Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Dewey Decimal classes


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. OCLC does not object to our hosting of this information. &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  beans  // 22:50, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

List of Dewey Decimal classes

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The Dewey Decimal Classification system is a copyright work. "All copyright rights in the Dewey Decimal Classification system are owned by OCLC". It appears the copy of this work in the List of Dewey Decimal classes article is not so unambiguous that it qualifies for WP:CSD and so I'm using the AFD route. The closest the copyright owner has to what we have here in Wikipedia seems to be the "Thousands Section" of http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/summaries.en.html. A comparison of what the OCLC has on their web site vs. what's here shows there are many minor wording changes. Of the 1,010 items listed 612 have identical wording and the remaining 398 items have minor changes to the wording. An example of minor wording changes is 375 Curricula in the DDC is 375 Curriculums on Wikipedia.

The OCLC has released a copy of the work under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0. There is no evidence the copyright owner has gone through the Donating copyrighted materials process to release the portion of the database we have in this article into the public domain. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 03:49, 25 November 2013 (UTC) --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 03:49, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

When looking for users that may be interested in the AFD I found a prior deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Dewey Decimal System though it's unclear if that discussion was about this list under a different name or if it was an attempt to delete the Dewey Decimal Classification article. I suspect it was the list under an another name. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 04:04, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I have notified the following users that either made multiple edits to the list in the past year and/or regular edits to the talk page of the article under AFD and Talk:Dewey Decimal Classification: Capitalismojo, ElKevbo, Gilliam, Joeblakesley, LaMona, Lugia2453, Martin of Sheffield, Merrilee, Nemo bis, Quiddity, Rcsprinter123, Shii, The Transhumanist, Tsinfandel, Verbal. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 04:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Ping In case you have some insight to this, via work with WP:OCLC. Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 04:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Done - thank you. I realized I messed up a little in that I pointed people to the article under AFD and not the discussion. I've always found the AFD hatnotice to be confusing in terms of realizing it contains a link to the discussion. I'm mulling over if I should go back let at least the OCLC people know where the discussion is. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 04:34, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Marc Kupper: Small note that you/we utilized the WP:MENTION function just by linking their usernames here (plus a 4tilde signature, which is currently required to trigger a Mention-Notification). So all is well. And thanks for the cohesive summary and clear process, that is allowing us to straighten this out once and for all! :) –Quiddity (talk) 18:30, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: There is another page that lists the Dewey classes at this same level of detail: Comparison_of_Dewey_and_Library_of_Congress_subject_classification LaMona (talk) 17:13, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

What is the copyvio?
An editor left a message on my talk page asking "What is the copyvio?" I realized that may not be clear from what I posted above. The Dewey Decimal Classification list has always been copyright. See the Dewey Decimal Classification article for some of the history about this. Generally, lists and directories have not been subject to copyright. For example, apparently it's allowed to make a copy of a phone book. The legal concept of "Sweat of the brow" was developed out of the litigation resulting from some early copying efforts. It appears the Dewey Decimal system is a "Sweat of the brow" work though it appears to just be a list of numbers and words or short phrases. 61% of the Wikipedia version of the list is a verbatim word-for-word copy of OCLC's list. The remaining 39% is a copy of OCLC's list with minor wording changes.

On Wikipedia we are not allowed to use even small portions of copyright works unless it's a direct and attributed quote applicable to the context of that article. This is covered under Copyright violations. Generally, I would have done a speedy-delete under WP:CSD but Talk:List of Dewey Decimal classes has years of people wondering "isn't this list copyright?" and so I decided to use the AFD route to give those who want to keep a list a forum to post why/how we can keep this on Wikipedia. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 04:54, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Keep, possibly change? Thanks for the notification. I agree that the most recent version of the Dewey system is copyrighted, but there also older versions out of copyright. It seems like something could be done to preserve the article. I'm not a copyright law expert but in principle I think the subject of the article is notable. Shii (tock) 04:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That's an excellent point. We may be able to use a copy that's 75 years old. The section about computers and such may be a bit thin. I was thinking the only fix was to only comment on the ten main divisions and to make that part of the main Dewey article. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 04:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The actual copyright issue here is Copyright in lists. The Dewey Decimal System is a creative list. That said, it is possible to use a public domain version. I don't think giving outdated information is in the best interest of our readers especially since it cannot be fixed due to copyright problems. MER-C 06:56, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. Would moving it to project namespace help solve the issue, and retain it as a potentially-useful list for editors? (In the same way that we keep Outline of Roget's Thesaurus). –Quiddity (talk) 07:20, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think such a use would be an acceptable use of non-free content because it replaces the original market role of the original copyrighted media (before you ask, the reasoning is the same). I have no objections to including a PD version in project space with an appropriate "don't update this" disclaimer. MER-C 10:56, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I was too conservative. I agree with Nyttend's reasoning that this meets WP:NFCC. Keep, but don't include anything after the decimal point to avoid replacing the market role of the work. MER-C 13:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

