[Foundation-l] What's appropriate attribution?

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Robert Rohde wrote:
> To Anthony and Jussi-ville,
>
> Why do you want attribution of work you have done on Wikipedia
> articles to be acknowledged more prominently in dead tree media than
> it is online?
>
> That's the sense I get from you when you say that referencing an
> online publication of the history is not okay.  

Surprisingly enough, I cannot speak for Anthony. For myself
I would in fact probably like to soften my stance a mite. A
link to a web page, if it is specific enough (such as the
history of the article), may well be a - not ideal / but will do
in a pinch - solution.

What has weakened my opposition to this approach, is that
I thought of software distributions which only provide
source on demand, and are considered compliant with
a non-expansive interpretation of open source.

Perhaps there is a good argument for not trying to be more
catholic than the pope.

> If one looks at the
> Wikipedia publication, in general one has to choose to seek out the
> edit history and (in many cases) put effort into parsing through it
> before they would even notice that you had contributed significantly
> to the article.  You seem to be suggesting that in the case of dead
> tree media you have an expectation that attribution be made
> clearer/easier to access than it is online.  Is that a correct
> understanding of your view point?  And if so why?
>   

Having said what I did above, there is one valid argument
that would favor providing clearer  attribution in a fixed
medium publication of wikipedia content, than is on the
editable site. That is that ostensibly (yes, I do realize it
is in part a fiction) wikipedia is "merely" a work in progress,
and not to be used as a finished reference work. A scratch pad
as it was originally termed, for Nupedia.

But though I find this argument very persuasive, it is clearly
an ethical/editorial one, and not a legal one.
> Personally, it feels antithetical to the principles of free content
> and frankly a bit unethical to demand that reusers give a more
> prominent acknowledgment to contributers than one receives from the
> primary publication, i.e. Wikipedia.
>   

Well, like I said, that is assuming wikipedia is a publication
rather than a website for the collaborative editing of
content that can be used by others for fashioning finished
publications.

Do remember that wikipedia relies on the distinction of not
being a publisher, for that legal protection under that
clause that I forget the number of... 230 or something
of some statute or law or another.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen