![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | → | Archive 10 |
There have been instances that Wikipedia itself got plagiarized (or copyviolated). Perhaps this should be mentioned? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:33, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
I just read this real-life argument about the suggestion of plagiarism in someone's article work: [1]. It includes some of the points we have discussed here; use of a source's structure, close paraphrasing, copyright vs. plagiarism, etc. I thought I'd just plonk it here as food for thought. Similarly, this article recently saw an edit war over the inclusion of a sentence which one editor asserted was plagiarism (he received a 48-h block for breaking 3RR in the end). Again, just food for thought; the more prominent the topic of plagiarism becomes, the more such disputes we will have, and the more important it is that this guideline will help editors resolve them. JN 466 22:58, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
It is now August 2nd, and there don't seem to have been any additional efforts to dispute the status in over a month. This tag isn't intended to remain indefinitely. Are there further issues that remain unaddressed? -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:23, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
In my opinion, the article is no longer objectionable because it now permits the use of attribution templates. It still needs improvement. I have avoided editing the article lately because I did not want to step into a contentious area. However, I feel that we still need some improvements:
If there is any consensus about any of this, I can try my hand at a copyedit. - Arch dude ( talk) 16:03, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
The first sentence says,
“ | Plagiarism is the incorporation of someone else's work without providing adequate credit. <ref>Hacker, Diana. A Pocket Style Manual (5 ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. p. 107.</ref> | ” |
Now, I'm having trouble understanding how this relates to our policy. According to the table of contents of Diana Hacker's book, she's expounding the MLA's view on plagiarism; she's talking to academics, i.e. individuals seeking to build a reputation for originality. By contrast, our own article on plagiarism opens with the definition from the Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary: "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work". (emphasis added.) This definition suggests that WP:OR is enough to prevent plagiarism. Suppose you reproduce, but do not credit, a public domain source that contains copious footnotes. By including the footnotes, haven't you complied with WP:OR? Then haven't you also not plagiarized?
When I look at Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Why_plagiarism_is_a_problem, "original research" is the second reason; the first reason is "citing sources"; the third reason discusses "improperly copied content" without describing what makes some copying improper; the fourth reason is about copyright. Only the fifth reason sticks to the domain of plagiarism -- i.e. our impact on "Subject matter experts" -- by which I assume we mean university professors. So does the motivation for our plagiarism policy come down to "We don't want to offend university professors?"
I'd also like some clarification: when plagiarism occurs on Wikipedia, who is doing the plagiarizing -- WP, or the editor? If WP does not accept original work, how can it be accused of plagiarizing? The plagiarizer is the individual editor, and I would assume that's his problem -- between him and his conscience. The "nutshell" summary says, "Don't make the work of others look like your own; give credit where it's due."
Now, my impression from plagiarism is that plagiarism isn't about denying someone the credit she deserves -- it's about receiving credit that YOU don't deserve. (" plagiarism is concerned with the unearned increment to the plagiarizing author's reputation that is achieved through false claims of authorship.") So couldn't we solve this problem by creating a Userbox, "This user plagiarizes, and should not be congratulated for writing high-quality content."
Sorry this post was disorganized. It's almost sunrise and I'm fighting insomnia. Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 07:46, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Andrew, I agree completely. Our plagiarism article is completely off base. Plagiarism is two separate offences: 1) taking credit, and 2) failing to give credit. Offence number one is of central concern in an acedimic and professional context and is very serious, but is essentially irrelevant to Wikipedia. For us, the problem is offence number two. While I feel it is still a serious ethical breech, it is much less severe than falsely taking credit. We need to justify our anti-plagiarism policy on our own terms, and not in terms of acedimic plagiarism. - Arch dude ( talk) 11:37, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
I co-created a template that aggregates public domain sources. Some editors are concerned that it could empower people to plagiarize. I'd like your feedback for how this template can be improved to 1) better accomplish its purposes and 2) not get attacked for violating our plagiarism policy. Also, I'm looking for someone who would be willing to work with me on implementing this feedback, because I don't know how to program -- I had it commissioned by hitch-hiking other people's programming skills.
Here's an awkward summary of the template:
- We need some method of encouraging editors to engage in a "source gather", a necessary step in scholarly research that is not adequately supported by ==External Links== or ==Further reading==. This could be accomplished by a template that permits us to gather, annotate, and otherwise organize sources that have not yet been integrated into the text. It would consist of a list of sources and would appear on the talk page of articles. Checkboxes would indicate whether each source is public domain; NPOV; well-footnoted; not-outdated; and available in html. If the template contains a source that falls into all five of these categories ( CRS Reports are of this character), it should transclude the article to a category like this one.
- {{ refideas}} illustrates these functions in a rudimentary way, but it needs a major overhaul. People have suggested incorporating features from {{ expand further}}, {{ findsourcesnotice}}, and {{ findsources3}}, and to make the template collapsible when it contains 5 sources.
Some editors are concerned that the "category" function could empower people who engage in plagiarism. One editor wrote, "I have a real problem with this... it sounds like we are encouraging lazy editors to go out and cut and paste material from free sources into our articles...We want to encourage editors to actually read other sources and summarize what they say." I responded: "I definitely agree that [our editors] should read the source, but why should they then take the time to paraphrase it? That sounds like a waste of time. If the statement in the original is better, they should use the statement in the original. Especially when the original source was written by a professional, full-time, paid, scholarly author". Another editor agreed: "This isn't about editors being "lazy" - this is a rapid way to develop initial content that would take much longer for human volunteer labour to produce."
I recognize that plagiarism is a concern, which is why I'm posting here. Clearly, the page should be scrutinized and supervised, and should include a detailed banner detailing Wikipedia's policies on POV, citation, copyright, plagiarism, as well as encouraging the use of
citation templates. What else?
Andrew Gradman
talk/
WP:Hornbook
15:52, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
This reason doesn't make sense to me:
How would correcting content disrupt the encyclopedia? Is this actually referring to deleting copyvio content? Kaldari ( talk) 17:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
I just discovered numerous instances of material lifted verbatim from other sources without quotation marks, by an editor who seems to make a habit of it. I found text lifted from professional journals, and even in one instance from a college student's term paper! (and yes, I checked to make sure the cribbing wasn't in the other direction: the material had been uploaded to a "get your free research papar here" site before the article in question was "written".) The editor, when I called him on another instance (relating to obvious, non-neutral promotional material) claimed it was just A-OK to quote without quotation marks, as long as he had a footnote to the paragraph containing the text. (Not all of his "contributions" have such footnotes, though). The funniest instance of this is when he copied a scholars autobiographical information without even changing the possessive adjective "my" to "his", referring to "my recent work". I'm not talking about an inexperienced editor; he's prodigiously prolific, but there's too much copying and pasting going on. The issue for me is not legalities; the issue is confusion and fairness. Habits like that can also result in jarring changes in tone, and non-neutral content getting slipped in, without readers knowing to whom to attribute the point of view. I think this project page needs to emphasize more strongly that footnoting information, broadly displayed in a paragraph, is not the same as properly attributing and marking verbatim text. This should apply equally to all work, whether under legal copyright or not. 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 05:24, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Don't drag it in here, man. I cited examples I found in your articles, merely to illustrate a point, not about you (stop taking stuff so personally) but about the subject of this project page: I feel that people are editing stuff in ignorance of the simple idea that quotations need to be marked as such. The fact that you simply don't realize that there's a problem is supporting my point. Anyway, my fault, re-reading the project page, I see that, really, it's as clear as can be. You just don't care about the standard (which is not a question of Wikipedia rules, but one of ordinary, common-sense practice in regard to incorporating other people's work.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 07:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
On the Talk:Systems psychology the anon automatically assumed and stated (see here:
Now on Wikipedia there is an common phrase, see for example here
I still have a hard time making sense of this contrast. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker ( talk) 09:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
It's not just you. The page this page is attached to makes it plain: use quote marks or block indents on quoted material. Same standard used in the world at large, I always thought. (We have a simultaneous edit happening here, Franamax. The following is directed to Marcel Douwe Dekker, not at you.)
