Hi!
can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote the source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article, the paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a better media exposure.
Bèrto
On 12/07/06, Berto albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Hi!
can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote the source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article, the paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a better media exposure.
Print is tricky for the GFDL - it seems to be the case * that when you're reproducing material under the GFDL online, you can get away with a link to the complete license and authorship information even if this is hosted on another server, whereas putting it in printed form means it stands alone, so you need to add the whole license, etc.
* I'm not sure if this is explicitly laid down or if it's just the generally-accepted interpretation, though.
2006/7/12, Berto albertoserra@ukr.net:
can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote the source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article, the paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a better media exposure.
I assume that by 'a wiki' you mean 'Wikipedia' here? Being sold is no problem. The GFDL explicitly allows commercial reuse. The real problem is that the GFDL requires publication of the complete text of the license, the 5 major authors and the publication history of the work. Of these, the last would be the smallest problem, provided we don't consider each version of a Wikipedia page as a separate edition, in which case "This article is based on such-and-such Wikipedia article, version <date>" could be considered enough. The second is problematic because Wikipedia itself does not keep to the GFDL here - there is no author list except for the page history. The first has the problem that the license could easily be as large or larger than the article itself. Online one can just have it on a different webpage and link to that, in printed material it's not that easy.
Having said that, Wikimedia policy is for online publication to be considered adhering to the GFDL when they mention the GFDL and link to it, and the same with the original Wikipedia page. I think it would be sensible to have similar requirements for print media, perhaps with a short description of what the GFDL means added because people cannot just click a link in a print newspaper. Thus, I would like to allow this provided the newspaper adds something like:
This article is an adaptation from the Wikipedia article "Nonsense", which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense. It falls under the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it can be copied and distributed by anyone in modified in modified or unmodified form as long as the new publication is under the same license. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html for the text of the license. A copy of this article can be found on our website at http://www.somenewspaper.com/article/08-11/fromwikipedia.htm.
That last line is because I suddenly remembered another requirement of the GFDL: One has to have a machine-readable version of the article available for any and all who request it.
However, I am not speaking here in any kind of official capacity here. Until the Wikimedia Foundation approves it my statements have no value whatsoever. And even if the Wikimedia Foundation approves it, technically all the editors of the article should approve too, although an approval of the Free Software Foundation instead would clear up a lot of sky as well.
Can an individual organisation such as Wikimedia change their requirements, despite the license, to something more lenient as you are suggesting? Even if they did, could some external organisation/person have a problem with it? Could the Free Software Foundation claim that we're misusing the GFDL? If they did, could they demand we use a different license (I think not, but I'll ask anyway)? Well, I'm just speculating, but they're questions that should be considered.
On 12/07/06, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
2006/7/12, Berto albertoserra@ukr.net:
can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote the source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article, the paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a better media exposure.
I assume that by 'a wiki' you mean 'Wikipedia' here? Being sold is no problem. The GFDL explicitly allows commercial reuse. The real problem is that the GFDL requires publication of the complete text of the license, the 5 major authors and the publication history of the work. Of these, the last would be the smallest problem, provided we don't consider each version of a Wikipedia page as a separate edition, in which case "This article is based on such-and-such Wikipedia article, version <date>" could be considered enough. The second is problematic because Wikipedia itself does not keep to the GFDL here - there is no author list except for the page history. The first has the problem that the license could easily be as large or larger than the article itself. Online one can just have it on a different webpage and link to that, in printed material it's not that easy.
Having said that, Wikimedia policy is for online publication to be considered adhering to the GFDL when they mention the GFDL and link to it, and the same with the original Wikipedia page. I think it would be sensible to have similar requirements for print media, perhaps with a short description of what the GFDL means added because people cannot just click a link in a print newspaper. Thus, I would like to allow this provided the newspaper adds something like:
This article is an adaptation from the Wikipedia article "Nonsense", which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense. It falls under the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it can be copied and distributed by anyone in modified in modified or unmodified form as long as the new publication is under the same license. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html for the text of the license. A copy of this article can be found on our website at http://www.somenewspaper.com/article/08-11/fromwikipedia.htm.
