The Wikipedia roads thread

[vdeane]

This is why I've always thought we should start our own wiki rather than use Wikipedia.  While Wikipedia has a lot of great articles, in terms of being "the encyclopedia everyone can edit", it fails miserably because of the bureaucratic culture that's developed.  I remember a few years ago they got called out by the press for saying that someone who was alive was dead, and since then they've been so paranoid that they've developed strict policies that arguable destroy their original vision.

[D-Dey65]

This is why I've always thought we should start our own wiki rather than use Wikipedia.  While Wikipedia has a lot of great articles, in terms of being "the encyclopedia everyone can edit", it fails miserably because of the bureaucratic culture that's developed.  I remember a few years ago they got called out by the press for saying that someone who was alive was dead, and since then they've been so paranoid that they've developed strict policies that arguable destroy their original vision.

I agree 100%, and if you didn't make it so obvious already, this doesn't just apply to road-related articles. Speaking of starting your own wikis, there happen to be road-related wikis already, and here's one;
http://reststops.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

[bulldog1979]

This is why I've always thought we should start our own wiki rather than use Wikipedia.  While Wikipedia has a lot of great articles, in terms of being "the encyclopedia everyone can edit", it fails miserably because of the bureaucratic culture that's developed.  I remember a few years ago they got called out by the press for saying that someone who was alive was dead, and since then they've been so paranoid that they've developed strict policies that arguable destroy their original vision.

I dunno about that one. The policies have always requested/required references to back added material. They've just tightened it a bit more on BLPs: Biographies of Living People. That's not necessarily a bad thing though.

As for forking, it's hard to drum up the same level of traffic that a top 10 website on the Internet can produce. The article on M-6 received about 22,900 page views on Nov. 20, compared to a couple dozen most days. Its appearance on the site's Main Page even made the local newspaper as a result. I know some roadgeek websites hit the press in relation to an existing news story, but how many of those websites generate a news story on their own?

[vdeane]

The policies were always there, but they weren't always enforced in a bureaucratic manner.  Wikipedia's founders envisioned that the rules would just be guidelines and only brought up to deal with issues.  I've read that the founders are shocked at how the present Wikipedia administration is enforcing the rules that they wrote without thinking about what would happen were they to be enforced.

[Scott5114]

The policies were always there, but they weren't always enforced in a bureaucratic manner.  Wikipedia's founders envisioned that the rules would just be guidelines and only brought up to deal with issues.  I've read that the founders are shocked at how the present Wikipedia administration is enforcing the rules that they wrote without thinking about what would happen were they to be enforced.

Considering that Jimmy Wales has been actively involved in the project from day one to the present, I find it doubtful he's too shocked about anything. (He's got a userpage and edits and everything.) I've certainly never read any posts by him saying such a thing, and if he did, everyone would probably know about it pretty quick. The other founder, whose name I can't remember right now, left the project fairly early on and became a vocal critic of just about everything about Wikipedia shortly thereafter, trying to start a competing encyclopedia that gave only qualified experts the ability to edit. Unsurprisingly, that model failed, probably because qualified experts have better things to be doing than writing encyclopedias.

I see it as the difference between a young small business and a corporation. When a company is small and everyone knows everyone, the folks in charge can be more lax about rules because everyone knows what is expected because there is one or two managers that see all the employees in the building on a daily basis. As the successful business grows into a large corporation there are more layers of management and stricter rules are laid down, which it probably doesn't make sense to adhere to like the gospel, but that is done anyway. It's seen as necessary to ensure everyone is treated uniformly, because the top execs probably don't get to talk to all the employees themselves and have to exercise their will through more junior managers.

[bulldog1979]

The policies were always there, but they weren't always enforced in a bureaucratic manner.  Wikipedia's founders envisioned that the rules would just be guidelines and only brought up to deal with issues.  I've read that the founders are shocked at how the present Wikipedia administration is enforcing the rules that they wrote without thinking about what would happen were they to be enforced.

