Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2017/10

Advanced search in GlobalUsage

Currently, GlobalUsage just returns everything, but if you are trying to update an outdated or superseded file (for example a map, flag, coat of arms, etc.), it doesn't matter when it's used on user pages or archived talk pages. Additionally, it would be very helpful to search for file usage in templates. For example, a file might appear on 2,400 pages, but the majority are because it is embedded in a few templates, and those templates are where the change should be made. To find them more quickly I just do a browser search for pages that contain colons (since the word template is obviously different in other languages) but that also shows me user pages, and it would be nice if this process was easier. I actually think this could be achieved simply by applying the advanced search options from other WMF projects. Thoughts? Wikimandia (talk) 20:20, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Wikimandia. I work with the search team at the foundation and am trying to better understand your proposal. Adding a full text search box to that special page sounds like it might make the function of that Special: page rather complicated. I could see lots of search results that would not be relevant. It sounds like, at minimum, that Special:GlobalUsage would be more useful if it had the option to filter by namespace. Is that closer to your idea? You might also be interested in learning about the advanced search project from Wikimedia Deutschland. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:21, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, filtering by namespace is exactly what I mean by the advanced search options. This would be very helpful when trying to update outdated files or superseded files. Thank you. — ʷiḳỉℳẚṅ₫¡₳ (talk) 11:06, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Ok, that seems like a reasonable request. :) I've filed a feature request using Phabricator, our task management software. (T179505). I'll mention it at my next meeting with the Multimedia team (who I think are responsible for GlobalUsage). Keep an eye on that page for updates! CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:29, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to include non-CC0 licenses for the Data namespace

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T154071

This proposal is to allow additional licenses to the Commons Data namespace beyond CC0.

Context

Not all licenses allowed under Commons:Licensing are relevant to data sets, this proposal is to allow all those considered relevant to tabulated data and maps, including the display of OTRS tickets to validate specific release statements.

Recent cases of non-CC0 maps in the Data namespace hosted on Commons rely on data exported from Open Street Map (OSM) ({{ODbL}}) and others may rely on map data originally taken from Government released open data, with attribution requirements such as {{OGL}} or Public Domain but not CC0. In some cases map data created on OSM (ODbL) has been released by the same person on Wikimedia Commons as CC0, which would require a release unless the account is verifiably linked with the creating account on OSM.

References

1. Launch notice on the Village Pump, November 2016.
2. Proposal for tabular data, April 2016.
3. Allow structured datasets on a central repository (CSV, TSV, JSON, GeoJSON, XML, ...) - main Phabricator ticket.
4. Add a data-page-only wiki markup header to datasets - ticket to make Data pages compatible with conventional Commons methods, like categorization and license templates.
5. Policies for map geo-data stored in the Data: namespace related Village Pump discussion supporting the idea of changing licensing policy for Data namespace.

--Fæ (talk) 12:08, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Votes

•  Support as proposer. --Fæ (talk) 12:08, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
•  Support For most regions OpenStreetMap is the most comprehensive map of the world available today. There are hundreds, if not thousands of articles for Wikimedia projects, which would greatly benefit from dynamic maps based on OSM, that could be hosted on Commons. Thus the acceptance of ODbL/OGL licenses would be a great step in the right direction!--Renek78 (talk) 13:48, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
•  Support, per previous discussions (referenced below)--Ymblanter (talk) 18:13, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Indeed more public databases are published under regular Creative Common licenses like the datasets of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland or the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage which were published under {{Cc-by-4.0}}. These datasets include coordinates of archaeological sites and monuments which could be used for maps showing the geographical distribution of such objects. --AFBorchert (talk) 19:04, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
•  Support - Offnfopt^(talk) 19:20, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --Alexander (talk) 20:04, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
•  Support with the understanding that any implementation of this proposal includes the necessary support for tracking and propagating the license metadata needed to comply with licenses that have attribution requirements, license link requirements, etc. —RP88 (talk) 00:00, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

  Phab:T155290 is worth watching to see how implementation progresses. This proposal makes the requirement clearer, and I would hope that the implementation means that current automated tools will be able to work in the Data namespace, such as the ability to add any notice. --Fæ (talk) 08:00, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

•  Comment This proposal is not sufficiently clear in scope or explanation and I suggest we stop voting and have a discussion instead. -- Colin (talk) 07:19, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
•  Support with the comment that having any namespace that is restricted to one license and impervious to tags, categorization, and even wikilinks is a foolish idea.   — Jeff G. ツ 13:45, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Per previous discussions. Thank you Fæ for proposing. Wikimandia (talk) 22:14, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
•  Support In my experience, most data relevant for maps below the province/state level is not in the public domain or compatible with CC0. It’s either in OpenStreetMap or open source data provided by governments though Open Government Licenses (e.g., data from the Canadian, NZ, UK and French governments). If the Data namespace is going to maximize its usefulness, I think allowing additional licenses is essential. -Shaundd (talk) 19:50, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
•  Info Any RFC result here appears to be moot. The legal response posted below appears to say we can't put anything except CC0 there, and that the WMF currently has no plans to allow us to put anything except CC0 there. I will quote what I believe to be the critical portions: Will the tabular and map data features support non-CC0 datasets? Currently, the tabular and map data features require a license field, that supports SPDX codes to identify the dataset's license. The feature currently supports CC0. In the future, it may support additional Free Licenses, including CC BY-SA or ODbL. Before additional licenses can be allowed, the Wikimedia projects should (1) support attribution and other obligations contained in the license (such as when displayed in the Graph extension and other consumers of tabular and map data), and (2) provide users with appropriate community guidelines on what material and license is acceptable. This support may require additional feature development that is not currently planned, but open for future open source contributions. Alsee (talk) 23:41, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support for both tabular data and maps. Thank you Fæ for starting the discussion. The current licensing requirements unnecessarely limits OSM imports and data from public data repositories, which normally require attribution. While in Wikidata having different licenses for different properties would be a nightmare, having isolated data tables under a free, but non-CC0 license would help bridge the gap. As to the maps, OSM data is preferable to other sources because it matches the current maps the WMF provides. As to the issues that Alsee mentioned, we missed the train on this year's community wishlist, but there is always 2018. Also, AFAIK ODbL data (one of the major usecases here) could be accomodated without further changes to the code, since OSM is already credited in the Kartographer maps, so we could start with that.--Strainu (talk) 23:05, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 10:08, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Weak support CC0 is obviously very good for data but other very similar but not explicitly compatible licences like ODbL and CC BY are too. Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 18:00, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Strong support Per "support attribution and other obligations contained in the license". Yes the Wikimedia project already support attribution. In fact it is enshrined within the community practice of WP:V. No magic tech solution is needed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:46, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:09, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support This proposal is forcing a difficult issue. The Wikimedia movement advocates for free licenses. Commons has traditionally accepted content with any free license. Within Commons it seems in line with all precedent that we should accept data sets with any license compatible in this project. The conflict here is that Wikidata, a sister project, only accepts a certain kind of free license, CC0. It is not that the community there wants this, but rather that there is uncertainty about what datasets are eligible for coppyright and recognizing that CC0 is the most clear free license designation. Through years of experience we have seen that copyright experts, copyright lawyers, data scientists, and data scientists who are open license enthusiasts typically have no share understanding or common language for discussing copyright, data sets, and free licenses. It is a chaotic space. I am ready to say that Wikimedia projects are the thought leader in open licenses and second to none in hosting the most relevant discussions and cultivating communities of practice which convene conversations and decide acceptable behaviors in this new space. The natural thing to do here is for Commons to accept data with licenses that it would find acceptable for any of the other media it has accepted in the past 10 years. If that conflicts with Wikidata then maybe the Wikidata community and the broader Wikimedia community should have more conversations about this. The big conflict that I see with Commons accepting this data is that we are splitting data in two projects - Commons and Wikidata - and creating a need to differentiate which data sets have which license. This has to be reconciled eventually. I do not think that this is a significantly bigger problem than our other license conflicts, such as English Wikipedia accepting fair use media uploads while Commons prohibits them. I am not seeing any WMF legal statements which bring clarity to this issue or this vote. I cannot imagine any lasting harm coming from this proposal clarifying that Commons accepts datasets with any free license acceptable by Commons. I am not aware of any published last word on what sorts of copyright data sets can have and how to delineate what can be copyrighted from what cannot. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:12, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
•  Strong oppose - or rather, a conditional support. Conditional on fulfilling the requirements listed by WMF legal, and even then only license per license, as the given license is supported. Colin listed a few very good arguments below and I agree with many on them. I hope that anyone who closes this discussion recognized that some of the supports above are also conditional on actually fulfilling the requirements of WMF legal (see e.g. RP88's comment on aspirationality). (But once these requirements are fulfilled, I will change my vote, even though I will continue to oppose the idea that pieces of data should be licensable at all). --Denny (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
•  Support We support free culture and so if it has a free license and fits our general scope, we should include it. Frankly, database rights are goofy and it's unfortunate that there is such a tangled mess of them but that shouldn't stop us from making available free data which others could use for legitimate educational purposes. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:46, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

There has been much related discussion to this proposal at Commons:Deletion requests/Data talk:Kuala Lumpur Districts.map, at Wikivoyage Traveller's pub and a maintenance category has been created at Category:Data files with Open Street Map coordinates. Short neutral notes have been added to the Traveller's pub and the Village pump to link to this proposal in order to avoid on-going duplication of any discussion. --Fæ (talk) 12:43, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Why oh why does Commons always vote prematurely on these things. What is this proposal asking? That we accept any licence "considered relevant to tabulated data and maps". Well GFDL is not in anyway relevant to photographic images (it is designed for electronic computer manuals) yet it is near impossible to get Commons to agree to suspend its future usage for photos because a very very few photographers deliberately use it to prevent their works being re-used outside of Wikipedia. So what the community "considers relevant" appears to be "anything that means we can host it here". This is a major shift from accepting data that is totally without strings (PD or explicitly placed into PD by use of the CC0 declaration) to data that most certainly has strings that have legal backing. It is a shift from work free of any copyright restrictions whatsoever (and thus free of any concern about actually being complex/human/intelligent/etc enough to be copyrightable in the first place) to work that is still under copyright that still has a copyright owner and that is merely licensed with certain conditions. As seen in some linked discussions, it also brings with it the headache of knowing whether taking a small part of that data constitutes a work that is derivative or is just a piece of free non-copyrighted data.

The "BY" part requires us to maintain attribution of the data and any derivative works. While that is feasible for a photo with a description page with plenty room for attribution statements, and photos generally do not get mixed with other photos on any regular basis, it is the mixing of data that is so likely and attractive and easy. The "SA" part requires us to enforce that all derivative works on Commons use the same licence. This is infective. And historically some licences have not mixed well with other licences. So one cannot take e.g. a GFDL image and mix it with a ArtLibre image and produce a CC BY-SA 2.0 montage. Some of the more recent licences are compatible but this requires a level of licence Guru that is beyond most people. Do we really want the headache that is SA to infect our data? Perhaps. But like to know how either of these aspects are going to work before voting. Can someone take open streetmap data and product a CC BY-SA 4.0 image, for example? Or does the resultant image have some bastard licence nobody can put a name on? Just like our normal licence scope is founded on Definition of Free Cultural Works, we need a proposal for data that establishes some fundamentals of any licence that could be acceptable. And I'd suggest we learn from past mistakes and not permit an open field for anyone to invent any home-made licence that looks freeish, but specifically agree as a community which licences we accept. Then we can ensure those licensed works have the infrastructure and documentation here for users to work with them.

