On 5/6/05, Faraaz Damji frazzydee@spymac.com wrote:
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Sorry for digging this back out, but I thought that minor edits can't be protected by copyright? If so, wouldn't be possible for a lot of the names to be removed from the list?
Interesting idea. I suppose so... though many minor edits are made by users who also make major edits to the same article. There's something to be said for preferentially crediting the editors who have contributed the most to an article.
< Also, anonymous users *usually* make
minor edits (doesn't change the content, eg. spelling). I understand that those edits wouldn't be marked as such, so someone would have to manually go through the diffs; however, it could end up reducing (or even eliminating!) the problem of showing IPs rather than proper names (the problem is that it doesn't look professional).
There have been so many strong claims made about what anonymous editors do recently! We should track them, so we can figure out which ones are accurate at any given moment. I agree with David Gerard that just saying "And anonymous editors" would be fine; the question is, for editors known only by the pseudonym "FunkyMan13," how to credit them without looking unprofessional.
And a lot of anon edits are not minor. I just browsed through the changes made to articles by the last 25 anon contributors (starting at 03:44 UTC), and 40% of them were major (adding a few sentences, a section, significant references or lists).
Still haven't found out which articles were being used, SJ