MediaWiki talk:Creditssource-credits

Suggested tweaks

1. I suggest changing "in its revision from" to "in its revision of".
2. Is a comma really needed following "There"?
3. The second sentences should end in a period. That is, following the "</a>".
4. The final period should be brought inside the parenthesis. Nurg (talk) 20:39, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Re: #1, I went with "as of" instead of "of," but otherwise I made all the changes as you suggested. --Peter ^Talk 23:07, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I still prefer my suggestion, but thanks for the changes anyway. Nurg (talk) 23:41, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Mentioning WT twice

We do not need to do this. Thus have changed. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:24, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Credit for WT

All our contributors are given credit in the history tab. Why should WT be given credit in mainspace? I propose that we create a bot to give credit to WT in an edit summary and remove the mainspace crediting. Thought? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:37, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to make a null edit to nearly every page on the site. WT doesn't own any copyrights on any of this text, so there's nothing for which to give them credit. LtPowers (talk) 21:08, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Attribution

As we attribute all editors under the history tab, further attribution of WT at the bottom does not appear to be needed. I have changed the footer to a note referring people who are interested to the history tab. This is especially true since IB are not the "owners" of the content, but the individual contributors are. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:18, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Creative Commons requests that we provide a clickable link when referring to their license; that should probably be restored. We should also use $5 (as documented by Ryan below) to link directly to the history tab rather than referencing it without a link.

More generally, I'm fine with removing the WT links, but the current message may be a little too generic. This message only appears on pages imported from WT, doesn't it?

-- Powers ^(talk) 21:09, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

The license is already linked in the next line. Should we link it twice or no? Done the other bit. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:04, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

That's a good point. I'm not sure. Powers ^(talk) 14:45, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Usage

For future reference, this message is used with mw:Extension:CreditsSource, a custom extension created for Wikivoyage. Message parameters for this message are:

• $1 - Link to the specific revision that was imported from WT
• $2 - Link to the English WT main page
• $3 - Time and date of revision imported from WT
• $4 - Prefix used for author attribution ("WT-en")
• $5 - History page link on WV

-- Ryan • (talk) • 17:01, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

$5 doesn't work. You should use https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title={{FULLPAGENAME}}&action=history instead of $5. --Andyrom75 (talk) 13:49, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

It works fine for me. Can you be more specific regarding how it doesn't work? Powers ^(talk) 15:06, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

LT you are right now it works, maybe they have fixed it this afternon, because for the whole week until this morning it doesn't work in no language version. So, nevermind :-) --Andyrom75 (talk) 22:15, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Can you clarify what you mean by "doesn't work"? It has worked fine for me since the markup was updated on 20-March. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:25, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Ryan, For at least the whole week (since I've noticed), the php script didn't associate any value to the variable $5, so the generated link was http://en.wikivoyage.org%245/ that is the encoding of http://en.wikivoyage.org$5. But now it seems that the "temporary" bug has been fixed. --Andyrom75 (talk) 07:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Ryan, let me know if it's clear (and closed) or if you need further details by my side. --Andyrom75 (talk) 12:31, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm still not sure why you would have seen something different (perhaps a caching issue?) but if it's working now the I guess we're good. -- Ryan • (talk) • 14:50, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Ok. I've just noticed it after one user has highlighted this issue. I don't think is a cache issue, because I've noticed that the changes that I've made on it:voy appears immediately, so I suppose that the same thing occurs here as well. However... the important fact is that now it works :-) --Andyrom75 (talk) 15:43, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Was anyone aware of this, because I sure wasn't.

Swept in from the pub

Apparently the footer on articles derived from WT has been altered. Rather than an explicit mention of and link to Wikitravel, the test reads as follows:

"This article is partly based on Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike 3.0 Licensed work from other websites. Details of contributors can be found in the article history."