Btw, the linked deletion discussion is a classic of Commons voting with their hearts to desperately keep works here, rather than with their heads accepting that honestly the material had been wrongly declared CC0 and should not (currently) be hosted here. We should bear that in mind, that we tend to be foolishly desperate when it comes to wanting to host/keep material and not always accept the legal issues that others point out. I'm not against the idea of accepting some other licences, but it seems to me that is going to require more work to prepare for and consider. -- Colin (talk) 07:19, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Looking at the VP discussion, I see User:RP88 rightly raises the issue of compatibility when mixing data by says "Commons has long had to deal with this issue with regards to collages. Adoption of multi-licensing was used to ease some of these license compatibly issues". This isn't a great comparison. Collages are rare, so by and large, most Commons users will not deal with the headache of mixing licences. And if the source images are on Commons or online, then it is easy to link to them so any re-user can be clearly aware of which parts were taken from which source, and identify the attribution clearly also. But multi-licensing does not solve compatibility issues. For starters, it requires the original author to have the forethought to release their work under a variety of licenses. GFDL, CC BY-SA, ArtLibre, etc, etc. Then the person creating the collage has to pic the intersection of licences of their source material. That might mean they are left with just CC BY-SA. So whenever multi-licensed works are combined, and those licences aren't "compatible" you are left with a more restricted licence set. And if those licences aren't compatible to begin with, you actually can't mix them at all. It appears that ODC Open Database License is compatible with Open Government Licence and with Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. This means they can be mixed and you can use either one of these for the result. But while CC BY 4.0 is compatible, is CC BY-SA 4.0 compatible? And what about others? I would strongly suggest we only accept compatible licences, making the concerns of mixing data easier. -- Colin (talk) 07:58, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

See CC Compatible licences and this chart. It seems that while the three data licences above are compatible and interchangeable, none of them have an SA component. Mixing them with an SA licence like CC BY-SA means the new work must also be SA and thus can only be a compatible SA licence. Similarly, if one mixes non-SA works but chooses to release the derivative work under an SA licence, then that means all future derivative works must also be SA. So while CC BY-SA 4.0 is compatible with ArtLibre aka Free Art License 1.3, you can't take one of these and produce a CC BY 4.0 or an Open Database Licence work. The licences can only get more restrictive as you combine. Are there any SA data licences that are compatible with CC BY-SA? If not, then that's a very good reason to discourage SA completely, and stick with the three fully-compatible BY licenses. Note that the lack of an SA clause in these three licences, permits re-users to produce works that are not free, though of course such works could not be hosted here. -- Colin (talk) 08:36, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the reservations you've expressed Colin. I saw this proposal as "aspirational", i.e. the Commons Community approves of the goal of supporting in the Data namespace licenses that meet the WMF "freedom defined" standard with the proviso that any such support must be consistent with the aims of Wikimedia Commons. If it is impractical to support one or more of these licenses in a manner that honors the terms of the license, or the interaction between the requirements of a license and the Data namespace prevent or otherwise discourage the creation of derivative works (something I feel is outside the aim of Wikimedia Commons), then I don't think those licenses should be permitted in Data namespace (this is what I assumed "considered relevant to tabulated data and maps" was sort-of-awkwardly expressing). To that end, I think any implementation of this proposal should incrementally add support for individual licenses. By the way, as a minor aside, the ODC ODbL does have a share-alike clause (see section 4.4) that is triggered by any use of a "substantial" part of the licensed database. A work derivative of an OGL database and a substantial portion of an ODC ODbL database must be licensed under the ODbL. Licenses that contain share-alike clauses are typically incompatible with each other. Surprisingly, the OpenStreeMap project even considers CC-BY and ODbL incompatible (see Use of CC BY 4.0 licensed data in OpenStreetMap and their ODbL Compatibility matrix). However, both ODbL and newer versions of the CC licenses include compatibility clauses, so it is possible these incompatibilities could be rectified by a future agreement between ODC and CC to add their respective licenses to their lists of compatible licenses. —RP88 (talk) 11:59, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

RP88, thanks for the info. From this link we can see that the share-alike licences CC BY-SA 4.0 and Free Art Licence 1.3 are fully compatible. But GPLv3 is one-way-compatible only. And other versions are generally not compatible at all as you note. There is a big difference between data and images that I think is relevant to considering SA licences for data, so I think we need to be wary of comments like "this is just like collages". Most uses of images are not collages and most uses of images are not to create derivative works. Wikipedia happily uses any freely licensed image, and different images of various incompatible licences and be mixed with incompatibly licensed text. And my CC BY-SA photos can be happily used in a book that is (c) All Rights Reserved without free licensing because one only needs to state that my photo is freely used and give a link to where they got it from for someone else to re-use it again. I may be wrong, but I suspect many uses for data are to create derivative works, and to mash up e.g. a map with a regional area with a set of locations.

Wrt to your "substantial portion" comment, when does Commons accumulate enough individual pieces of another database that it then becomes a substantial copy of a portion of it? I recall issues on Wikipedia with the DSM psychiatry manual. While it is permissible to quote short texts from another work on Wikipedia, if all our medical articles quote short texts from DSM, then Wikipedia eventually gets too much of the DSM, which is very much copyright protected. So quoting from the DSM is simply disallowed (or at least, it was years ago when I edited more frequently there).

Wrt to the "aspirational" nature of the proposal, I would not be concerned about voting if the proposal was clearly reworded to make it so. But currently it says "this proposal is to allow all those [licences] considered relevant to tabulated data and maps" which is carte blanche open-ended permission. I don't think the community would be wise to authorise that just yet. Much better to consider carefully whether we want to shift from the current "no strings data" to "strings attached data" at all, in other words, to go from having unlicensed PD data to having licensed copyrighted data. That's a big jump concept in itself, before we even consider which licenses are practical to support. -- Colin (talk) 13:31, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Collections can indeed include works with incompatible share-alike clauses. Commons is itself such a collection, as I have no doubt the Commons database contains GPL licensed text in the form a PDF somewhere, but the Commons database is not itself required to be GPL licensed. With regards to ODbL's share-alike clause being triggered by any use of a "substantial" part of the licensed database, it is a term-of-art defined by the ODbL, not a feature of copyright law in general and as such only applies to ODbL licensed databases. Your DSM example does not involve the ODbL, so for it you need to look to the threshold of originality and fair use to determine the point at which too much is used. OSM has a nice guideline for their interpretation of "substantial" as it relates to their ODbL licensed database. —RP88 (talk) 14:18, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

As a quick update from the Foundation, SLaporte and I chatted yesterday about why we currently only accept CC0-released data in the Data namespace. The full legal public response to this issue will take a few days for us to prepare, but we wanted to let you know that we have heard you and the questions being asked. There are a couple of tickets open around this topic that we'll be tracking as well: T154071 and T178210. Thanks for your patience, DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

@DTankersley (WMF): Just for clarity, and to avoid any later misunderstanding of how we got here, the reason why "we currently only accept CC0-released data in the Data namespace" was not a WMF decision, nor ever voted on by the Community, based on the records of discussions when the concept was created. The idea for the Data namespace came from the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey and was followed up with a discussion on Commons (see links in the proposal). The decision to go with CC0 was not based on any actual legal reasoning, nor even for compatibility with Wikidata, and the discussion and vote to start experimenting with the Data namespace in 2016 only went with CC0 as a starting point, with the option to add other licenses once it got underway. Conflicts with licenses like those used for Open Street Map content and the database were never reviewed.

Before WMF legal publish a statement, could you confirm what specific question is being worked on? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 19:49, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

@Fæ: We will be sharing why we started with CC0, and some other resources in ODbL. If there are concerns with this topic, or if you do not want us to participate in this discussion (as it seems like you're asking in your post), please send me an email and we can discuss this in that manner. DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

@DTankersley (WMF): Thanks for the reply. It's probably worth repeating, as you are using "we" to mean WMF Legal and wrote that "we started with CC0". Starting Data namespace files with CC0 was not a choice based on legal considerations, nor was it the choice of the WMF. Consequently the literal "why" would not appear to be helpful in moving forward this proposal.

With regard to "other resources in ODbL", Wikimedia Commons already has many map files hosted which rely on the ODbL just not "officially" in the Data namespace. As far as I'm aware, the ODbL has never been a conflict with Wikimedia Commons hosting in terms of policy or legal constraints. There is the secondary related issue that Open Street Map content often relies on other licenses which include an attribution requirement, in particular data sets sourced from a number of different Government data services (example). I have no idea if these considerations are what WMF Legal want to make a statement about, as it appears tangential to this proposal of extending the Data namespace to non-CC0 licenses.

I have made no request that WMF legal cease participating here, the question was "could you confirm what specific question is being worked on?". That question has yet to be answered, and I have no idea why it is being avoided. I would rather not be left to speculate. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 13:33, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Hello, we've posted a response to the legal question of usage of CC0 data in Phabricator. I've copied some of it here:

"According to the Wikimedia License Policy, the Wikimedia projects may only accept material that meets the definition of Free Cultural Works. This includes material that is protected by copyright but released under a compatible free license, or work that is in the public domain because it is not protected or restricted by copyright law.

"Currently, the tabular data and map data features support a CC0 dedication.

"CC0 is suitable for data because:

CC0 does not add extraneous restrictions on factual data points that are not protected by copyright law or other rights.

CC0 is widely used and recommended for sharing datasets.

CC0 is easily compatible with other open licenses, so datasets can be combined or remixed without compliance concerns (other data-focused licenses have more complex compatibility questions like the Open Database License).

CC0 promotes legal predictability and certainty. More restrictive database licenses are tied to the existence of copyrights, neighboring rights, or sui generis database rights that vary from country to country.

"There are many data sources that use licenses other than CC0. Popular examples include Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 3.0 material, used on Wikipedia, and Open Database License (ODbL) material, used by Open Street Maps. As a general rule, people must use material in compliance with these license terms and release their work under a compatible license. However, there are circumstances where material from a source licensed under CC BY-SA or ODbL may be used in a dataset released under CC0."

Please read the rest of the post in Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T178210 and let us know if there are any further questions about the use of CC0 in the map or tabular data namespaces. DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 01:41, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Having read the post in Phabricator, the one-sided question raised and answered by WMF Legal, explores the benefits of CC0, which I think everyone voting in this proposal already knew. The proposal does not say "stop using CC0", in fact we would probably all continue to encourage maps and other JSON data to be published with a valid CC0 license as the preferred and default license for all data. What this proposal does do is make it possible to use other licenses and avoid having to delete "Free Cultural Works" which are clearly within Wikimedia Commons' project scope. Should the proposal fail, the community would be forced to invest a huge amount of volunteer time continuously assessing and debating deletion requests to assess whether claimed CC0 maps which reuse other data sets, sufficiently meet the legal requirements for "material from a source licensed under CC BY-SA or ODbL may be used in a dataset released under CC0", as we have seen in the DR that started this proposal.

In practice, I do not see how the basic observations from WMF Legal about CC0 should sway the outcome of the proposal. --Fæ (talk) 09:43, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Fæ's conclusion. -Shaundd (talk) 14:25, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey it currently going on (phase 1 Nov 6–19), perhaps we need to add a entry for this proposal there. - Offnfopt^(talk) 14:50, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

My reading is "put NOTHING there until the WMF adds software support for other licenses". Any CC other than explicit CC0 can't go there. Anything more than negligible quantity of OpenStreetMap will be "substantial" and will invoke the license. They failed to provide any answer on OpenGovernment, and until that say "yes" then I believe that is a "no". The community needed to communicate our questions to WMF-legal more directly, because filtering the communication through other WMF staffmembers got the wrong questions asked and the wrong answers back. Alsee (talk) 23:26, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

• My reading is that we can put other stuff their but we need to attribute, if we are using data that requires attribution. Well guess what, we should be attributing our sources anyway / regardless. This is already a requirement on Wikipedia per WP:V.
• Per User:Colin's concerns, yes it would be nice if we could create a perfect world and solve the hundreds of years of copyright confusion that exist, but we cannot. It is a messy world we live in. We should not have "perfection" making it impossible to build a better encyclopedia. We have succeeded based on gradual iteration / improvements and can continue to work that way.
• Do we need some lawyer to officially sign off before we do anything? No we do not. They will let us know if we take a step too far or will remove stuff if we get DMCA take downs which they feel unable to support.
• Rich content is one of the key things OUR readers are requesting. Allowing more licenses will allow us to provide this content. Yes we must innovate or we will become obsolete. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:01, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

• • "Should the proposal fail, the community would be forced to invest a huge amount of volunteer time continuously assessing and debating deletion requests" - lol, you mean we are being forced to spend time at DR? the WMF made us do it? i understand the pique at the "license migration" to CC0, but until you are prepared to sue over a CC-SA degraded to a CC0, the purity fork to data space is a nullity. and you will get yanks ignoring it anyway per w:Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co.. but hey if you want to edit war about which data licenses, go for it. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 02:15, 3 January 2018 (UTC)