Talk:Fork FAQ

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[edit] Is this really under the same license ?

You should probably know that some Wikivoyage contributors have been going around to certain other project under the same license and demanding that their contributions be taken down. This of course represents at least a mis-understanding of the nature of the CC by-sa, if not an outright violation. I would think that if the association supports this kind of behaviour that it makes this wiki considerably less free than the one that it was forked from. -- Mark 10:48, 10 January 2007 (CET)

Dear Mark, I do not understand Your problem. You are referring to two authors. The behaviour of individuals is not the some as the behaviour of a community. I think that this was discussed on WT in extension. We neither support nor deny the behaviour of individual authors.--Der Reisende 13:19, 10 January 2007 (CET)

It's up to the community to make sure that the works it's distributing are really under the license the community says they are under. I would suggest that the works in question are at least tainted, since the author clearly doesn't want them released under the CC by-sa, at least not for real. Therefore, this community should recognize that and delete them as well, or the community should try to educate its members about the license. Specifically about how the license in question is granted to the whole world. -- Mark 15:03, 10 January 2007 (CET)

Mark, welcome to Wikivoyage. I'm happy to see that Wikivoyage has needed only a couple of weeks to become important enough that even WT/en contributors come for a visit. However, I feel very sorry that there is still so few information about us available in English. Be sure, this is not because we wanted to cook our "German only soup", but rather a matter of time. We are still so buisy with the de: branch that we simply have not foud the time for bringing general: up to date.

This is a good occasion to clearify some things. Some month ago, we had been discussing about the reasons for the fork and some community policies. I remember well that you wanted me to translate some MeatBall article about soft community policies, which I have denied for reasons of time. When looking back after being up for one month, I'd say you realy had been somewhat overcautious. Let me tell you, we already have lost one contributor who didnt want to accept our manual of stile. He has gone by his own will, none of us ever had locked him out, blocked him in any way or said any bad word to him. So far, most things seem to run quite simular as they do on WT, except that we refuse to have such a strong leader as Evan is on WT. Instead, we have elaborated a decision making policy on de: with a strong emphatizes on consensus. Only if no consensus is possible for some reason, we make votings (what has not yet happend so far).

Above, you are talking about "some Wikivoyage contributors". I'd prefere clear words. Who exactly do you mean? And what are the "certain other projects"? Do you mean de:User:JensANDMarian who have asked for a deletion of their images from WT? I have read this discussion. They wanted to know what we on WV would do in order to prevent an upload of their work on some commercial site. I have clearly told them that we make our db-dumps freely available and that we must accept every use conform to the CC-by-sa 1.0, including commercial ones. By the way: My foramal request for db-dumps at IB has simply been ignored, even after several reminders.

Some last thing: On the WT/en VfD you are talking about "some guy who is a relative newcomer is out there running a disinformation campaign about one of the founders of this website, Evan." I seriously hope that you didn't mean hansm, although I fear that some others could have associated my name with your remark. It would be nice if you could clearify this.

-- Hansm 15:35, 10 January 2007 (CET)

I did mean you. -- Mark 15:49, 10 January 2007 (CET)

Please let me know what the so called "disinformation campaign" should be. -- Hansm 15:51, 10 January 2007 (CET)

Well, let's start with this FAQ. -- Mark

Please do so. -- Hansm 15:59, 10 January 2007 (CET)

Exactly. I think it should start with a first level header apologising to Evan in really really really contrite terms about the harm you've caused him in both words and actions. Until I see an apology my opinion will be that neither you nor your project deserve my respect nor that of anybody in the Free Software community. You have harmed one of ours, and I don't much like it. -- Mark 16:02, 10 January 2007 (CET)

Mark, this are hard words, but I still don't understand your objections. It would help me a lot if you could specify what exactly is wrong with my FAQ and what the "disinformation" should be. What harm did I cause him, except that he probably doesn't like our fork? You already could have explained me this some months ago, before we did the fork, since it has been published on my WT user page in first place.

Concerning the Free Software community, I must admit that I'm not very familar with the developer scene. I personaly use free software for years and even this server is running on Debian, but I won't tell you new things. Maybe, you know the Austrian Gründer-Wiki (German) what is somehow comparable to MeatBall. Those guys seem to like Wikivoyage.

-- Hansm 16:23, 10 January 2007 (CET)

I'm not Mark, but I think this part of the FAQ is ridiculous:

Evan and Michelle have run Wikitravel as private persons. The wiki community had no choice but trusting into their good faith. There was no community control on the two owners of the server and you see what has happened. It was their personal decision to sell the wiki and so they did. They also could have decided to close down the wiki or whatever. Private persons are no good carriers for the wiki and its internet domain.

You're ignoring a fundamental point that Mark has explained over and over: the "wiki server" may be Evan and Maj's, or now Internet Brands', but the content is free. The community (or little bits of it, like you) doesn't have to trust them, they can fork off their own versions if they're not happy, and the lawyers of the eeeeeeeeevil IB cannot do anything. But I also think it's completely idiotic to fork the website before IB changes anything at all! Wikitravel:Jpatokal 61.246.25.109 17:25, 11 January 2007 (CET)

Hi Jani, welcome to Wikivoyage. I know that Mark has mentioned "over and over" that the content still were free, but it never did convince me (and others). So, please, it's not that I had ignored that, but a lack of good arguments on Mark's side. My request for db dumps has shown how free WT's content realy is: requests are ignored, IB tries to keep the monopoly on the data set as whole.

I don't understand why you feel that the above citeted argument should be rediculous. Could you explain that?

-- Hansm 17:39, 11 January 2007 (CET)

"The wiki community had no choice but trusting into their good faith" → ridiculous, you can fork if you don't trust them

"and you see what has happened" → ridiculous, absolutely nothing has happened

"Private persons are no good carriers for the wiki and its internet domain." → ridiculous, this doesn't make any sense even grammatically

Hi Jani,

unfortunatly with the above you did not provide good arguments against the quoted FAQ section. Trust has got nothing to do with forking. Of course the contents is free, but it is not freely ditributed in terms of full availability, as there are no datadumps available (wikivoyage already released the first dumps around Christmas). The community which was always said to be most important and should take part in every decision has never been asked about selling the project. If you call this "nothing" I wonder what would mean "something" to You. Talking about grammar, this argument is ridiculous as you very well know that Hansm is no native speaker. So we are still waiting for arguments to convince us.--Der Reisende 16:19, 12 January 2007 (CET)

Der Reisende, That's a very good point. I was angry when I wrote above, and made several unsubstantiated remarks, based mainly on materials which were on altwt. I still don't want to get into the details because that site's dissapeared, along with most of the statements that made me angry. I'd really rather not put them into print again.

As for mysql dumps, I really seriously think that the XML dumps that WT offers are technically superior for a number of reasons, mainly because they make the work of reusing the material in a trademark-compliant way much much easier. The dumps have in fact been available to anybody who's asked since sometime last fall. I'm not sure exactly when.

Just so I don't leave this un-substantiated, I'll list some of the reasons that I think the XML dumps are better:

• Self-service updating (once you have the dump you can just follow recent changes), in real time.
• Use as much or as little of the content as you like.
• A guarantee that only public data is in there.
• It's XML, so it's human readable. You don't even need a copy of mysql much less MediaWiki.

Anyhow I tested, and proved all of this stuff before you guys ever got started. Nobody had a problem with it on WT.

Besides, dumps are immaterial to the freedom of WT the guides. The guides are available online for mirroring, along with instructions for how to do so, and are released under a free content license. Dumps of one kind or another are a convenience, but only a convenience.

The very existence of this site proves that WT is Free content, since absolutely nobody has asked you to stop using any of the content. Unfortunately that statement cannot be made the other way around, WV participants came to WT and asked us to take down content which had been released under the CC by-sa v1, which means that they didn't really mean to release it under that license. So WV really needs to take all of that contributor's work down as well, because it is not CC by-sa licensed!

Why is it that people from here are getting the idea that Wikitravel is somehow "bad" in the first place? Is it perhaps because of statements like the ones in this FAQ? I think it's reasonable to state the difference in governance between the two projects, but that's the only difference there is. Both projects are equally commercial or not, that's a red herring. The difference is that WV is governed apparently by democratic or majority rule of some central committee that you have to buy into (€25, right?). WT is a constructive anarchy, in which each person contributes according to their ability and can use the whole thing according to the license, and what's more each contributor owns the bits that they've contributed, to do with as they please within the bounds of the license. This includes the service and the trademark, which were held by Evan, and which are now held by somebody else. Big deal.

Now meanwhile Hans and others have written a bunch of stuff about Evan that amount to nothing more or less than character assassination. This is about somebody who's put serious effort into MediaWiki, and continues to, and contrary to some of the nonsense I've read here and elsewhere has published every single line of code under the GNU GPL. This is somebody who's been working as a Debian maintainer for 10 years, who's been involved in the work of folks like the EFF and CC for at least as long, who I have pictures of somewhere marching with me around Adobe one day and chanting at them to "Free Dimitry!". This is somebody who's worked so long and so hard to help provide you with a truely Free operating system, and I think he deserves better treatement than he's getting in this "FAQ". -- Mark 00:00, 13 January 2007 (CET)

Hi again, sorry if this discussion is time consuming, but we have a time difference between the states and europe. I just want to answer briefly on the above statements.

• About our organisation: Wikivoyage is not governed by a central committee (I really hope you do not compare us with other central committees this world has seen yet - if you do, you don not have any idea about suffering under the dictatorship of a central committee). You do not have to by into it. The easiest way to explain ist to compare it with wikipedia. You have the project and the foundation. So we have the Wikivoyage project which is anarchic in the same way WP is and we have the association/foundation which is running and paying the hardware. The association/foundation is led by a board which has currently the legal minimum of three members (this is german law) which are elected for one year. The rules/guidelines of the association are written down and recognised and registered with the german legal authorities. If there are vital changes necessary the association has to meet and vote under certain circumstances all have to agree otherwise no changes will be done. Wikivoyage as a wiki project lives from and with its community and decisions will be really made by the community either by finding a commons understanding or a voting. To be a member of the community you don not have to be a member of the assoc.

• Wikitravel is not bad in first place: We never said so. We just did not agree with the way it was governed and sold.

• Dumps: Sorry to object, but we never got any XML dumps os similar although we asked. If it is possible, as you mentioned above, please provide us the link were it is written and were to get it. Wether XML or not is more a technical thing.

• Hans and Evan: I think, as you might agree, out of a diappointment a lot of harsh words are born. Therefore there was a personal issue mixed with real concerne about what was going on. But there has been more writing without the above but there was no answer. That is what is sad. You might know Evan personally and have a deper insight in his concerns, feelings and plans, we unfortunatly have not so maybe a clear statement would satisfy both sides.

• FAQ: This FAQ will be subject of a discussion about changing or dropping it. We focused on :de but we will now start to restructure :general in order to provide all necessary information about the project and its rule.

I really hope we can maintain contact in a friendlier way, a kind of partnership to learn from each other. Nevertheless this project is run by a handful of highly motivated people who put a lot of effort (financial, time and heartblood) in to keep it going, it is not a personal revenge tool of Hans (which I think that some of you take this for).

so, farewell and no bad feelings from my side.--Der Reisende 19:29, 13 January 2007 (CET)

[edit] @Mark

Dear Mark,

just to make a few things clear. This project is not hansm project. This is a project of the Wikivoyage association which was founded a couple of month ago after a long an controverse debate. If You attack Hans here you are the one who is behaving unfair. In contrary to the opinion of some of us, Hans is always trying to keep contact with WT (check Sapphire) an has opened his hands more than once to Evan without having been answered yet. What do You mean with "one of us" has been harmed? Did anybody of "You" asked "us" about the feelings of WT being sold? There would have been many other possibilities of securing the financial future of WT.

So be fair and not personal if You want to receive the respect You deny our project.

Regards--Der Reisende 09:34, 11 January 2007 (CET)

This FAQ is awfully personal, and pretty much wrong or even self-contradictory. If I've attacked chairman Hans, it's only because he deserves it. There's nothing unfair about saying that he's done things that I think are low-down and dirty, because I think he's done things which are low-down and dirty (for instance that WP article).

Sure Hans has reached out. But I think his main goal in doing the outreach is to lure WT contributors here, and convince them that our project (WT) is no longer worthy because somebody might advertise on it someday, just like somebody might advertise here someday according to this FAQ.

I think those of you who support WV need to come to terms with WT as being much more than Evan, and much more than IB. You need to do this for yourselves, not for us.

As for chairman Hans, I still think he should apologise to Evan, in really contrite terms, because he has in fact done wrong. I on the other hand owe no apology to chairman Hans because all I've done is written that I thought he had done something wrong, and I still think that. I want this FAQ fixed. I want Hans to apologise. I want things to cool down for six months or so. I want my mom to be less sick. I want the Palestinians and Israelis to learn to get along. I want the US out of Iraq. I want a lot of things, and I probably won't get most of them.

I don't particularly want the respect of anybody here though, especially not Hans. -- Mark 00:14, 13 January 2007 (CET)

I agree about cooling down and having peace on earth, so lets start it. Peace starts like war with two people. By the way nobody is luring sombody away from somewhere. --Der Reisende 19:36, 13 January 2007 (CET)

[edit] Critique of this FAQ

I'd like to point out some stuff in this FAQ that ought to be changed. This is not necessarily a complete list.

1. "Q. A group is fine, but who is the strong voice on the wikis as Evan is on Wikitravel? A. That will be our voices in choir."

   This is factually incorrect. Evan does not get a greater voice than anyone else in Wikitravel regarding content policies. This section should be removed. Keep in mind that the content and the website are different things. The Wikitravel community still makes its own decisions about content.

2. "The usual way on Wikitravel is that at some point Evan has to explain to the community what the consensus on some topic is"

   Evan can explain all he wants. If he is wrong, the community is free to ignore him.

3. "Q. Have you got database dumps from Wikitravel for doing the fork? A. Is there anybody who ever has got some?"

   Yes, more than one person/organization has received dumps.

4. "Hansm, as our chairman, already has asked Evan about his ideas for collaboration of the two projects and we wait for his response"

   Content-wise and project-wise, Evan is just another user. Any user, including Evan, is free to ignore some out-of-the-blue question posted on his talk page. Your question should be addressed to the community rather than a single individual. If you want to talk to the Wikitravel community, you might consider addressing your proposals to the community instead.

   That said, I don't see why we would choose to cooperate with WikiVoyage. I do not see how it benefits the Wikitravel community to encourage divisions among the contributors. I do not speak for the entire community, so go ahead and initiate a discussion with the Wikitravel community at the Wikitravel Pub if you like.

I want to be clear about this. If the operating environment at Wikitravel becomes too bothered by advertising, then I would support forking the project. But because forking hurts projects, I want to refrain from forking if at all possible. I am not willing to rend the community. Yet. I am willing to tolerate ads to pay for the bandwidth -- as long as the ads are no more intrusive than on Wikia.

Regarding the JensANDMarian contributions to Wikitravel. It seems to me that he does not understand the cc-bysa license. He thinks that after uploading the content, he retains a legal right to have that content removed. This is not how cc-bysa works. I would appreciate it if you explained to him how it works (or just make sure he understands) since he either does not understand our explanations, or does not trust us to speak the truth about how cc-bysa works. -- Cjensen 04:11, 13 January 2007 (CET)

Hi Cjensen, thank your for your remarks. As I mentioned above I think we probably should discard this kind of FAQ. I agree on your topic about understaning CC-By-SA completly. Like Shakespeare said much ado about nothing.--Der Reisende 19:42, 13 January 2007 (CET)

Cjensen, welcome to Wikivoyage. Some remarks to your 4 points:

1 and 2: If you believe what you have written, than WT is the right place for you and nobody asks you to leave from there.

3: If so, this are important news for me. Can you tell me who has got them and if they did get them for free? I can ensure you, I didn't. Ask Evan, MAJ and John McGanty if they agree with publishing their mails and I will upload the whole correspondence on WV.

4: Evan has been working as de: admin during the last weeks. If an admin is not willed to forward such a requet to the community he does not behave as an admin should. But this is a WT internal problem, not our's.

I can very well understand that JensANDMarian are annoyed. He (they?) has been Wikitraveller for a couple of years and now he wants to have removed his pictures from WT. What the hell has WV got to do with that? Either you delete them for courtesy or you don't. That's a decision that has to been made on WT and nowhere else.

-- Hansm 00:42, 14 January 2007 (CET)

1 and 2 : I have overridden Evan's decisions when they are wrong, so this is not a "belief" but rather a fact. On the en: site, it happens more often than you might realize. He is treated with the respect any valued contributor ought to be given. We treat him no differently than anyone else who contributes. If he ever referred to himself as the "chairman" or claimed any other un-given title we would flame him mercilessly. Founder and Admin are the only titles he can use. I realize that it is a fact that you are chairman of the organization which hosts the WV website. I think you ought not confuse that with being the chairman of the community. The community will always outnumber the members of the organization. It is prudent to treat all members of the community as equals.

3. Why don't you ask Evan. In this case, you are asking for something that only Evan can respond to. Also, if you don't want to go through Evan then end-run him by nominating a bot whose sole purpose will be to scrape the website and create a dump the hard way. If you agree to share the dump publicly, you will have my vote for the bot.

4. Admins on Wikitravel are not your mother. They don't have any responsibilities beyond a normal user -- they only have additional Janitorial work that they are permitted to work on. If you want to address the community, don't expect someone else to do it for you. If you leave a message on Evan's talk page, you are talking to Evan. It is up to you to address the community. Think long and hard though about the kind of response you will get -- I expect others will also want to know how Wikitravel could benefit from cooperating with WV.

5. Can I ask that all my contributions to WikiVoyage be removed? If I did that, I would be a Jackass. Jens is not a Jackass -- he just doesn't understand cc-bysa. I'm not asking you to defend Wikitravel's vote-for-deletion. I just want someone to explain to him how cc-bysa works. He needs to hear the explanation from the mouth of someone he trusts.

Der Reisende, I tend to agree. I think things might be better if this FAQ was removed. WikiVoyage should define itself for what it stands for. This FAQ gives the appearance that WikiVoyage is defining itself in terms of why it is not Wikitravel. -- Cjensen 05:52, 14 January 2007 (CET)

CJensen. I will put up a discussion in pub about this. Concerning Jens I agree already and I agree with Hans, it has got nothing to do with WV but we will try to explain it to him. I think it is time to put away all personal issues and concentrate on the work which is, altough fun, time consuming enough.--Der Reisende 14:10, 14 January 2007 (CET)

@Der Reisende: What's on? Just the fact that some guys state the same thing over and over again doesn't make it true. We havn't failed to make things clear in any way. I already have told JensANDMarian my oppinion about his VfD about a week ago. -- Hansm 17:43, 14 January 2007 (CET)

You didn't make it clear at all. From my reading you told him that he had kicked up quite a discussion, and later told him that the due to the license you couldn't prevent people from copying stuff back to WT. You didn't in any way point out that he was violating the terms of his own license, or try to explain to him why this was wrong. You didn't say anything at all about not having any dissagreement with WT the community, but went harping on about the stupid commercialism thing, when you know full well that you intend to have ads here too (it's in this FAQ even!). Plus you gloated a bit about how neat it was that the conversation resulted in a link here.

Der Reisende, I think you need a new chairman. Or at least you need to convince this one to not keep up a losing argument. -- Mark 22:57, 14 January 2007 (CET)

Since I don't read German, it would have sufficed to explain to me that you had explained the terms of the license. For example, you could have said this the first time instead of the second time I asked about it. You might also consider being less than condescending in your tone with me.

"Just the fact that some guys state the same thing over and over again doesn't make it true". I agree. Just because you claim that no dumps occurred doesn't make it true. Just because you claim Evan acts as The Authority and Defines Consensus doesn't make it true. Just because you act like Evan is the dictator of Wikitravel doesn't make it true.

It is ironic how much effort you have placed into imagining that Evan is a dictator without ever bothering to put the thesis to a test. If Evan is the dictator, then the community cannot overrule him. Did you ever test this by asking the community to overrule him on anything? No, of course not. Demonizing and destroying is much easier than creating.

So here's what I think is the real problem with this FAQ. This FAQ defines WikiVoyage in terms of how it is not Wikitravel. Break free of your the chains you have placed upon yourself! Define WikiVoyage in terms of what it is and stand by that and cut the ties! Remove the childish rant that is the FAQ and replace it with a manifesto of what you hope to be instead! -- Cjensen 09:53, 15 January 2007 (CET)

As suggested above we will discard this FAQ and move it to a history page including this discussion. See Pub for the decision process. --Der Reisende 10:17, 15 January 2007 (CET)

First step made, new ((FAQ)) set up and link from mainpage changed as well.--Der Reisende 10:42, 15 January 2007 (CET)