On Wednesday 21 January 2009 19:32:15 Erik Moeller wrote:
2009/1/20 Nikola Smolenski <smolensk(a)eunet.yu>yu>:
Don't know about this wording thing, but as a
Wikipedia author, I have to
say that I do not think that attributing me in this way is sufficient. As
a Wikimedian, I believe that a lot of people will feel the same.
That's probably true, Nikola. The proposed attribution language is
intended to balance the various positions (ranging from 'an URL should
always be fine' to 'names should always be given'), the established
I'm not sure that these positions should be balanced. For example, everyone
who believes that an URL should be fine is also OK if all names are given,
but not the other way around.
requirement). Our hope is that a strong majority will
recognize the
value of such a compromise, and the improvement over current state:
huge complexity for re-users, legal barriers between groups that
should be able to cooperate, inconsistent and confusing
interpretations of the rules.
I agree that a compromise is necessary; I disagree that this is a good
compromise.
And I don't think we can or should take the easy
way out and not make
a decision as to what the terms of re-use should be. But any decision
Absolutely agree.
is likely to offend a sub-group of people who feel
it's going too far,
or not far enough. Nor do we have complete freedom to pick any
Now I disagree. Some people are going to be offended if they are not credited
when they think they should be; no one is going to be offended if they are
credited when they don't think they should be. They may believe that this is
stupid or pointless, but they won't really be offended in the same way.
I realize that some community guidelines have asked or
encouraged
print re-users to include a complete list of usernames alongside
articles. (This, by the way, does not satisfy the GFDL's history
inclusion requirement.) Under the proposed language, that would
continue to be necessary for articles which have no more than five
As I said, I do not think that attributing me in this way is sufficient; and I
do not think that this requirement is necessary. We can develop tools that
would identify principal authors with sufficient accuracy; and this list of
authors is likely to be short enough to be practically included in full.
Given your example of France, per
http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=en.wikipedia&pag…
about a third of edits are marked as minor, and that parameter alone would
probably slash almost one third of the list of authors.
Please consider this, especially in light of recent research that shows that
most Wikipedia contributors contribute from egoistic reasons ;)