[Wiktionary-l] GNU-FDL and Ultimate Wiktionary

Sun May 29 20:56:51 UTC 2005

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> I think that GNU FDL is perfectly fine for Ultimate Wiktionary and there
>> is no need to change the license.  The license is perfectly compatible
>> with the .DICT format, so there should be no problems at all.
>>
> I'm glad to hear that.

I do not understand why you think so.

>> Thinking about how to import data from wiktionary in the ultimate
>> wiktionary may pose a few puzzles with respect to FDL compliance, but I
>> don't see any significant problems.  The import script should keep track
>> of who contributed to a chunk of data and take note of that fact.  The
>> history may be a little more problematic, and I think we will want to
>> get advice on exactly how to do it.
>>
> Importing histories into Gerard's project will not remove them from 
> the existing Wiktionaries.  Simply putting a dated link to the source 
> Wiktionary should do it.  That would only become a problem if the 
> existing Wiktionary deletes the article or otherwise makes it 
> unworkable.  In the existing transwiki technique article histories are 
> moved with the term in question.  This gives a nice list of who edited 
> and when, but records of what changes these people made are 
> unavailable.  In some cases, particularly as regards very stubby 
> articles, it has proved more practical to discard the transwikied 
> material and its history completely, and start a whole new article.

To what wiktionary would you attribute information and on what level ?? 
When you interwiki, you expect that old style wiktionaries will continue 
to exist.. I expect that several wiktionaries, if not all, will 
eventually be discontinued.

 From my point of view there is nothing wrong with very stubby 
information. The only criterium is that information is correct.

>> But changing the license to something else would require throwing away
>> all existing work in wiktionary, which seems quite unwise to me.
>
> Not really, since the existing wiktionaries would continue as they 
> have all along.
>
> Ec

Hoi,
When a Wiktionary has its data imported into Ultimate Wiktionary and 
when its users have migrated to the Ultimate Wiktionary as well, why 
should they continue as they did before. It does not makes sense to 
suggest that they would. I will not work on any Wiktionay if the work of 
UW proves to be more efficient. Given the amount of work that I did on 
the nl.wiktionary it can not continue as it did before.

The idea that Wiktionary is similar to Wikipedia is also something that 
can be disputed. It is more of a lemma than an article. Wiktionary is in 
many respects like a list, the individual words cannot be copyrighted. 
The individual translations cannot be copyrighted. This is unlike 
Wikipedia. So if anything stubby lemmas in Wiktionary are not a problem. 
There is also the consideration that the content can come from many 
sources. It is therefore very difficult to state in the Ultimate 
Wiktionary who contributed to a word because it can originate from many 
sources. When you add for instance that a noun has a particular gender, 
you cannot claim copyright because that fact is in the public domain.

The GNU-FDL is not intended for data like wiktionary, this license was 
intended for manuals and it is not really appropriate for data like 
dictionaries. There are public domain dictionaries that will give you 
90% of what you need to have in a modern dictionary.

When changing the license for Ultimate Wiktionary is a given, there are 
several ways of dealing with complaints from people who have contributed 
to a wiktionary.
*You can import the same/similar data from several sources. So when a 
wiktionary editor complains he is removed as an editor and an other 
resource is attributed as its source.
*This division is particularly easy for language independent stuff like 
translations wordtypes genders etc. Meanings and etymologies are more 
personal.

Given that it is only contributors can complain and given that changing 
the license will be done to make the UW more usefull, I doubt there will 
be many people that will complain. I also think that it will not be 
apreciated by the community when people complain as the reason why the 
license would be changed is to make it easier to fulfill the goals of 
the Wikimedia Foundation.

Thanks,
    GerardM