And given the very real consequences related to BLPs, those rules have to be enforced regarding those subjects. We have a policy on WP restricting the use of "self-published sources", which means that unless the narrow exceptions apply, we can't use them. No blogs, no books published through vanity publishers, no self-published websites (like most of the various roadgeek websites). The reason is that there is no "editorial oversight" of the content, there's no one but the author reviewing what's been written before publication. That isn't to say that the information is wrong, but with a newspaper, their editors have a reputation to uphold so they take some responsibility for the content. The community drew a bright line around SPSs, and crafted a policy that says not to use them unless certain exceptions apply.

Because there isn't the level of concern and potential damage related to highway articles in most cases, the policy against SPSs isn't as strictly applied to highway articles like it would be for an article on a living person. In other words, I will use the Wisconsin Highways website put together by Chris Bessert as a source for historical information on WI highways, and I make sure that there is a footnote crediting it as the source. I don't use his Michigan site anymore for MI highway articles because I'm at a stage that I can't. For an article to be listed as a Good Article, using a SPS isn't allowed, and the Featured Articles require "high-quality reliable sources". This isn't a knock on Chris, rather a reflection of the fact that he isn't acknowledged as an "expert" in the field of history or the history of highways by the broader community. Even though I can't/don't use Michigan Highways as a source, I do link to the site at the bottom of every MI highway article. As it stands right now, of the little over 200 MI highway articles, 9 are FAs and 115 are GAs. The remainder are just below GA status on the scale.

[J N Winkler]

I see it as the difference between a young small business and a corporation. When a company is small and everyone knows everyone, the folks in charge can be more lax about rules because everyone knows what is expected because there is one or two managers that see all the employees in the building on a daily basis. As the successful business grows into a large corporation there are more layers of management and stricter rules are laid down, which it probably doesn't make sense to adhere to like the gospel, but that is done anyway. It's seen as necessary to ensure everyone is treated uniformly, because the top execs probably don't get to talk to all the employees themselves and have to exercise their will through more junior managers.

The transition from charismatic to bureaucratic leadership has been a well-known phenomenon since Max Weber described it in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.  I don't think anyone (aside from aficionados of unusual forms of social organization) objects per se to Wikipedia developing into a bureaucracy bound by impartially enforced rules as its content and its responsibilities expand.  Bureaucracy, in the view of Weber and many other writers on the subject, is a necessary accompaniment of scale.  What tends to attract criticism are the features of Wikipedia's bureaucracy that tend to distinguish it from established bureaucracies within government and the blue-chip corporate world, combined with frequent use of jargon in management-oriented pages, which adds to the difficulties outsiders (including casual Wikipedia editors like myself) face in sussing out institutional arrangements.

Government bureaucracies tend to be hierarchical and the hierarchies are relatively easy for people outside government to understand and navigate.  In the British civil service, for example, you know that an assistant principal (postholder of a certain administrative grade, not a school administrator) is a pretty important mid-level official; the CEO of an executive agency is less important than a minister or a departmental secretary; that anyone identified as "Chief Accounting Officer" of an agency or department is a pretty important person indeed; etc.  By convention the government publishes a Civil Service List which sets forth the title of each official, his or her position within the hierarchy, and his or her annual salary.  What are Wikipedia's equivalents of assistant principal, agency CEO, chief accounting officer, etc.?  Where is Wikipedia's equivalent of the Civil Service List?

Governments and corporate bureaucracies are also constrained by budgets.  Money has to be requested from third parties (either legislators or civil servants in an unaffiliated department) in order to staff bureaux and fund performance of their appointed duties.  Once granted, the money has to be accounted for to the funders after a defined interval, and this report has to compare the results obtained from money expended with the purposes for which it was originally appropriated.  This mechanism for accountability helps prevent the unjustified proliferation of bureaux, multiplication of employees within the bureaux, and expansion of responsibilities undertaken by a given bureau.  Where is the budget of Wikipedia?  Where are Wikipedia administrators required to account for their use of resource?  What are their job descriptions?  What are the charges of the organizational units for which they are responsible?

By mentioning all of these issues, I do not mean to assert that Wikipedia lacks a defined hierarchy, financial discipline, or any of the other institutional furnishings that attach to bureaucracies better understood by the man in the street.  What I mean to underline is that Wikipedia's hierarchical arrangements are a closed book to outsiders.  The same is true of any mechanisms it may have in place to ensure that resources (including not just money from donations but also the most important kind of resource of all, the time of knowledgeable editors) are spent as efficiently as possible.  Wikipedia also suffers from the problem that the typical casual editor's first contact with management usually occurs in a negative context, as the result of some other editor (generally some vaguely defined type of "higher up") objecting to an edit on the basis of criteria which are hard to find and not always possible to apply objectively.  The casual editor, if he or she sticks to his or her guns, then gets ushered into an appeals process governed by obscure forum selection rules, where it seems that anyone with the time and ego commitment to write screed after screed after screed can carry the day regardless of the merits of his case.

This particular discussion dealing with a project scope expansion (WikiProject UK Roads to cover road bridges and tunnels in addition to surface highways) was recently pointed out, by a Facebook friend, as an example of Wikipedia bureaucracy gone wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Roads#Amendment_of_scope

Note that there is more than a screenful of discussion, most of it from a single objector, on what should be a fairly simple and straightforward technical change.  This objector lost me at "PR, GAN, ACR or FAC."

My Facebook friend offered the link with this sarcastic observation:  "Hells bells, they might even add some useful content one day if we're not careful!"

[NE2]

As it stands right now, of the little over 200 MI highway articles, 9 are FAs and 115 are GAs. The remainder are just below GA status on the scale.

And how many are actually good? :bigsass:

[Scott5114]

Government bureaucracies tend to be hierarchical and the hierarchies are relatively easy for people outside government to understand and navigate.  In the British civil service, for example, you know that an assistant principal (postholder of a certain administrative grade, not a school administrator) is a pretty important mid-level official; the CEO of an executive agency is less important than a minister or a departmental secretary; that anyone identified as "Chief Accounting Officer" of an agency or department is a pretty important person indeed; etc.  By convention the government publishes a Civil Service List which sets forth the title of each official, his or her position within the hierarchy, and his or her annual salary.  What are Wikipedia's equivalents of assistant principal, agency CEO, chief accounting officer, etc.?  Where is Wikipedia's equivalent of the Civil Service List?

Wikipedia does have a hierarchy of "higher-ups" but this hierarchy is largely irrelevant to the lay person because it bears no relevancy to editorial decisions. I am an administrator, but I have no greater say in what the content of an article is than you do. Administratorship is simply a trusted position granted more technical tools that allow an editor more latitude to defend the encyclopedia against unconstructive edits ("vandalism")–among them are user blocking, page protection, quick reversion ("rollback") ability. Wikipedia cultural values hold that adminship is supposed to be "no big deal" and the position is often likened to being janitorial in nature; achieving adminship is frequently referred to as "getting the mop" or simply "the tools". Above adminship lie positions that are similarly more technical in nature, the bureaucrat and the steward. Both of these positions have rights granted which are even more obscure and seldom needed; the bureaucrat, for instance, has the ability to add and remove certain special flags to user accounts (like a flag indicating an account is used by an automated bot) and promote users to adminship.

However, this hierarchy as mentioned above is ultimately irrelevant to editing, as all decisions on Wikipedia stem from the consensus of the involved parties. This is why Wikipedia has so many policies–a need to document all of the consensuses that the community has reached on various issues. Unfortunately this is somewhat poorly organized and rather cumbersome to the newcomer. The U.S. Roads project chose to address this by creating a new user orientation page which quickly lays out some of the basic policies, style guidelines, and cultural norms for someone interested in U.S. Roads in particular.

Governments and corporate bureaucracies are also constrained by budgets.  Money has to be requested from third parties (either legislators or civil servants in an unaffiliated department) in order to staff bureaux and fund performance of their appointed duties.  Once granted, the money has to be accounted for to the funders after a defined interval, and this report has to compare the results obtained from money expended with the purposes for which it was originally appropriated.  This mechanism for accountability helps prevent the unjustified proliferation of bureaux, multiplication of employees within the bureaux, and expansion of responsibilities undertaken by a given bureau.  Where is the budget of Wikipedia?  Where are Wikipedia administrators required to account for their use of resource?  What are their job descriptions?  What are the charges of the organizational units for which they are responsible?

The budget of the Wikimedia Foundation is also irrelevant to the average editor. So as to avoid the possibility of bias brought on by advertising, the Foundation's expenses are covered through donations, usually solicited through donation drives somewhat similar to what you would see on public television in the US. (This is why you occasionally see "A Personal Appeal From Jimmy Wales" or some such plastered on the top of each page.) The only people on the payroll of the Foundation are those performing behind-the-scenes non-editoral duties–think the office workers, people running the servers, responding to press inquiries, etc. The vast majority of the budget, however, is simply spent keeping the servers running. The Foundation instructs editors to disregard any sort of financial or software-performance issues in editorial decisions and generally keeps out of the way altogether unless they need to step in due to some dire legal issue, which is infrequent.

By mentioning all of these issues, I do not mean to assert that Wikipedia lacks a defined hierarchy, financial discipline, or any of the other institutional furnishings that attach to bureaucracies better understood by the man in the street.  What I mean to underline is that Wikipedia's hierarchical arrangements are a closed book to outsiders.  The same is true of any mechanisms it may have in place to ensure that resources (including not just money from donations but also the most important kind of resource of all, the time of knowledgeable editors) are spent as efficiently as possible.

All of the information in this post is freely available somewhere on the site but as mentioned before there is just so much to read on Wikipedia's back-of-house operations that it is very overwhelming. Efficiency is, well, non-existent; because people work on a volunteer basis and are free to edit just about any page sometimes you will have many inefficiencies on that front. In U.S. Roads this manifests itself as having as many as half a dozen editors interested and actively editing articles on roads in the Northeast but close to none looking after articles on roads in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Missouri, etc.

Wikipedia also suffers from the problem that the typical casual editor's first contact with management usually occurs in a negative context, as the result of some other editor (generally some vaguely defined type of "higher up") objecting to an edit on the basis of criteria which are hard to find and not always possible to apply objectively.  The casual editor, if he or she sticks to his or her guns, then gets ushered into an appeals process governed by obscure forum selection rules, where it seems that anyone with the time and ego commitment to write screed after screed after screed can carry the day regardless of the merits of his case.

Editorial disputes are supposed to be resolved by everyone involved sitting down as equals and trying to form a consensus together. Of course this often fails precisely because someone decides to "stick to one's guns" and refuse to work with the other party. That's when editorial dispute resolution processes kick in, in the form of third-party mediation or, worst comes to worst, arbitration. The problem is that it's generally not that clean because someone will have stepped on some policy at some point (often 3RR, the three revert rule meant to curb edit wars) and the other party will make things worse by posting to an administrative noticeboard attempting to get someone to intervene. Other times discussions will spread because someone is seeking an outside opinion and then the discussion will get spread to that page. MeatballWiki terms this a "forest fire". In my six years on Wikipedia I have only been involved in such "forest fire" type debates two or three times. I don't think they are all too common for the average savvy editor, as long as controversial areas (such as anything that lends itself to nationalism) are avoided.

This particular discussion dealing with a project scope expansion (WikiProject UK Roads to cover road bridges and tunnels in addition to surface highways) was recently pointed out, by a Facebook friend, as an example of Wikipedia bureaucracy gone wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Roads#Amendment_of_scope

Note that there is more than a screenful of discussion, most of it from a single objector, on what should be a fairly simple and straightforward technical change.  This objector lost me at "PR, GAN, ACR or FAC."

My Facebook friend offered the link with this sarcastic observation:  "Hells bells, they might even add some useful content one day if we're not careful!"

The abbreviations arise from the fact that the same dozen policies or so are often referenced again and again in a discussion and it becomes tiresome to type "three revert rule", "no original research policy", "assume good faith", etc. over and over again. Usually you are addressing a room full of experienced Wikipedia editors and thus it is reasonable to assume that everyone is familiar with the acronyms. Generally they will be linked at their first appearance in a discussion, but if not, they may be looked up by prepending "WP:" to them and visiting that page (e.g. visiting the page "WP:3RR" redirects the reader to the "three revert rule" policy page).

[rschen7754]

We also have an IRC channel #wikipedia-en-roads on Freenode where new editors can come and ask us questions. During the evening hours there's always someone on who can answer your questions.

Nowadays, we don't really have to worry about the road articles getting deleted, or about the articles getting wrecked. There have been precedents set in place that protect us, for the most part. There's a lot of Wikipedia drama going on around the encyclopedia, but there's a few of us that monitor those discussions and keep the others informed about what they need to know, and we're able to keep it out of the roads areas. The roads projects have been relatively peaceful for a few years now; sure, there's debates, but we're able to keep those somewhat civil and contained.

As it stands now, the hypothetical scenarios of forking from Wikipedia haven't been honestly considered for years.

(Wow, I didn't realize this thread was still going, over 2 years later!)

[english si]

Nowadays, we don't really have to worry about the road articles getting deleted, or about the articles getting wrecked. There have been precedents set in place that protect us, for the most part.

Which is interesting as road articles tend to be either original research or plagiarism - both banned by WP - the latter for obvious reasons, the former a bit less obvious. I guess it's a rare case of pragmatism and content over rules and regulations.

I think it's one of the cultural differences between British and US roadgeeks - British ones mostly dislike wikipedia: part of it is history and another part geography.

History - in the early days of SABRE, a complete route list was started - the actual one is very awkward (a series of 1:10k maps with each route number on them and little-to-no cataloguing) and no public lists existed at the time. Along with that came projects to supplement CBRD's listings of motorways with descriptions of A1-99 and then A100-999 (which were grouped on webpages 10 to a page, earning the title 'roads by ten'). These group efforts were hosted on SABRE. The 'digest' and the 'First 99' and 'R10' projects were maintained by people posting updated/improved on the forum, some people adding descriptions for B roads and 4-digit A roads, and then someone updating the .html pages. This wasn't great, and after years of talk, we finally installed a wiki, which merged the projects and allowed a lot more scope (junctions/interchanges, 'primary destinations', other important destinations, service areas, bridges) and no middle man. In the US, there's team websites like AA roads, state/region-specific websites, well maintained lists of roads that are accessible, and so on: not until recently, with the AA roads forum, has there been something that resembled a go-to place for all US roads knowledge.

Geography - the US is huge, and different people made sites for their different areas, add to that state routes - data for each area is fragmented, and state roads aren't nationwide - it wasn't a group project to list and describe roads, but rather the work of just a few.

Additional history - we found out, several years ago, that wikipedia users were basically stealing SABRE members research - normally uncited. At the same time, we found that the websites that the research was put on - when they were actually being cited - were then being considered unreliable sources. In fact, this last week, I've heard that the original (and only complete) list of British Roads - from 1922, is considered unreliable as they didn't make that many copies 90 years ago and it's hard to get your hands on a copy (though there's certainly one in the British Library, and another in the National Archives). J.N.'s Facebook friend has spend a couple of years trying to heal the rift between SABRE and WP, to little avail and every little bit of news has been "they make our horrible admin days look great" (which is really saying something, given how awful our days as the Society for Anal Bureaucratic Regulating Everything was).

[NE2]

In fact, this last week, I've heard that the original (and only complete) list of British Roads - from 1922, is considered unreliable as they didn't make that many copies 90 years ago and it's hard to get your hands on a copy (though there's certainly one in the British Library, and another in the National Archives).

Bullshit. Presumably it's under crown copyright, hence public domain, so it can be transcribed onto Wikisource. (Even if it wasn't, that shouldn't make it unreliable.)

[bulldog1979]

In fact, this last week, I've heard that the original (and only complete) list of British Roads - from 1922, is considered unreliable as they didn't make that many copies 90 years ago and it's hard to get your hands on a copy (though there's certainly one in the British Library, and another in the National Archives).

That source is reliable. The number of available copies doesn't make or break a source as reliable or not; the publisher/author does.

[english si]

^^ http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=576804#p576804 <-post saying that idiots are at play in WP:UK Roads. I know it's a reliable source, and fits WP's definition, but it is considered to be unreliable by nincompoops!

Crown copyright is the same as normal copyright, just it's 50 years, not 70 years - it is public domain because of its age, not because of its authors.

It can be transcribed onto Wikisource, but SABRE will get irate without decent proof that the transcriber put in some effort to obtain the document and didn't plagiarize it. SABRE has a full list transcribed on its wiki, someone having gone to the trouble of paying to digitally copy (photos, IIRC) the copy in the British Library and then sharing it with a few others, so they could help the laborious task of copying it by hand to the SABRE Wiki. The photocopies are copyright the copier, under UK copyright law. The transcription on the Wiki is copyright SABRE.

Anyway, I think it might be that the 1922 Road Lists were considered unreliable as the reference was to the SABRE Wiki (helping the end user, as they could then actually read the original source) transcription - which as a wiki, isn't reliable under WP rules. This is despite Wikisource being a wiki, but if someone just copied and pasted the wiki code (with permission) from SABRE to Wikisource, the change of location would make it a reliable source <facepalm>. If it is the case that the reference was pointing you to the SABRE Wiki, then it is still nincompoops tagging it as unreliable and shows one of the worse aspects of Wikipedia - that there's a lot of people whom the end user isn't the person to please, but the rules applied with no common sense.

[NE2]

It can be transcribed onto Wikisource, but SABRE will get irate without decent proof that the transcriber put in some effort to obtain the document and didn't plagiarize it. SABRE has a full list transcribed on its wiki, someone having gone to the trouble of paying to digitally copy (photos, IIRC) the copy in the British Library and then sharing it with a few others, so they could help the laborious task of copying it by hand to the SABRE Wiki. The photocopies are copyright the copier, under UK copyright law. The transcription on the Wiki is copyright SABRE.

Fuck SABRE and fuck British law allowing creativity-less copyright. Wikipedia rightly ignores the latter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain#Non-creative_works

[english si]

Fuck SABRE and fuck British law allowing creativity-less copyright. Wikipedia rightly ignores the latter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain#Non-creative_works

That's the root of the dislike between SABRE and WP - people spend hours in archives doing research and then Wikipedia come along and steal the facts that the SABRE members found (and then call the sites where the research was published unreliable sources) and declare it like some sort of right, despite breaking the law (including US, see below). And, of course, Wikipedia doesn't allow anything other than this plagiarism, as that would be 'original research'.

I've just looked through my collection of old books where the content is out of copyright as written years and years ago. All of them have stuff like "Text copyright 1995" or whatever. The actual work is out of copyright, but the book is in copyright. The most aggressive one was the one imported from the States: "Copyright 2008... All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher" they did the formatting and made "numerous corrections" to the 1845 translation. Technically, according to that draconian list, I'd be unable to quote it in essays - having to find the original (or an alternative) translation.

And, of course, Wikipedia puts a Creative Commons licence on it's own material, restricting use, so they don't want me to be able to copy some list of facts off their site and putting it under a different CC licence (eg no licence). It seems they do believe in copyrighting facts - I can't just pull a list off of WP and dump it somewhere else on the web unless I have the same CC licence on that site.

With the 1922 roads lists, the original content is obviously not copyrighted - however as SABRE members have made corrections, and the formatting, then we have just as much right to copyright it as the American publisher of my old book (we have much less rigid copyright terms too, IIRC). Wikipedia users ought to be able to reference the source if they want (and SABRE members don't have a problem with it in the case of the 1922 road lists, which isn't a pooling of research and there's no creative input other than formatting and correcting some spelling errors - the problem is at the WP end), but they apparently can't as it is on the wrong wiki despite the objections to the SABRE Wiki as an unreliable source equally applying to WikiSource.

Photos of old documents are copyright for exactly the same reasons as photos of old paintings, old buildings, ancient geology, etc are copyright. Ditto photocopies. Making a copy of the copy without permission is theft. Making your own copy of the original isn't. I'm certainly not talking about if someone goes and puts the document, from an original copy, on wikisource (which is highly unlikely) - I'm talking about if someone uses our copies (photo or wiki) without permission (far more likely, due to the magpies on WP).

If Wikipedia did not consistently and systematically steal research from SABRE member's websites and then attack those websites as unreliable, then SABRE would be much more friendly to WP. I've had a look round WP this evening and found quite a bit of work lifted from stuff I've done for the SABRE wiki - often with no citations. Most blatantly is a list of destinations that aren't considered 'primary' anymore where they have (wrongly) added a couple of incorrect places: mistakes we at SABRE initially made - including one that is spelt wrong, in a way that I am nearly unique in misspelling it - but then quickly corrected. Sure it's simply compare two different online documents made 15 years apart, but they can't even do that without pilfering the answers off someone else. Facts might not be copyright, but surely mistakes are? I'm not wanting to bring a lawsuit, or anything, just it's so fucking rude for these thieving twats not to even care about fixing errors in the stuff they stole when they are fixed on the original!  

