Wikimedia Forum/On disbanding Wikiquote

Moved from Metapub —Anonymous Dissident^Talk

On disbanding Wikiquote

I think it is time that we (Wikimedia) disband the Wikiquote project. It is currently (in various languages) a hotbed of copyright violations and other non-free content. Pages like q:Pick-up lines or q:The West Wing or q:The Simpsons are in direct contradiction to basic fair use policies and Wikimedia's mission of providing free content.

Any public domain material can and should be moved to Wikisource. All other material can be incorporated into Wikipedia (if appropriate under fair use) or simply removed from our sites altogether.

Disbanding a Wikimedia project is a bit of an odd task and so I'm posting here to hear reactions and to see what the next steps would be. --MZMcBride 00:59, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

This is probably the wrong forum for a balanced discussion of the subject, which should really be on a large and active wikiquote. That said, I encourage you to promote this page on wikiquote pub/cafe pages if you want the discussion taken seriously. +sj | help with translation |+ 06:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

• This sounds like an okay idea at first impressions with the copivios and etc, but I'll look into it some more. This may be a tough task to just disband a website with a lot of members spread across many languages. This obviously needs some more input also, maybe we should ask someone at WikiQuote?. RedThunder 01:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

• My larger problem is that this is just a lousy thing for a wiki to do. It seems like the main advantage Wikiquote has over other quotation resources is that other quotation resources limit themselves to things the subject actually said. Phil Sandifer 01:21, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

  This is funny, but I don't find it accurate. quote collection can be usefully done on a wiki, and wq is fairly good as such sources go. +sj | help with translation |+ 06:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

• I'm in agreement with MZ's sentiment, however, what about the legitimate uses of quotations: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and other long-dead people (and so forth)? I'm not really sure they were meant for Wikisource. That said, input from Wikisource as well might be helpful.
  Perhaps, of course, disbanding is not the key here, but rather, a tightening of the rules at Wikiquote should be had. No doubt that the project there has allowed these things because it has been rather ignored, even in comparison to Wikinews or another of the non-pedia projects. Or because the contributors do not understand the goal of Wikimedia is to host free things rather than non-free things, which they similarly and possibly do not understand that stuff that is said on TV and such is not free... --Izno 01:49, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

• Just a note that there is past-precedent for disbanding a Wiki for excessive copyvio issues at Communications subcommittees/Press/2006/03/28 fr.Wikiquote brief MBisanz ^talk 01:51, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

  It wasn't disbanded; it was restarted with clearer guidelines and the new project is quite legal and useful, fwiw. +sj | help with translation |+

It wouldnt fit into wikisource to well since it is meant to hold entire works. Copyright issues can be sorted although generaly you need a very robust definition of the problem.Geni 01:59, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

• Wikisource could easily have a quotes page attached to our Author pages. i.e. Author:Benjamin Franklin/Quotes (the Quotes page hasnt been created on Wikisource; this is just an illustration on how it could work). I just now have created s:Category:Author subpages to illustrate other lists that have been created in the Author namespace. s:Author:Thomas Jefferson/Letters and s:Author:Barack Obama/Floor Statements are good examples.
  Wikisource would of course be more rigorous in removing unattributed quotes, and by the nature of Wikisource being primarily about sources, newcomers would be encouraged to find the full source for every quote. I dont understand why anyone would want to use a quote without the entire source, as it is likely to be used out of context.
  I am not a fan of Wikiquote, as the only content that is there which isnt suitable for Wikisource is the material that is covered by copyright, which means it is a fair-use playground (I have played there too). John Vandenberg 03:21, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

  Wikisource is not a place to gather collections of quotes. Of course we /could/ semantically combine all wikimedia projects into a single namespace, with different features for different sorts of data structure; and I'm not against that. Nevertheless, the desire and need for a quotations project is as old as copyright itself. +sj | help with translation |+ 06:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Frankly said: this is an insult. (This is also the wrong venue, but let's not even get into that.) How about we try to fix the problem before determining the the project should be disbanded? Actually, there is no problem. Quoting is allowed due to fair use and we are very careful on Wikiquote with regards to how much quoting is allowed. I often see other admins hacking down at page content because it is too much and breaches copyright. Do not make such rude and outrageous suggestions when you don't know the situation. Furthermore, how could you even consider closing a project because of one user? *sigh* The logic of certain people really baffles me sometimes. Cbrown1023 talk 03:53, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. you don't need to get too annoyed; this is clearly the wrong way to start the discussion, but the discussion will be interesting and may help improve WQ, so we should run with it. +sj | help with translation |+

Erm... have you had the opportunity to read q:Pick-up lines lately? Some of the content is grossly, grossly offensive. And the page for q:The Simpsons can't possibly be construed in any sense to fall under fair use. All of the quotes listed there are copyrighted material that were "released" under the GFDL when submitted to Wikiquote. But there's no critical commentary, no outside sources, just a horrible amount of copyright violations. The same can be said for q:The West Wing. And your comment about one user makes no sense to me. I assume you're referring to me.... I posted this thread to look at possible future options for exploring disbanding Wikiquote. "Testing the water", if you will. It's not as though we were going to lock all the databases tomorrow morning based on this thread. And this is the wrong venue? This is the board to go to for Wikimedia matters, no? --MZMcBride 04:53, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

