[WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages and GFDL

Thu Dec 8 23:17:42 UTC 2005

Being able to change the author column would help,
but I could still see problems.
How would you avoid people crediting others for edits they didn't make
or suggest?
Also, some people are inherently lazy and still won't proper attribute
something even if there's an easy way to do so. Proof is in the fact
people fail to listen to multiple clear instructions on both the help-
and reference desk which are explained and should make sense.

Any idea on how to avoid such problems. Re-educating users would safe
coders a lot of work, not to mention another scheduled downtime to
upgrade databases like when the current id was being changed so diffs
to the latest version could remain static.

Mgfm

On 12/8/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/8/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We have the same problem with merges.
> > Some people don't seem to think it's neccesary to attribute material
> > to the original article and author when merging something. I'm not
> > even sure of a majority of them actually say it's a merge in the
> > summary.
> >
> > That really needs to change.
> >
> > Mgm
> >
> It certainly won't change until there's a solution which actually
> makes sense, such as an editable history section like I suggested.
> Putting authorship information in the comment column, and not in the
> authorship column?  I can see why people don't do that, it doesn't
> make any sense.
>
>
>
>
> > On 12/8/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > On 12/8/05, Jim <trodel at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 12/8/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > > > On 12/8/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > > > We may pretend it does not matter at all; but the truth is that most
> > > > > > authors are proud of their work. And it is hard to be striped of one's
> > > > > > authorship. If it were not true, we would not be so numerous to list
> > > > > > articles we wrote.
> > > > > >
> > > > > We should add an *editable* history section.  Call it the history
> > > > > namespace.  Put a link to it next to the link to the talk page.
> > > > > Automatically add a username to it when the user edits a page (at
> > > > > least if they are making a new edit for the year), and manually add a
> > > > > username to it when text is copied.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > It seems to me that this could be resolved by properly referencing the
> > > > source of the material in the summary. For example, copied from WP:AFC
> > > > request per [[User:ip.add.res.s]]. And editors should be instructed when
> > > > copying information from one article to another - to put the version of the
> > > > source article just prior to the cut in the target article summary.
> > > >
> > > > This would point them to the article before the cut and reference the
> > > > authors that created the source article up until then.
> > >
> > > This would work relatively OK if everyone did it correctly and
> > > consistently 100% of the time.  Which is to say, we've already tried
> > > this, it doesn't work.
> > >
> > > As for Ant's particular problem, one could suggest that she simply
> > > make some minor edit to the text, and thus her name will then show up
> > > as an author.  But that's kind of a kludge, and someone looking at the
> > > actual diffs would get the wrong impression as to what she was the
> > > author of.  It also doesn't address the GFDL requirement to include
> > > the title of the work (the title at the time it was edited), if a page
> > > is moved, and it makes the list of authors way too long and awkward
> > > (we don't need to list the same author more than once per year, in
> > > fact in my opinion there should only be one line in the history
> > > section per year, listing all the authors, unless the title changes or
> > > there is a merger from a different work in which case you'd want one
> > > line per title).
> > >
> > > Anthony
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