Mailing List Archive

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> But in terms of pictures, photographs is a very very minor
> segment indeed. Discussing the matter solely in terms
> of photographs is very diversionary.
>
I certainly didn't intend to be diversionary; rather, I'm a bit confused
as to what the vast majority of non-photograph pictures I've mised are.
Aren't the vast majority of the pictures on Wikimedia commons
photographs? How is that a "very very minor segment"? We're discussing
licensing for media files that are part of the Wikimedia project, after all.

What pictures *do* you mean? Heck, our diagrams almost always have a
single author too, from some spot-checking I've done, as do our maps. I
can't think of a single category of works that make up a significant
proportion of Wikimedia-distributed media files that usually have
multiple authors.

-Mark


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On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 8:55 PM, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> 2009/1/16 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@gmail.com>:
>
> > It seems though
> > that the _prospect_ of very speculative and indecisively
> > defined new ways of showing editors _on_ wikipedia
> > pages fringes (not requiring it downstream even), is
> > what is really concretely even hinted at...
>
> The downstream requirement that we're talking about right now is:
> a) If there are up to five authors, name them directly alongside the
> article;
> b) If there are more than five, you can refer to a copy of the history.


What about text works which were licensed under CC-BY-SA but were released
somewhere other than Wikipedia? Can these be incorporated into Wikipedia?
How will their right to attribution be respected? Is this allowance of
"reference by history URL" built in to CC-BY-SA, or is it specific to
Wikipedia?
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On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org> wrote:

> What about text works which were licensed under CC-BY-SA but were released
> somewhere other than Wikipedia? Can these be incorporated into Wikipedia?
> How will their right to attribution be respected? Is this allowance of
> "reference by history URL" built in to CC-BY-SA, or is it specific to
> Wikipedia?
>

The CC licenses give us a fair bit of room to move with regards to
attribution, allowing for pseudonums, taking into account the medium,
delegates (incl. publishing entities eg Wikipedia), etc.

I also stumbled on this[1] in commons which is interesting in the context of
the discussion about certain types of contribution (photographs)
inexplicably requiring stronger attribution:

"Visible tags or
watermarks<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking>inside
images are strongly discouraged at Wikimedia Commons. So information
like "Mr. Foobar, May 2005, CC-BY-SA" shall not be written directly in the
image but in EXIF fields, which is technically even superior. The reasons
are:

- We don't tag our Wikipedia articles with our names in a prominent way
inside the article text *in order to step behind the work and let it speak
for itself*, the same applies to the images (stepping behind own work and
thus reducing personal vanity is crucial for
neutrality<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV>
)."

Cheers,

Sam

1.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Manipulating_meta_data#Purpose_for_using_EXIF_at_Commons
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On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 6:59 AM, Sam Johnston <samj@samj.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org> wrote:
>
> > What about text works which were licensed under CC-BY-SA but were
> released
> > somewhere other than Wikipedia? Can these be incorporated into
> Wikipedia?
> > How will their right to attribution be respected? Is this allowance of
> > "reference by history URL" built in to CC-BY-SA, or is it specific to
> > Wikipedia?
> >
>
> The CC licenses give us a fair bit of room to move with regards to
> attribution, allowing for pseudonums, taking into account the medium,
> delegates (incl. publishing entities eg Wikipedia), etc.
>

That doesn't really any of my questions, though I was more looking for an
answer from Erik or Mike anyway.

It's a fairly important question, since compatibility with other works under
CC-BY-SA is allegedly the main reason for the relicensing.

Is the question clear? Maybe I should be even more specific. How would one
go about using content from Citizendium in Wikipedia, if Wikipedia
relicenses content under CC-BY-SA? How would a third party go about using
the combined work? How would the attribution rights of the Citizendium
contributors be respected?

I'm going to copy Larry Sanger on this message, because I'd like to hear his
input, and I hope he can poll the CZ community to see what type of
attribution they expect. But Citizendium is, of course, only one example
among many.

Larry, do you understand the context or should I explain further?
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Thanks Larry. That does indeed answer my questions from the point of view
of Citizendium content, at least if I'm reading those URLs correctly, in
that:

Individual Citizendium authors are not concerned about being individually
attributed, and are content to have their contributions attributed as "*This
article incorporates text from the *Citizendium<http://www.citizendium.org/>
* article "Félix
d'Hérelle"<http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_d%27H%C3%A9relle>
*

Is that correct? One problem with the URLs you gave me is that they don't
seem to be very up-to-date. For instance, in
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Reusing_Citizendium_Content it says "After
Wikipedia finalizes its decision to allow relicensing of its contents under
CC-by-sa, *GFDL* in the previous paragraph may be replaced by *CC-by-sa*."

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Larry Sanger <sanger@citizendium.org>wrote:

> Anthony,
>
> I'm not 100% sure I understand, but if I understand the question properly,
> the relevant policy has already been duly decided:
>
> http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:License
> http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Reusing_Citizendium_Content
>
> For background, see: http://www.citizendium.org/czlicense.html
>
> -----
> Lawrence M. Sanger, Ph.D. | http://www.larrysanger.org/
> Editor-in-Chief, Citizendium | http://www.citizendium.org/
> Executive Director, WatchKnow | http://www.watchknow.org/
> sanger@citizendium.org
>
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On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org> wrote:

> One problem with the URLs you gave me is that they don't seem to be very
> up-to-date. For instance, in
> http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Reusing_Citizendium_Content it says
> "After Wikipedia finalizes its decision to allow relicensing of its contents
> under CC-by-sa, *GFDL* in the previous paragraph may be replaced by *
> CC-by-sa*."


I've reread that again and realized I was just misreading it.

That raises the question, though. Has Citizendium relicensed its GFDL
content (including any content it imported from Wikipedia before November 1,
2008) under CC-BY-SA?
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2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>:
> That doesn't really any of my questions, though I was more looking for an
> answer from Erik or Mike anyway.
>
> It's a fairly important question, since compatibility with other works under
> CC-BY-SA is allegedly the main reason for the relicensing.
>
> Is the question clear? Maybe I should be even more specific. How would one
> go about using content from Citizendium in Wikipedia, if Wikipedia
> relicenses content under CC-BY-SA?

Assuming a large number of authors on Citizendium. Use the export
function there to provide the file in a useful format and reactivate
the import function on en to export it (at a pinch is should be
possible to put together a script that can grab the relevant
information and turn it into a file suitable for import to wikipedia
without having to use the export function).

For smaller numbers of authors there are workarounds.

> How would a third party go about using
> the combined work?

Depends on the context.

--
geni

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On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 1:55 PM, geni <geniice@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>:
> > That doesn't really any of my questions, though I was more looking for an
> > answer from Erik or Mike anyway.
> >
> > It's a fairly important question, since compatibility with other works
> under
> > CC-BY-SA is allegedly the main reason for the relicensing.
> >
> > Is the question clear? Maybe I should be even more specific. How would
> one
> > go about using content from Citizendium in Wikipedia, if Wikipedia
> > relicenses content under CC-BY-SA?
>
> Assuming a large number of authors on Citizendium. Use the export
> function there to provide the file in a useful format and reactivate
> the import function on en to export it (at a pinch is should be
> possible to put together a script that can grab the relevant
> information and turn it into a file suitable for import to wikipedia
> without having to use the export function).
>

That would destroy the usability of diffs.

> How would a third party go about using
> > the combined work?
>
> Depends on the context.


In the context of a printed book using an article which was 60% originated
in Wikipedia, 20% originated in Citizendium, and 20% originated by the book
authors?
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2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>:
>> Assuming a large number of authors on Citizendium. Use the export
>> function there to provide the file in a useful format and reactivate
>> the import function on en to export it (at a pinch is should be
>> possible to put together a script that can grab the relevant
>> information and turn it into a file suitable for import to wikipedia
>> without having to use the export function).
>>
>
> That would destroy the usability of diffs.

Can be got around by editing the date entries in the XLM file

>> How would a third party go about using
>> > the combined work?
>>
>> Depends on the context.
>
>
> In the context of a printed book using an article which was 60% originated
> in Wikipedia, 20% originated in Citizendium, and 20% originated by the book
> authors?

The oversimplified answer is the same credit as the authors of the
original content get. You still don't provide enough detail (book is a
very imprecise term in some respects) to answer the less
oversimplified version.

So:

Is the book continuous prose or broken into separate sections?
If separate sections do the sections have content from more than one
wikipedia/Citizendium article in them?
Is the wikipedia/Citizendium content text or pics (or sound there are
a couple of ways to do it)?
Is the wikipedia/Citizendium content integrated into the rest of the
text or more standalone?

There are probably other issues to consider.