Was anyone else aware of this? Did WMF Legal do that or was it one of us? I follow on my watchlist most if not all of the important project pages listed at Wikivoyage:Administrator's handbook#Watchlist, but I don't recall this ever having been mentioned. Apologies if I missed it.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:22, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I am aware of it from seeing it, and of course think it is an excellent change. Congratulations and thank you to whoever did it. Pashley (talk) 13:34, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Doc James did it about 10 days ago. The relevant page is MediaWiki:Creditssource-credits, formerly MediaWiki:Creditssource-source-work. Powers ^(talk) 14:40, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes and WT is watching per Talk:Longsheng Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:51, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I've noticed the footer has changed a couple of times for a little over a week. Jmh apparently tried it out on Longsheng first and if you read both threads there he unfortunately made a well known long time contributor very angry. :D ϒpsilon (talk) 14:55, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Does Wikivoyage have procedures for dealing with legal threats? I'm asking this because for reference Wikipedia currently has a policy on dealing with legal threats that might tell us how to handle these situations, and whether they might be unwanted for our reusers. I'm not sure of the exact reasoning behind such a policy, but I believe it's due to the fact the reader who prints out the article as PDF might be wary of doing so for fear he would be copying copyright-violating content and breaking the law. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 22:09, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:No real world threats. K7L (talk) 23:33, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone clarify what the user's beef was? Now that page histories have been merged, I can't see what the user was seeing. Powers ^(talk) 02:15, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Assuming you are talking about the problem at Talk:Longsheng, sure. If you look at the current history page of Longsheng, look at the last five of the edits made on March 11. Those are all that were showing before, and the rest were at the history page of the redirect at Longsheng, China (which is pointed to by the first edit summary of those 5 edits). The user was claiming that the pointer given by Jmh649 in his edit summary was not sufficient. I didn't necessarily agree that it was insufficient, but I merged the histories anyway, as that seemed to be the best way to shut down the complaining/trolling. Texugo (talk) 02:59, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

---

I find it at best impolite that this change was done in a unilateral manner for all language versions, and they were not even informed of the change. I am sure that many people in other languages still scratch their heads to understand what to do with the red link to the history page, let alone absolutely weird translations. Finally, I really do not understand why this whole action was necessary, because the old credit message at MediaWiki:Creditssource-source-work could be rewritten in every possible way. The problem was on the legal side, and this problem is hardly resolved=( --Alexander (talk) 00:29, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The change message for the commit that caused the behavior to change states "Raised on https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Thread:Support/About_MediaWiki:Creditssource-source-work/ksh". In case there is any confusion, this was not done at the behest of English Wikivoyage and appears to have been done to address translation problems rather than anything related to SEO or legal concerns. See the second comment under #Proposed related site external links and small technical issue above for an explanation of what needs to be changed to work with the new formatting. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

I believe what Alex was referring to is the wholesale removal of attribution from the footer-- not any single specific edit that was made. That would be a mere quibble. Rather, the removal of proper attribution from not only the Longsheng page, but apparently the bulk of wikiVoyage, seems to violate both the terms of the sharing license as well as the spirit of the sharing idea, and therefore puts the whole of wikimedia-- including Wikipedia itself-- at risk of being found in violation of copyright. This is a poor precedent for this offshoot/fork site to set. Further, it appears to have been done not only without explicit approval from the legal arm of the wiki foundation, but directly in the face of their implied advice to very specifically not do so, and rather concentrate on creating distinct content. These google tricks are I'm certain a joyous distraction. But some of you are wandering into dangerous territory and taking the rest of you with them. Restore the links. Your page history attribution is insufficient (it does not even name real contributors, since someone named "WT-Alex" exists on neither website. In your zeal to remove attribution to the site that gave you all your data, you seem to have forgotten that in doing so you are cheating millions of Wiki contributors out of their copyright by applying technically shoddy and legally unsound methods. Change it back and move along with the rest of your agenda. —The preceding comment was added by HK britt (talk • contribs)

Attribution goes on the history page, just like it always has for all types of contributions. As far as I know, there is zero reason, legal or otherwise, why WT should get special treatment with a link on the actual article page. Clicking on any user in that history preceded by a WT- will give you an explanation who that user is on WT, so that is covered. As must as you would like to believe so, we are not cheating anyone. I also am nearly 100% convinced you a troll employed by IB. Texugo (talk) 19:11, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

HK, it isn't particularly smart to threaten the organization that develops MediaWiki. ϒpsilon (talk) 19:40, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

errr, what threat? You may rather refer to the foundation's top lawyer's advice to concentrate on content and dispense with the google trickery. The implication that it will have legal consequences is his, not mine: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikivoyage/Lounge&diff=prev&oldid=5866452

That's a stretch of context. There is no Google trickery here. Can you show us where the license legally requires any type of attribution whatsoever to be included on the same page as the work? If not, please stop trolling. Texugo (talk) 20:42, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

HK's claims are ridiculous. Edits we imported are attributed exactly the same as they are on WT, with the addition of the signifier "(WT-en)" to distinguish users who have not merged their edits with a WMF account. The "WT-Alex" example is a straw man; the actual username would be "(WT-en) Alex". The only thing that was removed in the recent change was the link to the WT version of the article, which is useless and not required because we credit each contributor by edit. Powers ^(talk) 01:56, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Exactly what matters is attributing the actual authors. WT is not the author of anything. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:30, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Let’s see if I have the timeline correct.

