[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Contributors list

Fri Apr 30 23:58:04 UTC 2004

Well, we don't list *all* contributors for the page.  We only list those 
before the "Automated Conversion", for which there were no copy/paste 
moves, and for which none of the text was taken from some other public 
domain, GFDL, or other source.  And yes, *some* of the contributors 
could also be found, maybe, by looking for redirects to that page and 
seeing if some of the text which existed before the redirect was made 
was copied there, but who wants to do that anyway?

Personally I think the best solution would be a History namespace which 
was freely editable, but populated automatically by the software in the 
case of standard contibutions.  If you wanted to get fancy, you could 
even have a textbox when you submit a modification which says "author" 
(pre-filled with your username), and hey while you're at it a checkbox 
for "public domain" in which case the history wouldn't be populated at all.

But I haven't coded any of that, and there's a fair chance I never will...

As for 5 "principal authors", really Wikipedia should be listing that 
already anyway, so it's tricky there.

 >If the GFDL really requires that list *on the same document* (can't be 
really the same page, think printed version again), can't we declare the 
whole wikipedia as one giant document in itself?
Well, 5 "principal authors" need to be on the "title page", which 
probably "means the text near the most prominent appearance of the 
work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text," unless 
you're going to define the whole wikipedia as one giant document in itself.

In any case, someone with authority over this (Jimbo or the board if 
there is one yet) should really make a declaration as to what the 
"document" is, what the "title page" is, what the "section entitled 
history" is, where the "copyright notices" are (or that there are none, 
which isn't really compliant with the GFDL), where the "transparent 
copy" is (the URL of which should be in the document), etc.  And 
remember, all of this (the history, the title page, the copyright 
notices) is supposed to be to be contained inside whatever the 
"document" is, and the transparent copy thereof.  Of course, the easier 
solution (which is far from easy) would be to just abandon the GFDL and 
use a simpler existing license or a custom one.

Anthony

Magnus Manske wrote:

> IANAL, but IMHO:
> * We already list *all* contributors for the page, in the page 
> history. I'd say that the single click required to see it is 
> comparable to turning a page in a printed version, which is not too 
> much to ask, under any legal system I know of.
> * If you want to find the main contributors, go ahead and use the diff 
> function. By listing them all, we also listed the main editors.
> * The fact that noone *ever* demanded to see his/her name on the 
> article page itself indicates to me that there is strong community 
> (=contributor) consensus regarding our current practice in that matter.
> * Everybody's free to use their real name as user name, or to write it 
> on their user page. The additional click required should be tolerable, 
> for reasons stated above.
>
> If the GFDL really requires that list *on the same document* (can't be 
> really the same page, think printed version again), can't we declare 
> the whole wikipedia as one giant document in itself? [Translation to 
> legalese would be required]
>
> Magnus
>
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> I was just made aware of this thread, and I realise that potentially 
>> a legal issue is discussed on wikitech. I would like the opinion of 
>> our lawyers on this specific point.
>>
>> So, tel me if I understand well, to comply with the gfdl the best we 
>> can  (and we already know it is problematic), what you suggest is to 
>> list first the real name contributors, followed by pseudonymes, then 
>> by ips. Of course, the number of names is limited. We can expect that 
>> on many articles, the number of names will be over 50 or more.
>>
>> I understood the gfdl "normal" requirement is to list the 5 main 
>> contributors. We probably know that we can define who the 5 main 
>> contributors are. Indeed, unless the number of contributors is below 
>> 5, there is no way to report with honesty the legal requirements.
>>
>> This said, if we can't report reality, why would we report a group of 
>> contributors more than another ? If a pseudonyme wrote 95% of an 
>> article, and 5% officially real names corrected typos, is that really 
>> correct to indicate these 5 real names and not the pseudonyme ?
>>
>> I would say it is not. Legally, that is incorrect. From a community 
>> view point, that is setting a case which I am not sure is really 
>> positive.
>> It think that it would be more correct to make random choice among 
>> pseudo or real names, or to choose among the last ones.
>>
>> I will forward this to wikipedia-l and foundation-l, since I believe 
>> this is more than a technical issue.
>>
>> Evan Prodromou a écrit:
>>
>>> So, I'd like to add a little block of attribution data to each page
>>> (optional, per-installation; I'm guessing Wikipedia wouldn't use
>>> this). Something along the lines of:
>>>
>>>        This article last edited on April 21, 2004 by Evan Prodromou.
>>>        Based on work by Alice Notaperson, Bob Alsonotaperson, users
>>>        Crankshaft, Deckchair and Eggplant, and anonymous editors.
>>>
>>> For each (distinct) person who's listed in the old table, it'd show
>>> their real name if it's set, or their user name if not. All anonymous
>>> edits would be lumped under "anonymous editors". Contributors would be
>>> listed with real-named folks first, then pseudo'd folks, then
>>> anonymous. There's no particular reason for that; it could be any
>>> other way (although I don't see a big point making it configurable).
>>>
>>> The goal here is to make it easy for redistributors to comply with
>>> license provisions that require author attribution (such as some
>>> Creative Commons licenses), without having to dig through a whole
>>> bunch of history pages.
>>>
>>> Anyhoo, the Metadata.php code already does most of this logic, albeit
>>> for output in RDF format. I'd like to take that stuff and put it in
>>> the Article class, in a method like "getContributors". The method
>>> could then be used both from the attribution code and from the RDF
>>> metadata code.
>>>
>>> getContributors would return an array of arrays, each of which would
>>> contain:
>>>
>>>         0. User ID
>>>         1. User account name
>>>         2. User real name, if set
>>>
>>> Another option would be to create User objects for each entry in the
>>> returned array, but a) I don't think that most of the User object
>>> fields (email, preferences) are needed, and b) I'd be worried about
>>> slingin' around incomplete User objects. So, I think the arrays are
>>> the best bet.
>>>
>>> Does returning an array of arrays seem insane? Would it be wrong to
>>> add this method to Article? If so, where else would it go?
>>>
>>> ~ESP
>>>
>>
>>
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