Does MP Attribution of User Content Work?

In discussions in this topic, many have said that individuals may personally take the content they submitted to MP and give it to third parties, whether commercial or not.  Still, it is not clear how one would use MP information to separate their provided content from that provided by others.

Route and Area descriptions on MP:

1. have the recently added "Updates" link on each page which does not go far enough back in time
2. were re-assigned to others without necessarily wiping the original content; for years now, re-assigning seems no longer an allowed practice; but the impact on the topic still exists
3. have been modified by admins and other users prior to the "Updates" link (i.e., without apparent change tracking); the passing years make it hard to attribute portions
4. have modifications even up to today of which the owner of original content was not personally notified
5. where the "Updates" link exists, recorded updates do not distinguish between what the submitter crafted versus what was copied from, say, earlier content provided by someone else

Practically speaking, the above points make it quite difficult for an individual contributor to identify their content whether for the above stated purpose, or to assign responsibility for mistakes, or etc.

And I don't believe this capability was ever promised in any Terms of Use starting from the inception of Mountain Project.  I am just exploring how practical it actually is to identify and extract personal contributions for routes and areas as some have suggested.

Edit: I do think that, back in the day, detailed attribution was easier when individuals had more effective ownership of route and area pages. Given the above points, whatever that was does not seem to exist today.

My immediate thought is how would attribution work in a constantly evolving work like the Mountain Project route database? Let's say a contributor adds a number of routes, and in the intervening years, the route name, description, grade, etc. are all updated so that none of the original words remain. Does that original contributor still have an attribution claim? (For those unaware, this is the Ship of Theseus paradox) — I think there's no argument that the original contributor's attribution remains.

But what do you send back if they request a copy of their content? That's where it gets tricky and where I'd feel like a "best effort" from MP would be above and beyond my personal expectations.

I am just exploring how practical it actually is to identify and extract personal contributions for routes and areas as some have suggested.

If I fixed a couple of typos and then asked MP to send my contributions back to me, would they send a bunch of individual letters back?

It's an interesting question!

I feel like you’re pondering version tracking. It is interesting. But there are ways that seem to work for people. I don’t think any of those ways were used by MP.

When I was an admin, I would make/merge minor changes like spelling and grammar, mistakes like saying left facing when you really meant right facing, fixed gear changes, etc without noting it.  

Major changes were a case by case basis.  Most of the time i'd add a new section with attribution, like ancient art for example: Stolen Chimney

Reassigning was rare, and mostly done in cases of neglect or plagiarism.  For entries that were well written or cared for, i'd always work with the original poster when possible.

I would have been a lot happier if the system had been built with version tracking in mind, and suggested it many times over the years.  I think most admins try pretty hard to maintain a good balance of keeping things accurate, keeping things readable, respecting authors, and respecting copyright.  Mistakes get made for sure, but admins try hard.

To be clear, Admins have done a great job with the tools that they have in my opinion. And they have been a positive force behind many improvements.

The question popped up when I went to copy a route on MP that I had a hand in writing. It was evident pretty quickly how difficult it would be to copy only what I had written for reasons in the above list. In the same vein, how would I tell OB to remove my content without removing someone else’s content who was okay with sharing?

After some added thought on this and other ongoing discussions, I think the point made here is moot. Anyone can write a description in their own words for a route with which they are familiar. Indeed, much of MP’s current content came about this way from guidebook descriptions.