User talk:Moonriddengirl/sandbox
Wikipedia includes a number of articles that reproduce lists previously published elsewhere. If the content is creative (in composition, selection, arrangement), there can be copyright concerns. The purpose of this RfC is to determine how we can fairly cover creative lists in accordance with WP:NFC. (Note: this does not apply to uncreative factual compilations, although sometimes what appears to be a factual compilation is actually creative; see below.)
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In January and February, after copyright concerns were raised about several unconnected list articles, I exchanged a number of e-mails with our interim attorney in the hopes of clarifying what position we should take with these. (User:Philippe, who is the Wikimedia Foundation's Head of User Relations, has seen the e-mails. They can't be reproduced here in their entirety, but I'm sure he'd be happy to verify my correspondence.) Based on her letters, these are factors we should consider here:
The need for certainty in creation criteria protects us from inadvertently misusing those lists that may look like fact but that may instead be based on expert opinion, which is creative.
What the NFC guideline says now, based on our interim attorney's feedback, is that "unusable text" includes "A complete or partial recreation of "Top 100" or similar lists where the list has been selected in a creative manner, such as AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies. Articles on individual elements from such lists can discuss their inclusion in these lists. Complete lists based on factual data, such as List of highest-grossing films, are appropriate to include." This is a good distillation of her advice, but a strict application of this would make even The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, which I have always used as a good example, a problem. Based on her advice above, is this the necessary approach? Or is there a way to stay comfortably within NFC that does not require us to remove all such partial recreations (or limit them to the bottom 5)? This is not an intellectual exercise, but will impact a number of existing lists, both those that include material in their entirety and those that include samplings of various sizes. They are many. |
How should we treat creative lists compiled by third parties on Wikipedia? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:59, 16 March 2011 (UTC)