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

[Strainu]

2013/10/23 Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com>:
> Actually, following the same philosophy, one should wonder whether the
> person reverting from version B to version C should be kept in the
> contributor's list. At the end of the day, version C is an exact copy of
> version A (i.e. no creative input of editor C), and version B is a
> derivative version of version A, but versions C+1 and following are not
> derivative versions of B, only of A and previous.

That was actually one of my arguments, yes. But I think this is more
on the moral side of things.

2013/10/23 Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>:
> 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.

Doesn't it? The reverter might not even be aware that he's reverting
something (if, for instance, B was just random letter deletions and
the author of C thinks these are honest mistakes, he's clearly working
on version B)

> 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.

If we go this way, then none of the authors who added legitimate
content in the past but had it deleted later should be credited. We
would need a tool like "git blame" [1] to generate the author list.

>
> 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.

Is this even possible? I only have the rights to do this on ro.wp and
I see no option to replace the name with a pseudonym. I just select
"Delete the username or IP address" and add a reason and the history
shows the text "username deleted" crossed. And on the pdf export, I'm
positive there is no pseudonym used.

Strainu


[1] https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-blame.html