On Jan 23, 2008 6:43 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/01/2008, Rama Rama ramaneko@gmail.com wrote (on commons-l):
- There is definitely a trend of professional photographers to request
credits under the image in articles. This is what they are accustomed to. I (and a few others) think that we should make efforts to sensibilise our users to this. We can definitely afford to credit people in articles. This is a small concession which costs us very little and can benefit us greatly.
I think articles should also be attributed to their authors in the body of the article. Every major encyclopedia does it. Certainly there would be some debate about how much of a contribution should be required for attribution, and what form the attribution should take, whether real full names, wikipedia nicks, or real full initials.
Regards, Ezra
On 1/24/08, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
I think articles should also be attributed to their authors in the body of the article. Every major encyclopedia does it.
Granted, no other major encyclopedia is the product of collaboration by the general public[1].
Certainly there would be some debate about how much of a contribution should be required for attribution...
This is a debate which no one will win and which most of us would rather not conduct. Right now we can't agree on when it is, or when it isn't, appropriate to use the "[x] Minor edit" check-box. What makes an edit "major" or "minor" anyway? In practice it's a subjective evaluation. Before saving one's edit, the user might ask "hmm... is this edit more significant or less significant than the last one?" or even "how would I rate this on a scale of 1-10?" Of course it's a mistake to spend this much time thinking about it.
...and what form the attribution should take, whether real full names, wikipedia nicks, or real full initials.
Obviously this is the individual user's prerogative. Anybody who wants their edits to be attributed to their real name can have their account renamed accordingly, and the history tab of every page they have edited will reflect this change. Initials are another story. You'll probably notice that most two- or three- letter usernames are already in use.
[1] And no, Citizendium doesn't count. Calling it "major" or calling its participants "the general public" would be a repugnant farce.
—C.W.
On 24/01/2008, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 23, 2008 6:43 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/01/2008, Rama Rama ramaneko@gmail.com wrote (on commons-l):
- There is definitely a trend of professional photographers to request
credits under the image in articles. This is what they are accustomed to. I (and a few others) think that we should make efforts to sensibilise our users to this. We can definitely afford to credit people in articles. This is a small concession which costs us very little and can benefit us greatly.
I think articles should also be attributed to their authors in the body of the article. Every major encyclopedia does it. Certainly there would be some debate about how much of a contribution should be required for attribution, and what form the attribution should take, whether real full names, wikipedia nicks, or real full initials.
The big problem is working out who to credit. I've been trying to answer that question, and have failed completely - no system I've come up with would be anywhere near fair. As for how to attribute - it has to be by pseudonym since that's all we know, if people want to be credited under their real name they need to sign up under their real name, or get renamed to it.
On Jan 24, 2008 1:50 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
As for how to attribute - it has to be by pseudonym since that's all we know, if people want to be credited under their real name they need to sign up under their real name, or get renamed to it.
Or add a preferences field "name for attribution." I personally would rather edit under a pseudonym but if I were given credit I would prefer my real name to be used.
I think the whole idea of attribution of text in the body of the article is misguided, and I doubt that it will ever be implemented in Wikipedia or for that matter any Wikimedia project (with the possible exception of Wikinews).
Attribution sufficient for copyright is in the edit history, and anything further would be extraordinarily disruptive and contentious. We've got enough of that at the moment to last us for years. Wikipedia is a collaborative project, and articles are written by anyone at any time - so the only true attribution for the current state of an article at any particular time is to the "Wikipedia community" not "Editor So And So, Who Wrote Two Paragraphs 5 Years Ago."
On Jan 24, 2008 2:01 PM, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 1:50 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
As for how to attribute - it has to be by pseudonym since that's all we know, if people want to be credited under their real name they need to sign up under their real name, or get renamed to it.
Or add a preferences field "name for attribution." I personally would rather edit under a pseudonym but if I were given credit I would prefer my real name to be used.
-- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers
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On Jan 24, 2008 2:07 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
so the only true attribution for the current state of an article at any particular time is to the "Wikipedia community" not "Editor So And So, Who Wrote Two Paragraphs 5 Years Ago."
You would certainly have to work out who deserves to be credited and whether somebody still deserves to be credited after what he originally wrote was substantially changed, but that does not mean that those who deserve to be credited should not be credited.
Many times it will obvious who deserves credit. I am not proposing an automated system for credit, although it might me be possible to make one. I am proposing a policy change that would require a section at the end of any good article that credits the significant authors of the article in a way similar to that of footnotes and references. If there are contentious issues about who should be credited that would be worked out on the talk page just like other contentious issues are.
Regards, Ezra
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?
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.
On Jan 24, 2008 2:43 PM, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 2:07 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
so the only true attribution for the current state of an article at any particular time is to the "Wikipedia community" not "Editor So And So, Who Wrote Two Paragraphs 5 Years Ago."
You would certainly have to work out who deserves to be credited and whether somebody still deserves to be credited after what he originally wrote was substantially changed, but that does not mean that those who deserve to be credited should not be credited.
Many times it will obvious who deserves credit. I am not proposing an automated system for credit, although it might me be possible to make one. I am proposing a policy change that would require a section at the end of any good article that credits the significant authors of the article in a way similar to that of footnotes and references. If there are contentious issues about who should be credited that would be worked out on the talk page just like other contentious issues are.
Regards, Ezra
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On 24/01/2008, 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?
Easier: add a "show credits" link to pages that transcludes a list of all contributors to text and images. Possibly images could then do with a "creator/photographer" field so that's listed rather than the uploader.
- d.
On Jan 24, 2008 12:11 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Easier: add a "show credits" link to pages that transcludes a list of all contributors to text and images. Possibly images could then do with a "creator/photographer" field so that's listed rather than the uploader.
Might be workable -- saw somebody else mentioned an "authors" tab that sounds pretty similar.
If we're looking to reduce this to a "short" list that would be suitable for in-line display, that sounds prohibitively difficult: if not automated, the process would generate countless amounts of busy work and drama, and it sounds like it'd be nigh impossible to automate.
-Luna
On 25/01/2008, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 12:11 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Easier: add a "show credits" link to pages that transcludes a list of all contributors to text and images. Possibly images could then do with a "creator/photographer" field so that's listed rather than the uploader.
Might be workable -- saw somebody else mentioned an "authors" tab that sounds pretty similar.
Pity there isn't room to make the "History" link/tab say "Article history and authors".
If we're looking to reduce this to a "short" list that would be suitable for in-line display, that sounds prohibitively difficult: if not automated, the process would generate countless amounts of busy work and drama, and it sounds like it'd be nigh impossible to automate.
I think there's already something in MediaWiki that generates a list of all named contributors to an article and renders the article with it appended. I forget how to make it do this, but it's in there, so that bit's been coded.
- d.
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
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.
We get enough heated debates about content, can you imagine trying to reach a consensus on whether or not a particular user's work is worth crediting on the page? Pretty much everyone involved in the debate will have a conflict of interest!
On Jan 24, 2008 3:22 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
We get enough heated debates about content, can you imagine trying to reach a consensus on whether or not a particular user's work is worth crediting on the page? Pretty much everyone involved in the debate will have a conflict of interest!
I think this fear is overstated. Even though people have a conflict of interest, I think that in the vast majority of times once a set of guidelines have evolved, there will rarely be any serious doubt about who should be credited. I would propose a pilot project just to see how it would work.
I think people will be reluctant to assign themselves more credit than they deserve because it doesn't look good. Even people who have a hard time with keeping to NPOV would probably find it easy to not take more credit than their due.
Regards, Ezra
On 24/01/2008, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 3:22 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
We get enough heated debates about content, can you imagine trying to reach a consensus on whether or not a particular user's work is worth crediting on the page? Pretty much everyone involved in the debate will have a conflict of interest!
I think this fear is overstated. Even though people have a conflict of interest, I think that in the vast majority of times once a set of guidelines have evolved, there will rarely be any serious doubt about who should be credited. I would propose a pilot project just to see how it would work.
I think people will be reluctant to assign themselves more credit than they deserve because it doesn't look good. Even people who have a hard time with keeping to NPOV would probably find it easy to not take more credit than their due.
It doesn't need to happen often for it to be a problem. Even if 99.9% of articles never have a problem, that still leaves over 2000 articles that we'll have to fight over.
On Jan 24, 2008 4:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It doesn't need to happen often for it to be a problem. Even if 99.9% of articles never have a problem, that still leaves over 2000 articles that we'll have to fight over.
I really don't think it's a problem. There are plenty of resources. There will always be people who will be happy to adjudicate cases like this. I think questions about authorship will come up less often than requests for article deletion. And many of those debates are even more stupid than the ones that would come up about article attribution.
Regards, Ezra
On 24/01/2008, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 4:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It doesn't need to happen often for it to be a problem. Even if 99.9% of articles never have a problem, that still leaves over 2000 articles that we'll have to fight over.
I really don't think it's a problem. There are plenty of resources. There will always be people who will be happy to adjudicate cases like this. I think questions about authorship will come up less often than requests for article deletion. And many of those debates are even more stupid than the ones that would come up about article attribution.
Are you sure there will be people willing to adjudicate? I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to tell someone their contribution isn't worthy of credit. There are plenty of people willing to adjudicate content disputes, sure, but this isn't about content, it's about people, and that changes things.
How about a separate author tab, similar to the revision one? All authors of non-minor marked edits could be named, possibly in the form of a "tag-cloud" where weight is given to the amount of edits and bytes added.
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 21:22 +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 24/01/2008, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 4:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It doesn't need to happen often for it to be a problem. Even if 99.9% of articles never have a problem, that still leaves over 2000 articles that we'll have to fight over.
I really don't think it's a problem. There are plenty of resources. There will always be people who will be happy to adjudicate cases like this. I think questions about authorship will come up less often than requests for article deletion. And many of those debates are even more stupid than the ones that would come up about article attribution.
Are you sure there will be people willing to adjudicate? I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to tell someone their contribution isn't worthy of credit. There are plenty of people willing to adjudicate content disputes, sure, but this isn't about content, it's about people, and that changes things.
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I guess some people have a rosier view of human nature than I do. I can easily foresee a practically unlimited number of conflicts over credit. I can easily see a dozen major news articles based on who it is revealed wrote a particular article. What if it turns out that 40% of the George W. Bush article was written by an Australian 12 year old? (Not at all unlikely). How will that increase the trust in Wikipedia of the general population?
How would you deal with the fact that a large portion of the content on Wikipedia was contributed not just under a pseudonymous nickname but by a nameless IP address? I'm afraid that manually written credits in the content of an article is just not ever likely to happen. There are far too many problems for it to ever get beyond an intellectual debate on a mailing list.
If you are really into the idea of credit, investigate something similar to David Gerard's suggestion.
Nathan
On Jan 24, 2008 4:29 PM, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
How about a separate author tab, similar to the revision one? All authors of non-minor marked edits could be named, possibly in the form of a "tag-cloud" where weight is given to the amount of edits and bytes added.
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 21:22 +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 24/01/2008, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 4:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It doesn't need to happen often for it to be a problem. Even if 99.9% of articles never have a problem, that still leaves over 2000 articles that we'll have to fight over.
I really don't think it's a problem. There are plenty of resources. There will always be people who will be happy to adjudicate cases like this. I think questions about authorship will come up less often than requests for article deletion. And many of those debates are even more stupid than the ones that would come up about article attribution.
Are you sure there will be people willing to adjudicate? I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to tell someone their contribution isn't worthy of credit. There are plenty of people willing to adjudicate content disputes, sure, but this isn't about content, it's about people, and that changes things.
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On Jan 24, 2008 4:42 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I guess some people have a rosier view of human nature than I do. I can easily foresee a practically unlimited number of conflicts over credit.
Of course there is no way to know for certain what the results are going to be, until it is tried. I think it should be tried. We should decide that for the next week all new articles should have authors on them. We could set up a proposed guideline that explains how it is going to work, and see what the results are.
After a week we could evaluate it. If it works out, then we could start gradually crediting other articles, in a way similar to how footnotes have been introduced into articles.
I can easily see a dozen major news articles based on who it is revealed wrote a particular article. What if it turns out that 40% of the George W. Bush article was written by an Australian 12 year old? (Not at all unlikely). How will that increase the trust in Wikipedia of the general population?
