Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2007-08-13
CC 3.0 licenses accepted on Commons
After months of debate over whether the newest Creative Commons licenses could be considered "free licenses", the Creative Commons 3.0 licenses were accepted as acceptable licenses for media.
The debate centered mainly on a clause centering on "moral rights" related to a work. Moral rights, as defined by most legal systems, include the right to "the integrity of the work", barring the work from alteration, distortion or mutilation. Because such rights can prevent using works in ways that the author disagrees with, many believe that moral rights can make an image "unfree". Since some users believed that the clause applied moral rights to a work that may not have had moral rights applied otherwise, the license was not recommended at first while users discussed what the clause meant.
In a mailing list discussion in July, David Gerard said, "The problem with some variants of the CC licenses is that the wording of them appears to make moral rights apply in countries that don't have such laws. Thus, they're a blatant usage restriction, and the wording in question seems unduly onerous as well. But if this is not in fact the case I'm sure Joichi [Joi Ito, Creative Commons chair] will eventually come back to this thread and clarify how the licenses don't mean what they appear to mean."
Ito replied with an explanation from Catharina Maracke, the head of Creative Commons International:
Generally speaking, moral rights have to be addressed in the unported license to assure that this license would be enforceable by law in every jurisdiction, whether moral rights are exist or not. The criticism, that the wording of the moral rights section in the unported license could be read as if the licensee has the obligation "....to not distort, mutilate, modify or take any other derogatory action in relation to the work which would be prejudicial to the original authors honor or reputation" in every jurisdiction, even if moral rights are do not exist, is not legally correct.
...In a jurisdiction, where moral rights do exist, ... we have to respect moral rights (and in particular the moral right of integrity), meaning the licensee is not allowed to "distort, mutilate, modify or take any other derogatory action in relation to the work which would be prejudicial to the original authors honor or reputation" - whether we like it or not. ...In a jurisdiction, where moral rights do not exist, the latter part of the sentence will not be applicable: "except otherwise permitted by applicable law" means "except the respective copyright legislation permits every adaptation of the work", which is (only) the case, if moral rights are do not exist and not included in the respective law.
Ito also promised that in the next version of the unported license, and in this version of the national licenses, that the distinction would be made more clear, and easier for non-lawyers to understand.
Jimbo Wales weighed in as well, saying, "I am on the board of Creative Commons and thus privy to the discussions. I think there is a clumsy wording here that needs to be clarified for non lawyers, but all the lawyers say the same thing: no additional moral rights in countries where those laws do not apply."
Later that week, Erik Moeller forwarded a message from Wikimedia Foundation counsel Mike Godwin, who said,
In effect, CC 3.0 seems to me to be written NOT to *enforce* a restrictive vision of moral rights but INSTEAD to *dodge* or *avoid* the question of whether and how moral rights should be enforced under a particular nation's laws. The clear aim, it seems to me, is to allow the same CC 3.0 language to be used generally, whether in a nation like Japan that (apparently) has strong enforcement of moral-rights claims or in a nation like the United States, where moral rights claims are weakly enforced if at all, and where moral-rights claims are severely constrained by national legal norms. The preceding can be interpreted as restating what CC's counsel has said on the subject.
This weekend, a few weeks after discussion had died down on the subject, it was suggested that given the opinions of Ito, Wales and Godwin, and a lack of objection to the license, that the license should be accepted. On Monday, Commons officially began accepting CC 3.0 licenses, adding them to the license selector on the upload form.
The Creative Commons 3.0 licenses were introduced on February 23, 2007.
Reviewing five software requests
Some changes to the software are more requested than others; here's a review of the status of five feature requests and bugs affecting the English Wikipedia that I consider to be important, here given in chronological order by the time they were requested or reported.
Documentation (bug 1)
The first request that was reported on the current bug-tracking system was for better documentation. New features are added to the code all the time; developers tend to be busy, and so the documentation often lags behind. You can help with the documentation; Help information for using most of MediaWiki's features is stored on MediaWiki.org, and as with all wikis it will benefit from constant improvement.
Single user login (bug 57)
The most requested feature request ever, single user login would allow for usernames to be valid across all Wikimedia projects and languages, and not just valid on one project in one language. There was a test run in November 2006 which seems to imply that the project is feasible; the most recent update on its status was this message from June by User:Brion VIBBER, which lists the remaining work to be done as "Further work, testing, test rollout, separation of private from public wikis, live rollout." At the moment, separate accounts have to be registered on different projects; you can help simplify any future transition by using the same username and email address if you create an account on a different Wikimedia project or a different language as you do on the English Wikipedia.
Section edit link for section 0 (bug 156)
Every section on a Wikipedia article has an [edit] link to allow editing of that section, except for the introduction ('section 0', the section before the first section heading on a page). The main problem with implementing such a link is disagreement about where it should be positioned; there have been suggestions to place such a link as a tab (like 'edit this page' is), on the same line as the title, and on the line just below the title. This feature apparently existed in some skins in the past, but was removed, due to interference with right-floating elements in the page's content. Several workarounds exist; there are five user scripts and two templates (see Help:Section#Editing before the first section) designed to fix this problem, and it's possible to manually enter a section of 0 to edit by editing a different section and changing the section number in the edit page's URL to 0.
Subcategory paging in large categories (bug 1211)
At the moment, in a large category that contains both categories and non-category pages, sometimes the subcategories will end up in the second page or subsequent pages of results, which can be counterintuitive and inconvenient. This is the most requested bugfix ever; at least two alternative versions of the code that solve the problem have been written, but neither has yet been applied to the main code by developers, and as both versions are over a year old it's likely that some changes would be needed before they could be used with the current codebase. At present, one workaround (such as is used on CAT:AFD) is to use category sortkeys to sort subcategories to the start of the list, thus making sure that they are visible on the first page of results.
New-messages bar problems for anonymous users (bug 9213)
When a message is sent to an anonymous user's Talk page, sometimes the orange 'you have new messages' bar will not come up; sometimes when it does come up, the bar will not then disappear for the anonymous user (not even after a refresh, cache bypass or after deleting cookies), staying up permanently and annoying the user. The bug therefore means that it's impossible to send a message to an anonymous user in such a way that they will be guaranteed to see it. Further information on Wikipedia is collected at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism/Bug ID 9213; the bug has not yet been fixed because it's not certain what is causing it (although it is known to be a relatively recent bug), and as an intermittent bug it's hard to pin down.
WikiWorld comic: "2000s"
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "2000s". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
News and notes
St. Petersburg Meetup
A meetup is being organized for this Friday in St. Petersburg, Florida; the meetup will be at the Panera Bread at 1908 4th Street North, at 5:00 p.m.
Briefly
- The Japanese Wikipedia reaches 400,000 articles.
- The Wikimedia Commons has reached 1,750,000 files.
In the news
Wikimania coverage in the press
Wikimania 2007 wrapped up a week ago, and the annual, international Wikimedia conference generated some publicity in the Taiwan press and elsewhere. In a New York Times blog post, a conference attendee, Noam Cohen, outlined the purpose of the conference and the bidding process, and talked about a few highlights, including Florence Nibart-Devouard's speech, the location outside of the mainstay of Europe and the United States, and the One Laptop Per Child display. In a follow-up blog post, Cohen described the Joi's keynote address, where he distinguished transitory pleasure from happiness, conflicts in Arab topics, and the differences between the large and small projects. Titan Deng, the chairman of Wikimedia Taiwan, was interviewed by the Taipei Times about commercial re-use of Wikipedia content (see below for more).
Baidu: a Wikipedia copyright violator?
Baidu is accused of violating the GFDL, on a scale that might make it the "biggest copyright violation we have", said Florence Nibart-Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. Baidu is China's largest search engine, and it runs Baidu Baike, a Chinese language editable encyclopedia. Wikipedia articles fall under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, which, among other requirements, demands attribution when copies are made. There have been instances of wholesale copying without attribution, and it is said that complaints have been falling on deaf ears, although this report suggests that Baidu denies fault, because the content is user-submitted. The Chinese-language version of Wikipedia is blocked in mainland China, and it is ironic that the only way that Wikipedia can be read in China is through this copying. Because the Foundation does not own the copyrights, legal action may not be possible, although Devouard hinted at the possibility of a class action suit.
Article text colour-coded for trustworthiness
Researchers have developed software that allows for Wikipedia articles to be colour-coded depending on how trustworthy a particular piece of text is. On the UCSC Wiki Lab home page, you can put the software to the test, with an online demo: text on a white background indicates trustworthy text, while orange indicates untrusted text. Editors' reputations are continually calculated by examining how long their edits remain untouched; if your contributions are quickly removed, you are seen as untrustworthy, and your contributions will be highlighted as such. However, the software is not a fact-checking tool, and "it won’t necessarily direct people to Wikipedia's best, most academically rigorous articles".
SEO optimization article
Is Wikipedia Corrupt? - follow-up comments are made about Durova's SEO optimisation article (see archived story). The mention of edits to Matthew Hill and David Davis also made mainstream news, with Timothy Hill, Davis's press secretary (also Hill's brother) admitting that he made the edits, saying, "I made a mistake". One article states that the editing has been reported to an internal committee of the United States House of Representatives, who may investigate the editing. The editing has also been covered on other local sites. [1] [2]
Other mentions in the news
Other recent mentions of Wikipedia in the online press include:
- Our Virtual Middle Ages - a comparison is made between the read-write model of Wikipedia and the spread of knowledge in early universities. "Wikipedia embodies a democratic medievalism", where what you say needs to be backed up by references, instead of your personal expertise.
- The Right Way To Fix Inaccurate Wikipedia Articles - administrator Durova writes another article for Search Engine Land, this time about the mechanisms that exist for inaccuracies about articles, in particular biographical articles, to be corrected. She emphasises the legitimate ways in which you can draw attention to inaccuracies in Wikipedia, through the use of various noticeboards, WikiProjects and the OTRS, and how the history can reveal a pattern of vandalism from a specific IP address.
Features and admins
Administrators
Five users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Brian New Zealand (nom), Eluchil404 (nom), MatthewUND (nom), Alex valavanis (nom) and Lyrl (nom)
Bots
Twelve bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: EddieBot (task request), GrooveBot (task request), CorenSearchBot (task request), Android Mouse Bot (task request), BoricuaBot (task request), SXT-404Bot (task request), Fluxbot (task request) and Maelgwnbot (task request), Chris G Bot (task request), ClueBot (task request), HermesBot (task request) and HermesBot (task request).
Featured content
No articles were promoted to featured status last week.
Four articles were de-featured last week: Radar (nom), William the Silent (nom), Timpani (nom) and Ted Radcliffe (nom).
Seven lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of counties in Hawaii (nom), List of counties in Vermont (nom), List of works by Joseph Priestley (nom), List of Alpha Phi Alpha brothers (nom), Hart Memorial Trophy (nom), List of tallest buildings in Providence (nom) and List of wild mammal species in Florida (nom).
One list was de-featured last week: Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc (nom).
One portal was promoted to featured status last week: Portal:Energy (nom)
No topics or sounds were promoted to featured status last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: William Tecumseh Sherman, Encyclopædia Britannica, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, Beagle, Backmasking, Toraja, and Maximus the Confessor.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Eastern Banjo Frog, GISP2 ice core, Senior American military officials of World War II, Mont Saint-Michel, Leafhopper, Apollo 11 bootprint, and Rosie the Riveter.
Eight pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.2 (ce9d259), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active.
Fixed bugs
- The raw watchlist display ('View raw watchlist') now updates correctly when the watchlist is changed from that screen, rather than requiring a reload of the page. (r24732, bug 10880)
- An error where the OR operator returned incorrect results in the search box was fixed. (bug 10873; this turned out to be a configuration issue rather than a bug in the software, and so didn't require any software changes to fix)
- There was a server outage at about 14:50 UTC on Saturday 11 August; User:Brion VIBBER wrote this explanation of what happened.
New features
- Information on the user who made a deleted revision is now available more easily to administrators who are viewing that revision. (r24707, bug 10832)
Configuration changes
- Some database schema changes are currently underway; once they are completed, the most immediate effect will be to speed up renames of users by bureaucrats, but they will also help with future image-related code changes.
Ongoing news
- Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla.
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee accepted one new case during the past week. No cases were closed this week.
