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Copyright Notices

langcliffe

langcliffe

Well-known member
The following text has appeared on some of the recent pages:

"The text of this page is available for modification and reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts)."

I really don't think this is appropriate. If that is the agreed approach, then it should appear once (possibly on the front page), rather than cluttering up the individual pages. If it isn't the agreed approach, then the author is effectively preventing anybody else from modifying the page which is against the whole philosophy of a wiki.

I must admit that I had made the assumption that the UK Caving Wiki did have a similar copyright approach to the Wikipedia which is what the above has been copied from (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Trademarks_and_copyrights), but I concede I had no justification for doing so.

One thing is for sure: Wikipedia doesn't see the need for putting the licensing conditions on every one of its four million pages.
 
langcliffe

langcliffe

Well-known member
That's true. Despite being a fairly active Wikipedia editor I hadn't noticed! It is, however, a little more subtle than what is happening now in the UK Caving Wiki.

I have also just noticed that there is already a copyright notice on each page on the UK Caving Wiki (a GNU FDL icon), so we definitely do NOT need text on every page.
 
graham

graham

New member
langcliffe said:
That's true. Despite being a fairly active Wikipedia editor I hadn't noticed! It is, however, a little more subtle than what is happening now in the UK Caving Wiki.
Click to expand...

It is, isn't it.

langcliffe said:
I have also just noticed that there is already a copyright notice on each page on the UK Caving Wiki (a GNU FDL icon), so we definitely do NOT need text on every page.
Click to expand...

I would agree that it looks rather like overkill.
 
bubba

bubba

Administrator
I'll leave this for the wiki contributors to enlighten us about.

From the admin side, nothing has changed regarding the wiki software, etc.
 
Goydenman

Goydenman

Well-known member
Those text I have put on  :chair:
I have been contributing to the main wiki site and so used the same text which prompted a warning over copyright and reading through their stuff seemed what was required.
Ver happy to receive advice and even more help as making sense of all that is written does my head in  :confused:
 
S

susie

New member
My view is that the pages don't need it as the copyright issue is quite explicit, and the new text looks intrusive and detracts from the content. As far as Wikipedia is concerned anyone chasing up the potential copyright infringement would see the licence information on the original source.
 
Goydenman

Goydenman

Well-known member
Susie my pages on wiki have now been deleted and the following comments was made:

I don't know who told you that "this was not required", but content you post to Wikipedia is released under a Creative Commons SA license, and the GNU FDL does not fully cover the provisions of that, so such a license is not good enough for content which is to be used on Wikipedia.

 
S

susie

New member
It hasn't been a issue in previous discussions I have had with other Wikipedia editors, but having read through the licences I can see that it might cause a problem.

I think that it is divisive and confusing for some of the content in the UK Caving Wiki  to be subject to different licensing conditions which is dependent on the contributor's wider agenda, so how about proposing that that the Caving Wiki content be made available under the same licence as the Wikipedia content - i.e. the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License?
 
Rhys

Rhys

Moderator
I'm not really keeping up with the details of all the different licences and what they entail, however, I would suggest that duplicating content on the UKCaving wiki and Wikipedia is probably unnecessary and not really appropriate in any case. To my mind, the two sites have a different intended audience and require content tailored to match those audiences; I see the UKCaving wiki as being for cavers and Wikipedia being aimed more at the general public.

Regarding copyright infringement; you are the creator and original owner of the content, so it's entirely up to you if you choose to publish it in numerous places - it shouldn't be deleted from Wikipedia on those grounds alone. (unless there's some clause in the user agreements of either wiki regarding exclusivity of content - I've not read them).
 
C

Cave Mapper

Member
When you contribute to a Wiki, whether it's Wikipedia or The UK Caving Wiki, I think the basic principle is that your contribution automatically has the copyright licensing terms that have been chosen for that Wiki. You therefore don't need to (and shouldn't) add any specific copyright notices yourself.

Since 2009, Wikipedia content has been licensed under the CC-BY-SA copyright license. Before that it was licensed under GNU-FDL.

The UK Caving Wiki content is currently licensed under GNU-FDL (it says so at the bottom of every page).

So why doesn't the UK Caving Wiki use the same license as Wikipedia?

  - I suspect that there is no good reason, it was simply that when the Wiki software was first installed it just defaulted to GNU-FDL (as used by Wikipedia at the time).

Why did Wikipedia change from GNU-FDL to CC-BY-SA?

  - "The license update was undertaken to achieve greater interoperability and greater re-use of free knowledge world-wide in service to our vision" (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update)

Does it matter that the UK Caving Wiki is now out of line with Wikipedia?

  - Probably not in practice, the two licenses are very similar. But in an ideal world it would be better for UK Caving Wiki to be consistent with Wikipedia.

I wonder if anyone would object if the UK Caving Wiki admin simply updated the site-wide copyright notice? I'm sure that everyone's expectation is that when they contribute to the UK Caving Wiki, they are doing so on the same basis as when they contribute to Wikipedia.







 
bubba

bubba

Administrator
Thanks for that Cave Mapper, very helpful indeed.

Cave Mapper said:
- I suspect that there is no good reason, it was simply that when the Wiki software was first installed it just defaulted to GNU-FDL (as used by Wikipedia at the time).
Click to expand...
You are correct.

Cave Mapper said:
I wonder if anyone would object if the UK Caving Wiki admin simply updated the site-wide copyright notice? I'm sure that everyone's expectation is that when they contribute to the UK Caving Wiki, they are doing so on the same basis as when they contribute to Wikipedia.
Click to expand...
If the main wiki editors are in agreement then I'm more than happy to do this; I've had a look and it seems quite straightforward.


Whilst we're on the subject, an update to the wiki software is long overdue as well, we're about 18 months behind the current release - that's a lot of bug-fixes, security releases and new features.  I'll bring the software up to date at the same time.
 
bubba

bubba

Administrator
Sorry Susie, I missed the fact that you'd already proposed this  :-[

If nobody else objects then I'll address this and the software update later in the week...
 
bubba

bubba

Administrator
Do you mean surveys that have been published online? If they are there with the blessing of the copyright holders then that's fine but please don't link to any pirated content.
 
bubba

bubba

Administrator
Since it was just changes to the configuration files, I've made the license change.

Please check and let me know if I've done it correctly.

I'll proceed with the wiki software update later in the week as promised... and when I've not had a drink ;)
 
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