Forum:Video policy on MA?

Forums → Ten Forward → Video policy on MA? (reply • watch)

To continue from my prior discussion, I'm bring up some of the things we discussed as relates to video in a bit more detail.

Overview

Over the last few years, Memory Alpha has come close to a "no videos" policy on the site. This has to do with a number of factors including (but not limited to):

• Copyright issues
• Need and contextual relation
• Fan fiction
• Ability of any user to add (potential for hidden vandalism)

While visiting the Wikia offices and discussing these issues with them, they presented us with a few possibilities that could mitigate some of these problems (although, I leave that final decision up to the community as to whether that's actually the case). Two of the major points that they offered up were:

• Only administrators can add video
• All videos would be required to be sourced from their video library

The first point has its obvious merits and limits any possible vandalism. The second would ensure that all videos we use are copyrighted appropriately (as Wikia actually licenses their use from the copyright holders).

Historically, we have only really "allowed" trailers and teasers produced for publicity, and this is a stance that I would like to see continue as we move forward. While discussing this with Wikia, we noted that the only videos we currently had on the site included teasers and trailers, but that we would also potentially be interested in the "next time on..." bumpers at the end of episodes.

They asked why we were not showing interested in episodes or clips thereof, and the two main issues I brought up were "geo-locking" and a desire to not take portions of episodes out of context, and thus push people toward viewing the episodes/films in other legal venues (ie, blu-rays or DVDs, startrek.com, etc). They did bring up the possibility of using short clips (at our discretion, and under our control) to illustrate articles where we use 2-3 images to display something (such as the Kolvoord Starburst).

The Doctor Who wiki has a very detailed video policy, some of which might be relevant here, some of which isn't, but some of the basic points therein could be of use when designing our video policy if we choose to follow that route.

What I'd like to suggest is that we take a serious look at the options that they've presented us and consider such an implementation, with a very carefully worded video policy, obviously.

Proposal

My suggested (very high level) proposal is as follows:

1. All videos must be sourced from Wikia's video library,
2. Videos may only be added by admins to Memory Alpha,
3. There shall continue to be no "related videos" module in the siderail,
4. Videos shall only be used in appropriate contexts and shall be embedded in the articles in much the same manner as we currently use images,
5. Memory Alpha shall not use geo-locked videos (over half of our readership is based outside of the continental US),
6. In terms of the specific content, anything beyond publicity material (commercials, teasers, trailers) will be discussed and agreed upon before being put into use on Memory Alpha.

Discussion

As the proposer, I'm in favour (obviously) of all six points I raised. -- sulfur (talk) 15:29, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

• I support the above proposal, as I think it strikes a good balance- though I am open to changes to the proposal. 31dot (talk) 16:03, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

[edit conflict]:

While I still have some issues with wikia's somewhat cavalier interpretation of fair use, which I will not quote here due to the NDA, I do think our version of the file description page would need all the info not located here, for example, and maybe we should also just add that info directly to the video library as well. Since only admins would be adding videos, and I don't think we're talking about more than a handful of videos currently, this wouldn't be too much of a hassle, and would be much easier to do going forward than doing it later after the fact (this also ties into another point below).

The article I was thinking of in San Francisco but couldn't remember while we were there is Selected DNA exchange, which is the perfect testbed for replacing six images with roughly 5 seconds of video. That said, I would like to see the clip we would use first before agreeing we should, and this really would be a case by case basis.

As for writing a policy, I could see a draft based on parts of the current image policy as well as what the TDC uses. That said, I have an issue with how some of these are named. Wikia seems to be using the first part of a tile as a category (or categories), and while that's not a deal breaker, it does tie into some of the things we talked about out west involving how they handle and organize videos. If these we're to be renamed, how would that effect us, or MB even?

• While I'm on board with this overall, I think all of this would need to be "tested" first, as I don't know of any wiki that's currently working this way, and I would rather be agreeing to a working system than a hypothetical one. - Archduk3 16:22, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

I'm not bound by any NDA, so I guess I'm free to state the obvious: the Fair Use claim while using copyrighted material without permission is based, among other things, on "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole". A clip, even if only some seconds long (but with sound), is a much more substantial part of the whole work than any single image, or small set of images, would be. Thus, a Fair Use claim wouldn't hold up as well as it currently does. In the past, concerns such as these have been brushed away rather easily, basically stating something along the lines of "we'll deal with any infringement claim when it comes up" - perhaps this still is Wikia's stance on Fair Use. If that is the case, it should be kept in mind that, after all is said and done, it's still the original uploader of copyrighted content that will have to answer that, not Wikia as "just" the host.

