On Tuesday 03 February 2009 21:07:51 Sam Johnston wrote:
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 8:31 PM, Nikola Smolenski
<smolensk(a)eunet.yu> wrote:
Given
that full attributions are both largely worthless and onerous to
the point of forbidding reuse in many circumstances (e.g. paragraph
Please stop beating the dead horse. No one has ever suggested that full
attributions are necessary.
Yes they have.
Citation?
quotes, most physical mediums, compilations, etc.) and
partial
attributions are in many ways worse than no attributions at all,
Could you specify at least some of these many ways?
Ok, so off the top of my head:
- It is impossible to reliably determine the top contributors in a
mechanical fashion, because:
- There are no reliable metrics for identifying 'top contributors'
(e.g. edit count vs wikiblame vs creator vs something else?) but:
- Manual determination of top contributors creates opportunities for
internal conflict where there would otherwise be none yet:
- Partial attribution creates opportunities for external conflict
(think DMCA, lawsuits, etc.) where those excluded take exception,
which leads us to:
Yes, but how is this worse than no attribution at all? Surely, anyone who will
object to being out of a partial attribution will also object not being
attributed at all.
What you wrote after that is completely fictional.
Wikis, or 'Massive Multiauthor Collaboration
Sites' (as the FSF calls
them) are a relatively new concept. Copyright, attribution, etc. works
well for individuals and extends to relatively small groups (e.g.
bands, tv/film crews, journals, etc.) but many of us believe that it
breaks badly at this scale.
Many of us also do not. Film crews are still typically larger than the number
of editors of a Wikipedia article.
In any case it is clear that Erik/WMF have a good
handle on the issue
and Brian's nailed it:
"With a system that can find the authors of any given piece of text no
matter when it existed in any language version:"
"Wikipedia"
OK. Could you please show me how to find the authors of the article "Gay
Nigger Association of America" as of May 2006?