Talk:Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

Copyright problem removed

One or more portions of this article duplicated other source(s). The material was copied from: [1] (see archived) and [2]. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:49, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Copyright violation - Rolled back page to last good state

Following the RCPE including text from their own webpage this was flagged as constituting a copyright violation. Consequently, the RCPE Wikipedia page has now been rolled back to its last known good state before the violation (26 Dec 2015) and they have been made aware of the need to avoid COI editing and copyright infringement. Stinglehammer (talk) 16:37, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

That was my assessment too, Stinglehammer, and I'd requested revdeletion based on what you'd done. However, the content was so unencyclopaedic in tone that I looked a little further, and found that the very first version was copy-pasted from the website of the college; even though it was our absolute top copyright clean-up editor who dealt with problems here in 2010, this was apparently missed. I've restored the copyvio blanking in case anyone wants to work on a rewrite; if they don't, I'll probably stub it in a few days' time. Thanks for your help, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:48, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Temporary page created

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Royal_College_of_Physicians_of_Edinburgh/Temp Rewrite created since the current page had been flagged for copyright infringement. Ajmoore94 (talk) 13:24, 1 December 2016 (UTC)Audrey

Hi Audrey, the page you have created is not appropriate and should be deleted. The current RCPE article does not need to be replaced, nor should it. The article was created in 2005 and to date more than 50 editors have contributed. The page that you created would destroy the record of what they did and when, although the content of some copyright violations, such as the the one caused by you earlier this month, can be dealt with quickly and are hidden from public view. Older copyright violations are more difficult to remove and will take longer. Drchriswilliams (talk) 13:51, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi Chris. The advice from Justlettersandnumbers is that a rewrite is needed. Since the COPYVIO was present from the first version and persisted despite efforts to adapt it, starting afresh seems valid to me. It is, however, important to keep the article history intact, but this could be managed.

The way I think it would work is that the redrafted article would be copied over from the temporary page and the previous versions can then be revision deleted. The page on revision deletions outlines that this is one of the situations where it would make sense to use it: there are copyright violations, but it keeps the attribution of edits intact.

I've not seen complex copyright problems in articles too often, but that was essentially how it was handled. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 14:05, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Drchriswilliams, Richard Nevell (WMUK), this seems to be a fairly complicated situation, with three separate copyvios that I've been able to identify: the recent one by Ajmoore94, which Dr Chris has dealt with; a series of copyvio additions by Betsvc in March 2016; and a foundational copyvio in 2005 by George Burgess, much of which was removed in 2010 by Moonriddengirl, but some traces remain. For that reason the rollback performed by Stinglehammer, though exactly the right way to deal with the March 2016 copyvio, didn't quite do the whole job. Unless someone comes up with a viable rewrite in the next couple of days, I'll nevertheless probably repeat that rollback and then delete the sections that still contain vestiges of the first copyvio.

Richard, I'm not an admin, but I think that in a situation like this, the rewrite is moved into the place of the article, and then a histmerge and revdelete performed if necessary. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:24, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: Ajmoore94 has drafted a rewrite Talk:Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh/Temp. My volunteer account has admin rights and I could help with the clean up. A histmerge and revdeleting versions with copyrighted information wouldn't be too tricky. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 11:32, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers, Richard Nevell, and Drchriswilliams: - I note today that the rewrite (Talk:Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh/Temp) has been deleted. Utilising a fresh rewrite of the RCPE page seemed the best way to go to resolve the COPYVIO issues. Yet the rewrite is now deleted. What is the best course of action here, in this case? Undeleting the rewrite, then doing the histmerge and revdeleting that Richard suggested?Stinglehammer (talk) 18:55, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

As I recall that "rewrite" didn't actually use independent sources. I have looked over what is included in the article and checked for material that appears in independent sources. I have spent the last couple of days working on a rewrite. My conclusion is that there isn't much in the existing version that is written from a neutral perspective, or is verified using sources that are independent of the college. I'm going to do an unusual thing and delete sections, then reintroduce rewritten material that I can be sure is of adequate quality. Drchriswilliams (talk) 19:02, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