That last line is because I suddenly remembered another requirement of the GFDL: One has to have a machine-readable version of the article available for any and all who request it.
However, I am not speaking here in any kind of official capacity here. Until the Wikimedia Foundation approves it my statements have no value whatsoever. And even if the Wikimedia Foundation approves it, technically all the editors of the article should approve too, although an approval of the Free Software Foundation instead would clear up a lot of sky as well.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 12/07/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Can an individual organisation such as Wikimedia change their requirements, despite the license, to something more lenient as you are suggesting? Even if they did, could some external organisation/person have a problem with it? Could the Free Software Foundation claim that we're misusing the GFDL? If they did, could they demand we use a different license (I think not, but I'll ask anyway)? Well, I'm just speculating, but they're questions that should be considered.
Wikimedia can't change the license requirements to something more lenient (a hypothetical soft-GFDL, or CC-BY, or something), because only the copyright holder can relicense material they've released under a given license.
And the copyright holders are the *authors*, not Wikimedia. Of course, if the specific authors are willing to dual-license their work as something else, you're sorted, and it may well be doable to manage this for the bulk of the articles on a small wiki with only a few active contributors... but it's a hack.
2006/7/12, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
Can an individual organisation such as Wikimedia change their requirements, despite the license, to something more lenient as you are suggesting? Even if they did, could some external organisation/person have a problem with it? Could the Free Software Foundation claim that we're misusing the GFDL? If they did, could they demand we use a different license (I think not, but I'll ask anyway)? Well, I'm just speculating, but they're questions that should be considered.
No, technically we cannot. I don't think the FSF can make such a claim, but the individual authors of that Wikipedia page might well have a point if they claim it is violating their copyright.
I sometimes wished I had a time machine so I could go to January 2001 and warn Jimbo about the problems of the GFDL, advising him to find or create another license for Wikipedia.
Doing another multi-licensing drive is the next best thing (though time machines are alot more fun). I forget which user performed the last multi-license drive (he/she used a bot to post on user's talk pages, quite controvertial at the time). I, personally, would happily multilicense into CC-by-sa for the sake of the project (I'm surprised I haven't done it yet).
On 12/07/06, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
2006/7/12, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
Can an individual organisation such as Wikimedia change their requirements, despite the license, to something more lenient as you are suggesting? Even if they did, could some external organisation/person have a problem with it? Could the Free Software Foundation claim that we're misusing the GFDL? If they did, could they demand we use a different license (I think not, but I'll ask anyway)? Well, I'm just speculating, but they're questions that should be considered.
No, technically we cannot. I don't think the FSF can make such a claim, but the individual authors of that Wikipedia page might well have a point if they claim it is violating their copyright.
I sometimes wished I had a time machine so I could go to January 2001 and warn Jimbo about the problems of the GFDL, advising him to find or create another license for Wikipedia.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Oldak Quill schrieb:
Doing another multi-licensing drive is the next best thing (though time machines are alot more fun). I forget which user performed the last multi-license drive (he/she used a bot to post on user's talk pages, quite controvertial at the time). I, personally, would happily multilicense into CC-by-sa for the sake of the project (I'm surprised I haven't done it yet).
To be of any use, all authors of an article would have to multi-license their work (I did;-) which is unlikely for most articles. Also, it seems impossible to get an additional license from anons.
Jimbo said he's working with the FSF to make the GFDL compatible with CC in the next version, and I trust that he will get that done. After all, we're working towards the same goal; open source shouldn't have incompatible proprietary licenses just because we can ;-)
Magnus
There's something I've never understood about our use of the GFDL. I assume it is not the case that we are stuck with whatever version of the GFDL was around in September 2001? There must be some kind of provision in the text of the GFDL to automatically update the license to the latest version, am I right? If this isn't the case then we're as far from GFDL 1.3 as we are from CC-by-sa.
