[Foundation-l] Proposal: Fan History joining the WMF family

[geni]

I apologise for top posting but I wish to respond to your post in full
while making the absolute show stopper clear. You wiki is not under a
free license nor can it's content be released under a free license
without an impractical degree of effort

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage
people around the world to collect and develop educational content
under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it
effectively and globally.

Compare to Fan History's copyright page.

Fan History created this  policy with the following objectives in mind:

* Create a copyright policy which does not allow people to reproduce
the whole of the content elsewhere without the consent of Fan History;


Now you've said;

> *Compromises Fan History is happy to make:*
> * Change our copyright from
> http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Fanhistory.com:Copyrights to the same policy
> used by WMF.

Lets see if you have the legal ability to do that. First from your edit window:

Please note that all contributions to Fan History Wiki may be edited,
altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your
writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it
from a public domain or similar free resource (see
Fanhistory.com:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work
without permission!

No release of copyright under any license or to Fan history in a way
that would allow it to be relicensed.

Still lets look at http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Fanhistory.com:Copyrights

The site does not claim ownership of the content contributed to Fan
History. Works are contributed with permission. By submitting content
to Fan History for inclusion in its site, you grant Fan History the
world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce,
modify, adapt and publish the content for the purpose of displaying
and distributing such content through Fan History's systems.

But no ability to relicense or indeed allow anyone other than Fan
History to legally modify the stuff. The copyright policy goes
downhill somewhat from that point with a number of internal
contradictions and stuff that doesn't make sense within any one legal
syste, (for example you talk about fair use then jump to what is
effectively a database copyright claim).


2009/11/18 Laura Hale <laura at fanhistory.com>:
> Erik suggested I post this to the list for further discussion.
>
> Sincerely,
> Laura Hale
>

I strongly suggest finding a point of contact other than Erik


> Current objectives for the project include:
>
> * Document the history of fan communities.
> * Preserve the history of fandom, especially in areas that are deemed at
> risk like Geocities.
> * Provide academics operating in fandom starting points for additional
> research and to provide academics with comprehensive data sets.
> * Provide members of fandom a resource to find links to communities in
> fandom, and explain parts of the culture in those communities to help them
> adapt to them.

Within the WMF's objectives.

> *  Provide members of fandom a tool to promote their work, their projects,
> charity efforts by fans.

Outside and their might be issues with charity law.

> * Provide members of fandom a platform to share stories about what happened
> in fandom so that important incidents won't be forgotten.
> * Provide a comprehensive directory for fandom that anyone can edit. This is
> necessary because of increased fragmentation in a web 2.0 world, and as
> members of fandom transition away from various services because of downtime,
> problems with policy, etc. It is also necessary because a lot of time in
> fandom trying to track down authors and artists who disappeared and in
> trying to locate fanworks that have disappeared.
> *  Provide companies that deal with fandom a source to locate fandom
> communities, understand how fandom functions, identify current issues in
> certain fandoms, give examples of how certain issues were dealt with, etc.
> By knowing that information, they can better interact with and cater to
> fandom's specific needs.

Borderline.

> * Reasons why Fan History Wiki would be a good fit for WMF:*
>
> * WMF is trying to be more female friendly in terms of developing its
> contributor base. Fan History's primary contributor base and audience is
> female.
>            * A largely female audience is a historical truth for popular
> culture fandom based around movies, and television. The audience around
> manga and anime is becoming increasingly female.  In most areas, the
> academics entering the field are female. Major popular culture obsession
> items at the moment where there is a large female base include Twilight,
> Harry Potter, Star Trek.
>              * Fan History’s inclusion amongst foundation projects can be a
> selling point for outreach in that area.  If needing to point to a similar
> female dominated group doing similar work, the Organization for
> Transformative Works can be cited.

Looks good but I'm not sure how well slapping a female dominated group
onto the side of the WMF projects would address the overall issue.

> * Our scope allows for more esoteric information that could not be included
> in Wikipedia, Wikiversity or Wikinews that would still help work towards a
> greater good.
>             * The WMF Foundation supports quality resources that anyone can
> edit. Fan History is primarily a cultural historical anthropology project
> dedicated to documenting the history of fandom.
>              * People have tried to do such research on Wikipedia in the
> past but it frequently gets deleted because of the lack of research, it is
> original research or it isn’t notable.  In terms of popular culture studies,
> Fan History provides a place to do that.

Hmm. Uncontrolled original research is a bit outside our range of
experience so hard to predict.

> * Fan History being part of the Foundation would allow closer relationships
> with the science fiction community, the academic community and others with a
> vested interest in the topic.

I think we already have such relationships

>            * We’re already being used as an academic source in some places
> because the research we do on the wiki is not being done by anyone else.
> With more attention and increased awareness, this can be increased.  That
> attention and use should reflect back on other WMF projects to justify those
> sources as credible.
>           * Fan History can be used as leverage to develop relationships
> with programs like the Popular Culture studies work done at USC and MIT.

The main barrier so far though has seemed to be lack of manpower and
any clear purpose in doing so.

>           * This would be a big step towards getting professional
> historians and cultural anthropologists to using Wikipedia related projects
> more.  Some would like such a platform to do their own work and are hesitant
> to do it on more commercial sites like Wikia.

The project would not be that wikipedia related though.

>
> * Fan History’s preservation work would foster good will, improve
> credibility of WMF projects, generate additional press and help WMF in
> creating good relationships with other organizations.

We don't need additional press and an original research based project
is kinda risky in terms of trying to improve credibility.

>            * We are doing important preservation work related to sites that
> are closing like Geocities and have identified other sites at risk like
> Tripod and Angelfire where we need to start working.  Most of the work being
> done preservation wise focuses on just saving the raw content, not
> screencapping and putting this work into its historical context.  There is
> no competition in that context.

Other than in certain narrow areas this is the case yes.

>
> * Our preservation work would help improve credibility, as we become more of
> a primary source resource.  It is easier to cite that work in ways that
> people cannot cite Wikipedia.
>            * The Internet Archive and other projects received a lot
> positive press because of their preservation efforts.
>            * Preservation efforts open up opportunities to work with
> university programs, and other non-profits that have a vested interest in
> saving that information.

I'd need to see some slightly more solid evidence of this.


> *What Fan History needs from WMF:*
>
> * Improved back end support.
> * Help increasing our base audience of contributors.
> * Financial security.
> * The continued ability to work towards our objectives.

Money and people. Well we've made worse spending decisions.

>
> *What Fan History offers beyond good fit:*
>
> * Policies that have been tested to work inside the larger community that
> meet different standards.
> * Scalable policies that have been tested so there should not be huge
> problems coming on board.

What are your techniques for dealing with say Korean nationalism?

> * An all female admin staff at the onset.
>
> * Few copyright problems.  While we have some copyrighted images, we could
> dump almost all and not lose anything substantive.

I've addressed this. Although your "dump almost all and not lose
anything substantive" claim is not consistent with your talk of useing
geocities screenshots. Incerdently what you think the copyright status
of say:

http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/File:Our_Stories_1241229337347.png

is?

> * A huge scope.  We cover over 37,000 fan communities representing
> television, movies, music, video games, anime, manga, actors, theater,
> radio, science fiction, cartoons, comics and sports.
>

Indeed. Still if it wasn't for the software issues a union with
TVTropes would make a lot more sense.

-- 
geni