Editing Encyclopedia:WikiProject Ecoregions (section)

==Copyright review (August 2021)==
The ecoregion articles depend heavily on information from the World Wildlife Fund.  WWF has placed strict [https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/site-terms terms of conditions] (updated March 21, 2021) on the use of their web site, including:<br/>
* Linking to the WWF site is prohibited without prior permission.  (“If you would like to link another Web site to this Site, you may only do so if you obtain WWF's prior permission.”)
* Use of the terms “World Wildlife Federation” and “WWF” are prohibited, as is the use of these terms in ‘hidden tags’, which would include Wikipedia templates, reference links, and WikiData ID's.
* The whole site is copyrighted with an explicit prohibition of commercial use, which means Wikipedia's CC BY-SA cannot be supported<br/>

Obviously the first thing to keep in mind is that direct quotations from the site are out of the question.   I have started a review of the 866 ecoregion articles using the [https://copyvios.toolforge.org/ Copyvio Detector], with checkmarks in the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecoregions/Terrestrial Ecoregion Checklist|ecoregion tracking list]], column named “CRChk?” for status updates.<br/>  

I will also seek permission from WWF for permission to link to their site, and to use their name and initials in passing in the articles and links.   But because of their non-commercial requirement, we have to be ready for a refusal that will require scrubbing WW* from our ecoregion articles.  Or does anyone know of link/name permission that might have been formally granted to Wikipedia in the past?<br/>

WW* is listed as an “author” on the [[Encyclopedia of the Earth]] site ([https://eol.org/docs/what-is-eol/terms-of-use terms of use]), which carries a CC-BY-SA 3.0 notice (“unless otherwise noted”) at the bottom of their pages.  But serious Wikipedia editors have questioned that license's documentation for Wikipedia purposes.  And in any event the EOE terms of use appears to pass through some of WW* organizational limits.   I will check with EOE on the status of WW* content on their site.  We may have to make some article adjustments for EOE also.<br/>

Sorry to bring this up, but those of us who put a lot of work into ecoregion articles don’t want to find it all lost in a mass deletion.   The WW* and EOE do solid work and are important to the study of ecoregions.  For us, the moral of the story is to respect their copyright wishes, keep our articles clean, and to diversify our reference links to more sources in the scientific community.   [[User:Every-leaf-that-trembles|Every-leaf-that-trembles]] ([[User talk:Every-leaf-that-trembles|talk]]) 16:37, 21 August 2021 (UTC)