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Tomasz Wegrzanowski | 1 Mar 2002 01:45
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Re: [Intlwiki-l] Statement about the Spanish wiki encyclopedia fork

On Wed, Feb 27, 2002 at 01:16:19PM -0800, Larry Sanger wrote:
> I've drafted a letter to Spanish Wikipedia contributors, urging them *not*
> to fork, and if those behind the fork cannot be convinced to stop the
> fork, at least please put your full support behind Wikipedia!
> 
> I'm hoping that someone will be willing to translate it; I think someone
> might already have started.
> 
> Here's the URL:
> http://es.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Statement_By_Larry_Sanger_About_The_Spanish_Wiki_Encyclopedia_Fork
[cut]

Larry, I think that you seriously underestimate abilities of the community.
That's probably because, as you said, you're not a technical person,
so you don't have experience with major software community projects.

There are really big software projects that work well without any paid employees.
Some of them, like Debian, have much bigger scale than Wikipedia.
And there are also many encyclopedia community projects that work well without them,
like FOLDOC and non-English wikipedias.

It's natural that people who either have worked with major community software project,
or have been involved in non-Engish Wikipedia or other community encyclopedias,
don't necessarily agree with you that paid employee is strictly required for
success of major project.

Moreover you use words `troll', `silly', `idiocy' and others to describe
known and respected contributors who don't agree with your opinion.
This isn't proper way of building community.
(Continue reading)

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João Mário Miranda | 1 Mar 2002 03:18

Re: [Intlwiki-l] Statement about the Spanish wiki encyclopedia fork


Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> It's natural that people who either have worked with major community software project,
> or have been involved in non-Engish Wikipedia or other community encyclopedias,
> don't necessarily agree with you that paid employee is strictly required for
> success of major project.

How do you measure success? By the number of contributions or by 
structural quality of the project? I noticed, by reading around 
the spanish wikipedia that the project has some problems that we
at the english wikipedia took long time to solve:

- copyright violations
- neutral point of view
- GNU FDL interpretation
- relations with Boomis
- software problems
- documentation of the project

The spanish wikipedia forked due to bad communication, 
misunderstanding of the project and of the GNU FDL license,
antiamercanism, anticommercialism and bad faith assumption. It
was a stupid fork and there was no need to do it.

There is the danger that we get lots of forks with lots of copyright
and GNU FDL violations and with bad and partial articles that will
damage the reputation of the idea of a freePedia and of the  
GNU FDL license because people that fork don't understand what they
are doing.
(Continue reading)

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Tomasz Wegrzanowski | 1 Mar 2002 14:48
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Re: [Intlwiki-l] Statement about the Spanish wiki encyclopedia fork

On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 02:18:47AM +0000, Jo?o M?rio Miranda wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> 
> > It's natural that people who either have worked with major community software project,
> > or have been involved in non-Engish Wikipedia or other community encyclopedias,
> > don't necessarily agree with you that paid employee is strictly required for
> > success of major project.
> 
> How do you measure success? By the number of contributions or by 
> structural quality of the project? I noticed, by reading around 
> the spanish wikipedia that the project has some problems that we
> at the english wikipedia took long time to solve:
> 
> - copyright violations
> - neutral point of view
> - GNU FDL interpretation
> - relations with Boomis
> - software problems
> - documentation of the project
> 
> The spanish wikipedia forked due to bad communication,
> misunderstanding of the project and of the GNU FDL license,
> antiamercanism, anticommercialism and bad faith assumption. It
> was a stupid fork and there was no need to do it.
> 
> There is the danger that we get lots of forks with lots of copyright
> and GNU FDL violations and with bad and partial articles that will
> damage the reputation of the idea of a freePedia and of the  
> GNU FDL license because people that fork don't understand what they
> are doing.
(Continue reading)

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João Mário Miranda | 1 Mar 2002 15:44

Re: [Intlwiki-l] Statement about the Spanish wiki encyclopedia fork


Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> > We must solve the license interpretation problem first. Articles of
> > the spanish wikipedia fork are modified versions of the wikipedia
> > articles. GNU FDL requires a link back to the original version, but
> > we never get to a consensus on how the link must be done.
> 
> GNU FDL requires link to transparent (that is, machine-readable) version,
> *not* the original website. You have full right of keeping them on your site.
> Read it again if you don't understand that.

From the license, modified versions require:

   Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for
   public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise
   the network locations given in the Document for previous versions
   it was based on.  These may be placed in the "History" section.
   You may omit a network location for a work that was published at
   least four years before the Document itself, or if the original
   publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.

Also, you must preserve "Invariant sections" and is still under 
discussion what kind of "Invariant sections" wikipedia should have.
Please read:

http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=GFDL+Workshop

--

-- 
joão
(Continue reading)

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Tomasz Wegrzanowski | 1 Mar 2002 15:58
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Re: [Intlwiki-l] Statement about the Spanish wiki encyclopedia fork

On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 02:44:57PM +0000, Jo?o M?rio Miranda wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> 
> > > We must solve the license interpretation problem first. Articles of
> > > the spanish wikipedia fork are modified versions of the wikipedia
> > > articles. GNU FDL requires a link back to the original version, but
> > > we never get to a consensus on how the link must be done.
> > 
> > GNU FDL requires link to transparent (that is, machine-readable) version,
> > *not* the original website. You have full right of keeping them on your site.
> > Read it again if you don't understand that.
> 
> >From the license, modified versions require:
> 
>    Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for
>    public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise
>    the network locations given in the Document for previous versions
>    it was based on.  These may be placed in the "History" section.
>    You may omit a network location for a work that was published at
>    least four years before the Document itself, or if the original
>    publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.

