I think it would be polite to acknowledge the
materials taken
from his site with a boilerplate note at the bottom of the
article containing a link back, similar to what we have been
doing with FOLDOC materials,
I think we should set a precendent that such
acknowledgements go on
the Talk page, not in the main article. As long as they are posted
at the top of the talk page, with discussion below, and not deleted
if discussion is refactored, I think we will meet all our credit
obligations without limiting our ability to edit text.
I disagree, for the
following reasons:
* Precedent has arguably been set with the FOLDOC materials already,
but precedent doesn't really matter, so let's forget that.
* If somebody uses our material on their site, we want a prominent
link back. We would probably not be happy with a notice on some
attached discussion page that is buried among dozens of links and
rather difficult to find for the casual user of the site. So then
fairness requires that we give the same prominent attributions to
others.
* I don't understand the "limiting our ability to edit text" part.
* If you mean: we are then limited because we cannot remove the
acknowledgement from the article anymore, then you are correct.
Removing that notice would amount to a breach of copyright law,
just like pasting in some copyrighted material would. But
people check edits all the time, and these things would be
noticed and reversed. The same applies to your Talk page
solution, but edits on Talk pages are arguably much less
scrutinized than edits in the main namespace.
* If you mean we lose the ability to edit the material of the
article itself: that's incorrect; we just phrase the
acknowledgement properly ("This article is based on material
from ...")
* Talk pages are for discussion, not for credits. Nobody would look
there for them, and nobody would put them there. If you want a
Credits: namespace, I think I could live with that, but I still
find it more polite to give the original source more prominent
exposure in the article itself. If somebody prints out the
article, I want them to see the acknowledgement.
Hi all,
I feel that it wouldn't be proper for Wikipedia to give credits and
acknowledgements on article pages themselves. It wouldn't be Wikiwiki.
We don't sign our articles.