Talk:List of licences to crenellate

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedy deleted as an unambiguous copyright infringement, because... (your reason here)

There is no copyright infringement. The following was posted on talk page of Battlement by Nev1 16:50, 7 August 2012: "the list was copied from Davis' article on the subject and attributed only to "The Castle Studies Group". Thinking this was a breach of copyright, I asked Moonriddengirl how to handle this but she points out that sweat of the brow isn't recognised by US law so doesn't affect Wikipedia. In any case, the Wikipedia article has a link to Davis' work which is as it should be since it is an important paper and easily available in PDF format through the Castle Studies Group website". The full answer of User_talk:Moonriddengirl included the following (User talk:Moonriddengirl/Archive 47, item 96, 12:50 7 Aug 2012):

"The research isn't really an issue for us. In terms of copyright in lists, "sweat of the brow" isn't a factor for United States copyright law and so isn't a factor for Wikipedia's policies, either. If the material is strictly factual, than compiling it doesn't gain protection, no matter how hard you have to work to do it. The list of dates and names is probably not protected".

The list is not a straight cut and paste, the data has been laid out in a different format. It is fully referenced and the authors of the research fully credited. Do not see how this can be deemed a copyright infringement. (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 09:27, 30 August 2012 (UTC))

Regarding the Duplication Detector report of duplicated text, this has thrown up many duplications mainly because the list consists largely of names, which cannot be re-phrased or spelt differently. That is not the same as copying sentences or written expressions. Also, wording from original historic licences has been re-quoted, cannot be re-phrased, also noted by Duplication Detector, but wrong conclusion reached. (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 09:44, 30 August 2012 (UTC))

You claim that "The list is not a straight cut and paste, the data has been laid out in a different format."

On the contrary, this list is a clear copy/paste job from the pdf with minimal subsequent changes. After reading Wikipedia:Copyright in lists, I contend that the original list is copyrightable because if another person were to have access to the same data as the original author, they would not necessarily arrive at the same selection of items. Therefore this list should be deleted as a copyvio.  —SMALLJIM  10:18, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Don't see your point, the "material is strictly factual", derived from "sweat of the brow", the licences exist in the records of the Patent Rolls, unambiguously as "Licence to crenellate granted to XXX", that's not a matter of interpretation, creativity or value-judgement. Davis and his research assistants looked through the Patent Rolls, identified them, and published a list. (i.e. see [1] & a text search for "crenellate" quickly brings up: "Licence for John de Cherleton to crenellate his house in the town of Shrewsbury. , By p.s.". Some licences listed by Davis he marked as "dubious", or "forgeries", but they are still recorded as facts in records or charters, even though forged by mediaeval house owners or monks. If it would remove any doubt from your mind, I suggest we delete from the list all of the few licences considered by Davis as dubious. This is not a list of "Best songs of the 1980's" or some other list based on personal judgement, a matter raised in Nev1's question in (User talk:Moonriddengirl/Archive 47, item 96, 12:50 7 Aug 2012). How is this different from the many WP factual lists such as High Sheriff of Essex etc, all sourced from the sweat of the brow of academics, gained through searching through original records? Most of the lists of MP's in the many WP lists are taken from the publication History of Parliament, a major research work, but the authors are in every case fully credited. This list is not a breach of copyright under WP criteria. Your point as to whether the list is or is not a cut and paste is not relevant. A list of names and properties cannot be re-phrased, it has to be the same as in the source list. "John Smith, Anywhere Castle, date, quote from original wording of list" cannot be re-worded. (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 10:52, 30 August 2012 (UTC))

You said: "Your point as to whether the list is or is not a cut and paste is not relevant." I was just putting the record straight after you implausibly denied it.

The entries marked "Dubious" are at the core of the issue, I think. Such a marking indicates that value judgements were made by the list's compiler, so, as WP:Copyright_in_lists#What_copyrighted_content_means_for_Wikipedia points out, that most likely makes it subject to US copyright law. Did the compiler come across even more dubious cases that he decided not to include? - we don't know. As an aside, I assume that you're in the UK where "sweat of the brow" is relevant, so I'm not sure what the import of the last para of Wikipedia:Copyright_in_lists#Other_considerations may be. This case may benefit from some more opinions, so it may be better dealt with at WP:AfD; I'll let another admin decide.  —SMALLJIM  12:54, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm quite happy to remove every "dubious licence" from the list, there aren't many, if that will satisfy your copyright concerns. Please let me know if you would agree to that. I'm not saying I agree with your reasoning, but am willing to compromise to remove any possible reasonable doubt. If there were any "more dubious" cases that he decided not to include, i.e.omitted, they will not be reflected in my list, which is based on his, so surely no worries on that account?(Lobsterthermidor (talk) 13:07, 30 August 2012 (UTC))

By my reading of the guidance, that misses the point. Removal of the compiler's "Dubious" cases would merely hide his value judgements, it wouldn't resolve the problem: your list would still be based upon the judgements he made, which are what makes the list copyrightable. Regarding possible omitted "more dubious" cases, WP:Copyright in lists says: "Where criteria cannot be determined, we may not always be able to assess the inherent nature of content and comfortably determine that it is "safe" to freely reproduce [the list]".

All in all, I think it would be safest to delete this page and describe the list with a few illustrative examples in the parent article. After all, as Nev1 pointed out, the original is easily available online for anyone that wants it.  —SMALLJIM  13:56, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Cannot agree. The licences remaining after the dubious ones have been removed are all 100% certain and factual. Indeed many individual licences granted already link to existing WP articles on the buildings concerned - I made some of the links when setting up the article, but the text was there already in all cases. There are a great many such links, check for yourself by seeing "what links here" on Licence to crenellate:

Hartley Castle ‎ (links) Hemyock ‎ (links) Blackdown Hills ‎ (links) Chillingham Castle ‎ (links) Aydon ‎ (links) Naworth Castle ‎ (links) Allington Castle ‎ (links) Nunney Castle ‎ (links) Caister Castle ‎ (links) Penrhyn Castle ‎ (links) Ogle, Northumberland ‎ (links) Caverswall ‎ (links) Brougham Castle ‎ (links) Beverston Castle ‎ (links) Gidea Hall ‎ (links) Acton Burnell Castle ‎ (links) Bronsil Castle ‎ (links) Eshott Hall ‎ (links) Ogle Castle ‎ (links) Tarset ‎ (links) Astley Castle ‎ (links) Caverswall Castle ‎ (links) West Langdon Abbey ‎ (links) Witton Castle ‎ (links) Drumburgh ‎ (links) Macclesfield Castle ‎ (links) History of Workington ‎ (links) Bishopton Castle ‎ (links) Warblington Castle ‎ (links) Beaumys Castle ‎ (links) Apley Castle ‎ (links) Drayton House ‎ (links) Marston Moat ‎ (links) William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings ‎ (links) Bodiam Castle ‎ (links) Raby Castle ‎ (links) Royal Scots Navy ‎ (links) Baconsthorpe Castle ‎ (links) Athelhampton ‎ (links) Cottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire ‎ (links) Baron Ogle ‎ (links) Titchfield Abbey ‎ (links) Wilton, Redcar and Cleveland ‎ (links) Bennettsbridge ‎ (links) William Martyn ‎ (links) Ogle baronets ‎ (links) Radcliffe Tower ‎ (links) Henry de Percy, 1st Baron Percy ‎ (links) Wilton Castle (Yorkshire) ‎ (links)

And to Licence to fortify the following articles link, again with mention of specific licences (excuse any repetions):

William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings ‎ (links) Bodiam Castle ‎ (links) Raby Castle ‎ (links) Royal Scots Navy ‎ (links) Baconsthorpe Castle ‎ (links) Athelhampton ‎ (links) Cottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire ‎ (links) Baron Ogle ‎ (links) Titchfield Abbey ‎ (links) Wilton, Redcar and Cleveland ‎ (links) Bennettsbridge ‎ (links) William Martyn ‎ (links) Ogle baronets ‎ (links) Radcliffe Tower ‎ (links) Henry de Percy, 1st Baron Percy ‎ (links) Wilton Castle (Yorkshire) ‎ (links)

