Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Superman Through the Ages! => Supermanica => Topic started by: Klar Ken T5477 on February 18, 2005, 09:34:24 AM



Title: Should articles have writer credits?
Post by: Klar Ken T5477 on February 18, 2005, 09:34:24 AM
Another q_ if writing original entries such as the ones we've done previously, should we be signing our work as Telle did at the conclusion of the Kryton page?

Meaning should contributors be signing their original entries not taken from other sources?


Title: Re: Preliminary thoughts
Post by: Great Rao on February 18, 2005, 11:57:05 AM
Quote from: "Klar Ken T5477"
Another q_ if writing original entries such as the ones we've done previously, should we be signing our work as Telle did at the conclusion of the Kryton page?

Meaning should contributors be signing their original entries not taken from other sources?


The problem with signing an article is that other people will be adding things, removing parts, and re-writing it - maybe even scrapping and re-writing the entire article.  So there is no guarantee that any signature has anthing to do with the article above it.

Here's the way this should be done:

When you're typing in a new article, there is an empty field at the bottom, above the Submit and Preview buttons, that is labelled "Summary:"  You should enter something here about what it is that you're doing.  Like,  "This is the first version of this article, I wrote it myself."  or "I typed this in from The Great Superman Book."

MediaWiki keeps a log of all changes and who did them.  For each article, you'll notice that in addition to an "edit" tab along the top (for changing the article) there is also a "history" tab.

For instance, if you go to the Towbee article at

http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Towbee

Then click on "history." You will see the complete history of this entry, in reverse chronological order with the newest at the top, the oldest at the bottom.  So we can see that this article was written by someone who, unfortunately, forgot to log in but did remember to say that they wrote it  (this is one of the reasons that it's important to log in)  by entering a comment: "Initial entry - I wrote it myself - still needs LSOK stuff added" so we know that this article isn't from The Great Superman Book, but was written by somebody other than Fleisher.  Ten minutes later, The Starchild made an edit to it.  Chances are, he wrote it, then logged in and edited it, but there's now way to know that for certain.

If you click on one of the date-and-time stamps listed, you will be taken to that specific version of the entry.  So there is a history of every addition and edit to every article, and you can always go back and read any previous version of it.  In this case, if you want to see what specific change it was that Starchild made, go back to the history page and click on the "Compare selected versions"  button, and you will see that he added the code to display an image.

Clicking on the history tab of the Lexcorp article reveals that it was first added by Macduff, who negelected to leave a comment stating where it came from.

If you click on the tab for the Zytal article (article is at http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Zytal history tab takes you to
http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php?title=Zytal&action=history )

You will see that this article was also entered by Macduff, but we know that in this case it was from TGSB (ie, The Great Superman Book)

The history for the Wonder-Man article reveals that the article was initially entered by Bill 9000, but unfortunately, he neglected to leave a comment stating that he wrote it.

For the Krypton entry, perhaps when Telle was editing it he could have entered a comment in the "Summary" field that said something like, "Added Tradition and Religion sections" and whether he wrote them himself or where he got them from.  That comment would then show up next to his name on the history page for that article.

:s:


Title: Re: Preliminary thoughts
Post by: TELLE on February 19, 2005, 04:40:12 AM
Quote from: "Great Rao"

For the Krypton entry, perhaps when Telle was editing it he could have entered a comment in the "Summary" field that said something like, "Added Tradition and Religion sections" and whether he wrote them himself or where he got them from.  That comment would then show up next to his name on the history page for that article.

:s:


Thanks for the tip.  I noticed the date/time-stamp feature and guessed it was to be used indescrimately and that the program would make allowances somehow for the constant rewriting of the entry that will occur after.  I'll use the summary and get rid of the time-stamp.


Title: Re: Should articles have writer credits?
Post by: Klar Ken T5477 on February 19, 2005, 09:30:42 AM
Got rid of mine as well...altho you can pretty much guess who's responsible. :roll:  :wink:


Title: Re: Should articles have writer credits?
Post by: Bill 9000 on March 07, 2005, 10:29:17 AM
Mine, too ... just look for th really long-winded ones.  :lol:  :wink: