[Wikipedia-l] Re: another copyright issue

Tue Nov 27 01:29:58 UTC 2001

From: "Lars Aronsson" <lars at aronsson.se>
> Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> > On the English Wikipedia we play by the "better safe than sorry"
> > rule: if an article appears to be a copyright violation, we remove
it.
>
> Who are "we"?  A non-formal group of core contributors, or Bomis
staff?
> Is there a similar "we" for the non-English language Wikipediae?

"We" in this case has been me as well as a lot of other people who
understand that the presence of copyrighted material in the Wikipedia
database puts the project at some legal risk.  We do our best to remove
obvious violations of copyright while, in uncertain cases, giving people
a chance to explain themselves.

> It appears to me that Bomis actively "runs" the English Wikipedia, and
> almost don't care about the other languages.

Well, this is inaccurate.  We care very much about the other languages.
But, not knowing other languages that I do know (with the possible
exception of German) well enough to participate in the wikis in those
other languages, we have left them to develop on their own.  Recently, I
set up the Intlwiki-L mailing list (cc'd) as a forum where issues shared
by all the Wikipedias could be hashed out.

We've tried (with limited success so far) to accommodate the people
working on a Polish wiki encyclopedia project (they have called
themselves the "Polish Wikipedia"), and they might still move.  (The
last I know about that is that I've tried to send them an e-mail, which
bounced.  :-( )

> I think it would help
> greatly to assign the role of a responsible editor to some person for
> each language, perhaps Kurt Jansson or Stefan Rybo for the German, and
> Linus Tolke for the Swedish Wikipedia.  This would make Wikipedia more
> like a franchising concept.  The national wikipedias could be run on a
> separate site (like wiki.rozeta.com.pl) if the responsible editor
> ("franchising owner") finds that useful.  Bomis would own the name
> Wikipedia and the concept and terms under which it is franchised.
>
> I guess what I am saying is that the national Wikipedias need a Larry,
> and that there are people who can take on that role if they know the
> role exists.
>
> (No, I am not a candidate for editor of the Swedish Wikipedia.)

This is an interesting proposition, and it sounds like a good idea, but
you know, anybody can, by force of intelligence and character, move a
wiki in a positive direction.  I'd agree with what Jimbo had to say
about it: I'm not sure what it would mean to designate someone as
official leader.  We'd have to *give* it some meaning.  In my opinion,
one reason Wikipedia has worked has been the fact that it is associated,
very loosely, with Nupedia, and people know that I am looking at,
evaluating, and actively guiding the project.  Moreover, it's important
that I'm a Ph.D. philosopher who has gained much relevant experience
from organizing Nupedia, as well as other academic projects as a
graduate student.  If there were some person who could be identified as
an active ringleader, and for whom it would *matter* to others that they
were considered the ringleader (i.e., someone whose credentials would
command immediate recognition and prima facie respect), that might be a
good idea.  But we'd still need to know what sort of rights and
responsibilities they have.  It's not even clear what rights and
responsibilities *I* have.  :-)

Maybe what we need to do is, on
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.fcgi?action=browse&id=Non-English_Wikipedi
as ,
as well as on intlwiki-l and Nupedia's interpret-l, add something to the
effect that we strongly encourage particularly well-qualified people to
get to work on the non-English wikis and try to speak as a voice of
reason and authority (both, hopefully :-) ) on the wiki.  Then, perhaps,
we can identify and have a list of any of the de facto "leadership" of
the Wikipedias, and make it official.

What do you think of that, folks?  These are just idle thoughts.  I
haven't really thought a lot about it.  I'm sure others could elaborate
the issues involved!

Larry