With all that being said, there's no policy-based or legally-based good reason to get rid of the current information. Nyttend (talk) 12:30, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep SOMETHING here. I like the idea of returning to an out-of-copyright version, because the idea of independently recreating descriptions of everything seems unworkable.  If we can't find a way to do this in line with copyright, then we'll just have to link to it as an external reference, which would be a bit of a loss and so I recommend it only if we are unable to keep something reasonable in mainspace due to copyright. Jclemens (talk) 07:25, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. Could the discussion be more legally formal? What are the relevant limitations and exceptions to consider? Besides that, I think a copy in an/the article is good, and, if necessary, an out-of-copyright version would be fine. If I go to an article on the DDS, I want to see in reasonable detail how the subject areas are arranged. An older version provides that. I don't want too much detail. But perhaps someone could write to the OCLC and ask for permission to use a suitable version of the system categories?Tsinfandel (talk) 11:10, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep. TLDR summary: we're using only a tiny portion of the copyrighted work, similar to what scholarly authors do frequently without permission, and it passes our nonfree content criteria.  Check something such as Zins, Chaim, and Plácida L.V.A.C. Santos.  "Mapping the Knowledge Covered by Library Classification Systems."  Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 62.5 (2011): 877-901.  DOI: 10.1002/asi.  Although they explore in detail the contents of the various DDC classes (and UDC and LC), and Zins and Santos never say anything like "Used by permission"; they mention the fact that it's copyrighted by OCLC, but in precisely the same way they mention the fact that their own proposed classification system is copyrighted by Zins.  Nothing of "Used by permission" or anything like that, which is always required for something like this if it replaces the market role of the original or otherwise represents an unfair use of a copyrighted work.  Like them, we are providing an encyclopedic discussion of the copyrighted work: we are nowhere near attempting to replace it in any sense, and because we are discussing the creative work itself, we (like Z&S, and tons of other authors who have examined the source itself) we are making a completely fair use of the copyrightable elements.  This is definitely an encyclopedic topic, and it qualifies under the NFCC.  Let's look at the ten points over there:
 * 1) No free equivalent: since we're discussing the text itself, there's no way to replace it. This is basically the textual equivalent of images such as File:The Falling Man.jpg being used in the The Falling Man article.  Since classification standards change, providing a PD-1923 edition would be downright harmful, since users might consult our list and be confused because of differences between it and current classification standards.
 * 2) Respect for commercial opportunities: really basic guides to DDC, such as this, are given away by lots of libraries. OCLC, or people acting by their permission, publish full book-size discussions of how to classify books according to DDC, and reproducing that to a substantial extent is what would be problematic.  Nobody sells a simple thing like this that's only good for helping readers find works on topics of their choice, and librarians aren't going to use a stripped-down thing like our list to classify a book.
 * 3) Minimal usage (number of items and extent of use): if we discuss only some of them, we have a glaring hole in the discussion. What good is a list of DDC that only gives half, or a quarter, or whatever of the entries?  Meanwhile, for extent of use, we're only giving the extremely basic descriptions for the various classes.  We're already obeying the extent of use criterion by giving a kind of document that's useful only for readers (to whom it's already given for free) instead of the extensive editions that are sold to libraries and comparable institutions.
 * 4) Previous publication: obviously it's been published extensively for many years
 * 5) Content: this is a topic that's been discussed in innumerable scholarly publications for over a century; it's definitely encyclopedic.
 * 6) Media-specific policy: really not applicable here
 * 7) One-article minimum: it's text in an article
 * 8) Contextual significance: we can't understand much about how DDC classifies works without being shown the basics of their classification
 * 9) Restrictions on location: this is only being used in article namespace
 * 10) Image description page: not applicable
