Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/1/22 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
2009/1/21 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
Whether or not something is sufficient to comply with licensing requirements isn't something that can be decided democratically.
We're operating in a space with a high degree of ambiguity. The point would be to determine whether there's a clear and shared expectation of what constitutes reasonable attribution requirements or not. It would be an information gathering poll, rather than a decision-making vote.
You need to be very careful how you interpret it, since it's a self-selecting sample. The people sufficiently committed to the projects to vote (eg. not people that edited once or twice and then left) are more likely than the general population of editors to be tolerant of bending the rules for the benefit of the projects, I would think.
It's somewhat opposite in my experience---highly active Wikipedians are much more knowledgeable and pedantic about copyright and attribution, whereas people who've edited a few times mostly aren't. Most "normal" people I've introduced to Wikipedia who've made a few miscellaneous edits were, when I mentioned this relicensing debate, somewhat surprised, as they had been under the impression that Wikipedia owned the copyright on their edits (which is the case at most other "social media" or "crowdsourcing" sites people are used to participating in). Most also, in a brief 4-person straw poll, were entirely confused by the debate about attribution, with queries along the lines of "but Wikipedia articles don't list their authors anyway, do they?"
-Mark