Marcel, Did you even read the page that this talk page is attached to? "If the external work is under standard copyright, then duplicating its text with little, or no, alteration into a Wikipedia article is usually a copyright violation, unless duplication is limited and clearly indicated in the article by quotation marks, or some other acceptable method (such as block quotations)." (Emphasis added)
Note how I quoted (that is, put quotation marks around) the material I just cited there. That's what you didn't do. And what you have done multiple times, and which you insist is acceptable. It isn't. I can't believe you've been operating under such a delusion for so long. Wikipedia, as an institution, has itself outed journalists and others who have quoted verbatim from articles while making it seem as if the text were their own. What you're doing is no different. As the article makes plain (and again, it's not just Wikipedia, it's normal, common-sense practice), you can't just shovel in someone else's text, without even using quotation marks, and then justify it simply because you put a footnote in. All the footnote tells the reader is where you got your information; it is not meant to indicate "just assume that anything you're reading in that paragraph was probably not written by the Wikipedia editor(s) who purport to have written it." 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 10:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I will list specific examples here later today. I will not edit any of the pages in question myself though, because the person doing the "non quoted" quoting would just revert them. And we're talking about potentially an awful lot of articles, in a field in which I have no expertise. As you can see from other comments here though, the editor whose actions I am taking issue with does not recognize that anything he's doing constitutes plagiarism. He specifically doesn't see the need to put long quotations in quotation marks. I'll post examples later. 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 11:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC) Thank you for your lucid explication of the issue, Franamax. I maintain that, even if the rules on plagiarism here weren't already explicit (I mean, am I wrong, is the paragraph I quoted in this project's page just intended to be ignored? It states explicitly that one must use quotation marks, or block indenting. And if "Just adding the ref-tag" were considered acceptable (which again, it's not, if the documentation is to be believed) then that would put Wikipedia in a universe all its own, because really, where in encyclopedic, journalistic, academic or scholarly writing is such carbon copying of whole paragraphs of prose, without it being indicated as such, permitted? (People arguing for such permissiveness, please cite some examples other than "people disagree about this point in Wikipedia." Please show me any reputable reference work that addresses the issue and supports such a notion.
And why in the world would anyone even want to do it to begin with? I can at least understand the motive for the reverse problem: journalists at least are getting paid for stuff they lift verbatim from Wikipedia, so I guess they think it's worth the risk to their credibility; why would volunteers undermine the credibility of Wikipedia by doing the same thing?
I agree, Franamax, everyone should keep it simple; when quoting, show that you're quoting. It's always been simple. 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 11:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
←Well, a google search here of the text removed is somewhat informative. The article's "It holds the promise of integrating mind-body-spirit in a rigorous and coherent framework" is almost verbatim from the cited source: "Process Psychology holds the promise of integrating mind-body-spirit in a rigorous and coherent framework." I tend to think that "holds the promise of integrating mind-body-spirit in a rigorous and coherent framework" is protected expression, as it doesn't seem stock or uncreative. The passage that begins "Drawing from the depths of..." is taken directly from Mary Elizabeth Moore's review there, which is also creative expression governed by copyright. This does seem to be a plagiarism issue, as well as a problem under WP:NFC, which requires that copyrighted text incorporated into articles be clearly marked. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I think there is a misunderstanding here. If text is under copyright then Wikipedia editors must use quotes which is what this guideline says: "If the external work is under standard copyright, then duplicating its text with little, or no, alteration into a Wikipedia article is usually a copyright violation, unless duplication is limited and clearly indicated in the article by quotation marks, or some other acceptable method (such as block quotations)."
Where this guideline indicates that other methods such as attribution is acceptable is for non copyright material. In other words for all copied text from all copyright sources, then quotes must be used. The reason why we have the hedge in the guideline is because very occasionally we have copyright material where the author has given us permission to use it, see for example the Richard Lindon article and OTRS on Talk:Richard Lindon, and there are also some other very narrow criteria such as lists, where in practical terms there is no avoiding copying the structure and words of a text and where quotes are no needed, but I think we can put those to one side for this conversation. -- PBS ( talk) 12:59, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Ditto! 208.105.23.6 ( talk) 16:15, 6 October 2009 (UTC) (different ip, same "anon" as above) Thanks for the thoughtful and clear contributions by all. 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 23:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi, could somebody take a look at the continuing discussion we started here on the Talk:Project Management Institute. I am rather confused their. In short:
PBS seems to have seriously urged me to remove the history section. I ask him what was wrong? he said I have to look for myself. Now he seems to be telling me: If I feel it is ok, you should return the page, but if you haven't solved the copyright problems, he states "if you repeatedly add wording that is a copy violation, your account will be blocked"
This seems to be the other way around I don't have a clue what kind of copyright problems he talks about. I have asked him three times to state the exact problems... But I don't get any answers. What am I doing wrong here?
I am under the impression that a proof of burden is a simple listing from the other editor of what he thinks specfically is wrong.. with the text?? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker ( talk) 11:39, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
@Moonriddengirl: would you clarify this area for me, please -- If text has been plagiarized from copyrighted material, isn't it, ipso facto, a copyright violation? I don't see how representing someone else's words as one's own could not be also a copyright violation, if such text were non-free. And, in your opinion, if the copied text (I am talking about a substantial sequence of verbatim text that has not been marked with quotation marks) is for some reason not considered plagiarism, wouldn't such a verbatim, unmarked, undelimited passage nevertheless lead a reasonable person to suspect that a copyright violation might have occurred? Would you advise any editor to add such unmarked quotations, or would you not caution that such a practice might predictably result in frequent violations of copyright? Thanks. If you prefer to reply on policy on copyright or another page, it's all good. Thanks. 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 23:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC)(sorry, forgot to log-in: this is my user page: Bacrito ( talk) 23:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC))
I think that Plagiarism is similar to Wikipedia:copy-paste as both of them have the function of "Taking stuff from other websites". Do you agree? If not, could you explain why they are different to each other please? I don't understand. Minimac94 ( talk) 07:03, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
(begun & copied from here) I've a question about plagiarism on WP that's bugged me for quite awhile. Nobody seems really troubled, but IMO it needs adressing. It appears many pages derived from DANFS (in particular, from what I've noticed, all the submarine pages), are verbatim copies. This is being defended as OK because they're not copyright. Except this suggests (& I agree) it's still plagiarism of somebody else's intellectual effort. Am I wrong? Maybe more important, can anything be done if I'm not? (BTW, I've added material from other sources where I encounter the pages, as much to correct DANFS POV & error; stil...) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 01:52, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
(outdent)
See Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_criteria#FAs_that_are_copies_of_other_sources. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:09, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
As none else has produced a template along the lines that user:Arch dude suggested in Wikipedia_talk:Plagiarism/Archive 6#Suggestions for improvement I have gone ahead and written one. Hence the addition to the guideline:
I have made it the same format as {{ source-attribution}} but it could be changed to be an addition more in line with the format that user:Arch dude suggested. What do others think? -- PBS ( talk) 05:33, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
The templates recommended in section Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Where to place attribution have no docs or examples, and should not appear in the guideline until this is fixed - the guideline should be useful to the majority of editors, not just to specialists. -- Philcha ( talk) 05:49, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
PBS, I think this is a great idea, it really bothers me to see a footnote citing a work, when the text is actually a copy of the work itself. I'd also like to see a flag added to the {{ cite}} family to show "Incorporates text from..." before all the usual parts of a proper citation, but this is a good start. Franamax ( talk) 07:18, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
It would be better to list the templates that are currently regarded as useful and in what situations. The problem with categories is that anyone can add anything. -- Philcha ( talk) 16:05, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
We do not have to change {{ cite}} because {{ citation-attribution}} templates can be wrapped around the citation templates. eg using the current example from template:citation-attribution/doc:
produces:
{{
cite book}}
: |volume=
has extra text (
help), a publication now in the
public domain.-- PBS ( talk) 01:59, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
An editor has expressed that this may conflate wp:quote. 174.3.107.176 ( talk) 09:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, how many words in a row would you need to copy to be accused of plagiarism? Is there an acceptable minimum amount of copying that needs to take place in order for an accusation of plagiarism to stick? I've recently been told "Plagarism is copying without quotation marks three or more words." Is that correct? -- HighKing ( talk) 14:57, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Unless the discussion [2] should actually be here. I wouldn't know. If I could ask a favor though: please read what I've written carefully. Some contributors apparently have not. Yakushima ( talk) 07:06, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
RESUMING: To the extent that there was any conclusion at the Village Pump discussion above, by anyone other than the editor with whom I have the dispute, it seems to be this: for the situation I outlined,
though the editor supplying that opinion hedged that some dictionary definition might permit escape. Well, I'm talking about Wikipedia here (and common sense). Not about what a given dictionary definition might say.
