Template talk:Free-content attribution

Using this template with Visual Editor

Hi

Would it be possible to use this template using Visual Editor and include both a CC-BY-SA license and a proper reference using the Visual Editor Reference tool?

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 11:07, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Updated template

I've now repaired the template and updated the documentation. Note that the previous plural parameter is no longer present. I also documented the fact that you can override all of the built in templates if you e.g. want to use an established cite template.

Actually I'm not sure this template needs all of the new parameters (other than license statement URL) since a similar, arguably better, result can be established by using this as a wrapper for a normal cite template (see below)

•  This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA IGO 3.0. Text taken from UNESCO - MAB Biosphere Reserves Directory​, UNESCO.
•  This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA IGO 3.0. Text taken from "Fontainebleau et du Gâtinais | UNESCO - MAB Biosphere Reserves Directory". www.unesco.org. UNESCO. Retrieved 11 July 2016.

/ André Costa (WMSE) (talk) 08:21, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi @André Costa (WMSE):, thanks so much for fixing the template, the reason for doing it this way is that Visual Editor cannot use nested templates yet. Once it does then there may be a better way of doing this.

Thanks again

John Cummings (talk) 15:15, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Not using a wrapped cite template means that the benefits of those templates (formatting, validation, error tracking, emitted metadata, etc) are not available. Given the variety of sources, making this template call {{Citation}} may be the simplest solution. Another alternative would be to fork this template, once to wrap {{Cite web}}, another for {{Cite book}}, and so on. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:02, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

@Andy: While I agree that that would be the best solution long term I agree with John's opinion that until Visual Editor can deal with nested templates that will make adding these templates more complicated for non-wikitexters. /André Costa (WMSE) (talk) 09:00, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks André Costa (WMSE) and Andy, to the best of my understanding the issue with VE not being able to handle nested templates is being addressed, once that has happened we can have both an easy to use template in VE and use the proper citation templates. Ideally I would like something that could use Citoid to autocomplete the citation form a URL but not sure how realistic that is but one can dream. --John Cummings (talk) 09:17, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Does Visual Editor still not support nested templates? It would be way better if this template could use regular citation templates! - Paul^T+/_C 16:58, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

"Open source" might not be an ideal term

The term "open source" is a loaded concept. Here is a defining essay -

• Why "open source" misses the point of free software, freely licensed version
• Stallman, Richard (2009). "Viewpoint- Why "open source" misses the point of free software". Communications of the ACM. 52 (6): 31. doi:10.1145/1516046.1516058. ISSN 0001-0782.

"Open source" is a term which was invented in the late 90s to describe software which had previously been called "free", and also to change the nuance of how software and other things can be free. In 2001 the term "open access" was coined for certain kinds of academic papers.

There are some heated discussions still ongoing in software about whether free or open source software should be used, and these are not the same things. Similarly, there are heated discussions in publishing about open access, because the original intent was to make academic research free in many senses but some large publishing houses have co-opted the social movement to spread disinformation that the intent of open access is to make some business-friendly changes without acknowledging activist demands. The Wikipedia community historically has been on the side of the activists, because here we use CC-By-SA licensing as the most restrictive license. Also Wikipedia uses free software. Free software is much like CC-By licensing, whereas open source software can be something like CC-By-ND.

Wikipedia should be a leader in using the right term in the right place. This "open source attribution" license and template could come into wide use, and I would like the name for the concept to be thoughtfully chosen. I suggest any of these as being more in compliance with the historical precedent:

• open content attribution
• free content attribution
• free text attribution

It might be worthwhile to develop a statement of principles for this so that the referencing system here can be reused more broadly in general publishing. Right now, the world does not have a concept of attribution for combining free text into a larger publication. No manual of style has any guidance for this, and applying the practice of academic referencing to this concept seems to be a good reuse of the practice of citations. However, citations have not traditionally been used to mark the combining of text in this way. Whatever is done here could influence publishing broadly in the future and I might like to talk through with others what this should be called and how it should be explained to anyone who wants to reuse the concept. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:00, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

"Open source" doesn't sound right here as we're not talking about software, but I would like to note that CC-BY-ND is not an open source license according to the OSI definition. Some people might incorrectly use the term, but "free software" isn't really better either to readers unfamiliar with the term. But anyway, like I said, "free content" is better here. nyuszika7h (talk) 12:30, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Reverted to code from 1 October 2016

Hello, everyone

Today, I noticed that the template was not functioning properly. The text that had appeared on WebAssembly article seemed broken and |author=, |publisher= and |source= were being ignored completely.

