User talk:SuezanneC Baskerville

We need more/better help for newbies!

Please see my posts at https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#What_is_this_wiki_for_.3F and https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Talk:Volunteer_Portal#Volunteer_portal_not_good_for_newbies

Jaszon Maynard 09:29, 23 February 2008 (PST)

KB articles in the Wiki

Heyas Suezanne!
I saw you article about Packet Loss and later realized that it was a copy of SL Knowledge Base: this KB article. I know it's a stupid and annoying thing, but I wanted let you know that we're currently not allowed to copy and paste articles from the KB to the Wiki, due to copyright problems (see 1, 2, 3). The KB is under a different license than the Wiki and - even after a few Requests - this doesn't seem to change anytime soon. The last thing I heard about it is:

Jon Linden: technically speaking, the copyright that’s on the KB prohibits the wholesale copying of content from the KB to the wiki

Jon Linden: i’m not actually sure about just parts — especially parts that are just pure procedure
Jon Linden: my personal take — and this shouldn’t be interpreted as policy — is that a procedure can be derived from simply using the viewer, and so copying a procedure from the KB should be allowed, since it could theoretically be arrived at independently thereof
Jon Linden: but this is just my personal opinion

Jon Linden: i can follow up on that with our legal team

(taken from 3)

So I wanted to ask you to link to the KB, rather than copying from it. You can use Template:Slkb. I think I'll file a Jira for this copyright stuff... Will let you know when it's online.
Greetz, Lynch ^{(talk|contribs)} 13:57, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

There you go: WEB-910

Lynch ^{(talk|contribs)} 14:16, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

What in the world would motivate someone to take the time to do this? This could have been left to Linden Lab to spend the time they see fit to spend on this sort of thing. Now the information removed is once again unable to be linked to convenient, and not findable by Google or other normal web search engine. I don't appreciate or approve of the removal of the page. Surely there is something a person could find to go with their time that is more useful than removing Knowledge Base content from the wiki.—The preceding unsigned comment was added on 17:14, 14 December 2008 by SuezanneC Baskerville

It took me quite some time to decide whether or not I should reply to this - from my point of view - insulting comment. I'm still not sure what motivated this reaction, since I have the impression that my initial tone was quite friendly.

History: I'm bothering Lindens since about March with this topic. All three questions about copyright linked above were mine. I also raised this topic at an Office Hour with Lexie Linden, at the Editing Discussions article, at one of the rare occassions when Philip Linden was inworld to listen to Residents etc. etc.. I always got the reply that it's not allowed and requested a change.

Why is it important for me? Simple copy and paste from the KB is not a benefit. These articles need some follow-up work. Before I recognized that the article was copy and paste, I tried to do this follow-up work and turned it from your version to a wikified version as a first step, to make it less ugly and to register it to certain categories connected to the Help Portal. The article would have needed more follow up work, e.g.: interlinking it to other connected or mentioned articles, adding the described but missing pictures etc.

If one article is copied and pasted from the KB without someone interferring, there will come more articles from there. All these need follow-up work and they all will find someone who's willing to spend the time on it, without knowing the conditions.

I'm not willing to invest time and work on articles that might be removed due to copyright infringements. I also don't want to see other contributors getting frustrated 'cause they wasted time this way. Seeing the Help Portal build on a fragile ground hurts me (more than your comment did).

Is it likely that the article might be removed? No.

Can it happen nevertheless? Yes.

I've seen LL doing stranger things than that. So I want to be sure that this got an OK. It's basically the same reason why the LSL Portal isn't using content from the LSLWiki.

Regarding the comment on a more useful way to spent time, I was quite surprise to read the resentment about the fact that information aren't easily findable, but without a vote on the Jira in order to raise your voice for a change.

I didn't like to remove the article (I didn't even do so - i linked to it), but I think that it was the right thing to do and I don't regret it. What I regret to a certain extent is, that I took the time to write my first comment here in order to inform you about my intentions behind it. Apparently this wasn't appreciated.

Anyway, this chapter is closed for me. Lynch ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:11, 16 December 2008 (UTC)