Exactly what I said.
"network location for public access to a Transparent copy",
not network address of origin site.

> Also, you must preserve "Invariant sections" and is still under 
> discussion what kind of "Invariant sections" wikipedia should have.
> Please read:
>
(Continue reading)

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Jimmy Wales | 1 Mar 2002 17:37

Re: [Intlwiki-l] Statement about the Spanish wiki encyclopedia fork

João Mário Miranda wrote:
> The spanish wikipedia forked due to bad communication, 
> misunderstanding of the project and of the GNU FDL license,
> antiamercanism, anticommercialism and bad faith assumption. It
> was a stupid fork and there was no need to do it.

What can I do to help matters?  I am willing to do anything within reason.

The points you mention are important.  Bad communication is caused,
surely, by the fact that I do not speak or read Spanish.  I can't
really do anything about that, but I can try harder to seek out people
who speak both Spanish and English so that communication can take
place in a timely fashion.

Misunderstanding of the project and of the license will surely be helped
by better communication.

Anti-Americanism I can't do anything about, except to say that it is
contrary to the NPOV spirit of wikipedia for nationalism to have
anything at all to do with the project.  We can and should leave
political arguments at the door.  I think one of the great benefits of
the NPOV policy is that it provides everyone with a mechanism to work
around differences.

I saw a translation of something that one forker wrote, saying that he
would not allow any of his work to benefit Americans, directly or
indirectly.  I can only contrast this with my own opinion -- I seek
that my work be of benefit to all people of all nations and all
creeds, without distinction.  If there are people or beliefs that I do
not agree with, I still hope that they will benefit from the
(Continue reading)

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Jimmy Wales | 1 Mar 2002 17:38

Re: [Intlwiki-l] Statement about the Spanish wiki encyclopedia fork

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Spanish fork was done because part of the community (majority as far I can see)
> lost all their trust in Larry and Jimbo, 

But why?  As far as I have been able to determine, it is because they
have been operating under false information, rumors spread by people
who are not operating in the spirit of wikipedia.

> Majority of Spanish authors are now on Sevilla University Encyclopedia,
> so I'm not sure who should give credit to whom.

I want them to come back.  Will you help me?

--Jimbo
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João Mário Miranda | 1 Mar 2002 17:58

Re: [Intlwiki-l] Statement about the Spanish wiki encyclopedia fork


Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 02:44:57PM +0000, Jo?o M?rio Miranda wrote:
> > Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >
> > > > We must solve the license interpretation problem first. Articles of
> > > > the spanish wikipedia fork are modified versions of the wikipedia
> > > > articles. GNU FDL requires a link back to the original version, but
> > > > we never get to a consensus on how the link must be done.
> > >
> > > GNU FDL requires link to transparent (that is, machine-readable) version,
> > > *not* the original website. You have full right of keeping them on your site.
> > > Read it again if you don't understand that.
> >
> > >From the license, modified versions require:
> >
> >    Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for
> >    public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise
> >    the network locations given in the Document for previous versions
> >    it was based on.  These may be placed in the "History" section.
> >    You may omit a network location for a work that was published at
> >    least four years before the Document itself, or if the original
> >    publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.
> 
> Exactly what I said.
> "network location for public access to a Transparent copy",
> not network address of origin site.

"Document" in the license is the "original version", not the modified
(Continue reading)

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Tomasz Wegrzanowski | 1 Mar 2002 19:38
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Re: [Intlwiki-l] Statement about the Spanish wiki encyclopedia fork

On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 04:58:51PM +0000, Jo?o M?rio Miranda wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 02:44:57PM +0000, Jo?o M?rio Miranda wrote:
> > > Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > > > > We must solve the license interpretation problem first. Articles of
> > > > > the spanish wikipedia fork are modified versions of the wikipedia
> > > > > articles. GNU FDL requires a link back to the original version, but
> > > > > we never get to a consensus on how the link must be done.
> > > >
> > > > GNU FDL requires link to transparent (that is, machine-readable) version,
> > > > *not* the original website. You have full right of keeping them on your site.
> > > > Read it again if you don't understand that.
> > >
> > > >From the license, modified versions require:
> > >
> > >    Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for
> > >    public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise
> > >    the network locations given in the Document for previous versions
> > >    it was based on.  These may be placed in the "History" section.
> > >    You may omit a network location for a work that was published at
> > >    least four years before the Document itself, or if the original
> > >    publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.
> > 
> > Exactly what I said.
> > "network location for public access to a Transparent copy",
> > not network address of origin site.
> 
> "Document" in the license is the "original version", not the modified
> version. If you change a "document" it becomes a "modified version"
> and "modified versions" must link back to the "document". That's what
(Continue reading)

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Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz | 1 Mar 2002 09:00
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Copyrights (was Re: [Intlwiki-l] Statement about the Spanish wiki encyclopedia fork)

On 01-03-2002, Jo?o Mário Miranda wrote thusly :
> > Because I now understand why many Spanish Wikipedians have moved to
> > another server, and that they are not going to come back, I think it
> > would be best to create good mechanism that would allow importing
> > (GFDL) articles between both projects.  Then, they will be able to
> > peacefully coexist under different management policies.
> > That's mostly software issue.
> 
> We must solve the license interpretation problem first. Articles of
> the spanish wikipedia fork are modified versions of the wikipedia
> articles. GNU FDL requires a link back to the original version, but
> we never get to a consensus on how the link must be done.
I understand that the original author retains his/her rights even
if they put it under FDL ?

Regards,
kpj. 
--

-- 
Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz, M.D | Odciski palca bożego nie są nigdy identyczne.  
Czestochowa, Poland ...       | Stanisław Jerzy Lec  
  Więcej cytatów : http://www.cytatowo.prv.pl
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Gmane