I don't see this as a problem at all. If the twelve year old did an excellent job, then good for him, and people will think that he is a little genius. If he did a lousy job, then it wouldn't have stayed and he wouldn't have gotten any attribution.
As far as Wikipedia's reputation, I don't think it could suffer. Nobody is likely to use it less because it was written by twelve year olds. In any case, Wikipedia already has a solid reputation.
How would you deal with the fact that a large portion of the content on Wikipedia was contributed not just under a pseudonymous nickname but by a nameless IP address?
I think that we can credit unknown contributors as anonymous if there are no better ideas.
I'm afraid that manually written credits in the content of an article is just not ever likely to happen. There are far too many problems for it to ever get beyond an intellectual debate on a mailing list.
I haven't seen any problems here that cannot be addressed. I think the only thing it has going against it, is inertia.
Regards, Ezra
On Jan 24, 2008 4:29 PM, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
How about a separate author tab, similar to the revision one? All authors of non-minor marked edits could be named, possibly in the form of a "tag-cloud" where weight is given to the amount of edits and bytes added.
I wouldn't be averse to that knowledge being readily available, but I don't think it does the trick.
I don't think an automated process could ever give the proper amount of credit, and some types of credit are simply impossible to detect automatically.
I also think, that the authors must be part of the article when it is printed. It is not simply a matter of being able to find out who the author is, but acknowledging the author, and that can only be done properly if it is part of the article and hand edited.
The same thing that makes people afraid that people might get offended for being left off the list, is what gives it the power of rewarding people for the good work they have done by being acknowledged by other human beings.
Regards, Ezra
The other thing you don't consider is that credit in the article is not required by either the GNU Free license or CC-by-SA. Any reuser would have the right to remove credit from the articles, and I expect most would exercise that right.
On Jan 24, 2008 4:45 PM, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 4:29 PM, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
How about a separate author tab, similar to the revision one? All authors of non-minor marked edits could be named, possibly in the form of a "tag-cloud" where weight is given to the amount of edits and bytes added.
I wouldn't be averse to that knowledge being readily available, but I don't think it does the trick.
I don't think an automated process could ever give the proper amount of credit, and some types of credit are simply impossible to detect automatically.
I also think, that the authors must be part of the article when it is printed. It is not simply a matter of being able to find out who the author is, but acknowledging the author, and that can only be done properly if it is part of the article and hand edited.
The same thing that makes people afraid that people might get offended for being left off the list, is what gives it the power of rewarding people for the good work they have done by being acknowledged by other human beings.
Regards, Ezra
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On Jan 24, 2008 4:50 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
The other thing you don't consider is that credit in the article is not required by either the GNU Free license or CC-by-SA. Any reuser would have the right to remove credit from the articles, and I expect most would exercise that right.
I don't think that matters. Almost all use of Wikipedia content is directly from the website. If it is printed out, it is too much effort to remove attributions. Other web sites that copy Wikipedia's content, do not edit the articles. I cannot imagine that any web site that doesn't remove footnotes would remove authorship.
And if it is clear who wrote an article, it is possible that some journalists will actually credit the author of the article in addition to Wikipedia, especially if Wikipedians insist that that should be the proper etiquette.
Regards, Ezra
Maybe you should copy a few articles into your userspace and add credits to them in a way you think is appropriate. Once you've completed that initial exercise, trial the articles (and they can't be obscure stubs) in article space and see what people think. Be sure to make note on the talk page of the trial and its purpose. That would be a step more agreeable than trialing it on all new articles for a week - most new articles have a single contributor, and a lot of them are stubs or of low quality.
Nathan
On Jan 24, 2008 5:04 PM, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 4:50 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
The other thing you don't consider is that credit in the article is not required by either the GNU Free license or CC-by-SA. Any reuser would have the right to remove credit from the articles, and I expect most would exercise that right.
I don't think that matters. Almost all use of Wikipedia content is directly from the website. If it is printed out, it is too much effort to remove attributions. Other web sites that copy Wikipedia's content, do not edit the articles. I cannot imagine that any web site that doesn't remove footnotes would remove authorship.
And if it is clear who wrote an article, it is possible that some journalists will actually credit the author of the article in addition to Wikipedia, especially if Wikipedians insist that that should be the proper etiquette.
Regards, Ezra
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Nathan wrote:
Maybe you should copy a few articles into your userspace and add credits to them in a way you think is appropriate. Once you've completed that initial exercise, trial the articles (and they can't be obscure stubs) in article space and see what people think. Be sure to make note on the talk page of the trial and its purpose. That would be a step more agreeable than trialing it on all new articles for a week
- most new articles have a single contributor, and a lot of them are
stubs or of low quality.
That's a constructive suggestion for him. While it might be over the top to suggest that he do this with [[George W. Bush]], perhaps choosing any article that has achieved FA status would be a good place to start for discovering just what kinds of problems such attributions will entail. Getting credit for FAs could get competitive when editors' prestige is at stake.
Ec
On Jan 24, 2008 7:51 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Nathan wrote:
Maybe you should copy a few articles into your userspace and add credits to them in a way you think is appropriate. Once you've completed that initial exercise, trial the articles (and they can't be obscure stubs) in article space and see what people think. Be sure to make note on the talk page of the trial and its purpose. That would be a step more agreeable than trialing it on all new articles for a week
- most new articles have a single contributor, and a lot of them are
stubs or of low quality.
That's a constructive suggestion for him. While it might be over the top to suggest that he do this with [[George W. Bush]], perhaps choosing any article that has achieved FA status would be a good place to start for discovering just what kinds of problems such attributions will entail. Getting credit for FAs could get competitive when editors' prestige is at stake.
Thinking about what would be involved, it seems that it would be very difficult to sift through hundreds of edits to determine who wrote what. Anybody have any ideas about how to make it a manageable task?
Regards, Ezra
On 25/01/2008, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
Thinking about what would be involved, it seems that it would be very difficult to sift through hundreds of edits to determine who wrote what. Anybody have any ideas about how to make it a manageable task?
It's not difficult, but because of vandalisation blanking issues in principle you need to go through the entire history of the article to find out the earliest time that a particular edit/paragraph/sentence/string of characters appeared, which you could probably best check using hashing. It would be time consuming, it's an O(N*M) problem per article where N is the number of history items and M is the size of the final article.
But you could do it a different way where you go back through the history in large jumps (binary search if you know what that is) until a particular contribution disappeared, and then sniff around checking to see that the disappearance at that point in the history wasn't just a temporary blanking. That would be O(log(N)*M) or better.
There would still be issues though, if somebody correct spelling, then it would look like they wrote that bit entirely to the dumb program, whereas a human would probably still credit the original guy mostly, but there might be ways around that too by checking the percentage change or something.
It seems doable.
Regards,
Ezra
pres·tige /prɛˈstiʒ, -ˈstidʒ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[pre-*steezh*, -*steej*] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun 1.reputation or influence arising from success, achievement, rank, or other favorable attributes.2.distinction or reputation attaching to a person or thing and thus possessing a cachet for others or for the public: The new discothèque has great prestige with the jet set. –adjective 3.having or showing success, rank, wealth, etc.
How do you expect us to remain as an anti-elitist community if we make a big deal of author crediting? Prestige is the last thing an author should be seeking. FAness is no big deal.
- White Cat
On Jan 25, 2008 2:51 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net > wrote:
Nathan wrote:
Maybe you should copy a few articles into your userspace and add credits to them in a way you think is appropriate. Once you've completed that initial exercise, trial the articles (and they can't be obscure stubs) in article space and see what people think. Be sure to make note on the talk page of the trial and its purpose. That would be a step more agreeable than trialing it on all new articles for a week
- most new articles have a single contributor, and a lot of them are
stubs or of low quality.
That's a constructive suggestion for him. While it might be over the top to suggest that he do this with [[George W. Bush]], perhaps choosing any article that has achieved FA status would be a good place to start for discovering just what kinds of problems such attributions will entail. Getting credit for FAs could get competitive when editors' prestige is at stake.
Ec
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On Jan 25, 2008 12:01 AM, White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
How do you expect us to remain as an anti-elitist community if we make a big deal of author crediting? Prestige is the last thing an author should be seeking. FAness is no big deal.
Is the community anti-elitist? What do you call administrators? What are barnstars etc? And I think FAness is a big deal. It takes quite a bit of work to get there. Why shouldn't people get credited for their work? Why should you only be able to find out who did it if you put forth an effort?
Regards, Ezra
Barnstars are no big deal. Adminship is also no big deal either, I happen to be an admin and as you can clearly see we are discussing things on an equal ground. FAness takes a fair amount of work but being FA doesn't really mean anything. It doesn't mean the article is complete. If you click on the FA star it is explained as a never ending and continuing process of development. People ARE credited through the history link. Not only it credits you it shows precisely what you did when you did. If thats inadequate maybe you are contributing to the wrong site.
- White Cat
On Jan 25, 2008 7:18 AM, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 25, 2008 12:01 AM, White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
How do you expect us to remain as an anti-elitist community if we make a
big
deal of author crediting? Prestige is the last thing an author should be seeking. FAness is no big deal.
Is the community anti-elitist? What do you call administrators? What are barnstars etc? And I think FAness is a big deal. It takes quite a bit of work to get there. Why shouldn't people get credited for their work? Why should you only be able to find out who did it if you put forth an effort?
Regards, Ezra
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How do you expect us to remain as an anti-elitist community if we make a big deal of author crediting? Prestige is the last thing an author should be seeking. FAness is no big deal.
Prestige (or repuation, at least, which is much the same thing) is extremely important to Wikipedia, it's one of the key things that keeps people in line. We have no way to force people to behave, one of the main reasons people do so is because they want to be respected by their peers. If everyone had to edit anonymously, we would have far fewer dedicated and well behaved contributors.
On 24/01/2008, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
How about a separate author tab, similar to the revision one? All authors of non-minor marked edits could be named, possibly in the form of a "tag-cloud" where weight is given to the amount of edits and bytes added.
That would be no better than the History page - the whole point of this idea is to credit people on the article itself.
On Jan 24, 2008 4:22 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Are you sure there will be people willing to adjudicate? I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to tell someone their contribution isn't worthy of credit. There are plenty of people willing to adjudicate content disputes, sure, but this isn't about content, it's about people, and that changes things.
Oh definitely. I don't think there will be a question of whether a person is worthy, only whether his contribution meets the criteria for crediting him. There will be some question about what sort of contribution is worthy of credit, and what isn't, but that can be hammered out.
If somebody adds a significant fraction of an article, or a significant amount to the article, and it survives subsequent editing, then it deserves attribution. If it doesn't survive then he loses the attribution.
If somebody started an article and made a significant contribution to the article, he definitely gets credit. If somebody significantly improved the accuracy of an article, even if the size of the article didn't change, he would get credit.
If somebody does significant copy-editing on the article, he should get credit, and even if there is significant reorganization. We should credit each person for the specific contribution he made.
You might not like to step on people's toes, but as I am sure many here can attest, there are plenty of people who are willing to take the risk.
Regards, Ezra
I'm reposting my reply to Nathan and breaking up the paragraphs to make it easier to read.
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 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
I can understand of course that the ideal of credit is appealing. David's idea of automatically generated contribution statistics under a "Show credit" template is a good idea, its basically an editor summary of the article. As far as actually listing editors in the text of the article for credit - I think that it is difficult and contentious to the point of being not worth the effort. If the process is subjective, it will be yet another meta-distraction from the goal - which is content, not credit.
Perhaps if simple and objective criteria were proposed, an idea similar to "Show credits" could be workable and useful, although the almost universal use of pseudonyms sort of takes the meaning out of public credit (as opposed to a similar show credit box on the talk page, perhaps).
On Jan 24, 2008 3:22 PM, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
I'm reposting my reply to Nathan and breaking up the paragraphs to make it easier to read.
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 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
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On Jan 24, 2008 3:32 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I can understand of course that the ideal of credit is appealing. David's idea of automatically generated contribution statistics under a "Show credit" template is a good idea, its basically an editor summary of the article. As far as actually listing editors in the text of the article for credit - I think that it is difficult and contentious to the point of being not worth the effort. If the process is subjective, it will be yet another meta-distraction from the goal - which is content, not credit.
I like the idea of a manually edited summary better than an automatically generated one. I think some of the decisions about who should be credited cannot be automated accurately.
