College of Engineering Pune students to co-author Wikipedia-India

Daily News & Analysis
By DNA Correspondent | Place: Pune | Agency: DNA A total of 843 students of the College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) will soon get an opportunity to contribute to the popular search engine, www.wikipedia.org. A six-month semester was recently kicked off …

Students in Pune, India to edit Wikipedia as part of college course

The Next Web
The program includes students from the computer, electrical, electronics and telecom, mechanical, and production engineering fields, as well as from infotech and mathematics. They will work under the guidance of professors at the college as they make …

I liked the comment:

At least there was no Pune intended. Indians are terrible when they pun-jabbi...

Great. They know how to write Wikipeda-style English. They're off to a flying start!

*facepalm*

There are enough English-challenged Indians adding nonsensical spam to unwatched articles about random villages and universities in the country. (This is sort of a problem with some other non-English-majority-countries' topics, too, but not as much in my observations.) I do hope they can stick to their own language Wikipedia(s), one of which I recall seemed to have a bot creating thousands of village stubs for no reason.

Looks like the whole Pune / India / Campus Ambassador program got a fairly scathing review in The Signpost.

Kudos, though, to Hisham Mundol for hiring some eye-candy consulting talent to oversee the program.

Also, I found this especially interesting from the interview with Mundol:



Isn't that an incorrect interpretation of Section 230? By knowingly harboring copyright violations that are already within their view, isn't that more likely to ring the alarm bells? It could be demonstrated that Wikipedia establishes an environment where copyright violations are not removed when detected.

See: Napster.

They are probably correct. That is, if the WMF does intervene to remove what is loosely called "copyvio" -- which may not be actual copyright violation, i.e., not illegal to host in the absence of objection from the copyright owner -- then they might be considered responsible for the content when they fail to intervene. They become the "publisher."

By being hands-off, and only intervening if there is a take-down notice, they are indeed in the "safe harbor."

What gets really nuts is the "free content" restriction, i.e., a policy on limiting "fair use." Material that would be perfectly legal is contrary to policy. In theory, each wiki can set up its own Exemption Doctrine Policy, but wikis have mostly interpreted the Foundation position on this in the most restrictive way. For example, the goal of the Free Content policy is that others can republish without expensive review. That's why they require a specific fair use template for each use of an image. So it can be found by machine and the image yanked. But that leaves a hole, and then a republisher may have to go to some expense.

Now, if the republisher was non-profit, with a similar purpose ("free knowledge"), they could assert the same fair use, so this policy only impacts for-profit republication. In other words,the Foundation policy is serving for-profit republishers, on the backs of the users, who are required to forfeit usage or find "free substitutes."

The case I found at Wikiversity was photos of users on their user page. This is really not part of the "content," it's a community issue, community building. The purpose of the photos is definitely legal for fair use: a user puts up their own photo. They do not want to release the photo for general publication. The specific example that came up was a photo of, how shall I say this, a "babe." Does she want her photo published everywhere, with no further consent needed? So she, apparently instructed by her brick-and-mortar instructor, claimed ownership and "fair use."

The Wikipedibots claimed violation, and the image will be removed, if it hasn't been already. Surely she can fine a "free equivalent." This is mindless policy, serving what?

So all those users mangling content where there is a legitimate claim of fair use and no actual copyright violation is at all likely, are serving what? Not content, that's for sure. Photo of professor in article that mentions the work of the professor. Photo taken from university web site, put up under "fair use." Image not full resolution, really no issue at all, source drives some level of traffic to university web site.

And editors waste time arguing over whether or not this is an "educational purpose." After all, the text is still the text without the photo. As if "educational purpose" did not include the subtle aspects of pleasing and attractive presentation. "Dull and boring" is hardly educational. Unless, of course, you are a Wikipedian at heart, focusing on technical compliance with mindless restrictions, created to ... what?

*Not* to protect the WMF. To protect for-profit re-users. Who might that be?

