I have found some details about "attribution required" and "cc-wiki" at the bottom of the main photo.se page, but I can't find any details around reposting my OWN contributions. What do you think? How about vice versa?
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2 Answers
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IANAL, but you license your contributions to us under Creative Commons.
That is, the only people who need to worry about proper attribution are generally third parties.
It's attributed to you on our site, and self-attribution when posting your own content seems redundant to me.
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Interesting question... and complicated.
Short answer. You can replicate your own answer without attribution. You must attribute the question, if you didn't write it. You should attribute the whole thing because you're generally a nice, rational person.
Copyright Law. So, first, let's think a little bit about copyright. The terms of service for Stack Exchange state that "The Network is protected by copyright as a collective work and/or compilation, bla bla bla" (scroll down to Section 2, Network Content, fourth paragraph). The US Copyright Office, on the topic of contributions to collective work says, "[t]he copyright in a separate contribution to a published collective work such as a periodical is distinct from the copyright in the collective work as a whole."
In other words...
- The entire question and set of answers is copyrighted to (and belongs to, under CC license) Stack Exchange.
- Your individual answer is your own creation, and although you give
Stack Exchange the permission to use it, you retain the copyright to that specific answer. - In a technical legal sense, you can reproduce your answer on your own blog because you own it. However, you can't reproduce the question... that belongs to stack exchange. Unless you asked and answered your own question.
Internet Etiquette. If I write a post for my photography-related blog that was inspired by a Stack Exchange question (even if it isn't an exact replication of my answer), I'll reference the original question in the beginning. To me, it seems like common sense and general courtesy. It also makes the thought process and conversation more organic and genuine. Someone asked a question, and this is my answer to it. It only seems right to point your readers to other opinions.
Final Answer. If you're simply re-posting your own answers to your own blog, then I'd suggest you preface it with something like "So I saw this question on the Photography Stack Exchange (link here) the other day, and here's what I think..." However, if you don't copy the actual question, you are not legally/technically obligated to attribute SE because you still own a copyright to your actual response.
