Wikipedia talk:Reusing Wikipedia content

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Have an explicit (Re-use) link on image thumbnails

Please comment there. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:53, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

CC BY-SA 3.0 licence requirements for keeping intact disclaimers

Moved from Category talk:Wikipedia disclaimers

 – Bsherr (talk) 05:24, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

The CC BY-SA 3.0 licence under which many works on Wikipedia are licensed, imposes the following obligation on redistributors of works licensed under the licence:

You must keep intact all notices that refer ... to the disclaimer of warranties with every copy of the Work You Distribute ...

- from 4(a) (in Restrictions section)

After traversing the Wikipedia Disclaimers link, I found that there were in fact six Wikipedia disclaimers (at the time of writing): Content disclaimer; Legal disclaimer; Medical disclaimer; Risk disclaimer; Survey disclaimer; and General disclaimer.

It would be useful for Wikipedia to add some official clarification on whether all these disclaimers need to be included for redistributing CC BY-SA 3.0 material obtained from Wikipedia. Currently, Creative Commons don't seem to make this disclaimer requirement very clear (which doesn't help either).

--MarkJFernandes (talk) 16:50, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

@MarkJFernandes: I would suggest asking the question at Wikipedia talk:Reusing Wikipedia content. This page is for discussing improvements to the Wikipedia disclaimers category. --Bsherr (talk) 18:03, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

@Bsherr: Yes, I'm trying to do that. I'm not yet autoconfirmed so can't edit the semi-protected talk page for the page you've mentioned (trying to make 10 edits so that I get autoconfirmed). Regardless, I do think it's worthwhile mentioning it here as it may be a good idea to add clarity as to which disclaimers (if any) need to be included, in this disclaimers section. I know that personally, I went here first, before I discovered the Wikipedia page on reusing Wikipedia content. --MarkJFernandes (talk) 18:14, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Understood. I've requested unprotection of that talk page. Then we'll go from there. Meanwhile, I'll leave the conversation here. --Bsherr (talk) 18:25, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

@MarkJFernandes: You've been granted the confirmed user right, and I've moved the conversation now. --Bsherr (talk) 05:24, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

CC BY-SA 3.0 licence requirements for credits in adaptations/collections that also has credits for other non-CC works

4c(iv) of CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, with its context and associated note, reads:

"If You Distribute, or Publicly Perform the Work or any Adaptations or Collections, You must, unless a request has been made pursuant to Section 4(a), ... provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing:" "... consistent with section 3(b), in the case of an Adaptation, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Adaptation (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). The credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors."

So, in my project I have works under the UK's Open Government Licence (OGL), with CC BY-SA 3.0 works obtained from Wikipedia. It's a collection (and actually also adaptations). Because of the OGL, most of the OGL works have author credits in my main legal notice. Now, my problem is that I made use of very many Wikipedia articles for the project (probably much more than 600), and I'm not sure the exact dates when I used them nor do I have copies of the pages frozen at the precise time I made use of them. But even if I could figure out the author credits applicable to exactly when I used the pages, figuring out the authorship of just bits and pieces of the pages I used, appears to be something of a nightmare.

I was hoping that simply linking to the pages would be sufficient which is roughly hinted at, on this Wikipedia guidance page. However, in light of the excerpts above, it appears this isn't necessarily the case, at least for my project based on works under a mix of licences.

However, there is a possibility that linking to the pages will be enough, if "...a request has been made pursuant to Section 4(a)..." (as outlined above).

So finally, to get to my specific issue, is it taken as granted that such a '4a' request is made for content provided by Wikipedia, thereby allowing for me (and other people in similar positions) to only need to link to the Wikipedia pages in relation to providing sufficient credit? If this is the case, I think it is a good idea to make it explicitly clear that this is the case, on this Reusing Wikipedia Content page.

Additional Information

4a request:

"... If You create a Collection, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Collection any credit as required by Section 4(c), as requested. If You create an Adaptation, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Adaptation any credit as required by Section 4(c), as requested.:

--MarkJFernandes (talk) 14:44, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

@MarkJFernandes: My best short answer to your question is from the text of this wiki policy:

"To re-distribute a text page in any form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using"

You quoted Creative Commons license text and asked about that. Wikipedia uses these licenses but of course Creative Commons the legal organization maintains those and are the most authoritative source for interpreting them. Know that you are not directing your question to the organization which maintains the license.

The time you pulled content from articles does not matter. All content is in the Help:Page history, which explains how the URL connects to authors. Click "history" at the top of any article to see the logs, and click page statistics for a visualization of that data. There is a presentation of authorship there. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:46, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: Thanks for the reply. At least one person has replied.

So first to address whether this enquiry is better addressed to Creative Commons: from looking at the advice from CC, and reading the legal code, it appears the credit you suggest is just not sufficient in my circumstances. So starting from that starting point, given the prominence of Wikipedia, and the likely very large number of materials licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, I wanted to get further advice on reusing Wikipedia materials from Wikipedia. At the heart and soul of Wikipedia is the notion of being able to freely reuse such information. Therefore, being able to reuse Wikipedia material is likely very important to Wikipedia.

Looking at the policy you have quoted, technically, the policy doesn't specify that that is all that is required for author credit. And as I have pointed out, with reference to the actual licence legal code, more is (or at least seems to be) required. From my research, things probably would be okay if version 4.0 of the licence had been used.

Thanks for pointing out that it doesn't matter that I don't know the time I pulled the content.

--MarkJFernandes (talk) 19:00, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

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