So, whatever way we decide to go with licenses or attribution requirements when this debate has settled, at some point our prospective reader will find themselves confronted with a long list of names, whether printed on the page or at the end of a URL or steganographically encoded into the site logo. :-)
On this list, a minority will be real names ("John Smith"); the rest, if we discount the thousand variants on "anonymous" via our IP editors, are pseudonyms ("WikiUser") or modified names ("JohnSmith78").
In some cases, users adopt pseudonyms out of a desire for privacy, but in many cases, it doesn't signify much more than a simple decision that a username is a lot easier to work with internally, or a general habit of using some kind of nickname online... or the fact that "John Smith" was taken. And many of *those* people would, no doubt, prefer to be credited by a real name (or at least a real-sounding nom de plume...). Similarly, some of those using pseudonyms who don't want to use real names, may prefer a different pseudonym... etc, etc, etc.
It would be helpful to figure out some way of (automatically) being able to have a given username "translate" into a different name when a list of credits is generated - we would have a list which better reflects the attribution wishes of our users, and one which looks a little "neater" for the reuser to put in their Respectable Scholarly Publication. Win-win situation.
So how could we do it? At a rough sketch, I'm envisaging:
* each user has a "credit" field which they can (optionally!) set through preferences
* when we generate the list of contributors to an article, in whatever way we end up deciding to do that, the system can be set to read off this "credit name" rather than simply using the normal internal username, if one is available.
I note that MediaWiki already has a user_real_name field - could we use it for this sort of purpose? Would this be technically practical?
2009/2/2 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
It would be helpful to figure out some way of (automatically) being able to have a given username "translate" into a different name when a list of credits is generated - we would have a list which better reflects the attribution wishes of our users, and one which looks a little "neater" for the reuser to put in their Respectable Scholarly Publication. Win-win situation. So how could we do it? At a rough sketch, I'm envisaging:
- each user has a "credit" field which they can (optionally!) set
through preferences I note that MediaWiki already has a user_real_name field - could we use it for this sort of purpose? Would this be technically practical?
Default MediaWiki has this as an option anyone who cares can set. On our work intranet wiki, it specifically says it's for giving credit under. I couldn't find it in my en:wp preferences, though ... what happened to it?
- d.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:20 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/2 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
It would be helpful to figure out some way of (automatically) being able to have a given username "translate" into a different name when a list of credits is generated - we would have a list which better reflects the attribution wishes of our users, and one which looks a little "neater" for the reuser to put in their Respectable Scholarly Publication. Win-win situation. So how could we do it? At a rough sketch, I'm envisaging:
- each user has a "credit" field which they can (optionally!) set
through preferences I note that MediaWiki already has a user_real_name field - could we use it for this sort of purpose? Would this be technically practical?
Default MediaWiki has this as an option anyone who cares can set. On our work intranet wiki, it specifically says it's for giving credit under. I couldn't find it in my en:wp preferences, though ... what happened to it?
- d.
It's disabled on WMF wikis afaik.
-Chad
Any reason why? I can't seem to find anything on it.
- Chris
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 9:22 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:20 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/2 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
It would be helpful to figure out some way of (automatically) being able to have a given username "translate" into a different name when a list of credits is generated - we would have a list which better reflects the attribution wishes of our users, and one which looks a little "neater" for the reuser to put in their Respectable Scholarly Publication. Win-win situation. So how could we do it? At a rough sketch, I'm envisaging:
- each user has a "credit" field which they can (optionally!) set
through preferences I note that MediaWiki already has a user_real_name field - could we use it for this sort of purpose? Would this be technically practical?
Default MediaWiki has this as an option anyone who cares can set. On our work intranet wiki, it specifically says it's for giving credit under. I couldn't find it in my en:wp preferences, though ... what happened to it?
- d.
It's disabled on WMF wikis afaik.
-Chad _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:39 PM, Chris Down neuro.wikipedia@googlemail.comwrote:
Any reason why? I can't seem to find anything on it.
- Chris
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 9:22 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
It's disabled on WMF wikis afaik.
