[FM Discuss] credits

[Julian Oliver]

..on or around Sun, Jan 13, 2008 at 08:50:04PM +0100, adam hyde said:
> 
> The Audacity manual is the best example of a collaboratively written
> manual in FM with chapters contributed by myself, Anthony Oetzmann, and
> Adam Willetts. 
> 
> For me, I am quite happy being credited as a collaborator for this
> manual, and the manuals where I am the main writer (eg. MuSE). So
> increasingly, I think maybe its a matter of the main contributors (where
> this can be identified) deciding what they prefer. 
> 
> However I would really like to underline the collaborative nature of
> production. If a manual, for example, is mainly written by one person
> then there maybe many others that come across the work and wish to clean
> up layout, spell check, contribute chapters, tweak etc. We should be
> careful to leave the door open to these people so they are also
> motivated to contribute. My worry about crediting explicitly one person
> as the 'writer' is fine and deserved in many cases (such as Blender),
> but it might not necessarily communicate well that anyone can contribute
> and hence may deter contributions.

by the same token, if it's a big manual, and requires a 100 hours to
write it from scratch, potential authors will quite possibly /feel/
unmotivated to even begin if that contribution isn't directly reflected
in the credits.

the desire to be recognised for a given contribution is an old and basic 
mechanism in human culture, one that has also served the Free Software
world well - in what they call a Meritocracy (albeit a very problematic
term).

it seems to me that the first draft by <name>, chapter 5 by <name>, 
installation guide by <name>, proofing by <names> would serve well here. 

the only minor problem is that the credit page may looks like film credits 
for a reasonably sized manual. 

> 
> These issues are also reflected in the world of Wikipedia vs Knol.
> Google are starting a (sort of) encyclopedia (Knol) where the author of
> a doc gets a prominent credit. This is their answer to Wikipedia (where
> authorship is dissolved to some extent).
> 
> Wikipedia is a very interesting community production model, whereas the
> Knol model is explicitly about building authorship. The differing
> emphasis underlies the fact that the two groups are motivated by very
> different things. 
> 
> My question is, are we a Wikipedia or a Knol? Can we reduce FM to these
> basic models or are we something different?.
> 
> Intertwined in this is the question - what motivates people (ie. you) to
> contribute to FM?

personally speaking, i rarely have a desire to simply 'contribute', in
the general sense.

instead, i am motivated to develop something specific that i believe, or
have been led to believe, would be really useful for people. similarly i
don't value other people's 'contribution' so much as their specific
contributions. 

i really like it when i'm reading the header of some code and see a list
of the authors, with their URL's, and what they've actually done.  i
also like this in online project pages, books and album credits:  i want
to know who the synth-player is.. this adds a layer of granularity that
helps me greatly when finding who i want to collaborate with, contact
and appreciate. authors are primary meta-data in the distribution and
understanding of cultural and technical works.

i realise this probably appears as a very modernist approach to
authorship, but i value it in culture, my work and the work of others in
general. 

cheers,

-- 
http://julianoliver.com
http://selectparks.net

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