On Wed, 2002-10-30 at 23:39, koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com wrote:

Toby wrote:

...

As-is to an extent that avoids lying, yes, but not to the extent that fixes an invariant section. For example, if an original (by Dr. X) said "Churchill was a pompous windbag that everybody hated.", then I might write "Dr. X wrote "Churchill was a pompous windbag".", which is fair use in the context of an encyclopaedia article, and release that under the FDL. Then a derivative FDL encyclopaedia should be able to shorten it to "Dr. X called Churchill "a pompous windbag".", but that wouldn't be possible if my FDL release classified the quotation as an invariant section.

*lightbulb*!

Sorry. Now I follow you.

The only problem with this is that invariant sections can't be included willy-nilly in the main content of the document (that is, Wikipedia). In other words, this is a enjoyable exercise, but a misinterpretation of the GFDL.

All Invariant Sections are Secondary Sections.

A Secondary Section must be "a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject."

In other words, there can be no Invariant Sections within Wikipedia entries.

There are many gray areas about GFDL use, but this isn't one of them.