Let me put it a lot less hypothetically. The problematic passage was as follows. Note that bold indicates my emphasis added, to show diffs, and especially note that what follows was not a blockquote (or any other kind of quote) in the WP article, but part of its running text. It would therefore be presumed by readers to be editor-contributed, not copied -- much less quoted -- from the source cited. [3]:
The source cited in [4] had this:
I'm still being told by a certain editor, despite considerable discussion with him, that I'm ignorant of WP:PLAGIARISM because (he says) I don't realize (as he claims) that supplying that footnote [4] would make it "not quite plagiarism".
My position is: in this case, the footnote makes no difference. A footnote isn't even some ambiguous indication that a passage might be copied from anything. If anything, quite the contrary. A footnote suggests that somebody did their homework, and since people who do their homework are seldom so foolish as to lead a trail back to evidence of their own misbehavior, the (already relatively small) probability in the reader's mind that he's reading something copied (nearly) verbatim from some source is reduced, not increased. Either way, the reader will more naturally assume this wording is the work of the editor(s) who contributed it. Any editor who copied this into the WP article text, in this way, footnote or not, is therefore, clearly, making someone else's work look like it's their own. That's what would make any such copying plagiarism.
Yes? No? Yakushima ( talk) 12:12, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
Gregcauletta's recent comment [4] suggests to me some serious and valid criticisms of this guideline:
And that's if they get anything out of the introduction at all, except bewilderment: a sense that plagiarism is (notwithstanding the good nutshell summary) a very complex technical subject.
Don't get me wrong: The guideline is a tour de force insofar as it's about getting the issues and principles right. I just think it falls down badly, early, in a more important respect: getting those issues and principles across, to those in the target audience who need this guidance the most. After all, if you succeed in getting a somewhat flawed message across, you'll get more help in the long run for eventually getting it right. But if you fail in getting it across, you just get cognoscenti talking to themselves.
Look at the long, dense, very technical second paragraph, excerpted below. In the presentation that follows, I'll use italics for sentences lacking the word "plagiarism", and I'll use bold for any terms that are almost certainly over the head of most Wikipedia editors. After all, your average Wikipedia editor is above-average in education, I'm sure, but most of them don't concern themselves with the arcana of IP law and open source licensing. I'll break several times for comment.
I must say something: an editor who has arrived at this guideline confused about copyvio/plagiarism distinctions could read that last sentence as implying that such duplication is never plagiarism, even if it is copyright violation. And it's a long sentence that doesn't directly address the topic raised by the previous one: how a source should be "handled appropriately to avoid plagiarism." Already, it's going off-topic.
Still off-topic, but maybe worse: most people (and most new Wikipedia editors) have neither heard of, nor taken much note of, the term "copyleft". Then you throw in severe complication: that the hypothetical external work's copyleft license is somehow constrained by a complex and more recent licensing scheme (with version number!). Congratulations! You've got about 95% the eyes definitely glazing over, at least among those who need a primer on plagiarism. (And those editors probably unwittingly constitute 95% of the plagiarism problem on Wikipedia. Of course reaching those people is the priority!)
"Adequate attribution" is technical in a different way: a lot of people will arrive at the article not knowing some fairly basic things about what constitutes "adequate". I'm probably better than most, but I have an advantage: I was once beaten and left for dead by an English professor wielding the Chicago Manual of Style.
Whoa. Waa-aa-ay before this, the reader should be told that the combination of plagiarism and copyright violation is hardly limited to cases where the source was under copyleft compatible with blah-blah-blah, about which readers in the most important target audience know next to nothing at this point, and care even less. And if you have to say this here (or anywhere), say it this way: "omitting such attribution is not only copyright violation, it's what makes it plagiarism." Actually, I'd throw out the "is not only copyright violation" part.
Now, I've been gentle up there and have not flagged all uses of "attribution", even though earlier I flagged it as possibly technical, and not well understood yet by some readers. Step back, knit what I've separated with comments back together again in your mind, and look at how much of this long, complex paragraph is now in italics (i.e., the word "plagiarism" not used in the sentence) and peppered with boldface (i.e., possibly too technical to throw at a recent arrival starting cold on these issues.)
What to do? Strunk & White said, "Omit needless words." Yes, I'd support deleting the entire paragraph as an improvement to the guideline. If any points made in it are not made further on, in relevant sections, they should have been already.
OK, I actually do believe there should be a paragraph there. Just not this one. Yakushima ( talk) 06:24, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
By the way, according to the Flesch–Kincaid readability test as computed here [5], the second paragraph requires 19 years of schooling. Yes, beyond M.S./M.A. grad-student level. On the readability indices here [6], the passage scores at graduate school level for all but Coleman-Liau Index.
We don't need this level of discussion for someone who just wants to fix some WP info about an Eric Dolphy track from old vinyl album-cover liner notes. We just want them to get that they can't just copy those liner notes (at least, not without showing that the wording comes from those notes.)
I can't think of any reason why there couldn't be a second paragraph that would not only be easily read by most college freshman, but also stand as an actual model of how they should be writing. And I think I've given you all plenty of reasons why there should be a second paragraph like that, or no paragraph at all. Would you take writing advice about what amounts (in AGF terms, at least) to a point about being clear, from somebody who was a long way from being clear? Yakushima ( talk) 12:09, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
The opening paragraph says, among other things:
which puts the emphasis (unfortunately, I think) on what are at best such special cases that no reasonable person would call them plagiarism. (And what fun for purposes of out-of-context quoting by irresponsible people either trashing Wikipedia or defending plagiarism: "Wikipedia's own guidelines say '... plagiarism is not a problem ...'").
Worse, though, and getting to my point, there's a section heading later:
which directly implies that plagiarism is always a problem. Whichever is right (IMNSHO, plagiarism is an ethical problem almost by definition, even if many specific incidents owe only to cluelessness about the ethic), this guideline can't be seen as equivocal about whether it's always a problem or only in certain cases. I don't think this guideline should even use the word "problem" without making it clear who would have any such problem, and whether the problem is legal, ethical, reputational, orthographic, etc.
To further compound the confusion: one of the reasons given under "Why plagiarism is a problem" is nearly circular. It effectively re-asserts a good definition of plagiarism instead of saying why it's a problem for anybody.
This is almost like saying "Wikipedia shouldn't have plagiarism because, well, it's plagiarism". You need to say why it damages the credibility of Wikipedia.
After all, for some people, it's subtle. A lot of plagiarized content is copied admiringly by the clueless precisely because, being well-written and closely reasoned, it sounds so credible. Even the clued-in might cite some such motive, rationalizing that they at least made Wikipedia "look better", Wikipedia being presumably a good cause. Such text, if never detected as plagiarism, actually redounds to Wikipedia's credibility.
It might seem to some that such credibility damage is not a cultural universal, depending on the topic. In some cultures where all norms are dictated at considerable length, and with mind-bending specificity, in sacred texts and authoritative commentaries thereon, attribution is thought beside the point. (Unless, perhaps, you're (a) ecclesiastically certified and (b) digging into relatively obscure material.)
However, in these cultures, the very fact that your lay text contains a comment on an ethical, moral or social issue is considered a clear enough signal, in most formal contexts, that you copied it in good faith from an authoritative source -- after all, how would you dare to have your own opinion on such matters, in which originality is tantamount to Original Sin? As well, the diction of the source may be considered signal enough, if it differs enough from the vernacular.
This is perhaps all well and good in those cultures, but Wikipedia is nothing if not a secular instrument of education. Yakushima ( talk) 07:54, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
(dedent). Problems first is good. But plagiarism (because of its ugly sound on almost all ears) is problematic from the first word. So the first priority is to say that the purpose of this guideline is to help people understand what plagiarism is and what to do about it, from the ethical rudiments expressed in the nutshell to the subtleties (technical to emotional) that arise in confronting even the possibility of it.
"How to avoid plagiarism", right off the bat, makes it sound like plagiarism is an unfortunate accident, something you stumble into. For some people it is, admittedly. But for those people, "avoid" could reinforce any impressions they might have that people who plagiarize are generally blameless.
For those for whom the word sounds bad, like a reflection on character (i.e., most of us), the subtext of "how to avoid plagiarism" is too close to "how to avoid being a thief." Well, what sense would that make?
In short, "avoid plagiarism" is potentially misleading from either point of view. That's why I like part of Moonriddengirls' solution: it relies on non-normative diction at just the point where it says the guideline will draw crucial distinctions:
However, even she uses "avoid plagiarism" just a bit later. Worse, copying and close paraphrasing happen in copyright violation as well (inadvertent and otherwise), and the second paragraph already muddies those waters too much for those who don't understand the distinctions and similarities. And remember how I got here: such confusion is a major reason why we're even having this discussion about improving the guideline.