1. User “HK britt” drops in on the Longsheng page to complain (admittedly, coarsely) that not only has the page footer attribution to his (her?) original work (presumably via an IP edit) imported from Wikitravel been removed systematically, but also the proposed new form of attribution was also removed (the page history listed only 5 revisions, instead of the dozens of actual edits since 2007 by various writers who contributed to the Wikitravel article).

2. This accusation was found to be true by Texugo, and though he did not agree that it needed to be there at all (why?), he went ahead and restored the page history, which had been removed by Doc James as an “experiment” (note to Doc James and others: maybe don’t play with removing attribution as an “experiment” from now on – this is people’s actual work you’re removing the credit for).

3. After calming down and pointing out on the Pub exactly why the brouhaha, HK britt is accused of making “real world threats,” goes ahead and denies making any such threats, and is promptly subjected to the kangaroo court of a quick userban for making threats which I’ll be darned if I can find (a threat, remember, is a statement of one’s intent to harm another in some way – I see no such statement by HK britt), and summarily kicked off the site.

Now, I am not sure if you can see the effect of all this to an outsider, but having had my run-ins with absolutely insane administrators here (not a threat! Calm down!), one could easily read this as: dare to question an admin here, get pig-piled on by all the rest with a trumped-up charge and get booted from the site. If your aim is to attract editors, you’re doing one heck of a bang up job fellows.

A secondary effect is that it’s embarrassingly clear you want the name “Wikitravel” scrubbed from every orifice here. Understandable. But as long as you let zealots like Doc James run roughshod and do whatever they want, as britt pointed out, you run certain risks as a community (not a threat! Calm down!). Remember how you all got started here. You copied the entirety of Wikitravel and renamed it Wikivoyage (yes, I know the Italians and German were already here). You may not like it, but you will owe that debt to those Wikitravelers until the last word of their writing is gone from Wikivoyage, and at the current pace that is going to be a very, very long time coming. It’s why Google barely gives you a glance. And even if washing the evil “wikitravel” name from this site ends up helping your google rank (it won’t – it’s about content, as the wm legal team pointed out), you’re doing it at the cost of betraying the very thing you propose to hold so dear: sharing content freely and attributing it to its authors.

Perhaps in some technical sense there was a way for a non-Wiki expert to visit the Longsheng page and actually locate, after many clicks, the authors of that content. Maybe they can decipher exactly what “(WT-en) Salbastarfrog” is supposed to mean, even though at present there is no way to find an actual link to the Wikitravel site through the page history/fake username rabbit hole you’ve created. Maybe this is technically sufficient for the CC/SA license to apply (a lawyer will surely answer that at some point). But is this why you came here? To be so full of bitterness at where you came from that you’re willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater in making your “new start” and burn your content creators along with IB?

What a horrible precedent. What a rotten attitude. When you allow the bitterest among you to make such unilateral, vindictive, sweeping changes, you are all tarnished. I’m glad I no longer edit here. You who are complicit ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You have some soul searching to do.SpendrupsForAll (talk) 01:10, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

You're on extremely thin ice yourself, Spendrups (examples: 1, 2, 3), so I would strongly recommend if you want to remain here that you think long and hard before spouting off your nonsense on a contentious issue like this. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:55, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

The fact is however that HK Britt's behavior was unacceptably aggressive, and continued even when calmly engaged by the WV community. Their complaint about WT attribution was not the reason they were banned. Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:31, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

None of your claims are accurate, Spendrups, and I don't even see any reason to dignify your trolling with a point-by-point rebuttal, though it's easy to mention that "You copied the entirety of Wikitravel and renamed it Wikivoyage" is a ridiculous description of a fork, and that the rest of your logic derives from this (intentionally?) distorted viewpoint. Either use your account here for constructive edits and cease trolling, or you are likely to be the next person nominated for a user ban in short order, as you are wasting our time. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:33, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Are we breaking our own rules of attributing

Swept in from the pub

Hello and I hope I am not posting in the wrong place.