PS. For good measure I'm just about to multilicense :)
On 12/07/06, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
Oldak Quill schrieb:
Doing another multi-licensing drive is the next best thing (though time machines are alot more fun). I forget which user performed the last multi-license drive (he/she used a bot to post on user's talk pages, quite controvertial at the time). I, personally, would happily multilicense into CC-by-sa for the sake of the project (I'm surprised I haven't done it yet).
To be of any use, all authors of an article would have to multi-license their work (I did;-) which is unlikely for most articles. Also, it seems impossible to get an additional license from anons.
Jimbo said he's working with the FSF to make the GFDL compatible with CC in the next version, and I trust that he will get that done. After all, we're working towards the same goal; open source shouldn't have incompatible proprietary licenses just because we can ;-)
Magnus
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Oldak Quill schrieb:
There's something I've never understood about our use of the GFDL. I assume it is not the case that we are stuck with whatever version of the GFDL was around in September 2001? There must be some kind of provision in the text of the GFDL to automatically update the license to the latest version, am I right? If this isn't the case then we're as far from GFDL 1.3 as we are from CC-by-sa.
Yes. The license is "GFDL 1.2 or any later version", IIRC.
However, Stallmann (and thus the FSF) did /not/ endorse the CC licenses because there's a noncommercial one, and if he won't endorse one of the licenses, he won't recommend the others in the CC bundle either.
So much for his reasonig, if it can be called that ;-)
Magnus
On 12/07/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
There's something I've never understood about our use of the GFDL. I assume it is not the case that we are stuck with whatever version of the GFDL was around in September 2001? There must be some kind of provision in the text of the GFDL to automatically update the license to the latest version, am I right? If this isn't the case then we're as far from GFDL 1.3 as we are from CC-by-sa.
The GFDL allows any work to also be licensed under the GFDL, *or* any later version of the GFDL. This allows for small technical fixes ("oops, clause seventeen clashes with an obscure 1927 publishing law and means GFDL material can't ever appear on cardboard, better fix that comma and call it 1.3"), but (at least in spirit) means you can't just replace it with "GFDL 2.0" where clause one is "you must give Stallman lots of money", because that would be a different license entirely rather than an incremental upgrade.
Essentially, we're stuck with the general terms of the license, but (because we're a massive, massive user and thus have clout) we're able to work on the details a little.
On 7/12/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/07/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
There's something I've never understood about our use of the GFDL. I assume it is not the case that we are stuck with whatever version of the GFDL was around in September 2001? There must be some kind of provision in the text of the GFDL to automatically update the license to the latest version, am I right? If this isn't the case then we're as far from GFDL 1.3 as we are from CC-by-sa.
The GFDL allows any work to also be licensed under the GFDL, *or* any later version of the GFDL. This allows for small technical fixes ("oops, clause seventeen clashes with an obscure 1927 publishing law and means GFDL material can't ever appear on cardboard, better fix that comma and call it 1.3"), but (at least in spirit) means you can't just replace it with "GFDL 2.0" where clause one is "you must give Stallman lots of money", because that would be a different license entirely rather than an incremental upgrade.
Somewhere (I think it might be in the GFDL itself) is a clause that says that any future version of the license will be "in the spirit of" the original GFDL.
On 7/12/06, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
Somewhere (I think it might be in the GFDL itself) is a clause that says that any future version of the license will be "in the spirit of" the original GFDL.
-- Mark [[en:User:Carnildo]]
The "spirit" of the GFDL, I thought, was to be to documents what the GPL was to code. That spirit is contrary to the actual spirit of the current GFDL, which seems to be to be an impossible dysfunctional complex monster. Hell, switching to one of the CC licenses would be more in the spirit of the GFDL than the current license.
