Thanks for highlighting this @Josve05a! We will look into this issue.

Zhou

Hi @Josve05a,

Thanks again for finding this. The copyright issue revolving around social media issue is interesting and does not yet have a clear legal precedent, at least in the U.S.

Having said this, I do not think we need to disable the sharing feature for the Wikipedia app for iOS at this time (Android has a similar feature) for the following reasons:

1. The Facebook sharing is part of the standard iOS sharing framework and is not something we built ourselves. We only have the Wikipedia App tell the iOS operating system whether certain pages are shareable and it has infrastructure that automatically offers the available sharing options to the user, such as text messaging, email, and depending on the apps you have installed and your settings, Facebook and potentially other apps as well. As such, we did not actively build this sharing functionality and it is up to the user to decide whether they should share an article or picture, and the platform under which the item will be shared.

2. In some cases, the user will want to share a picture in the public domain or for which they are the author and we do not want to deny them the opportunity to do so via our app.

In addition, thanks for directing to the Meta article about CC BY-SA sharing on Facebook.

As a caveat, as noted on the article, it is not meant as legal advice. However, it is understandable if a user is confused about sharing on Facebook via the app if they read the document. As such, we plan to add some clarifications to this document to help guide the user. I can notify you once we have added the revisions.

Thanks again for your interest and input in our projects. They have been very valuable and we hope you continue to offer them in the future. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Zhou

(Ok, I'll apoligize in advance for making editorial comments in this comment that hasn't got anything to do with the app, just wanted to respond to the above point, since other ways to inquiry legal about this has been left ignore.)

• @ZhouZ Why is the WMF activly sharing images from Commons on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Wikimedia.Commons/)? That's not "up to the user", "not we that build a share button" or "public domain images", but the WMF (I assume) that shares those images activly. Why not err on the side of caution?

Ok, and now a comment to the iOS-team:

• Can we improve the sharing system at least, to either
  • include a link to the image-descripion page or something similar to "help the user" with attribution?
  • instead just share a link to the image's description page and it will transclude the image on Facebook, instead of attaching it in the post.

Hi @Josve05a, in terms of the Facebook Page, I don't believe we run that account. I am still trying to get to the bottom of the relationship but if it is an unaffiliated account, they might be misusing our trademarks. Thanks for flagging it.

In general our teams follow the social media best practices outlined here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_media/Best_practices. As you can see, we ask employees not post on our official accounts media not owned by us or in the public domain.

Thanks,

Zhou

In T129798#2159182, @ZhouZ wrote:

I am still trying to get to the bottom of the relationship

The editors of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Social_media/Facebook might have some info

The editors of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Social_media/Facebook might have some info

Thanks @Josve05a we are talking with the editors now about improving their posting process.