The "one user" bit was in response to what brought this discussion up, the recent controversy on Wikiquote. With regards to wrong venue, the polite thing to do is to go to the project and either discuss solutions there or actually do some cleanup like Risker did (see, was that so hard?). Then if there was still a problem, you'd bring it here and this would still not be anything to do with closing it. You would need to advertise a discussion and discuss on mailing lists and with the board. Cbrown1023 talk 16:55, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with Cbrown1023 (talk · contribs) on this. This doesn't seem to be the correct venue, but even if it were, the issue of quoting is clearly fair use - especially if admins are on top of removing portions that are too extensive as Cbrown1023 says. Cirt (talk) 04:09, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

• My view is rather that the project clearly requires some cleanup, but that it should not be closed, and that such a preposition is quite premature. The idea has potential, but the platform might need some tweaking. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 04:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

• Projects were started for their legitimate reasons; without a review of whether they are endeavouring to fulfill their missions towards their goals, this proposal amounts to an attempt to solve temporary, local problems with long term, drastic and global means, i.e. 用牛刀殺雞 。 If you want to pursue this idea, I would suggest that you go around all active wikiquotes and check with the communities. Hillgentleman 05:39, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Completely agree. I'd like to add that fair use is nice to have, but does not work in all countries. Several years ago, the French Wikiquote was discovered to be a huge copyright violation, not so much of the quotes themselves but rather of the database structure of another (commercial) company. We chose to entirely start from scratch. Following this rather drastic event, the French wikiquote was started again, but with clearer and stronger guidelines. Since then, situation seems much better. I am not saying that deleting the english wikiquote is the solution, however, better working on the mission and the rules of wikiquote might be helpful. I would start by thinking of what "educational" mean. The huge page about the Simpsons fails to appear to me "educational". Nor even informational actually. But recreational. I do not think our mission is to provide recreational activity for bored internet users :-) Anthere
• Thankfully, that crappy pick-up lines page has been cleaned up (thanks Risker). That said, I agree with Phil Sandifer and MZMcBride. Pages devoted to holding quotes just fly in the face of free content by nature, which is what I thought we're about. Free content can be moved to Wikisource; either as a full work, or as a quotes page (I agree fully with Jayvdb about that and would be equally happy to have some PD quotes there). I think moving towards closing Wikiquotes is a good idea. Giggy 10:45, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
• I agree with the above. I've never seen much potential of Wikiquote, and agree that the free content could easily be moved to Wikisource (or even Wikipedia). I also think this page is the best place for such discussion. Majorly ^talk 12:27, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
• I support this motion. Quotations arn't free, unless explicitly licenced as such by the person (or the copyright has expired). Wikiquote would be a giant fair-use project (except for some really old people) and it's hard to draw the legal line at which we start to get into copyright infringement. Firefoxman 14:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
• Question: So, this is a request to close all WikiQuotes even though only CopyVio evidence with the English one was provided. According to Anthere, a lot of work was done cleaning up the French WikiQuote. You want to close the French WikiQuote down, too? --MarsRover 16:21, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
  • The relevant quotes could easily be moved to French Wikisource. Majorly ^talk 16:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
    • That's like saying that the relevant quotes, along with wikisource and wiktionary, could be moved to the 'source materials' part of French Wikibooks. It avoids the basic question about how to support the world's best book of [in this case French] quotations. +sj | help with translation |+ 06:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Wikiquote shouldn't be locked, closed or disbanded. But in my opinion it should not be a Wikimedia project. Move it to Wikia or another place.

Wikimedia projects are intended to provide free knowledge and information. An encyclopedia (Wikipedia), a dictionary (Wiktionary), and a bookshelf (Wikisource) are things which can be found in the households of most people who have aquired formal knowledge or want to aquire more formal knowledge. Every erudite will have these three things on or besides his or her desktop. A newspaper (Wikinews) is another typical thing found in every scholar household. These four things are key competences in information and knowledge provision. Wikiversity is like taking courses at the adult education center or like organizing a private study group. Wikibooks is like an additional bookshelf with how-to-books, manuals, guides etc. Both are useful supportive ways of information and knowledge provision.

But Wikiquote is like a single book about, well, quotes. Its some kind of useful information which enjoys popular interest, but there are dozens of possible projects which contain useful information enjoying popular interest. Think about projects about genealogy or about collecting stamps. Useful information, but Wikimedia cannot cover all useful information. It has to focus on the basic things. Quotes are not basic. It's a relatively narrow niche. Too special.