~maru
Oldak Quill wrote:
There's something I've never understood about our use of the GFDL. I assume it is not the case that we are stuck with whatever version of the GFDL was around in September 2001? There must be some kind of provision in the text of the GFDL to automatically update the license to the latest version, am I right? If this isn't the case then we're as far from GFDL 1.3 as we are from CC-by-sa.
You're right, we're not stuck with the current GFDL. This isn't explicitly a feature of the GFDL, but is a result of the way people usually license their work under the GFDL, which is intended for exactly this sort of issue.
The en: Coyprights page states our license as follows: "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts."
So if the FSF published a Version 1.3, third parties could at their option choose to comply with that license instead of the current Version 1.2.
-Mark
Hi Berto,
consider that it is less of a problem when the authors are for example three/four you know. If you all agree to publish that specific article under another license (for example cc-by) you can do that - this means: each author can publish the own work under various licenses.
Small wikipedias like us (pms, nap, lmo etc.) have less problems in that way - it is enough that you take the article, contact all contributors (of course anonymous contributors cannot be contacted ... don't really know how to deal with that one) and have them state that the article may be used under license xyz for the publication in newspaper abc. Creative Commons licenses are somewhat better ... you do not have to include the whole text of a license there.
Another possibility for us small wikipedias who want to go that way is: ask contributors to state that they would agree to a double-licensing (for example cc-by) of their work. I suppose most of us will gladly do that, because we want to spread the information and not close it down in an electronical format.
Ciao, Sabine
Berto schrieb:
Hi!
can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote the source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article, the paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a better media exposure.
Bèrto
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale! http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
Hi All,
I'll better explain the whole story... our situation is: 1) after getting some nice media exposure traffic started to rise (about 5 published articles since March, 27; 2 of them on national media) 2) people do register, but actually 90% of what we get is from anon users, from the grammar mistakes they usually make I'd say it's at least 4 main contributors working almost every day, but all efforts to contact them have proved unsuccesful this far
Now, I get the impression that a number of papers could use us as a free source for some kind "Not everybody knows that..." section of their papers. This would: 1) get a permanent exposure to the wiki 2) increase wiki's authorithy as a public data source 3) get people in touch with the written form of their language.
The main contribution waves came exactly when important media published pms text quoted from the wiki, so it seems to make sense to work on this. Most people are not familiar both with reading and writing the language and with the very concept of a wiki. By acquiring some stable presence in the paper media we could use the trend that is manifesting itself on spontaneous basis.
It's not a problem to have a small copyright related text published in small chars, from our marketing POV we'd want the wiki URL published in bigger chars. Please bear in mind that given the current trend we'll have NO way to contact 90% of the authors.
От: "Andre Engels" andreengels@gmail.com
This article is an adaptation from the Wikipedia article "Nonsense", which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense. It falls under the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it can be copied and distributed by anyone in modified in modified or unmodified form as long as the new publication is under the same license. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html for the text of the license. A copy of this article can be found on our website at http://www.somenewspaper.com/article/08-11/fromwikipedia.htm.
Newspapers will need a much shorter text, IMHO. We are going to stand somewhere in the "local chronicle" page, sometimes in the "Culture" section, we cannot really expect them to waste this much room. What about writing: "The original text is published at http://pms.wikipedia.org/wiki/article and released under a GNU Free Documentation License. Details can be obtained at http://pms.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia/GNUFDL "
At this point we would use a template to point readers of the original article to a machine readable copy inside the wiki, in a special namespace (say Printed_Articles:), where one could know who published what and were.
If it seems to make sense to the people here I'll try my luck in asking the board to issue an official authorisation for this use. Thanks Bèrto
PS I suggest to all minor language edition to try this marketing trick. And the smaller and more local the paper mentioning you, the more contributors you seem to get. Just make sure that text gets published in the same language as the original.
