The Cunctator wrote:
I strongly think we're better off formalizing a policy in which particular author attribution is not required. That is, by contributing to Wikipedia, you agree to be attributed as one of the "Wikipedia Contributors" or somesuch.
Jimmy responds:
Well that certainly much more closely matches our social custom, in which articles aren't "owned" by anyone, and we value all sorts of contributions to the project without specifically privileging 'authorship'.
But, how can we reconcile your suggestion with the FDL?
Not to be a wag, but how can we reconcile anonymous contributions of any stripe--including ones that aren't logged in--with the FDL? Pick an AOL IP address and try to assign it to one author, without AOL's help. Impossible. It doesn't even trace to one *computer* without AOL jumping through hoops, much less to one author at that one computer. (If this weren't the case, we wouldn't have the problem of recurring vandals).
Now, if the {irony} brilliant, uninvasive {/irony} idea of prepending IPs with phone numbers ever comes to fruition, maybe we would be closer to compliance with what the FDL seems to require. As it is, I think we're probably not, but also unable to do much about it without severely changing what wikipedia is.
kq
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