[WikiEN-l] defining Free Encyclopedia

Sun Aug 22 19:35:17 UTC 2004

> > Does the entire encyclopedia need to be editable?  What types of
> > edits must be allowed?  Can there be centralized control, for
> > instance linkback requirements?

> None of these questions have anything at all to do with the question
> of GNU-freedom.  These are internal policies of administration, and we
> have pretty well-developed answers for all of them, right?

I think you misunderstood the question, as it was related to what types of
edits, and linkback requirements are required under copyright law, but I can
guess your answer, anyway.

> > All this talk of whether or not things are "free enough" led me to
believe
> > that there was a lot of grey area.  Maybe I'm wrong, and we do agree on
what
> > it means to be a free encyclopedia, we just haven't agreed that we want
to
> > be a free encyclopedia.

> With all due respect, Anthony, I think you're just trolling here.

My comments were rhetorical.  If that makes them trolling, then I guess I
was trolling.  But I wasn't *just* trolling.

> We know what it means to be a free encyclopedia, and we draw on
> longstanding traditions in the free software community to flesh out
> the details of that meaning.  We have been committed from day one (day
> one of Nupedia, even) to be a free encyclopedia in the sense of
> GNU-freedom.

You have been.  Most of the other early members have been.  But much of the
community is not.  This isn't to say that many people reject having a free
encyclopedia, but there are many who just don't understand what that means
to Wikipedia.  For example, it was only when you made an official statement
that noncommercial only images weren't allowed in Wikipedia that many
Wikipedians would even consider them to be a bad thing, and even now there
is no effort to remove these images and there are people actively fighting
against their removal.  I don't see how you can say that the community is on
the same page on this.  It's clearly not true.

> Acting as if there's some deep philosophical division within the
> project, or some less-than-complete commitment to freedom is an insult
> to many of us who have been working so hard for so long to achieve
> exactly that.

I'm sorry that you're insulted by this.  But at this point the amount of
work that is necessary to legally redistribute Wikipedia, even in the United
States for non-commercial purposes, is enormous, and so in that sense
freedom has not been achieved.

As you've been insulted and don't even believe I'm being serious, I'll
continue this discussion no further.  Feel free to reply publically and/or
privately if you'd like, but I give up.

> --Jimbo

Anthony