----- Исходное сообщение ----- От: "Sabine Cretella" sabine_cretella@yahoo.it Кому: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Отправлено: 12 июля 2006 г. 14:45 Тема: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question
Hi Berto,
consider that it is less of a problem when the authors are for example three/four you know. If you all agree to publish that specific article under another license (for example cc-by) you can do that - this means: each author can publish the own work under various licenses.
Small wikipedias like us (pms, nap, lmo etc.) have less problems in that way - it is enough that you take the article, contact all contributors (of course anonymous contributors cannot be contacted ... don't really know how to deal with that one) and have them state that the article may be used under license xyz for the publication in newspaper abc. Creative Commons licenses are somewhat better ... you do not have to include the whole text of a license there.
Another possibility for us small wikipedias who want to go that way is: ask contributors to state that they would agree to a double-licensing (for example cc-by) of their work. I suppose most of us will gladly do that, because we want to spread the information and not close it down in an electronical format.
Ciao, Sabine
Berto schrieb:
Hi!
can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote
the
source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article,
the
paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a
better
media exposure.
Bèrto
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale! http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
You mention trying to get permanently featured as "not everyone knows that" sections on the fun pages of newspapers. Could this not fuel a perception of Wikipedia as somewhat frivelous? Couldn't it encourage more people to see our contents as a random collation of facts rather than a great source of information?
On 12/07/06, Berto albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Hi All,
I'll better explain the whole story... our situation is:
- after getting some nice media exposure traffic started to rise (about 5
published articles since March, 27; 2 of them on national media) 2) people do register, but actually 90% of what we get is from anon users, from the grammar mistakes they usually make I'd say it's at least 4 main contributors working almost every day, but all efforts to contact them have proved unsuccesful this far
Now, I get the impression that a number of papers could use us as a free source for some kind "Not everybody knows that..." section of their papers. This would:
- get a permanent exposure to the wiki
- increase wiki's authorithy as a public data source
- get people in touch with the written form of their language.
The main contribution waves came exactly when important media published pms text quoted from the wiki, so it seems to make sense to work on this. Most people are not familiar both with reading and writing the language and with the very concept of a wiki. By acquiring some stable presence in the paper media we could use the trend that is manifesting itself on spontaneous basis.
It's not a problem to have a small copyright related text published in small chars, from our marketing POV we'd want the wiki URL published in bigger chars. Please bear in mind that given the current trend we'll have NO way to contact 90% of the authors.
От: "Andre Engels" andreengels@gmail.com
This article is an adaptation from the Wikipedia article "Nonsense", which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense. It falls under the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it can be copied and distributed by anyone in modified in modified or unmodified form as long as the new publication is under the same license. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html for the text of the license. A copy of this article can be found on our website at http://www.somenewspaper.com/article/08-11/fromwikipedia.htm.
Newspapers will need a much shorter text, IMHO. We are going to stand somewhere in the "local chronicle" page, sometimes in the "Culture" section, we cannot really expect them to waste this much room. What about writing: "The original text is published at http://pms.wikipedia.org/wiki/article and released under a GNU Free Documentation License. Details can be obtained at http://pms.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia/GNUFDL "
At this point we would use a template to point readers of the original article to a machine readable copy inside the wiki, in a special namespace (say Printed_Articles:), where one could know who published what and were.
If it seems to make sense to the people here I'll try my luck in asking the board to issue an official authorisation for this use. Thanks Bèrto
PS I suggest to all minor language edition to try this marketing trick. And the smaller and more local the paper mentioning you, the more contributors you seem to get. Just make sure that text gets published in the same language as the original.
----- Исходное сообщение ----- От: "Sabine Cretella" sabine_cretella@yahoo.it Кому: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Отправлено: 12 июля 2006 г. 14:45 Тема: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question
Hi Berto,
consider that it is less of a problem when the authors are for example three/four you know. If you all agree to publish that specific article under another license (for example cc-by) you can do that - this means: each author can publish the own work under various licenses.
