Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>> Another thing to keep in mind is the three-year limitation for
>>> taking action on a copyright violation. If something has been on
>>> the site for at least three years it is probably safe to keep. The
>>> argument that continuing availability may result in new limitation
>>> periods can probably be countered by invoking the doctrine of laches.
>>
>> However, republishing in another medium, such as publishing a print
>> edition of Wikipedia, probably would easily restart the limitation
>> period.
>
> That's debateable. With GFDL the history of the material should be
> traceable. A fairly recent case involving laches went against the
> Church of Scientology because they had delayed the enforcement of
> their rights. This was despite the fact that the limitation period
> had not yet expired when they started their action.
Two points are worth noting here. First of all, in case it's not clear,
the doctrine of laches can only apply if the plaintiff knows about the
infringement and fails to complain. If, as is very likely, a copyright
holder did not know about infringing material on Wikipedia, then laches
would not prevent a claim based on the continuing availability of the
material within the statute of limitations.
Second of all, if the Scientology case Ec alludes to is the New Era
Publications v. Henry Holt case that I've read, I should mention that
laches was only applied to deny an injunction against publication. It
did not prevent a remedy for monetary damages.
So the notion he suggests, that anything that's been on Wikipedia for at
least three years is safe to keep forevermore, probably should not be
used as a "rule of thumb" for copyright problems.
--Michael Snow
1) I'm not necessary challenging the 32K limit itself. I was urging
that the message present 32K as a _soft_ limit, a guideline requiring
_deliberate_ action. The old message sounds like a call to jump in and
do something immediately.
I've Been Bold and rewritten the message. It now reads:
"Note: This page is 38 kilobytes long. Under current article size
guidelines, articles that exceed 32KB are considered to be too long. It
may be appropriate to restructure this topic into a related series of
shorter articles, or split off a section of it as a separate article.
However, these are major structural changes which should not be made
hastily, and should be made by consensus agreement among editors of the
page. See the guidelines for details."
The new text links to [[Wikipedia:Article size]]. That article should
now be expanded to discuss not just the technical issue but some
obvious observations on size problems should be handled. Specifically,
it should say that if a _controversial_ section of the article has
grown large, it should _not_ be split off as a separate article
_unless_ all editors are certain that the title and content of the new
article exhibit a neutral point of view.
2) Christiaan Briggs <christiaan(a)last-straw.net> asks
> So what are the generally accepted criteria for length of articles in
> encyclopedias?
>
> Christiaan
People should be getting tired of my stock answer to this, which is
that the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica contains
articles which exceed one megabyte in size. I need to get to the
library and see what size the juicier articles in the Britannica 3
Macropaedia are.
3) An important consideration is _how well indexed_ the encyclopedia
is. It's a benefit if you can guess the location of your article
without having to consult the index. The Britannica 3 Micropaedia is
sort of interesting: it's essentially a TEN-volume combination of an
index and all the stub-sized articles. The Britannica 11th is notable
for having an absolutely superb index.
In case anyone doesn't know, indexing a traditional book is a specialty
in itself and involves huge amounts of judgement and creativity. People
tend to think that it's a mechanical task that can be done by a
computer. It can't. A computer has no idea _what terms need to be
indexed._ Computer-generated indices have a terrible tendency to
generate entries that have a list of fifty page references following
them, because the computer doesn't know which are the important ones,
and doesn't know how to replace a single entry term ("London, Jack" 20,
21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36...) with several narrower
terms ("London, Jack: paternity of, 20; infancy, 21; travels to Yukon,
23; breaks into print, 25; affair with Charmian, 30; ...)
I haven't tried to test this objectively, but my impression is that,
comparing Wikipedia/(current) Britannica 3/(classic) 1911 Britannica,
a) _if_ the subject you want _is_ treated in the encyclopedia,
b) _if_ you don't succeed in guessing the entry term correctly on your
first try, and
c) are forced to resort to search/Micropaedia/index,
you are _more_ likely to find what you're looking for in either
Britannica than in Wikipedia.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
All of this needs to be taken to Wikipedia_talk:Article_size and Wikipedia:Article_size and MediaWiki_talk:Longpagewarning, where I and some others are Being Bold (and the warning message is consequently in a state of flux...) To summarize what I believe to be true:
The _only_ reason for a _firm_ bright-line limit of 32KB was a technical limitation in some now-seldom-used browsers. Because of the advent of section editing, even users of these browsers can do _almost_ anything needed, and updated versions of these browsers are available. Thus, there is consensus that article size is now limited _only_ by considerations of page-loading speed, ease of navigation, issues of style and organization and preference, etc. There is no longer any urgent need to take action just because an article is 36KB.
The actual wording of the warning is still being wordsmithed. There's general agreement that it should be softened--no more "Danger! Danger! 32769 bytes! Aaaah-ooo-gah! Aaaah-ooo-gah! Split! Split!" People are struggling to find something concise that says everything people think needs to be said.
I've invented some hopefully-non-controversial uh, policy at Wikipedia:Article_size. Rather than repeat it here, I invite people to read it there and discuss in Talk.