There are even more, where specific licences are quoted but where no link has yet been made to either of these articles, many are linked simply to Battlement or are not linked at all. I suspect a large proportion of the entries in Davis's list are already mentioned in the relevant WP article on the building. These entries generally mention specific licences, by date and licencee and building. This list is thus in part a counter-part to such articles. These licences mentioned in the separate articles have all been sourced independently of Davis' list, as far as I can see. Do you suggest all be deleted from the list? Would you object to a list made up purely of licences already identified in WP articles, in other words a pure compilation job? If so, what restrictions could you realistically put against such a list expanding naturally as people write more articles about more houses and castles? Davis's work is by no means original research, but rather a compilation from well known published sources not needing interpretation, it is pure "sweat of the brow" and cannot be protected by copyright. If you see an entry in the patent rolls "licence to crenellate granted to Xyz" that calls for no judgement, its a factual statement of a licence having been granted. (see my example above). As for your point that WP need not include articles where data is publicly available elsewhere, that cannot be a valid argument. Are you suggesting for example that all the articles on the peerage be deleted, for example a simple List of extant baronetcies, all post 1911 data sourced from Leigh Rayment's list of baronets because the info is easily available on-line? You suggest using only a few illustrative examples, but the list can and should include all to be comprehensive, there aren't that many, fewer than extant baronets, and this would be valuable information. (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 20:05, 30 August 2012 (UTC))

OK. After sleeping on this, I now think it's reasonable to accept that Davis's list is an attempt to list all the licences - the fact that he rejects some of them in his Notes column is evidence of this. So SOTB does apply and it's OK to use his list as a basis for ours. But I think that some of his Notes, in the last column of his table, represent his expert opinion so should not be included verbatim in our copy, and you've removed the "reject" and most of the "dubious" comments, which is good.

To be on the safe side, and to add value to the list, we should include information from other sources too. For instance, look at Bishopton Castle: Davis says "Reject (a supposed Durham licence)", but our article cites Hull, Lise E. (2006) Britain's Medieval Castles. p.128 (Google preview) which says "The first licence to crenellate was possibly issued for Bishopton Castle in 1143...". This disagreement should be mentioned (in a footnote?), and I have no doubt there are many other remarks that could be added, making the whole list more useful and helping to differentiate it from Davis's work to forestall any future copyright concerns.  —SMALLJIM  11:53, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Now that it's in, I suggest that it's converted to a sortable table, with columns for date, person, castle, etc. Then all we need to do is disambiguate the people and castles. Stuartyeates (talk) 17:52, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Great, I'm delighted this article has now passed this very difficult hurdle in its early existence. Your ideas above are good, I have many of my own, which I saw no point in spending a great deal of time on until this difficulty above had been overcome. A table would be great. I think I'll personally start however on completing the list, tidying up the data, adding links, and adding prefixes (D), (R),(F), see below. I agree with adding extra sources, as and when they are encountered, indeed it would be ideal eventually to link every one back to chapter and verse in the published Calendars of Patent Rolls - perhaps as the last column in the proposed wikitable. I suspect this is the sort of detailed work our successors on WP will be doing in 50 years' time, once our generation has established the basic articles. I think as a basic ref it is now agreed that Davis is at least satis. I intend to leave all the "dubious/reject/forgeries" in the list but prominently pre-fixed by the bold flags (D), (R),(F) explained at the top with ref to Davis's work. The reason I think they should remain is connected precisely with the example you gave of the supposed licence for Bishopton Castle as no doubt others which are frequently quoted in external articles, promotional material etc. WP will be able to identify such as suspect, a valuable service to the reader. Some are no doubt firmly embedded in the often carelessly written and superficial tourist info on many of these places. See what you think when I have done this. (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 14:50, 1 September 2012 (UTC)) I am delighted to report that this article has borne its first fruit in acting as route-to-source for removing the cn tag in Haddon Hall. (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 15:52, 1 September 2012 (UTC))

Improvements

Glad that you're going to work on improving this list, I'm sure it will eventually be a valuable resource. I think, though, that it's important not to give Davis's opinions more credence than other recent ones - regarding Bishopton, for instance, you seem to be treating Davis's opinion as more valuable than Hull's: I'm not sure that's warranted - Davis isn't the final word on the matter is it? Sure, it probably supersedes much older work, but if other recent scholars have expressed different opinions, then per WP:NPOV they should be given equal weight, unless independent sources indicate otherwise.  —SMALLJIM  12:44, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Update: I've just discovered that Davis's up-to-date work on this is at http://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/Indexs/Locindex.html. There's much more info there, including his reasons for rejection, etc.  —SMALLJIM  18:34, 2 September 2012 (UTC)