Small wikipedias like us (pms, nap, lmo etc.) have less problems in that way - it is enough that you take the article, contact all contributors (of course anonymous contributors cannot be contacted ... don't really know how to deal with that one) and have them state that the article may be used under license xyz for the publication in newspaper abc. Creative Commons licenses are somewhat better ... you do not have to include the whole text of a license there.
Another possibility for us small wikipedias who want to go that way is: ask contributors to state that they would agree to a double-licensing (for example cc-by) of their work. I suppose most of us will gladly do that, because we want to spread the information and not close it down in an electronical format.
Ciao, Sabine
Berto schrieb:
Hi!
can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote
the
source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article,
the
paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a
better
media exposure.
Bèrto
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale! http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
----- Исходное сообщение ----- От: "Oldak Quill" oldakquill@gmail.com Кому: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org Отправлено: 12 июля 2006 г. 19:01 Тема: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question
You mention trying to get permanently featured as "not everyone knows that" sections on the fun pages of newspapers. Could this not fuel a perception of Wikipedia as somewhat frivelous? Couldn't it encourage more people to see our contents as a random collation of facts rather than a great source of information?
This is strictly related to the kind of content you allow in the wiki. Actually I never knew myself that Cristoforo Colombo was a native PMS speaker and that there is even a museum dedicated to him and opened by one of his descendants in the village in where he was born. I learned that by verifying the content we get, andf I hardly can imagine this sort of notions having a bad impact on the wiki as such. Obviously, some care must be taken from the very start.
But on the other hand, having such data about small cities and villages published on the papers will give the people : 1) a clear idea of the kind of data the wiki community rates as interesting 2) the image of a wiki as a way to "store and share knowledge" 3) a first crucial contact with written minor languages as means of communication 4) the idea that they all hold knowledge that can be shared
Point 4) is crucial for our project "Native atlas". We can manage to properly collect a full atlas of toponims in native languages ONLY if we can involve local people. Many of them will limit their contribution to adding data on their own close geographic area, but a percentage of these people will also add data on local traditions, life styles, etc. These data alone have an immense value for researchers who cross-reference toponims to infer old extinct languages like PIE, ligurian and lepontian. I'd rate this quite far from being "frivelous". In addition, we would present the material toghether with a call for partecipation in the "Native Atlas" project, and present the project itself for what it is: a giant scale data collection that researchers will eventually use.
The last thing we need is people coming in to add a page about their own dog's birthday, obviously. Because it would only add extra admin work in getting rid of it. But this far I do not see any such trend, although it will definitely happen, if traffic grows enough for that. But at that point we'll also have a bigger admin structure and we'll be able to cope with the flow.
I do not think that this marketing channel "as such" can send a peculiar image of the wiki. As all channels, it really depends on what you use it for.
Bèrto
Just two points: -information added by locals on their customs/traditions will have to be verifiable. We cannot accept original research. -I don't think distribution in newspapers will change the *type* of vandalism we'll get. I'm not even sure if it will increase the volume of vandalism greatly. Regardless, as you say we will have a larger admin base and more refined tools and bots.
Other than that, it seems like a good idea.
On 12/07/06, Berto albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
----- Исходное сообщение ----- От: "Oldak Quill" oldakquill@gmail.com Кому: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org Отправлено: 12 июля 2006 г. 19:01 Тема: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question
You mention trying to get permanently featured as "not everyone knows that" sections on the fun pages of newspapers. Could this not fuel a perception of Wikipedia as somewhat frivelous? Couldn't it encourage more people to see our contents as a random collation of facts rather than a great source of information?
This is strictly related to the kind of content you allow in the wiki. Actually I never knew myself that Cristoforo Colombo was a native PMS speaker and that there is even a museum dedicated to him and opened by one of his descendants in the village in where he was born. I learned that by verifying the content we get, andf I hardly can imagine this sort of notions having a bad impact on the wiki as such. Obviously, some care must be taken from the very start.
But on the other hand, having such data about small cities and villages published on the papers will give the people :
- a clear idea of the kind of data the wiki community rates as interesting
- the image of a wiki as a way to "store and share knowledge"
- a first crucial contact with written minor languages as means of
communication 4) the idea that they all hold knowledge that can be shared
Point 4) is crucial for our project "Native atlas". We can manage to properly collect a full atlas of toponims in native languages ONLY if we can involve local people. Many of them will limit their contribution to adding data on their own close geographic area, but a percentage of these people will also add data on local traditions, life styles, etc. These data alone have an immense value for researchers who cross-reference toponims to infer old extinct languages like PIE, ligurian and lepontian. I'd rate this quite far from being "frivelous". In addition, we would present the material toghether with a call for partecipation in the "Native Atlas" project, and present the project itself for what it is: a giant scale data collection that researchers will eventually use.
The last thing we need is people coming in to add a page about their own dog's birthday, obviously. Because it would only add extra admin work in getting rid of it. But this far I do not see any such trend, although it will definitely happen, if traffic grows enough for that. But at that point we'll also have a bigger admin structure and we'll be able to cope with the flow.
I do not think that this marketing channel "as such" can send a peculiar image of the wiki. As all channels, it really depends on what you use it for.
Bèrto
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi!
-information added by locals on their customs/traditions will have to be verifiable. We cannot accept original research.
Mostly reference data is there. The problem is that such books, more often than not, are buried into libraries and data never gets any public exposition. Our procedure at the moment is to allow anon users to drop in anything they want, and afterwards check the info with our contacts in the university environment and a number of dedicated mailing lists. If the data can be proved to be reliable, than we just wikify it and add references for it.
No matter how hard we try, there is going to be a number of cases that will remain floating in the mist. We will have a special marker for such data, asking the people to provide evidence for them. This in turn gets to expand en:wiki content, too. When translating the "Cairn" entry we found additional data by contacting both pms and oc communities. References are being checked and once approved they will be added to the en:wiki entry, too.
-I don't think distribution in newspapers will change the *type* of vandalism we'll get. I'm not even sure if it will increase the volume of vandalism greatly.
We had some occasional vandalism only in the first week of our existence. At the moment trouble is limited to very small edit wars... I suppose we need to grow much larger before we attract vandals :)
Bèrto
Oldak Quill wrote:
You mention trying to get permanently featured as "not everyone knows that" sections on the fun pages of newspapers. Could this not fuel a perception of Wikipedia as somewhat frivelous?
So what? Let them have whatever perception they want. People are fascinated by these snippets of information that are short enough that they can just repeat to their friends over the next glass of wine. If you are worried about it being seen as frivolous then you are taking this all too seriously
Couldn't it encourage more people to see our contents as a random collation of facts rather than a great source of information?
Yes, that would be an excellent outcome.
I don't see the point of getting into such complicated legalese contortions over what amounts to very short extracts from Wikipedia. Saying simply "Source pms.wikipedia.org" (or whatever language version) should be enough for anything that does not exceed two paragraphs in length. A simple policy statement that any such usage will be viewed as fair use should be adequate to the circumstances. Trying to dissect the minutiae of GFDL to deal with this can only benefit stupid lawyers.
Ec
Hi!
Saying simply "Source pms.wikipedia.org" (or whatever language version) should be enough for anything that does not exceed two paragraphs in length.
It's what basically all small newspapers already do when using pics they get from the net. But anyway I'd rather hear what the board thunks about it. Having a clear statement for us to present to redactors would greatly simplify the matter. It's a fair deal: they get free content, we get free marketing.
Bèrto
Oldak Quill wrote:
You mention trying to get permanently featured as "not everyone knows that" sections on the fun pages of newspapers. Could this not fuel a perception of Wikipedia as somewhat frivelous?
This would be a concern if Wikipedia had used the CC-NH (Creative Commons, Non-humorous use only) license.
