Charles E. Campbell, Jr. wrote: > There are some additional considerations/points I'd like to > point out: > > * The tip authors made their tips with the understanding that > they'd have prominent credit. Probably many don't care, > indeed, by this point some have likely "moved on" to (brace > yourselves) management and don't use vim much anymore. > Removing that credit, however,is a violation of that understanding. > > * Authorship can convey a notion of reliability (or lack > thereof). An article by Tony M would, for example, probably > be considered more trustworthy (authoritative :)) than one > from (*-* NOTICE: THE NETPOLICE HAVE CENSORED SOME > INFORMATION AT THIS POINT *-*). > > * Other than curiosity, I suspect that most consumers of the > tips/articles don't care who wrote them; of those few that > do, undoubtedly fewer know how to look up the editing history > (and yet fewer have done so). Thus I expect most replies on > this thread will be fine with removing authorship notices for > the tips -- they didn't write them. > > * The "right" group with which to discuss this would be, > IMHO, with the authors themselves. However, it seems to me > that that may be impractical, unless the email addresses of > the authors are stored somewhere on vim.sf.net, perhaps by > the plugin login database. > > * The tips were placed on a public forum (vim.sf.net). By > this reasoning, the tips are "public domain" and thus > authorship may be removed at will (aside: I am not a lawyer, > laws vary from place to place, and so I make no > representation about the correctness of this advice ...). > This point acts as a counter to the first consideration I made. > > So, ideally, one would obtain permission from the original > authors if their work remains largely unchanged. However, > this seems to me to be an impractical thing, especially since > it may be rather difficult to locate them (email-wise). > Anyway, you have my permission to remove authorship from my > tips (that'll save you at least one email!) :)
Thanks, these are good points. People have suggested removing the entire header and/or removing the authors a couple of times in the past, and I have deferred thinking about it due to some uncomfortable feelings along the lines of what you've mentioned. I'll ponder whether something might be done (a page listing all tips and original authors?). I'm afraid that you're right about emailing the authors. That information has gone. I suppose a vim.org database might have a record of registered users and emails, but I doubt if anyone is going to feel like digging out that list and broadcasting a message. John --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
