not directly compete with us. I am specifically referring to databases like
- IMDB.com for movies, games, TV
- freedb.org for albums
- Amazon.com for books and .. lots of other stuff.
We would ask these groups to provide a link for each entry in their database to the Wikipedia article about that entry, whether it exists or not. For example, if I looked up "Bowling for Columbine" in IMDB I would get "Description at Wikipedia: 'Bowling for Columbine is a Academy Award- winning documentary film starring Michael Moore. It opened ..' (more)"
If I looked up a non-existent movie, I would get "Describe this movie at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia."
Links to existing articles would point to locally stored copies at IMDB, with an "edit the current revision of this article at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" link at the bottom.
Why would IMDB do this?
- IMDB doesn't have many good movie summaries because they lack a
collaborative writing module. They could implement one, but why not just use existing resources? 2) IMDB visitors would only leave IMDB when following an explicit link to Wikipedia. Otherwise they would stay within the site. 3) With some Sifter-like interface, we could make sure that IMDB always has the latest trusted copy, thereby giving them an advantage even over Wikipedia proper. 4) Because of the FDL, they can tear their bonds with us whenever they want, without losing the content. 5) Wikipedia already has some brand name recognition. We have a positive image that might rub off on those who cooperate with us.
Why would we do this?
- IMDB has a huge community of movie enthusiasts who could contribute
much useful information. 2) Similarly, in the case of freedb, instead of just importing tracklists, we would invite people to actually describe the content of albums, to write real articles about them. 3) Being linked prominently from large sites like these would strengthen our brand substantially and increasingly turn Wikipedia into a household name.
There are some possible problems:
- Free databases tend to list lots of obscure stuff that probably does not
warrant encyclopedic inclusion. Similarly, we would not want an article about every toy or product listed at Amazon.com. We would have to negotiate with each database supplier the criteria for when the Wikipedia link/copy is shown. For example, we could ask IMDB to only do it on movies that have a gross earnings listing (usually only the larger ones), or FreeDB to only do it on albums that have all data fields filled etc.
- We might not want to be associated with shady businesses bent for world
domination like Amazon.com. However, sooner or later we will have to think about with whom we want to cooperate, and IMHO "only open content people" is too tight a rule.
- The mere inquiry might inspire these groups to think about creating
their own, proprietary content collaborative writing modules, e.g. an IMDB article writing module whose contents are copyrighted by their authors and cannot be used by us. However, if that is a real threat, then it will probably happen sooner or later anyway, and it could be argued that we should give these people an alternative *before* they do it.
What do you think? Perhaps we should wait with more concrete inquiries until we have more resources to handle the traffic, but in general I believe it's worth giving it a shot.
Regards,
Erik
I like the idea, personally. Those sites need more description and real writing, and Wikipedia has a lot of stubs that duplicate the plain data those sites have now... I can see it working into the sites' (Well, I don't know what freedb has for this) existing comment systems without a lot of trouble. It'd also probably mean a hefty traffic upswing... like you said:
Perhaps we should wait with more concrete inquiries until we have more
resources to handle the traffic But I'd put feelers out to those places and see what they think. I disagree on limiting movies by income or related... some of these may be those obscure-but-significant type of movie. Besides, earnings numbers are less than reliable.
IMHO "only open content people" is too tight a rule.
I concur. And besides, making people think of new ways of doing things is always a good idea, in my book.
-- Jake jnelson@soncom.com User:Jakenelson
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
Hi,
I like the idea, personally. Those sites need more description and real writing, and Wikipedia has a lot of stubs that duplicate the plain data those sites have now... I can see it working into the sites' (Well, I don't know what freedb has for this) existing comment systems without a lot of trouble. It'd also probably mean a hefty traffic upswing... like you said: Perhaps we should wait with more concrete inquiries until we have more resources to handle the traffic
but wouldn't the inclusion of our copylefted material because of the meme-viral character of that material make IMDB and others going GNU? __ . / / / / ... Till Westermayer - till we *) . . . mailto:till@tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072 . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179 . . . . .
Till Westermayer wrote:
but wouldn't the inclusion of our copylefted material because of the meme-viral character of that material make IMDB and others going GNU?
That's a bit of a tricky issue, because the GFDL doesn't seem to have been intended for websites, but books. In a book, I think this would be the case -- if you took someone's book, and added a few chapters to it, you'd have to FDL the whole thing, not just the original chapters. Similarly, if you published a book on movie history and included stuff from Wikipedia, you'd have to FDL the whole book, including your own writings.
I'm not sure if this carries over to a website though. Can a website have only certain sections FDL'd (say, the reviews) and consider the rest of them a separate work, even if they happen to appear on the same page? The analogy to books would say no, but I'm not sure.
-Mark
On Sun, 3 Aug 2003, Delirium wrote:
Till Westermayer wrote:
but wouldn't the inclusion of our copylefted material because of the meme-viral character of that material make IMDB and others going GNU?
That's a bit of a tricky issue, because the GFDL doesn't seem to have been intended for websites, but books. In a book, I think this would be the case -- if you took someone's book, and added a few chapters to it, you'd have to FDL the whole thing, not just the original chapters. Similarly, if you published a book on movie history and included stuff from Wikipedia, you'd have to FDL the whole book, including your own writings.
I'm not sure if this carries over to a website though. Can a website have only certain sections FDL'd (say, the reviews) and consider the rest of them a separate work, even if they happen to appear on the same page? The analogy to books would say no, but I'm not sure.
I would say that even in books, the answer could be yes, provided that the part which falls under the GNU/FDL is clearly set apart and labelled as such. In my opinion, a work of which part is from the GNU/FDL and part not, could fall under:
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, does not as a whole count as a Modified Version of the Document, provided no compilation copyright is claimed for the compilation. Such a compilation is called an "aggregate", and this License does not apply to the other self-contained works thus compiled with the Document, on account of their being thus compiled, if they are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter of the entire aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers that surround only the Document within the aggregate. Otherwise they must appear on covers around the whole aggregate.
Andre Engels
Till Westermayer wrote:
but wouldn't the inclusion of our copylefted material because of the meme-viral character of that material make IMDB and others going GNU?
Not if they are careful. There's nothing wrong with including both copylefted and proprietary material in a single aggregate publication. For example, a book might include 7 ordinary-copyright essays, and 1 GNU FDL essay, and that'd be no problem.
Similarly, a website might contain some GNU FDL content and some other content, no problem.
--Jimbo
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