(By the way, if we have a second look at the typical accessoires of our erudite household, we may notice, that one of them is missing from the Wikimedia project list: The atlas or globus. We have no project dedicated to collecting free maps and geoinformation [well, Commons has maps, but only static and not in a coordinated system].) --::Slomox:: >< 17:58, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

• more than just one is missing, Slomox :-) We are also missing a book of laws, a "who's who", and a book of detailed anatomy. There is quite a list, for anyone who cares to properly flesh out the list of wikipedia siblings. +sj | help with translation |+ 06:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

• I tend to agree with MZMcBride and Giggy. Even if the content does fall under fair use, Wikimedia is supposed to be about free content, how does having a project based around fair use fit into that goal? Do any of the Wikiquote projects comply with Resolution:Licensing policy? The closest thing to an EDP I could find on the English Wikiquote is q:Wikiquote:Copyrights, which would seem to go against "Such EDPs must be minimal." The resolution is unclear though, in some cases it refers to "files" suggesting it only applies to uploaded media, but in other places it refers to "content," which would presumably mean all content. Mr.Z-man 19:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
  • our projects are about the free sharing of human knowledge and culture. This includes knowledge and culture which for whatever social reasons is not available under ideal licenses for remixing. It is the new work that we do which should be carefully crafted to comply with that licensing policy, so that we are a generative force for scalable expansion of shared culture -- that is not a reason to shun or disown culture that are not so available. +sj | help with translation |+ 06:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree do shut down wikiquoutes. We had a similar problem on the german language wikiquote, but we solved ist, the projekt ist no on good standards. I don't think it is a good job when some subprojects mad mistakes to shut all down. It is a better job to reform them and bring the the single projects to good standards or shut one single projekt down - but if all other attemps failed. --Joergens.mi 19:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

• • Bartlett's Quotations and similar works are common household ornaments, which is precisely why Wikiquote is an appropriate Wikimedia project. We can organize things in ways that go beyond the provenance of Wikisource. I agree that there is much police work to be done, but if we are to shut down projects over the potential for copyrights to be violated, then we will have to shut down Wikipedia as well. It is beyond question that there must be vast swaths of information on Wikipedia that have been copied from printed works for which a simple internet search will not reveal the copying.
    
    For my part, I have been spending considerable time at Wikiquote adding quotes from a variety of books of quotations which are themselves in the public domain. It would be an absolute travesty if all of that work were wiped out. BD2412 T 23:22, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
    • If this proposal gains traction, no free content would be lost. I agree that Wikiquote is better at quotes than Wikisource could be, and the topical pages like q:Education, q:Knowledge and q:Happiness are the better part of Wikiquote: those pages wouldnt naturally fit within Wikisource, however we do have s:Wikisource:Education; we could add notable quotes onto that page. So, I can see limited value in Wikiquote as a distinct resource/project, and the potential is there, and is being realised by several users such as yourself who work very hard in creating well sourced quotes. However, for the large part the contributions to the project would be better to be either: 1) not accepted, 2) on Wikisource, 3) on Wikipedia, or 4) a "Quotations Wikibook" could be created. BD2412 it would be helpful for you to show us some of the pages that you think make the project worth keeping as a distinct project. John Vandenberg 23:50, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I also tend to agree to the proposal. There seems to be a big copyright problem with most of these projects. But if Wikiquote is shut down, I think it is necessary to keep all non-copyvio content and move it to the respective Wikisources. --Thogo (talk) 19:42, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

As administrator of the German Wikiquote project I agree with the impression that en Wikiquote is full of copyvios (without any fair use rationale). I have suggested serveral times changes but without success. If you will shut down a Wikiquote project please choose en Wikiquote. I strongly disagree with the opinion that all Wikiquote projects doesn't have educational content worth to keep. Attaching WQ to WS would'nt be a good idea. German Wikiquote has now strict rules: from authors who are not 70 years dead we only accept 5-10 quotes. We don't accept any new quote without a serious source. There is a lot of quotation collections in the web but most of them doesn't have sources like German Wikiquote. In this direction I see the future of all Wikiquote projects. We cannot tolerate the massive copyvios in en Wikiquote anymore but shutting also down the German project which has high quality standards would be nonsense --Histo 19:47, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for this practical and useful contribution. Sourcing is certainly one way to improve and solidify the practices of all language WQs. +sj | help with translation |+

@Thogo: If you are able to keep all non-copyvio content and move it to Wikisources, then you are also able to simply keep the non-copyvio content in Wikiquote. Guido den Broeder 20:30, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Some of these issues have already been raised very recently on en Wikiquote.[1][2] It is a small project which tends to move slowly, but a responsible one and I'm sure admins and editors will take the necessary steps to fix problems. I agree it needs to be stricter and cleaned up, but there's no reason why this can't be done to make it viable. Tyrenius 21:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Seit Anfang des Jahres werden auf de-wq sämtliche Urheberrechtsverletzungen entfernt, über 1000 Artikel wurden gelöscht, fehlende Quellenangaben werden nachrecherchiert. Bei Autoren, deren Werken geschützt sind werden maximal 5-10 kurze Zitate mit genauer Quellenangabe zugelassen, letzteres gilt auch für jedes neueingestellte Zitat. Ich halte es für unerlässlich, sich die einzelnen Projekte anzusehen und nicht diejenigen mitzubestrafen, die sich an die Gesetze halten. --Paulis 21:18, 7 September 2008 (UTC) (admin de-wq)

ACK. Paulis says: One has to check each project and not to punish projects which are according the law. Since begin of 2008 all copyvios in de.WQ were removed, 1000+ pages were deleted. --Histo 22:04, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

A concerted effort should be made to fix the project before a proposal for shutting it down is discussed. Wikipedia contains many of these same fair-use quotations, so if absolute adherence to free content is the standard we'd have to shut down that project as well. It would be a simple thing to go through WQ and delete unsourced content. Decisions on what sourced content to keep will be harder but no harder than similar decisions made every day on other projects. Will Beback 23:32, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, dewq is a wonderful exemption which is much appreciated, but why shouldn't the content go to Wikisource? Is it really necessary to have two different projects that provide original texts (be it whole texts/poems/stories or citations)? --Thogo (talk) 09:41, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm bureaucrat of the German Wikiquote project and I'm also familiar with the German Wikisource project. Both projects are dealing with spoken or written words but they have nearly nothing in common. Some reasons why it's impossible to merge German Wikiquote and German Wikisource:

• Due to wikisoure policies you could only move those quotes to Wikisource which are already in the public domain. On the other hand there doesn't exist any problems with quotes that are sourced but the author is still living or not dead since at least 70 years. That's because most short quotes threshold of originality hasn't been reached.
• Due to wikisoure policies you have to scan every single word you want to post in the project. Therefore you wouldn't even been allowed to move those quotes which are already in the public domain. To the contrary, you would have to begin to scan right now every single phrase, and upload the images. In other words, you would lose the whole content of the current German wikiquote project, even those several thousand sourced quotes.
• In German wikiquote there are two different kinds of "standard" pages. Pages that contain quotations of a single person, and pages that contain quotes of serveral persons but all those quotes belong to a common topic. Those topical collections doesn't fit to the concept of German wikisource project. But these pages are nearly unique. There are nearly no quotation collections that consist of this elementary division. There is no way to transfer these pages to German wikisource project. Even the sourced quotes will be lost.
• In Wikisource there are almost exclusively old texts. In Wikiquote there is a great mixture of old and current quotes. This matchless and varied mixture is one of the most important things concerning contribution to education.

To cut a long story short, if you shut down project like German Wikiquote you will lose valuable and sourced content that can't neither be transfered to Wikipedia nor to Wikisource. If the foundation wants to disband wikiquote projects for some reasons, it should decide which one has to be shut down and which one will be supported in the future by having a very close look at every single project, their policies and the quota of their sourced quotations as well as the value of the content for the other Wikimedia projects. --W_I^KImaniac 20:52, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Quoting from English Wikiquote Village pump

“ Bear in mind that we have much greater leeway with quotes than does the author of a commercial product being sold for profit. ” — 17 August 2008 - BD2412

This is not correct; free content (which Wikiquote is by way of being hosted by the WMF) should be able to be published commercially in book format without any copyright lawyers beating down the doors of the publisher. At the very least, English Wikiquote needs to put in place an EDP that is approved by the WMF. John Vandenberg 00:02, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, you can't have a fair use claim except for a specific use. For example, Commons can't have fair use images (even if it wanted to) because we don't use them in articles (or whatever) - you can't claim fair use when compiling a stock media repository any more than when compiling a stock quotation repository. What that means for Wikiquote, I'm not sure. Perhaps only quotations which have fallen into the public domain may be acceptable, as on dewq?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 00:33, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I happen to be an intellectual property attorney. My above statement is correct - the nature of the use, be it commercial or nonprofit, is one of the four factors weighed by the courts in making a fair use evaluation. Wikiquote is a non-profit, educational entity, meaning that any use by Wikiquote of a quote would be weighted more heavily towards being a fair use than would the same use in a book published for profit. BD2412 T 14:48, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I am not saying your legal opinion about fair-use is incorrect; I know what you are saying is absolutely correct when assessing fair-use in general. My point is that Wikiquote should not use this "non-profit" aspect of fair-use to its advantage. The definition of "free content", as is used by WMF projects, stipulates that all content must be free to be used commercially. Any project that makes use of the "not for profit" element of fair-use assessment results in an undesirable limitation of the freedoms we expect. As an example, Commons, Wikipedia and Wikisource all reject any text/media which has non-commercial limitations placed on it by the copyright holder, such as CC-BY-NC. John Vandenberg 15:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

If that were the case, we would never be able to make a fair use of anything. We can, for example, host and display a movie poster in an article about that movie; but if some other party were to copy the poster from our website and sell it for a profit, that would be a clear copyright infringement. On the other hand, I would say that most Wikiquote pages containing text still in copyright would be fair use even if they were compiled into books and sold for a profit. BD2412 T 23:33, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break 2

Wikiquote does have a fair use problem, but it's not from lack of trying. Most of the regulars - myself included - have been trying to cut down on copyrighted material. Sceptre 01:33, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikiquote needs to have the freedom and autonomy to solve its own problems without interference by copyright paranoiacs who do not participate in that project. It is up to the participants there to establish standards to judge when claims to fair use have become excessive; the law does not make the limits very clear. It is certainly correct to say that Wikiquote would have greater leeway than a commercial enterprise; that directly addresses one of the four fair use factors outlined in the law. Whether that in fact helps the situation is debatable. Nevertheless, fair use, when a passage properly fits that classification is not a copyright infringement. Without fair use Wikiquote or any other compendium of quotations would be laughable by virtue of carrying only quotations that are more than 70 years old. Some level of fair use in publications of that type is a generally accepted practice. I would be interested to know if there have been any legal cases involving that kind of publication; these could be a useful guide. Eclecticology 02:05, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

The US law does allow quite a bit, but Resolution:Licensing policy does not:

Such EDPs must be minimal. Their use, with limited exception, should be to illustrate historically significant events, to include identifying protected works such as logos, or to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted contemporary works. An EDP may not allow material where we can reasonably expect someone to upload a freely licensed file for the same purpose, such as is the case for almost all portraits of living notable individuals. Any content used under an EDP must be replaced with a freely licensed work whenever one is available which will serve the same educational purpose.

