[Foundation-l] Delete of Article History and GFDL

[Ray Saintonge]

Cary Bass wrote:
> geni wrote:
>   
>> 2008/9/12 Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com>:
>>     
>>> On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>       
>>>> If the edit has been reverted I see no reason why it would need to be
>>>> attributed to anyone since it isn't there any more. The GFDL requires
>>>> us to attribute anything we use but we don't have to use everything
>>>> that's posted.
>>>>         
>>> This is tricky ground though. Somebody could decide to selectively
>>> delete meaningful contributions from which the current version of a
>>> page are derived. The only edits you can selectively delete under the
>>> GFDL are those which did not serve as a basis for later derivatives.
>>>       
>>  Yup which means a copyvio will generally mean deleting back to the
>> last clean version which can be a bit of a pain.
>>     
> I know when there's been a large number of edits which required
> deletion, the best option is to rollback to the last known good version
> and notify everyone we can who had good edits after that that they have
> to do it again... a real pain...
>   
This is surely excessive.  Edits since the copyvio may very well have 
bent the copyvio passages far out of recognition.  Remember too that 
copyright does not apply to ideas, but to the expression of those ideas.

Ec