[Foundation-l] Attribution survey and licensing next steps

[Brian]

On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> <snip>
>> A condorcet winner could probably be determined from the raw numbers, though.
> <snip>
>
> Condorcet Ranking (for the enwiki data):
>
> 1) Link to the article must be given.
> 2) Collective credit (e.g. Wikipedia community).
> 3) Link to the version history must be given.
> 4) For online use: link. For other uses: full list of authors.
> 5) Full list of authors must always be copied.
> 6) No credit is needed.
>
> -Robert Rohde

Nice work.

1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 at the re-user's option seems like a good compromise.
I interpret 1 as meaning that the survey taker probably would be
inclined to provide at least a link to the article if they were the
one re-using the content. This means that most people understand that
providing a link is an acceptable minimum level of attribution and
would be inclined to do it whether or not the license forces them to.
At the same time, many people seem OK with community credit, which can
practically be shortened to just "Wikipedia, Article Title" or similar
(in the case of the WikiBlame extension, just Wikipedia). This is
useful for re-users on non-hypertext media where a protocol
declaration and specification makes little sense, it being so easily
and obviously constructed from just the simpler text attribution.
Providing the specific revision number is an acceptable option when
that revision number is appropriate and helpful. However, I see no
reason to encourage sending people to old versions of article data
when its not necessary. If someone wants to cite the full list of
authors, it should be made readily available to them.

Ultimately it does not seem reasonable to force the printing of a URL
on non-hypertext mediums.