On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Nathan <nawr...@gmail.com> wrote: > It's by no means guaranteed that if we include " > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dentistry&curid=8005&action=history > " > in a printed book in 2009 it will still be accessible in 2019. >
You're right, which is another great reason *not* to link to the history page URLs (which are as ugly as sin) but to the article directly (which is *significantly* more useful for the reusers' users). While I find it very hard to believe Wikipedia will cease to exist, the same can't necessarily be said for PHP and ugly GET requests are already a dying breed... If we do eventually find a sensible way to identify primary authors then we can always promote them to the article page, or a separate info/credits page (which could include other metadata like creation date, edit and editor counts, etc.). On the other hand if we *must* have a separate link then perhaps appending '/info', '/credit' or similar to the article URL would be a better choice. Alternatively we could set up something like a purl partial redirect or even run our own short link service (eg http://wikipedia.org/x9fd) which would reliably point at a specific version and survive moves etc. There are plenty of solutions - we just need to work out which one works best and offends the least people. Sam > On the other hand, if we printed out the names in the book... then as long > as you have the book you have the names, because they travel together. We > may change the syntax of the history link, the most common method for > locating content on the web may change (either structurally, or because of > device evolution), or the sites might for some reason come down. We should > also consider that ideally we want our content to be usefully credited in > areas of the world where Internet access is very limited, or where > Wikipedia > is specifically blocked. Thinking ahead, these are the parts of the world > most likely to be using a paper Wikipedia anyway. > > I do understand that there are mediums where this is impossible, and I > think > perhaps the solution requires an outline that describes different (but > reasonable) standards based on medium category, broadly interpreted. > > Nathan > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l