If the change to CC-BY-SA goes through I will be proposing a new
wikimedia project to record what authors and reuses consider
acceptable (and what people actually do if that happens) in terms of
attribution for every form of reuse we can think of.

--
geni

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2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>:
> Is the question clear? Maybe I should be even more specific. How would one
> go about using content from Citizendium in Wikipedia, if Wikipedia
> relicenses content under CC-BY-SA? How would a third party go about using
> the combined work? How would the attribution rights of the Citizendium
> contributors be respected?

I would say in part this is a problem that the community can
collectively solve, as it has historically: We've incorporated
information from other GFDL works and attributed them, for example.
And we can apply common sense. Contributors to wikis typically have
different attribution expectations than authors of monographs who have
no connection to the wiki world. Both authors and re-users will
express objections or support for different models. And wikis will
probably want to develop reasonable standards between them that
facilitate their mutual goals.

I do believe there are probably technical improvements that we can
make to further support free information exchange, such as a richer
page history feature, or a metadata blob for this kind of information.
But I don't think that such improvements are a necessary precondition:
people will continue to use footers, page histories, and talk pages to
denote such information. Attribution standards can always be revised
based on the respectful dialog between the involved parties. Resolving
legal incompatibility, on the other hand, is a necessary precondition
for even having these conversations.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 8:26 PM, geni <geniice@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> If the change to CC-BY-SA goes through I will be proposing a new
> wikimedia project to record what authors and reuses consider
> acceptable (and what people actually do if that happens) in terms of
> attribution for every form of reuse we can think of.
>

This is an interesting suggestion for a thread calling for Wikipedia to keep
it simple :)

If the rules are too complex they will be either ignored (and broken) or
avoided (eg users will go elsewhere). In particular, anything which involves
attempting to extract meaning from the (arbitrarily long and constantly
growing) edit histories or refer to a table of 'reuse scenarios' almost
certainly falls into the 'too complex for your average [re]user' category.

To use the cloud computing article again, there are almost 500 unique
editors including chestnuts like 'RealWorldExperience, CanadianLinuxUser,
MonkeyBounce, TutterMouse, Onmytoes4eva, Chadastrophic, Tree Hugger, Kibbled
Bits and Technobadger'. About half are IPs (which probably still need to be
credited) and there's even a few people I'd rather not credit were I to
reuse it myself. In this case at least, attempting to credit individuals as
currently proposed dilutes the value of attributions altogether and actually
does more harm than good - I would much rather 'contribute' my attribution
to Wikipedia.

Allowing users to discuss 'recommended' attributions eg on the talk page
could be another simple, effective solution. That way such claims could be
discussed and a concise list of authors maintained (subject to peer review).
It would ultimately be for the reuser to determine above and beyond the base
'Wikipedia' credit.

I would hope to see something like this emerge, which is not far from
Citizendium's relatively good example:

*If you reuse Wikipedia content you must at least reference the license and
attribute Wikipedia. You should also refer to the article itself and may
include individual author(s) from the history and/or attribution requests on
the talk page, using URLs where appropriate for the medium.
*

Unfortunately with wording like '*To re-distribute a page in any form,
provide credit to all the contributors.*' in the draft it seems I shouldn't
be holding my breath. In any case I hope this doesn't derail the migration -
perhaps asking the question about CC-BY-SA separately from the
implementation details would be best?

Sam

1.
http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=en.wikipedia&page=cloud%20computing
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On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:55 AM, geni <geniice@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/1/20 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>:
> > That doesn't really any of my questions, though I was more looking for an
> > answer from Erik or Mike anyway.
> >
> > It's a fairly important question, since compatibility with other works
> under
> > CC-BY-SA is allegedly the main reason for the relicensing.
> >
> > Is the question clear? Maybe I should be even more specific. How would
> one
> > go about using content from Citizendium in Wikipedia, if Wikipedia
> > relicenses content under CC-BY-SA?
>
> Assuming a large number of authors on Citizendium. Use the export
> function there to provide the file in a useful format and reactivate
> the import function on en to export it (at a pinch is should be
> possible to put together a script that can grab the relevant
> information and turn it into a file suitable for import to wikipedia
> without having to use the export function).


I actually have such a script written in python already, and it would be
trivial for others to wirite similar ones. I suppoose my point is that
reusing content from other Wikis is easy if Import is turned back on (as you
keep full edit histories).

--Falcorian
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