[Foundation-l] What's appropriate attribution?

John at Darkstar vacuum at jeb.no
Tue Oct 21 03:11:58 UTC 2008


I've asked about this some time back, and the answare was that Wikipedia
is a collection of independent work, meaning each one of them has to
list the principal authors of that work. The collection as such is a
database and may or may not be a work in itself.

Also, a failure to state the principal authors does not release any
later work from giving due attribution. The attribution is a property of
the work itself and not for some random copy of the work, that is each
copy has to give due respect to the authors of the work not the authors
of the previous copy.

John

Anthony skrev:
> On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 
>> The relevant GFDL clause states: "List on the Title Page, as authors,
>> one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the
>> modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of
>> the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors,
>> if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this
>> requirement."
>>
> 
> There's another relevant clause: "Preserve the section Entitled "History",
> Preserve its Title, and add to it an item stating at least the title, year,
> new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title
> Page.  If there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one
> stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on
> its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated
> in the previous sentence."
> 
> Now, when I first read that I interpreted "authors" to mean all authors, but
> I've heard someone else interpret it to mean "authors...as given on its
> Title Page", which in the case of Wikipedia articles, would be no one.
> 
> 
>> Most people have chosen to ignore the "principal authors" requirement
>> and to try to attribute every author instead because there's no
>> obvious way to determine who the principal authors are. I remember a
>> few years back that Anthony tried a completely different approach,
>> where he created a full copy of Wikipedia (under the assumption that
>> it's a single GFDL work) and attributed it to five people on the
>> frontpage. Anthony, please correct me if my recollection is incorrect.
>>
> 
> That's extremely misleading and/or incorrect.  I listed 5 authors on the
> title page (http://web.archive.org/web/20050202210758/http://mcfly.org/),
> but I listed *all* the authors on a page which I linked from a page entitled
> "GFDL History" (
> http://web.archive.org/web/20050217045214/en.mcfly.org/GFDL_History, which
> unfortunately does not contain the linked page, probably because it was so
> huge).  Furthermore, I did not base my use on the assumption that Wikipedia
> is a single GFDL work.  Rather, I based my use on the assumption that
> *either* Wikipedia is a single GFDL work *or* that it could be merged into a
> single work under section 5 "Combining Documents".
> 
> Also, I would like to point out that the GFDL does not say to list *the*
> five principal authors, it says to list "five *of* the principal authors".
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