Talk:The Economist Democracy Index

Possible copyvio

I believe that the amount of material in this article taken directly from Democracy Index 2011 has strayed into WP:COPYVIO territory, and I have asked that it be looked at by someone with better knowledge of Wikipedia policies in that regard. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:06, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Beyond My Ken asked me to look at this because I work with copyright concerns on Wikipedia. As was brought up in 2008 on this talk page, there are copyright concerns with this material. Essentially, lists of facts are not copyrightable, but lists that involve value judgments or creative selection are. Rankings are copyrightable unless they are on obvious criteria - for instance "top sellers". Please see Wikipedia:Copyright in lists, which includes some background on how lists are traditionally handled on Wikipedia as well as some background on law from the Wikimedia Foundation attorneys. I've blanked this content and will list at the copyright problems board, but I think it is very likely that we need to come up with a safe way to present as much of the material as we can instead of using the list itself, unless the company is willing to license it (see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission). --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:00, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

This isn't the only article the index is featured on, and removing it makes the article pretty much useless. We might as well delete the article if it's not going to have the list. The list is also featured on the article List of Freedom Indices. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.128.221.196 (talk) 21:22, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

The problem is the amount of material being quoted. This article essentially quoted the entire graphic from the source, which is copyrighted, and this is not allowed, it's too much material. If there is another Wikipedia article which quotes a similar amount of material, it needs to be removed from there are well. Some other articles quote material, but not nearly as much. How much can be quoted is sometimes difficult to determine, which is why we have discussions like this one, but the amount that was here is clearly much too much to pass legal muster. Removing it doesn't make the article "useless", since we can synopsize the various conclusions of the report, and we provide a link for interested people to get the full report directly. Please see WP:COPYVIO for additional information. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:32, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I've looked at List of freedom indices and the amount used there doesn't seem to me to violate copyright, but Moonriddengirl has a much better sense of where the line is, so I'd defer to her judgment. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:34, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm very hesitant to weigh in on the safe amount, given the surprising feedback I received from our legal team when this was broached to them many months ago. We had always thought we could do, say, "Top 10" out of 500. They felt that this could be unsafe practice, since the "Top 10" was the most marketable. But in terms of the second article, it at least offers comparison to other indices, which is somewhat transformative. There's nothing wrong with linking to the full list from this article, if a direct link is possible, but otherwise we aren't here to reproduce creative works so much as to talk about them. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:54, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

That was kind of my feeling as well about List of freedom indices, that it was a creative assemblage of a number of different lists, which is markedly different from just copying one list. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:12, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I asked the copyright holder, london@eiu.com, to wich extent they want to be quoted.--Marc Lacoste (talk) 07:51, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Great. :) Please keep in mind that if they permit reproduction of the list, they'll have to do so through permissionswikimedia.org, and the material will have to be compatibly licensed. Otherwise, we are restricted to the amount permitted by WP:NFC for the same reason we are not permitted to accept material where permission is granted for Wikipedia only. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:12, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

This is their reply :

Dear Marc, Thank you for your enquiry. The full list is fine to show. Kind regards, Adriana, Economist Intelligence Unit, www.eiu.com

.

It's possible to ask her to transfer her mail to permissionswikimedia.org, but I can't think they would license their work under a license allowing commercial reuse. My goal was just to understand their POV on the quotation reuse, and it was the initial question, not to ask the economist if they want to become wikipedians. --Marc Lacoste (talk) 14:28, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

They don't have to become Wikipedians, they just have to license their property in a way that's compatible with Wikipedia's licensing requirements, and that means, unfortunately, that it must be available for commercial re-use. It's nice that they're willing to let us use the list in full, but our policies won't allow us to without the proper licensing. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:20, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Putting a work here under a gfdl license is making you a contributor, even if you don't write in wikimarkup and don't participate in talk pages. Your initial question was asking if putting the full list was a quote or a copyright violation. Asking a group to decide on grey areas like that is often sterile, so I asked the most appropriate person : the copyright holder. They feel fine to be quoted. Why do you want more? Live with that. Confirm their position, but if you want to ask people living on their intellectual production to abandon it, I won't defend that. I'll let you explain the gfdl necessity to Adriana at londoneiu.com --Marc Lacoste (talk) 07:15, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll be happy to explain it to them; I do it quite a lot. :) If you want to forward their letter to permissionswikimedia.org, please let me know. If you put "attention Moonriddengirl" in the subject line, it'll help make sure I'm the agent who gets it, so she doesn't get a form letter. Not that the form letter is rude, per se, but - well, it's the difference between getting a template and getting a note. If she's being helpful, I'd prefer that she be treated well. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:03, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

So is this just in limbo now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.128.221.196 (talk) 01:08, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

No, it is not "in limbo". At this moment, the material is a copyright violation and cannot be re-added to the article. Unless and until a license some through to OTRS, that will remain the case. I have reverted your restoration of the material to the article, which violates our policy. If you do it again, you are subject to being blocked from editing. Everyone reading this comment should take that as a final warning, albeit from a non-admin. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:02, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

So if they already told us the full list was fine to show, what's the problem? This reeks as somewhat authoritarian, and I can't say I appreciate the idea of restricting the flow of information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.128.221.196 (talk) 05:15, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

As explained above, the material is copyrighted and for us to have it here (copy-paste style) it has to be licensed under a free license such as CC BY SA. We just need them to send an e-mail confirming they want it released under a free license. Mohamed CJ (talk) 08:20, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I was in cc on 11 september on a mail from permissions@wikimedia.org to London@eiu.com asking for the CC license without any response yet. --Marc Lacoste (talk) 13:47, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Still no response. :/ I've removed the copyvio template for now along with the section in the hope that this will prevent our needing to semi-protect again. At this point, it seems alternatives need to be considered. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:14, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, so can we agree on citing only the overall score, without the 5 categories (Electoral process and pluralism, Functioning of government, Political participation, Political culture, Civil liberties)? with perhaps year on year evolution? --Marc Lacoste (talk) 20:14, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Not for the entire list, that would also be a copyvio. The best thing to do is to find another source that analyzes the data and use it as a cite for a text section. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:15, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, so could you remove every other list not generated in wikipedia, in the meantime I'll erase every list created by wikipedians based on the WP:OR policy. --Marc Lacoste (talk) 10:21, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I put back a censored list with only the interval of the index (9-10, 8-9, 7-8, etc.). Same information as in

wich was'nt removed, so I consider this information is OK to show. If you think the ranking (1.2.3.4.5.etc.) is too much a copyright violation, you could remove the column but please leave the list, otherwise the countries out of the list section doesn't make sense and you have to respect the work of the editors who put a list with the nature of each regime. I find it bleak to censor a democracy list. --Marc Lacoste (talk) 08:36, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

It's not censored, it's copyrighted, and we do not have the owner's permission to use it under our policies. The map is a creative re-conceiving of the data, and is therefore (probably) not a copyvio. Please do not restore the list, copyright violations are taken very seriously here, and you are liable to be sanctioned for it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:26, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm with Marc on this one. The index is already available for free on the Economist's website, and we're not making a profit off posting the list here, so what's the problem? Plus they already gave us permission to show the full list. All of this bureaucratic red tape appears to be quite at odds with what Wikipedia is supposed to accomplish. --ZacharyGeorgeNN (talk) 00:03, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Copyrighted Material

I understand this list by the Economist Intelligence Unit is copyrighted. Could we maybe include a link to the official list in the actual article? Johnxsmith (talk) 22:34, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

There's a link in the External Links section already, isn't that sufficient? Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:09, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

"Countries and territories not included in this list" section

It doesn't seem to make sense to have the extensive "Countries and territories not included in this list" section when the "this list" referred to is no longer included in the article. I would have just deleted it but since there seems to be some dispute around this article I thought it better to discuss first. - htonl (talk) 10:31, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I see the heading has now been changed to "... the list", but I still don't think it makes sense to have the countries *not* on the list if we don't have the list itself. (Especially when the "Dependencies" list includes such things as the Antarctic territories, which have no government at all.) In fact, I think the not-included list is WP:OR, since as far as I can tell some Wikipedian has got (from somewhere uncited) a list of all countries and territories and then removed those listed in the Democracy Index. - htonl (talk) 20:42, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the list should go, and if it stays it should reformatted so that it doesn't leave so much white space on the page. Bevo74 (talk) 21:19, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Where does the 'non-list' come from? Is it WP:OR, or copied from the same place as the deleted main list? Bevo74 (talk) 19:36, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I removed the list but the removal was reverted without any explanation. In my opinion the list should go because: a) we have a list of countries not included but no list of countries that are included! b) Also, I agree that this list would fall into OR, because a list of countries not included was not (obviously) included in the source. Deciding what counts as a state or whether or not to list dependencies is OR. -- Hazhk ^{Talk to me} 13:00, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Equador

How come Equador hasn't got a higher rating? I thought it was one of the most free countries in the world, giving asylum to Julian Assange and all that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.100.198.13 (talk) 11:21, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

We have to wait 5 years in Britain. It's not a big deal. You can't change Parliament every 1 year of so. Johnxsmith (talk) 22:36, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

@213.100.198.13 - You should use the link in the External Links section and read about the criteria used to assemble the list. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:40, 24 November 2012 (UTC)