[Foundation-l] What's appropriate attribution?

[Anthony]

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 1:15 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:

> On Thursday 23 October 2008 22:22:26 Anthony wrote:
> > I'm sorry, your numbers are pulled too wildly from the air to be useful.
>  A
> > 300 page book about 200 countries?  You're better off rewriting
> everything
> > "ab initio" than copying from Wikipedia for that.  The work to cull down
> > the information into that small of a format is going to far outweigh the
> > savings from plagiarizing the content anyway.
>
> He's referring to possibility to create a book that would have only the
> introduction from each article, yet it would have to list all authors
> (because you can't determine who was writing in the introduction and who
> wasn't).
>

Sometimes, sadly, it's not possible to get something for nothing.  Is it
really part of the mission of the Foundation to allow publishers to create
such books?  Would such a book even be worth more than the paper it's
printed on?  It seems like one of those books I can get for $0.10 at the
thrift store, or $2.00 at the bargain bin section of a bookstore.

Then again, this whole thread seems to be leading to the conclusion that
Wikipedia and the right to attribution are incompatible.  If that's truly
the case, the only fair thing to do is to start over from scratch under
terms that make it clear to all contributors that they have no right to
attribution.  I honestly hope it isn't the case, and that I'm just missing
something.

Anthony