-Chad
Not sure. There's no comment in the configuration files, but it ($wgAllowRealName) is set to false for all WMF wikis. You'd have to ask someone official for the reason. Privacy issues?
-Chad
Following this line of reasoning in both directions, many users who contribute to an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit" may not want their name reprinted on every conceivable medium that their contributions could be replicated on. In other words, many users probably don't care even a little bit about the attribution requirements of the CC-BY-SA. They contribute under the implicit assumption that their work is in the public domain. An argument can be made that printing their username all over the place is an invasion of their privacy, since with a bit of Googling its often possible to relate that to their real identity. I've got a collection of references to algorithms that show its possible to link users across social networking sites. Some of these methods would apply to a user's edits as well.
My honest intrepretation of the 5 authors or less rule else a hyperlink is that it's silly.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
So, whatever way we decide to go with licenses or attribution requirements when this debate has settled, at some point our prospective reader will find themselves confronted with a long list of names, whether printed on the page or at the end of a URL or steganographically encoded into the site logo. :-)
On this list, a minority will be real names ("John Smith"); the rest, if we discount the thousand variants on "anonymous" via our IP editors, are pseudonyms ("WikiUser") or modified names ("JohnSmith78").
In some cases, users adopt pseudonyms out of a desire for privacy, but in many cases, it doesn't signify much more than a simple decision that a username is a lot easier to work with internally, or a general habit of using some kind of nickname online... or the fact that "John Smith" was taken. And many of *those* people would, no doubt, prefer to be credited by a real name (or at least a real-sounding nom de plume...). Similarly, some of those using pseudonyms who don't want to use real names, may prefer a different pseudonym... etc, etc, etc.
It would be helpful to figure out some way of (automatically) being able to have a given username "translate" into a different name when a list of credits is generated - we would have a list which better reflects the attribution wishes of our users, and one which looks a little "neater" for the reuser to put in their Respectable Scholarly Publication. Win-win situation.
So how could we do it? At a rough sketch, I'm envisaging:
- each user has a "credit" field which they can (optionally!) set
through preferences
- when we generate the list of contributors to an article, in whatever
way we end up deciding to do that, the system can be set to read off this "credit name" rather than simply using the normal internal username, if one is available.
I note that MediaWiki already has a user_real_name field - could we use it for this sort of purpose? Would this be technically practical?
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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Also, has it been discussed that the minimum number of authors rule effectually only applies to stubs and some starts? Even these have often been edited by many more than a handful of bots.
It would be useful to have an SQL query that output the number of articles on en.wp with more than a handful of articles. It's probably fairly small.
So the effectual rule is that attribution is done by a hyperlink.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
Following this line of reasoning in both directions, many users who contribute to an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit" may not want their name reprinted on every conceivable medium that their contributions could be replicated on. In other words, many users probably don't care even a little bit about the attribution requirements of the CC-BY-SA. They contribute under the implicit assumption that their work is in the public domain. An argument can be made that printing their username all over the place is an invasion of their privacy, since with a bit of Googling its often possible to relate that to their real identity. I've got a collection of references to algorithms that show its possible to link users across social networking sites. Some of these methods would apply to a user's edits as well.
My honest intrepretation of the 5 authors or less rule else a hyperlink is that it's silly.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
So, whatever way we decide to go with licenses or attribution requirements when this debate has settled, at some point our prospective reader will find themselves confronted with a long list of names, whether printed on the page or at the end of a URL or steganographically encoded into the site logo. :-)
On this list, a minority will be real names ("John Smith"); the rest, if we discount the thousand variants on "anonymous" via our IP editors, are pseudonyms ("WikiUser") or modified names ("JohnSmith78").
In some cases, users adopt pseudonyms out of a desire for privacy, but in many cases, it doesn't signify much more than a simple decision that a username is a lot easier to work with internally, or a general habit of using some kind of nickname online... or the fact that "John Smith" was taken. And many of *those* people would, no doubt, prefer to be credited by a real name (or at least a real-sounding nom de plume...). Similarly, some of those using pseudonyms who don't want to use real names, may prefer a different pseudonym... etc, etc, etc.