Hi all,
Perhaps I have been out of the loop on this development, but when I
started contributing to WP, limiting article length to 32Kb was
considered an important consideration. Lately, though, I've been
encountering articles considerably longer. Yesterday, I wanted to
refactor some material in one to tighten it up and another user
objected, saying that [[George W. Bush]] was 72Kb in length. Has the
32Kb threshold effectively been abandoned?
FWIW, I thought the 32Kb limit served as a useful stylistic constraint,
as it encouraged a a measure concision in unwieldy topics. I am going to
take a look at the Bush article in a moment to see what I think of such
a long article.
V.
Due to the power outage and the fact that I was traveling for most of
the weekend, I haven't been able to write as many articles, so this
week's edition of The Wikipedia Signpost is a little bit smaller than usual.
Also, a new feature has been added in the form of a handy shortcut. You
can now get to The Signpost quickly via [[WP:SIGN]].
--Michael Snow
Could we have an "Edit lead section" link up the top? Is it possible to
edit some mediawiki template to make this happen? Personally, I know
that sometimes I need to make the lead section much better, and if I
have a very long article then it just takes forever to update the article!
Can it be done?
TBSDY
Fred wrote:
> It is the section editing that ended the technical need to limit
> an article to 32K using Internet Explorer. Now unless it is the
> first section you need to edit you don't need to edit the whole
> article or change browsers. I have no idea why you can't edit
> the first section. Ability to do that should be added.
Yes, please oh please give us an Edit link on the first section.
Zero.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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Silly me! No , the article below is dated October, 2004 and would not be the same as the
one Jay mentioned.
However, its - the Forum at the end - and the still worth a read for those who have
not seen it.
Arno
=============
I don't know if it is the same as this one, but you can read this without
a subscription:
http://www.thetyee.ca/MediaCheck/current/JourFutureWikipedia.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "JAY JG" <jayjg(a)hotmail.com>
To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Article on Wikipedia in the Saturday National Post
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 23:12:34 -0500
>
> There was a pretty complimentary article published about Wikipedia
> in the Saturday National Post (a national Canadian newspaper).
> Unfortunately, you need a subscription to see the whole article
> online:
>
> http://www.canada.com/search/story.html?id=df1fbe7e-c310-47c8-98af-ddd72928…
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
--
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Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
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I don't know whether PJacobi is "on a hunt," but I am not at all happy
about the current state of the "Prem Rawat" and "Criticism of Prem
Rawat" article. While trying not to extend that battle here, I want to
make two points:
a) HYPOTHETICALLY (i.e. I DO NOT want to argue about whether Prem Rawat
actually is an example of this situation): SUPPOSE that there is a
topic that is being contentiously edited by two factions, A and B, that
include most of the WIkipedians actively interested in working on the
topic. The two factions could cut a deal in which they produce two
articles, one presenting faction A's viewpoint and one presenting
faction B's viewpoint, and agree that they will each tolerate and stay
out of the other faction's article provided the other faction does the
same. In this case, you have two POV articles--and because of the
agreement by the two factions and the disinterest by other Wikipedians,
the situation is likely to be stable.
Surely we agree that that is a VERY unsatisfactory situation, and not
what is meant by NPOV?
If we have to have this sort of thing, we need to figure out out a way
to legitimize it, e.g. with a template saying "This article represents
one view of a disputed issue. For the other view, see..."
b) In any case, I really dislike seeing the 32K limit being brought up
as justification for doing things. 32K is a reasonable _guideline,_ and
that articles in, say, the range 32K to 96K should be refactored
_eventually_. But it should not be regarded as an urgent necessity.
Particularly in the case of a disputed topic, the article should be
left to stew and mellow. _When it has reached a stable state_, the need
to break it up should be discussed.
But breaking up an oversized article shouldn't be a high priority.
Breaking up a 32 to 96K article is just _cleanup,_ and it's a _lot_
less important than a lot of other cleanup. _As long as no single
section_ is over 32K, people with older browsers can participate
actively in almost every part of the editing process. About all that
they cannot do is load the entire article as a whole in order to make
major changes in the section organization.
I think the 32K limit is often used as a convenient excuse for unwise
breakouts--specifically, POV splits and subtrivia. ("I couldn't put the
vital, encyclopedic, verified fact that John Kerry flip-flopped in
August, 1960 at the Central Street McDonalds when he ordered a Quarter
Pounder _and tried to exchange it for a Quarter Pounder with
Cheese_--the main article is over 32K!)
The 32K limit gets an unjustified amount of attention because a warning
is displayed automatically. The wording of that warning ought to be
toned way down. This is just one of many issues involved in browser
compatibility, and not the most important one.
I notice that no warning is displayed about the use of Unicode
characters, even though these also present problems in older browsers
(and sometimes newer ones!) In gauging the seriousness of these issues,
note too that using characters outside, say, ISO Latin-1 actually
presents problems to people passively _viewing_ the article, whereas
articles over 32K are still viewable by everyone (and editable within
sections by everyone).
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/