Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:41, 21 June 2008

User:Andries/Wikipedia:plagiarism and when you copy something do not forget to cite me :) Andries 20:26, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to separate this from a redirect to Misplaced Pages:Copyright

Plagiarism is a broader topic than copyright infringement. Suggest we change Misplaced Pages:Plagiarism to a soft redirect with a proposal template and work out a functional definition of what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. Durova 22:00, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

• See my post at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy) I can't see where there is a problem without a solution. Jeepday (talk) 22:35, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

• • I don't know what a "soft redirect" is. Let's just make this not a redirect, and work through policy. Here are some issues I raised with Carol Spears before:

Unique descriptions and phrases copied exactly from books must be put in quotation marks as I did with "in the rock crevices and water-receiving depressions". It is not enough to correctly attribute the source, if the same exact phrase is used it must be in quotation marks. --Blechnic (talk) 00:22, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

In this case I would add, in addition to unique descriptions and phrases, entire sentences or longer portions of text. It's a simple guideline. --Blechnic (talk) 15:59, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Al, plagiarism is plagiarism, but putting stuff in quotation marks does not give us the right to use as much as we want, and this runs into copyright violations, where all or most or large, inappropriate, non fair-use portions of a text are incorporated whole into articles on Misplaced Pages, for example, this well cited article:

• Deux Balés National Park copied from:
• http://sea.unep-wcmc.org/sites/pa/0108p.htm

--Blechnic (talk) 22:53, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I think we should do one or the other: ignore the copyright issue, it exists but at a certain level is wholly separate from the issue of copy-pasting anything, public domain, free license, works-for-hire - not a legal topic but rather an ethical topic; or, lets pretend that plagiarism of a PD work is exactly equivalent to a copyvio. We should pick one or the other approach, else this discussion will always be disrupted by the interested editor interjecting "that's a copvio!" - but that's not what we're about here, right? Franamax (talk) 01:47, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I support this suggestion, just making a policy on plagiarism, after all, that's what we came for. --Blechnic (talk) 02:31, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Resources

External links

• Indiana University guidlines
• Purdue University guidelines
• Lots of other universities, presumably...

Misplaced Pages articles

• Plagiarism (our article on it) and the see alsos and sources and external links
  • Academic dishonesty
  • List of plagiarism controversies

Internal pages

• User:Andries/Wikipedia:plagiarism - old attempt at a guideline
• User:MPD01605/Template:Plagiarism - old attempt at a warning template
• Misplaced Pages:Copyright problems#Plagiarism that does not infringe copyright - section at Misplaced Pages:Copyright problems

Related policies and pages

Public domain materials and templates

• User:Magnus Manske/Dictionary of National Biography (one example - there may be others)
• Category:Attribution templates (lots of useful examples here)

Previous discussions

• Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Plagiarism (from here)
• User talk:Carcharoth#Copyright stuff
• Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#Misplaced Pages:Plagiarism
• Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Continued plagiarism on DYK?

Please add more links as needed. Carcharoth (talk) 23:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Starting some text

I like Andries plagia-def, but I'm not satisfied with it. The "dishonestly" bit seems to me to exclude good-faith copying, which was evident in the recent incident which brought us here. Here we need the WP definition of what is and is not plagiarism. I'm also not comfortable with the ORI definition, since we are all about totally incorporating other people's ideas, any ideas other than our own in fact. Thus, I'm copying over my proposed initial text, to be dismembered at will:

