Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
2009/11/22 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: Tomasz Ganicz wrote: The idea is to create a Staging Area - a wiki (or non-wiki) project which is not public and can be used for media and meta-data mass storage before sending the stuff to public projects. The idea is that all permissions and other legal stuff would be carefully solved before sending anything to Commons, so the mass contributors coming from outside organisation would not need to cope with OTRS system. It's hard to see how the problems of bureaucracy could be solved by establishing a meta-bureaucracy. Very simply. If an organisation is going to make a project it will get their own space on Staging Area and will upload their stuff there without any legal problems. Then, one or more editors must examine this stuff adding to it meta-data and resolve all legal problems before sending it to Commons or any other WIkimedia project. The formal agreements can be stored on Staging Area and be made visible for OTRS volunteers. So instead of sending houndres of E-mails from all contributors of the project there will be only one pointing to the meta-data stored on Staging Area. Anyway, if you organize a mass contributors project you must be sure that all contributors were informed how free licences work, that their contribiutions can be used for commercial purposes, that anyone can copy and modify it. -- Tomek Polimerek Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 5:05 AM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Very simply. If an organisation is going to make a project it will get their own space on Staging Area and will upload their stuff there without any legal problems. Then, one or more editors must examine this stuff adding to it meta-data and resolve all legal problems before sending it to Commons or any other WIkimedia project. The formal agreements can be stored on Staging Area and be made visible for OTRS volunteers. So instead of sending houndres of E-mails from all contributors of the project there will be only one pointing to the meta-data stored on Staging Area. Anyway, if you organize a mass contributors project you must be sure that all contributors were informed how free licences work, that their contribiutions can be used for commercial purposes, that anyone can copy and modify it. That might make the process more visible, and get it off an email only system. Many people, I think, will still want to use email though, since it's the only thing they are familiar with. Many of the people that write to permissions are not very tech savvy. And in defense of the bureaucratic morons, you might be surprised the number of super positive generous people that want their work on Wikipedia that are completely unwilling to allow 3rd parties to use their work. I don't personally make people say The Great Sentence of Our Holy Secrets but I would like some indication that they are ok with other people using their work commercially. Many people simply aren't, and it hasn't crossed their minds that when they give something to Wikipedia that is what they're signing up for. I think we owe it to those people to make sure they understand. But yes, I'm not arguing that the system is good, but there is legitimately a lot of education that needs to happen before someone completely unfamiliar with free content licenses their work cc-by-sa. It's a tough problem. And, honestly, does copying and pasting the Great Sentence actually make people feel comfortable that the person understands what's happening? It probably shouldn't. Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
2009/11/22 Judson Dunn cohes...@sleepyhead.org: And in defense of the bureaucratic morons, you might be surprised the number of super positive generous people that want their work on Wikipedia that are completely unwilling to allow 3rd parties to use their work. I don't personally make people say The Great Sentence of Our Holy Secrets but I would like some indication that they are ok with other people using their work commercially. Many people simply aren't, and it hasn't crossed their minds that when they give something to Wikipedia that is what they're signing up for. I think we owe it to those people to make sure they understand. +1 This free content idea regularly EXPLODES PEOPLE'S HEADS. They really, seriously, don't get it. Even when they say they do, they frequently don't. The bureaucracy around submitting photos for Wikipedia is a goddamn pain in the arse ... *but* there are extremely good reasons it came about. What's the shoot on sight percentage on Commons like now? I understand it was 10-12% a coupla years ago. (GMaxwell, I vaguely recall you giving this figure, please correct if I'm wrong.) - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
I see a lot of well meaning people responding here, but maybe its time to go back to the basics. No non free pictures, period. No more bureaucracy plus cost savings on not having to run the permissions systems. From: Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, November 22, 2009 3:05:02 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy 2009/11/22 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: Tomasz Ganicz wrote: The idea is to create a Staging Area - a wiki (or non-wiki) project which is not public and can be used for media and meta-data mass storage before sending the stuff to public projects. The idea is that all permissions and other legal stuff would be carefully solved before sending anything to Commons, so the mass contributors coming from outside organisation would not need to cope with OTRS system. It's hard to see