User talk:Moonriddengirl/Copyright

Organizing

Okay, I'm beginning to think that what we need here is some kind of very straightforward text copyright/plagiarism cleanup FAQ with brief overviews of topics and lots of "see also"s. (Haha! I said "very straightforward"! With a straight face!) It seems like what we need to cover is:

1. The Wikipedia definition of copyright problem

   Don't forget non-free content!

   And derivative works

2. The Wikipedia definition of plagiarism
3. The difference between copyright and plagiarism.
4. How copyright cleanup is done on Wikipedia

   Revert & notify

   Rewrite(from scratch) & notify

   Delete (Tag & notify)

5. How plagiarism is handled on Wikipedia

   Attribute & notify

Tweaking User:MLauba/Cv101 (if necessary) could allow us to get it in mainspace and link to it from this. What do others think? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:25, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

How can you define a line? A lot of "close paraphrasing" has four or five word strings that would exceed de minimis, depending on what judge/lawyer you put it in front of, but we might still call that plagiarism instead of a copyright violation. I do support you though, considering that we have people running for RfA that are chronic "close paraphrasers", and nearly getting the bit, I think that shows how oblivious a lot of people are. I really do support the creation of either something like this or a modification of our existing guidelines or policies to make things much clearer. I just wonder how we can draw a line between copyright and plagiarism. Gigs (talk) 22:17, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not a line so much as a Venn diagram, it can be plagiarism and copyright violation, or just one or the other, or (best-case scenario) neither. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:21, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the feedback. :) Defining the line where "close paraphrasing" becomes a copyright problem is a bear, because it's totally subjective, even when it goes before a court. Besides the problem of fragmented literal similarity, there's the issue of comprehensive non-literal similarity, where no works are duplicated but the structure of a piece is appropriated. Maybe something could be derived from this section of my userpage? I'm never really sure how much is over-explaining or whether my explanations are clear, because I'm always guessing how much people already know. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:26, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the way to go might be to attack Wikipedia:Plagiarism with a buzzsaw, and then make sure it gets enough crosslink play in other policies and guidelines. Right now the word "plagiarism" doesn't occur even once in WP:V. That seems telling. Gigs (talk) 23:49, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I think one of the things to spell out clearly (and perhaps put into WP:FIRST too) are some notes about using the copy / paste function: just don't do it unless you're exact quoting something or merely copying figures as a good rule of thumb. Too often we get the "I copied it over so that I can rewrite it" line, and the result is always without fail a close paraphrase. MLauba ^(Talk) 23:51, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Two quick questions:

By categorizing plagiarism as an ethical problem, are you excluding a WP:Policy judgment that it is not permitted and or a ban-able offense?

Is attribution the ideal or even an acceptable response to straight plagiarism (from a non-copyrighted source)? I would have thought that some attempt at paraphrasing would be required as well. Thanks for your work on this, Ocaasi (talk) 16:03, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Calling WP:PLAGIARISM an ethical problem is more the raison d'être, just like legal problems are the reason for WP:COPYVIO. It's still a guideline and not permitted, but I couldn't give you an answer about the circumstances under which someone would be blocked just for plagiarism and not copvio.

Attribution is a perfectly acceptable response to plagiarism from a non-copyrighted source. There may be other issues with copied text, such as MOS considerations and outdated information (e.g., articles which began as imports from the 1911 EB), but those are beyond the scope of plagiarism. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:38, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I was mistaken on Policy. I thought a free-content article couldn't just be copied-and-pasted whole in to Wikipedia. Not true? On second thought, the whole 1911 Britannica was, so maybe that answers my question... Ocaasi (talk) 16:43, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

There's nothing currently that prohibits importing free content wholesale in policy, providing it is properly attributed. There have been at least one discussion by FAC regulars on whether such content was suitable of being presented as "Wikipedia's best" if it was created by someone else, but that's a different question. MLauba ^(Talk) 16:49, 8 November 2010 (UTC)