[Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language

[Bence Damokos]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 3:41 AM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Here's a first crack at revised attribution language. When the
> language is completely finalized, I'll send a separate note explaining
> some of our reasoning for this general approach in more detail. In the
> meantime, I'd appreciate it if you could point out any bugs in this
> specific language, given its intent which should be self-evident. To
> keep the discussion focused, please read it from the perspective of a
> "from scratch" attribution model, i.e., imagine that a new
> encyclopedia wiki that you'd contribute to had these terms. Which
> problems would they cause? Are there specific third party uses that
> would be significantly hampered by these terms?
>
> Thanks for any constructive feedback,
> Erik
>
> Attribution: To re-distribute an article page in any form, provide
> credit to the authors either by, at your choice, including a) a link
> (URL) to the article or articles you are re-using, b) a link to an
> alternative online copy which is freely accessible and conforms with
> the license and includes a list a list of all authors, or c) such a
> list of all authors. (Any list of authors may be filtered to exclude
> very small or irrelevant contributions.) Rich media (images, sound,
> video, etc.) that are the result of substantive collaborations between
> at least five people can be credited in the same fashion, but must
> otherwise be attributed in the manner specified by the uploader. These
> attribution requirements apply to content developed and uploaded by
> the Wikimedia community. Text and rich media contributions that come
> from external sources may attach additional attribution requirements
> to the work, which we will strive to indicate clearly to you on the
> article or the description page for the file(s) in question.
>
> --
>

>From the text's point of view, these observations might just be my
inadequate English.  "a list a list of all authors" is a typo; also I don't
actually understand the role of "such" in point c) (I don't see what it
could refer back to, as the requirements of a "list of all authors" comes in
the following sentence, and not in one of the previous ones).

>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.

Best regards,
Bence Damokos