It would be helpful to figure out some way of (automatically) being able to have a given username "translate" into a different name when a list of credits is generated - we would have a list which better reflects the attribution wishes of our users, and one which looks a little "neater" for the reuser to put in their Respectable Scholarly Publication. Win-win situation.
So how could we do it? At a rough sketch, I'm envisaging:
- each user has a "credit" field which they can (optionally!) set
through preferences
- when we generate the list of contributors to an article, in whatever
way we end up deciding to do that, the system can be set to read off this "credit name" rather than simply using the normal internal username, if one is available.
I note that MediaWiki already has a user_real_name field - could we use it for this sort of purpose? Would this be technically practical?
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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* more than a handful of authors
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
Also, has it been discussed that the minimum number of authors rule effectually only applies to stubs and some starts? Even these have often been edited by many more than a handful of bots.
It would be useful to have an SQL query that output the number of articles on en.wp with more than a handful of articles. It's probably fairly small.
So the effectual rule is that attribution is done by a hyperlink.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
Following this line of reasoning in both directions, many users who contribute to an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit" may not want their name reprinted on every conceivable medium that their contributions could be replicated on. In other words, many users probably don't care even a little bit about the attribution requirements of the CC-BY-SA. They contribute under the implicit assumption that their work is in the public domain. An argument can be made that printing their username all over the place is an invasion of their privacy, since with a bit of Googling its often possible to relate that to their real identity. I've got a collection of references to algorithms that show its possible to link users across social networking sites. Some of these methods would apply to a user's edits as well.
My honest intrepretation of the 5 authors or less rule else a hyperlink is that it's silly.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
So, whatever way we decide to go with licenses or attribution requirements when this debate has settled, at some point our prospective reader will find themselves confronted with a long list of names, whether printed on the page or at the end of a URL or steganographically encoded into the site logo. :-)
On this list, a minority will be real names ("John Smith"); the rest, if we discount the thousand variants on "anonymous" via our IP editors, are pseudonyms ("WikiUser") or modified names ("JohnSmith78").
In some cases, users adopt pseudonyms out of a desire for privacy, but in many cases, it doesn't signify much more than a simple decision that a username is a lot easier to work with internally, or a general habit of using some kind of nickname online... or the fact that "John Smith" was taken. And many of *those* people would, no doubt, prefer to be credited by a real name (or at least a real-sounding nom de plume...). Similarly, some of those using pseudonyms who don't want to use real names, may prefer a different pseudonym... etc, etc, etc.
It would be helpful to figure out some way of (automatically) being able to have a given username "translate" into a different name when a list of credits is generated - we would have a list which better reflects the attribution wishes of our users, and one which looks a little "neater" for the reuser to put in their Respectable Scholarly Publication. Win-win situation.
So how could we do it? At a rough sketch, I'm envisaging:
- each user has a "credit" field which they can (optionally!) set
through preferences
- when we generate the list of contributors to an article, in whatever
way we end up deciding to do that, the system can be set to read off this "credit name" rather than simply using the normal internal username, if one is available.
I note that MediaWiki already has a user_real_name field - could we use it for this sort of purpose? Would this be technically practical?
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
Also, has it been discussed that the minimum number of authors rule effectually only applies to stubs and some starts? Even these have often been edited by many more than a handful of bots.
It would be useful to have an SQL query that output the number of articles on en.wp with more than a handful of articles. It's probably fairly small.
So the effectual rule is that attribution is done by a hyperlink.
I can't speak for enwiki, but I did a similar thing for ruwiki (WMF's 10th largest wiki), and a very substantial fraction of articles had 5 or fewer editors. If one condenses IP editors to something like " and 3 anonymous editors" (as some people have suggested) rather than listing each IP, then the number of articles with 5 or fewer editors is roughly half of all articles.
Of course there is also a significant fraction of articles with dozens of editors, which probably includes most of the well-developed and easily reusable content.
Enwiki, with its larger articles and higher number of edits per articles, probably has a lower percentage of articles that would fall under the 5 or fewer rule, but I don't think it would be trivial.
