[Wikipedia-l] Force user to choose a licence when uploading data

Thu Mar 18 21:02:10 UTC 2004

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 03:55 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>> I think there is universal support for this proposal, actually this
>>> proposal:
>>>
>>> 1.  Force the user to choose a license
>>> 2.  Force the user to fill out a field (or more?) indicating the source
>>> 3.  Write this on the page: {{msg:<NameOfLicense>}}
>>> 4.  Additionally store the license and source information in a separate
>>> database field
>>
>>
>> What about {{msg:CopyrightedFreeUseProvided}}, which takes an 
>> "argument" (text following the tag)?  Perhaps a text field after the 
>> license choice? 
>
>
> My only concern about this approach is that most people don't 
> understand anything about copyright.  Asking them to choose a license 
> under those circumstances is like rolling dice.  It would be nice if 
> the license choices were accompanied by a brief outline of the 
> implications of each choice.

Or simply a "don't know". If a person doesn't really know about this stuff,
I'd rather them say they don't know, than to try to pick an approximate
match. A tricky way to help sniff out problem pics is to ask for the date of
the picture too, then focus attention on "post-1923 don't knows".

Stan