On 20 Mar 2009, at 17:03, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Michael Peel wrote:
On 20 Mar 2009, at 08:57, Tim Landscheidt wrote:
Is this problem really exclusive to online
references? I'd
guess there is plenitude of author references to "[...] et
al." (or none at all) out there that cannot be resolved
without access to a catalog or the source material itself
and become "devoid of meaning" at the latest when these re-
sources are destroyed or not accessible.
I'm not talking about references to a text, I'm talking about a copy
of the text. That's completely different. Please, give me examples of
where text is reprinted with the authors attributed as "[...] et al."
or none at all.
A copy of Wikipedia text is frequently used in eBay descriptions of
books. The attribution is simply to Wikipedia, and does not
progress so
far as to say "[...] et al." That's about as much as anyone could
reasonably expect, no matter what the licence says.
I was meaning non-Wikipedia text, i.e. existing attribution methods
for other works.
In the case of eBay, where the use is temporary, attribution by URL
seems fine to me. Were it more permanent (e.g. a proper website, or a
book), then attribution by author names would seem more appropriate.
Only my own laziness and the economics of publishing
prevent me from
putting together a book of related Wikipedia articles. (Maybe a
wiki-guide to Vancouver in time for the upcoming Olympics.) If I did I
could do so safely in the knowledge that no-one would sue me. For any
author to expect otherwise is to suffer (to use Milos's appropriate
term) from "bourgeois egotism."
That's an argument for clear rules, with no relation to attribution.
A simple rule saying "if you use this text for that, attribute these
authors" suffices and removes any doubt about anyone being sued.
Mike