• "Plagiarism is the copying of material produced by others, either verbatim or with only minimal changes, without attributing that material to the original author. Material can be plagiarized from books and other printed media, websites, and GFDL-licensed works, such as the work of other Misplaced Pages editors. The copyright status of the work is irrelevant, directly copying a public-domain work is still plagiarism unless the original work is noted. Material in infoboxes (corporate data, species taxonomy, etc.) is not considered as plagiarized." Franamax (talk) 03:17, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the "other Misplaced Pages editors" bit works. Some editors release their contributions into the public domain (but there is no obvious indication of that), but more relevantly, copying of other editors' work takes place all the time. Attribution is sometimes only through the page history or an edit summary, rather than in the text. When you rewrite any article, you are adding yourself to a general list of authors, and kind of taking 'general credit' for the resulting article, so talking about plagiarising doesn't make sense here. What is plagiarising is if you use a Misplaced Pages article (or part of it) outside Misplaced Pages without crediting Misplaced Pages (ideally you provide a link so people can look up the authors, but at minimum people need to make clear "this is from Misplaced Pages - I did not write this"). The infoboxes thing needs tweaking as well - most data (but not all), but not "distinctive phrases of text". If you say in the infobox that someone is "best known for being 'The Man of Steel'", you should quote it and make clear it is a promotional, probably trademarked, tagline, not a description that you wrote (eg. "best known for climbing Everest"). Not the best example, I know, and the distinctiveness of the phrase means most people would realise what you meant, but still. One more point: "directly copying a public-domain work is still plagiarism unless the original work is noted" - people will think that it is enough to put a reference tag and give the source. That is not sufficient. You need to make clear by the layout of the text that the wording is not ours. In other words, the quoted text needs to be offset from the surrounding text, or the right template put at the bottom to indicate that the article is substantially (or wholly) from this PD source. Quite when the line is reached when incremental rewrites mean no "distinctive trace" of the original is left, I don't know. I don't think anyone is going to go back through all the 1911 stuff and check for that. Carcharoth (talk) 06:48, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Plagiarising other wiki-editors can happen when you lift text from one place and drop it in another without giving attribution. Here's an example where another editor liked my work well enough to copy it elsewhere, with attribution. Another example would be copying text from a deleted article, Mr. wikibiz got all tied up in a knot about that a little while ago. Moving text within an article is fine of course, since it's tracked by the history.

The wording on infoboxes does need clarification, I was thinking of factual items that are impossible to restate.

And yes, this guideline needs to lay out exactly when and how you indicate that you've directly copied a source, preferably with some examples. Franamax (talk) 17:36, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Copying from elsewhere on Misplaced Pages

(new sub thread)

As per Carcharoth, I normally only attribute Misplaced Pages copies with an edit summary. With that summary, it is similar in principle to cutting a paragraph from one section of an article and moving it to another. This is also normal practice for people who translate articles among the different language Wikipedias. Are you suggesting that this is somehow problematic, though we say on every edit page If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it. ?

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 19:49, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Is there something unclear about "without attributing that material to the original author"? If you attribute in the edit summary, as in the example I gave above, you're doing it right. If you copy someone else's work and pretend it's your own original material, it's wrong. Translations are just the same, if you say "translated from de:wiki", you're giving the traceback to the original authors. If you translate it then say "I wrote this article", you're doing things the wrong way. This is why we need a guideline, to lay out what's acceptable and what's not. Franamax (talk) 20:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I understand your drift now. Lets add a sentence to one of the existing guidelines or new editor guides to say that. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 20:26, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Why?

why do we need a policy for plagiarism of public domain works. It is not illegal and lack of citation is already covered by established policy. Lack of a policy does not indicate need of a policy. Jeepday (talk) 13:28, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

The difference is between: (a) copying text and sticking a reference tag on something; and (b) explicitly saying (with quote marks or naming the source in the text) that you are using someone else's words to express their idea or concept. Wording like The event was described as "horrific" (Baker, 2001) and "horrendous" (Smith, 2007) as opposed to This was an horrific event <ref>Baker (2001)</ref>. Other forms (both acceptable) are This was an "horrific" event <ref>Baker (2001)</ref> and Baker, in his book published in 2001, described the event as "horrific". Again, not a great example, but the exact approach to take always depends on the exact context. As regards public domain material, Durova gave the example of Felbrigge Psalter. Look at the blockquoted section from Davenport (1903). If you fail to use blockquotes (or something similar), or fail to say "Davenport describes the back cover in the following manner", then you risk misleading the reader as to who is saying what. Consider it as being the difference between the editorial/authorial voice of the multitude of Misplaced Pages editors, and the voice of the sources. You can rewrite the latter to get to the former, but insufficient rewriting is plagiarism, and quoting without attribution is also plagiarism. Is that clearer? Have I got any of that wrong? Carcharoth (talk) 13:47, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure it is wrong, but we are not going to block anyone for copying a public domain work. It happened en masse about 2002 when articles were imported for EB 1911 (a lot of those editors are probably highly respected admins now.) Another editor will come along and add the quote marks. That is the wiki way. Why do we need a policy for what editors do anyway? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 19:39, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm a bit twitchy about the citation on the 1911 EB import, but at least the effort was made to credit the source—as far as I know, every one of those articles was started with a Template:1911 attached. As well, much of the 1911 material is dated in style or content, and I expect that it will tend to gradually erode out of Misplaced Pages as we get around to updating those articles.