 * Keep I raised the issue of copyright initially here on WP:templates. this led to further discussions on Dewey Decimal Classification, User:Merrillee and here.  The last is particularly interesting, it shows the active involvement of OCLC in the Wikipedia project.  The legal action against the hotel was due to trademark infringment, not use of the copyrighted schedules.  As has been pointed out above, the thousand divisions have been freely published and copied for many years with Forest Press' and OCLC's knowledge.  Since OCLC are cooperating with Wikipedia and we have some editors who are in contact with OCLC (user:Merrilee and user:Ocaasi) I would suggest asking them to talk to OCLC and report back.  Meanwhile do nothing precipitous. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:54, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 *  Limit to the thousands or merge to Dewey Decimal Classification. Nyttend raises a good point about using a PD version of the DDC: it could be confusing to readers. I'm not aware of the differences between the PD and current versions of DDC, but if it's anything more than adding a few categories for new technology, there is real possibility of harm. Regardless, it's possible that doing so may not alleviate liability under some state law cause of action per WP:CIL. However, I disagree with Nyttend's argument that we can go along with publications such as Zins, et al. that discuss the DDC presumably without permission on three grounds: (1) academic publications' fair use guidelines are going to be far more liberal than Wikipedia's, and we cannot presume that a legally-sound fair use meets our stricter policies; (2) Zins, et al. presumably engages in in-depth discussion of the categories where they're mentioned, unlike most Wikipedia list articles, and probably unlike what we'll see in this article; and (3) fair use is, as a matter of policy, harmful to Wikipedia. Taking these factors into account, we should exercise greater care in what we include, especially given OCLC's track record of litigiousness with respect to the DDC. The thousands gives us a level of classification where we can engage in the in-depth discussion that would satisfy the transformation consideration in a fair use analysis. At such a level, however, I think we may be at the outer limits for what belongs in a list, and may do better to just merge/redirect to Dewey Decimal Classification. —/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 13:20, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Just a quick response to one of your points, Mendaliv. I don't know (and right now I don't particularly care) what JASIST's guidelines about fair use are; my point was strictly addressing the legal aspects.  I'm basically saying that JASIST isn't going to publish something that's a clear copyright infringement, and major scholars aren't likely to produce something that's a major copyright infringement, and JASIST is a prominent enough publication that OCLC's intellectual property people are definitely aware of it.  Given all of those factors, either OCLC thinks it's an appropriate fair use, or they think it's not; and if they think it's a problem, they'd take action either to force their own terms on the authors (at the minimum, some sort of "Used by permission") or force them to take down the article from online subscription services, but it's still available without modifications.  I therefore conclude that Z&S either haven't done anything that OCLC finds objectionable, or OCLC did object and lost their lawsuit — either way, Z&S are fine for this article.  Finally, I'm wasn't attempting to address your "fair use is harmful to Wikipedia" argument; I went over the NFCC to argue that this is in line with our current fair use criteria.  Nyttend (talk) 14:05, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, first and foremost, for the purposes of Wikipedia, while the pure legal aspects are important, we can't look at those in a vacuum given we do operate under a fairly strict internal fair use policy. With respect to looking at how OCLC responds to fair use by Zins, et al., while we can go back and forth about how and why OCLC might behave based on what's been published by someone else, OCLC isn't bound by their own past behavior with respect to other parties. Besides, I've always understood "They probably won't sue us" as not being a valid counter to a copyright concern. In fact, we should expect OCLC to refuse to grant an assurance one way or another on the grounds that the fluidity of any Wikipedia article would make it prohibitively expensive and detrimental to its own rights to state what they'll sue over. —/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 16:22, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The list is already limited to the first thousand, and that is what has been freely published over the years. Merging with Dewey Decimal Classification would not adress the copyright issue one iota, and would put another article at risk.  You might also care to consider whether such a combined article would be too long and subject to WP:SPLIT.  I would therefore respectfully suggest to you that taking the first clause of your first sentence amounts to an agreement to keep the status quo. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 16:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've stricken my proposal to keep to the thousands in light of this, and now suggest we merge/redirect to the main DDC article. I realized that part of the issue is we're just publishing a mere list of broad categories without more commentary or discussion of those categories. This is definitely concerning from a liability standpoint, even if OCLC has broadly allowed it elsewhere in the past (OCLC is not estopped from pursuing claims against one party when they haven't pursued them against other parties in the past). Furthermore, it may impinge upon WP:NOTDIRECTORY as written: list articles need to have more than a mere ordered list of entries. Until such a time that someone actually goes though and thoroughly discusses the entries in a manner greater than just listing the DDC entries, we're probably outside of fair use and outside of encyclopedic content. —/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 17:21, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep I agree with Nyttend. Only Wikipedians seem to really understand copyright law. Then in doing so, they make the massive assumption that the copyright holder (often blissfully ignorant) will be totally negative towards WP when actually they would be more than happy to reword their copyright statement, so it benefits all parties. Time has moved on, WP is no longer little; having a good coverage in WP is a hugh commercial advantage. We talk from strength- so lets not act in weakness.-- Clem Rutter (talk) 13:45, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm kind of "meh" because I don't find the list of classes terribly useful, although it is somewhat interesting that there are links from some of the classes to Wikipedia pages. Since we have contacts with the copyright owner, we should let the owner decide if it considers this a copyright violation. I'd be more likely to want it taken down for reasons of utility than a question of copyright. I don't know how often the main classes change these days, but any such list needs to be kept up to date; the main article points to the online version, which can be assumed to be current. As for comments above, I agree that 1) with Dewey as linked data the CC license makes the copyright clear 2) the Dewey summaries have been made openly available for a very long time 3) using an out of copyright edition would not be useful -- much has changed. 1922: 684 was "Carriage and cabinet making"; today: 684 is "Furnishings and home workshops". Not to mention that in the 1922 edition (the most recent out-of-copyright edition) Dewey was using his goofy reformed spelling: Medicin, Bilding. LaMona (talk) 14:22, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep, as part of our Wikipedia Library partnership with OCLC, I've spoken with the head of the Dewey Department. They made clear to me that the Dewey numbers themselves are free for reuse.  We could put them on individual articles, and I don't see how it's any different to have a list of them.  It's only the access to their paid website, and their detailed notes associated with numbers that requires a license.  Incidentally, OCLC is also quite interested in changing the entire copyright on Dewey to CC-BY.  If I can help clarify this with a letter from Dewey I'd be happy to arrange that.  Best, Ocaasit &#124; c 17:10, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Please do contact the OCLC so that this list is not in legal limbo. I think this is an important and useful article to have. Shii (tock) 18:44, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Second that. I think that would be really cool, and think we could do a lot if the entire classification were freely licensed. —/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 00:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep This is a very brief summary-- I agree if we reprinted the many hundred pages of the full classification it would be copyvio. But this is a small extract, and appropriate content. Nobody would buy the actual classification to have just tis, and nobody who needed the actual classification would be able to use this. Therewould be a point in having the sketches of earlier versions also, as it shows the trends in the aspects of civilization reflected by books in american libraries.  DGG ( talk ) 18:18, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment
 * 1) The OCLC has summaries of their database that they call "The Ten Main Classes", "The Hundred Divisions" and "The Thousand Sections" posted on line here. These summaries are copyright. The Wikipedia article up for AFD is a near word-for-word WP:COPYVIO of all three summaries with the latter two merged into a single list on the Wikipedia page. I'm not sure we can say it's allowed on Wikipedia because the summary is a small portion of the full database. OCLC's summary itself is copyright. Claiming the list is a small, and usable, subset of the main database would be like removing the trunk and 1000 main branches of a tree, leaving just small twigs and leaves, and saying we have not copied the main part of the tree and so we are ok.
 * If we wanted to show a small portion of their database it would make more sense to show something like this:
 * 700 Arts & recreation (this is one of The Ten Main Classes)
 * 790 Sports, games & entertainment (this is one of The Hundred Divisions)
 * 791 Public performances (this is one of The Thousand Sections)
 * 791.4 Motion pictures, radio, television
 * 791.43 Motion pictures
 * 791.437 Films
 * 791.4372 Single films
 * 791.4375 Two or more films
 * A library would file a DVD containing a single feature film under 791.4372. A DVD with two or more films, such as the original and a remake, would be filed under 791.4375.

