利用者:Makotoy/Copyvio assessment

The aim of this draft is to assess the handling of copyright/GFDL-violation cases in Japanese Wikipedia, particularly the ones in which the original materials are located in other language edition of Wikimedia projects. I (makotoy) welcome anyone to contribute here in order to add materials and/or correct existing ones to more relevant ones, since my knowledge of the relevant cases are severely limited.

Case Study

Typical situation

1. Wikipedia:削除依頼/ギローム・ド・ロピタル: an editor contributes a translation of a chunk of the article in English Wikipedia. He misses the reference (link, edition) to the original article in the edit summary. The contributor is still active when someone notices this.
2. FIXME: the same as above, the contributor just mentions that it is 'from the English edition'
3. FIXME: the same as above, but the contributor is no longer active.
4. Wikipedia:削除依頼/パブリック・エナミー: an editor creates a new article with the translation of that in the English Wikipedia. He misses the link inside body, also inside the summary field. The article is more or less intact from the others' edit.
5. FIXME: ditto, but there are edits by other people

Current handling in JaWP

The number corresponds to each of the above cases

1. Somebody notifies the GFDL history rule to the contributor, and submits a deletion request for the 'contaminated' editions, Wit the contributor's consent, or after one week anyway, a sysop does the deletion and the contributor submits his edit again, this time with an appropriate summary.
2. Ditto, but without the contributor aware of the situation, the problematic editions are removed and never put back.
3. Somebody (possibly the translator himself) becomes aware of the problem, and with his consent, the article is deleted once and submitted again.
4. Somebody notices it, and the article is eventually deleted without recovery.

Problems

• Sometimes it is hard to convince noobs about the necessity of the whole tiresome process
  • The requirement of GFDL is rather unusual
• This looks like an overreaction
  • There is little possibility of Wikipedia facing legal challenges due to such cases, since the authors of the original material in other wikimedia projects are nowhere likely to do that.
• The edits to the article is discouraged during Vfd process.
• Sysops like me are too lazy to process the deletion in time :( anyway this is burden.

Possible Alternatives

Post-edit notice in the note by the contributor

The translator puts the notice in the note that a portion of the article is a translation from another project, in order to complement the edit history. Consequently this notice ought to contain the edit diff, link to the original material, which edition was used as the source, etc.

Pros

• • This is possible when the translator is still active, impossible otherwise :)

Cons

• • 'Problematic edition' is not concealed

Post-edit notice by somebody else

Same as above, but somebody else does that.

Pros

• • It doesn't require the original contributor to be active.

Cons

• • It is hard to guarantee the validity of the claim.