[Foundation-l] What's appropriate attribution?

[Ray Saintonge]

phoebe ayers wrote:
> 1. cite everybody who ever touched the article
> 2. cite some of the people who touched the article
> 3. provide a link back to a comprehensive list of everyone who ever
> touched the article, which also has the benefits of handy diffs so you
> can see who added what, etc.
>   
...
> There may be other problems and advantages that I haven't thought of
> yet. I'll leave other people to hash out the moral, ethical, and legal
> advantages of each approach. But these are the practical
> considerations faced by a reprinter of content. It's also important to
> remember, I think, that if we are trying, in general, to make
> reprinting and reuse not just possible but smooth and easy that adds a
> consideration to the problem. For my part, I think we need to think
> carefully about this problem and come up with a good solution for the
> sake of free content distribution in general -- producing content that
> can be reused is a fundamental part of Wikimedia's mission, so let's
> do it right.
It all comes down to the risk tolerance of the person doing the 
printing.  I would be satisfied with including a printed link to the 
relevant Wikipedia history page. This would satisfy what I believe to be 
my ethical responsibilities in the matter.

When you bring it down to basics you arrive at the core issue, producing 
re-usable content.  On the way there we get diverted by trying to have 
the language just right, but each elaboration of language brings new 
vulnerabilities to the fundamental principle.  People seem to read laws 
in a way that puts them at maximum disadvantage.  In an attempt to abide 
by the literal word of the law (which includes private rules) they 
imagine circumstances that can only remind us of the boys in the George 
Carlin skit trying to befuddle the aging priest with hypothetical sins. 
We tie ourselves in knots trying to find legal countermeasures to 
aspects of the law whose interpretation is tenuous at best. 

Maybe it just takes a plain language statement of what we believe.

Ec