How does a page full of non-free quotes from a television show or a book meet that? Mr.Z-man 03:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

That policy statement should be updated to appropriately allow for quotations and other short excerpts which are noteworthy in their pith without context. There is generally no 'replacement' of quotes with 'freely licensed quotes', so that clause itself does not apply; often the perfection of the quote is what makes it so memorable and timeless. +sj | help with translation |+ 06:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

It is true to say that some fair use is acceptable in compendium of quotes, however if I was to publish a book of quotations of modern day people, it would be expected that I obtain permission from those people, or their estate, where possible and feasible. Not doing so at all would result in legal battles that my publisher would not be willing to enduring, and would tell me to sod off. Has Wikiquote obtained any permission from any of the quoted people? If Wikiquote cant be published for profit, it is not free content.

Also you don't touch on the educational value of the wikiquotes project, nor the structural benefit of having a compendium of quotes as a distinct project rather than within wikibooks. John Vandenberg 03:20, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I think Wikiquote needs some kind of notability guideline - only quotes that people actually quote should be included, any funny line from a given film is not worthy of inclusion in a collection of quotes regardless of copyright. What would be a useful project is a site where people can go having heard a quote and find out a) if the person really said it b) what exactly it was they said and c) who it was that said it (some clever search algorithms may be needed if (b) and (c) are being asked at the same time). --Tango 05:11, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed -- quotes that have obvious value should certainly be included; they have provided inspiration and guidance in every generation. Quotes should have both notability and utility guidelines -- a useless quote that is verifiably said by a famous person, but never used, is not a great quote. +sj | help with translation |+

It is already discussed on the English project and consumed as q:Wikiquote:Quotability. The problem here is that more than half edits come from anons who don't notice Wikiquote is a non-profit project under clear policy but confuse it with sort of fansite.

Also I would like you to remind you cannot say roughly on Wikiquote. The details of policy is vary from language to language. If you talk about Wikiquote , please clarify which language version you are talking on then. And if you don't know anything about its policy, please give a look on its project pages before saying Wikiquote needs so-and-so. It doesn't make a sense to demand to create what it has already. --Aphaia 06:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so the English Wikiquote doesn't need to make such a policy, but it does need to enforce the one it has better. There is no point having a policy if you don't use it. --Tango 11:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

• My take on the issue:
  • Copyright is not an important issue here. Any argument for something as major as shutting down Wikiquote should work even if Wikiquote adopted an editorial policy such as 'no non-public domain quotes'. Copyvios can be dealt with, and have been, and I have never held with 'copyright paranoia' being a guiding principle. Copyright's so messed up that nobody has clean hands, and striving for clean hands can easily swing right into fighting-monsters-and-becoming-a-monster territory (or more proverbially, the cure being worse than the disease).
  • Perhaps the pickup lines and Simpsons articles are putrid cessholes which deserve to be burned with fire. I'll bet the English Wikipedia has deleted orders of magnitude bad more articles at CSD alone than exist in all the Wikiquotes, though...
  • Wikiquote does have clear value to me. It integrates well. I read a Wikipedia article on Alexander Pope, say, and I go to Wikiquote and read excerpts from his poetry and writings. These link to full editions of the original work on Wikisource which I may or may not consult for context. From there I might check out Commons to see if any of the famous quotes appear on monuments or something, and perhaps I wander back to Wikiquote...
• Do I do a lot of work on Wikiquote, do I know much about it, do I know people who are Wikiquotians? No, not really. But I still appreciate it, especially after I try some of the other quote pages floating around. Just today I had cause to appreciate the nice Ludwig Wittgenstein quotes page after I had tried some other online sites of much lower quality. --Gwern 06:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. Two quite different sorts of text. Secondly, two quite different sorts of copyright aproach (PD in Wikisource, fair use or something that fits in Wikiquote). And thirdly, and important: when osmebody says that Wikisource users could better keep attention on this, so it is on the other hand wrong: I am not sure if every (small) Wikisource subdomain could and would solve the problems arising from the fact that suddenly there are dozens of new users editing the quotes, not having sufficiently experience with editing Wikisource and respecting the copyright rules there. If you join the two projects so you join also the two different communities. I am not sure if this works. -jkb- (cs.source) 07:17, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

By the way. When there is a proposal to disband Wikiquote as project so I would expect arguments that all Wikiquotes are that bad. In my opinion and in my experience this is not true - many domains are very carefully in the question of copyright. -jkb- (cs.source) 07:45, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

