Talk:blood supply

Deletion discussion

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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blood supply

To me looks like self-evident, i.e. SOP. Any defenders? --Hekaheka (talk) 06:27, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

• Keep based on the distinction between the senses. A horse may have an abundant blood supply (sense 1) flowing to its vital organs, but that will be no help to a human who needs a blood supply (sense 2). bd2412 T 16:40, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Delete. The given senses are just two randomly chosen possible meanings of "blood" + "supply". --WikiTiki89 17:17, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
    • Randomly chosen? Are there any other CFI-meeting combinations? bd2412 T 14:38, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Delete. A SOP’s constituents having multiple senses does not make it idiomatic. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 17:47, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

• Keep. Both senses are idiomatic. The first can only refer to donated blood; the second has to be a volume of blood flowing over a particular time period. ---> Tooironic (talk) 07:09, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

  How the blood is usually obtained or measured is irrelevant to its idiomacity. --WikiTiki89 09:46, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

  The first sense only refers to human blood. There are in fact supplies of blood maintained for certain animals, but these are always qualified as such. The second sense can refer to the blood of any animal. bd2412 T 14:43, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

  I would say the same thing about "blood" itself; it usually refers to human blood unless qualified as the blood of some animal. --WikiTiki89 14:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Inclined to keep the second sense, a common medical term and convert the first sense (non-idiomatic) to use {{&lit}}. The first sense covered by literal sense. Defined in Collins [1] and medical dictionaries, so WT:Lemming principle might be applicable. It's also a translation-target candidate entry. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:33, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky You have removed Collins definition and usage example but I have provided the reference. Is it really a copyright violation? I am confused. AFAIK, we can use dictionaries and reference them. There was a BP discussion about it. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:37, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

You cannot copy definitions and example sentences word-for-word from copyrighted sources into Wiktionary; it does not matter whether you provide a reference. I do not know of any discussion in which people declared such behavior as accepted. I know of a discussion in which multiple editors defended copying translation pairs, since that was supposed to be enabled by the merger doctrine (W:Merger_doctrine_(copyright_law)), but that was about translation pairs, not about definitions. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:45, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Published books are also copyrighted but we quote from them. I don't see how two referenced sentences can be a violation but someone may clarify or fix citation if needed. In any case, I acted in good faith, no need to use "such behaviours" when there's no vandalism--Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 10:32, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

If you're using text to substitute for the original work--definitions from a dictionary to make a dictionary, for example--then your claim of fair use is much weaker. Dictionaries make large use of quotes from books because it has no effect on the original.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:52, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I know what you mean but in less-than-straightforward cases like this one, when the existence of a word is questioned, is it really wrong to use the exact definition of a term - a technical, medical, computing, etc? No, I'm not suggesting that we should use other dictionaries' definitions at all. Such literal quotations are quite common, as long as references are provided. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:07, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Intellectual property attorney hat on. Quoting an individual definition from a dictionary as a source is de minimis and therefore not a copyright concern. If we were quoting dozens of definitions from the same dictionary, then we would run into that as a problem. Of course, if we were, under the DMCA, the proprietor of the allegedly infringed dictionary would need to send Wiktionary (or the WMF) a takedown notice before any liability would accrue. Intellectual property attorney hat off. bd2412 T 18:05, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

@BD2412 I don't have a neat hat to put on, but anyway: I find it dangerous to condone copying definitions and example sentences word-for-word from dictionaries under de minimis rationale. There are only handful of dictionaries to copy from; if various people start copying copyrighted content here and there, always on a "single case basis", you soon find non-trivial amount of copyrighted expressions (not just the ideas behind the expressions) transferred into Wiktionary. On a related note, my impression was that the editor above thought that copying word-for-word is ok as long as you reference the source, which is utter rubbish IMHO; it is not the first editor to think so. From what I can see, he is still of the opinion that referencing somehow magically gives you the license to take copyrighted content and relicense it under CC-BY-SA in Wiktionary. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:09, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

De minimis copying indicates that the amount of text copied is too short for copyright to apply to it at all; in other words, it is in the public domain. The phrase "to increase blood supply to the pelvis" is far too short to be covered by copyright. The fact that this is quoted from a dictionary does not distinguish it from the literally thousands of comparable quotes (and, indeed, much longer quotes) that we have copied from thousands of other books as citations. Incidentally, a Google Books search for books with "dictionary" in the title claims to return 293,000 results. Although a good number of those are unconventional titles like Baillière's Midwives' Medical Dictionary, there are tens of thousands of actual language dictionaries from which we might take examples. bd2412 T 20:10, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

@BD2412 I am not sure I understand you correctly. Are you saying that we are free to copy from Merriam-Webster online all definitions that are no longer than 7 words? If not, do you acknowledge that copying 100 definitions that have no more than 7 words is a copyright violation, regardless of de minimis? If not, do you acknowledge this for 1000 such 7-word definitions? --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:15, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Re: "there are tens of thousands of actual language dictionaries from which we might take examples": That is very hypothetical. The transfer is likely to proceed from several most popular online dictionaries, as has occurred in the past when some less informed editors copied AHD definitions into Wiktionary word-for-word. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Have I said that we are free to copy a hundred of these? This isn't even a "definition", by the way, it is a sample usage, and a very basic one at that, not even a complete sentence itself. Nor is it particularly novel. There are tens of thousands of works that refer to increasing the blood supply to some part of the body. Compare this quote:

• 2010, Lois White, ‎Gena Duncan, ‎Wendy Baumle, Foundations of Adult Health Nursing, page 137:

  Treatment for angina includes measures to increase the blood supply to the affected area.

Why would you think that quoting this is any more or less of a copyright concern than quoting a dictionary example? Because the dictionary is in competition with us? We may diminish dictionary sales, but that is not traceable to our copying a relatively unoriginal seven-word snippet example of use. bd2412 T 22:01, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Two of the four prongs of fair use are "the nature of the copyrighted work" and "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." We're cutting into the market for a dictionary; courts are going to be way faster to find it "not fair" for us to take from them to build our dictionary, then to use quotes from other texts that we aren't in competition with. I don't know where the line is going to be laid--nobody can know until the final judge rules on this case--but in a Wiki context it's very hard to put multi-page restrictions to stop a hundred different articles from using it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:20, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

If a phrase is too short or too unoriginal to be covered by copyright at all (this is both), then it is in the public domain, and the fair use factors do not enter into the discussion at all. Even if fair use were the applicable regime, the "nature of the copyrighted work" prong has nothing to do with it being a dictionary; it addresses whether the work is creative (like a poem or painting) as opposed to factual (like a reference work). Works conveying facts are entitled to less copyright protection because they can be independently collected and reported by anyone, while creative works initially exist only in the mind of their author. As for the effect on the potential market, we offer a definition of this word whether we use their seven-word example or not. In other words, any loss of market that they experience is not attributable to our quotation of their phrase. bd2412 T 04:14, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Re: "Why would you think that quoting this is any more or less of a copyright concern than quoting a dictionary example?" Entering 100 (or maybe 1000) attestation quotes from a single non-dictionary would also be copyright violation, I think. If Wiktionary accepts the hypothesis that "copying a short definition from a copyrighted dictionary is okay if referenced", then I see nothing in this hypothesis to prevent transfer of 10 000 definitions or more. I do not see this hypothesis as acceptable, which is why I have asked whether you do. Since if a short definition would be in public domain per its being short, then 10 000 short definitions would be in public domain for their being short. So I believe editors should be actively discouraged from copying word-for-word even short definitions, unless they can in each instance show that there is very little phrasing originality, by comparing the entered definition with definitions from other dictionaries. I propose an exercise: take a couple of words and collect their definitions from several popular dictionaries. You will see how much pain the authors take to have their definitions vary in phrasing, even in minor way; that at least is my experience. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:27, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

• Keep part-of-body sense. I see no obvious reason that every living person has a "blood supply" but only a vampire can have a "supply of blood". (O.K., not quite literally true: google:"her supply of blood", for example, also finds some allusions to blood libel. But you know what I mean.)
  No vote on the other sense.
  —Ruakh_TALK 06:03, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Second sense kept. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:57, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

• Where do you see a consensus to delete the first sense? bd2412 T 00:25, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

My mistake. Restored the first sense. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:44, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:42, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

• Let us keep "donated blood which is stored in a blood bank" as well; I do not think &lit is an improvement over this. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:14, 27 May 2014 (UTC)