I am concerned, wondering if/why we are not attributing our sources materials the same way that we expect others will attribute to us when we are the sourced? I think according to our rules we are to provide a text and a link to the source, such as here:

https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Wikivoyage%3AHow_to_re-use_Wikivoyage_guides#Sample_attribution

Again I am wondering in pages such as where I have edited why we do not do it? I have a hard time finding our sourced materials, thank you. Travel doc96 (talk) 23:34, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Look at the bottom of the page, where it says "This article is partly based on Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Licensed work from other websites. Details of contributors can be found in the article history" (with links). Texugo (talk) 00:37, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I do see that, than you texugo. Also in our rules for attributing it tells everyone to use this form: "[A list of contributors (link to history tab)] is available at the original [Singapore (link to attribution source)] article at [Wikivoyage (text name of source)]."

So I was noticeing that when we attribute or original sources, we do not follow our own advice. And that has changed only since recently:

https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Creditssource-credits&action=history

It seems to be just a user who changed it and no discussion of changing the recommended way to attribute sources. It looks like we say others must attribute us one way, and then we do it a different way. No? I think a text and link also is what Wikipedia does and what recommended by Creative Commons. So we should change back and add link to sources, so nobody feels bad about giving credit for writing, no? Travel doc96 (talk) 00:58, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

If you haven't read through MediaWiki talk:Creditssource-credits, please do, and if after you've read through the entire page, you would like to suggest a new idea, I would suggest for you to go ahead and do so on that talk page, but I think you'll have a different view about whether the change you're objecting to was a result of a process of discussion and consensus or not. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:08, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

You're right I had not read that. Cheers! Travel doc96 (talk) 01:16, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, ok except that does not address why we are asking for one kind of attributing, but doing a much less one?

Abd also, it looks like several members are upset by the change, which was made and not discussed before it was done at all. The mention that it was a translation problem is a joke I think? It is clearly the same user who wants to try search optimizing to improve google, so that's why he did it. Again, maybe not an issue? But we are not following attribution advice of Wikipedia, Creative Commons, or even our own guide. Surely it was not a problem the way it was before. I could change it back, but it is a locked page. Can someone else do this? Travel doc96 (talk) 01:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

You think that the way we provided free publicity to Wikitravel in the past was not a problem, but many of us think it was, and the policy won't be changed back because of only one or two users' objections. You have to try to gain a consensus to revert to the previous policy, and again, I suggest that you post to that talk page with your specific proposal and try to gain a consensus for it. I predict that you won't be successful, but your only chance is if you indicate very clearly why you think it's necessary. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:55, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

You've answered your own question. 'Advice' as you put it is 'advisory' and we have considered this as a community and made a decision. If you disagree, you are welcome to make a formal proposal on the talk page. James A ▪ talk 09:38, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Per Ikan's suggestion this discussion has moved to MediaWiki talk:Creditssource-credits#Policy change - please make any further comment there. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:06, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Policy change

I agree with the above topic starter that the attribution change was wrongly made.

The link to original source material is a standard practice and is used by Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AReusing_Wikipedia_content#Re-use_of_text_under_Creative_Commons_Attribute_Share-Alike

And recommended by Creative Commons:

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Best_practices_for_attribution#This_is_a_good_attribution_for_material_from_which_you_created_a_derivative_work

And is what we ourselves recommend that others do when attributing our work used elsewhere

https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Wikivoyage%3AHow_to_re-use_Wikivoyage_guides#Sample_attribution

We have practiced this for more than a decade. Yet this is no longer what we practice when we attribute content to the originals material we have based our guide on.

Why?

I move to change it Back to the standard wiki best practice, with text plus hyperlink to the authors of the material. This is common courtesy and it is what we expect others to do for us.

Thank you for supporting.

Travel doc96 (talk) 23:32, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

A diff of every change ever made to every article, with a link to a user information page for the user that made the contribution, is available on the history tab of every article - this is the same level of attribution that a contributor to Wikipedia or current Wikivoyage receives. If we had copied full text, rather than individual diffs, then your suggestion would make sense, but as it is we provide far more detailed attribution than would be offered by a footer link. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:40, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

1. It is a technicality to mention, but you are incorrect-- entire pages were copied, not "diffs" or even "full text." The articles we're copied whole and moved over.

2. Surely you cannot believe that not providing a link to the original content is BETTER than providing one? All the attribution we currently show was also present in the previous method, plus a link. Now that link was removed, and one must know where the history is, click the history, decipher what the old usernames mean, and then try to find a link to contact them. That, by definition, cannot be better. Please let us stick to the facts and not beliefs.

