Hear hear!
"Das Wikipedia Lexikon in einem Band"[1] is another stunning example of attribution gone mad and reusers would always have the option of crediting authors anyway (perhaps guided by author preferences expressed on the talk page or some other interface).
Most critically however, "the benefit of free knowledge weighs greater than the benefit of credit to largely pseudonymous individuals who have never, at any point, been promised [anything]". Well said - thanks for this enlightening and comprehensive review of the situation.
I would hope that URLs point to the article itself which is far more useful (and cleaner) than the history page, and that they would be optional depending on the medium (eg web/pdf vs paper/print). Aside from that agree 100% with everything you've said and look forward to seeing what the poll and/or vote.
Sam
http://books.google.com/books?id=BaWKVqiUH-4C&pg=PT979
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 1:11 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Because I don't think it's good to discuss attribution as an abstract principle, just as an example, the author attribution for the article [[France]] is below, excluding IP addresses. According to the view that attribution needs to be given to each pseudonym, this entire history would have to be included with every copy of the article. Needless to say, in a print product, this would occupy a very significant amount of space. Needless to say, equally, it's a significant obligation for a re-user. And, of course, Wikipedia keeps growing and so do its attribution records.
The notion that it's actually useful to anyone in that list is dubious at best. A vast number of pseudonyms below have no meaning except for their context in Wikipedia. I think requiring this for, e.g., a wiki-reader on countries makes it significantly less likely for people to create such products, and I think that the benefit of free knowledge weighs greater than the benefit of credit to largely pseudonymous individuals who have never, at any point, been promised or given to understand that their name would be given a significant degree of visibility through the lifetime of the article they contribute to.
The idea that we can meaningfully define the number of cases where this requirement is onerous and the number where it isn't through simple language is not at all obvious to me. Whether something is onerous is in part a function of someone's willingness and ability to invest effort, not whether they are creating something that's intended for online and offline use. Ironically, heavy attribution requirements advantage publishing houses with armies of lawyers over individuals. People who don't care about rules will ignore any requirement we set (and realistically we have no energy or ability to enforce those requirements in most cases); unreasonable requirements primarily affect people who are trying to do the right thing, like any unnecessary emergence of bureaucracy.
But, I do not want to rehash every single argument a hundred times. As I said in a different thread, I think it may be useful to include at least a preference poll in the licensing vote to better understand where different people are on this issue. Attribution-by-URL under certain circumstances is consistent with many people's expectations and preference, but clearly not with everyone's. If there's a predominant conception of an acceptable attribution regime, that would make developing a consistent model easier.
Erik
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