I agree totally with the idea that we should not impose a strict table attribution requirement. However, I don't think all these arguments against it are valid.
Axel Boldt wrote:
Three additional arguments against the current strict table attribution requirement occured to me last night:
** if we really want large websites to adopt Wikipedia (Microsoft is out since they have Encarta, but Yahoo, Google and AOL are potential customers), there is absolutely no way that we can hope to dictate layout decisions to them. Their site designers will laugh us out the door.
Actually, many sites (Google, AOL, Altavista, and some other major sites) do use the "Open Directory Project" data, and it has a strict table requirement. So apparently this isn't as big an issue as we might think.
** On educational websites that use some materials from Wikipedia, teachers typically would want to tell students about the project, but they don't want their students to jump right in and contribute to Wikipedia: it would distract too much; learning is the focus. So you make actually discourage teachers from using Wikipedia material, because the current table would suggest to students that the teacher wants them to contribute.
I'm not sure that this would really be a factor, but it is certainly one thing to consider in thinking about what, exactly, we want to require.
** We are currently using FOLDOC materials which were licensed to us under GFDL. Imagine their invariant section contained some pink table and a blinking icon. I don't think we would appreciate it.
That's right.