I imported code from many past revisions and observed that all were broken. The latest working code that I could find was from revision 742132687 from 1 October 2016. Somehow, a damaging edit had slipped under the watchful gaze of Pigsonthewing, John Cummings, Trappist the monk and Fayenatic london. Well, as a matter of fact, one you esteemed colleagues have caused it. I believe Wikipedia policy demands that I call every single one of you "stupid nincompoop", but I am not going to per WP:IAR! (To the sarcasm-impaired: The last sentence was a joke; the reverse is true: Wikipedia policy demands avoiding all sorts of personal attacks and comments.)

Ironically, my reversion is not a breaking change, i.e. any new parameter added since 1 October 2016 was not lost because they never worked in the first place.

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 19:28, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@Codename Lisa: Your edit depopulates All pages with titles beginning with Category:Free content from, where such categories were added by this template. For example, Category:Free content from UNESCO contained the page Adult education just now but, after I made a null edit to that article, it disappeared from the category. So, at least

[[Category:Free content from {{{publisher|{{{Publisher|}}}}}}]]

should be reinstated. I confess that I don't understand how the rest of the removed code[1] is meant to work as a wrapper for that category code, so I'm having a go at reinstating the above category with a different "if" test.

Also, you did not change NAMESPACEE which must be a typo for NAMESPACE. I'm removing the E.

I think I have fixed the "page numbers" code too.[2] As "author", "publisher" and "sources" followed that parameter and were all disabled, it appears that it was this edit [3] by John Cummings wot done it. – Fayenatic London 20:37, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Good catch. I see that the very last character inserted into revision 762100082 is a pipe ("|"). This effectively gives a third parameter to the level-2 "#if" statement. ("#if" statement only supports two parameters.) —Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 04:20, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi all, many thanks for sorting this out, I'm very reliant on this template for a lot of things. --John Cummings (talk) 12:51, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

To learn how to...

The phrase "To learn how to add open-license text to Wikipedia articles, please see Wikipedia:Adding open license text to Wikipedia" introduced in this template shouldn't be visible in articles. AFAIk there are no other attribution templates with their message giving such direct instructions. The proper place for this message is the template doc. --XXN, 10:10, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree XXN. There are a lot of things about this template and how it is used that confuse me. To be clear, on the whole I think it is great that appropriate content is being added to Wikipedia with the appropriate source and license, but I don't understand why this is needed in a separate section in the article. Is there any reason why this couldn't be handled by inline or endnote references in a similar style to existing references and/or a message on the talk page of the articles where these templates are being used? Currently it is unclear what part of the articles these notices apply to. - Paul^T+/_C 01:29, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

See my comments below for further discussion: - Paul^T+/_C 16:58, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

The template evaluates to wrong HTML

If the template is used, it evaluates to:

<div role="note" style="position: relative; padding: 0.4em 10px 0.4em 65px;"></div>
… some code after the template invocation …
<div style="position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 10px; margin-top: -17.5px;"><img alt…

This makes the icon not being contained in the outermost div and it is positioned at 50% of the article height.

However, I don’t understand what triggers this behaviour. -- wikimpan (Talk) 04:38, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Icon floats out of place in a list

The icon associated with this template is often not properly anchored to the item to which it is supposed to highlight when this template is used in a list. This may be a symptom of the problem identified in November 2017 that, "The template evaluates to wrong HTML" (see above -- the section heading for which this is a subsection as of 2018-01-14).

For example, resizing the page in the following list may cause the icon to appear next to different items on this list or even outside the list -- or may not appear at all:

Template by itself

 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Text taken from This is accompanied by a logo that changes position so much when resizing a page that it is almost impossible to tell where it is anchored..

Template as item 2 in a list of three

• item 1
• Free-content item:  This article incorporates text from a free content work. Text taken from This is accompanied by a logo that changes position so much when resizing a page that it is almost impossible to tell where it is anchored..
• Item 3

Template again by itself

 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Text taken from This is accompanied by a logo that changes position so much when resizing a page that it is almost impossible to tell where it is anchored..

When and where noticed

I first noticed this on 2018-01-14T02:06:12‎ in the article on Vietnam, but I could not find what was causing the problem. Then an edit "2018-01-14T09:13:28‎ Anon126 (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (146,616 bytes) (-3)‎ . . (→‎Sources: move Template:Free-content attribution out of list; was causing the icon to "float" strangely)" caused it to disappear. Clearly User:Anon126 knows something about this including how to fix it in a particular instance.

Then I noticed that it actually floats in this article -- at least in Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari under macOS 10.13.2. I took a couple of screen shots showing this icon just below "Author" in the main article accompanying this talk page at 2018-01-14T13:38 UTC and a minute later at 13:39 floating just above "Publisher" in two different cells of the table. I can upload those images to wherever if anyone wants to look at them. I won't do it now, because I don't know how to upload such an image for a talk page like this, and I'd rather not take the time to learn now. If you want to see them, please let me know where and how you'd like to see them displayed.

The first three subsections of this section on "Icon floats out of place in a list" shows the icon seemingly in the correct position when this template is used by itself before and after a list but out of place when the template is used inside a list.

I don't know the preferred way to report a problem like this, but this seems appropriate to me.  ???

@Anon216: Might you care to add something to this? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 15:51, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi, DavidMCEddy. I don't really know why it floats when you place it in a list. I just kinda guessed that it had something to do with a "box-like" template being placed in a list. I think a good place to report this is the technical village pump. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 23:05, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

@Anon216: Thanks. I posted a brief comment on "Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Template:Free-content attribution evaluates to wrong HTML with icon floating in apparently disconnected locations" linking back to here, consistent with your suggestion. DavidMCEddy (talk) 01:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

@DavidMCEddy, Anon126, and Wikimpan: Fixed; was caused by line breaks messing with the list formatting. Jc86035 (talk) 01:50, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. DavidMCEddy (talk) 04:29, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I think this behavior was introduced when this template changed to use a separate div for the image and the text. I think it would be better if the template had the same or a similar style to the other attribution templates so that it can be used inline in lists. Here is my proposed change to the code (with <nowiki> </nowiki> removed):

[[File:Definition of Free Cultural Works logo notext.svg|12px|link=|alt=]] This article incorporates text from a [[free content]] work. {{#if:{{{license|{{{License|}}}}}}| Licensed under {{{license|{{{License|}}}}}}|}}{{#if:{{{license statement URL|{{{License statement URL|}}}}}}| [{{{license statement URL|{{{License statement URL|}}}}}} Licence statement]:}} {{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{{1}}}|{{#if:{{{title|{{{Title|}}}}}}|{{#if:{{{documentURL|{{{DocumentURL|}}}}}}|[{{{documentURL|{{{DocumentURL|}}}}}} ''{{{title|{{{Title|}}}}}}''],|{{{title|{{{Title|}}}}}},}}}} {{#if:{{{page numbers|{{{Page numbers|}}}}}}|{{{page numbers|{{{Page numbers|}}}}}},}} {{#if:{{{author|{{{Author|}}}}}}|{{{author|{{{Author|}}}}}},}} {{#if:{{{publisher|{{{Publisher|}}}}}}|{{{publisher|{{{Publisher|}}}}}}.}} {{#if:{{{source|{{{Source|}}}}}}|{{{source|{{{Source|}}}}}}.}}}}<includeonly><!--If namespace is true then include the category else do nothing-->{{#ifeq: {{NAMESPACE}} | | [[Category:Free-content attribution]] {{#if:{{{publisher|{{{Publisher|}}}}}}|[[Category:Free content from {{{publisher|{{{Publisher|}}}}}}]]}} | <!--do nothing--> }}</includeonly></p>

This would revert the formatting changes back to the version that was used in 2016 without removing the additional parameters and categories that were added since then. It also removes the unneeded links to Wikipedia:Adding open license text to Wikipedia and the the terms of use. This would also allow this template to be used in a list (or inline references) without any formatting anomalies. See below:

Altered template by itself

 This article incorporates text from a free content work.

Altered template as item 2 in a list of three

• item 1
• Free-content item:  This article incorporates text from a free content work.

• Item 3

Altered template by itself in a list of one

•  This article incorporates text from a free content work.

If there are no objections to this change in a week, I will update the template with this code. - Paul^T+/_C 16:58, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Village pump discussion

See Policy / technical / other questions regarding links to the project namespace from articles and citation templates for a topic I started about this template at the Village pump (miscellaneous) - Paul^T+/_C 17:10, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Proposal: Remove the how-to sentences

I'd like to see the how-to sentences removed or at least set to not be included by default. Wikipedia is supposed to be written for readers, not editors, and it's inappropriate to link to a how-to page from a mainspace article. The link to Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content is at least a little more reader-focused, but it's not clear why the use of free content from elsewhere at an article would mean readers would want to reuse content from the article. Sdkb (talk) 08:26, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

I support this proposal. Melmann 12:08, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Support after 3 yr without objections, I went ahead and disabled the how-to by default. fgnievinski (talk) 03:21, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Style advice conflict with Help:Adding open license text to Wikipedia

The documentation for this template tells the editor to place it in the reference section, but the page Help:Adding open license text to Wikipedia says one should place it in it's own sources section. Please consider harmonising this advice. Melmann 12:08, 30 April 2021 (UTC)