New case
- Allegations of apartheid: This new case concerns the conduct of various editors in connection with a group of articles whose titles include the words "Allegations of apartheid". It has been alleged that these articles were created in violation of Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point, after several deletion debates concerning Allegations of Israeli apartheid resulted in that article being kept. Issues have also been raised concerning comments made in deletion discussions and reviews. Several users who have created and edited the "Allegations of apartheid" articles have strongly denied any inappropriate conduct.
Evidence phase
- List of Republics: A case brought by Nema Fakei involving disputes on List of Republics and related articles, involving the conduct of WHEELER and other editors.
- Catalonia: A case brought by Physchim62 involving alleged edit warring, possible sockpuppetry, and other misconduct by various editors on Catalonia, Valencian Community, and related articles.
- Boris Stomakhin: A case involving a dispute between Biophys and Vlad fedorov, involving alleged BLP and 3RR violations, block evasion, and edit-warring.
- Vision Thing: A case initiated by Infinity0 concerning alleged edit-warring on anarchism, anarcho-capitalism, and related articles. The dispute has already been the subject of a prior arbitration case, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Infinity0, involving some of the same parties. Arbitrator UninvitedCompany has moved to dismiss the case for insufficient evidence, but other arbitrators have not yet commented on this proposal.
Voting phase
- Great Irish Famine: A case initiated by SirFozzie, involving allegations including misuse of sources and harassment relating to Great Irish Famine and other Ireland/Northern Ireland articles. Arbitrators are voting on arbitrator Mackensen's proposals to place the Great Irish Famine article under the "mentorship" of three to five administrators and restrict Sarah777's editing, as well as proposals by arbitrator Kirill Lokshin that would ban Sarah777 from Wikipedia for one year and place MarkThomas on civility parole.
- Jeffrey O. Gustafson: A case brought by John254 alleging incivility and other misconduct by administrator Jeffrey O. Gustafson. Arbitrator UninvitedCompany has proposed that Mr. Gustafson's administrator privileges be suspended for 30 days, while arbitrator Kirill Lokshin has proposed desysopping him.
- Zacheus-jkb: A case involving the actions of -jkb- and Zacheus, who have been involved in disputes in other forums that were imported to the English Wikipedia. In a proposed decision, the Arbitration Committee would admonish both editors for their previous misconduct against each other but note that the problematic conduct seems to have stopped, and warn the parties not to resume practices such as posting identifying information about other editors or making personal attacks.
- Armenia-Azerbaijan 2: A case alleging misconduct by various editors, some of whom were previously placed on revert parole in an earlier case, on articles relating to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and related matters. A proposed decision drafted by arbitrator Fred Bauder would place those editors already subject to the revert parole on probation as well, and would impose identical remedies on any other editors who are identified as editing these articles aggressively and uncivilly.
- COFS: A case initiated by Durova based on a discussion at the community sanctions noticeboard. The case involves allegations of tendentious editing by various editors, sockpuppetry, conflicts of interest, and other user conduct issues on Scientology related articles. The proposed decision submitted by UninvitedCompany would ban COFS for 30 days for POV editing and require him to change his username and disclose any duties he may have to the Church of Scientology before resuming editing.
- Pigsonthewing 2: A case initiated by Moreschi concerning the conduct of Pigsonthewing, including a series of conflicts between this user and other editors involving the use of microformats on Wikipedia and other matters. A proposed decision submitted by UninvitedCompany would find that "Pigsonthewing disregards the Wikipedia way of doing things and is unable or unwilling to improve his pattern of participation" and would ban Pigsonthewing from editing Wikipedia for one year.
- Attachment Therapy: A case initiated by Shotwell, who alleges that other editors have engaged in POV pushing and tendentious editing on attachment therapy and related articles. During the case, checkuser indicated that DPeterson had created at least four sockpuppets that were used to edit-war on these articles and create the appearance of consensus. A proposed decision by Kirill Lokshin would ban DPeterson for one year and would remind the other parties to exercise care while editing articles as to which they may have a conflict of interest.
Motion to close
- Piotrus: This case involves Piotrus and other editors on Central and Eastern Europe-related articles. In the case, multiple parties have accused one another of edit-warring, incivility, unethical behavior, and biased editing. Under the currently proposed decision, an amnesty would be granted for prior editing problems on these articles, and the parties would be reminded of the need to edit courteously and co-operatively in the future. Two arbitrators have opposed closing the case pending consideration of additional remedies.