I think the whole introduction should start and end on giving credit where credit is due, and pound the point pretty hard everywhere between. That's positive to the naive, the beleaguered, the more sophisticated, and the more judgmental. With a dark word like plagiarism, you want to get rays of sunshine beckoning on the horizon immediately. But we can't be Pollyanna here. Plagiarism is failing to give credit where it's due. That's dark. However, phrased the right way, it's also motivational: after all, nobody wants to fail. And the scrollbar status for this longish guideline will hint to any reader (naive or sophisticated) that this "not-failing" is more complex than they might have thought. Indeed, it might hint even to the sophisticates that almost anybody can fail even with the best of intentions. That humbling length is good, provided that readers aren't left too daunted by the writing itself.
Which gets back to my Newbie Overwhelm point above. Readers will certainly need motivation to either suck it up and get through paragraph two on a first reading, or (better) bravely skip it in the hope that things clear up later. Maybe any comment on that should be made above, not here. But for now, let me suggest that at least the tone of the introduction would be better if it rang somewhat like the following. (N.B. Not block-quoted from any source, and with the allowed exception of conventional expressions, not anything that I remember from anywhere. I claim these words are mine.):
Remember: I'm only suggesting tone and reading level here, by example. I'm not nearly as up to speed on all the history, wikidrama, and subtleties as I should be. I don't claim I've covered all the facts and issues in the right way, above. And the writing? Still too gnarly. If the feeling is right, though, and better than what we have already, but the words are wrong, what matters is that the words get replaced without doing violence to that feeling. Yakushima ( talk) 15:28, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Rereading, I think this paragraph doesn't work:
Phrases that are the simplest and most obvious way to present information. Editors who claim that the phrasing at issue is plagiarism must show that there is an alternative phrasing that does not make the passage more difficult to read. If a proposed rephrasing may impair the clarity, or flow, of a paragraph, they must propose a rephrasing that avoids such side-effects, possibly by rephrasing content preceding and following the disputed passage, or even the whole paragraph. An objective measure of whether a proposed rephrasing makes the passage more difficult to read can be obtained by a readability tool such as Dispenser's Readability Analyser. However, issues about clarity and flow will have to be resolved by discussion.
It was a turbulent time, when that was added, but I would imagine that the intent was to clarify that simple, non-creative content does not require attribution. That's basically what's implied by the first sentence, but the subsequent seem to suggest that reading fluidity is the real issue here...and that doesn't make sense. Suppose a public domain source has an excellent description of the flight pattern of a Monarch butterfly and that rewriting it would dilute it. Does this eliminate the attribution requirement, when all that is needed to retain it is a note that it's copied verbatim? (If the passage is non-free, of course, it's even less useful, since copyright law doesn't care if you like the way the copyright holder puts it.)
I propose eliminating everything after the first sentence, replacing it with an expanded explanation that the reason this is not a plagiarism problem is because it lacks the degree of creativity requiring attribution. Maybe something like this:
Phrases that are the simplest and most obvious way to present information. Sentences such as "John Smith was born on 2 February, 1900" lack sufficient creativity to require attribution.
As it is currently written, anyone can claim that any non-free content they've imported requires no attribution if it has a better readability index. Again, all that's required if the content is free to permit its use is attribution. If it's non-free, readability is immaterial.
Thoughts? -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:34, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I've created a notice template for unattributed copying of PD content, here. Wanted to let people know about it in case it can be improved. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:02, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
I note the section Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Where to place attribution added on July 20 2009. This advice seems to be in conflict with Wikipedia:MOS#Section headings which talks of "primary headings are then ==H2==, ===H3===, ====H4====, and so on up to ======H6======" and makes no mention of ad hoc emboldened section headings.
There does seem to be sense in using a section heading to regularise and highlight the attribution of text inserts into articles. Although hitherto I've placed attribution templates under an H2 ==Notes==, I could cope with placing it under an H3 ===Attribution===. Does anyone have thoughts on this?
I note that whatever advice is given here should probably be reflected in Wikipedia:Citing_sources, such that we establish a regular pattern for citations, references, notes, attribution, etc. -- Tagishsimon (talk) 10:31, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
BTW for anyone who is interested: all three templates {{ 1911}},{{ Catholic}} and {{ DNB}} have a flag called "inline=1" which allows them to be used like the {{ citation-attribution}} "To aid with attribution at the end of a few sentences ..." eg <nowkik>{{tl|1911|inline=1|wstitle=A}} returns:
-- PBS ( talk) 10:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi Moonriddengirl, what's your objection to this? It's standard practice per V to use in-text attribution without quotation marks. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 15:39, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
Moonriddengirl said the US government utilizes a "substantial similarity" test intended to determine if infringement exists and that Melville Nimmer produced subcategories of "substantial similarity" for which the courts search.
I think there is a misunderstanding going on. I guess SlimVirgin is probably thinking of quotations of entire paragraphs, using appropriate means for marking them as quotations. If there are no quotation marks this includes at the minimum starting a new paragraph and saying where it is from, but typically that new paragraph is also indented and/or in italics. I think Moonriddengirl is probably thinking of the recent big copyvio case involving an established editor and regular contributor to policy discussions, who thought copy/paste (without quotation marks or other markup) is the only way to avoid original research, and acted accordingly for years. Hans Adler 16:49, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
SV you say that to meet Wikipedia content polices and other guidelines, in-line attribution and an inline-citation are enough, but how is a reader to know if what I have just written is a summary of what you said or a direct quote unless quotes are marked as such? I would assume that although imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, to avoid copyright and plagiarism issues, I would have put in quotes an exact copy of your words. MRG has told me in the past that if a Wikiepdia editor use a well worn phrase -- as I did in the last sentence -- then those do not have to be quoted. On reading that last sentence would you assume that I was quoting verbatim what MRG said to me or paraphrasing what she said to me? -- PBS ( talk) 01:11, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
Someone said the quotation-mark requirement was added after a discussion reached consensus about it. Can someone link to that discussion, please? SlimVirgin talk| contribs 17:59, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
At a literary salon in February 1909, he befriended the novelist Olivia Shakespear—Yeats's former lover and the subject of his The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love—and her daughter, Dorothy, Pound's future wife, who Iris Barry said carried herself with the air of a young Victorian lady out skating, in strong contrast to Pound. [1]
At a literary salon in February 1909, he befriended the novelist Olivia Shakespear—Yeats's former lover and the subject of his The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love—and her daughter, Dorothy, Pound's future wife, who always carried herself delicately with the air of a young Victorian lady out skating. [2]
Pound's future wife, who Iris Barry said carried herself "with the air...of a young Victorian lady out skating"
The first section currently ends as follows:
You can avoid any dispute concerning potential plagiarism by:
- rewriting text completely into your own words, using multiple referenced sources;
- marking any material you copy as a verbatim quote, using quotation marks, and referencing the source; [3]
- properly attributing any public-domain, or free-content text, that you place directly into an article.
- ^ Montgomery, Paul L. Ezra Pound: A Man of Contradictions", The New York Times, 2 November 1972.
- ^ Montgomery, Paul L. Ezra Pound: A Man of Contradictions", The New York Times, 2 November 1972.
- ^ Note that the amount of text you quote from non-free sources must be limited to comply with non-free content guidelines.
Contrary to what the section title suggests, this does not try to define plagiarism but only gives a bright-line rule for those who want to play it safe. How about something like the following instead:
Defining and identifying plagiarism is not as easy as it may appear, but we can establish some bright lines:
- Recognising obvious plagiarism
- More than 20 words are copied from a source with no or minimal rephrasing. The source does not appear in a citation.
- More than 20 words are copied from a source with no or minimal rephrasing. The source appears in a citation, but nothing indicates to the reader that information from the source was copied rather than independently rephrased or summarised.
- Playing it safe
There is a huge area between these two bright lines, and most of it is plagiarism. That said, competent writers have techniques for copying text verbatim without quotation marks and still attributing it correctly to the source. Only try this if you are really sure you understand plagiarism better than 50% of American undergraduate students. [3]
- ^ Note that the amount of text you quote from non-free sources must be limited to comply with non-free content guidelines.
- ^ See 1911 for an example.
- ^ Roig, Miguel (1997), "Can undergraduate students determine whether text has been plagiarized?", The Psychological Record
I probably missed some important things, but maybe this can serve as inspiration for a version that satisfies all concerns. Hans Adler 17:40, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | → | Archive 10 |
There have been instances that Wikipedia itself got plagiarized (or copyviolated). Perhaps this should be mentioned? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:33, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
I just read this real-life argument about the suggestion of plagiarism in someone's article work: [1]. It includes some of the points we have discussed here; use of a source's structure, close paraphrasing, copyright vs. plagiarism, etc. I thought I'd just plonk it here as food for thought. Similarly, this article recently saw an edit war over the inclusion of a sentence which one editor asserted was plagiarism (he received a 48-h block for breaking 3RR in the end). Again, just food for thought; the more prominent the topic of plagiarism becomes, the more such disputes we will have, and the more important it is that this guideline will help editors resolve them. JN 466 22:58, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
It is now August 2nd, and there don't seem to have been any additional efforts to dispute the status in over a month. This tag isn't intended to remain indefinitely. Are there further issues that remain unaddressed? -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:23, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
In my opinion, the article is no longer objectionable because it now permits the use of attribution templates. It still needs improvement. I have avoided editing the article lately because I did not want to step into a contentious area. However, I feel that we still need some improvements:
If there is any consensus about any of this, I can try my hand at a copyedit. - Arch dude ( talk) 16:03, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
The first sentence says,
“ | Plagiarism is the incorporation of someone else's work without providing adequate credit. <ref>Hacker, Diana. A Pocket Style Manual (5 ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. p. 107.</ref> | ” |
Now, I'm having trouble understanding how this relates to our policy. According to the table of contents of Diana Hacker's book, she's expounding the MLA's view on plagiarism; she's talking to academics, i.e. individuals seeking to build a reputation for originality. By contrast, our own article on plagiarism opens with the definition from the Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary: "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work". (emphasis added.) This definition suggests that WP:OR is enough to prevent plagiarism. Suppose you reproduce, but do not credit, a public domain source that contains copious footnotes. By including the footnotes, haven't you complied with WP:OR? Then haven't you also not plagiarized?
When I look at Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Why_plagiarism_is_a_problem, "original research" is the second reason; the first reason is "citing sources"; the third reason discusses "improperly copied content" without describing what makes some copying improper; the fourth reason is about copyright. Only the fifth reason sticks to the domain of plagiarism -- i.e. our impact on "Subject matter experts" -- by which I assume we mean university professors. So does the motivation for our plagiarism policy come down to "We don't want to offend university professors?"
I'd also like some clarification: when plagiarism occurs on Wikipedia, who is doing the plagiarizing -- WP, or the editor? If WP does not accept original work, how can it be accused of plagiarizing? The plagiarizer is the individual editor, and I would assume that's his problem -- between him and his conscience. The "nutshell" summary says, "Don't make the work of others look like your own; give credit where it's due."
Now, my impression from plagiarism is that plagiarism isn't about denying someone the credit she deserves -- it's about receiving credit that YOU don't deserve. (" plagiarism is concerned with the unearned increment to the plagiarizing author's reputation that is achieved through false claims of authorship.") So couldn't we solve this problem by creating a Userbox, "This user plagiarizes, and should not be congratulated for writing high-quality content."
Sorry this post was disorganized. It's almost sunrise and I'm fighting insomnia. Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 07:46, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Andrew, I agree completely. Our plagiarism article is completely off base. Plagiarism is two separate offences: 1) taking credit, and 2) failing to give credit. Offence number one is of central concern in an acedimic and professional context and is very serious, but is essentially irrelevant to Wikipedia. For us, the problem is offence number two. While I feel it is still a serious ethical breech, it is much less severe than falsely taking credit. We need to justify our anti-plagiarism policy on our own terms, and not in terms of acedimic plagiarism. - Arch dude ( talk) 11:37, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
I co-created a template that aggregates public domain sources. Some editors are concerned that it could empower people to plagiarize. I'd like your feedback for how this template can be improved to 1) better accomplish its purposes and 2) not get attacked for violating our plagiarism policy. Also, I'm looking for someone who would be willing to work with me on implementing this feedback, because I don't know how to program -- I had it commissioned by hitch-hiking other people's programming skills.
Here's an awkward summary of the template:
- We need some method of encouraging editors to engage in a "source gather", a necessary step in scholarly research that is not adequately supported by ==External Links== or ==Further reading==. This could be accomplished by a template that permits us to gather, annotate, and otherwise organize sources that have not yet been integrated into the text. It would consist of a list of sources and would appear on the talk page of articles. Checkboxes would indicate whether each source is public domain; NPOV; well-footnoted; not-outdated; and available in html. If the template contains a source that falls into all five of these categories ( CRS Reports are of this character), it should transclude the article to a category like this one.
- {{ refideas}} illustrates these functions in a rudimentary way, but it needs a major overhaul. People have suggested incorporating features from {{ expand further}}, {{ findsourcesnotice}}, and {{ findsources3}}, and to make the template collapsible when it contains 5 sources.
Some editors are concerned that the "category" function could empower people who engage in plagiarism. One editor wrote, "I have a real problem with this... it sounds like we are encouraging lazy editors to go out and cut and paste material from free sources into our articles...We want to encourage editors to actually read other sources and summarize what they say." I responded: "I definitely agree that [our editors] should read the source, but why should they then take the time to paraphrase it? That sounds like a waste of time. If the statement in the original is better, they should use the statement in the original. Especially when the original source was written by a professional, full-time, paid, scholarly author". Another editor agreed: "This isn't about editors being "lazy" - this is a rapid way to develop initial content that would take much longer for human volunteer labour to produce."
I recognize that plagiarism is a concern, which is why I'm posting here. Clearly, the page should be scrutinized and supervised, and should include a detailed banner detailing Wikipedia's policies on POV, citation, copyright, plagiarism, as well as encouraging the use of
citation templates. What else?
Andrew Gradman
talk/
WP:Hornbook
15:52, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
This reason doesn't make sense to me:
How would correcting content disrupt the encyclopedia? Is this actually referring to deleting copyvio content? Kaldari ( talk) 17:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
I just discovered numerous instances of material lifted verbatim from other sources without quotation marks, by an editor who seems to make a habit of it. I found text lifted from professional journals, and even in one instance from a college student's term paper! (and yes, I checked to make sure the cribbing wasn't in the other direction: the material had been uploaded to a "get your free research papar here" site before the article in question was "written".) The editor, when I called him on another instance (relating to obvious, non-neutral promotional material) claimed it was just A-OK to quote without quotation marks, as long as he had a footnote to the paragraph containing the text. (Not all of his "contributions" have such footnotes, though). The funniest instance of this is when he copied a scholars autobiographical information without even changing the possessive adjective "my" to "his", referring to "my recent work". I'm not talking about an inexperienced editor; he's prodigiously prolific, but there's too much copying and pasting going on. The issue for me is not legalities; the issue is confusion and fairness. Habits like that can also result in jarring changes in tone, and non-neutral content getting slipped in, without readers knowing to whom to attribute the point of view. I think this project page needs to emphasize more strongly that footnoting information, broadly displayed in a paragraph, is not the same as properly attributing and marking verbatim text. This should apply equally to all work, whether under legal copyright or not. 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 05:24, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Don't drag it in here, man. I cited examples I found in your articles, merely to illustrate a point, not about you (stop taking stuff so personally) but about the subject of this project page: I feel that people are editing stuff in ignorance of the simple idea that quotations need to be marked as such. The fact that you simply don't realize that there's a problem is supporting my point. Anyway, my fault, re-reading the project page, I see that, really, it's as clear as can be. You just don't care about the standard (which is not a question of Wikipedia rules, but one of ordinary, common-sense practice in regard to incorporating other people's work.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 07:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
On the Talk:Systems psychology the anon automatically assumed and stated (see here:
Now on Wikipedia there is an common phrase, see for example here
I still have a hard time making sense of this contrast. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker ( talk) 09:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
It's not just you. The page this page is attached to makes it plain: use quote marks or block indents on quoted material. Same standard used in the world at large, I always thought. (We have a simultaneous edit happening here, Franamax. The following is directed to Marcel Douwe Dekker, not at you.)
Marcel, Did you even read the page that this talk page is attached to? "If the external work is under standard copyright, then duplicating its text with little, or no, alteration into a Wikipedia article is usually a copyright violation, unless duplication is limited and clearly indicated in the article by quotation marks, or some other acceptable method (such as block quotations)." (Emphasis added)
Note how I quoted (that is, put quotation marks around) the material I just cited there. That's what you didn't do. And what you have done multiple times, and which you insist is acceptable. It isn't. I can't believe you've been operating under such a delusion for so long. Wikipedia, as an institution, has itself outed journalists and others who have quoted verbatim from articles while making it seem as if the text were their own. What you're doing is no different. As the article makes plain (and again, it's not just Wikipedia, it's normal, common-sense practice), you can't just shovel in someone else's text, without even using quotation marks, and then justify it simply because you put a footnote in. All the footnote tells the reader is where you got your information; it is not meant to indicate "just assume that anything you're reading in that paragraph was probably not written by the Wikipedia editor(s) who purport to have written it." 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 10:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I will list specific examples here later today. I will not edit any of the pages in question myself though, because the person doing the "non quoted" quoting would just revert them. And we're talking about potentially an awful lot of articles, in a field in which I have no expertise. As you can see from other comments here though, the editor whose actions I am taking issue with does not recognize that anything he's doing constitutes plagiarism. He specifically doesn't see the need to put long quotations in quotation marks. I'll post examples later. 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 11:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC) Thank you for your lucid explication of the issue, Franamax. I maintain that, even if the rules on plagiarism here weren't already explicit (I mean, am I wrong, is the paragraph I quoted in this project's page just intended to be ignored? It states explicitly that one must use quotation marks, or block indenting. And if "Just adding the ref-tag" were considered acceptable (which again, it's not, if the documentation is to be believed) then that would put Wikipedia in a universe all its own, because really, where in encyclopedic, journalistic, academic or scholarly writing is such carbon copying of whole paragraphs of prose, without it being indicated as such, permitted? (People arguing for such permissiveness, please cite some examples other than "people disagree about this point in Wikipedia." Please show me any reputable reference work that addresses the issue and supports such a notion.
And why in the world would anyone even want to do it to begin with? I can at least understand the motive for the reverse problem: journalists at least are getting paid for stuff they lift verbatim from Wikipedia, so I guess they think it's worth the risk to their credibility; why would volunteers undermine the credibility of Wikipedia by doing the same thing?
I agree, Franamax, everyone should keep it simple; when quoting, show that you're quoting. It's always been simple. 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 11:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
←Well, a google search here of the text removed is somewhat informative. The article's "It holds the promise of integrating mind-body-spirit in a rigorous and coherent framework" is almost verbatim from the cited source: "Process Psychology holds the promise of integrating mind-body-spirit in a rigorous and coherent framework." I tend to think that "holds the promise of integrating mind-body-spirit in a rigorous and coherent framework" is protected expression, as it doesn't seem stock or uncreative. The passage that begins "Drawing from the depths of..." is taken directly from Mary Elizabeth Moore's review there, which is also creative expression governed by copyright. This does seem to be a plagiarism issue, as well as a problem under WP:NFC, which requires that copyrighted text incorporated into articles be clearly marked. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I think there is a misunderstanding here. If text is under copyright then Wikipedia editors must use quotes which is what this guideline says: "If the external work is under standard copyright, then duplicating its text with little, or no, alteration into a Wikipedia article is usually a copyright violation, unless duplication is limited and clearly indicated in the article by quotation marks, or some other acceptable method (such as block quotations)."
Where this guideline indicates that other methods such as attribution is acceptable is for non copyright material. In other words for all copied text from all copyright sources, then quotes must be used. The reason why we have the hedge in the guideline is because very occasionally we have copyright material where the author has given us permission to use it, see for example the Richard Lindon article and OTRS on Talk:Richard Lindon, and there are also some other very narrow criteria such as lists, where in practical terms there is no avoiding copying the structure and words of a text and where quotes are no needed, but I think we can put those to one side for this conversation. -- PBS ( talk) 12:59, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Ditto! 208.105.23.6 ( talk) 16:15, 6 October 2009 (UTC) (different ip, same "anon" as above) Thanks for the thoughtful and clear contributions by all. 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 23:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi, could somebody take a look at the continuing discussion we started here on the Talk:Project Management Institute. I am rather confused their. In short:
PBS seems to have seriously urged me to remove the history section. I ask him what was wrong? he said I have to look for myself. Now he seems to be telling me: If I feel it is ok, you should return the page, but if you haven't solved the copyright problems, he states "if you repeatedly add wording that is a copy violation, your account will be blocked"
This seems to be the other way around I don't have a clue what kind of copyright problems he talks about. I have asked him three times to state the exact problems... But I don't get any answers. What am I doing wrong here?
I am under the impression that a proof of burden is a simple listing from the other editor of what he thinks specfically is wrong.. with the text?? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker ( talk) 11:39, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
@Moonriddengirl: would you clarify this area for me, please -- If text has been plagiarized from copyrighted material, isn't it, ipso facto, a copyright violation? I don't see how representing someone else's words as one's own could not be also a copyright violation, if such text were non-free. And, in your opinion, if the copied text (I am talking about a substantial sequence of verbatim text that has not been marked with quotation marks) is for some reason not considered plagiarism, wouldn't such a verbatim, unmarked, undelimited passage nevertheless lead a reasonable person to suspect that a copyright violation might have occurred? Would you advise any editor to add such unmarked quotations, or would you not caution that such a practice might predictably result in frequent violations of copyright? Thanks. If you prefer to reply on policy on copyright or another page, it's all good. Thanks. 72.229.55.73 ( talk) 23:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC)(sorry, forgot to log-in: this is my user page: Bacrito ( talk) 23:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC))
I think that Plagiarism is similar to Wikipedia:copy-paste as both of them have the function of "Taking stuff from other websites". Do you agree? If not, could you explain why they are different to each other please? I don't understand. Minimac94 ( talk) 07:03, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
(begun & copied from here) I've a question about plagiarism on WP that's bugged me for quite awhile. Nobody seems really troubled, but IMO it needs adressing. It appears many pages derived from DANFS (in particular, from what I've noticed, all the submarine pages), are verbatim copies. This is being defended as OK because they're not copyright. Except this suggests (& I agree) it's still plagiarism of somebody else's intellectual effort. Am I wrong? Maybe more important, can anything be done if I'm not? (BTW, I've added material from other sources where I encounter the pages, as much to correct DANFS POV & error; stil...) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 01:52, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
(outdent)
See Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_criteria#FAs_that_are_copies_of_other_sources. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:09, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
As none else has produced a template along the lines that user:Arch dude suggested in Wikipedia_talk:Plagiarism/Archive 6#Suggestions for improvement I have gone ahead and written one. Hence the addition to the guideline:
I have made it the same format as {{ source-attribution}} but it could be changed to be an addition more in line with the format that user:Arch dude suggested. What do others think? -- PBS ( talk) 05:33, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
The templates recommended in section Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Where to place attribution have no docs or examples, and should not appear in the guideline until this is fixed - the guideline should be useful to the majority of editors, not just to specialists. -- Philcha ( talk) 05:49, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
PBS, I think this is a great idea, it really bothers me to see a footnote citing a work, when the text is actually a copy of the work itself. I'd also like to see a flag added to the {{ cite}} family to show "Incorporates text from..." before all the usual parts of a proper citation, but this is a good start. Franamax ( talk) 07:18, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
It would be better to list the templates that are currently regarded as useful and in what situations. The problem with categories is that anyone can add anything. -- Philcha ( talk) 16:05, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
We do not have to change {{ cite}} because {{ citation-attribution}} templates can be wrapped around the citation templates. eg using the current example from template:citation-attribution/doc:
produces:
{{
cite book}}
: |volume=
has extra text (
help), a publication now in the
public domain.-- PBS ( talk) 01:59, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
An editor has expressed that this may conflate wp:quote. 174.3.107.176 ( talk) 09:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, how many words in a row would you need to copy to be accused of plagiarism? Is there an acceptable minimum amount of copying that needs to take place in order for an accusation of plagiarism to stick? I've recently been told "Plagarism is copying without quotation marks three or more words." Is that correct? -- HighKing ( talk) 14:57, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Unless the discussion [2] should actually be here. I wouldn't know. If I could ask a favor though: please read what I've written carefully. Some contributors apparently have not. Yakushima ( talk) 07:06, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
RESUMING: To the extent that there was any conclusion at the Village Pump discussion above, by anyone other than the editor with whom I have the dispute, it seems to be this: for the situation I outlined,
though the editor supplying that opinion hedged that some dictionary definition might permit escape. Well, I'm talking about Wikipedia here (and common sense). Not about what a given dictionary definition might say.