I think that crediting people in public motivates them to write better articles and to put more effort into them. I also think that it is morally important to give credit where credit is due, and even though it is possible to find out who did what, it is not the same as actually giving credit.
There are other things that can be considered distractions, such as footnotes, that were at one time not part of policy and now are.
Also, as much as there is an ideal of NPOV on Wikipedia, it, as all ideals is impossible to realize. As such the author of the content is also part of the content.
It would also do much to improve the image of Wikipedia. If there are people who are responsible for the content, as opposed to an anonymous blob, then there will be more trust, and also more awareness of where content is coming from.
Perhaps if simple and objective criteria were proposed, an idea similar to "Show credits" could be workable and useful, although the almost universal use of pseudonyms sort of takes the meaning out of public credit (as opposed to a similar show credit box on the talk page, perhaps).
I think that many people would be prepared to use something closer to their real names if they were going to be credited within the articles. I really think that the credit should be as much part of the article as the footnotes are. Articles should have authors, not anonymous blobs.
Regards, Ezra
On 24/01/2008, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
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.
A fundamental problem is that we make no distinction between "editors" and "authors", but there are very different cultural expectations for how those two classes of contributors to a work are recognised.
On 1/24/08, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
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.
Oh, Jesus. If there ever was something on which to hope ArbCom is never batshit enough to accept a case, this is it.
—C.W.
This would be the fastest case arbcom rejected had it makes its way to arbcom me thinks.
On Jan 24, 2008 11:01 PM, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/24/08, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
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.
Oh, Jesus. If there ever was something on which to hope ArbCom is never batshit enough to accept a case, this is it.
—C.W.
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Or add a preferences field "name for attribution." I personally would rather edit under a pseudonym but if I were given credit I would prefer my real name to be used.
Where would the pseudonym be used if not for crediting you for your edits? Signatures are already customisable, that just leaves the title of your user page and non-History log entries - hardly things worth having a separate name for.
On Jan 24, 2008 2:10 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Or add a preferences field "name for attribution." I personally would rather edit under a pseudonym but if I were given credit I would prefer my real name to be used.
Where would the pseudonym be used if not for crediting you for your edits? Signatures are already customisable, that just leaves the title of your user page and non-History log entries - hardly things worth having a separate name for.
I wasn't suggesting changing the display name on e.g. history, just more of an "if this thing goes to print" attribution. There are many cases where having separate names makes sense. For example, if two editors have the same name. They will need different account names, but may both want to be credited as "John Doe."
I wasn't suggesting changing the display name on e.g. history, just more of an "if this thing goes to print" attribution. There are many cases where having separate names makes sense. For example, if two editors have the same name. They will need different account names, but may both want to be credited as "John Doe."
Why would you want different attribution in print than online?
On Jan 24, 2008 2:18 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I wasn't suggesting changing the display name on e.g. history, just more of an "if this thing goes to print" attribution. There are many cases where having separate names makes sense. For example, if two editors have the same name. They will need different account names, but may both want to be credited as "John Doe."
Why would you want different attribution in print than online?
It seems to me that some people (myself included) see online and offline activity as very different and having a different set of standards. I see using nicknames online as perfectly acceptable, where in the credits for a printed book I would not expect to see "By AwesomeEditor," they would expect a real name.
There is a duplicate thread of this on foundation-l. I utterly and wholeheartedly oppose inline crediting either for image or article authors. It is impractical and problematic for many ways.
Contributing to wikipedia for the sake of self promotion feels like a conflict of interest to me. Such a goal is not inline with the goal of ''free encyclopedia''
This may lead to corporate donation of images simply to spam. Wikipedia will no longer be free (as in freedom) if we start allowing corporations to dictate or manipulate our content for a price. Such a thing would actually be in conflict with NPOV among other things.
The history link is there for a reason. Do you have any idea how many authors some articles have?
- White Cat
On Jan 24, 2008 8:24 PM, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 23, 2008 6:43 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/01/2008, Rama Rama ramaneko@gmail.com wrote (on commons-l):
- There is definitely a trend of professional photographers to
request
credits under the image in articles. This is what they are accustomed
to.
