On 10/30/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Kwan Ting Chan <ktc(a)ktchan.info> wrote:
No? Software change such that from a certain
point on any edit will
automatically update a credit page. At the same time, start running
something that goes through all the non-deleted edits and update the
page as well.
Yes, we could just extract the long list of names (including offensive
vandal names) from the history, store it, and update it.
What real advantage would this serve over just directing people to the
history page? Lack of duplication doesn't seem like enough of a win
to justify keeping the extra data.
Presumably each author would only be listed once on the credits page,
as opposed to possibly hundreds or thousands of times on "the history
page". That alone makes a credits page much more useful than "the
history page".
Most of the people who edit a page aren't authors,
certantly not in
the copyright bearing sense, and it's unfortunate and confusing that
"Throbbing Monster Cock" gets equal attribution for adding the word
"the" to an article as an actual author.
I think a semi-automated credits page would make the most sense. So
"Throbbing Monster Cock" would get attribution by default, but this
attribution could be removed manually (or in some cases, by a bot).
Likewise, names could be manually added for copy/paste moves or
whatever.
But when someone makes a significant edit to a page, they would be
attributed automatically by default (they could opt-out of this, I
guess).