I absolutely think we should block anyone who – after a warning – insists upon copying public domain material without attribution. Indeed, I will block any such individual who comes to my attention. (I would give credit to anyone who makes a good-faith attempt to cite their sources, of course—many people have never been taught how to properly footnote, and wikimarkup can be daunting even to academics. Just pasting a URL after a block of quoted text is enough of a pointer for a wikignome to use, and demonstrates the intention to give proper credit.)

Of course, I'm not sure that it's always wise to look back to the way things were done in 2002 to govern how we ought to manage things now. Just as one might say "another editor will come along and add the quote marks" now, back then someone might say "another editor will come and fact-check John Seigenthaler's biography". Out of that mess, we got a dreadful amount of bad press, and harsh policy imposed rapidly from on high: WP:BLP.

Do I expect this to become another Seigenthaler incident? Well, probably not. The press don't tend to have the patience or the appreciation for nuance to present this type of issue—but I could be mistaken. Still, this does have the potential to have a slow, steady, erosive effect on Misplaced Pages's reputation, and is likely to be most damaging among the experts whom we most want to recruit to our project. At some point – and I think it should be now – we have to stop saying "someone will fix it eventually" and start saying "let's start cleaning up, and let's not let it get any worse". TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:01, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I also just found Category:Attribution templates (some useful ones there - there are a lot more than just the 1911 ones), another ANI debate here and I remembered my example of an on-wiki collection of PD-material - see here. Your comment (in the edit summary) that we need to step up is quite true. Similar sentiments were expressed here:

"When Misplaced Pages was young, the threshold for copying was similar to a blog or diary. Now that Misplaced Pages is established, firm and harsh rules must apply. Misplaced Pages must follow the same rules as print encyclopedias. No copying, no plagiarism, no moving a few words around. Those who do must be notified and asked to stop. We have to start acting like a trustworthy group, not a band of kids writing half-copied term papers. We also need to have good customer service and courtesy, not gossip, IRC, etc." Model710 (talk) 18:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree absolutely with what Model710 said. Carcharoth (talk) 23:27, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To TenofAllTrades: After 1 warning? Boy, you are strict. We don't do that for vandals.

By the way, I agree that the EB 1911 import is horrible, and the pesky tag should be deprecated in some way. As far as I can tell we didn't have history back then (I am a 2006 newbie) so it is not always clear even to an editor where EB ends and Wikipedians begin. This is how I like to extensively copy from public domain sources, if I really have to, which is more or less how the Manual of Style tells me to.

We already have several policies and guidelines that cover public domain plagiarism and attribution in some detail. (I added some links and quotes above.) Maybe we need to add a brief sentence at or near Misplaced Pages:Copyright problems#Plagiarism that does not infringe copyright reminding people that changing a few words in a sentence or stream of thought is still copying? Instead of a brand new guideline page, perhaps what might be useful is a tutorial to help people teach themselves the difference between original writing and original research, as that is something distinctive to encyclopedia writing that you won't get in school.

After all that, all I am saying is: this is much easier to do than negotiating a new guideline page, getting consensus for its contents, and getting it read by new editors.

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 23:46, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

That is an interesting link you provided to that astronaut bio with large chunks of quoted text. The "1911" way can be seen in the articles using the templates at Category:Attribution templates. Some examples: Template:Factbook, Template:Catholic, Template:1728, Template:Appletons, Template:Harper's Encyclopedia, Template:A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, Template:USDA, and so on. It seems there was never really a debate over which way was better. Carcharoth (talk) 23:59, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

It may have been decided which was better without a debate. Someone wrote the block quote way into WP:V and WP:MOS and somehow it gained consensus. It is decent, honest and reasonable. Other people saw the 1911 example and continued to emulate it. (That was how Piers Sellers looked before I added the block quotes.) We should think of a kind and gentle way to stop them.

