Content Attribution Guide

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Content Attribution Guide

Updated: 2026-06-21 — attribution moved from contributor: tags to structured Contributor cards + dedicated relation fields.

Purpose: How to attribute wiki content to the people and organizations responsible for it, in a way that can later hold real sign-in accounts.

Model: structured attribution fields → Contributor cards

Attribution lives in three dedicated Pointer fields on a card, each pointing at one or more Contributor-type cards (one card per person/org):

Field Meaning Examples
+author Publication authors, including architects / theory originators Ben Goertzel, Matthew Iklé, Moshe Looks
+contributor Code authors / maintainers (git-verified), and org/team contributors Linas Vepstas, OpenCog Community, iCog Labs
+editor Wiki-team editors (curation, not source authorship) Khellar Crawford, Lake Watkins

Rule of thumb: paper-author-not-code → +author; code-not-paper → +contributor; both → both; wiki-curation-only → +editor.

The Contributor cardtype

Each person/org is one card of type Contributor (e.g. Ben Goertzel, OpenCog Community). The cardtype has Decko’s *accountable rule on, so any contributor card can later be linked to a real wiki sign-in account — credit people now, attach accounts later. (Two pre-existing people, Lake Watkins and Khellar Crawford, are User cards; pointers reference them directly.)

Orgs/teams (iCog Labs, OpenCog Community, Mind Children, …) are currently typed as Contributor too. A dedicated Team cardtype may be introduced later to model them more precisely.

Display

Populated +author/+contributor/+editor fields render automatically as a compact attribution block at the top of Draft / Published / Index / History pages (the view :page_attribution frame render in mod/editorial_review). There is nothing to embed in card bodies.

How to apply (MCP)

  1. Ensure a Contributor card exists for each person (create one if not): create_card("Jane Researcher", type: "Contributor", content: "One-line bio / role.")
  2. Create the relation field as a Pointer subcard with newline-separated names: create_card("Topic+Subtopic+author", type: "Pointer", content: "Ben Goertzel\nMatthew Iklé") (Use +contributor / +editor likewise.) Names must match the Contributor card names so the links resolve.

Use canonical name forms (Matthew Iklé not Matt Ikle; Greg Meredith not Lucius Gregory Meredith).

+tag is for topics/process only

The +tag (a.k.a. +tags) Pointer holds only topical/process tags — e.g. PLN, attention, publication:paper, ai_generated, human approved. It must not hold attribution.

DEPRECATED: contributor: tags

The old convention of namespaced contributor:Firstname Lastname tags inside +tag is retired. All such tags were migrated into +author/+contributor fields and removed wiki-wide on 2026-06-21. Do not add new contributor: tags — use the relation fields above instead. (search_by_tags(["contributor:..."]) no longer returns results; query the +author/+contributor/+editor Pointer fields instead.)

Key principles

  1. Use full, canonical names — so pointers resolve to the right Contributor card.
  2. Check for an existing Contributor card before creating a duplicate.
  3. Source-ground attribution — +author from the publication/byline; +contributor from git authorship; +editor for wiki-team curation.
  4. +author is curated credit, not the full bibliography — a card’s Papers: list may name more people than +author; that’s intentional.
  5. Contributor cards are separate from accounts — they carry credit and can be promoted to accountable sign-in later.