[Foundation-l] A Wikisource Definition (was: RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition)

[Erik Moeller]

On 5/3/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> But might it not be a good idea to have the text of a license like the
> GPL even if we don't have any material under it? Would not that be
> well under the purpose of Wikisource?

This is an excellent question.  It leads to another one: Why does
Wikisource, as a project, exist? People will have many different
answers to that. Here's mine.

1) All material is ready to use, because we follow a strict standard
of freedom. Derivative works, commercial use, and so forth, are all
permitted. This parallels the equally strict standards of Commons (I
still think a case could be made for them to be merged, but that
decision has long been made), and distinguishes Wikisource from other
archives.

2) Metadata. Wikis are getting better at storing a wide range of
relations and associations with the pages they contain. For now we
have categories, templates, interwiki links, and regular links
(enriched with the "What links here" feature). Projects like Semantic
MediaWiki or Wikidata will eventually add even more functionality, and
the collaborative editing approach makes it possible to develop
reasonable "folksonomies" (yech). Wikisource will probably have the
best metadata of all the source text libraries.

I count annotations as metadata. There is a wide range of NPOV
annotations that are possible, especially for classical texts.

3) Translate and collaborate. I cannot emphasize enough how strongly I
feel translations should become part of Wikisource's core mission.
This is where wikis, with some additional functionality (easier
processes for managing documents and assignments), could really shine.
There is tremendous value in free translations. Many, many books which
are in the free Wikisource archive are not available as free
translations even in languages like German, Italian, French, let alone
Russian, Farsi, or Japanese.

Wikis are well-suited for this kind of work, because you can both
split the work into packages, and collaborate on refining the
consistency of the end result. The same is true for proofreading
scanned documents, but here, the "Distributed Proofreaders" project is
already doing an admirable job. We'd have to do a lot of work on
further software extensions to compete with them.

4) Limited scope archive. We cannot possibly archive every single
document that might be of interest to someone in the future. Similarly
to Wikimedia Commons, we need to develop criteria of usefulness. One
such criterion is freedom of the content. This already drastically
reduces the scope to a much more manageable amount. The material
should also have been published at some point and meet  general
criteria of notability.

5) Incentivize freedom. Through 2) and 3), I hope that we can create a
real incentive for authors to release published works freely,
especially after they have gone out of print. I have decided to put
the first edition of my own book under a GFDL/CC-BY-SA dual license. I
did so with the hope that it might be archived and translated on
Wikisource. However, de.wikisource.org has neither decided whether it
wants to do translations, nor whether it wants modern texts.

I see no principal reason why Wikisource should not archive many
different ''kinds'' of material as long as they meet criteria as
defined in 4). For instance, I think it would be great if Wikisource
became an archive for "open access" scientific content (and even data)
that meets the free content definition.

But with the exception of 2), all of the points above suggest
implementing a strict standard of freedom on Wikisource. Then, in
answer to your above question, it follows logically that license texts
that are not used as resources are, unless they are free content,
inappropriate on Wikisource. What do we gain by archiving them? Due to
their very nature, only armageddon could wipe out the record of the
most popular licenses. If we cannot translate them, if others cannot
derive new licenses from them, if we do not use them -- then we should
not host them.

But, you might answer, aren't these documents in themselves
philosophically compatible with our core ideas? You might make an
equally strong case for mirroring all of Richard Stallman's
philosophical essays. However, unless they are published, and unless
they are free content, we should not do so.

Now, a library of free licenses that others can use as modular
building blocks to create their own, that would be a very interesting
project indeed.

All of our projects will eventually need clear definitions. There is
some need for Board oversight here, or there will be what we call
"semantic drift" in the WiktionaryZ project: people developing their
own meanings, and implementing them as they see fit. Some will take
the project away from its free content nature. Others will be too
strict in limiting the scope of documents. Some will argue that a
collaborative translation is a form of "original research" and should
not be allowed. Again others might see annotations as unacceptable
alterations of the source material.

We have seen this with Wikibooks. Intended as a place to
collaboratively write textbooks, this definition clashes with a much
more inclusive practice that has long tolerated materials such as game
guides, jokes, or dating tips. How much do we know about the way the
meaning of Wikibooks or Wikisource is interpreted in other languages
than English, when we don't have a shared definition of its mission
which itself is literally translated into these languages?

I'm glad that we did write and translate a mission statement for
Wikinews. There was never any confusion in a local Wikinews edition
about whether or not original reporting is allowable, for instance. So
volunteers could immediately start working on policies for it. These
_policies_ differ from language to language, but the core goals do
not.

Volunteers like Birgitte can be forgiven for being frustrated when
their own ideas clash with those which are seemingly well-understood
by a small group of people who have little to do with the project
itself, ideas which are not well-communicated to its editors. It needs
to be clear why Wikisource exists, and what core policies it should
follow. Certainly such a definition can be developed through a process
of community consultation (as we're doing with the FCD), but it still
has to be done.

Erik