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Hello, Ndulepski7, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Adam and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing.

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  • You can find answers to many student questions on our Q&A site, ask.wikiedu.org

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 12:13, 12 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

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  Hello Ndulepski7, and welcome to Wikipedia. All or some of your addition(s) to Disaster Relief Act of 1974 have been removed, as they appear to have added copyrighted material without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from sources to avoid copyright and plagiarism issues here.

  • You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and cite the source using an inline citation. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
  • Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify the information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
  • Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
  • If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a legally designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. Understand, though, that unlike many other sites, where a person can license their content for use there and retain non-free ownership, that is not possible at Wikipedia. Rather, the release of content must be irrevocable, to the world, into the public domain (PD) or under a suitably-free and compatible copyright license. Such a release must be done in a verifiable manner, so that the authority of the person purporting to release the copyright is evidenced. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
  • In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are PD or compatibly licensed) it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, the help desk or the Teahouse before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
  • Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Wikipedia project or article, you must follow the copyright attribution steps in Wikipedia:Translation#How to translate. See also Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 14:26, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

  • I wanted to emphasize what Diannaa said - all content is considered to be copyrighted unless it's explicitly stated as falling in the public domain or under a compatible Creative Commons license. This means that you cannot post content from elsewhere - even if you include a citation - unless it's very small and is clearly marked as a quotation. Even then, you should make sure that your quotation is necessary - meaning that it is something that cannot be re-written in your own words.
I would like for you to go over the module on plagiarism and copyright, thanks. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:35, 4 December 2017 (UTC)Reply