[Wikimedia-l] Is the capability to delete usernames compatible with the CCBYSA license?

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Strainu <strainu10 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Someone brought up an interesting issue: is it moral for the vandals
> to be credited as contributors to articles (especially when exporting
> the article as pdf)? After experimenting a little, it turns out that
> deleting the usernames from the history removes them from the
> contributor list.
>
> While morality is a subjective matter, a more interesting question is:
> is this behavior compatible with the CCBYSA license? Say we have
> version A of a text, vandalised in version B and reverted in revision
> C. Then version C is a work derived from version B, shouldn't it
> credit the full author list of version B?
>

No, the reverted text is derived from A, not from B. That there has been a
version in between at the same place does not matter. Same argument in
different wording: None of the creativity that goes into the vandalizing
from version A to version B is present in version C. Thus, version C does
not fall under the copyright of the vandal. Which means that there is also
no obligation to honor their licensing restrictions, only those of the
authors who are actually partly responsible for the final document.

Going further, say that someone with an offensive username (or even
> just an username unaccepted on wikipedia, such as a company name)
> actually makes a valid edit, which is not reverted, but the name is
> removed from the history. Is it fine to ignore the license just
> because we find some usernames offensive? Shouldn't we instead credit
> the user *at least* with a pseudonym?
>

Is it usual to remove names from history without replacing them with
another pseudonym? I know of no such case.

-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com