MediaWiki:Wm-license-attribution-with-author-text
There should be GENDER support on $1 - if it is a wiki user name, or more likely then, a link to a user page - in message Wm-license-attribution-with-author-text ("The copyright holder of this file, $1, allows anyone to use it '''for any purpose, provided that''' the copyright holder is properly attributed. Redistribution, derivative work, commercial use, and all other use is permitted."). I could not find out, what $1 is, at least not easily. Does enybody happen to know?
$1 is not, in general, a username of a wiki user, it might be any free text (real name, pseudonym, company name, etc.) – it is used at commons:Template:Attribution.
For gender that doesn't really matter - because "gender unknown" is taken care of, too. So when gender is know, the correct address will be used. As far as I can tell, GENDER can be used in these messages (correct me if I'm wrong).
Hesitantly yes, but possibly better not: We may have the situation of a user name matching the name of someone else, who's an artist but not a user of that name. That might yield:
[[User:Pat Smith|Pat Smith|]]→ string is not a user name → unknown gender- Pat Smith → User:Pat Smith's gender
either of which is not what we want, and may be arbitrarily wrong. Pat may be Patrick as well as Patricia.
Likely, having an extra message for known users would do one trick, and another message for everyone else including people, groups of artists, companies, etc.. This 2nd message could also be using correct genders where possible, if we were to revise a design decision. See bug 27743. With it fixed, users could specify artists genders as template parameters on Commons.
$1 is free text so we don't know the gender. I don't think you can and want to force in the gender.
What do you think about supplying the gender via a template parameter, having the default "unknown"?
whatever works ... There is no value for the person currently logged in.
This message (and few similar ones) are used in templates inside descriptions of uploaded files where they refer to the copyright holder of that uploaded file. That can be a user of the wiki, or someone or somegroup else. If the currently logged in user is meant, (s)he is referred to in the same way any other wiki user is. For these message, there needs to be no special treatment for the person currently logged in.