Wikipedia:Ownership of content
 |
Questions of ownership of Wikipedia articles have several aspects.
Control of Wikipedia articles
First, there's control of the article. Some contributors feel very possessive about articles they have donated to this project. Some go so far as to defend them against all intruders.
Well, it's one thing to take an interest in an article that you maintain on your watchlist. Maybe you really are an expert or you just care about the topic a lot. But when this watchfulness crosses a certain line, then you're overdoing it.
You can't stop everyone in the world from editing "your" prose, once you've posted it to Wikipedia. As each edit page clearly states:
- All contributions to Wikipedia are released under the GNU Free Documentation License (see Wikipedia:Copyrights for details). If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it. [emphasis added]
If you find yourself warring with other contributors over deletions, reversions and so on, why not take some time off from the editing process? Taking yourself out of the equation can cool things off considerably. Take a fresh look a week or two later. (See Staying cool when the editing gets hot.)
Or if someone else is claiming "ownership" of a page, you can bring it up on the associated talk page. Appeal to other contributors, or consider the dispute resolution process.
Believing that an article has an owner of this sort is a common mistake people make on Wikipedia.
Legal ownership of text
Second, there's the question of legal ownership, which is where copyright law applies.
Contrary to popular belief, Wikipedia articles are copyrighted. However, this does not imply that they are illegal to copy. The author – legally called the "copyright holder" – of a text (or any other creative work) can grant rights over the text to other people. These rights are codified in a licence. By submitting an article (or indeed a self-made photograph, drawing, diagram or other image) to Wikipedia, a contributor agrees to licensing their work under the GNU Free Documentation License, or GFDL for short, which grants everyone else on the planet the right to copy and modify the text provided they fulfill certain requirements (such as author attribution). Submitting an article does not surrender the author's copyright, but at the same time, the author cannot prohibit modifications to it because they have granted the rights codified in the GFDL.
When someone makes an edit to an article, that someone has created what is called a "derivative work". They are the copyright holder of the new version, but since the new version is based on the old version, which was licensed to them under the GFDL, they are bound to the requirements of the GFDL, and thus they cannot act as if they were the sole author of the new version. This carries on indefinitely: no matter how many edits are made to an article, even the hundredth revision is still subject to the requirements determined by the licence of the first revision.
In summary, the author(s) of an article are legally the "copyright holders" and could thus be regarded as the "owners", but since they cannot prohibit modifications, it could also be said that everyone "owns" every article in the sense that everyone has the right to copy or improve them.
It should be mentioned at this point that the copyright holder of a creative work retains full rights to it and is not subject to any requirements even if they license their work under the GFDL (for example, they do not need to attribute themselves as the author if they are the only one). They can license the same work again under any other licence – and indeed many Wikipedians agree to licensing their work under one or more further licences in addition to the GFDL – or they can even surrender their copyright (immediately or later), thereby suddenly removing the GFDL's requirements and allowing things that were previously forbidden (such as copying the text without author attribution). When a text has no copyright attached to it (because the author surrendered it or it expired), the text becomes "public domain", which means that anyone can do with it whatever they like.
Guidelines
Don't sign what you don't own
Since no one "owns" any part of any article, if you create or edit an article, you should not sign (~~~~) it. On the other hand, when adding comments, questions, or votes to back end pages, like "Talk" pages, it is good to "own" your text, so the best practice is to sign it. For more editing "do"s and "don't"s, you might want to go through the brief Tutorial. At least with existing pages, you can get an idea of where it's appropriate to add your signature by noting what previous contributors have done.
See also
External link
- AuthorshipModel - a discussion of authorship of Wiki pages on the CommunityWiki