Why does "seeing copyvio" "break their heart?" If the "copyvio" improves the function of the article, it's serving the educational, non-profit purpose, especially if it's credited. If it's not credited, surely these staffers know what to do. And if it isn't improving the resource, it can be taken out without any fuss about "copyvio," which is often a cover, anyway, for "I don't like this."

The copyvio police often confuse plagiarism and copyvio. And don't look for win-win solutions. And frequently don't consider fair use, if a user hasn't properly set up the templates.

I don't believe that you understand. It's free as in freedom; it isn't free as in free beer. Wikipedia content is licensed under CC-BY-SA, no CC-BY-NC-SA, so for-profit organizations may reuse or redistribute Wikipedia content. Why? Because allowing for-profit organizations redistribute content makes the content more accessible, freer. CC-BY-NC-SA, on the other hand, is restrictive and makes content less accessible, less free.

Why give freedom to for-profit organizations? Let's say that you want to host a Wikipedia mirror in order in include the content's accessibility in a foreign country where some Wikipedia content might be blocked (eg. China, Iran). Obviously, visitors aren't going to donate money to you, so you need to turn to ads or some other way to generate money to host the mirror.

Here's more information:

http://www.appropedia.org/Non-commercial_l...s_open_licenses

For Pete's sake, Abd -- can't we get a link to the "babe", please? I'd like to see who Poetlister is impersonating now!

Definitely not Poetlister.

However, there are two RfDs still open. The images have not been deleted yet. So, get em while they're hot!

Papatsorn
Nataporn

These were on user pages, respectively:
User:Papatsorn Revert warring over a link on a user page. I finally compromised by poking out the link so it would not display, and explaining.
User:Pearlek.t User page has been blanked by the user, after controversy appeared, see her Talk page. This page might vanish at any time, because of the user blanking.

My basic stand was to follow the principle that non-cooperative edits of user pages are not allowed. If there is a violation, the violation would be in the hosting of the image itself, not in the link on the user page that causes the image to be displayed. Links to illegal content would not be allowed, but the content is, rather clearly, not illegal.

I know Asian culture, and most Asians, especially Asian women, would flee controversy. These users might never return, anyway, their class was over, but ... it's now been made almost certain, by the Wikipedian-like approach.

Notice who revert warred on User:Papatsorn. Bilby and S Larctia. These are both users who strongly opposed my custodianship. Bilby was a bit of a problem on Wikipedia, historically. S Larctia is banned on Wikipedia as a sock of Claritas. Both are promoters of Wikipedian concepts, they support global bans, etc., they don't understand the importance of Wikiversity independence, or maybe they do, and they are trying to demolish it.

In that exchange, it became clear that the issue is not copyright, it is "free content." It is essentially claimed that there is no possible legitimate "fair use" or "non-free use" in user space. That's a standard that clearly does not consider the welfare of the community, and that doesn't consider what happens in brick-and-mortar educational institutions. The stringent standards applied to fair use in mainspace also are setting a goal higher than improvement of the project, and for Wikiversity, it's obvious that what a real educator would want -- and permit in class -- is being made less important than this "free use" standard. The result is damage, large or small, to content, if high-quality educational materials, available for free *reading*, is the goal.

See another RfD on this.

What's being done is to make the job of commercial re-users easier, for other than free educational purpose. Non-profit re-users would have no problem with the fair use images, in fact, because they could make the same fair use claims. The "free use" standards are actually benefiting, not what most people would think of as "free use," i.e., free knowledge, but rather commercial activity.

You really think there's someone in the real world named "papatsorn thongngamdee", and that she just so happens to look like this?

Well, at one point I confirmed that the class she was a part of was real. I saw all these user pages being created for students with Thai names. So while I can't prove it, yes, I think she's for real. What, you don't like her name? I did find this. Her and "Nataporn" are in the class roster here.

Here is the homework that students were doing.

Okay, I'm going to call that proof.

Welcome to Wikiversity, Papatsorn, it was my pleasure to write. Okay, okay, so it was only a template. Tough job, but someone's got to do it.

Each to his own. I found virtually nothing about her on Google, so suddenly making one's first significant Internet "coming out party" on Wikiversity just seemed quite odd.