Being a small wiki, with few contributors and little articles, wiki licensing could be switched to a dual license like GFDL-Cc-by-sa. Cc-by-sa is very similar to the GFDL terms, but license text is not required. You would need to contact with all contributors to get their agreement to publish their previous work under cc-by-sa too. Changing the licensing informationg would make the future ones. And a strong community consensus required :)
Be aware that contributions previous to the switching will be GFDL-only so you couldn't publich it under the second one. This may not apply to trivial information (e.g. like those ips usually give). Unrelicensable texts could either: -Be deleted (the strict way) -Tag them with a template saying 'some parts of this may not be available under CC ' (the easier way)
Platonides
Hi!
Being a small wiki, with few contributors and little articles, wiki licensing could be switched to a dual license like GFDL-Cc-by-sa. Cc-by-sa is very similar to the GFDL terms, but license text is not required. You would need to contact with all contributors to get their agreement to publish their previous work under cc-by-sa too. Changing the licensing informationg would make the future ones. And a strong community consensus required :)
Be aware that contributions previous to the switching will be GFDL-only so you couldn't publich it under the second one. This may not apply to
trivial
information (e.g. like those ips usually give). Unrelicensable texts could either: -Be deleted (the strict way) -Tag them with a template saying 'some parts of this may not be available under CC ' (the easier way)
We have a template shown on all pages already. Basically I guess we could simply point readers to a "Wikipedia:Licensing" page, where we would state that content published before <licence switch date> is available under GFDL only, and invite distributors to use the "history" tool to verify what's the situation for each page. If they need to publish GFDL-licensed material we will discuss the question with the contributors and eventually place an add on that page that completely switches it to CC. It looks a lot easier than having to hand-tag 1.200 articles.
Bèrto
What about translations from other wikipedias? That text is highly likely to the GFDL-only, and I suppose it should also be redistributed as GFDL (i.e. printing the whole text of the licence)
Marco (Cruccone)
On 7/13/06, Berto albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
We have a template shown on all pages already. Basically I guess we could simply point readers to a "Wikipedia:Licensing" page, where we would state that content published before <licence switch date> is available under GFDL only, and invite distributors to use the "history" tool to verify what's the situation for each page. If they need to publish GFDL-licensed material we will discuss the question with the contributors and eventually place an add on that page that completely switches it to CC. It looks a lot easier than having to hand-tag 1.200 articles.
Bèrto
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi!
What about translations from other wikipedias? That text is highly likely
to
the GFDL-only, and I suppose it should also be redistributed as GFDL (i.e. printing the whole text of the licence)
Well, if this *is* a problem, then it makes no sense to switch licences at all. It's much more practical to revert to the old solution of having a short text published that will satisfy the cops enough to get rid of the whole matter. We need a marketing tool, not a lawyers' mind game.
Is this really *that* relevant? And if it is, then how many wikies are actually "stealing" content from each other?
I can read pretty much the same stuff from all interwiki links, and never ever noticed anyone having a foreign link in their histories... neither did I see templates stating that text "Goofy loves Mickey" was originally translated from xxx.wiki, while "Walt Dysney was an american of ukrainian origin" came from ttt.wiki. So what about quoting sources and giving a pointer to the original(s)?
It's impossible to do it, unless you want to have articles look like trashbins. I use sources in... 20-25 languages, sometimes I get to read 5 editions to check a single voice, should I quote them all? Now this *really* would turn any text into an unreadable mess.
Bèrto
If you're already doing so, i highly encourage you to change it globally (even if you have to specify on other place that date info). You will need to change Mesiawiki:copyrightwarning and the copyrightpage. The text below saying it's under GFDL won't be incorrect at all (all of it is under GFDL), but for changing you will need to ask on bugzilla.
About translations from other wikipedias, you're supposed to be able to read from various sources to know and then make your own text so shouldn't be so much a problem unless you directly quote (then you could have a GFDL-only text with dual licensed translation and modifications, quite a © mess...). Maybe a new template: be aware original article source is GFDL-only? Better being creative!
Platonides
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