how the problems of bureaucracy could be solved by establishing a meta-bureaucracy. Very simply. If an organisation is going to make a project it will get their own space on Staging Area and will upload their stuff there without any legal problems. Then, one or more editors must examine this stuff adding to it meta-data and resolve all legal problems before sending it to Commons or any other WIkimedia project. The formal agreements can be stored on Staging Area and be made visible for OTRS volunteers. So instead of sending houndres of E-mails from all contributors of the project there will be only one pointing to the meta-data stored on Staging Area. Anyway, if you organize a mass contributors project you must be sure that all contributors were informed how free licences work, that their contribiutions can be used for commercial purposes, that anyone can copy and modify it. -- Tomek Polimerek Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
2009/11/22 Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com: I see a lot of well meaning people responding here, but maybe its time to go back to the basics. No non free pictures, period. No more bureaucracy plus cost savings on not having to run the permissions systems. I submit that you aren't reading the messages sufficiently closely. The problems described are those in making sure the pictures are indeed free content. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
On 11/22/2009 05:57 PM, David Gerard wrote: 2009/11/22 Judson Dunn cohes...@sleepyhead.org: And in defense of the bureaucratic morons, you might be surprised the number of super positive generous people that want their work on Wikipedia that are completely unwilling to allow 3rd parties to use their work. I don't personally make people say The Great Sentence of Our Holy Secrets but I would like some indication that they are ok with other people using their work commercially. Many people simply aren't, and it hasn't crossed their minds that when they give something to Wikipedia that is what they're signing up for. I think we owe it to those people to make sure they understand. +1 This free content idea regularly EXPLODES PEOPLE'S HEADS. They really, seriously, don't get it. Even when they say they do, they frequently don't. The bureaucracy around submitting photos for Wikipedia is a goddamn pain in the arse ... *but* there are extremely good reasons it came about. What's the shoot on sight percentage on Commons like now? I understand it was 10-12% a coupla years ago. (GMaxwell, I vaguely recall you giving this figure, please correct if I'm wrong.) - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l I am contributing to various Wikimedia projects since 2003 and I contributed my first piece of free software in 1999. Since late 1990s I am actively ideologically supporting free software in my country and in my part of the world. It is hard to imagine to me a kind of surprisingly new behavior from the side of people who makes their first touches with free software and free content. Actually, I am able to present many anecdotes related to such behavior. Actually, I am fully supporting position of both of you. If you read the content of the link which I posted inside of the first email, you could see that I had passed a variation of the same process. Please, make the content free. Yes, I will do it if it doesn't assume commercial interest. ... However, I've got permission as it is needed after one more ask. The point is that I came into the dead end with the demand to mark what may and what may not be included into Wikipedia. (Besides the fact that situation Please repeat the next: ... is solidly stupid if you have ~60 years old professor at the other side.) If I think constructively, I will need to do the next: * Analyze all the sites and find some generic way to cover given permissions as simple as it is possible. Probably, I will need some help (and I'll get it). * Write as shorter email as it is possible with as less as it is possible points. * Explain to the professor that this way of getting permissions is necessary even I think that it is stupid. * Send it to OTRS again and hope that I wouldn't have to do the process again. This task will consume a lot of time. Instead of spending that time on more constructive Wikimedian tasks, I will do it just to raise legal safety from 99% to 99.5%. Keep in mind that this is not about non-free content, this is not about a possibility that professor didn't understand all consequences of his approval; this is just about The Form. The Bureaucracy. Note, also, that this cooperation exists for four years. I don't think that it is reasonable. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
2009/11/22 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: Keep in mind that this is not about non-free content, this is not about a possibility that professor didn't understand all consequences of his approval; this is just about The Form. The Bureaucracy. Note, also, that this cooperation exists for four years. I don't think that it is reasonable. Oh, certainly. The sort of case you describe is just silly. A lot of the problem is that Wikipedia attracts geeks, who tend to trying to render things black-and-white wherever possible. So they get heavily bureaucratic with very little impetus. The problem here with clearing away the bureaucracy is that the impetus for it makes repeated checking sometimes necessary. (e.g. I'm appalled that the Flickr copyright checker is just a bot to go to Flickr and look at what the CC licence there is, rather than a human sanity-checking whether it's plausible the Flickr poster really does have the right to release the image. I don't mean a complicated process, I mean even checking that it's plausible.) I don't know of an easy solution that doesn't involve spreading the notion of free content further. Using ourselves as the existence proof helps in my experience - i.e., of course you can give everything away and do well. We do, and you're talking to me because we do. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
Geoffrey Plourde wrote: I see a lot of well meaning people responding here, but maybe its time to go back to the basics. No non free pictures, period. No more bureaucracy plus cost savings on not having to run the permissions systems. This is simplistic. No-one seriously here is opposed to the philosophy of free content. Free content is a concept; GFDL and CC are licences. In the same way an apple tree can have different varieties of the fruit grafted upon it. The licences are fruit which imply the presence of a common trunk, but the presence of the trunk says nothing about the fruit that are grown there. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
Milos Rancic wrote: But, during the couple of previous days I've got one more contribution to our Monument. This kind of contributions make me to think that Wikipedia in English (not just en.wp for sure) is becoming -- slowly but surely -- the main problem in spreading free knowledge. ... It is suggested: Any material that he is not authorized to give us permission to use must be clearly noted. Even, again, a moron would be able to understand what has been created by professor at his site and what is not. For example, if he used some photo and he is describing that photo as an art and mentions the author of the photo -- logically, this photo is not his. If he quoted some author and describes that quote -- logically, this quote is not his. And so on. The other problem which such bureaucracy is opening is the fact that that suggestion means without any doubt that I would need a week or more of work to mark everything on professor's five sites. * So, my only response to such moronic bureaucracy is: Fuck you! Of course, it is not about particular Wikimedia volunteers, it is about the whole system which transforms good persons into bureaucratic morons. And why it is so? Because we have hundreds or thousands of cases before courts because not so pedantically defined sentences? Because it is reasonable to suppose that a professor who already gave to us permissions to get materials from his site four years ago will sue us because not so well worded agreement for giving materials under CC-BY-SA? Fuck you, again! I mentioned just two examples, but there are at least a couple of more similar from my experience. As this kind of bureaucracy is so deeply inside of Wikimedia and especially at Wikipedia and especially at Wikipedia in English -- the only solution which I am able to see is to create a number of auxiliary sites which would take care about permissions instead of Wikimedia. However, this is a very clear path of making Wikipedia and Wikimedia less relevant. After five years of such tendencies some standards will be created. After another five Wikipedia won't be necessary anymore. I would like to say that the option is to work against such bureaucracy. However, I am not so optimistic in relation to the large projects which are already deeply bureaucratic. Even a number of smaller projects suffer from bureaucracy because of strong influence of the large projects. You paint an excellent picture of a gravedigger who has been so enthusiastic about his work that he has dug so deep that he is unable to climb out of his own work. I suppose that every project is in a different stage of littering with fly-paper. In the example at least the professor was still alive for you to be able to ask permission, but remembering that as the law now stands in many jurisdictions this scene is likely to be repeated for 70 years after he dies, during which time you will be seeking permissions from heirs who have no clue about what you are asking, all for the sake of protecting economic rights that they never knew they had and money that they never knew they were getting. It should be enough for the person granting the free licence to subscribe to a statement of principle about free content that transcends GFDL or CC or whatever the flavour of the day may be next year, next decade or next century. There always will be cases where a reasonable and fair analysis will lead us to the conclusion that those contents are probably free, but where that final step in establishing a clear licence is nearly impossible for a wide variety of reasons. Due diligence does not require absolute certainty about a work's copyright status. It accepts that there is some level where one's efforts are good enough. It accepts that at some point the individual must accept responsibility to protect his own rights without the nanny state doing it for him. With so many significant rights in serious need of protection it makes no sense that so much effort to protect the speculative rights of the long dead. And the wiki projects should not be surrogates for the nanny state. At some point we need to be able to say to our users: We have a high degree of confidence that this [specific] material is free, but these difficulties exist: ... Use it at your own risk. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
2009/11/22 Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com:
For some applications (though not necessarily all), it might help if
the OTRS process was replaced by a standard online permission form
rather than having Wikimedians negotiate with outsiders in the hope of
getting them to say magic words.
I might imagine a process somewhat like the following:
1) User identifies some materials they would like to use on Wikipedia.
2) They upload copies to some staging area.
3) They use a utility to prepare a standardized permission form for
the item(s) in question.
4) Through Wikimedia they send an email to the copyright holder
explaining the situation, and asking them to visit the online form to
give their permission
5) Once approved, the materials could be automatically moved to Commons, etc.
It sounds interesting however there is assumption that the user knows
that he/she has to go for
permission if the content is not his/her and does not need to do it if
it is his/her own work. However it is not so simple...
What are current copyvio-checking scenarios, which are different for
files and text:
in case of text:
* first of all we just make an automatic assumption that it is orignal
text of contributors and do not bother the user for legal questions at
all - he/she just click on edit button and can add his/her stuff -
this is what Wikipedia made sucessful
*It works fine as long as someone will find that the user
contribiution is potential copyvio and add ugly warning template to
the article and user's discussion page
* then we just wait for user reaction
** if none, the text is deleted after several hours or days -
depending on the local project policy;
** if yes we start teribble and time consuming OTRS procedure
in case of files upload it works in a little diferent way
*after clicking upload button - there is a lenghty starting screen
pointing to various upload forms different for diffrent types of media
and/or legal status - that screen was developed in order to decrease
the number of copyvio uploads;
*the user must first choose the proper form and than read plenty of
complicated explanation,
*than fill those not-so-friendly or even quite unfriendly forms
askinkg him/her many strange questions, some of them hard to
understand by newbie;
* if he/she is lucky and do everything properly file upload seems to
be sucessful - user is not bothered;
*if he/she made a mistake - for example she/he writes that the picture
is not taken by he/she bu by his/her classmate and uses {{self|GFDL}}
template...
*we put ugly copyvio template and wait for reaction;
** if none the file is deleted;
**if yes we start OTRS procedure;
*some of those forms suggest to send agreement to OTRS if the file is
not yours but you can upload the file ignoring this suggestion
Bear in mind that ugly copyvio template is used no matter if the
user's contribiution is his/her original, but it was found on other
websites not working under free licences or the user has the
permission but not send it to OTRS or the user has no permission at
all. It is just because we don't know the legal status of user's
contributon - in case of files upload we just try to ask him/her by
filling all those terible forms used on Commons or other projects, but
it is easy to give a wrong answer or do silly mistake; in case of text
we don't ask, we only warn a little and then we perform seek and
destroy style approach
So, the replacing current ugly-copyvio-template - OTRS scheme for
something else must take into consideration various scenarios which
are currently handled by that scheme in quite often teribbly
unfriendly style but anyway it is at least handled.
So, the point is that we must seek and destroy copyvio and on the
other hand we want to stay friendly, try to assume goodwill, and try
to remain to be just click and edit wiki project...
--
Tomek Polimerek Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html
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Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy
On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 4:27 PM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: snip So, the replacing current ugly-copyvio-template - OTRS scheme for something else must take into consideration various scenarios which are currently handled by that scheme in quite often teribbly unfriendly style but anyway it is at least handled. So, the point is that we must seek and destroy copyvio and on the other hand we want to stay friendly, try to assume goodwill, and try to remain to be just click and edit wiki project... Tomek, I think you fundamentally misunderstood. I didn't suggest replacing OTRS for all scenarios. I only suggested creating a more standardized approach for those scenarios where an experienced Wikipedian is trying to obtain permission to add materials that he knows are owned by someone else. I believe this is the case that Milos was discussing in the start of the thread (unless I misunderstood something myself). Yes, there are other scenarios we have to deal with, and perhaps some of them could in fact be helped by the development of standardized permission forms, but I was never suggesting that all of OTRS should be replaced. -Robert Rohde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
