Wikipedia talk:Non-free content

See also: Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria exemptions

"brief verbatim textual excerpts" revisited

I do understand the fair use allows "brief verbatim textual excerpts from copyrighted media", and we are deliberately not defining "brief" with a specific word count, for several reasons. I do understand it can be context sensitive. While I am particularly interested in a specific situation at the moment, this is one example of a dozen related examples I am looking at, so I'm looking for both feedback on my specific plan, and feedback on general principles, to the extent possible.

I started the right way, I did a search of the archives. The phrase "brief excerpt" gets a lot of hits, unfortunately, many of which assume it needs no further explication.

One recent exchange discusses In the Bedroom where Masem suggests that "2-3 sentences" is not too long. That's longer than I would have guessed, but I'm happy to hear it if supported by others.

Another exchange at Excerpts of copyrighted text highlights some general principles, such as the allowable length may depend on the length of the original, e.g. an excerpt from a short poem may need to be shorter than an excerpt of a longer poem.

One issue I do not see discussed is whether the length of the excerpt should be compared to the length of the article in which it will be placed. I've recently removed some material who length was longer than the rest of the article after removal, or appeared in footnotes, and exceeded the length of the (admittedly) short article. However, I don't know whether this is a generally accepted metric, so I'll ask: is the length of the material in question relative to the length of the article ever an issue?

A second general question is whether the use of the material in the article, versus the use of the material in a quote in a footnote makes any difference? In other words, would we be expecting that quotes in footnotes would be generally shorter (my view, but not firmly held), than if the same excerpt were to be included in the main text of an article?

On to the specific. In New York House of Refuge there is a quote in the footnote which is six sentences, and 120 words long. I'm struck by the length in comparison to the article length: two sentences, 28 words. I'll understand if others view this comparison as irrelevant.

My plan is to chop the quoted excerpt at the end of the first sentence. It is supporting a claim, and that is achieved by the end of the first sentence. I understand that the rest of the paragraph is interesting, but I don't see that as an acceptable reason for inclusion. I'd particularly like feedback if I am being too harsh, and a quote of this length is perfectly fine.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:42, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The use of that text exerpt is completely wrong. In fact, what should happen is to paraphrase and summarize that source as text in the article body; there's no need to even quote that.

Text excerpts should be used primary when we're talking specific creative works to demonstrate a style, a plot element, or other non-factual aspect. They should be also used when opinion is stated and the context of the original opinion is needed to avoid altering its meaning in paraphrasing. But they should not be used to replace the proper job of summarizing factual information into an article. We have no copyright problem doing that as long as it is proper paraphrasing and not straight-upright copy without quotes or sourcing. --MASEM (t) 22:50, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I think half of your definition of "copyright problem" is really a style decision. An article can be a "quote farm" in the eyes of some editors without actually violating copyright, especially where it summarizes a discussion among scholars or other people. Take The Autobiography of Malcolm X. the article has a number of 2-3 sentence quotes from various sources (and had even more before it was submitted to FAC) and I would be very upset to see our policy on copyright treated that article as violating NFC. Protonk (talk) 23:12, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, in that article, glancing at the quotes, they aren't "factual" statements but read as personal experiences or opinion; paraphrasing them would be either impossible or damaging. And thus direct quote with citation is completely fine, as well as the fact they are taken from several different works and not just one. Effectively, that article isn't a copyright problem. The example specifically given by Sphilbrick is one that can and should be fixed, however. --MASEM (t) 00:13, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Masem here; although I think there are cases when they may be used simply to present fact, there should be clear reason why we need to. In terms of brevity, it's helpful, too, to consider how central the quote is to either document. If you quote four lines from a song as part of a larger body critically discussing the song, that's one thing; four lines from a song by themselves aren't transformative. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:39, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I guess my fear is that the closer NFC gets to style or content questions the more contentious the guidance becomes and the less pleasant (and more importantly, consistent) application becomes. I know we aren't suggesting a high bar like NFCC8 does for images, but just be aware that extending our guidance too much has a non-linear effect on enforcement. Protonk (talk) 03:17, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

For all purposes, I don't think WP:NFC should be giving advise as to how much quote to use, because this is a far different aspect of copyright than what non-free embodies. I don't know if there is a page, and if there isn't, there should be to describe when to use quotes, how much quote to use, and when not to use quotes but instead paraphrase. We can make reference to that here, in that text taken from such must meet fair use restrictions, but that's it. --MASEM (t) 16:05, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

An aspect that also may be important is the proportion of the quote vs. the full article. In this example[1], the quote from Bloomberg (via the NYTimes) was perhaps at first glance not extremely long, but when checking the source, it copied the whole (short) article[2]. Surely that can't be the intention of the fair use rules? In general, I agree with Masem here that (long) quotes shouldn't be used simply for referencing, but mostly for style, opinions, ... Fram (talk) 15:28, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Using the quote parameter in citations

The above discussion seems confounded, since "brief verbatim textual excerpts" includes quotes added to the body of articles, and as far as I know the purpose of this discussion regards the use of the quote parameter in Template:Cite.

