[cc-community] Attributing when there is no name

Terry Hancock hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Sat Oct 20 01:15:08 EDT 2007


Complex wrote:
> I am using an image licensed as CC-by-SA, distributed through
> Wikipedia Commons. Because the only name associated with the work is
> the username (e.g. fred01), I had to write the attribution as "image
> copyright 'fred01' licensed as CC-by-SA"  which certainly doesn't look
> very reputable.
> 
> Is there a standard behavior I should follow in this case?

I don't know if it's "standard", but in such cases, I usually also
indicate the site name or URL at which the username is meaningful.
There's probably more than one "fred01" in the world, after all.

I generally check profile pages for real name information, though. I do
wish that sites using CC licensing options would provide a better
framework for reminding authors to provide a "Name for the purposes of
attribution".

Certainly when I'm writing attribution notes for my own use, I write in
a highly-abbreviated form, such as:

imgfile001.jpg  fred01 at wikipedia/CC-By-SA

Which is compact, but complete enough to provide complete attribution from.

Cheers,
Terry


-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com



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