[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Andre Engels]

One thing that has not been brought forward yet in this discussion,
and which I think is important, is that 'author' does not equate
'editor'. It seems many here do go from that assumption in trying to
get the authors of an article. Suppose, an article has the following
edit history:

A starts the page with some text
B adds some text to it
C notes that A's text was a copyright violation, and adds a template
to that effect
D removes all the text of the page (because A's text is a copyright
violations, and B's edits make no sense without it), and replaces it
by a translation from another Wikipedia
Some vandal vandalizes the page
E reverses the vandalism
F adds some interwikis
G corrects 2 spelling mistakes
H adds a paragraph
I adds a picture from Commons.

The _editors_ of the page are A to I and the vandal. But are they also
the authors? I think not. In my opinion the _authors_ are D, H, the
authors of the translated article and the author of the picture.

Having said that, my opinion on this is that I do want to be credited,
but only where my contributions are really major. Not where I made a
'non-authorship' edit, and also not where I made a substantial but
still relatively small edit, for example adding one line to an already
extensive article. The first I don't consider authorship, and the
second I'd be more than happy to be credited as part of "wikipedia
editors". But where a page is essentially written by me with only
insubstantial (though useful) edits by others before and after, I do
want to see my name as the maker or one of the makers. Thus, I'd like
to see some credits similar to the "main credits place" in GFDL, where
a few of the major authors are mentioned, plus "other Wikipedia
editors" or something similar.

-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com