I was just made aware of this thread, and I realise that potentially a legal issue is discussed on wikitech. I would like the opinion of our lawyers on this specific point.
So, tel me if I understand well, to comply with the gfdl the best we can (and we already know it is problematic), what you suggest is to list first the real name contributors, followed by pseudonymes, then by ips. Of course, the number of names is limited. We can expect that on many articles, the number of names will be over 50 or more.
I understood the gfdl "normal" requirement is to list the 5 main contributors. We probably know that we can define who the 5 main contributors are. Indeed, unless the number of contributors is below 5, there is no way to report with honesty the legal requirements.
This said, if we can't report reality, why would we report a group of contributors more than another ? If a pseudonyme wrote 95% of an article, and 5% officially real names corrected typos, is that really correct to indicate these 5 real names and not the pseudonyme ?
I would say it is not. Legally, that is incorrect.
From a community view point, that is setting a case
which I am not sure is really positive. It think that it would be more correct to make random choice among pseudo or real names, or to choose among the last ones.
I will forward this to wikipedia-l and foundation-l, since I believe this is more than a technical issue.
Evan Prodromou a �crit:
So, I'd like to add a little block of attribution
data to each page
(optional, per-installation; I'm guessing Wikipedia
wouldn't use
this). Something along the lines of:
This article last edited on April 21, 2004 by
Evan Prodromou.
Based on work by Alice Notaperson, Bob
Alsonotaperson, users
Crankshaft, Deckchair and Eggplant, and
anonymous editors.
For each (distinct) person who's listed in the old
table, it'd show
their real name if it's set, or their user name if
not. All anonymous
edits would be lumped under "anonymous editors".
Contributors would be
listed with real-named folks first, then pseudo'd
folks, then
anonymous. There's no particular reason for that; it
could be any
other way (although I don't see a big point making
it configurable).
The goal here is to make it easy for redistributors
to comply with
license provisions that require author attribution
(such as some
Creative Commons licenses), without having to dig
through a whole
bunch of history pages.
Anyhoo, the Metadata.php code already does most of
this logic, albeit
for output in RDF format. I'd like to take that
stuff and put it in
the Article class, in a method like
"getContributors". The method
could then be used both from the attribution code
and from the RDF
metadata code.
getContributors would return an array of arrays,
each of which would
contain:
0. User ID 1. User account name 2. User real name, if setAnother option would be to create User objects for
each entry in the
returned array, but a) I don't think that most of
the User object
fields (email, preferences) are needed, and b) I'd
be worried about
slingin' around incomplete User objects. So, I think
the arrays are
the best bet.
Does returning an array of arrays seem insane? Would
it be wrong to
add this method to Article? If so, where else would
it go?
~ESP
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"A" == Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com writes:
A> So, tel me if I understand well, to comply with the gfdl the A> best we can (and we already know it is problematic), what you A> suggest is to list first the real name contributors, followed A> by pseudonymes, then by ips.
OK, so, this feature is on its way with 1.3. I'm less concerned with the GFDL than with the Creative Commons Attribution-style licenses, by the way, which is what Wikitravel uses.
I'm not sure if this feature will be enabled on any of the Wikimedia projects, or how. My main concern is to make it easy for people redistributing Wikitravel content to conform to the attribution requirements of our license.
My guess is that it won't be enabled for Wikimedia projects, as it requires three extra database calls* per page view.
Note that IPs aren't specified per IP, just all balled up as "Anonymous user(s)". So whether 1 or 1000 anonymous users edited a page, there's just two words, "Anonymous user(s)".
A> Of course, the number of names is limited. We can expect that A> on many articles, the number of names will be over 50 or more.
Brion suggested setting an upper limit on the names, which is in place in CVS. So, depending on a configuration variable, just the last N editors are listed on the page.
The only reason that I group real names, user names, and anons together is to make the text flow smoother. It's still the last N editors, regardless of how their user login is set up.
My next step is, if there are more than N editors who've worked on a page, to have an additional link to show _all_ the editors (without the article text).
So the attribution would look like this:
This article last edited 28 April 2004 by Wikipedia user Anthere. Based on work by Evan Prodromou and Brion Vibber, Wikipedia users Charlie and Diane, anonymous users of Wikipedia, and _others_.
Clicking on _others_ would give the full list of editors (but still with all anons grouped together).
A> I understood the gfdl "normal" requirement is to list the 5 A> main contributors.
It is, in fact, quite difficult to figure out who the "main" contributors are for a wiki page. Is it the ones who contributed the most text, or the ones who provided the key points? What about those who refactor and rearrange an article, but don't leave any text?
A> This said, if we can't report reality, why would we report a A> group of contributors more than another ? If a pseudonyme wrote A> 95% of an article, and 5% officially real names corrected A> typos, is that really correct to indicate these 5 real names A> and not the pseudonyme ?
Of course not. The N contributors are listed in reverse chronological order. The steps are:
1. Get the last N contributors (where all anons count as one contributor). 2. Print them out in order by real name, user name, then anonymous.
A> From a community view point, that is setting a case A> which I am not sure is really positive. It think that it would A> be more correct to make random choice among pseudo or real A> names, or to choose among the last ones.
The last thing I want to do is discredit pseudonymous or anonymous editors. The only reason they're separated out is to make the attribution text more readable; otherwise, it'd look like:
This article last edited 28 April 2004 by Wikipedia user Anthere. Based on work by Evan Prodromou, Wikipedia user Charlie, an anonymous user, Brion Vibber, Wikipedia user Diane, and _others_.
...which seems kinda wordy.
I'd be willing to work on this a bit to make GFDL conformance easier, if it was desired.
~ESP
* One to get the last editor's real name, one to get the list of N contributors, and one to get the count of all anonymous contributors.
Anthere wrote:
I understood the gfdl "normal" requirement is to list the 5 main contributors. We probably know that we can define who the 5 main contributors are. Indeed, unless the number of contributors is below 5, there is no way to report with honesty the legal requirements.
The exact quote is "at least five of the principal authors of the Document", which is significantly different from *the* 5 main contributors.
This said, if we can't report reality, why would we report a group of contributors more than another ? If a pseudonyme wrote 95% of an article, and 5% officially real names corrected typos, is that really correct to indicate these 5 real names and not the pseudonyme ?
Depends on the context, but possibly not. You'd have to somehow say that at least 5 of those real name people are "principal authors".
I would say it is not. Legally, that is incorrect.
From a community view point, that is setting a case
which I am not sure is really positive. It think that it would be more correct to make random choice among pseudo or real names, or to choose among the last ones.
I think an even better solution would be to force users to give their real name or waive their rights to attribution. But that's just my never humble opinion.
~~~~
err, I mean Anthony
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org