Jump to content

Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board

Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ric man (talk | contribs) at 23:27, 2 March 2017 (→‎Fair Use campaign - Next steps). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Shortcut
Australian Wikipedians' notice board

Portal | Project | Board | Alerts | Deletions | To-Do | Category | Related | Help


    WikiProjects edit | watch
    In the news edit | watch
    Read and edit Wikinews


    27 August 2024 –
    Australian Police and New Zealand Police announce they have concluded a joint illicit drug operation that resulted in 1,611 arrests and 2,962 charges nationwide. The police also confiscated almost 1,400 kilograms (3,100 lb) of illicit drugs and over 2,500 cannabis plants, worth 93 million AUD (US$63 million). (DW)
    25 August 2024 –
    Four people are injured in a mass stabbing in Engadine, New South Wales, Australia. The suspect is later taken into custody. (Reuters)
    15 August 2024 – Israel–Hamas war
    Peter Dutton, the leader of Australia’s Liberal Party, calls on the Australian government to ban the entry of Palestinian refugees fleeing from conflict in the Gaza Strip, which is met with significant condemnation from several politicians and organizations as promoting racial stereotypes. (ABC Australia) (Al Jazeera)
    SBS World News reports that the Australian government has rejected a majority of Palestinian visa applications, accepting 2,922 applications and rejecting 7,111 applications while granting 8,746 visas to Israeli citizens and rejecting only 235 applications. (Al Jazeera)
    12 August 2024 –
    One person is killed and several others are injured when a helicopter stolen from Cairns Airport crashes into a hotel in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. (The Guardian)
    7 August 2024 – 2024 Summer Olympics
    French police detain Australian field hockey player Tom Craig for allegedly purchasing cocaine. (DW)


    More Australian current events
    See also: Current events on Wikinews
    Categories edit | watch
    On this day in Australia edit | watch

    Australia · Arts · Architecture · Cities · Communications · Culture · Economy · Education · Environment · Geography · Government · Healthcare · History · Law · Language · Lists · Media · Military · Music · Organisations · People · Politics · Religion · Science · Society · Sport · Subdivisions · Transport · Tourism

    Australian states and territories · Australian Capital Territory · New South Wales · Northern Territory · Queensland · South Australia · Tasmania · Victoria · Western Australia

    Capital cities · Adelaide · Brisbane · Canberra · Darwin · Hobart · Melbourne · Perth · Sydney

    Australia stubs · AFL stubs · Geography stubs · Government stubs · Law stubs · People stubs · Paralympic medalists stubs · Television stubs

    8 September:



    To-Do edit | watch
    Announcements edit | watch

    Here are some tasks you can do to help with WikiProject Australia:

    Requests · Ariadne Australia · Awakenings Festival · Drought Force · Electoral reform in Australia · Fossils of Australia · Landforms of Australia · Sculpture of Australia

    Articles needing attention · Australian contemporary dance · Crime in Australia · Environment of Australia · Gender inequality in Australia · Privacy in Australian law · Secession in Australia · Tourism in Australia

    Images requested · Cheryl Kernot · MV Pacific Adventurer · Poppy King · Rosemary Goldie · James Moore · OneAustralia · Australian major cricket venues

    Verification needed · Architecture of Australia · Australian performance poetry · FreeTV Australia · Hindmarsh Island Royal Commission · List of political controversies in Australia · Punk rock in Australia

    Quality watch:

    Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/WikiProject used

    Fair Use recommendation for Australian law, could WP have a role in this?

    Hi all,

    The background:
    As some of you may know, the Australian productivity commission recently handed down a report into Australian Intellectual Property law (Report), and one of its key recommendations was the introduction of the principle of Fair Use - to replace the current Australian system of Fair Dealing. This is not the first time a government inquiry has recommended this (e.g. the 2014 Australian Law Reform Commission's report Copyright and the Digital Economy).

    As Australian Wikimedians, we have (arguably) some of the best practical experience in the country working with a Fair Use framework - as it is the method by which all the company logos, album covers, film posters etc. appear on English Wikipedia articles. Ironically, we have very limited experience in working with the Australian Fair Dealing system (that's the "Part VB of the copyright act" you might have seen on university handouts for example - it's a "statutory license" meaning that schools PAY for this, even for the use of free-access websites). This current system is deeply opposed by the Australian public education sector (see for example the "Fair Use And Why Australian Schools Need It" documents published by the Copyright Advisory Groups (Schools and TAFEs)) and the Libraries sector (see the Australian Libraries Copyright Council submission into this enquiry[1]). Given Wikimedia is all about free-access to the sum of human knowledge, by rights, the Australian schools and libraries sectors are those who we ought to be supporting as best as we can.

    Now, unsurprisingly, the Collecting agencies of Australia are opposed to this change - See for example the counter-arguments from the CopyrightAgencyLtd[2] or Australian Copyright Council[3]. They are, as expected, talking about this in the context of preserving the rights (and revenues) of Australian content creators and using emotive arguments about struggling authors to push this point. This is notwithstanding that one of the Fair Use checks is whether the usage would undermine the commercial value of the work in question. On the flip side, there has been a fair bit of support for the idea - from obvious places e.g. EFF [4] but also from more general sources e.g. IP-Watch [5] and these two articles by Fairfax Economics columnist Peter Martin [6] & [7].

    The suggestion:
    Australian Wikimedians, through the vehicle of the English Wikipedia, have a massively visible platform for awareness-raising about the role of Fair Use - because so many Australians are benefiting from Fair Use every day when they read our articles, without knowing it!
    Wikipedia is neutral as a matter of core policy, but we are also deeply activist as a matter of supporting free-access to knowledge.
    So, I'm wondering if the Australian Wikimedia community would be interested in "getting involved" in this area of public policy advocacy??

    Specifically - here's the idea I thought might be practical, and powerful. I'm asking your thoughts about whether you think it's a good idea in the general sense. Please don't pre-emptively shoot it down on technical minutiae, I'm aware that some software (as well as communications) work would be needed to make it happen.

    For all the media files on English Wikipedia that are a) are in the category Category:All non-free media, b) when they are viewed from an Australian IP address, c) by a non-logged in user,
    we overlay them with a graphic that says something to the effect of:

    This image is illegal to view in Australia under copyright law
    Click here learn why and how you can change that. Show me anyway.
    Clicking the 'learn why' would take you to a page (on meta?) describing Fair Use etc, and linking off to the lobbying campaigns of our allies (petitions, contact your MP etc.). The 'show me anyway' would dismiss the graphic and show the original Fair Use image.

    The idea here is to make Australians aware that they are already benefiting from Fair Use. Furthermore, unlike the SOPA blackout this can be targeted to only people who are affected (Australians viewing Fair Use content), be dismissible, and run for any period that allied organisations are making lobbying efforts (rather than a fixed 24 hours). Clearly, this idea (specifically the start/stop times, and the wording) would need to be coordinated carefully with organisations who could do the 'heavy lifting' of communicating with the press such as the ALCC - they are the lawyers, not us. Also, it would require the support of WMF-Legal as I imagine filtering a banner/graphic on the basis of IP-range has privacy policy concerns, not to mention the act of political advocacy in general.

    Obviously it would be importantly also to have the support of Wikimedia Australia (i'd say actually that it would be mandatory) but this would first-and-foremost be an on-Wikipedia action and therefore would require the consensus of Australian Wikipedian editors.

    If this is a super-dumb idea, please don't shoot me. But if it's a good one that needs some tweaks, please say so. I just think we're in an excellent position to lobby for some improvements to Australian copyright law because we already have the platform and already have a massive category of Fair Use content that Australians are accessing every day.

    Sincerely, Wittylama 15:44, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks Witty lama for your well thought out response to the issue. I do hope others respond as well. I do think that it is well worth considering. One small problem is at this time of the year many Australian editors disappear from here into shopping hysteria like the rest of the country.... there might be a delay of responses... JarrahTree 23:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not an editor, but an academic working on copyright reform, and work for civil society organisations that are active on the issue (Creative Commons Australia and Digital Rights Watch). We would welcome the support of WP & Wikimedia in advocating for the public interest in upcoming copyright debates. Bringing the importance of fair use to the attention of Australian users is an excellent idea. There are some legal issues - i.e. that some uses of the non-free media may already be permitted under Australian fair dealing law, but it's still an important point. The other really useful point that the WP community can make here is to show that fair use is not uncertain: that with a few guidelines, it's actually relatively easy to apply the legal rules to different situations. Nicsuzor (talk) 23:48, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    While I support introducing fair use in Australia, I don't think that Wikipedia should get involved in national politics in this way. This is a contested issue (this article on The Conversation does a good job of discussing the debate), with some content owners raising legitimate concerns about the Productivity Commission's recommendations - see this op-ed, for instance. As such, we cannot assume that Australian Wikipedia editors as a group support what the Productivity Commission has proposed. Wikimedia Australia and individual editors should advocate for this change, but Wikipedia shouldn't. Nick-D (talk) 07:58, 21 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    hi Nick-D, thanks for taking the time to comment. I'm not assuming that all Australian editors as a group already support the introduction of Fair Use to Australian law - that's why I'm asking what people think (of both the general principle and of this specific suggestion) here. This thread is to seek some form of [initial] consensus in that regard. I do assume that because we're already practitioners and beneficiaries of a Fair Use system, that we would be more informed about its benefits/risks that the general Australian population: if any group of non-lawyer Australians can speak about how fair use works in practice, it's us!
    I know that political lobbying has been done (eg for Freedom of Panorama legislation) on various language editions of WP, but I don't know if there's ever been any geo (IP) targeted advocacy before.
    I should also note that the Producivity Commission report recommends a whole range of things to do with IP, not just Fair Use, (including things like confirming that 'circumventing geoblocking is not a copyright infringement' - see page 28 of the report for a summary table of all recommendations). However this suggestion here that Australian WP editors might like to get involved is specifically and only related to Fair Use - given that it is the thing that we already promote by default in Australia through our use of it on en.wp. Wittylama —Preceding undated comment added 10:58, 21 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]


    I see this as raising two question, one is how the Wikipedia community reacts to the potential changes and how Wikimedia Australia reacts to the potential changes. In an ideal world they should be the same but WMAU is bound by the requirement of representing its members the larger the members base the stronger the voice WMAU can speak with, everyone is welcome to join WMAU. I'll watch this discussion with a keen interest to see what evolves as a WP contributor, as a member of the community, an outreach project leader and as President of WMAU. As yet WMAU has no agreed position and any members of the chapter or committee are speaking as individuals. Gnangarra 11:05, 21 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

    " ... WMAU is bound by the requirement of representing its members ..."
    @Gnangarra:Which "requirement" in particular? Mitch Ames (talk) 13:00, 21 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikimedia Australia is an Incorporated member organisation and charity it represents the interests, and furthers aims of its members, this is the primary purpose of all incorporated associations. Gnangarra 13:04, 21 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Further comments at User talk:Gnangarra#Wikimedia Australia's primary purpose, if anyone's interested, because it's off-topic here. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Personal attack noted and deleted, Merry Christmas Gnangarra 00:10, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    My refutation of this accusation of personal attack is at User talk:Mitch Ames § December 2016 Mitch Ames (talk) 02:53, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks Gnanarra. You're quite right - there are two potential (and partially overlapping) communities who could "do" something in this regard - the Chapter and the Editing Community - each with its own tools and constraints. WM-AU has previously been involved in submissions to government enquiries (e.g. our Submission on Australian Digital Future Directions paper in 20009) - which does mention Fair Use in passing - but the time for official comment/submission to this current enquiry is now over. At this point it's a question of publicity and lobbying (both in the positive and negative senses of those words) by interested stakeholders to encourage the Federal parties to actually turn these recommendations into a Bill, and then to actually vote on it in parliament... The Copyright industry is most certainly already doing this (see for example their "free is not fair" campaign). So, yeah, aside from this on-wiki suggestion, it would be good if WM-AU as an Chapter could do something in supporting this - perhaps a press-release or letter of support that our aforementioned allies could help to bolster their own work? Wittylama 12:13, 21 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Again, not a regular editor here, but someone who has worked closely with Wikimedia over the years and now works on copyright reform. If Wikimedia Australia does agree to support this suggestion, the organisation I work for, the Australian Digital Alliance could provide support in terms of materials to link to. We already have a series of CC-licensed videos and have plans for fair use mythbusting documents. If you want a partner, we're interested. Damph (talk) 12:12, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm supportive of a change to our regulations. But if we do write a message, I don't think it should state that *viewing* an image hosted under US fair use on US-hosted Wikipedia is *illegal* for Australians unless we have a strong legal opinion that says so. I doubt it's true. --99of9 (talk) 04:30, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks to the people who have commented here. It seems that, while there's certainly not an overwhelming or vociferous support for the idea, there is a general degree of positivity for the general concept across the comments (with the exception of Nick-D which I acknowledge). I agree with Nicsuzor and 99of9's points that the *wording* of any such notice (and landing-page) would need to be carefully constructed to be both 'good design' and 'legally accurate'. Perhaps an good text to overlay would be, simply, "FAIR USE" and people could click through to find out what that means (or click the 'x' to dismiss the overlay and see the image itself).

    I particularly thank Damph for offering that the Australian Digital Alliance could be the formal partner/supporter of this concept. And, I believe, if this idea would work it would be absolutely crucial for an external professional organisation that is *already* active in this lobbying-space would be the leader. This is not an area that Wikipedians or Wikimedia-Australia is capable of "owning" even if we wanted to, but it IS something Wikipedia can direct attention to the existing work of others like the ADA.

    This leads me to three questions:

    1. Would WMF legal department (e.g. User:Slaporte_(WMF)) be able to say that the idea of geo-targeting an overlay on Fair-use tagged images, for the Australian IP-range, to logged-out readers, for a few weeks(?), is both technically possible and legally allowable within of the Wikipedia terms of use/privacy policy?
    2. Would Damph be able to say that the text of the landing page could be written by the ADA and public-facing communication be coordinated by them - and what is the timeframe for starting/finishing any such campaign?
    3. And if these first two questions were "yes", how would Australian-Wikipedians here recommend that a fair community-consensus for approval or rejection of the proposal be reached?