I'm not talking here about US road pages - just the UK ones, which seem to be edited by cockwombles who don't have a clue, with occasional useful information either put there by outsiders, or by people from SABRE who put it there years ago before the problems, or more recently out of embarrassment at how wrong/bad the article was. This is a discussion about "to wikipedia, or not to wikipedia" and I'm explaining both why British roadgeeks, on the whole, tend not to wikipedia, and why SABRE has it's own wiki.

[NE2]

Just what I expected - a response full of bullshit, throwing around terms like theft.

Publishers, by the way, like to add unenforceable terms. Doesn't mean they can prevent you from copying public domain text or images.

London (Goswell Road, Upper Street, Holloway Road, Archway Road) - Barnet - Baldock - Stamford - Grantham - Newark-upon-Trent - Doncaster - Wetherby - Boroughbridge - Northallerton - Darlington - Durham - Newcastle-upon-Tyne - Berwick-upon-Tweed - Haddington - Edinburgh

Assuming this is the way the original document formats it, there's nothing you can do to prevent me from copying this text anywhere. The 'notes' column is of course copyrightable.


Now, if I were an actual researcher, I'd want to see the original because of possible errors in transcription (if SABRE had photocopies of the original, this would do just as well - and no, these cannot be copyrighted by the copier, and certainly neither can a transcription derived from them). But this has nothing to do with copyright and everything to do with good research practices. If you want to know what the Bible originally said, you go to the earliest known copy (or photos of it), not to a Gideon's.

[J N Winkler]

In addition to the specific case of the 1922 road list that Simon cites, the London Ringways have been a sore point between SABRE and Wikipedia.  The bulk of the archives research on these proposals was done by Chris Marshall (owner of Cbrd.co.uk) and Steven Jukes (owner of Pathetic.org.uk), and they wrote it up only later to find bits and pieces of their work used on Wikipedia without attribution.  I can remember an episode several years ago when Wikipedia editors posted in SABRE to the effect that they based their Ringway articles on their own archival research rather than Chris' and Steven's sites, but there were still enough similarities to give rise to the suspicion that the Wikipedians were depending on Steven and Chris for the overall narrative while "salting" the text with their own sources to obscure the extent of the plagiarism.

As matters now stand, Wikipedia does have a page on the Ringways but it is very short, with most of the citations coming from Chris' site.  There are some citations to Times articles which are probably a result of access to the Times article database at universities.  One citation is indirect--it is a link labelled "Highway Development Survey, 1937" (i.e., Bressey report) but instead of the actual book, which is still available at a number of university libraries in the UK, the link takes you to a roadgeek website page about it (now no longer actively maintained).

[AsphaltPlanet]

If I may interject, a similar situation erupted a few years ago in Ontario with regards to the history of highways in Ontario.  Back in those days, Wikipedia wasn't sourced like it is today, and a situation arose whereby a website that details the History of Ontario's King's Highway's would make regular updates and they would magically appear, un-sourced, and usually almost verbatim a few days later.  A feud ensued, and it seems like there is still bitterness today (surprisingly, emulated by members who weren't even involved in the kerfuffle all of those years ago).

Wikipedia is a neat idea, objectively I can't deny that, but as a fellow highway webmaster it has been frustrating over the years to see Wikipedia grow in popularity at the hands of sites such as my own which helped lay some of the ground work for information about highways in the first place.

As an analogy, Wikipedia is the Wal-mart of information on the internet.  It's everywhere, and it has everything.

[J N Winkler]

As an analogy, Wikipedia is the Wal-mart of information on the internet.  It's everywhere, and it has everything.

Personally I call it a McDonald's of information, but the underlying point is the same--there is an element of competition between quality on some third-party sites and accessibility on Wikipedia which flows directly from Wikipedia's scale and role as a one-stop shopping point for information.

[NE2]

Personally I call it a McDonald's of information, but the underlying point is the same--there is an element of competition between quality on some third-party sites and accessibility on Wikipedia which flows directly from Wikipedia's scale and role as a one-stop shopping point for information.