It appears the the OCLC has taken a consistent stance regarding their material in that they want to retain the rights to it. For example, someone at the Oakland Public Library created what they call "Dewey Pictograms".and It's a set of 88 graphic images with most of them also showing Dewey classification codes. If you look at opl_iconposter_final_2006_02.pdf you'll see "ALL COPYRIGHT RIGHTS IN THE DEWEY DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM ARE OWNED BY OCLC. ARTWORK © SHELBY DESIGNS & ILLUSTRATES" in the fine print on the lower-right margin. The PDF files for each of the 88 pictograms also bears copyright notices. Thus, while the OCLC allows some "public performance" of their work this does not mean they have released it into the public domain. While the OCLC people are willing to work with Wikipedia I'm not sure I'd encourage them them to release their summaries into the public domain. The "Ten Main Classes", "Hundred Divisions", and "Thousand Sections" are a core part of their product. Once these are released into the public domain they can't take it back. It'll be free forever. Anyone can then reproduce it, modify it, etc. Wikipedia has a mechanism for hosting some non-public domain content. That process is described at WP:NFCC. 
 * So far, I don't see a clean way to keep the list as there are ways we can document it on Wikipedia without needing to employ WP:NFCC. The list is not as iconic as the The Falling Man image. We can summarize a small portion to show how the Dewey Decimal system works. Documenting the set of 100 or 1000 does not add much to the on-line encyclopedia as it's a system for filing and finding media on physical shelves.. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 00:40, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * There is an example of a hierarchy of the notation similar to your suggestion above in the main article. That is functionally quite different from the page in question, though, and one does not substitute for the other. LaMona (talk) 17:16, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep in full at least at this time. I understand that we could make theoretical arguments here all day, but it has been stated without contradiction that the rightsholder does not object to our hosting the list (and it is not a matter of they might not have noticed the problem). Under those circumstances, we have a complete basis for a fair use as an absolute minimum. There are enough serious copyright infringement issues on this project that we do not have to conjure up theoretical ones that even the rightsholders have disclaimed any interest in pursuing. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:17, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, the issue is if something appears on Wikipedia then it's in the public domain unless it appears that the material is owned by someone else in which case we remove it. It's a bright line standard. A Wikipedia editor writes something and presses [Save Page]. At that instant the material is in the public domain. If a Wikipedia editor copies copyright restricted material into Wikipedia and presses [Save Page] then they have ignored or are taking their chances with the message that's at the top of the edit box which is "Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted."
 * When I wrote the AFD I thought we had some wiggle room from a copyright perspective. In looking at this again I now realize there's none other than that the copy we have is different than the Dewey list for 39% of the entries. A better article title is "An approximation of a list of Dewey Decimal classes." --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 04:05, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * This isn't a theoretical issue at all. Sure, OCLC isn't likely to sue WMF, but what happens when a third party relies on our use of it, and then gets sued? This is precisely why fair use is so heavily curtailed on Foundation projects. The project is so strict with fair use precisely because of the issues of reuse. I mean, are we going to have to categorize this article as containing large blocks of fair use text so as to warn people who reuse our content? —/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 17:49, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Suggestion – I suggest someone invite OCLC leadership to join this discussion. Skip Prichard, the president/CEO of the OCLC, can be reached via his bio at http://www.oclc.org/en-US/about/leadership/executives/prichard-skip.html. Michael Panzer, the editor of the Dewey Decimal Classifiation system, can be reached by entering his name in the contact staff search box at http://www.oclc.org/en-US/contacts/oclc-staff-directory.html# The Transhumanist 01:52, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I have e-mailed Michael Panzer. With the Thanksgiving this week we may not reach him until next week.


 * If OCLC decides "it's ok on Wikipedia" then I believe they need to follow Donating copyrighted materials, which puts their material in the public domain, and we are in the clear. It can't be done via assurances on talk pages. They either put a notice on their web page releasing the content of that page into the public domain or there's a procedure where they can e-mail Wikipedia to put the material we have in the public domain. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 04:05, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.