Based on the explanation above, the situation here might be different, insofar as Wikia is actually licensing (getting permission to use) the clips that are supposed to be displayed on Memory Alpha. In that case, a whole different can of gagh is the question whether that might make Wikia a contributor to MA - and what that means regarding the "NC" part of our CC license.

Last but definitely not least is the fact that videos are much less accessible than images, both from a technical standpoint (not every system/browser that can display images can display video), and regarding the visually impaired. We shouldn't replace important parts of "accessible content" with something that is inaccessible to some.

So, in combination, I'm hesitant about agreeing with this proposal. I don't see much need to integrate video - and if it happens, it should at least be restricted to content that can not be presented in another form (so: trailers, yes; replacing image sets, no). -- Cid Highwind (talk) 16:58, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

An afterthought: can we be sure that this won't be another "attack vector" for advertising in content space? -- Cid Highwind (talk) 17:00, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

And another one, after having read the Doctor Who Wiki video policy. Using only videos uploaded to YouTube by the copyright holder would definitely alleviate some of the issues, but: which one is the correct channel, how many Trek videos are available there at the moment, and how would requesting new video clips work? (I guess it wouldn't really work well at all.) -- Cid Highwind (talk) 17:20, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

It's my understanding that we can use content provided through wikia so long as we add it to the database. Wikia in this case would be be the middleman only, much like a news outlet would be between us and a Paramount spokesman, or even wikia and J.J. Abrams. As for ads, the Youtube videos already have some sometimes, and I would hope wikia is making enough on the partnerships with their content providers that any ads added wouldn't be more than what Youtube already has, if ad were added at all (and it wouldn't surprise me if they were). That said, I would have no problem with videos being removed, assuming they are added in the first place, if they become ad boxes first, videos second. - Archduk3 17:32, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

Cid: To address a couple of your concerns (note: I'm not bound by an NDA on the video side of things at all):

• The clips/videos/etc we would use would only be ones licensed for use. At that point, fair use no longer applies, and it becomes a "copyright, license to use given to MA via Wikia" (essentially). So, on that side of things, we avoid any fair use worries. That also means that we would not be using YouTube videos at all (and thus would not have to worry about which are legal and which aren't).
• To my limited understanding of the law as surrounds the CC-by- licenses, Wikia would simply be licensing these videos for use on any/all wikis that fall under their purview (or rather "wikias" as they want to start calling them). Because we can pick and choose which to use (if any) it shouldn't be much of an issue -- as things stand, any images we use do not fall under the license, the license applies to the text content of the site.
• I have no desire to replace content with videos. I am interested in the idea of helping expand the content with video. For the two example pages listed above (one from me, one from Archduk3), the solution might be some method of showing a video and the image set, possibly using a CSS/JS hide/show thing similar to the current appearances setup we have.
• In terms of ads? I'm with everyone else. I don't want to see that used as another space for ads. If that happens, I'm more than happy to lead the charge to reverse our video policy :)

Hopefully that addresses the issues that arose, if not, let me know, and I'll see what I can do. -- sulfur (talk) 18:04, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

As far as accessibility goes, might Wikia consider a flag in the user preferences page to enable/disable video on a per-user basis? And if video is disabled, maybe we could display an image set instead? Just tossing out ideas... -- Renegade54 (talk) 21:13, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

Regarding rights clearing, wouldn't that become a very complicated process? If the idea is that we should be able to use "random" clips from any of the shows (example: the "DNA exchange" mentioned above), then either Wikia would need to have a blanket license, probably restricted to a maximum length - or we would need to upload clips to a non-public location, wait for Wikia to get a license, and only then begin to use it.

If we go the route of having image sets and optionally replace that with a video, then it would need to be a central, integrated solution from Wikia, not one we create ourselves using user CSS and JS. A main reason for that is mobile usage, which uses different CSS/JS, and apparently an app in the future. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 22:09, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

I'm also not convinced that simply segregating all non-admin contributors from this feature really is the wiki way to handle this. A better approach would be to have a new user right "Video upload" for which all long-time contributors could be auto-approved (after X months or Y edits), and which could additionally be assigned or removed by admins/bureaucrats in case of misuse, following some policy. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 22:16, June 26, 2013 (UTC)

Due to potential copyright issues I would say it's best to leave the responsiblity of adding videos to admins. StalwartUK 03:07, June 27, 2013 (UTC)

But the claim is that there will be no issues with copyright whatsoever, because videos will come from some "video library" for which usage rights have already been cleared. Why restrict access to something for reasons that aren't valid according to the next bullet point on the list? Perhaps the real issue is control: people will want to use what they see, and videos will pop up everywhere if they can be added easily enough - but that's an argument that we need to have in mind when deciding whether to allow video at all, not afterwards. --Cid Highwind (talk) 05:35, June 27, 2013 (UTC)

Cid, the only reason I'm in favor of this is because who can add videos is restricted, regardless if it's to just admins or to a new user group we can add people to, so I don't think we need to worry about videos popping up everywhere. That said, this is also why I want to see this in action before we agree to it, because right now all I know is what should be possible, not what really is. - Archduk3 21:53, June 27, 2013 (UTC)

And I don't see the need to restrict something if the potential for vandalism (or other, less severe forms of misuse[*]) is no longer bigger than, say, with the addition of images. That said, I could live with a new user right for that, if it is handed out liberally and not restricted to some very small elite. I'm definitely against turning a "management role" (admins) into a "content role", which is what video upload should be. Admins aren't supposed to "know better" than the rest of the community what content should be placed where - they are supposed to uphold the rules that the community as a whole has set up.

I totally agree with your last point, though - we need to see something before overthrowing past policy. At the moment, I'm not even sure how restricting video additions to specific users is supposed to work if those video links are an integral part of wikicode. Will "non-uploaders" be able to edit an article that contains a video link, for example? Or is this supposed to be some Wikia-specific way that will make our code less compatible with "standard" Mediawiki wikicode? How will requesting a video clip that is not yet in Wikia's library work? Etc. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 22:19, June 27, 2013 (UTC)

[*]To explain that a bit further: Apparently, with only "Wikia library" videos being allowed, I assume that both copyright considerations and proper vandalism (totally inappropriate videos), as well as the later change of a video that is included here (as was possible with YouTube videos), are out of the question. The only thing that remains is that someone could take, say, a Star Wars video from the library (if it even is a shared one!) and use it here, out of context. I believe that we should be able to handle these cases just as we already handle the addition of wrong images, or wrong text content - by double-checking and eventually reverting these edits. As long as those edits are properly visible in our Recent Changes, I don't see a big problem. The question whether we want videos at all remains, of course. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 22:30, June 27, 2013 (UTC)

Restricting who can upload videos is to ensure: that only videos from the video library are used, since even those videos need to be "uploaded" into MA to be used (at least this is my understanding of how that will work); that videos uploaded here are relevant to MA; and that all the proper copyright information is added right away to at least our file description page, if not both ours and the library's.

Once uploaded, anyone could add that video anywhere using somewhat standard wikitext based on what we've seen with the youtube "conversions" (I think we would just end up making a template to simplify it), so who can upload is really the only thing we need to be more careful about, since as you said, incorrectly using a video somewhere, once uploaded, isn't really any different than using an image or text incorrectly.

As for who should be able to upload, I actually don't think all our admins would fall into that category, since at least the inactive ones presumably aren't following this and anyone who can upload videos could, based on my understanding of this, upload any supported video file, so I think we would need some pretty stringent criteria for having that right, but it doesn't necessarily need to be synonymous with sysop privileges. This, along with a few other reasons involving mobile support I don't anyone has gone into yet might be a reason to do something about the inactive admins.

Either way, I think testing this out somewhere, not here, should at least answer most of lingering questions. One of the reasons I want to see this in action first is to make sure you can't just embed a link to a video that's, to continue with the Star Wars example, on Wookieepedia. I don't think that would work, but I'm not sure, and as informative as the talk sulfur and I had with wikia about this was, there just wasn't enough time to really tackle every aspect of it. - Archduk3 00:13, June 28, 2013 (UTC)

So the "two major points they offered" aren't even two independent points, but in fact just one (upload restriction) that is necessary so that we can, somewhat manually, make sure that the other point is uphold? ...that wasn't clear to me before, and makes me even less convinced that this is a good idea at all. --Cid Highwind (talk) 07:19, June 28, 2013 (UTC)

To my understanding, limiting to Wikia's library and admin-only uploads were separate options. I'll put in an inquiry on this to try to get more details on the specifics and report back.

