Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 July 19
- I added a comparison table to APNG in this edit (diff), but put it into a comment, because I’m not sure whether I have abstracted it enough from its source, which is now only accessible through archiving services. Please remove the edit if this is an copyright violation, otherwise uncomment. — Christoph Päper 13:22, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
- I have some concerns about it, because it is not a table of fact but clearly published as "personal opinion". ("This list represents my personal interpretation and point-of-view.") I have removed it from the article and will seek feedback from a few more administrators who work copyright. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:44, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
- This is very difficult for me to interpret. As a non-expert, I don't know what "fallback" or "frame composition" means, etc. I don't know what assessment are opinion, and what are fact. In the original chart, does the number of pluses indicate how good he thinks this format to do in that situation? + meaning poor, - meaning not acceptable, +++++ meaning excellent? If I'm interpreting this correctly, there are several copyrightable parts to the chart. There is the look-and-feel (colors, fonts), which is not a problem. There is the choice of which PNG-like formats to use, which could be a problem. (Christoph's chart analyzes the same formats in the same order.) There is the choice of which attributes to compare, which seems to be sufficiently different. And then there are the ratings. Christoph's lists ratings of - to +++, which is somewhat different, but still very similar to the original chart. Christoph, did you make your own judgments as to how well each format does, or did you accept the original judgments? In conclusion, I would say this chart as-is is too close to a copyright violation to be used. But it could be sufficiently modified enough to be useful, if (1) the choice of which formats to use is either different than the original or else dictated by the nature of the state of the science, (2) the rating system is different, perhaps worded "poor" or "excellent" instead of plusses, and (3) the ratings given, when a matter of judgment, are the assessment of the article editor and not of someone else. Even at that point, we run into NPOV problems if these assessments might be disputed. So a bare uncontroversial "pass/fail" might work best. I hope this is helpful, – Quadell (talk)`
- My opinion looking at the original source is: some of the rows are purely factual while others are quite subjective. The objective parts are for the most part easily identified as the rows in which the author exclusively used "+++++" and "-" and nothing inbetween, or did not use +/-s (these include Animated fallback, Frame composition from multiple parts of the image, Supports JNG, Supports both PNG & JNG simultaneously, Streamability, (Proposed) extension, (Proposed) mime-type, and Current status, although Current status is likely woefully out-of-date). Some are very clearly subjective, like Simple to implement decoder, Simple to implement encoder, Easy to built on top of libpng, Visually appealing fallback, and Does not violate intention of current web-standard(s). The others I'm a bit uncertain about. My recommendations:
- Avoid using the style of the original: Put the columns in alphabetical order, not the original order. I think the use of +/- is fine although it'd help a bit to use something else like a number scale.
- I am concerned that that the very subjective implementation section is almost identical (just one less plus in each box). Remove it, or redo it based on other sources.
- The standard compatibility row is drawing distinctions that the original source did not (e.g. Ani-PNG is more standard-compatible than PNG-in-GIF). It has to either back these up with some kind of source, or be removed (original research issue, should be {{fact}} tagged).
- Other rows appear to substantially differ from the original or are objective and can remain.
- Hope this helps. Dcoetzee 01:13, 1 August 2011 (UTC)