    Sincerely, Wittylama 13:03, 23 January 2017 (UTC).[reply]

    Hi all - in response to Wittylama I can confirm that I've talked to the ADA Board and we are very keen on the project if you are. I think launching in March would be best. Public consultation on the proposed PC changes closes next week, so that will be the period when the government is making a decision about any response. We can certainly provide a landing page, which we would edit in consultation with WM-AU. It would be on a fairly slim website, with the aforementioned fair use videos, a few fair use fact sheets ("what is fair use?" "mythbusting" etc) and probably a call to arms for people to write to or phone certain parliamentarians. Does that sound like what you had in mind? Damph (talk) 23:34, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi all, I spoke with Wittylama, and want to confirm here that this is technically possible and legally feasible if there is community consensus in support. Following the Wikimedia Foundation's policy guidelines, we have a few steps to get approval for a potential action like this. The first step is to get the community's opinion on the proposal. As part of this discussion, it would be good to thoroughly consider the user experience of the proposal, so the campaign is designed to continue to empower people to get access to knowledge and information. Fair use can be a very important legal doctrine for free expression and the public interest. I'm glad to see a discussion about how to support a policy like this in Australia. Best, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 01:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Ask a librarian

    Is the "Ask a librarian" still operating? I don't see the link anymore on talk pages. --Micha 11:33, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Should still be there for article talk pages – {{WikiProject Australia}} hasn't had any edits to that part of the code since June 2016‎. Is there a specific page or pages where the link doesn't show? - Evad37 [talk] 11:43, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. Now I can see it. Was on the wrong page. - Do you know where I can get information about the success? For example how often the service was used? --Micha 12:04, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    It is very unlikely that we would be able to retrieve that sort of information - as the librarians could be at any of the participating institutions, and are not otherwise tied to the links JarrahTree 01:05, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    JarrahTree is correct. Micha, When I first proposed to the National Library reference desk staff (I was their social-media manager at the time) that answering wikipedia editors' reference enquiries would be a beneficial project, the idea was that the librarians would come ON to Wikipedia - the librarians of the National library of Israel do this with the Hebrew wikipedia (documentation). However that was not possible for a variety of reasons in Australia: one because the staff couldn't log the enquiries through their centralised system (not dissimilar to our OTRS) which is required as a publicly-funded organisation; but also because there is no 'australian specific' section of the wiki. Israel-Hebrew is a logical combination for their staff to be able to justify their time - but Australian library staff cannot justify time answering questions from any English speaker about all potential topics. So, as a result, we ended up with a system where the 'ask a librarian' external-link was placed on the talkpages of articles with the Wikiproject Australia tag. This is not particularly visible and, more importantly to your original question, simply sends the wikimedian to the Library's existing public enquiry website. It does NOT specifically track the origin of the enquiry as 'being from wikipedia' (although it is encouraged in the documentation that wikipedians state this fact, so it can be recorded un-officially) and furthermore the link to the relevant STATE library is provided as well as the National library for each time this template is shown (meaning the statistics of usage are potentially split across up to 8 libraries). From the library's perspective their work-activities have not changed, there's just now some links to the service on Wikipedia which hopefully encourage more use of it. I no longer work at the National Library but the results when I was there the actual usage wasn't very much. My assumption is that this is because a) the link is not very visible, b) requires the wikipedian to go to the mental effort to 'leave' wikipedia to a different website, and c) the interface of that website requires you to fill in a dozen fields (click 'enquire now' to see what I mean) which is normal for libraries to track abnormal for wikimedians to be asked these questions (like 'postcode'). Does that help answer the question? Wittylama 14:40, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Settlement_Scheme

    The colour poster on this page "1920s poster for the Group Settlement Scheme" is totally incorrect in the context of this article. This poster is dated around 1913 for a different land settlement scheme - the Ready-made Farms scheme of the Midland Railway Company. It has nothing to do with the Group Settlement Scheme at all. The image is sourced from: http://www.carnamah.com.au/ready-made-farms. The solution is to remove the image, then the article will be more correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Copeboox (talk • contribs) 11:22, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    I suggest you take this up with the State Library of Western Australia, from which the image was sourced. --AussieLegend (✉) 12:07, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    removed image - the Midland Railway Scheme was totally separate from what is known as the group settlement scheme - JarrahTree 12:14, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    self correcting BLP editors

    I have no idea whether many other editors are finding this, but I have encountered an increase of subjects of BLP articles who seem to think they have inherent rights to correct articles about themselves... I am not sure whether other editors have encountered this phenomenon, it would be useful to get a sense of whether this needs to go up a step to a wider-scoped noticeboard - or whether there is a sense of inadequate templating inside BLP articles that clearly indicate the requirements of BLP articles... ? anyone with any thoughts of this? JarrahTree 09:44, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]


    Fair Use campaign - Next steps

    I've moved this sub-heading down to make this a new section to ensure visibility rather than it being lost in the earlier thread.

    As described in the above section "#Fair Use recommendation for Australian law, could WP have a role in this?" the Australian productivity commission recently handed down a report into Australian Intellectual Property law (Report), and one of its key recommendations was the introduction of the principle of Fair Use - to replace the current Australian system of Fair Dealing. This is not the first time a government inquiry has recommended this (e.g. the 2014 Australian Law Reform Commission's report Copyright and the Digital Economy). Several of Wikimedia's allied communities in Australia are fighting for this change - notably the public education sector (see for example the "Fair Use And Why Australian Schools Need It" documents published by the Copyright Advisory Groups (Schools and TAFEs)) and the Libraries sector (see the Australian Libraries Copyright Council submission into this enquiry[8]).

    I propose that English Wikipedia supports this campaign with a banner which sends people to a campaign page on-wiki with more information about the wider campaign for the introduction of Fair Use in Australia. I propose that this be limited by the following methods. The banner would:

    1. only displayed to logged-out readers, on the English-Wikipedia
    2. only on mainspace articles which include a Fair-Use image.
    3. only to people viewing from an Australian IP address.
    4. that the campaign be for a fixed period of a few weeks.
    5. that it have an "x" to dismiss (which stops that person seeing the banner again)
    6. that the banner not block/obscure page content.

    (originally I proposed an image-overlay system but that's probably too complex to manage - let's just stick with our tried-and-true technology of banners)

    Notably, Slaporte (WMF) from WMF-Legal department has confirmed that this proposal is technically possible and legally feasible if there is community consensus (see the above section #Note from Wikimedia Legal), and Damph from the Australian Digital Alliance (ADA) has confirmed it is willing and able to support such a campaign (with their staff and documentation resources).

    I know that Neutrality is a core principle of Wikipedia and political advocacy is something we are very hesitant about. However, I argue that providing free knowledge is not a politically neutral stance and Fair Use is something which the English Wikipedia community uses on a daily basis - even though it is currently illegal in Australia. If Australian Wikipedia editors are benefiting every day from that system because our website is hosted in the USA, then we should be willing to advocate for it in our home jurisdiction - especially if our library and education allies would greatly benefit from this copyright law change but don't have the visible platform to advocate for it. Wikipedia has done political advocacy before - notably in Europe, promoting Freedom of Panorama legislation and globally, against SOPA. I believe that Fair Use is "core business" to how we operate so it is valid for us to promote awareness of it.

    Creationistas - Australian Copyright Is Broken

    I've included here on the right an example of a video produced by the ADA in their 2013 Fair Use campaign "The Creationistas - Australian Copyright is Broken", which directed people to the dedicated campaign website (internet archive link) and their main site http://digital.org.au/. The ADA could potentially make something like this (or re-adjust this one) for a Wikipedia project page about this e.g. at [[Wikipedia:Fair Use for Australia]] (or something like that) and the ADA, in collaboration with WMF-legal and WikimediaAustralia could handle any mainstream media enquiries (as/when appropriate).

    So, I know there's been some comments above, but now there is confirmation that this idea is legally and technically possible (equivalent to the Commons FoP campaign discussion or the MetaWiki Free Bassel campaign discussion) perhaps a straw poll here, would be the best way forward to determine Australian-community consensus? If you support this idea, or disagree with this proposal, have comments/questions, or would like to propose a design for such a banner please comment! Wittylama 11:53, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    JarrahTree - Fair Use, a broad copyright exception, is not and has never been part of Australian copyright law. We [currently] have a different system called Fair_dealing#Australia in which the kinds of 'allowed' actions have to be specifically listed in the act, otherwise it's not allowed (e.g. it's only since 2006 that using a VCR is technically legal in Aus). Fair Use makes you apply a 'fairness' test to any kind of use of copyrighted work - which is what we do on Wikipedia any time we upload a fair-use image (we clarify that it's "small" and "only used once" and "can't be replaced with a free image" etc. etc.). We do this on english Wikipedia because the website is hosted in the USA, but the legality of australians utilising this american law, when uploading australian images while they're sitting in australia - is questionable. For that reason most of the other language editions of wikipedia don't allow fair-use images because most of their editors and readers are physically located in juristictions which don't have fair use (e.g. Germany). This proposal I'm making here will not change the way Wikipedia operates - but it would radically change the way the school and library sectors (among others) work. It would save them MILLIONS in fees they pay to the copyright agency for their "statutory license" they negotiate to have the right to use things which the public use for free (e.g. TV shows, websites) in public schools and libraries (that's the "par VB of the copyright act" notice you might have seen at the start of any printouts you received at university, etc. Wittylama 14:05, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    In short, because logged-in users are a very small proportion of the visitors to Wikipedia but are the ones most keenly affected by 'banner fatigue' from various surveys, announcements etc, and, after all, this proposal is aimed to raise awareness "in the general public" rather than within the wikipedia-editing community. Another way of putting it: no doubt some active wikipedians would complain that they weren't consulted and don't like ANY banners - hiding the banners from Wikipedia-editors would reduce their frustration without decreasing the visibility to the target audience. Wittylama 12:31, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Lankiveil (speak to me) 11:43, 28 February 2017 (UTC).[reply]
    Further to this, I've advertised this discussion on the Australian Chapter mailing list, and on the WikipediaWeekly facebook group[9] - can anyone recommend other places to notify people (primarily targeting Australians, not merely for obtaining comments from those who won't be affected)? Wittylama 16:36, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment weighing in again on behalf of the Australian Digital Alliance. Now that we've made it through our annual conference, we'll have capacity to start working on the prep material for this whenever there is consensus in the community. In terms of timing - the public consultation on the PC recommendations has finished, and submissions are now being considered by government. It's not clear if we'll have a response in 3 weeks or 3 months (or even 3 years - some reports never really get responded to) - but I'd say that anytime in the next 3-4 months would be a good time to run the campaign. That way the messaging would be going to government as they are making decisions, and hopefully it will help to counter some of the public perception that fair use is just aimed at harming creators. We've got some new videos from our Forum last week that we're hoping to cut into short mythbusting FAQs, that could also go on the external website. I'll look at starting some ideas for the Wikipedia landing page on the campaign to share as an example, so people have a a better idea of what it would actually look like.Damph (talk) 01:19, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    For some comparison, here is the landing page of the 2015 Freedom of Panorama advocacy campaign in Europe, and these were the proposed banners accompanying that campaign. Perhaps Seddon (WMF), as the person with the most campaign banner experience on-wiki, can suggest some other examples that have been used for other advocacy campaigns around the world? Wittylama 11:33, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support As a long term Australian Wikimedian, it's great to see this campaign happening, and fair use in Australian copyright law would have educational benefits at all levels. I don't see why we can't push for change, and add our voice to those in the sector already doing so. Orderinchaos 01:43, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oppose As I've noted previously, this is a good thing for individual editors and Wikimedia Australia to advocate, but Wikipedia itself should not be seen as advocating for a change in this contested policy area as it would raise concerns around its neutrality and reliability. For instance, would readers who see this banner really assume that the Copyright law of Australia article is going to be neutral? Nick-D (talk) 07:51, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I thank you for your contribution Nick-D. To clarify - would you have also been opposed to the Freedom of Panorama advocacy campaign (if it had been applicable to Australia) and the SOPA-shutdown (which did happen in Australia too), or is your concern related specifically to this subject?
    More generally, I empathise with your concern (which I understand to be akin to WP:NOTADVOCATE and the need to uphold WP:NPOV in what people see on WP). My response to this valid critique is that I believe that our core principle of advocating for "free knowledge" is NOT a politically neutral stance, and running a "free knowledge" encyclopedia is an inherently disruptive/political act (not as much in Australia as in, say, China, but still). I believe it is possible to make a landing-page that describes the facts of why "we" believe Fair Use is an important thing for Australia - and dispells myths about it being spread by the Copyright-lobby - in a way that is factual and the community feels represents/advocates for our values. See, for example, the landing page for the FoP campaign on Meta:Freedom of Panorama in Europe in 2015 which, in my personal opinion, did not put the Neutrality of the article Freedom of Panorama in question. I suspect that you won't be swayed by my argument here, and that's fair enough, but I thought I ought to put it down in words for the record nevertheless :-) Wittylama 11:23, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not familiar with the political arguments around those other campaigns (the whole SOPA thing went over my head) or the balance of public opinion. I do have a mild degree of familiarity with the political arguments here, and am highly uncomfortable with Wikipedia being seen to campaign against prominent authors such as Anna Funder ([10]) and possibly the Australian Labor Party, which previously opposed changes to liberalise copyright laws applying to books. Wikimedia Australia and individual editors should certainly participate in this debate, but let's keep Wikipedia neutral. Nick-D (talk) 10:29, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi again Nick-D, the article you link to does indeed quote a noted Australian author opposing the introduction of Fair Use (published pre-empting the Productivity Commission's recommendation). Also quoted in that article is a piece by the SMH Economics editor pointing out that there were 5 (now 6) government enquiries over the years (commissioned by both sides of the political divide) which have recommended the introduction of Fair Use - so it's a bipartisan issue in that sense. However, that a fair amount of mainstream media publicity on the productivity commission report is actually focusing on the other main recommendation of the commissions' report relating to book publishers: the removing of Parallel Import Restrictions (see Parallel_import#Australia). This recommendation was in the same report, and affects the same peakbody (Copyright Agency Ltd - CAL) but is an entirely different part of law - its about trade restrictions, not copyright. This distinction is lost on the general public and CAL are deliberately conflating these two stories together to get them both shot down rather than deal with them separately on their respective merits (quick google search showing how the two stories are often mixed together). See this report in the SMH about the difference between the two, and how the Publishing industry is affected by each. Damph (from the ADA, above, who is also the copyright-advisor to the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee) tells me that she spends a lot of time/effort busting myths about Fair Use which are actually critiques of Parallel Import laws. This proposal for Wikipedia is solely about the Fair Use recommendation, not about Parallel import Restrictions. A major purpose is to demystify to the Australian public what Fair Use actually looks like in practice - since our infobox images of logos, album covers, movie posters etc are a perfect example of the system in daily use (and in a way that in no-way commercially disadvantages the copyright holder). Wittylama 11:39, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Dear StAnselm, thank you for adding your voice, even if it is strongly against my suggestion :-) To clarify, could you elaborate? While I respect your opinion, my understanding of NotAdvocate is that it is about the content of the articles themselves, and that Wikipedia's very mission statement is 'advocacy' - for free-knowledge. As I asked Nick-D above, who expressed similar concern, would you have also been opposed to the Freedom of Panorama advocacy campaign (if it had been applicable to Australia) and the SOPA-shutdown (which did happen in Australia too) - on the basis that you're opposed *any* such activity? Or, is your concern related specifically to this subject - Fair Use in Australian copyright law? Wittylama 20:42, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I was opposed to the SOPA-shutdown as well, and thought that it violated WP:POINT. Yes, I know WP:NOTADVOCATE and WP:POINT are written in the context of articles, but I think they apply more widely - we should not be engaging in political advocacy. I have no idea where you get the idea that "Wikipedia's very mission statement is 'advocacy' - for free-knowledge". In fact, I didn't know we had a mission statement. StAnselm (talk) 21:22, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    you're quite right that wikipedia doesn't have a formal "mission statement" in the way that the WMF as a registered charity does. Nevertheless, in the imprecise sense of "this is what we do", the creation and dissemination of "free knowledge" (Especially in the libre sense of the phrase) is what Wikipedia[ns] does/do. I personally believe that the NPOV and Free Knowledge concepts are - in an era of fake-news and information paywalls respectively - inherently political/advocacy positions. I appreciate that this does not change your opinion on how Wikipedia's banner space should be used (or not used, in this case!), but I hope we can amicably agree to disagree on that point :-) Wittylama 22:06, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support as per nom. Would be useful for WP and other Australian organisations. Jjamesryan (talk | contribs) 22:46, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment I also have similar concerns to the two opposes above. I don't think this at the level of SOPA or the proposed FoP laws in Europe, because this simply isn't mission-critical – whatever happens with fair use in Australia, it isn't going to change the way Wikipedia operates, no extra images would be uploadable to Commons, nor would any images have to be deleted. Fair-use would be nice to have, and would help out free-knowledge organisations etc, but I don't think Wikipedia itself should be doing the advocating. However, this isn't an outright "oppose" because I'm not exactly sure what you are proposing in terms of details. I could be more supportive if it turns out to be a relatively neutrally worded banner/landing page, that informs rather than advocates – i.e. says something along the lines of "this is how Wikipedia uses U.S. fair use, this is the situation in Australia (fair dealing), here's what supporters say, here's what opposers say, make up your own mind" (all appropriately linked and referenced). - Evad37 [talk] 00:37, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    That's certainly not what's being proposed as far as I can see. Yes, I'd be somewhat OK with that, although I don't really see the need. But we must not abandon neutrality just because it will be a banner rather than an article. StAnselm (talk) 08:32, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    StAnselm is correct in that this proposal is indeed one to advocate for a specific position - in support of the introduction of Fair Use in Australian copyright law. It would be disingenuous of me to soften that statement here just to try to encourage your support and then for you to be unpleasantly surprised later! I think a neutral description of the responses to the Fair Use proposals over the years could be a viable Wikipedia article (an expansion of Copyright law of Australia#Fair dealing perhaps?). However that said Evad37, I certainly DO intend that the banner(s) and landing-page text will be written in a way that is factually accurate and not hyperbolic - in keeping with Wikipedia's general 'voice'. While Damph will be the primary author (she's the actual Lawyer in this field after all) I fully intend for the banner message(s) and landing page to be commented-on/critiqued by the community for style-appropriateness and checked by WMF-legal and WMF-comms teams etc. (as per the relevant WMF policy on these matters). As I've just replied to Nick-D, above, a major component of this proposal is to demonstrate to the Australian public what Fair Use looks like in daily practice - and how our use of logos, album covers etc. is not harming the copyright owner.
    Finally, you're right that if Fair Use were to be added to Australian law, it wouldn't change what content appears on Wikipedia (unlike the FoP debates in Europe). However it would reduce the sense of Forum shopping that we currently have - where Australians are viewing Australian content in Australia, but relying on an American copyright exception to do so - not to mention how it would save the public education and library sectors $millions in fees for the use of otherwise publicly available content. Wittylama 12:24, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for the support comment Sauronjim but just to clarify - the very original proposal was suggesting an 'image overlay' not a full-page takeover. That is, to somehow obscure the Fair-Use image itself with a message saying "this is Fair Use" (or something similar) until dismissed. That would have been technically feasible but would require some bespoke coding, whereas the geolocated banner is a standard piece of software (although we still need to restrict it further to be only seen on articles which also include fair-use images - which will be, 95%+ of the time, in the infobox). As for the "changed content on Wikipedia" argument - you mightn't agree with it, but it is nevertheless factually correct that even if the Australian law changes, what people see on the English Wikipedia won't change. Maybe just maybe it would cause other countries to adopt Fair Use too (like some countries are following us with plain pack cigarettes) in which case the Wikipedia language editions serving those countries might change their local wiki policy to allow Fair Use - but that's a stretch! :-) Wittylama 13:28, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah right, I misunderstood what you meant by the overlay. Nevertheless, I stand by my arguments against the "changed content on Wikipedia" argument. Yes, it may be factually correct that what people see would not change. But I believe on principle that if one country (most notably America) making the same change would result in a change for the better or worse to Wikipedia, then Wikipedia should take a stand in favour of or against any similar change in any country, or at least any country which primarily uses that language version of Wikipedia. That is to say, I believe that we should here make the same decision as would be made if America's current laws matched Australia's current laws, and America were considering making the same changes Australia is currently. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sauronjim (talk • contribs) 18:49, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment - I disagree with Wittylama's assertion that

      our core principle of advocating for "free knowledge" is NOT a politically neutral stance, and running a "free knowledge" encyclopedia is an inherently disruptive/political act

    We are (or strive to be) neutral in that we don't favour one political group or set of ideas over another. The fact that our principles differ from some political groups does not make us "inherently disruptive/political", and I don't think it helps our case by making such an assertion.
    Our purpose (or "mission statement") is to "benefit readers by acting as an encyclopedia", "to create a free encyclopedia"; it is not actually "advocating" for anything. In particular our purpose is simply to provide free knowledge, not to change anybody's mind about anything (including that knowledge should be free). There's a fundamental difference between doing something, and advocating that others should do the same thing. Our purposes is explicitly the former and not the latter.
    I think a banner that advocates a particular view (no matter how much it helps our mission) is a blatant violation of WP:NOTADVOCATE and contrary to our principle of neutrality.
    That being said, I agree with Evad37 that a banner that is neutrally worded, stating the facts (or a linking to a page that does) but not advocating a particular view, might be a reasonable compromise between our desire to advocate for what helps us, and our pillars of neutrality and non-advocacy. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:38, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Unsure about the banner, but I'd like to be kept informed myself of how I can support this campaign. I note that Wikimedia legal have no objection to it provided it has "community support". It certainly has mine. Andrewa (talk) 18:05, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    paywall for The Australian and other NewsCorp newspapers

    Today as I worked through my watchlist I found a number of articles with really messed-up citations. So like a good citizen, I tried to fix them by clicking the URL and retrieving the fields like title, author, source date, etc. My problem is that many (all?) of our NewsCorp only allow a few articles to be retrieved each day and then you hit the paywall. This is increasingly impacting on my ability to both manage my watchlist and create new content. If it was just one newspaper, I'd probably be willing to pay for a digital subscription, but unfortunately it's many different newspapers. Are other people experiencing this problem? If you know of a solution, please let me know here or by email as you prefer. Kerry (talk) 07:13, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    A lot of this content should be available online through the likes of Factiva and EbscoHost which are available with a library card from the NLA or pretty much any state library system in the country. Hack (talk) 07:22, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm finding it to be a real problem with citations to The Australian now that their paywall is so strict and widely applied. Hack, is Factiva's database updated frequently? I've generally treated it as a historical resource, but I might be able to get more from it! Nick-D (talk) 07:48, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I tried to use the online The Australian available through ProQuest via the State Library of Queensland but all I have to work with is a naked URL, e.g. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/safe-schools-coalition-mps-label-review-a-joke-storm-out-of-briefing/news-story/4a1b1726f14d02366517c85dc50ab050 (from George Christensen (politician) an article full of minimal citations that I have been cleaning up all day until I ran into the paywall).
    Giving ProQuest the URL as search string doesn't work (unsurprisingly), using keywords "safe schools coalition mps label review a joke" as keywords (extracted from the URL) produces hundreds of results or nothing at all. My problem here is NOT that I am looking for any article on the topic but for a specific article that was cited. Kerry (talk) 07:57, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that every story in The Australian over recent months includes those words ;) Nick-D (talk) 10:04, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I always access news sites that provide a limited number of articles to view using my browser's "private/incognito" mode. It works for the NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, The New Yorker, etc, but I haven't used that method for The Australian or other News Corp publications. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:26, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Great idea, but alas not for The Australian it seems. I went straight to the paywall in incognito mode. Kerry (talk) 09:04, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Assuming you already have the URL of the article, you can simply paste that URL into Google's search and then click the first result – voila, you will have avoided News Corp's paywall. Try it with the URL for the Safe Schools article mentioned above as an example. Jenks24 (talk) 09:05, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    When I do it, I get the paywall. I tried using other browsers, same thing, I hit the paywall. Were you already hitting the paywall when you tried it as describe above, because if not, it worked because you hadn't used up your quota of free hits. Kerry (talk) 03:42, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    You could try viewing the Google cache of the article. Hack (talk) 03:50, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Using the URL didn't work (as soon as Chrome sees a URL, it immediately load it and hits the paywall), BUT if I typed in the key words from the URL, then the Google cache result for the desired URL worked beautifully. Thanks for idea! Kerry (talk) 04:10, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Qld Wiki Club - Mon 6 March

    Following their success in having group sessions for #1Lib1Ref (over 1000 citations were added, hurray for SLQ!), the State Library of Queensland is hosting a Qld Wiki Club afternoon from 12 noon to 3pm next Monday 6 March at The Edge at the State Library of Queensland in sunny Brisbane. The Edge is not in the main State Library Building but in an adjacent building (see map).

    There are a number of iMacs available for use or you can BYO laptop. The theme is Qld Women (in honour of International Women’s Day), but all are welcome regardless of what topic you are working on.

    My apologies for the short notice but I only learned of it when I returned from holidays. If you can interested in coming, can you RSVP me with an indication of whether you will BYO or use one of their iMacs as that helps with the room setup.

    Thanks Kerry (talk) 07:35, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Australian_Wikipedians%27_notice_board&oldid=768296527"