Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2012-06-11. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Procedural reform enacted, Rich Farmbrough blocked, three open cases (3,596 bytes · 💬)

What's most upsetting to me about the Farmbrough case is that it resulted in Helpful Pixie Bot being shut down, which was very helpful in my edits. I guess that means coding my bot is higher on my priority list now. --Nathan2055 ^talk 01:53, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

This brings up an excellent point: Why are bot authors permitted to contribute their bots' edits, without contributing their bots' code? What is the possible downside to requiring that source code of bots given the privilege of the bot flag be released under an appropriate and compatible license, just like the rest of Wikipedia content? Jclemens (talk) 04:50, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Whatever the institution that okays bot use should simply require that. I'm a little stunned that that isn't the case already. If one is going to use a bot on Wikipedia, it should be a Wikipedia bot. Carrite (talk) 17:46, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

This has been the problem for years, ditto for toolserver scripts - there are nice scripts that became inusable after their authors left (or were banned); as they were never public they had to be redone from scratch (or usually, were never redone...). This is a major annoyance - and something that could make a good article for Signpost. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:06, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I am in agreement with you all. If you have suggestions for a new piece, you can start a discussion at the Newsroom. For a change in bot policy you can start a request for comment on the bots talk page. James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 4:55pm • 06:55, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Forget that RFC's often end in stagnating inaction. Make a proposal and then get a vote on it. Targaryen^{speak or forever remain silent} 17:09, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes there are aspects of bots which can't be open sourced. For instance, I might have an opportunity to at one point do a one-shot editing bot to integrate a whole bunch of data into Wikipedia. It might be that the source code is extremely impractical to open source and would probably be of no further use. In general, bot source could ought to be open source, and it should probably be the default option, but I can think of times when it would be extremely practical to allow for closed source bots. —Tom Morris (talk) 13:05, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Precisely. We shouldn't put a few people's ideological dedication to a specific cause above practicality. Yes, urge people to publish their code, but don't force them to do it. Nyttend (talk) 21:16, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Featured content: The cake is a pi (431 bytes · 💬)

Crisco, just wanted to give you kudos for the article's title. Lord Roem (talk) 07:18, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Like — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:54, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

News and notes: Foundation finance reformers wrestle with CoI (1,883 bytes · 💬)

Italian SOPA-like bill

It's high time somebody wrote the article on that proposed Italian SOPA like bill. I take it from the fact that it not linked here or in the previous report, that we are still missing the article on it. And what is it name? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:04, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
- It was hyperlinked in the previous report, as DDL intercettazioni on the talk page. Uncle G (talk) 20:58, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Rendering text in both serif and sans-serif typefaces

The Project page headline "Foundation finance reformers wrestle with CoI" illustrates a recurring issue of considering how text looks in both serif and sans-serif typefaces. To a Wikipedian who knows Wikipedia's common abbreviation for conflict of interest, the meaning of "CoI" in a serif typeface is obvious. It is much less so when rendered in a sans-serif typeface, where it looks like the first syllable of College. (The headline appeared on my talk page sans-serif, so I came to the article mainly to discover what "Col", ending with a lower-case l, means.) However, to one who knows the abbreviation, "COI" (all caps) is unambiguous in either a serif or sans-serif typeface.

Does Wikipedia have a guideline about avoiding potential ambiguity in both typeface styles? If not, perhaps we should considered adopting one. In the meanwhile, please consider changing the abbreviation in the headline to all caps.—Finell 20:41, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Special report: Springer's misappropriation of Wikimedia content "the tip of the iceberg" (22,757 bytes · 💬)

Assigning blame

See Copyfraud. -- Ssilvers (talk) 19:05, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Springer just published a statement in response to these allegations --DarTar (talk) 19:08, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Springer has changed the URL for the statement. Tony (talk) 00:17, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

It's not entirely clueful and downplays their culpable behaviour in this incident. But it's a good start. I expect they will achieve enlightenment sooner rather than later - David Gerard (talk) 19:20, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Springer says: "In addition, we have manually stopped display of *all* images with MediaWiki or Wikipedia in the caption. These images will not be displayed again until we can reliably differentiate among those that have non-commercial restrictions." What? None of our content has non-commercial restrictions. They should've just complied with the licenses, not removed them all wholesale. They are definitely a bit clueless. Dcoetzee 19:30, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah. Wacky. Seems like maybe rushing is compounding the problem. -Pete (talk) 19:36, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

