Last modified: 2014-11-14 15:24:48 UTC
There is no independent list of authors for each article in Mediawiki. I consider this to be a showstopper since exporting the list of authors from history causes that: 1) also vandals and others users who added nothing into the article are listed, and 2) external authors cannot be credited in a "standard" way. Both points are severe problems which lead to unsolvable license problems when importing stuff into Wikipedia articles and also some wikipedians refuse to improve the article because they don't want to be listed altogether with people who destroy their work. The problem is very visible when exporting the articles from Mediawiki, for example into pdf documents. On the other hand I feel this can be fixed relatively easily.
I do believe the credits parameter for index.php[1] used to do this, but it's disabled and undocumented apparently. Also we have no way to tell different type of user accounts apart (for example: a vandal compared to a legitimate account). [1]. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Parameters_to_index.php#credits
The list of authors should be created automatically from history but sysops (or other privileged users) should be able to remove anybody from the list and on the other hand users should be able to add third parties if they should be listed.
(In reply to comment #2) > The list of authors should be created automatically from history but sysops (or > other privileged users) should be able to remove anybody from the list and on > the other hand users should be able to add third parties if they should be > listed. I agree that it's probably a good idea to strike vandal accounts (does action=credits even respect RevlDel?), but I'm not sure why we should be able to credit arbitrary authors (although we could do better with author information on import: eg. bug 7240)
(I was going to create a new bug, after some comments on today's Collection's bug triage on IRC - where bug 28064 was mentioned - but since part of the problem is already mentioned here, I'll copy my comment bellow) Per [[Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_91#Augmenting_article_history]] MediaWiki needs to provide some way to store the original authors of a content which is being imported to a wikipage from other places. The topic on village pump discuss the details and provides several examples of the current situation. This feature is needed for example to let automated tools to get the *full* list of authors of a wikipage and avoid licensing problems (such as incomplete attribution on books created by [[Special:Book]], from [[mw:Extension:Collection]] - see bug 28064) See also [[mw:Files_and_licenses_concept]], which discuss something roughly similar, but focused on images and other files, and not only on its authors but also on associated licenses.
I renamed this bug since some external authors might ask for a specific way to be quoted (e.g. a disclaimer besides the actual attribution). My proposal for a solution was presented here: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/60698
action=credits does this, the rest is butter -> lowering priority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test?action=credits does nothing
Of course not, it's disabled. It works on translatewiki.net, let me re-add it to the docs.
I do not agree with lowering priority since action=credits does very little of needed functionality. We still have no suitable way how to credit third party authors even when our license requires it. We still credit vandals at the same level as other users. Please, read once again what this bug's topic is. The action=credits functionality was known when this bug report was created.
(In reply to comment #9) > I do not agree with lowering priority since action=credits does very little > of > needed functionality. We still have no suitable way how to credit third party > authors even when our license requires it. "Our" license? > We still credit vandals at the > same > level as other users. So what? > Please, read once again what this bug's topic is. The action=credits > functionality was known when this bug report was created. Not relevant. I'm moving this to extension requests because the requested feature is not in scope for MediaWiki core.
Guys, let's not start a revert war here. I think including or not this feature in core is pretty much a design decision. Such a decision should be taken by the maintainers of this component (according to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developers/Maintainers there are none) or the architects. I took the liberty of adding Brion to the CC list in the hope that we'll get some comments from him.
I have no interest in an edit war. :) I tried to resuscitate a bug which has been silent for 2 years by clarifying status and way forward; just suggestions. The feature request is not needed by WMF wikis for their legal requirements, nor by most installations, so it's unlikely that it will ever be done in core: if you want it, you need someone to produce an extension, and then maybe it will be considered for wider usage.
Not activating action=credits has for consequence that the collection extension might crash with a book of only 100 articles: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46946
Somehow is related to the http://www.mail-archive.com/mediawiki-api@lists.wikimedia.org/msg00740.html ? I'm trying to get first learning the WikiMedia API, and I would like to list authors from a given page (e.g. in Wikipedia, Wikibooks, etc.) That's not possible right now? Its seems to be very simple requirement in the first steps building a collaborative system to edit electronic documents.
(In reply to gui from comment #14) > Somehow is related to the > http://www.mail-archive.com/mediawiki-api@lists.wikimedia.org/msg00740.html ? Yes and no. This bug is more about being able to edit such a list - remove "authors" which added nothing to the current version and add external authors in cases when their work is used.
