2009/1/8 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com:
I'm looking for guidance of the sort: Doing X, Y, and Z, is generally sufficient to comply with CC-BY-SA. It need not be minimally sufficient, and probably shouldn't be, since any advice we give ought to be at a level that is clearly black and white, and not gray. Maybe we necessarily limit that advice to text and certain traditional print mediums, but I do think there needs to be something direct about acceptable standards for attribution.
I agree. We'll try to formulate that attribution guideline as part of the full proposal (and it'll be discussed further from there before we go into voting). As I mentioned earlier up-thread, it'll likely look similar to what is suggested here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GFDL_suggestions#Proposed_attribution_text
Codifying a similar clause in the Wikimedia-wide terms of use is fully consistent with attribution requirements of the GFDL. There seems to be some confusion related to the "History" section of GFDL documents, the purpose of which is clearly change-tracking, not attribution, as its preservation is only explicitly required for modified versions. A reasonable attribution expectation of someone who licensed edits under GFDL would be to be attributed where possible (i.e. where there are five authors or fewer), and to be otherwise referred to the full list of authors.
Once these attribution requirements are consistent and clear, it should be more straightforward to bring some internal use cases into compliance (e.g. transwiki copying, attribution in the page footer, dumps).