Let me put it a lot less hypothetically. The problematic passage was as follows. Note that bold indicates my emphasis added, to show diffs, and especially note that what follows was not a blockquote (or any other kind of quote) in the WP article, but part of its running text. It would therefore be presumed by readers to be editor-contributed, not copied -- much less quoted -- from the source cited. [3]:
The source cited in [4] had this:
I'm still being told by a certain editor, despite considerable discussion with him, that I'm ignorant of WP:PLAGIARISM because (he says) I don't realize (as he claims) that supplying that footnote [4] would make it "not quite plagiarism".
My position is: in this case, the footnote makes no difference. A footnote isn't even some ambiguous indication that a passage might be copied from anything. If anything, quite the contrary. A footnote suggests that somebody did their homework, and since people who do their homework are seldom so foolish as to lead a trail back to evidence of their own misbehavior, the (already relatively small) probability in the reader's mind that he's reading something copied (nearly) verbatim from some source is reduced, not increased. Either way, the reader will more naturally assume this wording is the work of the editor(s) who contributed it. Any editor who copied this into the WP article text, in this way, footnote or not, is therefore, clearly, making someone else's work look like it's their own. That's what would make any such copying plagiarism.
Yes? No? Yakushima ( talk) 12:12, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
Gregcauletta's recent comment [4] suggests to me some serious and valid criticisms of this guideline:
And that's if they get anything out of the introduction at all, except bewilderment: a sense that plagiarism is (notwithstanding the good nutshell summary) a very complex technical subject.
Don't get me wrong: The guideline is a tour de force insofar as it's about getting the issues and principles right. I just think it falls down badly, early, in a more important respect: getting those issues and principles across, to those in the target audience who need this guidance the most. After all, if you succeed in getting a somewhat flawed message across, you'll get more help in the long run for eventually getting it right. But if you fail in getting it across, you just get cognoscenti talking to themselves.
Look at the long, dense, very technical second paragraph, excerpted below. In the presentation that follows, I'll use italics for sentences lacking the word "plagiarism", and I'll use bold for any terms that are almost certainly over the head of most Wikipedia editors. After all, your average Wikipedia editor is above-average in education, I'm sure, but most of them don't concern themselves with the arcana of IP law and open source licensing. I'll break several times for comment.
I must say something: an editor who has arrived at this guideline confused about copyvio/plagiarism distinctions could read that last sentence as implying that such duplication is never plagiarism, even if it is copyright violation. And it's a long sentence that doesn't directly address the topic raised by the previous one: how a source should be "handled appropriately to avoid plagiarism." Already, it's going off-topic.
Still off-topic, but maybe worse: most people (and most new Wikipedia editors) have neither heard of, nor taken much note of, the term "copyleft". Then you throw in severe complication: that the hypothetical external work's copyleft license is somehow constrained by a complex and more recent licensing scheme (with version number!). Congratulations! You've got about 95% the eyes definitely glazing over, at least among those who need a primer on plagiarism. (And those editors probably unwittingly constitute 95% of the plagiarism problem on Wikipedia. Of course reaching those people is the priority!)
"Adequate attribution" is technical in a different way: a lot of people will arrive at the article not knowing some fairly basic things about what constitutes "adequate". I'm probably better than most, but I have an advantage: I was once beaten and left for dead by an English professor wielding the Chicago Manual of Style.
Whoa. Waa-aa-ay before this, the reader should be told that the combination of plagiarism and copyright violation is hardly limited to cases where the source was under copyleft compatible with blah-blah-blah, about which readers in the most important target audience know next to nothing at this point, and care even less. And if you have to say this here (or anywhere), say it this way: "omitting such attribution is not only copyright violation, it's what makes it plagiarism." Actually, I'd throw out the "is not only copyright violation" part.
Now, I've been gentle up there and have not flagged all uses of "attribution", even though earlier I flagged it as possibly technical, and not well understood yet by some readers. Step back, knit what I've separated with comments back together again in your mind, and look at how much of this long, complex paragraph is now in italics (i.e., the word "plagiarism" not used in the sentence) and peppered with boldface (i.e., possibly too technical to throw at a recent arrival starting cold on these issues.)
What to do? Strunk & White said, "Omit needless words." Yes, I'd support deleting the entire paragraph as an improvement to the guideline. If any points made in it are not made further on, in relevant sections, they should have been already.
OK, I actually do believe there should be a paragraph there. Just not this one. Yakushima ( talk) 06:24, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
By the way, according to the Flesch–Kincaid readability test as computed here [5], the second paragraph requires 19 years of schooling. Yes, beyond M.S./M.A. grad-student level. On the readability indices here [6], the passage scores at graduate school level for all but Coleman-Liau Index.
We don't need this level of discussion for someone who just wants to fix some WP info about an Eric Dolphy track from old vinyl album-cover liner notes. We just want them to get that they can't just copy those liner notes (at least, not without showing that the wording comes from those notes.)
I can't think of any reason why there couldn't be a second paragraph that would not only be easily read by most college freshman, but also stand as an actual model of how they should be writing. And I think I've given you all plenty of reasons why there should be a second paragraph like that, or no paragraph at all. Would you take writing advice about what amounts (in AGF terms, at least) to a point about being clear, from somebody who was a long way from being clear? Yakushima ( talk) 12:09, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
The opening paragraph says, among other things:
which puts the emphasis (unfortunately, I think) on what are at best such special cases that no reasonable person would call them plagiarism. (And what fun for purposes of out-of-context quoting by irresponsible people either trashing Wikipedia or defending plagiarism: "Wikipedia's own guidelines say '... plagiarism is not a problem ...'").
Worse, though, and getting to my point, there's a section heading later:
which directly implies that plagiarism is always a problem. Whichever is right (IMNSHO, plagiarism is an ethical problem almost by definition, even if many specific incidents owe only to cluelessness about the ethic), this guideline can't be seen as equivocal about whether it's always a problem or only in certain cases. I don't think this guideline should even use the word "problem" without making it clear who would have any such problem, and whether the problem is legal, ethical, reputational, orthographic, etc.
To further compound the confusion: one of the reasons given under "Why plagiarism is a problem" is nearly circular. It effectively re-asserts a good definition of plagiarism instead of saying why it's a problem for anybody.
This is almost like saying "Wikipedia shouldn't have plagiarism because, well, it's plagiarism". You need to say why it damages the credibility of Wikipedia.
After all, for some people, it's subtle. A lot of plagiarized content is copied admiringly by the clueless precisely because, being well-written and closely reasoned, it sounds so credible. Even the clued-in might cite some such motive, rationalizing that they at least made Wikipedia "look better", Wikipedia being presumably a good cause. Such text, if never detected as plagiarism, actually redounds to Wikipedia's credibility.
It might seem to some that such credibility damage is not a cultural universal, depending on the topic. In some cultures where all norms are dictated at considerable length, and with mind-bending specificity, in sacred texts and authoritative commentaries thereon, attribution is thought beside the point. (Unless, perhaps, you're (a) ecclesiastically certified and (b) digging into relatively obscure material.)
However, in these cultures, the very fact that your lay text contains a comment on an ethical, moral or social issue is considered a clear enough signal, in most formal contexts, that you copied it in good faith from an authoritative source -- after all, how would you dare to have your own opinion on such matters, in which originality is tantamount to Original Sin? As well, the diction of the source may be considered signal enough, if it differs enough from the vernacular.
This is perhaps all well and good in those cultures, but Wikipedia is nothing if not a secular instrument of education. Yakushima ( talk) 07:54, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
(dedent). Problems first is good. But plagiarism (because of its ugly sound on almost all ears) is problematic from the first word. So the first priority is to say that the purpose of this guideline is to help people understand what plagiarism is and what to do about it, from the ethical rudiments expressed in the nutshell to the subtleties (technical to emotional) that arise in confronting even the possibility of it.
"How to avoid plagiarism", right off the bat, makes it sound like plagiarism is an unfortunate accident, something you stumble into. For some people it is, admittedly. But for those people, "avoid" could reinforce any impressions they might have that people who plagiarize are generally blameless.
For those for whom the word sounds bad, like a reflection on character (i.e., most of us), the subtext of "how to avoid plagiarism" is too close to "how to avoid being a thief." Well, what sense would that make?
In short, "avoid plagiarism" is potentially misleading from either point of view. That's why I like part of Moonriddengirls' solution: it relies on non-normative diction at just the point where it says the guideline will draw crucial distinctions:
However, even she uses "avoid plagiarism" just a bit later. Worse, copying and close paraphrasing happen in copyright violation as well (inadvertent and otherwise), and the second paragraph already muddies those waters too much for those who don't understand the distinctions and similarities. And remember how I got here: such confusion is a major reason why we're even having this discussion about improving the guideline.