• Could someone briefly explain to me how Wikiquote's content meets fair use laws? I'm currently of the opinion that if the project is to be kept (admittedly, good work has been done), limiting it to PD would be the best way to go. I'm happy to be proven wrong and challenge someone to do so. Giggy 07:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Whether content meets fair use criteria is not something that one determines in one mass across the entire project. Each quote needs to be separately evaluated. Quotes from The Simpsons may very well be excessive, but that too needs to be evaluated in its own right without extrapolating those determinations into something greater than the facts will besr. If you want to evaluate a particular text consider it in the light of the four factors in the law and make a conclusion based on a balance of probabilities. Following strict PD would lead to a compendium of obsolescence; how could that possibly be the best way? Eclecticology 09:06, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Because some cause trouble, all have to be erased? We wont deal with the cause of an effect, we simply erase the whole project? Of course, who realy needs a quotation collection? Simply trash it for gods sake! Das deutsche Wikiquote Projekt widmet sich mit Erfolg seit langer Zeit einer copyright-violation-free Zitatesammlung. Das zeigt, dass man sehrwohl das Problem mit Urheberrechtsverletzungen lösen kann, auch wenn dies nicht immer so einfach ist - eines ist sicher man muss nicht einfach das Projekt auflösen. Wikiquote.de successfuly attend to an copyright-violation-free quotation collection - of course, not all is done yet. This shows that its possible to create a wiki-based and copyright-violation-free quotation collection. Überhaupt ist eine Zitatesammlung nicht nur für sich genommen eine großartige Sache, sie ist ebenfalls eine außerordentlich tolle Ergänzung für Wikipedia. The idea to merge wikiquote with wikisource is´nt good at all. A cobbler should stick to his last. Both projects have their own goals and purposes, and they also add something unique and important to Wikipedia. de:q:Benutzer:Tets --84.113.52.244 08:14, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

This proposal is too poorly written to take serious. As said on the above, German Wikiquote has a strict rule about this so it is not their matter. French Wikiquote has a strict citation rule also. And please note still German Wikiquote accepts fair use to some extent. Japanese Wikiquote goes far: it accepts only PD quotes. There would be much more other Wikiquotes which have strict control for copyrighted materials. Disbanding the whole Wikiquote makes no sense, even if one project - English Wikiquote is not controllable as claimed. And in the truth, it isn't; English Wikiquote community has established citation criteria as q:Wikiquote:Quotability and not welcome anything written just because it was written somewhere else. There are already some attempt of cleaning massive potential copyvios. The community has tries to limit the quotes within the legitimate scope of fair-use, and cut down articles sometimes. It is a problem for years since we continuously accept newcomers who don't pay attention to our norms and policy, but if you think English Wikiquote does nothing, you are simply misled. And again, if you think English Wikiquote is in a problem, please address your problem properly, not drag all other language Wikiquote projects to your playground. It is totally nonsense to disband, for example, Japanese Wikiquote due to copyvio, since its all contents should be taken from PD materials. --Aphaia 08:25, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

• Completely disagree with any proposal to disband this valuable and desirable project.

1. While current and 20th century quotes may hit copyright problems, there is a vast source of historic quotes, as witness many many paper encyclopedias of quotations, to which copyright doesn't apply. So a legitimate encyclopedia on quotations is completely feasible.
2. Cleanup is no reason to disband a viable project; I'm not familiar with wikiquote but I am sure it gets unusable posts exactly as enwiki gets unusable copyvio article texts. Cleanup and take measures is the way to handle these. Only if vast and unfixable might one do more, and given the validity of the project and its usefulness, mirrored in many paper quotations encyclopedias, I cannot see that even remotely likely.
3. Most quotes are small snips of text and will not be a problem within a reasonable reading of copyright/fair use law. (If they are and some articles are entire chunks of the script or text, then see above and it's more than likely fixable.)
4. Permission to quote is quite optional. You don't legally need permission to say "X said Y", or "in book W, X said Y", or even "According to W, X said Y". (To underline this, English Wikipedia contains some 2.5 million articles many of which quote or cite using that structure. Just because this is an encyclopedia of quotations rather than of <wider topics>, doesn't change that. It is either okay to, or not.)

Thoughts. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 09:32, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree Wikiquote does have fair-use licensing problem, but that wiki has been around for ages, why wasn't this brought up earlier, and shutting down a project only after some recent event is highly suspicious and I also heard of rumours of people trying to disband another top project..instead of trying to disband, why don't you all try to clean it up and improve it instead of wasting time creating more politics and unnecessary drama....--Cometstyles 09:58, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with what Cometstyles said here. This proposal to dispand Wikiquote is imho nonsense, make it better instead of closing, it is a Wiki... Also if de.wikiquote is such a good example of how it could work (I believe to have read it more than once here), why not implementing its standards to other wikiquotes too instead of closing something good.

„The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.” —D.Adams

--birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 10:22, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I am a French Wikiquote administrator, and I also disagree with the proposal. I think there are a few misunderstandings there:

• We do create free content, so we fit in the Foundation's aims. We are creating a free quotation database, licensed under the GFDL. Of course, the text itself is not GFDL (as for Wikipedia articles), but the collection (i.e., database) is.
• We're not illegal. We do respect the Foundation principle of abiding by the laws. In almost every country, including in the US, there is a "quotation right" which permits to use text extracts from copyrighted works. We also check when multiple quotes get inserted at once, or when one user adds multiple quotes very quickly, whether they might be from another database.
• We care about local laws, too. AFAIK, Japanese Wikiquote only allows quotes from free (DP or freely-licensed) works. French Wikiquote checks quotation length according to the law and known court cases.
• We care about quality. As some of you pointed out, French Wikiquote was closed a few years ago because of massive copyright violation (large parts of an external database were copy/pasted, and the community wasn't able to track and remove the offending content). It was re-created after we wrote a Foundation-approved "rulebook", which forbids unsourced quotes.

