[Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 2009/3/15 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com>:
>   
>> Hehe, I am way ahead of you, brother.
>>
>> I've already sort of put the idea out there, discreetly,
>> that it would be cool if there was a url redirection service
>> on wikimedia servers, that would shorten the urls into
>> something like http://wmattr/342y6 or the like (perhaps
>> even http://wpattr/342y6 ; http://wsattr/342y6 ; http://wnattr/342y6
>> and the like. Of course it would be better if it would
>> direct (in the future at least) to a stripped history
>> without the summaries.
>>     
>
> Presumably you mean to have a ".org" in there?
>
> I think the summaries are necessary, though - they are where we put
> details of where non-original content has come from. You can't just
> attribute the content you are reusing to the appropriate Wikimedians,
> you need to attribute it to the actual creators.
>
>   

I think the practice of using summary lines for attribution
has from the start been viewed as a temporary solution,
only to be used until we figure out a better way to handle
content such as translations from other language projects.

I think if we do go towards creating an easy link which
contains a list of editors culled from history with no
duplicates, it might include a method of externally
adding attributions into that plain text form, for just
such translations and imported content from other
sites, where the content may even have a large list
of authors itself.

When and if that eventually materializes (next year in Jerusalem;
yearning for Zion; by and by, lord; when the lion shall lie down
with the lamb - insert your own religious affiliations allusion
to the eternal return here) naturally the summaries should
be purged and the attributions temporarily lodged there
given their proper place. I could even imagine some
semi-automated method that would while stripping off
the summaries, simultaneously scrape off the urls and
wikilinks in them and for good measure append them
to the list of editors.




Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen