[Foundation-l] Licensing interim update

[Robert Rohde]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Sam Johnston <samj at samj.net> wrote:
<snip>
>  - It is impossible to reliably determine the top contributors in a
> mechanical fashion, because:
>  - There are no reliable metrics for identifying 'top contributors'
> (e.g. edit count vs wikiblame vs creator vs something else?) but:
>  - Manual determination of top contributors creates opportunities for
> internal conflict where there would otherwise be none yet:
>  - Partial attribution creates opportunities for external conflict
> (think DMCA, lawsuits, etc.) where those excluded take exception,
> which leads us to:
>  - Optional attribution which incents those who might otherwise not
> care to request attribution and besides:
<snip>

If one wants to go down the suggested attribution route, one approach might be:

Create an "authors page" associated with each page that contains:

1) Some kind of automatically generated list.  This could be as crude
as simply consolidating the list of all editors, or it could use
blaming and other sophisticated metrics to remove vandalism and
otherwise give some indication of significance.
2) Give editors the tools to change how they are listed on the
authors' page, e.g. BubbleBoy47 converted to John Hancock
3) Give editors the tools to opt out of being attributed, both at the
global level and on a page by page basis.
4) Have a "notes" area so that editors can add corrections and
otherwise compensate for the inevitable weaknesses associated with any
automated scheme.

-Robert Rohde