User talk:Coren

I remain active to answers queries related to CSBot, which I intent to keep operational as long as it is still useful and welcome.

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Verbal

This is a simple notification that I've asked a question of you here. Maybe I'm missing the point, but I don't understand your rational. It seems it would apply to almost any case! Apologies if I've broken protocol in any way with this. Thanks, Verbal chat 22:58, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Wong Doc-Fai

Thank you for your notification regarding concern of copyright infringement regarding this topic. I assure you that nothing stated is infringing upon anyone's copyrighted material. I researched the reference for supposed proof of copyrighted material located on the http://www.whitelionsofshaolin.com/ and discovered that it is a rewrite of the original information provided on the subjects web site. The information I am providing is a distillation of of events and activities that are in the public arena and cannot be considered proprietary nor copyrighted. Please do not create an obstacle for the creation of this page as it relates historically to other subjects within the world of martial arts. Thank you. Clftruthseeking (talk) 02:56, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Dr5 Chrome / dr5

hello; I discussed this with another member; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dicklyon we concurred that it would be best to change the name of the dr5 page to its rightful name dr5 chrome. the dr5 page should be deleted and the Dr5 Chrome page take its place. Pillhall (talk) 04:59, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Relief

Hi, Coren. You asked me what relief I seek.[1] I'm trying to avoid the "Wikipedia time effect" here... but I have responded. Are you in a good position to tell me how to go about eliciting action from the committee yet? Bishonen | talk 11:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC).

I'm at work, but I'll take a look at it this evening after I get home. — Coren ^(talk) 14:06, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Bot is tagging GDFL content

Your bot is tagging content on sites/pages expressly marked with the GDFL 1.2 license. Make it stop, plz. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 14:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi. :) The bot needs to tag such sites. We can't accept them since our licensing transition in June. Imported text must minimally be compatible with CC-By-SA, and GFDL is not. See Wikipedia:Terms of use. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:53, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

That's theoretically true, but FWIW, I can't imagine a lower enforcement priority. The chances of anyone from such a site objecting to reuse on Wikipedia are essentially nonexistent. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:56, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Importing such text is a violation of our copyright policy. It's in meta's terms of use as well as our own. I can't imagine that Wikipedia would adopt even an unofficial "ignore it; it does no harm" policy over copyright violations. (eta: not that I disagree with you in theory, but when it comes to legal issues surely we need to toe our own line. After all, if someone from such a site did object and pointed out that we have tacitly encouraged the importing of such material by disabling bot detection and allowing it to remain, we would surely be putting ourselves in a bad position for contributory infringement--at least as individuals, if not as a collective.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:58, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That may be well true. Nonetheless, we have a duty to bring and maintain Wikipedia above questioning on copyright matters. This is akin to stating that unsourced BLP violations are no biggie if they happen to be favourable to the article's subject. Plus, we're discussing automatic flagging by a bot here. That's not exactly taking admin time away from other matters. MLauba (talk) 15:04, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with MLauba and Moonriddengirl here; at the very least, CSBot bringing attention to the matter so that a human can verify the compatibility is important. Incidentally, this means we should go over User:CorenSearchBot/exclude to check that sites which were added there because they were compatible with the GFDL are still compatible with CC-BY-SA — which may imply having to remove many of the GFDL-only sources from there. — Coren ^(talk) 15:15, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

When was the cut-off date again? November 12th last year? Looks like a task to post at WP:COPYCLEAN. MLauba (talk) 15:57, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Per your message on my talk page, Coren, why cannot GDFL-licensed sites also license themselves under CC-BY-SA? That makes no sense... - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 17:31, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for continuing the page stalking, but long story short, CC-BY-SA and GFDL 1.2 are not compatible licenses, which is the heart of the issue. Dual licensing is possible under GFDL 1.3 but only if dual licensing is adopted before August 1st (on the source site). Presumably GFDL 2.0 may change that - some day. MLauba (talk) 17:49, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I think what he means is that GFDL-licensed material can't be reused under CC-By-SA, not that the external site can't choose to co-license or re-license at some point. However, Coren seems to be saying there that "CC-By-SA only" material can be used under GFDL. If so, Coren, I think you're mistaken on that...at least, so Mike Godwin told me via e-mail back around when I first got started on copyright issues, when the whole licensing thing was new to me. It seems to indicate as much at GFDL#Compatibility_with_CC-BY-SA. Also, our terms of use support that when they say, "For compatibility reasons, any page which does not incorporate text that is exclusively available under CC-BY-SA or a CC-BY-SA-compatible license is also available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License." If CC-By-SA could be transferred to GFDL, that would be no concern; even if it was only licensed CC-By-SA, it would still be usable both licenses. But maybe I'm mistaking your note, and that's not what you're saying at all. :)

Any website that is currently licensed under GFDL can co-license going forward, but if they wish to retroactively relicense their text, it's going to be a real bear for them to do so since they'll either have to do it under the terms of GNU FDL 1.3 (I think they have to complete the transition by August 1, 2009 as well as meeting requisite conditions) or work out a whole new deal with GNU. Their headache; not mine, thank goodness. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

But that fact remains in the real world, this issue has virtually no importance; if we just kept doing as we were, the odds are substantial that no one would notice or care. It's not that I'm not aware of the importance of satisfying legal requirements, but there are issues of prioritization, and this falls way off the bottom of the list. I find it ironic that we are willing to take on disputes in gray legal areas where there are people with profound concerns and convictions on the other side (e.g. the ongoing National Gallery issue, which has a very real chance of ending up in litigation), but go out of our way to police this sort of virtually immaterial, hypertechnical non-compliance as to which continued non-compliance would likely have no meaningful consequences at all. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:44, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The only alternative would seem to be that we promote deliberately ignoring satisfying legal requirements. We have a bot that searches for duplicate text. Instructing it to exclude this material which is hosted illegally would surely be some kind of malfeasance on somebody's part. As the word spreads that GFDL is no longer the license-du-jour, it's less likely to be an issue. Meanwhile, letting our contributors know that Foundation wide policy is that GFDL-only text cannot be imported is likely not only doing a service to the encyclopedia (since we ensure we don't build articles that we know from foundation may be illegal to display), but to them. Unlikely as it seems, if the courts go after anybody, currently they're in the firing line, no?

On a related topic, your talk page edit header is somewhat out of date, Coren. :) It says (formatting omitted) "Unless there is an explicit permission on the page (or site) allowing reuse without conditions (or under the GFDL) you can not use that text in a Wikipedia article!" --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:57, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

(undent) As a follow up to the original query, I cleared the WP:SCV list of these, posted all five concerned articles at WP:CP and left a note on the contributor's page. Newyorkbrad, yes, this may be trivial, but if we ignore it and eventually get dragged to court, we will have a hard time demonstrating good faith. And even if it never actually happens, it's still our reputation at stake. Wikipedia has had a lot of bad press related to copyvio issues, but offsetting that, it also garners good press when the efforts of the copyright cleanup crew is recognized. Going after every issue we know of relentlessly is a matter of credibility for the project, no matter how trivial. On copyright and BLP, what matters is doing the Right Thing (tm), even if it isn't always a priority in the grand scheme of things. MLauba (talk) 23:54, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Earl L. Vandermeulen High School

I created this article by combining and redirecting the existing articles for "Vandermeulen High School" and "Earl L. Vandermeulen", neither of which were properly titled. I then got the Coren bot notification. It does appear that the former text is quite similar to the URL posted on my talk page - I will amend article and remove tag. Please let me know if I need to do anything further. Thanks! --Neighborhoodpalmreader (talk) 17:12, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Please put up the Dorothy McEwen article as submitted as I am the author and give you full permission to publish as posted. Thank you.