3. You are ignoring the fact that this former practice is the Best Practice of Wikipedia, Creative Commons, and is our own published recommendation. How do you explain the deviation? What will you do to correct it?

Thankypu Wrh Travel doc96 (talk) 23:50, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

You are incorrect - articles were not copied whole, the entire version history was copied diff-by-diff. That is why Wikivoyage, which started in 2013, has article histories that go back to 2003. Each contributor is properly attributed for his or her specific edit. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:54, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Travel doc96, please see WT changes for London from November 2003. Every change migrated from WT is clearly recorded and owner indicated. Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:15, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, perhaps I was unclear. I did not mean to imply that the diffs are not there. Of course they are. The entire site was copied over here, which includes diffs. I was asking what difference that makes. As I said, a technicality. Please instead address the bigger issues (points 2 and 3 above) and don't get hung up on the diff issue. Usually when one ignores the larger argument to focus on semantics, it means you are avoiding the issue at hand. Let's not. Thank you Wrh and Andrew Travel doc96 (talk) 00:37, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

You may mean well, but given that you seem to be dismissing the fact that we are already providing more attribution than your suggested footer link would provide as a "technicality", and also that this subject has seen a huge amount of concern trolling in the past, I'll refrain from further comment unless others share you concerns. At this point I feel that Wikivoyage has done more than is required to properly attribute all authors, and that seems to be an opinion that is widely shared and also backed up by the license requirements. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:50, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry ryan-- can you please comment on the fact that we are ignoring years of precedent, plus the explicit best practices of Wikipedia, Creative Commons, and our own site? Also as I have already shown, the "new" attribution is just the old one minus the link; it cannot be "better." Creative Commons license requirements are deliberately vague. This is not so much an issue of legality as it is about bad changes being made against best practices, precedent, and basic goodwill toward authors' copyright.Travel doc96 (talk) 01:04, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Including both full article edit histories and a backlink to WT is excessive. We all agreed on that some time ago, so we removed the useless backlink to WT. In what way is the backlink useful? Powers ^(talk) 01:20, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

They are called "best practices" for a reason. It's also an accepted standard at all of our parent Foundation's wikis, notable Wikipedia, and at Creative Commons itself. WP and CC are essentially saying "this is how to attribute a derivative work" and you are saying "no, even though it's what we always did, we are doing it a different way that short changes the original authors." We in no way agreed on this. There was barely a discussion, and then one user made the change himself without even the courtesy of announcing it beforehand. You say "excessive" but the authors contributed elsewhere and now we refuse to give them the courtesy of a clear path back to their material; now it's a click to the history, thumbing back through a long list of diffs, deciphering a strange re-naming scheme, and then maybe another click IF there's a link provided there (often there is not). Before, there was a link to the source directly. Do you believe there's no reason for that? Is Wikipefia being "excessive"? Are we, when we insist others attribute us the same way? Travel doc96 (talk) 01:37, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikitravel does not own any of the content; it was just the site on which the content was contributed. A fork is not the same as copying information from a separate site, and I'm not sure why you would think it is. In any case, I don't see any good reason to provide unnecessary free publicity for Wikitravel, which is now under hostile management - precisely the reason many of us are here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:48, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually, having re-read some of the thread above this one, it looks like you have nothing new to say that hasn't already been said. So do you want to make some more useful edits here, or would you prefer to go (back?) to Wikitravel? The choice is yours, but if you have nothing new to say, don't say it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:01, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Although you paint it as a simple step, it is just untrue that hyperlink back to the origional WT page will provide a 'clear path back to their material'. Only through navigating the diff history (regardless of whether it is on WT or WV) will allow you to do that.

(That said, navigating diffs on the WT server would be very painful considering the speed of their infrastructure :) ) Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:25, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Those "best practices" only apply in situations where it's impossible or impractical to credit each author individually. Since we do, in fact, credit each author individually, our current practices actually exceed these "best practices" you are so wedded to. The reason we request others credit us with a link back is so that each individual edit can be attributed to its author, via our history link. We have completely eliminated and superseded the need to do this by importing each edit individually. We are assuming that downstream re-users don't want or cannot import each edit individually, as we have done, so we ask for the next-best thing, which is a link to our history page.

Your attempt at explaining why a link to WT is better than our individually attributed edit histories falls flat. As Andrewssi2 points out, one would still need to "click to the history, thumbing back through a long list of diffs" on WT; doing so here actually saves a step.

