User objects as Authors

[lauratinnel]

When adding an author to an artifact, the system should look for users who match the author and allow a SEARCCH user object to be added as an author. Or -- allow the submitter to choose an existing user as an alternative to inserting author information.

[carboxylman]

Shouldn't the referenced user be able to veto this before it happens? I would suggest an invite that the target user can either accept or reject. Admins maybe can do it.

Either way, I think the first step is simply replacing one author with the current user making the changes.

[lauratinnel]

I'm more in favor of invites and pushing as much onto the community as possible. Admins should have the ability but the primary responsibility for creating complete records ought to be on the community.

I don't think that replacing an author with the current user makes sense. There is always the possibility that someone other than the author owns the record. E.g., I've imported a ton of artifacts and am the defacto owner, but I am not the author on 98% of the artifact records that I own.

I look at this feature as similar to the tagging feature in Facebook photos. Maybe we allow the importer (person or automated) to tag an existing user as an author. Give users an option to allow automated tagging or requests for tagging that must be approved by the user. Either way, push an email to the user telling them they've been tagged as an author or have a tag request to approve.