Of course, there is work to be done:

• Many Wikiquotes need to be cleaned. I think this is a very difficult job when you don't have clear rules about sources & length & co. I do think every project should try to work on their own rules, taking into consideration quality and legal problems.
• We need to make these rules and guidelines clearer for editors, especially new ones. But that's a difficult thing to do on every project, including Wikipedia.

If you're concerned about Wikiquote quality & legality problems, you're more than welcome to work with us. But disbanding Wikiquote is not the solution. Manuel Menal 10:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I read above that german Wikiquote's rules are good. Can I see them anywhere in english? Thank's. --Unai Fdz. de Betoño 10:32, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

In this sense, supporting birdy above. The Wikiquote domains should discus somewhere if the German rules suits all and then how to implemet it. Let us close this proposal. -jkb- (cs.source) 11:37, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'd disagree to use the German rules for every project. I don't think a limit to 5-10 quotes per author makes sense (no legal necessity). Perhaps it has something to do with German law, though. Manuel Menal 12:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

"Of course, the text itself is not GFDL" - That doesn't make any sense, the text (and any accompanying images) are the only things you can license under the GFDL. How can you have a freely licensed collection of non-free material? That would be like giving away free software, that only works if you pay a registration fee (yes, I know, different definitions of free). The content is either free or its not. Mr.Z-man 12:57, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, the law disagrees with you. Databases are copyrightable works. Each element may or not be free, but the final product (organized in pages, sections, categories, with metadata (sources, comments...)) itself is free. The database, which is under the GFDL, is 1) used 2) re-distributed 3) modified (you can add, move, remove quotes as you will) 4) re-distributed in a modified version. Manuel Menal 15:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I should add that the fact that databases are copyrightable works themselves is the reason why French Wikiquote was closed in the first place, and the main legal risk with Wikiquote. You can't take a collection of quotes from any website and copy/paste it: although they have no rights on the quotes themselves, their database is protected. Manuel Menal 15:34, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

As someone who has done some work on wikiquote, and who agrees it is both confusing and problematic as to what does and does not belong; it needs fixing not disbanding. It needs clear guidelines, and well thought out MoS policies. There might be a wikiquote central discussion page set up by the remaining administrators for discussion of the recent shocking events and its potential future. IMHO It has potential but needs clarification and front page parameters. Modernist 13:15, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

First of all, do not forget ja.wikiquote, which only uses public domain quotes and fr.wikiquote, which startet from scratch, only accepting quotes with sources. Those are good examples, how a wikiquote can be run without copyright infringements. At de.wikiquote, we see a big cultural importance in collecting also quotes from living persons and persons, where the copyright still applies - provided that their quote has a wider distribution and is publically known. As we cannot safely apply fair use - collection of quotes is not fair use according to German jursidiction, see w:de:Zitatensammlung, we try to reduce the risk of copyright infringement by ohter means. Quotes are principally allowed for educatinal projects by german law. Therefore we try to have an educational value in the collection of quotations by emphasizing on well-known quotes, by providing extensive sources - which typical quotation collections usually lack and also starting by collecing commented quotes and providing a history. Moreover, we are restricting quotes of persons where copyright might apply to short sentences and to few quotes. We assume that by doing so, the risk is low that we exceed the w:Threshold of originality/w:de:Schöpfungshöhe and that the risk of copyright problems is reduced significantly. Our rules are far from being perfect, but I try to sketch out the most important ones, which every new starter gets on his talk page (see [3])

• Only quotes of persons, that have been deceased 70 years ago or longer are public domain and can be used without restrictions
• For Novelists and authors, only 5-10 short quotes are accepted. Per movie, only 5 shot quotes are accepted.
• All quotes that are added to wikiquote have to have precise sources. As fas as books are concerned, it is required to give the page number also.
• Quotes added to Wikiquote need to be quotes that have been quoted by others and that have a certain distribution
• All Quotes that are collected in an article dealing with a topic (as Love etc.) need to be also added to an article that is collectiong quotes of the particular author also. Anonymous quotes or quotes of institutes etc. are only accepted if they are really wide spread.
• The "Recent changes" are monitored by regulars in order to enforce these rules.
• Quotes without sources are being removed - this applies after a period of grace to existing quotes also.

Best regards --Hei ber 21:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break 3

I am a sysop on Wikiquote. As of yesterday a discussion has been started on our Village Pump to deal with pages having copyright issues. The goal is: 1) to start a project in which these pages will all be dealt with; 2) to agree upon the allowable limit of quotations per movie, TV show, etc., so as to prevent the creation of any more copyright problems. We have had discussions about these problems at various times in the past as well as discussions on the question of deleting unsourced quotations; but we are closer now, I would say, to reaching a consensus on policy decisions. We have mostly been dealing with copyright problems by deleting or reducing new pages which have this likelihood of violation. In the mean time we have had a backlog of previously created pages which have been marked for copyright problems. It is hardly that we are unaware or indifferent to these matters; rather, we have so few regular administrators and other editors to work on these things that we spend most of our time on routine daily chores (patrolling, etc.) and ongoing individual projects.

