[WikiEN-l] Re: group work, unattributed work (was: Use of Wikipedia articles at Malaspina.com)

Thu Jul 10 22:47:43 UTC 2003

The Cunctator wrote:
>> I strongly think we're better off formalizing a
>> policy in which particular author attribution is
>> not required. That is, by contributing to
>> Wikipedia, you agree to be attributed as one of
>> the "Wikipedia Contributors" or somesuch.

Jimmy responds:
> Well that certainly much more closely matches our
> social custom, in which articles aren't "owned"
> by anyone, and we value all sorts of contributions
> to the project without specifically privileging
> 'authorship'.
>
> But, how can we reconcile your suggestion with the
> FDL?

Not to be a wag, but how can we reconcile anonymous
contributions of any stripe--including ones that
aren't logged in--with the FDL?  Pick an AOL IP
address and try to assign it to one author, without
AOL's help.  Impossible.  It doesn't even trace to one
*computer* without AOL jumping through hoops, much
less to one author at that one computer.  (If this
weren't the case, we wouldn't have the problem of
recurring vandals).

Now, if the {irony} brilliant, uninvasive {/irony}
idea of prepending IPs with phone numbers ever comes
to fruition, maybe we would be closer to compliance
with what the FDL seems to require.  As it is, I think
we're probably not, but also unable to do much about
it without severely changing what wikipedia is.

kq

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