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:::Wikimedia Australia is an Incorporated member organisation and charity it represents the interests, and furthers aims of its members, this is the primary purpose of all incorporated associations. [[User:Gnangarra|Gnan]][[User_talk:Gnangarra|garra]] 13:04, 21 December 2016 (UTC) |
:::Wikimedia Australia is an Incorporated member organisation and charity it represents the interests, and furthers aims of its members, this is the primary purpose of all incorporated associations. [[User:Gnangarra|Gnan]][[User_talk:Gnangarra|garra]] 13:04, 21 December 2016 (UTC) |
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::::<small>Further comments at [[User talk:Gnangarra#Wikimedia Australia's primary purpose]], if anyone's interested, because it's off-topic here. [[User:Mitch Ames|Mitch Ames]] ([[User talk:Mitch Ames|talk]]) 10:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)</small> |
::::<small>Further comments at [[User talk:Gnangarra#Wikimedia Australia's primary purpose]], if anyone's interested, because it's off-topic here. [[User:Mitch Ames|Mitch Ames]] ([[User talk:Mitch Ames|talk]]) 10:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)</small> |
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:::::Personal attack noted and deleted, Merry Christmas [[User:Gnangarra|Gnan]][[User_talk:Gnangarra|garra]] 00:10, 23 December 2016 (UTC) |
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:Thanks [[User:Gnangarra|Gnanarra]]. You're quite right - there are two potential (and partially overlapping) communities who could "do" something in this regard - the Chapter and the Editing Community - each with its own tools and constraints. WM-AU has previously been involved in submissions to government enquiries (e.g. our [https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Submission_on_Australian_Digital_Future_Directions Submission on Australian Digital Future Directions] paper in 20009) - which does mention Fair Use in passing - but the time for official comment/submission to this current enquiry is now over. At this point it's a question of publicity and lobbying (both in the positive and negative senses of those words) by interested stakeholders to encourage the Federal parties to actually turn these recommendations into a Bill, and then to actually vote on it in parliament... The Copyright industry is most certainly already doing this (see for example their [http://copyright.com.au/about-copyright/fair-use/ "free is not fair" campaign]). So, yeah, aside from this on-wiki suggestion, it would be good if WM-AU as an Chapter could do something in supporting this - perhaps a press-release or letter of support that our aforementioned allies could help to bolster their own work? [[User:Wittylama|Witty]][[User talk:wittylama|lama]] 12:13, 21 December 2016 (UTC) |
:Thanks [[User:Gnangarra|Gnanarra]]. You're quite right - there are two potential (and partially overlapping) communities who could "do" something in this regard - the Chapter and the Editing Community - each with its own tools and constraints. WM-AU has previously been involved in submissions to government enquiries (e.g. our [https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Submission_on_Australian_Digital_Future_Directions Submission on Australian Digital Future Directions] paper in 20009) - which does mention Fair Use in passing - but the time for official comment/submission to this current enquiry is now over. At this point it's a question of publicity and lobbying (both in the positive and negative senses of those words) by interested stakeholders to encourage the Federal parties to actually turn these recommendations into a Bill, and then to actually vote on it in parliament... The Copyright industry is most certainly already doing this (see for example their [http://copyright.com.au/about-copyright/fair-use/ "free is not fair" campaign]). So, yeah, aside from this on-wiki suggestion, it would be good if WM-AU as an Chapter could do something in supporting this - perhaps a press-release or letter of support that our aforementioned allies could help to bolster their own work? [[User:Wittylama|Witty]][[User talk:wittylama|lama]] 12:13, 21 December 2016 (UTC) |
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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/WikiProject used
creeping wheatbelt
Interesting, the notion of an Australian wheatbelt exists apparently, as well as the belts in states other than WA.
A recently updated disambiguation page - Wheatbelt claims from usage in articles: -
- SA near Kyancutta
- Vic near Sea Lake
and for the continent, a whole rainfall range area has been recently identified at Wheatbelt_(Australia), utilising two online sources of 'authority'. The plot further thickens when there is evidence that at Trove (http://trove.nla.gov.au/) that the term for the Australian wheatbelt, if it exists in name on the web, simply has never been referred to as such, at least not in a general search.
So what to do? I reserve my doubts as to the veracity of the usage of the term in the SA and Vic articles, and the usage of the term at the new australian generic article. I would much prefer to see other informed australian editors offer their understanding of where the term starts and and ends, and where the body of evidence shows and allows for an encyclopedia article and title as such in a wide and general usage.
A similar looseness of usage can be found with the word Nullarbor - where imagination and the propensity to make 6 out of 2 + 2, has the nullarbor starting at Norseman and ending at Port Augusta, whereas in fact, the real nullarbor is a lot more confined in its actual reach. In the end I suppose it is whether fellow editors want to allow ranges of things from picked sources, to be allowed in an online encyclopedia, or we stick to the general term as it has been used in time to be understood as what it is generally accepted. JarrahTree 23:50, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
- Writing as a South Australian with an opinion, I don't think I hear the term "wheatbelt" often enough to consider that it is in common use, but I wouldn't claim I have never heard it, either. I would imagine it is a band across the state south of Goyder's Line, but I wouldn't have any idea how wide it could be considered to be. South Australians would never consider the Nullarbor extends east of Ceduna nor as far north as the APY Lands, but otherwise, there is not often a need to be much more precise in common use anyway. --Scott Davis Talk 10:50, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
- Followup thought - I would read an article on Wheatbelt (South Australia) to see what it was defined as, as I don't think there is a clear definition (and I'd expect it to be far larger than just near Kyancutta), but I was surprised there wasn't a meaningful article at APY Lands or at least a redirect to a geography or anthropology/sociology article rather than the legislation article I piped to above. --Scott Davis Talk 11:19, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
- Because I wanted to see others comments - rather than pre-judge what I suspect to be the equivalent of a hoax article - I would like to challenge any editor to find anything on trove that specifically refers to the Victorian or South Australian wheatbelt in either a book or journal article JarrahTree 11:35, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
- Both http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q=%22Victorian+wheatbelt%22 and http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q=%22South+Australian+wheatbelt%22 return multiple entries (in books, newspapers, journals, archived websites) for me. If they really don't return any results for you, let me know and I'll post a sample of the links. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:25, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
- On that basis they need to be added to something to clarify that the alternate usages exist as the general trend and bulk is for western australia - however the next challenge - more than just Vic or SA - to show that 'Australian wheatbelt' term has been used over time and is not a recent web invention... go mitch ! JarrahTree 14:13, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
- The 2nd edition the Macquarie Dictionary, first published 1981, reprinted 1991, defines wheat belt as "that part of the country, usually a long, broad strip, in which conditions are ideal for growing wheat. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 6th ed, 2007, defines wheat belt as "a region where wheat is the chief agricultural product". There's no mention in either case of any specific state.
- Given that the article is Wheatbelt (Australia) with "Australia" being a disambiguator (cf Wheat belt (North America) ) rather than part of the proper name "Australian Wheatbelt", I don't think it is fair to insist that the specific term "Australian Wheatbelt" has been used, but http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q-field0=&q-type0=phrase&q-term0=Australian+wheatbelt&q-field1=&q-type1=not&q-term1=Western&q-field2=&q-type2=not&q-term2=West&q-field3=&q-type3=not&q-term3=South returns some hits, including newspaper articles from as early as 1924. The results may not be complete, because forcing the search to remove the words "Western", "West" and "South" (to exclude "Western Autralian wheatbelt" etc) may hide otherwise valid results, eg the perfectly valid (hypothetical) "While heading west across the Australian Wheatbelt".
- I do note, however that Encyclopædia Britannica, both the 1986 printed version and the current online version, has two definitions for Wheat Belt:
- "principal crop-growing region of Western Australia", with no mention of the rest of Australia
- "the part of the North American Great Plains where wheat is the dominant crop"
- However Britannica's Australia article online does include "Wheat is the country’s leading grain crop and is grown in every state, with production concentrated in the wheat belts of the southeast and southwest", and the Teens version includes "... a [railroad] line connected Melbourne and Port Melbourne, and 1871, when the inland wheat belts were being developed". (The 1986 printed version of the Australia article does not appear to use the term "wheat belt" in the agricultural section - it says "Wheat is usually grown in the medium rainfall belt in all states ...".)
- Mitch Ames (talk) 02:01, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
- I fail to see why EB becomes part of the equation.. all your material above is derivative, as is the article in question, the problem is there is no evidence that the term(s) are in actual fact in common usage or understanding or wide usage to actually allow for inclusion as an entry in this encyclopedia. The article (wheatbelt australia) clings to 2 websites as sufficient proof. The reality is over time WA has been the main place for the term usage and its inclusion into books, place names etc... The victorian and south australian and australian terms are not widespread or understood or known, and should be subsumed, imho into an article that ratifies the fact of limited usage - they otherwise come over as WP:UNDUE emphasis on an exception to establish a usage, where that is probably not a good way to go JarrahTree 02:29, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
I fail to see why EB becomes part of the equation..
— Encyclopædia Britannica (current/online) is an example of a current reliable source that uses the term "wheat belt" for other parts of Australia. (I don't think that the space between the words is significant in this context; if you do, please say so.)all your material above is derivative
— The appropriate term here is secondary source, as in "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources".The article (wheatbelt australia) ...
— The article is "Wheatbelt (Australia)" with a parenthetical disambiguator, so - as I explained - I don't think references to the the exact term "Australian wheatbelt" are strictly necessary, hence my citing of reliable sources (older physical books, not just "recent web inventions") that use the term "wheatbelt" in contexts that cover the whole country, not just WA.- You asked for evidence that "'Australian wheatbelt' term has been used over time" and I gave you some.
- I'm not saying that the article is perfect as it is, and I'm not disagreeing that wheatbelt might more commonly refer to WA. However I don't think that WA can lay exclusive claim to the term. Feel free to update the article if you think it appropriate, just be sure to cite references that support your new wording and/or do not directly contradict the above-mentioned reliable sources. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:11, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
- I changed the inbound link to each of the SA and Vic redlinks to point to the Australia articel instead, and removed those red links from the dab page. There's no real difference between the surrounds of Taldra and Meringur which both have (unused?) grain silos next to former railway lines. --Scott Davis Talk 05:10, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
- I fail to see why EB becomes part of the equation.. all your material above is derivative, as is the article in question, the problem is there is no evidence that the term(s) are in actual fact in common usage or understanding or wide usage to actually allow for inclusion as an entry in this encyclopedia. The article (wheatbelt australia) clings to 2 websites as sufficient proof. The reality is over time WA has been the main place for the term usage and its inclusion into books, place names etc... The victorian and south australian and australian terms are not widespread or understood or known, and should be subsumed, imho into an article that ratifies the fact of limited usage - they otherwise come over as WP:UNDUE emphasis on an exception to establish a usage, where that is probably not a good way to go JarrahTree 02:29, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
- Because I wanted to see others comments - rather than pre-judge what I suspect to be the equivalent of a hoax article - I would like to challenge any editor to find anything on trove that specifically refers to the Victorian or South Australian wheatbelt in either a book or journal article JarrahTree 11:35, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
A couple of days ago, ABC local regional radio I think it was, used the term Victorian wheatbelt in a programme about bumper grain harvests, possiblt Landline - sorry cannot remember the details, but the term stuck because I had read the above discussion the day before. Aoziwe (talk) 13:29, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps once determined they could also be added to List of Australian regions? Eno Lirpa (talk) 13:18, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
- Missing the point - this discussion has not seen any bright spark actually come up with sufficient number of WP:RS to actually justify enough evidence to create the viability of separate regions to be adequately identified or determined as specific wheatbelts.JarrahTree 14:02, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
- First you wanted "anything on trove", which I provided; then you wanted "over time and is not a recent web invention", which I provided; then you wanted "evidence that the term(s) are in actual fact in common usage or understanding or wide usage" and I pointed out that I'd just given you secondary sources; and now you want a "sufficient number"! How many references exactly do you want?! What about these:
- South Australian and Victorian wheat belt farmers on the state of grain growing
- Living in the heart of Victoria's wheat belt
- Victorian wheatbelt waiting for autumn break
- Pastures in the Victorian wheat belt : their role and management
- Pounds, shillings and suspense : the South Australian wheatbelt and the Great Depression 1929-1939
- "... every Australian wheatbelt town ..."
- "In the Australian wheat belt..."
- Or are you just going to keep saying that no truly reliable source would use the term wheatbelt for anything other than WA? Mitch Ames (talk) 23:44, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
- First you wanted "anything on trove", which I provided; then you wanted "over time and is not a recent web invention", which I provided; then you wanted "evidence that the term(s) are in actual fact in common usage or understanding or wide usage" and I pointed out that I'd just given you secondary sources; and now you want a "sufficient number"! How many references exactly do you want?! What about these:
- Missing the point - this discussion has not seen any bright spark actually come up with sufficient number of WP:RS to actually justify enough evidence to create the viability of separate regions to be adequately identified or determined as specific wheatbelts.JarrahTree 14:02, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
This is a totally pointless exercise taking up a vast amount of space on a national noticeboard. Either put the items in the appropriate article, or move on to something else JarrahTree 00:09, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
2016 Community Wishlist Survey Proposal to Revive Popular Pages
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Magic_Wand_Icon_229981_Color_Flipped.svg/220px-Magic_Wand_Icon_229981_Color_Flipped.svg.png)
Greetings Australian Wikipedians' notice board Members!
This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:
If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.
Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.
Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.
Best regards, Stevietheman — Delivered: 17:52, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Are there guidelines for whether a shopping centre is notable?
Are there any guidelines for how big a shopping centre should be, in order to be notable (apart from the GNG)? The background to this question is: there is a discussion here considering whether North Rocks Shopping Centre should be deleted for lack of notability. One reviewer noted its floor area of just over 21000 square metres and one-floor layout as factors in being non-notable. I can't find anything to indicate whether that should count for or against, so I thought the experts here may be able to point me in the right direction... --Gronk Oz (talk) 10:13, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
- there are no guidelines but consensus is increasingly showing smaller one storey centres tend to be deleted. LibStar (talk) 10:22, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
- I can't see why the number of floors matters; that's more a question of the price of real estate. Inner city shopping centres tend to be in towers, regional ones tend to be on one level. I'd be expecting to see the centre to be large (whether tall or sprawling), hosting a number of the major large stores or have some unusual kind of tenant mix, the sort of place you would go from "something special", not just the regular weekly groceries. I think a lot of smaller shopping centre articles could be merged into their suburb/town article. The larger centres tend to get newspaper coverage of opening, expanding, refurbishing etc, being bought and sold, so probably can pass GNG. Kerry (talk) 14:35, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
If anyone is interested in writing some articles that are "most wanted", I have generated a list of "topics most redlinked" for Australia, for each of the various states, and can do so for any other Australian category if anyone desires (just ask, or run the tool yourself).
You can find these lists at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The 5000 Challenge#Missing articles. If you create any others (relevant to Australia), please feel free to add them there. I think most people would prefer to write articles in their favourite topic areas than just pick a totally random topic from a list. And I hope there are some folks out there interesting in racing car drivers (which seem to feature prominently in these lists). Kerry (talk) 14:18, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
Fair Use recommendation for Australian law, could WP have a role in this?
Hi all,
The background:
As some of you may know, the Australian productivity commission recently handed down a report into Australian Intellectual Property law (Report), and one of its key recommendations was the introduction of the principle of Fair Use - to replace the current Australian system of Fair Dealing. This is not the first time a government inquiry has recommended this (e.g. the 2014 Australian Law Reform Commission's report Copyright and the Digital Economy).
As Australian Wikimedians, we have (arguably) some of the best practical experience in the country working with a Fair Use framework - as it is the method by which all the company logos, album covers, film posters etc. appear on English Wikipedia articles. Ironically, we have very limited experience in working with the Australian Fair Dealing system (that's the "Part VB of the copyright act" you might have seen on university handouts for example - it's a "statutory license" meaning that schools PAY for this, even for the use of free-access websites). This current system is deeply opposed by the Australian public education sector (see for example the "Fair Use And Why Australian Schools Need It" documents published by the Copyright Advisory Groups (Schools and TAFEs)) and the Libraries sector (see the Australian Libraries Copyright Council submission into this enquiry[1]). Given Wikimedia is all about free-access to the sum of human knowledge, by rights, the Australian schools and libraries sectors are those who we ought to be supporting as best as we can.
Now, unsurprisingly, the Collecting agencies of Australia are opposed to this change - See for example the counter-arguments from the CopyrightAgencyLtd[2] or Australian Copyright Council[3]. They are, as expected, talking about this in the context of preserving the rights (and revenues) of Australian content creators and using emotive arguments about struggling authors to push this point. This is notwithstanding that one of the Fair Use checks is whether the usage would undermine the commercial value of the work in question. On the flip side, there has been a fair bit of support for the idea - from obvious places e.g. EFF [4] but also from more general sources e.g. IP-Watch [5] and these two articles by Fairfax Economics columnist Peter Martin [6] & [7].
The suggestion:
Australian Wikimedians, through the vehicle of the English Wikipedia, have a massively visible platform for awareness-raising about the role of Fair Use - because so many Australians are benefiting from Fair Use every day when they read our articles, without knowing it!
Wikipedia is neutral as a matter of core policy, but we are also deeply activist as a matter of supporting free-access to knowledge.
So, I'm wondering if the Australian Wikimedia community would be interested in "getting involved" in this area of public policy advocacy??
Specifically - here's the idea I thought might be practical, and powerful. I'm asking your thoughts about whether you think it's a good idea in the general sense. Please don't pre-emptively shoot it down on technical minutiae, I'm aware that some software (as well as communications) work would be needed to make it happen.
For all the media files on English Wikipedia that are
a) are in the category Category:All non-free media,
b) when they are viewed from an Australian IP address,
c) by a non-logged in user,
we overlay them with a graphic that says something to the effect of:
- This image is illegal to view in Australia under copyright law
Click here learn why and how you can change that. Show me anyway.
- This image is illegal to view in Australia under copyright law
- Clicking the 'learn why' would take you to a page (on meta?) describing Fair Use etc, and linking off to the lobbying campaigns of our allies (petitions, contact your MP etc.). The 'show me anyway' would dismiss the graphic and show the original Fair Use image.
The idea here is to make Australians aware that they are already benefiting from Fair Use. Furthermore, unlike the SOPA blackout this can be targeted to only people who are affected (Australians viewing Fair Use content), be dismissible, and run for any period that allied organisations are making lobbying efforts (rather than a fixed 24 hours). Clearly, this idea (specifically the start/stop times, and the wording) would need to be coordinated carefully with organisations who could do the 'heavy lifting' of communicating with the press such as the ALCC - they are the lawyers, not us. Also, it would require the support of WMF-Legal as I imagine filtering a banner/graphic on the basis of IP-range has privacy policy concerns, not to mention the act of political advocacy in general.
Obviously it would be importantly also to have the support of Wikimedia Australia (i'd say actually that it would be mandatory) but this would first-and-foremost be an on-Wikipedia action and therefore would require the consensus of Australian Wikipedian editors.
If this is a super-dumb idea, please don't shoot me. But if it's a good one that needs some tweaks, please say so. I just think we're in an excellent position to lobby for some improvements to Australian copyright law because we already have the platform and already have a massive category of Fair Use content that Australians are accessing every day.
Sincerely, Wittylama 15:44, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks Witty lama for your well thought out response to the issue. I do hope others respond as well. I do think that it is well worth considering. One small problem is at this time of the year many Australian editors disappear from here into shopping hysteria like the rest of the country.... there might be a delay of responses... JarrahTree 23:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
- I'm not an editor, but an academic working on copyright reform, and work for civil society organisations that are active on the issue (Creative Commons Australia and Digital Rights Watch). We would welcome the support of WP & Wikimedia in advocating for the public interest in upcoming copyright debates. Bringing the importance of fair use to the attention of Australian users is an excellent idea. There are some legal issues - i.e. that some uses of the non-free media may already be permitted under Australian fair dealing law, but it's still an important point. The other really useful point that the WP community can make here is to show that fair use is not uncertain: that with a few guidelines, it's actually relatively easy to apply the legal rules to different situations. Nicsuzor (talk) 23:48, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
- While I support introducing fair use in Australia, I don't think that Wikipedia should get involved in national politics in this way. This is a contested issue (this article on The Conversation does a good job of discussing the debate), with some content owners raising legitimate concerns about the Productivity Commission's recommendations - see this op-ed, for instance. As such, we cannot assume that Australian Wikipedia editors as a group support what the Productivity Commission has proposed. Wikimedia Australia and individual editors should advocate for this change, but Wikipedia shouldn't. Nick-D (talk) 07:58, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
- hi Nick-D, thanks for taking the time to comment. I'm not assuming that all Australian editors as a group already support the introduction of Fair Use to Australian law - that's why I'm asking what people think (of both the general principle and of this specific suggestion) here. This thread is to seek some form of [initial] consensus in that regard. I do assume that because we're already practitioners and beneficiaries of a Fair Use system, that we would be more informed about its benefits/risks that the general Australian population: if any group of non-lawyer Australians can speak about how fair use works in practice, it's us!
- I know that political lobbying has been done (eg for Freedom of Panorama legislation) on various language editions of WP, but I don't know if there's ever been any geo (IP) targeted advocacy before.
- I should also note that the Producivity Commission report recommends a whole range of things to do with IP, not just Fair Use, (including things like confirming that 'circumventing geoblocking is not a copyright infringement' - see page 28 of the report for a summary table of all recommendations). However this suggestion here that Australian WP editors might like to get involved is specifically and only related to Fair Use - given that it is the thing that we already promote by default in Australia through our use of it on en.wp. Wittylama —Preceding undated comment added 10:58, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
- While I support introducing fair use in Australia, I don't think that Wikipedia should get involved in national politics in this way. This is a contested issue (this article on The Conversation does a good job of discussing the debate), with some content owners raising legitimate concerns about the Productivity Commission's recommendations - see this op-ed, for instance. As such, we cannot assume that Australian Wikipedia editors as a group support what the Productivity Commission has proposed. Wikimedia Australia and individual editors should advocate for this change, but Wikipedia shouldn't. Nick-D (talk) 07:58, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
I see this as raising two question, one is how the Wikipedia community reacts to the potential changes and how Wikimedia Australia reacts to the potential changes. In an ideal world they should be the same but WMAU is bound by the requirement of representing its members the larger the members base the stronger the voice WMAU can speak with, everyone is welcome to join WMAU. I'll watch this discussion with a keen interest to see what evolves as a WP contributor, as a member of the community, an outreach project leader and as President of WMAU. As yet WMAU has no agreed position and any members of the chapter or committee are speaking as individuals. Gnangarra 11:05, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
" ... WMAU is bound by the requirement of representing its members ..."
@Gnangarra:Which "requirement" in particular? Mitch Ames (talk) 13:00, 21 December 2016 (UTC)- Wikimedia Australia is an Incorporated member organisation and charity it represents the interests, and furthers aims of its members, this is the primary purpose of all incorporated associations. Gnangarra 13:04, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
- Further comments at User talk:Gnangarra#Wikimedia Australia's primary purpose, if anyone's interested, because it's off-topic here. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
- Wikimedia Australia is an Incorporated member organisation and charity it represents the interests, and furthers aims of its members, this is the primary purpose of all incorporated associations. Gnangarra 13:04, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks Gnanarra. You're quite right - there are two potential (and partially overlapping) communities who could "do" something in this regard - the Chapter and the Editing Community - each with its own tools and constraints. WM-AU has previously been involved in submissions to government enquiries (e.g. our Submission on Australian Digital Future Directions paper in 20009) - which does mention Fair Use in passing - but the time for official comment/submission to this current enquiry is now over. At this point it's a question of publicity and lobbying (both in the positive and negative senses of those words) by interested stakeholders to encourage the Federal parties to actually turn these recommendations into a Bill, and then to actually vote on it in parliament... The Copyright industry is most certainly already doing this (see for example their "free is not fair" campaign). So, yeah, aside from this on-wiki suggestion, it would be good if WM-AU as an Chapter could do something in supporting this - perhaps a press-release or letter of support that our aforementioned allies could help to bolster their own work? Wittylama 12:13, 21 December 2016 (UTC)