[Foundation-l] What's appropriate attribution?

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Michael Snow wrote:
> Robert Rohde wrote:
>   
>> Let me make a radical suggestion.  One that, for the moment, ignores
>> all those overbearing legal questions.
>>
>> Why not assume that the appropriate amount of attribution for a
>> Wikipedia article is essentially the amount that it has now?
>>
>> When you look at a Wikipedia article there is no list of authors
>> (principal or otherwise).  There is simply a link to "history", a
>> statement at the bottom of the page saying that the content is under
>> the GFDL, and a link to the GFDL.  On the Wikipedia page itself, that
>> is essentially the full extent of the licensing and attribution.
>>
>> I assume that practically all Wikipedia contributors are comfortable
>> with recieving this very low level of attribution for Wikipedia
>> articles.
>>   
>>     
> I might add that the attribution requirement of the GFDL talks about 
> listing at least five principal authors, "unless they release you from 
> this requirement." A fairly straightforward argument can be made that 
> existing and accepted practice on Wikipedia, and for that matter on 
> nearly all wikis, amounts to releasing subsequent distributors from this 
> requirement. If the authors can make this implicit release, then you 
> have to look at whatever attribution is customary in a given context, 
> along with any moral rights issues.
>
> Which is why I never get particularly worked up with people's concerns 
> about attribution. As Mike Godwin pointed out, we do seek to maintain 
> attribution in our own way, and most people are willing to accept and 
> work with that.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
>
>   

I think this is very close to precisely right. We do make a good
faith effort at expansive attribution, which is the important bit.

And we do it because it is right, not because it is required
by the GFDL. And as long as we do "the right thing" by our
contributors, it is accurate to say that any moral rights based
lawsuits while unfortunate, would both be perceived to be
a nuisance effort, and easily defensible in law (and really
it would serve no purpose to hash out how such cases should
be handled, suffice it to say that our moral and legal standing
would be firm).

It is is a point of insignificant import, that it is not quite true
that current practice that is accepted on wikipedia is to elide
attribution but for exceptional circumstances, such as may
apply to lost histories due to early disk crashes.

While for instance translations from other language wikipedias
currently only link to the original language article in somewhat
diverse form, in principle the concept behind this has been
that this is something which will be repaired in the future, once
we figure out how to properly attribute edits made in a different
language.

I cannot really thing of any other instances from which one might
make a case for it being "accepted practice" to consider editors
having released their edits without an expectation to a good
faith effort at crediting them for their work.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen