On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 6:44 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/16/2009 4:02:18 AM Pacific Daylight Time, wikimail@inbox.org writes:
Once you've released your writing, it can be "edited mercilessly" in ways which are directly counter to your intent, and you're left with the choice between abandoning credit for your work and being considered responsible for the modifications of others (or, in the case of Citizendium, you're forced to choose the latter).>>
I dont' understand about this "responsible" part. Even though I've started many articles in-project that were later put in a state that I wouldn't want, I don't feel responsible for the current state of the article.
Interestingly, this feeds into a current discussion going on about the use of PD text. The discussion (which may have got a little out of hand, is on the talk page of the Signpost's article about plagiarism). The basis of part of the subthread is whether it is morally right to take someone's PD work, to republish it as a Wikipedia article (with a template at the bottom providing attribution), and to then leave it to the tender mercies of the Wiki editing process. At what point might the author of the original PD text no longer want to be credited for writing the text that "seeded" the eventual result on Wikipedia?
And does it make a difference if the author of the PD text is long dead and the text is PD "by age" or if the author is alive and the text has been released as PD by the author's employer, or if the author himself released it as a PD text?
Or to put it another way - is it acceptable for Wikipedia to co-opt other authors into the "collective credit" that the authors of a Wikipedia article take for that article?
Carcharoth