Magnus Manske wrote:

IANAL, but IMHO:

• We already list *all* contributors for the page, in the page

history. I'd say that the single click required to see it is comparable to turning a page in a printed version, which is not too much to ask, under any legal system I know of.

I agree.

• If you want to find the main contributors, go ahead and use the diff

function. By listing them all, we also listed the main editors.

It has been pointed out (and even illustrated by complaints over McFly's choices of whom to credit) that identifying "principal authors" is highly subjective at best. I think this requirement is one of the silliest things in the GFDL; it might be better if the GFDL just required a Modified Version to list the same authors as the Title Page of the original Document, plus the authors of the modifications.

• The fact that noone *ever* demanded to see his/her name on the

article page itself indicates to me that there is strong community (=contributor) consensus regarding our current practice in that matter.

An excellent point. I have a longer argument to present here, but I definitely support this approach to the problem.

There are two sections of the GFDL that require author attribution, section 4B and section 4I - Title Page and History, respectively. History we provide. Because we are not in printed format (yet), Title Page should mean "the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text." For us, I take that to be at the top of the article, where it says something like:

Title of article From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (the latter part meets the requirement of section 4C, that the Title Page state the name of the publisher)

Section 4B allows the authors to release you from the requirement to identify five principal authors. Since the title of the article functions as the Title Page for GFDL purposes, and because we have never, as far as I know, identified principal authors along with the title of the article, I would argue that the release applies. Given our existing practices, we should take the position that all contributors have implicitly released us from the requirement to list authors on the Title Page. This would also neatly eliminate the problem of how to identify "principal authors".

If the GFDL really requires that list *on the same document* (can't be really the same page, think printed version again), can't we declare the whole wikipedia as one giant document in itself?

That would be highly counterintuitive. It would also defeat our efforts to provide a history section, since those are done by article (and before anybody says it, I would not accept Recent changes as adequate history for GFDL purposes).

--Michael Snow