In some industries (like film and music) it's standard practice to carefully review a work to make sure all relevant licensing agreements are in place long before publication. I can't imagine why an academic publisher would hold itself to a lower standard. This is really pretty shocking for a business that is supposedly trying to embrace openness. -Pete (talk) 19:35, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
- oh no, they know what they are doing, they will remove all free content, and keep only what they can control and charge for. when you are the pay to play gatekeeper, there was no penalty for stealing from the public domain, merely some loss of prestige. so they had no reason to screen free images, until their nose was rubbed in it. i'm not all that shocked, the wrangling that goes on in public at WP, goes on in private at companies. does "trying to embrace openness" mean fatal embrace. Slowking4⇔ †@1₭ 20:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  - otoh: "We will also be reaching out to Creative Commons and Wikipedia to investigate whether working together might help us to find the best approach to these challenges." hey pete, can you hold their hand? it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Slowking4⇔ †@1₭ 20:55, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
    - That was also the most interesting part to me, and several options for how to collaborate come to mind. They could for instance (1) try something like Topic Pages with some of their journals (2) upload (a selection of) their open access images (i.e. CC BY) to Flickr or perhaps even Commons, (3) help us find reviewers for articles on scientific topics, (4) provide "Cite in Wikipedia" tools, (5) organize some workshops for Springer employees on Creative Commons licensing and Wikimedia projects, (6) set up banner ads for WikiProject Open Access or some such, and so on. -- Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 23:23, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
This is excellent journalism and I feel proud that this is published in 'The Signpost. I can imagine that many publishers will be presenting this article to all of their staff. Congratulations user:Tony1 on creating a fantastic article! Here are Twitter links to the parties mentioned in this article if anyone wants to follow the buzz. @SpringerSBM @EvoMRI @petermurrayrust Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:19, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
- That's nice of you to say so; it wouldn't have been possible without considerable assistance from User:Daniel Mietchen. Tony (talk) 00:17, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
The above mentioned link to Springer's statement doesn't work any more. Here ist a workongt link to the statement. 87.78.238.106 (talk) 22:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? Some person thinks he can claim copyright over a public domain? This is worse than Nintendo vs. Universal Studios! gta jaxoxo ©® 10:52, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

This is precisely why I mark all of my own-work uploads as PD-self — if they want to use my uploads, people are probably going to ignore the licensing terms if I impose any, so what's the point? I have better things to do than checking up on license infringmenet, and as I'm glad to have my images used elsewhere, it's more pleasant for me to know that people aren't violating my rights. Nyttend (talk) 20:36, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia's violations of copyright owned by Springer-Verlag?

Has Wikipedia every violated the copyrights owned by Springer Verlag, Birkhauser, etc.? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:10, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I am sure we have for brief periods of time. But we have no generated profit from it. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:16, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

No "buts", please. Amateur copyright theft does not seem to get special treatment in law, and Wikipedia's copyright violations should not be pooh-poohed. I would suggest less self-righteousness in discussing Wikipedia and the firm of Julius Springer. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 14:54, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Certainly I am all for getting rid of Wikipedians who plagiarize and have never pooh poohed this issue. We have had some prominent editors leave us over this. I am also for putting in place more measures to preventing this from occurring in the future. We had a bot in the past that used to check I think. Re activating this should be a top priority if it is not already going again. I have removed a fair bit of plagiarism myself and have been just short of informing students universities regarding content that they have added here which is plagiarism. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:06, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, the profit motive is an important distinction. Additionally:

Individual photographers, not Wikipedia as an entity, are the ones whose rights are being violated; so that would not be a parallel instance; and
I'm pretty confident that any such violations are routinely identified within our community and removed (without the need for the copyright holder to police Wikipedia). -Pete (talk) 22:36, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Your confidence is misplaced, but such wishful thinking is common on Wikipedia. We have good people at the copyright-violation project, some WMF employees, who regularly rewrite articles while stating that they do not regard the violation as important---although it was important enough to justify an good writer's time! Persons without my overwhelming charity might suspect that such statements avoid leaving a paper-trail of culpability. Examine my edits when I cleaned up Freedom in the World, and about 8 other articles one day last summer, if you want to see a cluster of years-old copyright violations. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 14:54, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

It is not just images that are borrowed without attribution

Per here this textbook has borrowed many thousands of words from us. The New York Times today has further details regarding the issue here Book That Plagiarized From Wikipedia Is Pulled From Market published June 12th, 2012.

Response from the publisher

Dear Dr. Heilman and Mr. Cohen
We have received your mails concerning text in Understanding and Management of Special Child in Pediatric Dentistry. We have taken the matter up with the editors of the book and the contributors to the chapter in question. We take care to ensure the veracity of texts, but in this case our systems appear to have failed. However, we have decided to permanently withdraw the book from sale, and we will remove the title from our website and recall the book from our wholesalers and distributors. Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention. Yours Sincerely Tarun Duneja Director:Publishing
Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers Pvt Ltd

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:15, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely true, Doc - some of my own writing I've done here has been taken and published on at least two occasions via (relatively minor) direct copy-and-paste in two different peer-reviewed oncology journals - see my User page for the cites and details :-) Best regards: Cliff (a/k/a "Uploadvirus") (talk) 01:45, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I think if more people spent time looking then many cases would be discovered. That is a great catch and a great New York Times post describing this Wikipedia article reuse! Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:51, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I also want to draw all of your attention to Baidu Baike, the Chinese-equivalent wiki encyclopedia that agrees to censor by central Chinese government. We have documented their blatant copyright infringement. Since Baidu is actually listed on NASDAQ, I really believe that WMF can do something about this because both have operations in the US. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 14:58, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure that it would be in anyone's interest for the Wikimedia Foundation to start this fight. I regret that content on that site is being stolen and misused. Thank you a lot for pointing out this page - that is fascinating. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

An easy way to find copyright infringement

Simply do an image search of any of our images with Google. Than bring your cursor over the image and click on "more sizes". Here is an example of an image of mine [1]. Has be borrowed by the like of the University of Iowa among others with no attribution given.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:23, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion

Springer has generated profit for itself with our images. Perhaps it could grant a site license to us and benefit the work of Wikipedians. Since the Foundation is downright cheap when it comes to getting Wikipedians the resources they need such as access to JSTOR or Lexis-Nexis, we need to find other paths.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

What price would you suggest? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 14:56, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest that they fund a Wikipedian in Residence in their own offices to support Wikipedia and to train their staff about contemporary Internet culture. There is a bit more of this line of talk here on WikiProject Open Access. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:01, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Law in the UK

Various legal cases in the UK -- for instance, the recent House of Harlot case, or last year's David Hoffman case -- have awarded standard National Union of Journalists' photography rates of at least £250 per photograph per annum for misused photographs -- even though the photographs in question were taken down straight away (Harlot), or had been used on the assurance of the website designer that they were copyright-cleared (Hoffman). In the Harlot case £675 was awarded for one photo, plus £50 for moral rights, plus costs. In the Hoffman case £12,444.57 was awarded for 19 photographs, including interest.

Springer should be aware that an apology may not be sufficient -- this could get expensive.

As indeed so should we be, if wrongly attributed or falsely licensed photographs are uploaded here. To some extent WP can rely on service provider notification-and-take-down safe harbour provisions; but this is an area that cannot be seen as something trivial, and must not be treated casually. Jheald (talk) 12:24, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

My compliments go to Tony1 for this article. Great work! AGK [•] 15:13, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Not just journals

But all kinds of media and it happened to myself.

Compare this: commons:File:Wave_in_Lake_Ontario.jpg and this: [2] on National Post in Canada.

I am the copyright holder of the said image for being the creator. SYSS Mouse (talk) 17:08, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... it looks like they mentioned your name but did not provide a link to the source of the image wherein the licensing terms could be found. Did you contact them about this? Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:03, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

What do we expect by hiding the licence and attribution requirements?

Not so much hiding, but on the file page putting them underneath the picture display in a bland grey box, couched in multiple bullets that fail to alert many downloaders. "It's free, isn't it?", is likely to be the default attitude. The actual constraints are likely to be buried in this ethic.

I believe there's some opposition among Commons editors to placing at the top a short, polite but firm reminder that there are licencing and attribution requirements ("Please see these requirements below ...".) Apparently there's a fear that such a message at the top shifts perceptions too far towards author/photographer ownership.

