On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 2:06 AM, Klaus Graf klausgraf@googlemail.comwrote:
His decision has to be respected by Wikipedia absolutely.
And it will be... in the edit summary for the import which is in turn referenced either directly or indirectly in the attribution.
The critical difference is that unlike your average Wikipedian, this author didn't deliberately and knowingly contribute to a collaborative effort and in doing so waive any real possibility of a meaningful attribution.
So what's the better evil? Dealing with this once on the way in (that is, pinging the original author regarding your intention to include their content in a wiki where it will be relentlessly edited and reused with diluted attribution) or externalising the effort for all of our [re]users (and their [re]users and so on) forever by 'polluting' the article with a myriad differing long-lived attribution demands?
Note that Citizendium have been doing something like what is proposed for ages ("you must attribute the *Citizendium* and link to http://www.citizendium.org/ as well as the relevant *Citizendium* article"), *including* for Wikipedia articles ("Some content on this page may previously have [appeared on Wikipedia]"). The sky hasn't fallen on them yet.
Sam
1. http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Reusing_Citizendium_Content