Template talk:No license

Improving this template
I'm noting some issues below. I think they're pretty easily resolved, I hope this does not come across as controversial. I'm not proposing solutions here, but first trying to establish the problems to be solved. Hopefully others can consider whether or not these seem like real problems. If there's agreement on that, I think it should be pretty easy to come up with solutions, and I'd invite others to propose some. -Pete (talk) 19:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Use of word 'license'
The use of the word "license" is not up to the task here. A copyright holder can grant license to reuse their work (e.g., by invoking one of the Creative Commons licenses). Alternately, a copyright holder can choose to dedicate the work to the public domain (e.g., by invoking the CC-0 dedication.

But a work that is in the public domain (very common on Wikisource) cannot be licensed.

If this template is to be widely deployed on works that in some cases are in the public domain or freely licensed, but have not yet been properly tagged per Wikisource policy, the phrasing needs improvement. -Pete (talk) 19:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Fit to purpose
In some cases, this template is applied where a Wikisource user has already put some effort in, and identified a genuine difficulty in tracking down the information necessary to determine whether it complies with Wikisource's copyright policy. In this case, where there's an established question about the specific page, the "emergency" tone (red color, exclamation point, placement at top of page) may be sensible, and alert the user to something pressing about the page they're looking at.

In others (and recently), it's applied very broadly to all files that lack an assertion of the content's license or public domain status. In these cases, while it's reasonable to call the overall state of affairs (many untagged pages across the site) an emergency, it's an emergency that may very well not apply to the page it's on. If the page clearly establishes that the work was published centuries ago, or establishes in prose that it was released under a CC license, etc., there is no emergency on this specific page, but rather a clerical error that needs fixing. There's no need to distract the end user.

If the same banner is to apply sensibly in both cases, that will take some careful design and wordsmithing. Alternately, two banners, or a parameter within the template, could permit these use cases to be expressed to the reader with different language. -Pete (talk) 19:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)