[WikiEN-l] Attributing articles to their authors

[Shmuel Weidberg]

On Jan 24, 2008 3:04 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> In theory the idea that public credit should be given for good work is
> nice - it is simply unworkable for Wikipedia. What is public credit?
> What is good work? Who gets credit, in which order? Can you change the
> credits over time? Who decides?

Public credit as I mentioned would be a section at the end of the
article much like Brittanica has. I don't believe they credit the
minor editors. I don't know that it makes a difference whether the
work is good, only that it is substantial. I would give credit in the
order of contribution with perhaps the truly major contributors
getting top billing. If the work of an editor is mostly deleted, then
his credit would be removed as well. If somebody decides that he
decides that he no longer agrees with what he wrote, or it has been
edited to say something that he no longer agrees with, he can remove
himself from the list. The same people who edit the article can decide
who gets credit. When you edit an article you can decide for yourself
how much credit you deserve, and if some subsequent editor disagrees,
they can change it, or discuss it on the talk page as with the the
contents of the articles.

>
> I can see a hundred ArbCom cases rising from this issue, and I don't
> see how it is nearly worth the trouble given that all of our existing
> contributors have agreed to have their work published under the
> existing standards of attribution.

I am sure that there will be a number of arbcom cases as a result, but
so what. I think many editors agreed to not be credited because they
did not want to fight the system. Walt Disney didn't used to credit
his animators either, and they technically agreed to it, because they
could have stopped working for him, but they certainly weren't happy
about it, and they ultimately prevailed.

Regards,
Ezra