[Wikipedia-l] The case against "invariant sections"

Axel Boldt axel at uni-paderborn.de
Sat Jun 15 16:27:31 UTC 2002


Currently, we require an "invariant section", which means that anybody
has to put a specifically formatted HTML table on every page that
uses Wikipedia materials, asking people to contribute to Wikipedia.
(See below (*) for the rather messy details.)

Here, I want to argue that we should abandon this invariant section.

The FOLDOC computing dictionary has been licenced to us under GFDL
without invariant sections. We have incorporated many articles from
them. Two weeks ago, somebody asked me whether the material from our
TeX article (http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/TeX), which was originally
based on FOLDOC's but has since grown considerably, could be
reintegrated into FOLDOC. The answer is: only if they put our
Wikipedia table into the FOLDOC entry, which they are unlikely to do
because it doesn't really fit with their article formatting.

There is a new, exciting and fast growing math encyclopedia at
http://planetmath.org; everything is licensed under GFDL without
invariant sections, and can therefore be used by us without problems
(while acknowledging the source, as we do for FOLDOC articles). I
haven't copied anything over yet, but I'm sure I will in the future.
People have asked me whether they could take Wikipedia materials and
post them on PlanetMath. For articles that I have written exclusively
myself, and there aren't many, this is no problem. For others, the
Wikipedia invariant table is required, which pretty much excludes them
because of the site's particular layout.

These are two examples of the fledgling open content movement that's
growing right now. We are currently the clear leader of this movement,
but we are not playing very nicely. If everybody required their own
invariant sections, cooperation and exchange would become almost
impossible. I believe that this movement is ultimately even more
important than Wikipedia. We should do everything to foster it, if
only out of self-interest.

Even without an invariant section, the GFDL requires proper
attribution of all materials. Rather than fretting over the possible
evil schemes of big bad corporations, why not apply wiki principles:
trust that people are basically good, and that the more freedoms you
give them, the better the outcomes will be.

Axel

----
(*) The invariant section requirement is alluded to in
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/GNU+Free+Documentation+License, but no
link is given. http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/wikipedia:copyright
contains a "draft" which explicitly disputes an invariant section. The
invariant section requirement used to be contained in the uneditable
file http://www.wikipedia.com/license/fdl.html but that has ceased to
exist after the software change. It can still be viewed at
http://web.archive.org/web/20011112090138/http://www.wikipedia.com/license/fdl.html.
The invariant sections, or "linkbacks" have been defended by Jimbo and
Larry in several Wikipedia-l messages in October 2001:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-October/date.html 





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