@Drchriswilliams: The now-deleted rewrite was neutral and used a mixture of independent sources and sources published by RCPE. To be clear the rewrite used

• a book published through Birlinn Ltd
• a book published by Blackwell
• a papers from Res Medica
• a paper from the British Medical Journal
• and a paper from Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

Fair to say that is a good use of source material. The rewrite also used webpages produced by the RCPE to reference information on

• the number of members and international reach
• the number of items in the RCPE’s library
• some information about the laboratory
• membership and fellowship
• and publications

Is there any doubt about the veracity of the information sourced to those webpages? Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 19:17, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

@Richard Nevell (WMUK):@Stinglehammer:@Justlettersandnumbers: I don't have access to the deleted version, but I don't recall it being neutral. It was written by an editor who has only recently started editing with her account and of significance her edits have caused a string of copyright violations and she has made a range of RCPE-related edits including creating several articles that are not appropriately sourced. So, on this basis, I contest the veracity of the previous rewrite. If you looked at the claims about "international reach", for example, you might find the the RCPE webpage does not actually contain the figures used in the previous version of this article. The previous information about the laboratory was utterly promotional and failed to use third-party sources that are available. The publication section failed to actually describe the history of the publication. I have now rewritten the article in a way that should allow a simple revdelete to remove visibility of problematic material. Drchriswilliams (talk) 19:51, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

At least we have arrived at a new version of the article, albeit in a rather roundabout route. In future, I hope that we can try to give new editors a helping hand and guide their enthusiasm for editing. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 20:05, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

@Richard Nevell (WMUK): I specifically try to help new editors and I would note that I have already made edits to improve a number of the articles that one new editor here has contributed to. This discussion was triggered by a specific issue here relating to a difficult copyvio affecting this article. It would be important to recognise that this is a case where the article of a notable organisation has suffered from a historical copyvio that needed to be fixed. The enthusiastic contributer was not associated with the original problem. However, while she supplied a "rewrite", perhaps she has an undeclared connection and also perhaps her other edits didn't give the impression that she was yet fully aware of all of the issues that were in play here. Drchriswilliams (talk) 20:35, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Drchriswilliams, Richard Nevell (WMUK), Stinglehammer, I must apologise for not having sorted this out sooner. Dr Chris has done a great deal of work; I would have done something much quicker, but much less complete. We now have an article that is, as far as I can see, free of any inadvertent vestigial copyvio, and actually reads like an encyclopaedia entry too. Thank you, Dr Chris!

My recollection of the rewrite that was proposed on the Temp page is that it was neither neutral nor encyclopaedic – to the extent that I asked the editor if he/she had some connection to the institution. Richard, I applaud and share your sentiments about new editors; it's an area where we often fail. But persistent copyright violation has to be stopped – last time I looked, we had about 78000 articles still needing to be checked at WP:CCI, with two or three people working on them. I've just blanked and listed another article by the editor in question, and all his/her edits will now probably have to be reviewed. We don't have the resources for that, so it'll probably just get added to the backlog. Thanks to all for their help here. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:51, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Just wanted to clear up that I am a Wikipedia intern at the RCPE and was attempting to add historical information into the RCPE pages, however I am new to editing on Wikipedia and clearly did not fully comprehend the intricate process. Of course I want to abide by Wikipedia's guidelines and up until these issues were flagged though that was what I was doing, so any pointers or guidelines for adhering to Wikipedia's rules would be incredibly useful! Since I am interning, I have access to the RCPE's library and have found information that I believe is in line with what Wikipedia wants to do but clearly need a deeper understanding of how to do so without violating the rules of Wikipedia. Hopefully this is clear and I am just learning as I go on this so pointers would be useful. Thank you, Ajmoore94 (talk) 21:02, 5 December 2016 (UTC)Audrey