On 6/5/07, Angela Anuszewski angela.anuszewski@gmail.com wrote:
I'm sorry, I'm sorta new around here, and I guess I am not really sure I understand exactly what the GFDL says and why this (in some people eyes) is an issue. Is there a good summary of this controversy that a neophyte can understand without slogging through months' worth of talk pages?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GFDL particularly section 4, which requires a document's edit history to be maintained in some form or fashion. Generally this is easy to fulfill because the software does it automatically. But, if we continue to publish text even after deleting the edits through which it originated, then no edit history relevant to this text could possibly be readable by the public. Thus the text is being used in violation of the GFDL, unless the edit history is preserved manually by alternative means. The following could be copied from the history window and be more than adequate:
==From [[Some deleted article]]== Edit history: *11:53, 31 May 2007 User3 (requesting zomg speedy deletion) *11:51, 31 May 2007 User2 m (typo fix using AWB) *20:13, 16 May 2007 User1 (←Created page with '// Actual text of joke. //')
// Actual text of joke. //
==Next stupid joke==
If it makes things easier, the edit histories of bad jokes tend to be pretty short.
―C.W.