On 5/6/05, Faraaz Damji <frazzydee(a)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