[Foundation-l] Re-licensing (Import)

[Sam Johnston]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 2:06 AM, Klaus Graf <klausgraf at googlemail.com>wrote:

> His decision has to be respected by Wikipedia absolutely.


And it will be... in the edit summary for the import which is in turn
referenced either directly or indirectly in the attribution.

The critical difference is that unlike your average Wikipedian, this author
didn't deliberately and knowingly contribute to a collaborative effort and
in doing so waive any real possibility of a meaningful attribution.

So what's the better evil? Dealing with this once on the way in (that is,
pinging the original author regarding your intention to include their
content in a wiki where it will be relentlessly edited and reused with
diluted attribution) or externalising the effort for all of our [re]users
(and their [re]users and so on) forever by 'polluting' the article with a
myriad differing long-lived attribution demands?

Note that Citizendium have been doing something like what is proposed for
ages ("you must attribute the *Citizendium* and link to
http://www.citizendium.org/ as well as the relevant *Citizendium* article"),
*including* for Wikipedia articles ("Some content on this page may
previously have [appeared on Wikipedia]"). The sky hasn't fallen on them
yet.

Sam

1. http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Reusing_Citizendium_Content