[OSM-talk] Could we just pause any wikidata edits for a month or two?

[Christoph Hormann]

On Wednesday 04 October 2017, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
> there is another aspect that could be added to your list for
> discussion: wikipedia and wikidata integration on osm tag definition
> wiki pages.
>
> * Some wiki editors seem to believe, the first word of a osm tag
> definition should be a link to a wikipedia article about something
> related to this tag, but sometimes these are also interpreted as
> descriptions of what should go into the tag, particularly when the
> wikipedia link is the only substantial content.
>
> [...]

I agree this problem exists but it has existed for many years so it is 
not really something related to the current topic of wikidata and 
systematic addition of wikidata IDs.  I would suggest to separate that 
discussion.

> Regarding the license question: wikidata is public domain (so taking
> name translations from there shouldn’t pose a problem), but it
> started (AFAIK) with importing things like coordinates and
> interlanguage links from wikipedia, which has different licenses, how
> was this step possible? Maybe because these are seen as facts and not
> copyrightable?

AFAIK Wikipedia essentially says you can enter individual pieces of 
information (from any book, any map or any digital database) because 
such individual pieces of information are not protected in any way.  
You can enter such information freely into Wikipedia and from there it 
can be freely transferred to Wikidata (with a different license).  They 
ignore the fact that database law says that if you do so 
systematically, like if you determine the coordinates of all towns and 
cities in Germany from Google, you are subject to the restrictions of 
database protection.  Wikipedia ignores that possibility but OSM does 
not, therefore for OSM any information entered from Wikipedia or 
Wikidata would need to be treated as information from whatever source 
it was originally entered into Wikipedia or Wikidata.  If that source 
is unknown such information should not be used.  Practically this is 
not that much of a problem because if you have some info from Wikipedia 
(like a certain name or coordinates) that you don't know the source of 
and that you cannot verify independently from other sources or from own 
local knowledge it is not information you should enter into OSM anyway.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/