Sounds like a reasonable analogy. I find Wikipedia to be rather shite on reliability grounds, but knowing what to look for makes it a lot easier to find a better source.

[english si]

Just what I expected - a response full of bullshit, throwing around terms like theft.

What else is taking someone else's work without asking?

Assuming this is the way the original document formats it, there's nothing you can do to prevent me from copying this text anywhere.

oh indeed, but technically it would still be illegal, while unenforceable (see below).

Now, if I were an actual researcher, I'd want to see the original because of possible errors in transcription

Of course - I fully agree, but the issue being discussed in this train of coversation was why wikisource would count as a valid source, but the same thing elsewhere on the web wouldn't.

(if SABRE had photocopies of the original, this would do just as well - and no, these cannot be copyrighted by the copier, and certainly neither can a transcription derived from them).

25 years copyright for re-published works that the original is out of copyright, according to the Bodleian library at Oxford, under UK (EU?) copyright law - add to that the National Library of Scotland's views about maps their staff have scanned and you have two of the most important places for dealing with out-of-copyright material in the country concurring. Oxford says "you may not copy the whole of, say, a Dickens novel if the printed work you are using as the source of the copy was published in the last 25 years."

But this has nothing to do with copyright and everything to do with good research practices. If you want to know what the Bible originally said, you go to the earliest known copy (or photos of it), not to a Gideon's.

Indeed, and WP:UK Roads is an example par excellence of bad research practices, so they won't do anything of the sort.

[NE2]

Just what I expected - a response full of bullshit, throwing around terms like theft.

What else is taking someone else's work without asking?

If you mean hacking into the server and deleting it, you could call that stealing. Otherwise 'taking' is just as bogus a term.

25 years copyright for re-published works that the original is out of copyright, according to the Bodleian library at Oxford, under UK (EU?) copyright law - add to that the National Library of Scotland's views about maps their staff have scanned and you have two of the most important places for dealing with out-of-copyright material in the country concurring. Oxford says "you may not copy the whole of, say, a Dickens novel if the printed work you are using as the source of the copy was published in the last 25 years."

According to Wikipedia (heh) this only applies to previously unpublished works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_right
Here's the relevant UK law: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1996/2967/part/II/crossheading/publication-right/made
This obviously does not apply to a government document that was sent to libraries. Any attempt to apply this to such is so-called "copywrong" and reflects badly on the attempter.

[english si]

If I carried on my quote from the Bodelian, then it would have talked about Publication Right - it's not what I, or they, were talking about:

There is a similar right called 'publication right' that may apply to old material being published for the first time. This also lasts for 25 years. Apart from this there are no restrictions for out-of-copyright publications.

The only reason why this is even an issue is due to how Wikipedia contributors treat SABRE members hard work - like they have some right to simply grab any bit of information and dump it on Wikipedia without doing any work, or sending people to the place where the people who've done the work have presented it better and more accurately.

And OK, it's not taking - but an analogy is that you spend ages researching some academic project, only for someone to use your work, without asking or crediting, and get away with it - oh, and they take first drafts and don't fix the errors over on WP:UK Roads, reflecting badly when they do actually bother to source the information. Plagiarism, is what it is and if you look at Dictionary.com then you'll see that one of the synonyms is "theft".

[NE2]

If I carried on my quote from the Bodelian, then it would have talked about Publication Right - it's not what I, or they, were talking about:

There is a similar right called 'publication right' that may apply to old material being published for the first time. This also lasts for 25 years. Apart from this there are no restrictions for out-of-copyright publications.

If you're talking about the first sentence, that refers to "the typographical and other material aspects of the work". Not the underlying text, which is non-copyrightable. Certainly not the broad strokes of plot or where a road goes.

Think of it this way: if you take a picture of a road sign, you own the copyright to that picture. But if you take the same sign and put it in a scanner, the scan is not creative, hence non-copyrightable. And in either case, the fact that the border is 1/2 inch wide is not copyrightable.

The only reason why this is even an issue is due to how Wikipedia contributors treat SABRE members hard work - like they have some right to simply grab any bit of information and dump it on Wikipedia without doing any work, or sending people to the place where the people who've done the work have presented it better and more accurately.

Which has nothing to do with copying a public document.