Wiktionary talk:Copyrights

NOAD's McKean discussing dictionary making.
On 21 July 2005, at 01:00 GMT Erin McKean, editor of the New Oxford American dictionary will be taking part in a moderated discussion, talking about dictionary making. See http://wordsmith.org/chat/mckean.html &mdash; Jeandré, 2005-07-07t11:50z


 * Anyone know of any potential copyright complexities from any of us participating in this? Should we (Wiktionary) be attempting to get a GFDL copy of the transcript from them perhaps?  Or is this something that every regular Wiktionarian should avoid?  --Connel MacKenzie 9 July 2005 00:10 (UTC)


 * What copyright complexities? There is certainly no consideration of putting a copy of the transcript in Wiktionary. If you are a participant in the discussion what you do with the copyrights on your words is entirely your own business.  Licensing your contributions to Wiktionary under GFDL has no bearing on your contributions to other places. Eclecticology 17:18, July 11, 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, the archive is an interesting read. I managed to forget this entirely.  The OAD seems to have a tool they call a language "corpa" that accomplishes the same thing my Wikipedia top 5,000 list did...and that I still plan to do with the contents of Project Gutenberg.
 * It is neat to see they include words purely for entertainment value (failing to meet all other criteria for inclusion.)
 * Interesting philosophical view on the "proscriptive/descriptive issue".
 * It was also to see how important "meaning" order is to them. (We currently are not ordered at all - our numbering is random.)  She listed "Historical," "Frequency" and "Core-sense, Sub-sense."  I think the latter of those would be similar to Ncik's proposed nesting of definitions that I personally dislike so very much.
 * Ebonics vs. AAVE, duct tape, internet abbreviations. A fun read.  Wish I had remembered it.  --Connel MacKenzie 15:32, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Copyrighted material in a dictionary...?
Can we just copy definitions, word for word, from a source such as (say) dictionary.com? If not, then is the preferred method of adding words to Wiktionary to either a) make up fictitious definitions for words (which fits the general Wikipedia theme as well) or b) leave valid definitions out of Wiktionary entirely? --24.189.100.241 01:55, 12 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Although there is some court indication that a word's definition cannot, per se, be copyright, wholesale copying from a copyrighted collection of terms and definitions could result in a copyright infringement. The creation of a definition for a term is not "fictitious"; how do you think any dictionary ever creates it's definitions? they, and we, base our definitions on actual usage (descriptive, rather than prescriptive or proscriptive.) Commercial dictionaries are quite as likely to have invalid definitions as Wiktionary; that is, it is not a goal of Wiktionary to include them, there are processes to avoid their inclusion and, if included, to remove them, just as there are in the proprietary dictionaries.


 * More directly: please research any definition you wish to submit on Wiktionary, but do not plagiarize unnecessarily from any one source - it may not be reliable. Be prepared to present examples of your definition in use in publications where it is not describing the term itself. Check the criteria for inclusion guidelines. - Amgine/talk 02:27, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

creative expressions
I opened up the article just to quickly learn, whether I could read and reformulate existing proprietary dictionary entries for Wiktionary entry. But I had to spend quite some time until finding the paragraph Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is perfectly legal to read a dictionary entry, or other work, reformulate it in your own words, and submit it to Wiktionary. (See plagiarism and fair use for discussions of how much reformulation is necessary in a general context.)

I assume that, especially in a dictionary, one of the most important question a new editor can have regarding to copyright, is howfar he/she is permitted to use an individual definiton from an existing proprietary dictionary.

Therefore, I would like to have this information more prominently placed, such as to save the needing editor some time, instead of lengthily and abstractly introducing principles of copyright.

--Utonsal (talk) 20:16, 4 February 2023 (UTC)