I (and a few others) think that we should make efforts to sensibilise
our
users to this. We can definitely afford to credit people in articles.
This
is a small concession which costs us very little and can benefit us
greatly.
I think articles should also be attributed to their authors in the body of the article. Every major encyclopedia does it. Certainly there would be some debate about how much of a contribution should be required for attribution, and what form the attribution should take, whether real full names, wikipedia nicks, or real full initials.
Regards, Ezra
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On Jan 24, 2008 11:56 PM, White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
There is a duplicate thread of this on foundation-l. I utterly and wholeheartedly oppose inline crediting either for image or article authors. It is impractical and problematic for many ways.
Contributing to wikipedia for the sake of self promotion feels like a conflict of interest to me. Such a goal is not inline with the goal of ''free encyclopedia''
Everybody has ulterior motives for contributing. People want to promote the place they live, or somebody they are a fan of etc. None of it is completely altruistic.
This may lead to corporate donation of images simply to spam. Wikipedia will no longer be free (as in freedom) if we start allowing corporations to dictate or manipulate our content for a price. Such a thing would actually be in conflict with NPOV among other things.
What kind of dictating an manipulating are you concerned with? Google and Yahoo have already made major donations. If they withdrew their continued support, it would constitute a serious challenge to Wikipedia. Right now companies are making POV edits and it is not clear that they are. If they were credited in the article for the edits they made, they would have second thoughts.
The history link is there for a reason. Do you have any idea how many authors some articles have?
Look at the bottom of any major article and Britannica and you will also see twenty or thirty contributors or more. I don't see why Wikipedia couldn't handle a couple of hundred. Especially since the really minor contributors and vandals would not be credited.
Regards, Ezra
Yes, Yahoo and Google are donating money, not images. Entirely irrelevant. Donations from Google or yahoo come with no strings attached to the money. They expect not that we advertise them. Also donations do not directly come from companies but from their sub charity organizations that throw money on various humanitarian projects.
Promoting your own self or your own company on wikipedia is a conflict of interest. People have been banned indefinitely for doing so. Wikipedia is not a site for people to use to advertise. Our content will never be determined by the amount of cash people throw at us. This is something very important.
Are you aware of the history link? Every edit is credited.
- White Cat
On Jan 25, 2008 7:14 AM, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 11:56 PM, White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
There is a duplicate thread of this on foundation-l. I utterly and wholeheartedly oppose inline crediting either for image or article
authors.
It is impractical and problematic for many ways.
Contributing to wikipedia for the sake of self promotion feels like a conflict of interest to me. Such a goal is not inline with the goal of ''free encyclopedia''
Everybody has ulterior motives for contributing. People want to promote the place they live, or somebody they are a fan of etc. None of it is completely altruistic.
This may lead to corporate donation of images simply to spam. Wikipedia
will
no longer be free (as in freedom) if we start allowing corporations to dictate or manipulate our content for a price. Such a thing would
actually
be in conflict with NPOV among other things.
What kind of dictating an manipulating are you concerned with? Google and Yahoo have already made major donations. If they withdrew their continued support, it would constitute a serious challenge to Wikipedia. Right now companies are making POV edits and it is not clear that they are. If they were credited in the article for the edits they made, they would have second thoughts.
The history link is there for a reason. Do you have any idea how many authors some articles have?
Look at the bottom of any major article and Britannica and you will also see twenty or thirty contributors or more. I don't see why Wikipedia couldn't handle a couple of hundred. Especially since the really minor contributors and vandals would not be credited.
Regards, Ezra
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On 25/01/2008, White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, Yahoo and Google are donating money, not images. Entirely irrelevant. Donations from Google or yahoo come with no strings attached to the money. They expect not that we advertise them. Also donations do not directly come from companies but from their sub charity organizations that throw money on various humanitarian projects.
Promoting your own self or your own company on wikipedia is a conflict of interest. People have been banned indefinitely for doing so. Wikipedia is not a site for people to use to advertise. Our content will never be determined by the amount of cash people throw at us. This is something very important.
I don't know what you're getting at. Uploading a picture for us to use in exchange for credit may be a form of advertising, but there is no conflict of interest. We're under no obligation to use the image, so there is no neutrality problem involved.