I think the whole introduction should start and end on giving credit where credit is due, and pound the point pretty hard everywhere between. That's positive to the naive, the beleaguered, the more sophisticated, and the more judgmental. With a dark word like plagiarism, you want to get rays of sunshine beckoning on the horizon immediately. But we can't be Pollyanna here. Plagiarism is failing to give credit where it's due. That's dark. However, phrased the right way, it's also motivational: after all, nobody wants to fail. And the scrollbar status for this longish guideline will hint to any reader (naive or sophisticated) that this "not-failing" is more complex than they might have thought. Indeed, it might hint even to the sophisticates that almost anybody can fail even with the best of intentions. That humbling length is good, provided that readers aren't left too daunted by the writing itself.
Which gets back to my Newbie Overwhelm point above. Readers will certainly need motivation to either suck it up and get through paragraph two on a first reading, or (better) bravely skip it in the hope that things clear up later. Maybe any comment on that should be made above, not here. But for now, let me suggest that at least the tone of the introduction would be better if it rang somewhat like the following. (N.B. Not block-quoted from any source, and with the allowed exception of conventional expressions, not anything that I remember from anywhere. I claim these words are mine.):
Remember: I'm only suggesting tone and reading level here, by example. I'm not nearly as up to speed on all the history, wikidrama, and subtleties as I should be. I don't claim I've covered all the facts and issues in the right way, above. And the writing? Still too gnarly. If the feeling is right, though, and better than what we have already, but the words are wrong, what matters is that the words get replaced without doing violence to that feeling. Yakushima ( talk) 15:28, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Rereading, I think this paragraph doesn't work:
Phrases that are the simplest and most obvious way to present information. Editors who claim that the phrasing at issue is plagiarism must show that there is an alternative phrasing that does not make the passage more difficult to read. If a proposed rephrasing may impair the clarity, or flow, of a paragraph, they must propose a rephrasing that avoids such side-effects, possibly by rephrasing content preceding and following the disputed passage, or even the whole paragraph. An objective measure of whether a proposed rephrasing makes the passage more difficult to read can be obtained by a readability tool such as Dispenser's Readability Analyser. However, issues about clarity and flow will have to be resolved by discussion.
It was a turbulent time, when that was added, but I would imagine that the intent was to clarify that simple, non-creative content does not require attribution. That's basically what's implied by the first sentence, but the subsequent seem to suggest that reading fluidity is the real issue here...and that doesn't make sense. Suppose a public domain source has an excellent description of the flight pattern of a Monarch butterfly and that rewriting it would dilute it. Does this eliminate the attribution requirement, when all that is needed to retain it is a note that it's copied verbatim? (If the passage is non-free, of course, it's even less useful, since copyright law doesn't care if you like the way the copyright holder puts it.)
I propose eliminating everything after the first sentence, replacing it with an expanded explanation that the reason this is not a plagiarism problem is because it lacks the degree of creativity requiring attribution. Maybe something like this:
Phrases that are the simplest and most obvious way to present information. Sentences such as "John Smith was born on 2 February, 1900" lack sufficient creativity to require attribution.
As it is currently written, anyone can claim that any non-free content they've imported requires no attribution if it has a better readability index. Again, all that's required if the content is free to permit its use is attribution. If it's non-free, readability is immaterial.
Thoughts? -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:34, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I've created a notice template for unattributed copying of PD content, here. Wanted to let people know about it in case it can be improved. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:02, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
I note the section Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Where to place attribution added on July 20 2009. This advice seems to be in conflict with Wikipedia:MOS#Section headings which talks of "primary headings are then ==H2==, ===H3===, ====H4====, and so on up to ======H6======" and makes no mention of ad hoc emboldened section headings.
There does seem to be sense in using a section heading to regularise and highlight the attribution of text inserts into articles. Although hitherto I've placed attribution templates under an H2 ==Notes==, I could cope with placing it under an H3 ===Attribution===. Does anyone have thoughts on this?
I note that whatever advice is given here should probably be reflected in Wikipedia:Citing_sources, such that we establish a regular pattern for citations, references, notes, attribution, etc. -- Tagishsimon (talk) 10:31, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
BTW for anyone who is interested: all three templates {{ 1911}},{{ Catholic}} and {{ DNB}} have a flag called "inline=1" which allows them to be used like the {{ citation-attribution}} "To aid with attribution at the end of a few sentences ..." eg <nowkik>{{tl|1911|inline=1|wstitle=A}} returns:
-- PBS ( talk) 10:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi Moonriddengirl, what's your objection to this? It's standard practice per V to use in-text attribution without quotation marks. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 15:39, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
Moonriddengirl said the US government utilizes a "substantial similarity" test intended to determine if infringement exists and that Melville Nimmer produced subcategories of "substantial similarity" for which the courts search.
I think there is a misunderstanding going on. I guess SlimVirgin is probably thinking of quotations of entire paragraphs, using appropriate means for marking them as quotations. If there are no quotation marks this includes at the minimum starting a new paragraph and saying where it is from, but typically that new paragraph is also indented and/or in italics. I think Moonriddengirl is probably thinking of the recent big copyvio case involving an established editor and regular contributor to policy discussions, who thought copy/paste (without quotation marks or other markup) is the only way to avoid original research, and acted accordingly for years. Hans Adler 16:49, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
SV you say that to meet Wikipedia content polices and other guidelines, in-line attribution and an inline-citation are enough, but how is a reader to know if what I have just written is a summary of what you said or a direct quote unless quotes are marked as such? I would assume that although imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, to avoid copyright and plagiarism issues, I would have put in quotes an exact copy of your words. MRG has told me in the past that if a Wikiepdia editor use a well worn phrase -- as I did in the last sentence -- then those do not have to be quoted. On reading that last sentence would you assume that I was quoting verbatim what MRG said to me or paraphrasing what she said to me? -- PBS ( talk) 01:11, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
Someone said the quotation-mark requirement was added after a discussion reached consensus about it. Can someone link to that discussion, please? SlimVirgin talk| contribs 17:59, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
At a literary salon in February 1909, he befriended the novelist Olivia Shakespear—Yeats's former lover and the subject of his The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love—and her daughter, Dorothy, Pound's future wife, who Iris Barry said carried herself with the air of a young Victorian lady out skating, in strong contrast to Pound. [1]
At a literary salon in February 1909, he befriended the novelist Olivia Shakespear—Yeats's former lover and the subject of his The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love—and her daughter, Dorothy, Pound's future wife, who always carried herself delicately with the air of a young Victorian lady out skating. [2]
Pound's future wife, who Iris Barry said carried herself "with the air...of a young Victorian lady out skating"
The first section currently ends as follows:
You can avoid any dispute concerning potential plagiarism by:
- rewriting text completely into your own words, using multiple referenced sources;
- marking any material you copy as a verbatim quote, using quotation marks, and referencing the source; [3]
- properly attributing any public-domain, or free-content text, that you place directly into an article.
- ^ Montgomery, Paul L. Ezra Pound: A Man of Contradictions", The New York Times, 2 November 1972.
- ^ Montgomery, Paul L. Ezra Pound: A Man of Contradictions", The New York Times, 2 November 1972.
- ^ Note that the amount of text you quote from non-free sources must be limited to comply with non-free content guidelines.
Contrary to what the section title suggests, this does not try to define plagiarism but only gives a bright-line rule for those who want to play it safe. How about something like the following instead:
Defining and identifying plagiarism is not as easy as it may appear, but we can establish some bright lines:
- Recognising obvious plagiarism
- More than 20 words are copied from a source with no or minimal rephrasing. The source does not appear in a citation.
- More than 20 words are copied from a source with no or minimal rephrasing. The source appears in a citation, but nothing indicates to the reader that information from the source was copied rather than independently rephrased or summarised.
- Playing it safe
There is a huge area between these two bright lines, and most of it is plagiarism. That said, competent writers have techniques for copying text verbatim without quotation marks and still attributing it correctly to the source. Only try this if you are really sure you understand plagiarism better than 50% of American undergraduate students. [3]
- ^ Note that the amount of text you quote from non-free sources must be limited to comply with non-free content guidelines.
- ^ See 1911 for an example.
- ^ Roig, Miguel (1997), "Can undergraduate students determine whether text has been plagiarized?", The Psychological Record
I probably missed some important things, but maybe this can serve as inspiration for a version that satisfies all concerns. Hans Adler 17:40, 9 October 2010 (UTC)