[WikiEN-l] Controversial user nicknames

Wed Aug 27 19:49:39 UTC 2003

Alex R. wrote:

>The  GFDL requires that the last five authors of a document released be
>listed
>(see section 4(B) of the license).  Thus,  five contributors to a page may
>technically have to be listed by any GFDL republisher of that page.
>
>Imagine someone who wants to publish a page and finds that one of the
>authors has an offensive name; they may decide that they cannot morally
>accept to use such a page because of the offensive character of the author's
>name which they must acknowledge.
>
> If there is an offense username, a controversial name, or one which
>involves
> profanity, then this would tend to discourage the redistribution of
>Wikipedia
> content. Thus IMHO using an offensive user name is in violation of the
>spirit of the licensing scheme that we use in order to encourage
>redistribution
> of our work. That  should be enough reason to prohibit the use of such
>names.
>  
>
This brings up an interesting point, especially if Wikipedia is going to 
ever be published in paper.  With online publishing, a link to the page 
history should suffice for attribution, but in a paper format the 
publisher would actually have to list five authors for every single 
article, and they certainly wouldn't want to list offensive names for 
those authors.

I think this whole thing is unfortunate though, and it's becoming 
increasingly clear that the GFDL exactly as written isn't *really* what 
we want to do.  I think most Wikipedians would be happier with a license 
that required Wikipedia to be credited rather than five authors.  As it 
stands now, the republisher *has* to credit five authors, but does *not* 
have to credit Wikipedia at all.  They could give it their own name and 
not mention its connection to us at all, as long as they list the 
authors properly.  I think most of us would prefer the opposite -- that 
they be required to credit Wikipedia, and not be required to credit the 
individual authors.  But this would require a license change, which may 
be impossible at this point.

-Mark