In the end, it seems like theItalian Ministry of Culture did get the memo (kind of). Asreported byPiergiovanna Grossi forWikimedia Italy(in Italian), on 21 March 2024 the MoC publisheda revised version of thecontroversial decree that had aimed to introduce minimum fees for the commercial use of digital reproductions of state-owned cultural heritage, including works in thepublic domain. This decision had received widespread backlash from the academic community and had been criticized even by the nationalCourt of Audit – seepreviousSignpost coverage.
The new bill brings some encouraging updates for researchers who work with and produceopen access material: academic publications of every kind, newspaper and magazine articles and art catalogues, together with brochures and other publications (printed in up to 4,000 copies) involving exhibitions and cultural events,have all been exempted from payment for using reproductions, in line with the so-calledCultural Heritage and Landscape Code (CCHL), an Italian law originally approved in 2004 to "support the role of cultural heritage institutions in sustainable economic and social development".
However, both Grossi andUniversity of Florence professorPaolo Liverani remarked that the bill and the CCHL still present some legislative flaws and confusing passages that could be detrimental for freedom of access to and sharing of reproductions of cultural heritage in the public domain. Inan analysis forJLIS.it(in Italian), Liverani noted how the MoC "didn't have the courage to [fully] abandon the previous formula [of the bill]" and host public conversations with academic and cultural experts. As a result, the original fee system has been kept in place, despite being "neither acceptable, nor practically feasible", especially outside of Italy: in fact, thetrial court ofStuttgart recentlyrejected(source in German) the MoC's request for compensation to allow toy companyRavensburger to use a reproduction ofLeonardo Da Vinci'sVitruvian Man for a new model of their 1,000-piecejigsaw puzzle series. Among other aspects, Liverani also points out at the vague definition of "open access" provided by the bill, which is generically indicated as "publications freely accessible by everyone in virtue of not having a cover price", without any clear reference to thevarious types of Creative Commons licenses.
Plus, the decree still delegates reviews of requests submitted by non-exempted applicants to local cultural institutions: this bureaucratic process might not only take a toll upon the boards' economic and human resources, but also put researchers at risk of unequal treatment, since the bill could be interpreted differently depending on the area. On the other hand, as argued by Grossi, this same aspect could also lead to wider freedom of access to cultural heritage, if local institutions prove virtuous enough to extend exemption rights to other categories; she also noted that such organs have the right to cut fees entirely, which might be particularly beneficial to institutions in lesser-known areas and/or with lower budgets.
Overall, Grossi and Liverani agree that, despite some notable issues, the new version of the MoC's decree is a step back on the right track, although the former reminds that "it's now the turn of cultural institutions, the scientific community, researchers and volunteers to put these concessions to the test and see how far we can go". —O
The Wikimedia Foundation staff have presenteda draft for the "Wikimedia Research Best Practices Around Privacy Whitepaper", which aims to outline privacy guidance for academic researchers to avoiddoxing contributors, as requested last year by the English Wikipedia'sArbitration Committee in one of theremedies of thecase "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland" — seepreviousSignpost coverage. The Arbitration Committee said:
Formal request to the Wikimedia Foundation for a white paper on research best practices
1) The Arbitration Committee formally requests that the Wikimedia Foundation develop and promulgate awhite paper on the best practices for researchers and authors when writing about Wikipedians. The Committee requests that the white paper convey to researchers the principles of our movement and give specific recommendation for researchers on how to study and write about Wikipedians and their personal information in a way that respects our principles. Upon completion, we request that the white paper be distributed through the Foundation's research networks including email newsletters, social media accounts, and web publications such as theDiff blog.
This request will be sent by the Arbitration Committee to Maggie Dennis, Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability with the understanding that the task may be delegated as appropriate.
- Passed 11 to 0 with 1 abstention at 16:30, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
- Updated to includePhabricator tracking at 09:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Community feedback on the newly-presented draft is invited by 30 April. The WMF has also scheduled a Conversation Hour:
* Join us for a Conversation Hour on23 April 2024 at 15:00 UTC. This conversation will be guided by some questions to encourage actionable feedback.Join via Google Meet.
- We encourage you to use thetalk page/discussion feature to provide your input. If you need a private space to communicate your feedback, you can do so by sending an email to research-feedback@wikimedia.org with "privacy white paper" in the subject line.
–AK
Following extensive discussions (seelast issue'sTechnology report) about how to handle the outage of the Graph extension (which had been deactivated in April 2023 due to security issues, leaving tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles with broken content) and multiple abandoned attempts at a more limited technical fix, the Wikimedia Foundation hasannounced a plan for
[...] building a new service to replace the Graph extension. This approach will enable editors to create basic visualizations, will require coordination with communities around migrating existing graphs, and will be extensible by developers who want to build and maintain additional functionality.
The Foundation asks for input on several questions (e.g. "What are the basic visualization types that are most important to support? Which ones can we do without?" and "Which use cases are you concerned about being missed?"). The announcement indicates that implementation work on this project won't ramp up fully before July, and won't include interactive features yet:
In the many conversations around graphs, volunteers have also raised longer term questions about “interactive content”, such as timelines and 3D objects. Rebuilding the capability to serve simple graphs securely will be a large amount of work for staff and volunteers. As part of this, the new extension will be readily extensible by volunteers who have the technical skill to add more sophisticated visualizations and more data sources. This may be an open door to some kinds of interactive content, but the larger topic of interactive content is worthy of separate, continued conversations moving forward.
In the meantime, Basque Wikipedia, in collaboration with theWiki Project Med Foundation, hasimplemented a feature for displaying interactive graphs fromOur World in Data inline in Wikipedia articles (example,documentation). For privacy reasons, it initially shows a static image from Commons and requires the reader to click a button and provide consent (to have theirIP address shared with a non-WMF site) before the interactive version of the graph is loaded from OWID's servers. Another community-driven implementation of interactive content using the same "Template gadgets" system (enabled by a March 22 software change that allows the loading ofgadgets for pages in a specific category) can be seen inthe Spanish Wikipedia's article on theGame of Life. Both workarounds have obvious downsides in terms of the editability of the displayed interactive content. –H
FormerSteward Mohsen Salek (User:Mardetanha) wasglobally banned by the Wikimedia Foundation on 8 April 2024.
Mohsen has been a prominent movement figure for many years, as a past co-author ofWikimedia "Diff" blog posts, as well as the recipient of anhonorable mention in the Wikimedian of the Year 2016 event for creating the Persian-language version of the "Wikipedia Library".
He also served as an administrator and bureaucrat for thePersian Wikipedia, which in recent years, according toseveralindependentreports, has been subject to interference from Iranian authorities, most notably from theMinistry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. –AK,G,O
