Wikipedia:Attribution does not require blame
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 | This page in a nutshell: Attribution must be given to all contributors, but the current licensing requirements do not include their precise edits. |
Wikipedia's page history functionality provides attribution for the edits to a page: what the edit was, who made it, and what explanation was given (as the edit summary). Wikipedia's licensing requires that attribution be given to all users involved in creating and altering the content of a page. This narrower attribution requirement is satisfied by a simple list of authors, even if the link with the specific contributions has been hidden, as may sometimes happen as the result of administrative actions.
Glossary
- Attribution is the credit that a contributor receives, required by the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, section 7. Licensing of Content. It should not be confused with attribution of sources as covered by Wikipedia:Attribution.
- Blame is a user's precise contribution, the individual diff in the page history. The term is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Wikipedia:WikiBlame tool and the
git blamecommand.[1]
List of authors
The Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, section 7.b.iii, specifies a list of authors as a valid attribution method:
Through a list of all authors (but please note that any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions).
Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia § List of authors clarifies its use in practice.
A list of authors does not include page content and cannot provide blame. Therefore, the licensing requirements do not include blame. In a query of January 2022, Wikimedia Foundation Legal were reported to have reached the the same conclusion.[2]
However, the list of authors is rarely the same as the list of users who have edited the page. The latter will typically include users who have only made minor edits (like formatting or typo fixes, which do not contribute copyrightable content) as well as users whose edits have been reverted (such as vandals).
Attribution without full history
Page deletion
Deleted pages may be restored if their content is non-problematic and desired for reuse, but there are alternative methods described in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia § Reusing deleted material. Since deleted revisions are not publicly visible, attribution is provided by a list of usernames. When such a list is a separate page, it is tagged with {{Attribution history}}, which includes it in Category:Pages used to preserve attribution.
Wikipedia:Selective deletion is a copyright cleanup technique that has been superseded by revision deletion. It involves deleting the page and restoring specific revisions, so it uses these attribution methods.
Revision deletion
When using Wikipedia:Revision deletion and deselecting the Delete editor's username or IP option, usernames are not deleted. They remain visible in the history, which still functions as a list of authors. This is the setting generally used, including with the RD1 copyright criterion.
Wikipedia:Revision deletion § Notes on use:
Username hiding (copyright attribution issues):
- Wikipedia's licenses require that accessible edits be linked to the user who performed them, so it is generally a problem to hide the username from a revision while leaving their edited changes to the page in public view. Cases where it is acceptable are those where the revision contains no valid information copyrightable to the user who posted it (i.e. plagiarism, gibberish, vandalism, adding categories, no copyrightable change made to revision text, etc), where all changes will be reverted, or where the user accidentally posted while being "logged out" and the aim is protection of privacy at the request of the user.
Wikipedia:Revision deletion § Changing visibility settings:
Hiding of a username or IP should only be used where that username or IP has a reason in and of itself to be hidden, such as accidentally editing logged out or an attack username. Hiding a username will remove the contribution completely from the user's contributions list (except from administrators, who will see a warning indicating it is invisible to users), rather than a crossed out entry for deleted edits without hidden username. This will cause issues with users trying to review actions taken on the user, as well as potential copyright violation risks.
As long as the usernames remain visible, the minimum licencing requirement for attribution will be satisfied. However, this does not mean that such revision deletion is optimal. For example, it can make it impossible to extricate the list of actual authors from the set of all users who have edited the page. It may also limit the options of the re-users of Wikipedia content, as some licences, notably the next version (4.0) of Creative Commons, do require "blame". Regardless of the methods used, deletion will also remove attribution in the wider sense of the word (as used outside of copyright law) – page histories are normally visible not just to satisfy the licence, but to ensure the accountability and transparency of Wikipedia's content.