Hoi, The CC-0 license was set up with the express reason that everybody can use our data without any impediment. Our objective is to share in the sum of all knowledge and we are more effective in that way.
We do not care about market dominance, we care about doing our utmost to have the best data available. At that I could not care less for theoretical what ifs, I am interested in making a difference in our content because that is where we make a difference. Thanks, GerardM
On 18 December 2015 at 09:05, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
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] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights
On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@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@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Andrea Zanni <
zanni.andrea84@gmail.com
wrote:
On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 9:35 PM, Jane Darnell jane023@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-s...
[3]
http://awfulannouncing.com/2014/guilt-wikipedia-joe-streater-became-falsely-...
Associated Press: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/list-worst-scandals-college-sports [4] http://www.dailydot.com/lol/amelia-bedelia-wikipedia-hoax/ [5]
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogus-busi...
and
http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/wikipedia-plastic-surgery-otto-placik-labi...
and many others [6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost...
[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@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@gmail.com
wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 5:32 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com
wrote:
> > > On 13 December 2015 at 15:57, Andreas Kolbe <
jayen466@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. > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe:
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