On Jan 24, 2008 3:04 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
In theory the idea that public credit should be given for good work is nice - it is simply unworkable for Wikipedia. What is public credit? What is good work? Who gets credit, in which order? Can you change the credits over time? Who decides?
Public credit as I mentioned would be a section at the end of the article much like Brittanica has. I don't believe they credit the minor editors. I don't know that it makes a difference whether the work is good, only that it is substantial. I would give credit in the order of contribution with perhaps the truly major contributors getting top billing. If the work of an editor is mostly deleted, then his credit would be removed as well. If somebody decides that he decides that he no longer agrees with what he wrote, or it has been edited to say something that he no longer agrees with, he can remove himself from the list. The same people who edit the article can decide who gets credit. When you edit an article you can decide for yourself how much credit you deserve, and if some subsequent editor disagrees, they can change it, or discuss it on the talk page as with the the contents of the articles.
I can see a hundred ArbCom cases rising from this issue, and I don't see how it is nearly worth the trouble given that all of our existing contributors have agreed to have their work published under the existing standards of attribution.
I am sure that there will be a number of arbcom cases as a result, but so what. I think many editors agreed to not be credited because they did not want to fight the system. Walt Disney didn't used to credit his animators either, and they technically agreed to it, because they could have stopped working for him, but they certainly weren't happy about it, and they ultimately prevailed.
Regards, Ezra