The 1911 example makes me uncomfortable for a number of reasons, but plagiarism is not the main one (after all the tag puts our collective hand up to that). The main issues for me are verifiability and accuracy (as none of those imports that I have seen yet cited EB 1911's sources!), and the stuff that was added after the import that never got attributed. This, to me, seems worse than the newcomer who comes along and writes a new article out of his head because at least we know that it did come from his head, and we should check it and fix it.

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 00:21, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and made a hack-job of a start for Misplaced Pages:Plagiarism. I do think it's an important enough topic to rate it's own guideline, so it can be easily linked. OTOH I won't shed a single tear if that mess I made gets reverted back. Oh yeah, can anyone spot the bit I plagiarised? :) Franamax (talk) 00:40, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Started a new section below to start discussing the actual wording of the page. Carcharoth (talk) 08:03, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Come to think of it, this is why we need it (some context). MER-C 13:41, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Wording of the proposed policy or guideline (1)

Thanks to Franamax for being bold and making a start on this. Some of the previous discussions and links in the "resources" section above will be useful, so we should mine stuff from there (um, with attribution within reason - attributing stuff from other Misplaced Pages pages in honoured more in the breach than in reality - altering stuff within a page is dealt with in the page history - acknowledging movement of text between pages is, and always has been, more problematic - many people don't see the difference). Anyway, my changes are offered up below for review if needed:

• Example of how to quote and attribute material from other Misplaced Pages pages. The astronaut example should also be given, I think, as that is more relevant here.
• This bit here is a critical point. Is it right? Could it be made clearer?
• I'm uncertain how to phrase the common facts and data bit. My attempt is here. Improvements and corrections welcomed.
• I tried to address plagiarism of copyrighted works with this bit here. Again, improvements and corrections welcomed.
• What else is needed?
  • The overall structure need an overhaul - some stuff in the lead section needs summarising and being moved to its own section below.
  • The resources section needs writing, with suitable external links - what links would be best?
  • The set of templates used needs to be overhauled and tidied up. Probably some new ones are needed as well, though that can swiftly become very bureaucratic.

Anything else? Carcharoth (talk) 08:03, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Cripes Carch, you go on at length, I expand at the slightest provocation. We might as well bring in FT2 and ask NYB to do a cameo :) Which one of the Norns was it who held the scissors and cut the yarn when it was time? Or put another way, nice work, but we do have to watch the length to make this remotely accessible when it's done, so I hope we will all wield a judicious sword beside the pen. I'm happy to see this underway though :) Franamax (talk) 08:55, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

If we go all Greek, it was Atropos (yes, I had to look that up). I did write directly into the lead section, partly because the bits below were, well, not ready to be used yet! :-) Once the structure settles down, the lead section should be much shorter and most people will only read that. Some people will only read the nutshell. Do you agree with the concept of nutshells? Want to write the first attempt at a nutshell? :-) Carcharoth (talk) 09:14, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm more from the Nordic tradition, there was one crone with a big foot from spinning the wheel, one with a big thumb from arranging the multi-coloured threads of the lives of men (women too I guess, they didn't language-ize in those days), and the third one with the big scissors, when the thread of a man's life was done, she cut the thread. Most mythological, also helpful at funerals. OTOH, Atropos gave us a useful drug. I'm iffy on nutshells, especially because they have to fit inside something small, but I gave it a try. The wonderful thing about Misplaced Pages is that you can be sure someone will come along sooner or later and fix up your lame efforts. And if they don't, maybe it wasn't so lame after all. :) Franamax (talk) 09:38, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I dumped in a few examples on how to properly attribute PD material and sketched out some other stuff. What I'd like is

• How to spot plagiarism, especially of the uncited type.
• Cookie-cutter user warning templates
• We need to say that Misplaced Pages is a scholarly work, etc in the intro. After all, this is why we're discussing this.
• A good, free (software) plagiarism detector. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm 1337 enough for this task and my (offline) Misplaced Pages to-do list is embarassingly long as it is.
• An article issue template/associated category, something like (once again, a crude sketch):

• What do we do with articles which show up on WP:SCV and consist entirely of one copied sentence?

I think that's enough for the time being. Eviscerate away. MER-C 13:19, 21 June 2008 (UTC)