Support use

• IMO, the judicious use of the quote parameter is a valuable tool that enhances an article for the reader.  IMO, most Template:Cite usages should try to include a quote.  Doing so gives the reader a sense of the material to be found if the citation is obtained.  One of the primary uses for such a quote is to identify the reference being used in the article, and when used for this purpose the reader can get a quick sense of the authority behind the material in the article.  Used skillfully, the quote can also be used to draw attention to aspects or an idea that is not mentioned in the article.  And, a quote survives a deadlink.

If an editor doesn't like the length of a quote, he/she should consider reducing its length, but totally removing the quote is IMO vandalism.  Taquan Air is an example of a well-cited article where most of the references use the quote parameter.  Most of the quotes are one sentence, but one goes to three sentences, and one goes to four.

In the long run I think we will see a more extensive linkage between citations and the supporting material, possibly through indexes into web.archive.org.  Unscintillating (talk) 18:52, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• I support quotes in references. The quote parameter supports the most important principle in Wikipedia, verefiability. I also allows references to remain after the link is dead, otherwise the reference gets deleted and then the fact may be deleted. It allows the article being quoted to be found again if the link dies and it has not been archived. The New York Times stored all their abstracts at Proquest then they were moved to the New York Times website. All had to be refound and relinked. The Wall Street Journal is now behind a paywall and the quoted original material is no longer available for free. It allows the fact to be found in a long magazine article. A New York Times magazine article can be 10 pages of un-numbered text, a person verifying the fact only needs to cut and paste the quote to find it and be able to read it in situ. When paraphrasing a fact, a person may use a synonym that may change the context of the sentence slightly causing semantic drift in the fact. Twice, with semantic drift, I have seen where people have rewritten "attended college X" to "graduated from college X", where it was incorrect, they never completed a degree. Having the exact quote allows the reader to see the original language. I have seen several articles where people misinterpreted place names where people were born or died, where there was more than one with a similar or same name. Seeing the exact name as it appeared in the original allowed me to find the proper city and correctly link to it. Having the quote in the citation lets the person verify I made the proper correction. You cannot always refind Associated Press articles in other papers since the headline varies from paper to paper, but if a snippet of text is available you can find multiple versions to replace a dead link. It certainly is not copyright infringement, it is usually the same or less of the amount of text used by Google in Google News under fair use. I do not think we need to reinvent a more restrictive definition of fair use than Google. We also should be making Wikipedia as self contained as possible since we do not know what will be available in 50 years. We have link rot and whole swaths of reference works are disappearing from the web and going behind paywalls. I live in NJ where there still is not a complete online archive of our current newspapers. NJ.com which archives some NJ papers does not appear to have a long term archive. Links from my earliest articles are now dead from that source. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 16:06, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Do not support use

• I strongly disagree with including quotes for every cite template, particularly when there's no question of the meaning of the original text relative to its inclusion in WP. Not only does this start to encroach on exceeding fair-use (particularly if one source is used repeatedly), but it's also not in line with WP:V. Undertstandably, there's cases where quotes should be used (original foreign language translated to English; to identify non-printed information, repeating information from a rare source), but we generally avoid adding quotes for every citation to avoid the copyright problems. --MASEM (t) 19:08, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I've made some edits based upon the feedback provided here.

I would be quite grateful if a couple of the regulars took a glance at some of the examples, to see if the advice makes sense in context, and if my edits conform to the advice. It is highly likely that there will be hundreds of examples with this issue, and I'd rather find out sooner than later if the advice needs tweaking.

Examples:

• Anselm J. McLaurin
• Neptune Cable
• Dick Parry
• Angus Ellis Taylor
• Irving Kaufman
• Robert Russa Moton
• Artist collective
• Count Guy de Lasteyrie

--SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:07, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• I don't see a consensus here for removal. It is probably better to wait for consensus to form rather than removing them on an ad hoc basis.

Because this is more a question on citation as opposed to non-free content (though there's an element of that to it), I've asked this over at WT:CITE). --MASEM (t) 15:11, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Aren't you all confusing the extraction and presentation of specific material from a source – quoting or quotation – with the "|quote=" parameter? For all that quoting is a good practice (or not??), this is quite independent of how the quotation is presented. And you really don't need to use "quote" at all. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:27, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

For purposes of NFC, whether its a direct quote embedded in the body of the article, or a quote attached to a cite template quote parameter, it is the same issue. Now, whether we should use significant amounts of direct quote in the quote parameter, that's an issue at CITE. --MASEM (t) 01:44, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Requiring reduction for free license photos of 3D artworks

Please see discussion at Template talk:Non-free reduce#Should this template be applied to free license photos of 3D artworks? Kaldari (talk) 22:04, 27 December 2011 (UTC)