[WikiEN-l] Attributing "attribution required" free images

[Anthony]

On 10/30/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Kwan Ting Chan <ktc at ktchan.info> wrote:
> > No? Software change such that from a certain point on any edit will
> > automatically update a credit page. At the same time, start running
> > something that goes through all the non-deleted edits and update the
> > page as well.
>
> Yes, we could just extract the long list of names (including offensive
> vandal names) from the history, store it, and update it.
>
> What real advantage would this serve over just directing people to the
> history page?  Lack of duplication doesn't seem like enough of a win
> to justify keeping the extra data.
>
Presumably each author would only be listed once on the credits page,
as opposed to possibly hundreds or thousands of times on "the history
page".  That alone makes a credits page much more useful than "the
history page".

> Most of the people who edit a page aren't authors, certantly not in
> the copyright bearing sense, and it's unfortunate and confusing that
> "Throbbing Monster Cock" gets equal attribution for adding the word
> "the" to an article as an actual author.
>
I think a semi-automated credits page would make the most sense.  So
"Throbbing Monster Cock" would get attribution by default, but this
attribution could be removed manually (or in some cases, by a bot).
Likewise, names could be manually added for copy/paste moves or
whatever.

But when someone makes a significant edit to a page, they would be
attributed automatically by default (they could opt-out of this, I
guess).