On Jan 24, 2008 3:32 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I can understand of course that the ideal of credit is
appealing.
David's idea of automatically generated contribution statistics under
a "Show credit" template is a good idea, its basically an editor
summary of the article. As far as actually listing editors in the text
of the article for credit - I think that it is difficult and
contentious to the point of being not worth the effort. If the process
is subjective, it will be yet another meta-distraction from the goal -
which is content, not credit.
I like the idea of a manually edited summary better than an
automatically generated one. I think some of the decisions about who
should be credited cannot be automated accurately.
I think that crediting people in public motivates them to write better
articles and to put more effort into them. I also think that it is
morally important to give credit where credit is due, and even though
it is possible to find out who did what, it is not the same as
actually giving credit.
There are other things that can be considered distractions, such as
footnotes, that were at one time not part of policy and now are.
Also, as much as there is an ideal of NPOV on Wikipedia, it, as all
ideals is impossible to realize. As such the author of the content is
also part of the content.
It would also do much to improve the image of Wikipedia. If there are
people who are responsible for the content, as opposed to an anonymous
blob, then there will be more trust, and also more awareness of where
content is coming from.
Perhaps if simple and objective criteria were
proposed, an idea
similar to "Show credits" could be workable and useful, although the
almost universal use of pseudonyms sort of takes the meaning out of
public credit (as opposed to a similar show credit box on the talk
page, perhaps).
I think that many people would be prepared to use something closer to
their real names if they were going to be credited within the
articles. I really think that the credit should be as much part of the
article as the footnotes are. Articles should have authors, not
anonymous blobs.
Regards,
Ezra