On 22/02/09 01:24, John Beckett wrote:
> Each tip on the wiki has a header. We've pruned some of the information
> that was originally imported from vim.org, and now we're wondering
> whether to also remove the author field.
>
> The wiki way of dealing with authorship is to use "History", which
> records the edit summary, user name, and changes performed by each user.
> Wikipedia has thousands of magnificent pages where there is no visible
> author.
>
> On the Vim Tips wiki there are lots of cases where the original tip was
> pretty weak, and it's only the subsequent editing on the wiki that has
> provided polish. Sometimes we manually remove the author when we notice
> that removal appears appropriate, but it's a fairly arbitrary and
> time-consuming process.
>
> To summarise discussions (most recent being [1]):
>
> * It is unfair to credit some authors when the original tip was
> simplistic or defective, and it's been fixed by wiki editors (sometimes
> by merging in the imported comments). We should either credit every
> significant contributor or none.
>
> * We could replace "author" with "original author" to clarify its
> meaning. The idea is that a contributor shouldn't be discouraged from
> editing because some author "owns" the tip, or wonder whether to add
> their own name as an author if substantial edits are performed. Of
> course, if a tip does have an active author (someone who cares about
> it), they are welcome to clean up or remove any inappropriate edits, but
> no one owns a tip (if they do, it should be removed from the wiki).
>
> * I have done a temporary manual edit of one tip[2] to show what
> "original author" looks like.
>
> * Adding words to the header doesn't help the tip. We should clarify
> that "version" in the header means "minimum version of Vim required to
> use the tip, we think". It might be useful to say "minimum version", but
> "original author" doesn't help.
>
> * We could remove the author field after ensuring that the author's name
> is shown in the edit history (by having a script edit each tip to put
> "original author NAME" in the summary).
>
> I am posting to the vim-l (Vim Tips Wiki) and vim_use (Google Groups)
> mailing lists to seek opinions on the future of the author field. You
> might like to comment on other fields in the header as well.
>
> The current position favoured by the discussion[1] is that the name of
> each author should be copied to an edit summary in the history, and then
> the author field should be removed.
>
> [1] http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:JohnBeckett
> [2] http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Moving_to_matching_braces
>
> John
I do care about anything I authored, whether good or bad, and sometimes
I've been surprised to find that tips about which I had totally
forgotten, had my name at their top. So I reread them, and kept them in
my watchlist (or added them to it if they weren't in it).
Also, if I see that a comment is interesting, I don't hesitate to
incorporate it into the main tip, sometimes with mention of the
commenter if known, especially if interesting enough.
If my name is removed from my tips, someday I might come across some
minor tip of mine (not one of those whose URIs I regularly post in
comments in this ML), not recognise it as mine, and remove it from my
watchlist. I leave you judge of whether that would be a good or bad
thing. Going back to the oldest entry in the history of a wiki article
is not something I usually do.
As for replacing "Author" by "Original author", I have no issue with
/that/. Maybe it would even be better, considering that the best tips
may be those which have been improved by incorporating comments from
other people. IIUC it could be done for all tips in one fell swoop, by a
minor change in the appropriate template. The Vim ":intro" screen still
says "by Bram Moolenaar et al.", doesnt't it, even though many unnamed
people have contributed. In this case, I'd say Bram is both the original
author and one of the most active (probably the most active, over the
whole life of Vim) contributor of bugfixes and other improvements.
I'm mentioning my case because that's what I know best, but I suppose
there are other people in similar situations regarding the Vim wiki.
Best regards,
Tony.
--
You have prepared a proposal for your supervisor. The success of this
proposal will mean increasing your salary 20%. In the middle of your
proposal your supervisor leans over to look at your report and spits
into your coffee. You:
(a) Tell him you take your coffee black.
(b) Ask him if he has any communicable diseases.
(c) Show him who's in command; promptly take a leak in his "In"
basket.
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