The matter should be revisited, since the failure to correctly licence partly defeats our purpose, and the failure to name authors/photographers (where required) is both unfair and militates against donations. Tony (talk) 00:23, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I was just having a look at Commons photographs again since this article and thinking the same thing. The problem is ignorance more than thoughtful intent to deceive and steal. I think that organizations would be interested in learning more about how to reuse content properly if there were a system by means of which they could learn these things on a predictable schedule. I also think that more organizations would be willing to donate content if they had any way of learning how that would affect them and what that would mean. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:25, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Ninety-nine per cent of society does not care about copyright. With the Internet, it is conveniently but regrettably trivial to reuse copyrighted material without permission or adherence to license requirements. Copyright topics simpy are not taught in schools. Teachers feel free to pull images off Google Images for their own lectures. There is a culture in the classroom that does not take copyright seriously because everyone knows it has become unenforceable. Most people have no idea how to comply with any license other than the CC0. And they think it's normal and acceptable to take media from any site for use in whatever they need. No one tattles on the Happy Birthday singers at restaurants—no one even realizes the song is still copyrighted. And because most authors do not actively pursue unsanctioned reuse of their work, people assume that no one cares. And because the situation hasn't yet caused people to stop producing creative works, we all just go along thinking that it's not a serious issue at all. Of course, it usually isn't; we're nitpicking at Springer et al here—they wouldn't pay to use freely licensed images either way, so it doesn't hurt us. But the problem is just a culture of ignorance and apathy toward copyright concepts. 108.78.177.119 (talk) 03:47, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
- Displaying the license more prominently will not solve anything. We all routinely ignore those threats of copyright protection and so on. A more watertight solution would be to watermark attribution (and other data as required by the respective licenses) on images whenever they are downloaded or used outside of Wikimedia articles. No one steals low-resolution thumbnails and uses them for anything other than a fourth-grade science fair project. 108.78.177.119 (talk) 03:51, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Might be worth noting this related bug (and the others it links to) -- WMF recently fixed some more egregious license problems on the mobile site and mobile app. But I very much agree with Tony: our pages in general (articles, media, etc.) should do a much better job of conveying copyright status to the reader. If we can build some consensus here about what is the best path forward, I think that would be a great start. -Pete (talk) 13:58, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Technology report: To support or not to support IPv6, and why knowing when this report was last updated might be getting easier (3,385 bytes · 💬)

I'm confused. Why would we use ajax (or js whatsoever) to put lastmodified text on to a page. Its not like such text is dynamic, so caching shouldn't really be a concern [unless we wanted to change the timestamp magically before the page even reloads, which I somewhat doubt]. Not to mention there already is a timestamp in the lower left corner of every page... Bawolff (talk) 18:35, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh wait, was it the clicktracking that caused the overload, that would make more sense. Bawolff (talk) 18:42, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it was a simple logic error in clicktracking that measured far too many impressions. A patch has been submitted, and it won't be deployed until that's been merged in and thoroughly tested. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:46, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

And my confusion is about the non-Wikimedia wikis in the headline. Where are they discussed? Jim.henderson (talk) 18:53, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
- Oh, my bad, we decided late in the day to keep that (developing) story over for next week. I'll change the headline here, but it'll already have gone out on the mailing list. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 19:31, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Could someone please modify the story to link the contribs of an IPv6 anonymous user? I think this would be really interesting to see and drive the point home. Dcoetzee 19:40, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

There is already a link, last time I checked.--Jasper Deng (talk) 01:10, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I added one after Dcoetzee posted but forgot to respond here, just to clarify. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 09:48, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Something's wrong with this week's pie chart summarizing last week's poll result. Light blue and yellow both show 22% but the description says 3 voters and 7 voters respectively. And red says 16% on the pie but got more response (9) than light blue or yellow. Please recheck the numbers. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:18, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh, good spot. The numbers were correct, but the pie chart not. We'll run the same chart next week with a published correction, I think. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 20:51, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Adam's surname: is it Wight (first line) or Wright (last line)?Geogi (talk) 14:51, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
- Wight. Thanks, corrected. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 14:55, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject report: Counter-Vandalism Unit (788 bytes · 💬)

What? No one mentioned Wikipe-tan? ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 21:23, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Those are roving hordes, not roving hoards! --Orange Mike | Talk 18:04, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2012-06-11