[Wikipedia-l] comment on wikipedia

[Alex T.]

From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
> Gareth Owen wrote:
> > Optim <optim81 at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
> >
> > > Do you think it's true?
> >
> > No.  I've seen no evidence of this process.
>
> Still, I think there is something to it, and I have strong doubts that
> a wiki or similarly "wide-open" collaborative process could produce a
> great novel or play or poem.
>
> An encyclopedia is particularly well suited to the wiki process,
> because it isn't really _supposed_ to be individualistic in that way.
> _Greatness_ for an encyclopedia article involves a pretty healthy dose
> of "averaging" as one of it's essential components.
>
> Britannica sells a delightful volume of classic articles, many written
> by prominent people with an axe to grind.  They're great essays, but
> as encyclopedia articles, to my mind they fall short significantly of
> the kind of neutrality that we're so good at.

This brings up an interesting point regarding copyright. If the content is
so generic as just to be knowledge then it is not really copyrightable as
it would fall in the public domain.

This would also mean that the copyright claim is so weak that very liberal
fair use could be made of Wikipedia.

So you don't even have to worry  about the GFDL and its adaption to
the Wiki process as broad fair use and a large dose of public domain
knowledge means it is very hard to infringe on Wikipedia to begin with.

Perhaps once could even go so far as to suggest that the perfect NPOV
article
cannot have a copyright as it is so objective that there is no personal
expressiveness in it, it is a conglomeration only of knowledge.

Alex R. (en:user:alex756)