-Robert Rohde
On Monday 02 February 2009 22:41:37 Brian wrote:
Following this line of reasoning in both directions, many users who contribute to an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit" may not want their name reprinted on every conceivable medium that their contributions could be replicated on. In other words, many users probably don't care even a little bit about the attribution requirements of the CC-BY-SA. They contribute under the implicit assumption that their work is in the public
Do you have anything to back your claims with?
domain. An argument can be made that printing their username all over the place is an invasion of their privacy, since with a bit of Googling its often possible to relate that to their real identity. I've got a collection
Are you arguing that we should not have page histories?
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Monday 02 February 2009 22:41:37 Brian wrote:
Following this line of reasoning in both directions, many users who contribute to an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit" may not want their name reprinted on every conceivable medium that their contributions could be replicated on. In other words, many users probably don't care even a little bit about the attribution requirements of the CC-BY-SA. They contribute under the implicit assumption that their work is in the public
Do you have anything to back your claims with?
The operating assumption is that the average pseudo-anonymous user to a wikimedia project understands and/or cares about the licensing issues and realizes their name will be printed everywhere that the text they contribute is printed. Do you have any evidence that this is true? That the average pseudo-anonymous contributor has a fairly sophisticated understanding of copyright? Otherwise its quite similar to the ToS at the bottom of every web page you visit, which you supposedly implicitly agree to, but which you rarely to never read and is actually a legal grey area.
domain. An argument can be made that printing their username all over the place is an invasion of their privacy, since with a bit of Googling its often possible to relate that to their real identity. I've got a
collection
Are you arguing that we should not have page histories?
Just that I am skeptical that people realize their pseudonyms will be printed on potentially any medium and that they are further aware that this pseudonym can be linked to their real identity.
The point is that listing the authors is a silly clause.
2009/2/2 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
Just that I am skeptical that people realize their pseudonyms will be printed on potentially any medium and that they are further aware that this pseudonym can be linked to their real identity.
I can't say I agree with your general thrust here - I think that if people contribute to a massively open project, well, they have to accept "massively open". Bending over backwards to retroactively provide anonymity gets impractical fast.
However, this proposal could allow an effective opt-out from any form of downstream attribution - some kind of "NOCREDIT" magic word, perhaps. This would neatly sidestep the worry of people not wanting credited downstream...
I advocate a much more flexible attribution scheme than listing the authors or printing a url to the history page. I think a simple (Wikipedia) is a sufficient attribution for text. If you have the text it is trivial to find the original author of that text. It's not so trivial with images, but a link to the history page of an image can be embedded in its metadata.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.ukwrote:
2009/2/2 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
Just that I am skeptical that people realize their pseudonyms will be printed on potentially any medium and that they are further aware that
this
pseudonym can be linked to their real identity.
I can't say I agree with your general thrust here - I think that if people contribute to a massively open project, well, they have to accept "massively open". Bending over backwards to retroactively provide anonymity gets impractical fast.
However, this proposal could allow an effective opt-out from any form of downstream attribution - some kind of "NOCREDIT" magic word, perhaps. This would neatly sidestep the worry of people not wanting credited downstream...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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2009/2/2 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
I advocate a much more flexible attribution scheme than listing the authors or printing a url to the history page. I think a simple (Wikipedia) is a sufficient attribution for text. If you have the text it is trivial to find the original author of that text. It's not so trivial with images, but a link to the history page of an image can be embedded in its metadata.
There's two different issues, here, really, and I think you're chasing a different one to my original suggestion. I'm certainly not saying that this method for generating names is automatically a mandate to require they be used to top and tail every article - just that if someone does attribute that way, it'll help them do it better.
*However* we decide that downstream reused material should be attributed, be it heavily or as lightly as possible, there's going to be a step in the process - perhaps only an optional one - where someone takes a Wikipedia article and tries to shake out some authors. Figuring out how to make that work efficiently and cleanly and helpfully is a good thing in and of itself, whatever conclusion the main debate comes to.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I advocate a much more flexible attribution scheme than listing the authors or printing a url to the history page. I think a simple (Wikipedia) is a sufficient attribution for text. If you have the text it is trivial to find the original author of that text. It's not so trivial with images, but a link to the history page of an image can be embedded in its metadata.
Could you implement a wikiblame extension? That would make attribution much cleaner.
SJ
I actually suggested such a thing in another thread on this topic ^_^ It would require a monster search index (all revisions of all article text), but it wouldn't get a ton of use so wouldn't use too many resources.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:39 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I advocate a much more flexible attribution scheme than listing the
authors
or printing a url to the history page. I think a simple (Wikipedia) is a sufficient attribution for text. If you have the text it is trivial to
find
the original author of that text. It's not so trivial with images, but a link to the history page of an image can be embedded in its metadata.
Could you implement a wikiblame extension? That would make attribution much cleaner.
SJ
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On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I advocate a much more flexible attribution scheme than listing the authors or printing a url to the history page. I think a simple (Wikipedia) is a sufficient attribution for text. If you have the text it is trivial to find the original author of that text. It's not so trivial with images, but a link to the history page of an image can be embedded in its metadata.
Precisely, and once you have this as a minimum standard you can still do whatever you like on top of it. As significant bonuses we're not diluting/drowning out the promotion of Wikipedia and we're avoiding situations where authors can go after [re]users for infringement; effectively the power of enforcement would be vested in Wikipedia (but not the copyright itself so we don't have to worry about WMF turning evil, only new license releases which must be 'similar in spirit' anyway).
The attribution instructions could go something like:
"You must attribute Wikipedia, should reference the name of the article (with hyperlinks where appropriate) and may also credit the authors which can be found on the history tab."
I've also been thinking more about the possibility of identifying key contributors for attribution and I've come to my own conclusion that it's a non-starter. If you start attributing some people but not others then those who are not attributed (who would otherwise not care had the attribution have been for Wikipedia) will get justifiably upset and may well seek to enforce their 'right' to attribution.
The only way "to shake out some authors" reliably (as Andrew just said) is to do it manually, which is another avenue for conflict and resource wastage. Summary: author attribution is an all or nothing thing; either you attribute a boundless list of 'names' in 2pt font or you attribute nobody.
Anyway I have to get back to writing 'AttriBot' so I can stamp my name on any article with <5 authors ;)
Sam
I usually agree with the Mingus, but:
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Monday 02 February 2009 22:41:37 Brian wrote:
Following this line of reasoning in both directions, many users who contribute to an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit" may not want their name reprinted on every conceivable medium that their contributions could be replicated on.
True. One option should be "Include attribution for non-minor edits to all articles? Y/N". Another should be "Name for attribution" -- this is not necessarily a Real Name, it can be a writing alias, which is again different from a username.
< In other words, many users probably don't care even a
little bit about the attribution requirements of the CC-BY-SA. They contribute under the implicit assumption that their work is in the public [domain]
Some don't. Some do. Another option should be "Default license for your edits, in addition to CC-BY-SA : Public domain" (and perhaps others) for people who want their work to continue to be available to projects/efforts using other licenses. A good database would track licensing by revision, in addition to a shared default license.
The operating assumption is that the average pseudo-anonymous user to a wikimedia project understands and/or cares about the licensing issues and realizes their name will be printed everywhere that the text they contribute is printed.
I wouldn't recommend changing from the current mechanism to one that blatantly shows all editor's names on every page whever displayed. But I would aboslutely lay the groudnwork for prpoer attribution by aggregating and caching the complete author list, without duplicates, in some reasonable order; tracking and displaying a non-nick name for attribution, and having the full author list with some basic metadata about the contributions of each author at most one click away from the article itself.
Calling the current history interface "attribution by hyperlink" is misleading.
Are you arguing that we should not have page histories?
Just that I am skeptical that people realize their pseudonyms will be printed on potentially any medium and that they are further aware that this pseudonym can be linked to their real identity.
Then make that clear in user preferences and when people sign up for an account. It's an important part of joining the community. We could start by turning off the "include me in attribution" by default in userperfs and seeing what happens -- people who literally want 'full' attribution could still dredge through page histories.
