Okay, so I created a separate topic to discuss this, per Snowcone's post regarding the idea of the community coming to a consensus regarding the idea of cover artists taking credit for their individual work on the covers themselves. I pulled as many directly related posts as I could out of the other topic without bringing in any of the other discussion. Since I didn't want to edit any other posts (aside from my own), there were a few posts where people had already stated an opinion on this subject that weren't copied over, as they were mostly focused on the other topic. Please do feel free to join in this new discussion and please don't feel that I'm trying to hide/or negate your opinion on the matter.
So, here's the discussion - should cover artists be allowed to include - at their individual discretion - a small line of text or some sort crediting them as the creator of their individual covers?
Don't be confused by the term "Watermark" - as we're not talking about a huge logo or text that spans the length of the cover - no one wants that. In fact, I'd prefer to stop using the term "watermark" in this discussion at all, as I feel it might be a bit misleading.
What I'd like to do is run this topic for a little while to discuss the issue and let all view points be openly discussed. Obviously, we want to keep this civil, but I don't think that will be an issue, as we pretty much have a great group of people on this site. So please, chime in on the discussion. However, this isn't a vote - this is merely a discussion for us to openly communicate and talk about the pros and cons of allowing individuals to receive credit for their own work. IF, at some point later in the discussion, it is decided that we should bring this to a "vote" (either an open vote for anyone or a closed vote for cover artists/gurus), then that can be done - but for now, I think we should just have an open discussion about it.
Second - to correct/add to what Arseen said - the site hosts two kinds of covers: Retail and Custom. The idea of a "Retail" cover is that it should match the retail release as close as possible (this gets tricky when it comes to things like, say, NES Spines) - on these kinds of covers, it's generally not recommended to add any kind of credits to the cover although - and I could be wrong and someone can correct me on this - I don't believe there's any specific policy against it.
As for custom covers - they're exactly as they sound - custom work by the artist. While most artists don't clearly label these covers, I don't see any reason why they couldn't.
Someone can correct me if any of this is wrong.
