Gerard,
Of course you can't license or copyright facts, but as the WMF legal team's
page on this topic[1] outlines, there are database and compilation rights
that exist independently of copyright. IANAL, but as I read that page, if
you simply go ahead and copy all the infobox, template etc. content from a
Wikipedia, this "would likely be a violation" even under US law (not to
mention EU law).
I don't know why Wikipedia was set up with a CC BY-SA licence rather than a
CC0 licence, and the attribution required under CC BY-SA is unduly
cumbersome, but attribution has always seemed to me like a useful concept.
The fact that people like VDM Publishing who sell Wikipedia articles as
books are required to say that their material comes from Wikipedia is
useful, for example.
Naturally it fosters re-use if you make Wikidata CC0, but that's precisely
the point: you end up with a level of "market dominance" that just ain't
healthy.
[1]
On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hoi,
Andreas, the law is an arse. However the law has it that you cannot license
facts. When in distributed processes data is retrieved from Wikipedia, it
is the authors who may contest their rights. There is no such thing as
collective rights for Wikipedia, all Wikipedias.
You may not like this and that is fine.
DBpedia has its license in the current way NOT because they care about the
license but because they are not interested in a row with Wikipedians on
the subject. They are quite happy to share their data with Wikidata and
make data retrieved in their processes with a CC-0.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 17 December 2015 at 15:17, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Andrea Zanni
<zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com
wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 9:35 PM, Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> > Andrea,
> > I totally agree on the mission/vision thing, but am not sure what you
> mean
> > exactly by scale - do you mean that Wikidata shouldn't try to be so
> > granular that it has a statement to cover each factoid in any
Wikipedia
>
article, or do you mean we need to talk about what constitutes
notability
> > in order not to grow Wikidata exponentially to the point the servers
> crash?
> > Jane
> >
> >
> Hi Jane, I explained myself poorly (sometime English is too difficult
:-)
>
> What I mean is that the scale of the error *could* be of another scale,
> another order of magnitude.
> The propagation of the error is multiplied, it's not just a single
error
on
> a wikipage: it's an error propagated in many wikipages, and then
Google,
etc.
A single point of failure.
Exactly: a single point of failure. A system where a single point of
failure can have such consequences, potentially corrupting knowledge
forever, is a bad system. It's not robust.
In the op-ed, I mentioned the Brazilian aardvark hoax[1] as an example of
error propagation (which happened entirely without Wikidata's and the
Knowledge Graph's help). It took the New Yorker quite a bit of research
to
piece together and confirm what happened,
research which I understand
would
not have happened if the originator of the hoax
had not been willing to
talk about his prank.
It was the same with the fake Maurice Jarre quotes in Wikipedia[2] that
made their way into mainstream press obituaries a few years ago. If the
hoaxer had not come forward, no one would have been the wiser. The fake
quotes would have remained a permanent part of the historical record.
More recent cases include the widely repeated (including by Associated
Press, for God's sake, to this day) claim that Joe Streater was involved
in
the Boston College basketball point shaving
scandal[3] and the Amelia
Bedelia hoax.[4]
If even things people insert as a joke propagate around the globe as a
result of this vulnerability, then there is a clear and present potential
for purposeful manipulation. We've seen enough cases of that, too.[5]
This is not the sort of system the Wikimedia community should be helping
to
build. The very values at the heart of the
Wikimedia movement are about
transparency, accountability, multiple points of view, pluralism,
democracy, opposing dominance and control by vested interests, and so
forth.
What is the way forward?
Wikidata should, as a matter of urgency, rescind its decision to make its
content available under the CC0 licence. Global propagation without
attribution is a terrible idea.
Quite apart from that, in my opinion Wikidata's CC0 licensing also
infringes Wikipedia contributors' rights as enshrined in Wikipedia's CC
BY-SA licence, a point Lydia Pintscher did not even contest on the
Signpost
talk page. As I understand her response,[6] she
restricts herself to
asserting that the responsibility for any potential licence infringement
lies with Wikidata contributors rather than with her and Wikimedia
Deutschland. That's passing the buck.
If Wikidata is not prepared to follow CC BY-SA, the way DBpedia does[7],
the next step should be a DMCA takedown notice for material mass-imported
from Wikipedia.
And of course, Wikidata needs to step up its efforts to cite verifiable
sources.
[1]
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-a-raccoon-became-an-aardvark
[2]
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/may/04/journalism-obituaries-…
[3]
http://awfulannouncing.com/2014/guilt-wikipedia-joe-streater-became-falsely…
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogus-bus…
and
http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/wikipedia-plastic-surgery-otto-placik-lab…
and many others
[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpos…
[7]
http://wiki.dbpedia.org/terms-imprint
Of course, the opposite is also true: it's a
single point of openness,
correction, information.
I was just wondering if this different scale is a factor in making
Wikipedia and Wikidata different enough to accept/reject Andreas
arguments.
Andrea
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 7:10 PM, Andrea Zanni <
zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> I really feel we are drowning in a glass of water.
> The issue of "data quality" or "reliability" that Andreas raises
is
well
> > known:
> > what I don't understand if the "scale" of it is much bigger on
Wikidata
> > than Wikipedia,
> > and if this different scale makes it much more important. The scale
of
> > the
> > > issue is maybe something worth discussing, and not the issue
itself?
Is
> the
> > fact that Wikidata is centralised different from statements on
> Wikipedia? I
> > don't know, but to me this is a more neutral and interesting
question.
> > >
> > > I often say that the Wikimedia world made quality an
"heisemberghian"
> >
feature: you always have to check if it's there.
> > The point is: it's been always like this.
> > We always had to check for quality, even when we used Britannica or
> > authority controls or whatever "reliable" sources we wanted.
Wikipedia,
> and
> > now Wikidata, is made for everyone to contribute, it's open and
honest
in
> > being open, vulnerable, prone to errors. But we are transparent, we
say
> > > that in advance, we can claim any statement to the smallest
detail.
Of
> > > course it's difficult, but we can do it. Wikidata, as Lydia said,
can
> > > actually have conflicting
statements in every item: we "just" have
to
> put
> > > them there, as we did to Wikipedia.
> > >
> > > If Google uses our data and they are wrong, that's bad for them. If
> they
> > > correct the errors and do not give us the corrections, that's bad
for
us
> > and not ethical from them. The point is: there is no license (for
what
I
> > know) that can force them to contribute to Wikidata. That is, IMHO,
the
> > problem with "over-the-top"
actors: they can harness collective
> intelligent
> > and "not give back." Even with CC-BY-SA, they could store (as they
are
> > > probably already doing) all the data in their knowledge vault,
which
is
> > > secret as it is an incredible asset for them.
> > >
> > > I'd be happy to insert a new clause of "forced transparency"
in
> CC-BY-SA
> > or
> > > CC0, but it's not there.
> > >
> > > So, as we are working via GLAMs with Wikipedia for getting
reliable
> >
sources and content, we are working with them also for good
statements
> and
> > data. Putting good data in Wikidata makes it better, and I don't
> understand
> > what is the problem here (I understand, again, the issue of putting
too
> > > much data and still having a small community).
> > > For example: if we are importing different reliable databases,
andthe
> institutions behind them find it useful and
helpful to have an
aggregator
> of identifiers and authority controls, what
is the issue? There is
value
> in
> > aggregating data, because you can spot errors and inconsistencies.
It's
> not
> > easy, of course, to find a good workflow, but, again, that is
*another*
> > problem.
> >
> > So, in conclusion: I find many issues in Wikidata, but not on the
> > mission/vision, just in the complexity of the project, the size of
the
> > dataset, the size of the community.
> >
> > Can we talk about those?
> >
> > Aubrey
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 6:40 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 5:32 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > On 13 December 2015 at 15:57, Andreas Kolbe <
jayen466(a)gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Jane,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The issue is that you can't cite one Wikipedia article
as a
> source
> > in
> > > > > > another.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > However you can within the same article per [[WP:LEAD]].
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Well, of course, if there are reliable sources cited in the body
of
the
> > > article that back up the statements made in the lead. You still
need
to
> > cite a reliable source though;
that's Wikipedia 101.
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