Part of the benefit is the PRESENCE of that Wikipedia text.
I haven't contributed much to Wikipedia, but what little I DO contribute wouldn't be there if Jimmy Wales owned it all. Instead, it is available for anyone to reuse... for good OR for bad.
For instance, although I think Conservapedia is a stupid idea done by stupid people, the fact that they CAN fork it and create their own is important. In the (unlikely) event that Wikipedia is "taken over" by malign influences (for instance: sells out to the largest bidder, who starts exercising editorial control), I would want to make my own "Conservapedia"-like copy.
I completely disagree with you that rewriting is so easy. I couldn't rewrite Wikipedia, could you? Could any 1000 people in the world?
Forking an open-source project is quite rare, and usually a sign that the community has failed. But sometimes it is the only means to save the project; LibreOffice stands out as an example. The EXISTENCE of that option (even if almost never exercised) is a powerful force of its own, and the same is true of text as is true of code.
"I haven't contributed much to Wikipedia, but what little I DO contribute wouldn't be there if Jimmy Wales owned it all. Instead, it is available for anyone to reuse... for good OR for bad."
Thanks for engaging with my comment. (Upvoted.) Here are some counterargument to some of your points.
It has been years since Jimmy owned or controlled Wikipedia. Sure, the existence of a non-profit board with elections is no guarantee Wikipedia won't go bad, but I think you overestimate the usefulness of the CC license to those who would try to fork it if it does go ("has gone"?) bad.
>LibreOffice stands out as an example
Like I said although I strongly support open-source licenses for CODE (precisely because they allow forking). But I don't think the experience with code is particularly informative about text (or "prose" if you want a more precise word).
If Wikipedia's text were not freely redistributable, there'd be other ways of "forking" it (or more precisely, competing with it for the attention of the world's readers) besides rewriting from scratch. One can for example distribute a browser extension that replaces references to Wikipedia pages with pages from the "fork" if and only if a page in the "fork" exists.
My strongest counterargument is that the CC experiment and the Wikipedia experiment have been going on for at least 10 years now, and in the domain of their application to textual (or "prose") works, the most compelling actual development you can point to in support of them is Conservapedia (which, even if you approve of their mission, does not get enough traffic to count as a significant effect either good or bad).
In contrast, I can point to continuous harm (namely SEO spammers and just plain lazy folks who cannot be bothered to put thoughts in their own words, who are wasting the time of millions of readers).
Yes, this is not a "read news articles" site, this is a "discussion" site.
> I think you overestimate the usefulness of the CC license to those who would try to fork it
Really? Because the Conservapedia people were unhappy with the editorial policy and they wanted to fork it. And the CC license made it possible for them.
> If Wikipedia's text were not freely redistributable, there'd be other ways of "forking" it [...] for example distribute a browser extension
That would be of no use if the person's complaint were that it was online and they wanted to print it out on paper. Or if their complaint were that it was only available on the internet and they wanted it to also be available on the private military security network. Or if their complaint were that the board had decided to block access in certain countries because of laws passed on those countries that imposed liability risks. CC licensing addresses ALL of these concerns. It's also technologically easier for someone like Conservapedia to simply seed another MediaWiki clone with the same data than it is for them to create some kind of browser plugin that transforms pages and then convince their audience to use it. I, for example, would NEVER install a browser plugin created by Conservapedia, but I do sometimes browse their site (mostly just to laugh at them).
> the most compelling actual development you can point to in support of them is Conservapedia (which [...] does not get enough traffic to count as a significant effect [...]).
First of all, who are YOU to say that Conservapedia doesn't count? Even if they only have 6 users, aren't those 6 users entitled to their own opinion? I want to support that!
Secondly, I can give other examples. The work I'm taking a break from at this very moment is editing a patent application. The lawyers who constructed the text appear to have borrowed many explanations of basic technology from the corresponding Wikipedia entries. This would be illegal without the CC license, but I maintain that it is a good thing.
Yes, SEO spammers who just copy from Wikipedia are bad. They're not contributing anything new. But the solution is NOT to prohibit anyone anywhere from copying from Wikipedia, instead the solution is for Google to discount sources significantly when a substantial portion of the text is identical to text in Wikipedia and Wikipedia does not contain a link to the site in question (which it would if the copying had gone the other way).
For about ten years, many people have been advocating the use of CC licenses by arguing that it's a socially responsible or altruistic thing to do.
I have suggested here that CC does more social harm than good when applied to textual works (when compared to the alternative of making the text available for free under a more restrictive license) and consequently it is not an effective way for an author of a text to be socially responsible or altruistic.
Your question, "who are YOU to say that Conservapedia doesn't count? Even if they only have 6 users, aren't those 6 users entitled to their own opinion?" does not really apply to my suggestion because my suggestion is addressed to altruistically-minded authors and to people trying to persuade altruistically-minded authors to use the CC licenses. I am not trying to influence any other group.
And I am not suggesting the users of Conservapedia do not count; I am suggesting that the benefits (to them and the other beneficiaries) are outweighed by harms done elsewhere.
(And that will probably be my last comment in this thread.)
I haven't contributed much to Wikipedia, but what little I DO contribute wouldn't be there if Jimmy Wales owned it all. Instead, it is available for anyone to reuse... for good OR for bad.
For instance, although I think Conservapedia is a stupid idea done by stupid people, the fact that they CAN fork it and create their own is important. In the (unlikely) event that Wikipedia is "taken over" by malign influences (for instance: sells out to the largest bidder, who starts exercising editorial control), I would want to make my own "Conservapedia"-like copy.
I completely disagree with you that rewriting is so easy. I couldn't rewrite Wikipedia, could you? Could any 1000 people in the world?
Forking an open-source project is quite rare, and usually a sign that the community has failed. But sometimes it is the only means to save the project; LibreOffice stands out as an example. The EXISTENCE of that option (even if almost never exercised) is a powerful force of its own, and the same is true of text as is true of code.