Wikijunior talk:Big Cats/Authors

I don't believe the information on nationality etc is needed and we shouldn't be asking people for personal details that are not covered by the Privacy policy. Angela 00:56, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The page says "if you want to be formally recognised as an author, please sign below and add information".

What does "formally" mean here ?
 * Does that mean that if I participated to the project, I can be recognised as an author ONLY if I provide all this information, or will not be recognised as an author at all ? In this case, is not that infringing my own rights as an author ? According to the GFDL, my participation should be recognised...
 * Or does that mean I will be under another list of author (the minor anonymous ones ?)

I do not understand what "formally" is. Anthere


 * The information is required if we want to preserve the copyright on this information and wish to legally enforce the copyright for any of this content. Otherwise, this can only be considered public domain works and we might as well get rid of the copyright and license disclaimer, suggesting that all of the information is anonymous contributions.  The "formal listing" as an author is therefore required legally, and the privacy policy much therefore be amended to reflect this fact.


 * BTW, this is not a violation of the privacy policy because first of all this information is voluntarily requested, not required for participation. In addition, it goes beyond merely what is listed for your formal user account and adds information not found on either your user page (generally) or in your user record.


 * Simply put, if you want to be included as an author of the Wikijunior Big Cats book, put your name in the list. If you don't, take it out.  It is that simple.  In your case Anthere, your public information is plastered around Wikimedia projects simply because of your position on the board, and you have made some edits to this Wikibook as well.  We were trying to give credit where credit is due, and collecting public information we already knew about authors that are already listed in the history section of this Wikibook.  If you don't want that connection to any information, it would be advised to log out from your user account and perhaps log into an IP anonymizer as well (mentioned in the privacy policy).  If you don't want to be listed as an author, feel free to remove your name from the list.  I won't put it back.  --Rob Horning 10:26, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Now, sorry, but this is NOT the answer I am looking for. Robert, please try to see a little wider than just me. When I ask the question, I ask it for all editors, not for ME. Afaik, I did not write anything on any wikijunior. So have no reason to be put there. However, I am interested in the whole notion of what you suggest. In short, you suggest that all wikimedia projects are public domain, unless authors give their real name, place of living and year of birth. If so, that means that basically the GFDL and us using it is plain crap. So, I would like a clarification of the implications of this. Myself and thousand of editors are participating under pseudonyms to several projects and we consider we do it under GFDL. If the new recommendation is to give all personal information OR participate anonymously, then I would like to know more about it. But I do not think what you are doing is correct. So please, explain why what has been considered crediting for more than 4 years would not be valid any more now. 83.205.176.35


 * This is more like the Emporer's New Clothes: Nobody has take this issue seriously before hand.  Yes, I am suggesting that if you use a psuedonym and not your real name that you will be unable to enforce the GFDL, and in effect that the GFDL will become meaningless.  At least if you use a psuedonym with no connection to your real name and other identification information that marks you as a unique individual.  That makes the contributions anonymous and essentially in the public domain instead.  What I am asking for is that if you are interested in providing public information about yourself and claiming copyright privileges on your contributions, that you should do so and provide the necessary information that is required to make a formal copyright registration.  I'm also suggesting that the current MediaWiki software has a serious shortcomming right now because the page credits service is "turned off" for each page, and the only way to find out who actually made a contribution is to tediously go through each and every edit and mark down unique contributors by hand.  These features are in the software, but not available on Wikibooks at the moment due to a decision on the part of the developers presumably for performance reasons but the whole debate is IMHO uncertain and rather arbitrary.  I did try to explain that we are collecting this information on a voluntary basis, and I don't ever want that to change.  --Rob Horning 03:49, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Is registration neccessary?
I emailed juriwiki about whether copyright registration was necessary since I saw no reason to be attempting to do this. Michael Snow's reply is below (he gave me permission to add this here since he doesn't have an account on this wiki himself). Angela 17:09, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * No, registration is not necessary. It's required in order to file suit for infringement, and registration in advance protects the ability to claim statutory damages and attorney's fees (actual damages are not affected).


 * However, since Wikimedia doesn't generally own copyright to much of anything, it's really up to the contributors. I suppose if some author wants to pursue registration, they're welcome to do so, but it's of their own initiative and there's no need for us to assist or get involved in it. And other authors aren't required to participate in the process if they don't want to.


 * --Michael Snow