-- Powers ^(talk) 14:37, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

In any case, using a WT link as attribution is problematic. WT is not the author and (if the original article is deleted there) may have no info as to who wrote the content. We need the history here. K7L (talk) 14:50, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

A somewhat different change?

Yes, attribution with a link is normal policy for WMF sites and most other open content sites both to do themselves and to request from others. However, I feel quite strongly that this case is exceptional. See Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage_and_Wikitravel for background.

IB's WT management removed all discussion of a possible fork from the site, certainly removed admin privileges from many accounts & I think outright blocked some (though it has been a couple of years so I might be misremembering), disabled email-this-user to further inhibit discussion, and even initiated lawsuits against some users. They still do not allow any mention of WV anywhere on their site. This behaviour is entirely contrary to the usual spirit of co-operation between open content sites, so I do not think we should extend them the courtesies that are normal between such sites. I therefore strongly oppose the notion of restoring the link in the footer of imported articles.

On the other hand, I think the current text "partly based on ... work from other websites" is being much too coy. In at least the vast majority of cases "other websites" (plural) is completely inaccurate. I'd prefer something like "partly based on ... work from our ancestor site, Wikitravel", where the link is not to WT but a wikilink to our explanation of the relationship. Pashley (talk) 15:34, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

IB's management of WT is irrelevant to any discussion of whether or not we are following the CC-SA license and best practice. The CC-SA requires that we attribute authors, and we have imported full history, so article history includes each edit and a link to the user page of the person who made the edit. Furthermore, in addition to containing whatever information the user in question wanted to include for attribution, that user page also has a link to the user page on WT for anyone who would want to go to the original source. That's more than the CC-SA requires, and more than even w:Wikipedia:RFPI recommends - when importing with history, the WMF import process only requires that the user name be included. As the person who spent months making sure our mirror of WT contained every single edit, my goal was to make sure that we were in a position to fork while still providing full and correct attribution to the original authors, and that is what we have done; any footer link to WT would be a courtesy to the site owner, but should be irrelevant for license attribution since we have a complete article history that credits each author explicitly, and also have a mirror of all user pages for each of those authors. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:16, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

And since we don't have to provide additional free publicity to Wikitravel, let's not. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:20, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I think it is quite clear that our current attribution:

Complies with the actual requirements of the license, giving full attribution to authors.

Does not follow the usual best practice, providing a live link to the source.

IB's behaviour is relevant to a discussion of whether the exception to best practice is justified. In my view, it is entirely justified.

However, I think mentioning WT with a wikilink to Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage_and_Wikitravel would be an improvement. Pashley (talk) 17:33, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Any further comment? I feel fairly strongly that the current text is flawed and my suggestion would be a definite improvement. Pashley (talk) 00:53, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I would not like to see any explicit mention of WT at all if we can help it. Texugo (talk) 01:45, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I see no reason to mention WT. We just need the list of authors for the BY in CC-BY-SA and that's in the page history. K7L (talk) 02:25, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikivoyage spiteful change of footer, explained

To get the record straight, now that all our views are recorded:

1. Removing a direct link to the source material, which is the stated best practice of Wikipedia, Creative Commons, and wikivoyage, is somehow even better than having a direct link, even though it is a removal of information. (This is patently false, absurd, and disingenuous) 2. Providing a username that exists on neither wikivoyage nor it's original source website is better than providing a link to the actual author who wrote Wikitravel; user "WT-en Dhum Dhum" for instance does not exist, yet we credit him/her/it with contributions in the article history and consider that sufficient. (This is in no way adhering to CC/SA since it does not even mention an existing user on either site, let alone attribute correctly to that user). 3. Years of precedent on multiple wikis have no meaning to the current small group of administrators, and even now they attempt to rewrite history and make up reasons for the change that don't reflect the actual reason. "It's for SEO" gave way to "it's a translation issue" gave way to the newest false claim of "it's actually better attribution." Sadly, none are true. This was done out of spite, and I am forced to not only disagree with my fellow wikivoyagers on this point, but to condemn their flouting of the copyright of those who built this project's content. —The preceding comment was added by Travel doc96 (talk • contribs)

You've made your point, repeatedly, and it has been disputed by others, repeatedly. At this point we're probably best agreeing to disagree rather than repeating the same opinions. As Ikan noted, if you would like to add travel content here you are welcome to do so, but continuing to pursue this issue will likely not be a productive use of anyone's time. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:29, 19 June 2014 (UTC)