The point is that listing the authors is a silly clause.
I couldn't disagree more.
SJ
The point is that listing the authors is a silly clause.
I couldn't disagree more.
Just to clarify Sam, I am not suggesting the abolishment of the history page. Its just that if you are willing to agree that a url is sufficient attribution, I think you may as well follow the reductio on that argument and ask them to provide the minimum amount of information necessary to find the authors. In many cases this is just a single word, Wikipedia.
On Monday 02 February 2009 23:45:29 Brian wrote:
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Monday 02 February 2009 22:41:37 Brian wrote:
Following this line of reasoning in both directions, many users who contribute to an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit" may not want their name reprinted on every conceivable medium that their contributions could be replicated on. In other words, many users probably don't care even a little bit about the attribution requirements of the CC-BY-SA. They contribute under the implicit assumption that their work is in the public
Do you have anything to back your claims with?
The operating assumption is that the average pseudo-anonymous user to a wikimedia project understands and/or cares about the licensing issues and realizes their name will be printed everywhere that the text they contribute is printed. Do you have any evidence that this is true? That the
Yes:
* Contributors who do not have any understanding of copyright will usually attempt to copy copyrighted material to the project, that will then be deleted and they will be warned. This will lead them to at least understanding that they can't just copy any material anywhere without the author's permission, and logically this leads to the conclusion that other people can't do the same with their work. Similar thing will happen whenever someone tries to upload an image for the first time.
* When someone is presenting Wikimedia projects, they usually mention free licences and what do they mean.
* Practically all printed material today is printed with its author(s)' names; therefore it is obvious to assume that this material will be too, if printed.
* In past, several books and DVDs were made from material from several Wikimedia projects, containing all the names of the contributors. They were marketed in and out of the projects, and I expect that a fair number of at least contributors of these projects know about them, yet I haven't heard of anyone expressing surprise about it.
average pseudo-anonymous contributor has a fairly sophisticated understanding of copyright? Otherwise its quite similar to the ToS at the
Understanding that your work should be attributed to you requires only the most rudimentary understanding of copyright, or none at all.
bottom of every web page you visit, which you supposedly implicitly agree to, but which you rarely to never read and is actually a legal grey area.
I'd say it is quite dissimilar, but anyway - a large amount of Wikipedia marketing specifies that Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia the content of which can be freely reused under certain conditions and so on. This is much more than your average website does.
The point is that listing the authors is a silly clause.
You have not proven your point.
It's silly because it's arbitrary and only applies to the lowest quality articles - start and stub. I have a query running on the Toolserver which I hope to process into a percentage of articles that have 5 or less authors. But we already know that the large majority of articles are stubs, and somewhat fewer start. We also know that the quality of these articles is related to their popularity, and that an article of lower popularity is less likely to be quoted, by definition.
If you are willing to accept that a URL is sufficient, then there is no reason to ever show the authors - it's only to accomodate the fact that the CC-BY-SA contains a clause which isn't really relevant to the projects. Better to change the CC-BY-SA or the attribution requirements than kludge this 5 authors or less statement in there, which just makes it harder to use the content. That is against the aims of the project, so I do consider the whole 5 authors or less thing silly.
The point is that listing the authors is a silly clause.
You have not proven your point.
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On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 6:29 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
If you are willing to accept that a URL is sufficient, then there is no reason to ever show the authors - it's only to accomodate the fact that the CC-BY-SA contains a clause which isn't really relevant to the projects. Better to change the CC-BY-SA or the attribution requirements than kludge this 5 authors or less statement in there, which just makes it harder to use the content. That is against the aims of the project, so I do consider the whole 5 authors or less thing silly.
OK, now I understand better where you're coming from. The '5 authors or less' is indeed silly. A link to the history page does not satisfy my concept of 'a URL', and we can do much better than a URL on WP itself.
For the purposes of reuse we should facilitate simple solutions; a URL would be sufficient there if a detailed attribution page is preserved, for that revision, at a permanent link (and any mirrors thereof).
SJ
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