[Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language

[Erik Moeller]

2009/3/11 Bence Damokos <bdamokos at gmail.com>:
> From an attribution point of view, the definition of "full list of authors"
> that excludes very small contributions is not really acceptable to me.
> Imagine, that Joe only corrects spelling mistakes: arguably very small
> contributions - you wouldn't say he is the author of the articles. Now
> imagine, that you would print a hundred articles that Joe has corrected, and
> you omit his name from the list of authors - for he has minor contributions.
> I think Joe would be a bit upset that he is not credited, even though
> without his small contributions the articles would be unpublishable.

I think a distinction needs to be made between an aggregate of small
changes, or a single small change. I'm not sure this distinction needs
to be made more explicitly in this language, though: if someone has
made an aggregate of small changes, they have arguably not made "very
small or irrelevant" contributions to an article.
-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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