In terms of wanting videos, I'm still on the fence when it comes to videos that are not teasers, trailers, and so forth, and I can definitely see the benefits to being able to use these things. I'm more than willing to take things a step at a time -- seeing if we can try things out on a test wiki might be the best first option, so that we can see the system that would be used, end to end. -- sulfur (talk) 09:25, June 28, 2013 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea: First, let's make sure that we know exactly what is being offered. Then, let's decide whether the offer even is good enough for a test, and only finally let's decide whether we want that stuff here. The questions that have been posed throughout this discussion should be answered soon, or at least during the test phase. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 10:32, June 28, 2013 (UTC)

Step 1: MA Test wiki. I've done very little with it at this point, beyond adding the CSS and JS from here.

Step 2: I'm waiting for it to be "office time" in San Fran so that we can get it set up with some of the video functionality we desire to test out.

Step 3: Profit! -- sulfur (talk) 14:30, June 28, 2013 (UTC)

OK, the test wiki is now set up to be "premium videos only" (as it is termed). This means that videos can only come from Wikia's video library. If you check out the "James T. Kirk" page there, you'll see what's been done thus far. Do note that the "youtube" tag will still work at this time, but they're working on a method to "block" that. Short term, we can look into using the AbuseFilter, which will block the usage of that tag for everyone except for admins.

Once we've played a bit with the limited Star Trek videos that are available and can see how things would work there, we can figure out what the next steps are. -- sulfur (talk) 18:17, June 28, 2013 (UTC)

OK, I've played around with that a little. Some first impressions:

• Searching for "Star Trek" videos on video.wikia leads to about 4,300 results, but many of them seem to be not useful for us (Star Trek Online, IGN "news", even fan-made videos with content from the films, ...)
• Adding a random video from video.wikia to ma-test.wikia (in my case the TNG intro) works, but the video isn't found when later trying to add it to an article.
• Adding a different video to an article directly via the "add video" button works, and uploads it to ma-test.wikia
• Adding a video manually (that means, by writing the appropriate wikicode) works as well - I wonder how video upload (and "proliferation" later) by non-admins will be prevented with this
• Removing a video (via trashcan icon on the Special:Videos pages) leads to a redlink on the content page, similar to images

Basically, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the handling of images and the handling of videos. Just like any image uploaded to the wiki is presented on some page, videos are, too. Just like images can be deleted, leaving behind a redlink, so can videos. With that in mind, I still don't see a need to restrict video upload capabilities to a select few users, if we want videos on the wiki at all. If there's a policy in place, which can be used to get rid of "bad" videos (similar to current image deletion discussions), all is fine.

The more important question still is whether we really want videos at all - and for that, I think we need to discuss which types of videos beyond trailers we really want, and then see how Wikia will handle requests for these videos. Can we get Wikia to upload a random 10-20 videos from different episodes for us quickly, or how will this work? -- Cid Highwind (talk) 14:56, June 29, 2013 (UTC)

Non-admins can (still?) upload videos, so I would like to test the admin/usergroup only feature, even if we decide not to use it. I've also encountered some issues which resulted in a few questions:

1. Why don't video "uploads" show in the upload log?
2. Why is there no indication of who uploaded the video to the wiki itself in the file history box? Can that be added?
3. Why does it take two "edits" to add the category and then the blank description when using the "add a video" box option at Special:Video? Can that be fixed or changed?
4. Is it even possible to change the default category added?

I think all of these should be answered before we move forward.

Without an option to add some policy text like at Special:Upload, I don't think anyone who isn't suppose to already have read and know the policy on video uploads should be able to upload them, especially with the issues I've encountered, so only people we're "cleared" in some manner should be able to. If those problems are solved though, restrictions on who can upload would seem to be unnecessary.

While I don't think a user flag could be added to turn videos on and off as suggested by Renegade54 above, I do think a template could be created to either show a video or gallery (with an option to switch between the two) with a js or css option for the default, but I'm not sure how badly that would tax the parser or whatever techno-magic would be required.

I also would like to see and test any other video options we would have, since at least some of the parodies or tributes should already be in the video library somewhere I would think, and I've yet to see some of the things we talked about in California. - Archduk3 21:16, June 30, 2013 (UTC)

Wikia response

Hi All, Sulfur asked me to stop by to answer a few of the questions brought up here. Many of the questions that came up are actually bugs & features we are actively working on now.

• Adding a random video from video.wikia to ma-test.wikia (in my case the TNG intro) works, but the video isn't found in VET and search when later trying to add it to an article.
  • This is a bug with search. It’s filed now and the search team is working on it. Thanks!
• Non-admins can (still?) upload videos, so I would like to test the admin/usergroup only feature, even if we decide not to use it.
  • We are actively working on the option to restrict adding videos to admins only and it should be ready in about a month. It is possible to limit to admin only for rv module now, so let me know if you want to test that.
• Why don't video "uploads" show in the upload log?
  • They do now for youtube videos and we have an open ticket to include all premium videos there as well.
• Why is there no indication of who uploaded the video to the wiki itself in the file history box? Can that be added?
  • This is another open ticket we have. We plan to apply the correct attribution to the file history, lightbox and video embed attribution. The correct user attribution does get applied when the video is added to Special:Videos. This has been a lower priority ticket than other requests, but we hope to get to it soon.
• Why does it take two "edits" to add the category and then the blank description when using the "add a video" box option at Special:Video? Can that be fixed or change
  • Adding a description when adding a video to the Special:Videos page and the Videos module are also on our roadmap. This will allow for you to add the description in all places where videos can be added, and you can use wikitext to apply the category as you do now for images.
• Is it even possible to change the default category added?
  • Category:Videos is our only default option currently and we likely won’t adjust this.

I also wanted to let you all know about a new special page we created, called Special:UnusedVideos. This will show you videos your wiki that have not been embedded anywhere on the wiki. I hope this provides some clarity and let me know what other questions come up.--Sarah (help forum | blog) 18:37, July 2, 2013 (UTC)

I would consider almost all of these to be core functionality that would be required for us to add videos, including an option to either change the default category or at least turn that off, as MA would most likely use "Memory Alpha videos" as the video category per our category naming policy and established precedents. That said, my question isn't really "should we add videos?", but "when should we add videos?", or more to the point, when do these changes/fixes go live? - Archduk3 23:22, July 2, 2013 (UTC)

We are actively working on them, so they will be released as they are finished, likely over the next month or two. Do you feel any are a priority over the other? I can relay this to the team and ask them to focus on these first. --Sarah (help forum | blog) 17:46, July 3, 2013 (UTC)

Upload restriction, uploads being in the upload log, and correct user in the file history box, are the big three there, as the latter two would be needed if we don't go with the first. Also, I can't stress enough how Category:Video won't be used here. - Archduk3 22:03, July 3, 2013 (UTC)

How about adding a system message to the MediaWiki namespace to set the video category on each wikia? -- Renegade54 (talk) 22:26, July 3, 2013 (UTC)

Ah, the good old times of being able to configure stuff... ;)

It is correct that Category:Video shouldn't be used for that purpose here, because it is an in-universe category title according to our rules. Also, while we currently don't use that category, it could be used later - perhaps even, as strange as that sounds, as a side-effect of allowing videos here. --Cid Highwind (talk) 22:32, July 3, 2013 (UTC)

Update

Hi All, I wanted to give you a quick update on where we are with some of your requests. Starting today we have the ability to limit all video uploads to admin only. For this current sprint (so for the next two weeks) we are working on applying attribution for videos from the Wikia Video to the uploader rather than the library itself as well as the upload log. I wanted to check in on when you would like to test out using these features. Cheers, --Sarah (help forum | blog) 20:51, July 24, 2013 (UTC)

Further update. After some conversation with Sarah, I've doodled up {{video license}}, which would go on all of our videos here (since videos can only come from the Video Library by the suggested agreements above, the template is really simple). This also ties into a couple of newly created categories, Category:Memory Alpha videos and Category:Memory Alpha copyright videos. -- sulfur (talk) 16:35, August 6, 2013 (UTC)

While the technical stuff is being worked on, I haven't read anything new on the "content" aspect for a while. Are we still at the point where we're doing all this to, basically, be able to add a handful of trailers to a very few pages? :) -- Cid Highwind (talk) 17:30, August 6, 2013 (UTC)

As I understand it, short term, this will be trailers. Longer term (ie, once we've sorted out the process/technical stuff), we'll have access to more stuff. Exactly what that is remains to be seen. -- sulfur (talk) 18:41, August 6, 2013 (UTC)

You guys should check out the recent changes at the test wiki, since the purposed policy should most likely deal with the issues I've pointed out there. Also, we should have the admin only thing turned on to test it, at the very least. - Archduk3 18:52, August 6, 2013 (UTC)