I have begun to work on the pages with copyright problems and will do at least five per week. In any case, the copyright cleanup will be done. Even if I have to end up doing it all, I will; but I feel confident that there will be other assistance. - InvisibleSun 17:37, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikisource

I am an active cotributor to Wikisource, not at Wikiquote. However, I find Wikiquote to be a wonderful resource, very often helpful in ways that Wikisource is not and cannot be. And in ways that are part and parcel of the Wikimedia Foundation's goal to provide "the sum of all knowledge." A useful book of quotations is part of making that "sum of all knowledge" available.

As far as whether this useful tool could be incorporated on Wikisource, I think the answer is: absolutely not. Why not? Consider what a Wikisource contributer wrote above about this:

Wikisource could easily have a quotes page attached to our Author pages. i.e. Author:Benjamin Franklin/Quotes (the Quotes page hasn't been created on Wikisource; this is just an illustration on how it could work).

This is absolutely correct. Such a think could easily be done. The problem is, however, that it only works for authors, i.e. for people whose out-of-copyright books we curate at Wikisource. But aren't there plenty of important people who have said plenty of important things who are not authors? Aren't there important collections of quotes from cultural icons such as theater, movies? Isn't it important to assemble important quotations from people who didn't live a century ago or more? For anyone and anything that doesn't have an "author" page, Wikisource is irrelevant, and Wikiquote would advance "the sum of all knowledge" far less.

Finally, I suggest that pages like this one at Meta about disbanding projects are ill-considered and wrong-spirited. First of all, remember that Wikiquote exists in dozens of languages. Even those who don't consider the English version useful (something I find hard to understand) cannot even begin to estimate the value of the project in other languages, where it may provide information that isn't in reach any other way. Simply spitting out a "proposal to disband" here at Meta in English based on observations of the English wiki is unfair and mean-spirited.

Secondly, even regarding the English wiki proposals-to-disband such as this one are ultimately an act of selfishness: Because the wiki doesn't seem valuable to me let's get rid of it! Why not consider others, who find things useful that you yourself do not, and are willing to sacrifice their time and effort to contribute it for the public good?

Real issues regarding Wikiquote, such as policy guidelines and copyright, should and must be discussed, of course. But they should be discussed at Wikiquote, not on pages like this. Feedback from the wider community is also fine, but with an eye to help rather than to squash. I move that the proposal on this page be closed. Good luck to Wikiquote. Dovi 18:19, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Dovi, I completely agree with you. We should try to fix problems but not forget the different objectives of the projects. For wikiquote, the important tasks are

• Identify the important and relevant quotes - "I have a dream"
• Provide a proper source for the quote - Goethe is just not enough
• Goup quotes according to topics - as quotes dealing with Love, Relativity or Books
• Discuss, where well known quotes originate from, document false atributions: Who really said "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
• Also collect important quotes of people like politicians, scientists, but also actors or even athlets - if the quote is spread and has a cultural significance.

Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiquote do add to each other, but they are really different. --Hei ber 21:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Let me give you some examples of pages that can not effectively be moved to any other project. Robert H. Jackson was a leading Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and also lead prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials. His Wikiquote page has a collection of about 65 poignant selections from both his Supreme Court opinions (which are in the public domain) and his books and articles (which are not), along with about a dozen quotes about Jackson and his work by fellow jurists (in articles, also not in the public domain). No single article is the source of more than four quotes, and the longest quote is under 200 words, out of the tens of thousands of words in each article. This page could not be included in Wikisource, and would not be appropriate in Wikiquote under its current inclusion criteria, but fits with excellence in the structure of Wikiquote.
X me no Xs is a page collecting together representatives of a literary meme which goes back to the 1590s, whereby the same word is used as a verb to open the phrase and a noun to end it (e.g. "Plot me no plots"). So interesting is this meme that 1919 edition of Bartlett's Quotations had a section on it, except their quotes are less fully sourced than Wikiquotes, so we have actually built on that public domain work with the addition of superior sourcing and additional quotes, including some that are still in copyright, although our usage is of small snippets from much larger works.
And, of course, see Bigotry. BD2412 T 01:16, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

"..and would not be appropriate in Wikiquote ..." <- do you mean Wikipedia?

I dont doubt that there is some very good content on Wikiquote, and dont suggest for a moment that the good work should be abandoned entirely. The better quality Wikiquote content is typically being created from Wikimedians we all respect. That said, my limited analysis of Wikiquote (from watching the RC feed for a while), indicates that there is a problem in that most content being added is (in my opinion) over-use of fair-use. English Wikiquote has been tolerating massive copyright violations. If this can be corrected, that is great. When I suggest that other projects could absorb the Wikiquote content, it is as a means of ensuring that if the problems cant be corrected, there are positive solutions. This discussion is comforting - we are hearing that other Wikiquote projects are more strict, and that English Wikiquote is hearing the message.

As an aside, many of the books by Robert H. Jackson are in the public domain, as they were not renewed. John Vandenberg 02:46, 9 September 2008 (UTC)