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Mechanism for crediting external authors of a page
Open, MediumPublicFeature

Description

MediaWiki as used on Wikimedia sites doesn't provide a way to list the authors of each article - filed here as T4994: Automatically generated count and list of contributors to an article (authorship tracking). In addition to or as part of that feature there needs to be some way to credit external authors in a standardized fashion.


Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
URL: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Parameters_to_index.php#credits
See Also:
T30064: Collection extension needs some way to credit original authors of a work

Details

Reference
bz27629

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 21 2014, 11:28 PM
bzimport set Reference to bz27629.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

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 T30064: Collection extension needs some way to credit original authors of a work)

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.

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

internet.guilherme wrote:

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.

Scott renamed this task from Customizable summary of page editors/authors to Mechanism for crediting external authors of a page.Dec 28 2017, 12:38 PM
Scott reopened this task as Open.
Scott updated the task description. (Show Details)

Per Helder at T4994#3860813, rephrased task to only be about external authors as T4994 already covers on-wiki contributors.

In T29629#5109231, @Tgr wrote:

This is supposed to be about a general solution for all kinds of attribution which is currently given in free text or talk pages.

Theoretically you could do it with a hand-crafted import file...

So is this asking for a UI/API for editing page history? Or recording a list of authors in some other form than page history (what?) and expose it somewhere (where?)?

Aklapper changed the subtype of this task from "Task" to "Feature Request".Feb 4 2022, 12:24 PM
Aklapper removed a subscriber: ZhouZ.