[Wikipedia-l] Where to put acknowledgements

[Axel Boldt]

>> I think it would be polite to acknowledge the materials taken
>> from his site with a boilerplate note at the bottom of the article
>> containing a link back, similar to what we have been doing with
>> FOLDOC materials,

>I think we should set a precendent that such acknowledgements go
>on the Talk page, not in the main article.  As long as they are
>posted at the top of the talk page, with discussion below, and not
>deleted if discussion is refactored, I think we will meet all our
>credit obligations without limiting our ability to edit text.

I disagree, for the following reasons:

* Precedent has arguably been set with the FOLDOC materials already,
  but precedent doesn't really matter, so let's forget that.

* If somebody uses our material on their site, we want a prominent
  link back. We would probably not be happy with a notice on some
  attached discussion page that is buried among dozens of links and
  rather difficult to find for the casual user of the site. So then
  fairness requires that we give the same prominent attributions to
  others.

* I don't understand the "limiting our ability to edit text" part. 
   * If you mean: we are then limited because we cannot remove the
     acknowledgement from the article anymore, then you are correct.
     Removing that notice would amount to a breach of copyright law,
     just like pasting in some copyrighted material would. But people
     check edits all the time, and these things would be noticed and
     reversed. The same applies to your Talk page solution, but edits
     on Talk pages are arguably much less scrutinized than edits in
     the main namespace.
   * If you mean we lose the ability to edit the material of the
     article itself: that's incorrect; we just phrase the 
     acknowledgement properly ("This article is based on material 
     from ...")

* Talk pages are for discussion, not for credits. Nobody would look
  there for them, and nobody would put them there. If you want a
  Credits: namespace, I think I could live with that, but I still find
  it more polite to give the original source more prominent
  exposure in the article itself. If somebody prints out the article, I
  want them to see the acknowledgement.

Axel