Commons:Categories for discussion/2011/03/Category:Old Babylonian period Queen of Night relief

This category page has been extended to become a likely copyright violation. The text has been taken from the British Museum database and though there was an existing informal understanding with the museum, removing the text from some pages and now transcluding it to multiple image pages no longer falls under the previous understanding of how this text would be used. The text is transcluded into all related pages including minor detail shots which do not require the full exposition. I propose that the changes introduced by Zolo are reverted in accordance with the principles of BRD as requested several times previously (see Template talk:British-Museum-object and User_talk:Zolo#Blanking_of_information). The tentative benefits of "generalization" do not outweigh the risk here of copyright violation or the disruption these blanket changes have caused by introducing associated errors and inaccuracies. Fæ (talk) 13:13, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This has more to do with the template than the existence or sub-categorization of the category itself... AnonMoos (talk) 13:19, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The text in question is on the category page, not embedded in a template. --Fæ (talk) 13:21, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Three points:

The use of this template is certainly questionable and I have tried to discuss it at {{Artwork}} and some other places.

You can read the pages mentioned by Fæ but you won't find much about copyright violaton there.

I still don't know where the copyright violation is, but if there is, we need to think a bit more about it. All photos in this category depict the same object, so I think we can agree the description should be more or less the same in all pages. So if we use some content from the museum's database in one file, it would only be logical to do it in all files. The result will be about the same as if we transcluded it from a template or a category. Except that it is much longer to correct.--Zolo (talk) 13:54, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

With regard to the nature of the photos as stated above some are detail depictions of sub-figures for which the general description seems pointless as it may refer to details not in the photograph that the reader has in front of them and one is of a display case containing several other objects so again the description is inaccurate and may be misleading.

As for your suggestion of thinking more about the potential copyright violation you have created, good idea, perhaps now would be the time to revert your changes while you give yourself time to think about it. --Fæ (talk) 14:09, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As you may have noticed, I have tried to change the template to make it clearer that details were details. As you know I have reverted my changes in the category and in one file. According to your "fair use" principle I doubt there can be any objection.--Zolo (talk) 14:20, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure I understand your point, the description quoted on the category page is cut & paste from the BM database record and transcluded to several other pages rather than being used in individual image pages as originally envisaged. In what way have you fixed the problem? --Fæ (talk) 14:27, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I had forgotten one image, as you may have guessed. What exactly is your position ? That it is fine to copy-paste a copyrighted text in several files but not to transclude it ?--Zolo (talk) 14:41, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, as explained previously more than once, a fair use limited quote used against the image page for the artefact was considered reasonable. Pasting the same text into a general category page with the intention of it being transcluded for any image and for any new image that later users care to add is an entirely different context. --Fæ (talk) 15:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• If you mean fair use in a technical sense, we just have to delete the information. Sorry then if I did not reply properly to some of your previous remarks. I thought you knew that Commons did not allow fair use.
• If you mean that the British Museum gave some form of informal consent to use the description in eleven pages but stated they did not want to have it transcluded in ten files, then some clarification would be welcome. It appears to be at odds with what you mentioned earlier, notably on a page that you pointed out to me: w:Wikipedia talk:GLAM/BM/Archive 1#Quoting descriptions for objects from the on-line collection database and copyright--Zolo (talk) 15:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC)(minor corrections --Zolo (talk) 19:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC))[reply]
  • The clarification is that informal conversation indicates that taking the summary description from the database record they would not care about in practice though they would be concerned if this were in a format that could easily be data-mined instead of going to their database as a source. Unfortunately due to policy, they will make no statement about it and if asked would formally point to the website T&Cs which restrict to limited non-commercial use. As I previously stated, by reformatting the image pages so that this text is transcluded to multiple pages, you have invalidated any tacit agreement and as you are so adamant that the orthodoxy of Commons means that there is no rationale that can deflect users such as yourself from making the image pages as easy to data-mine as possible, I see little other option but to reverse my viewpoint expressed during GLAM/BM discussion about how to do this, and instead I am forced advocate the removal of all direct quotes from the BM database on all existing images on Commons (not just this one under discussion) in order to protect the interests of the copyright holder. This will be quite disruptive and unfortunately to the obvious detriment of the current image descriptions as the BM database records are the most accurate information we can use being based on the BM curator's own descriptions. After giving some more time for any responses here (say another week), I will make a proposal on en:WP:GLAM/BM and outreach:GLAM/Discussion as this may affect our relationships with the British Museum and several other institutions if the bulldozer enforcement of {{Artwork}} can accept no exceptions or listen to rational argument. --Fæ (talk) 11:30, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

imo We should not take the contents of any non factual database that has data that has been updated in the last 70 years.... although it could be given. (Minor infringements can be overlooked because we are human, but should be fixed) In the case of the BM we have an additional requirement because they have looked after us.

If I overlook for the moment the problem of copyright and moral rights we have our own policy. Commons in not an encyclopedia. It certainly is not an English language encyclopedia. If we were to take thousands of complete good descriptions in English of notable artefacts then I think we would undermine our own product(s). A summary would be OK if it contains facts and not description. Hope that helps.

And I see that it doesnt mention Burney Relief ... that really does complete the undermining of a Good Article. Why can't we use text from there? That text is made for sharing, why would we not use the text we recommend? Victuallers (talk) 12:45, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have thought about this point previously, the Commons description should be focussed on the description of the photograph. It seems reasonable (and in line with Commons policy) to include a very brief description of the artefact but if this is cut & paste from the Wikipedia article along with a host of facts about the artefact (not the photograph!), then why not just link the category to the Wikipedia article rather than creating a maintenance headache and duplicating text which will lack any of the associated spread of reliable sources that the Wikipedia article diligently quotes against these facts? --Fæ (talk) 13:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Fae. Johnbod (talk) 13:39, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fæ, now you make your point more precisely.

Commons is not an English language Wikipedia and one of the benefits of {{Artwork}} is precisely to ease multilinguality. Persnnally I think I would support the removal of the "description" section since it is copied from the BM database and makes the description a bit long. And I certainly think it should cite its source.

I must emphasize that {{Artwork}} does not imply transclusion. So I would suggest to either keep the discussion focused on the use of {{Artwork}} or to split it into two different parts, one about {{Artwork}} the other about the transclusion of object description

note: hoping it will calm down the debate, I now remove the few transclusions I had made of British Museum object descriptions.--Zolo (talk) 15:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC) edited --Zolo (talk) 15:51, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion is about the category. However your point is poorly made as you forced the use of the more accurate template British-Museum-object on image pages to be removed and replaced with Artwork on this category page which actually has fewer languages available than the original template and has field names that are a worse fit for a museum object (such as medium, accession number (rather than registration, catalogue number, or reference which appears to be used for a website link rather than a reference) and title (this has a name it is now known by, it does not have a title as a work of art)). I shall trim some of the text that appears to be possible copyright violation from the category whilst under discussion but please consider the discussion open and so the consensus may be to replace some of it or to re-write it. --Fæ (talk) 16:35, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this discussion is about whether we should or should not have Category:Old_Babylonian_period_Queen_of_Night_relief.

I have never considered this discussion closed. I was pointed out that there were two different questions and that they would be best handled sepately. If we the consensus is that we should not use {{Artwork}}, then obvously we should remove it from the category.

I am not sure to get your point about the number of language available. I suppose you do not say we have more translations for {{British-Museum-object}} that for {{Artwork}}--Zolo (talk) 16:45, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

British-Museum-object has "British Museum" in 11 languages, had anyone ever asked for more variations for the sub-titles we probably could have easily added some. Artwork has 5 languages shown in the drop list. 5 is less than 11. --Fæ (talk) 17:04, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The drop list was due to an oversight on the documentation page. It is fixed now. If you look a bit further down in the page you will notice that the template has 60 translations (some are not fully complete but it should be done soon). Only one part of one field is translated in {{British-Museum-object}}. This yields either an ungrammatical language mix or no translation at all and is not very easy to correct. Even if we don't take literally the 1% rule, more people are likely to want than to provide translations and it is easier to translate one template than many. --Zolo (talk) 18:17, 12 March 2011 (UTC) edited --Zolo (talk) 18:58, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hang on, Artwork is transcluded in nearly 70,000 pages and you are still debugging it? I don't see a strong argument for 60 language variations in the template, there is no way we are ever going to get around to providing a fraction of the translations necessary for this to be useful for photos of BM hosted artefacts where, at the end of the day, if the visitors can't understand the BM website with its limited translations (the online catalogue is only available in English and that is the primary reference used for the artefact descriptions) then making Commons a couple of magnitudes more translated makes no practical difference and would be a poor use of our edit-time. --Fæ (talk) 00:06, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Either it's a copyvio and it has to go, otherwise it should be kept. --  Docu  at 07:18, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd argue that the use of the summeries isn't particulary safe copyright wise and as wikipedia's selection of articles in individual BM objects exampands it becomes less important. We should probably remove them and focus on a free alturnative.Geni (talk) 00:41, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Closed, stale discussion that was never really about a category, but rather about templates. --rimshot^talk 21:57, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]