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.

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."

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?

On Jan 24, 2008 12:11 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)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.

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.

On Jan 24, 2008 3:22 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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.

On Jan 24, 2008 4:08 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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.

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: _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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.

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.

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.

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?

Ezra

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.

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.

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.

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 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On Jan 24, 2008 3:04 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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.

On 1/24/08, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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.

Why would you want different attribution in print than online?

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?

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.