tldr: Attribution for media on the mobile lightbox viewer is a bit inconsistent right now, fixing it is IMO worthwhile and doable (and users do care a fair bit about how it's handled) but you might land on disabling mobile lightbox or trying a different approach. I understand the mobile lightbox is not a top priority for the team right now.
on how to do attribution in the mobile lightbox viewer. If you're not involved with that, feel free to ignore the below.
Attribution is a hot topic for a lot of people, because it is viewed as fundamentally being a matter of respect and recognition of their work. So if you don't get why this is a big deal for people, please trust me that it is, and that we need to show some senitivity in how we handle it. :) Organizationally, we also want to be an example for how to use CC licenses correctly, and how third parties should re-use content from our projects.
Since I've been participating in the related discussions on desktop MMV a fair bit, let me try a concise summary of what the issues are. I'm CCing Luis who can jump in with clarifications (Luis, one "legal requirement" question for you below, feel free to answer offlist to Maryana/Kaldari if you prefer).
Other licenses (used for some files) may or may not include similar provisions; even without them you could argue that the differences in medium/means justify a different approach.
2) Lightboxes introduce additional step between user and attribution. We do not show attribution right below the image in an article, and as you introduce more steps, you stretch the "reasonableness" definition.
On desktop, the paradigm we follow is "Show required attribution wherever possible, err on the side of including source information since it _may_ be required" (the metadata is currently very messy on that aspect).
3) Small variations (such as not linking to the username, which makes some usernames effectively meaningless without going to the File: page) can stretch the "reasonableness" definition in the eyes of media contributors. Note, however, that the username sometimes will point to e.g. a Flickr URL, and will be ambiguous outside the context of Flickr.
4) Right now mobile MMV does not show any links related to the author, and does not show the source.
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The specific argument in the bug is that mobile devices have limited displays and input precision and therefore the introduction of too much detail can confuse and disorient users if they hit these links by accident, and that the fallback to the File: page ought to be sufficient for additional details.
There are two separate sets of questions here:
- What's the right thing to do to show the appropriate level of recognition for media contributors? Can this be done without violating good UX principles for mobile?
- What's the legal requirement, e.g., is it OK to omit the source link when an author may explicitly request a source to be linked to?
Here's how I think this question should be decided:
* Hard legal requirements are non-negotiable;
* Legal and the community at large should be a partner in defining what good attribution practices (beyond hard requirements) should look like, so a recommendation from legal or repeatedly expressed community wishes that are not a dealbreaker from a UX perspective should be taken seriously into account.
My recommendation: Add the link(s) (including the source link if it contains a URL), if you're concerned about link precision, throw some mobile user tests at it and see if it actually causes a problem -- abbreviate if needed. But I'm OK with a different outcome, with full consideration to the above issues.
I don't think that's actually very complicated, though getting abbreviation and potential layout explosions from rich HTML content right while retaining basic links may be the biggest development cost. Gergo / the MM team may have some advice on how to handle it.
Thanks,
Erik
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Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation