Hello all,
Seeing as several of the GNU licenses and CC licenses require attribution, it would stand to reason that Special:Export should have the option to produce the article with a small attribution.. In the form of a system message or some other way..
This also makes it easier to export/import pages since you don't need to go through each imported page and add the attribution.
I've gone ahead and created a small patch for Export.php that enables the wiki admin to specify whether or not exports should be done with a license or not ($wgExportWLicense), and also to specify what that attribution would be ($wgExportLicense). The code checks whether $wgExportWLicense = True and then adds whatever is in the $wgExportLicense to the top of the latest revision. The patch is available on bugzilla as bug 14048 (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14048).
I realize of course that the best way to do this wouldn't be through a global var but rather through a system message, however, there are some questions that need answering before I do that.. that's why I am posting it to wikitech-l for a discussion on the best way to go about this, and whether the community thinks this is a good idea..
Things to consider: 1) Whether this should happen to all revisions.. or only the latest revision?
2) If this should be an admin setting (ie. localsettings) or a setting the exporting user can select on the special:export page? or both?
3) Should the attribution appear on the top of the page or on the bottom? (I don't think the attribution should go anywhere else (i.e talk page) since the GFDL requires the attribution to be on the page itself).
4) Should licensing be added to non-content namespaces? (i.e templates, talk pages, images, categories etc..) - my view on this is yes, they are all licensed under the site license anyway..
Thanks,
Ben / Wiredtape