Talk:Alexander Berkman/GA1

GA Review

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STATUS: ON HOLD to resolve WP:COPYVIO concerns. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 14:22, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Large sections of text word-for-word identical with book:

Emma Goldman: Anarchist Woman

By Biographiq

Published by Filiquarian Publishing, LLC., 2008

ISBN 1599862158, 9781599862156

This book is GFDL licensed (!) which makes it look like a rip-off of Wikipedia. But the book was published (according to Amazon) in Jan '08; text I saw in article was added Dec. '08.
If nominator could scan the following and email it to me, that might be of some help:
Wexler, Emma Goldman in America, pp. 63–65.
Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 14:28, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As I wrote at Talk:Alexander Berkman, portions of the article are based on Emma Goldman, which may have been the basis for the Emma Goldman biography. I assure you that I don't know anything about the book you mention, and I certainly didn't copy-and-paste anything except from Emma Goldman, as stated at Talk:Alexander Berkman.

I'll scan the pages from Emma Goldman in America over the weekend or on Monday. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 17:48, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A-ha! Thanks to your explanation, I found this, which confirms that the edit predates the publication of the book in question. The book is a Wikipedia rip-off. All is cool, at least for GA.
BUT For FA purposes you need to be very, very careful!!! Copying from Wikipedia articles is a no-no, believe it or not. Wikipedia is not a WP:RS (isn't it ironic?). This is not just a theoretical question: I once screamed about copying from a French-Wikipedia FA, and tracked down all the sources until I found a convincing-looking bit of anti-American propaganda—propagated from the French FA to enwiki—that was not in the original sources, and had even been rmvd from the French wiki (I guess it was a sneaky-vandal or something). SO, all anecdotes aside, if you copy from Wikipedia, you have to either verify everything you copy by going back to the original sources, or pore through the article history page (as I just did) and get the original contributor of that info to verify it. Wikipedia is not RS; anything copied across articles needs to be re-verified, especially at the FA level. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 03:29, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have copies of the original sources and verified everything that was added to Alexander Berkman. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 04:42, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You need an image guru to help you out with File:Berkman with Frick (1892).jpg, which has a watermark, which is strongly discouraged by Commons policy. But "discouraged" is not "forbidden", and this is GA not FA. Please take care of this... but I won't fail GA because of it. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 03:35, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I cleaned up the picture, removing the watermark and sharpening the image. I also made it sepia-tone to hide some stains in the picture. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 05:13, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PASS GA. Good luck with future FA attempts! Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 04:21, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 04:23, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]