Talk:Computer Sciences Corporation/Archives/2014

Article reads like a press release in parts

It is obvious from reading the article that PR folks at Computer Sciences Corporation are primary authors. They admit this on the talk page, and add citations to their own press material which is fine, but the language they're using in the article isn't fitting of an encyclopedia.

Some examples:

1. A run-on sentence filled with generalisms and strange capitalization is lifted from the company's own PR material, specifically their 10-K: "The Company also licenses software systems including SaaS offerings for the financial services, healthcare and other industry-specific markets and provides a broad array of end-to-end business solutions that meet the needs of large commercial and government clients."
2. There is a timeline with over 100 items on it, including items as pedestrian as "Celebrates 50-year anniversary"
3. The article generally uses a lot of "business PR speak".
4. Overly detailed list of acquisitions that seems slanted towards pumping up the importance of the acquisitions. For example "DynCorp, one of the largest U.S.-based, employee-owned technology and outsourcing firms sold three DynCorp units (DynCorp International, DynMarine and certain DynCorp Technical Services contracts) to Veritas Capital Fund, LP in 2005"

Timealterer (talk) 08:25, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the article (history section in particular) is pretty messed up, unencyclopaedic. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a half-decent article somewhere in the edits before it was overwritten by PR idiots. Anyone watching this article, please ensure criticism sections are retained. I've very little interest in the subject, but will try to delete some of the junk for now. Edit: actually I've removed a copy of a page from the CSC website and marked it as copyvio - will try to identify the user who did that. Sorry, I don't know if the copyvio process is necessary. --Cedders^tk 12:10, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree some things need to be re-written - but removing large part without any consensus and any effort addressing the issue it somewhat underwhelming. I will edit the section in question - if give me some time (couple of hours) - once I am done you are free to comment. I am also planning a section on data breaches and would be happy to work with s.o. on it. 基 (talk) 14:01, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

If you look a couple of sections up, you'll see that a CSC PR type made an entry stating he or she was going to edit the article. What is needed is to build upon what advertising was added and write proper prose on the subject, with adequate citations. A bit about CSC seeking a leveraged buy out might be in order as well. I'll try to avoid doing so, as I do have a bit of a conflict of interest.Wzrd1 (talk) 18:11, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://in.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=CSC.N. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and according to fair use may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:35, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

The content removed was added in a lump at 09:49 on 5 November 2014‎. Thanks are due to Cedders for removing this and drawing attention to the problem, both of which were absolutely correct courses of action and exactly the right way to address that issue. Looking at this page as a whole, however, I'm concerned that I may not have been careful enough in checking for other copyvios in the history. I'm particularly bothered by the big block of stuff added by an IP at 14:18 on 19 August 2012, which appears to have been copied in part from Reuters. Unfortunately archive.org is out of action so I can't try to check earlier versions of that page. I intend to remove the content as a presumed copyvio; if it turns out that Reuters copied it from us (how likely is that?) it can always be restored. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:49, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I reverted your edit ... the section is sourced properly and the information provided correct.基 (talk) 04:33, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I'll make an effort paraphrasing the 2 sections that are saying word for word the same thing as the company profile on reuters基 (talk) 04:42, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

That's fine – unless of course you have some connection to the company, ChristophThomas? Knowingly adding back (apparently) copyright material that's been removed from the article, on the other hand, is not fine at all. Respect for other people's copyright is Wikipedia policy. I've again removed the text apparently copied from Reuters. Please do not attempt to add it back into the article without first definitively establishing that was original content when first added in 2012. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:24, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I removed the 2 points that you seem to claim are under copyright. 基 (talk) 09:52, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

If you do some research you will see that the wording as they appear in Reuters profile are very similar (if not identical) compared to the wording in quite a few publications - for example in CSC's "TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934" - which is indeed public record and does not fall under copyright protection (I am not suggestion to use that for this article - nor will I provide the research needed to determine how and when and where the text has been published first and). I think you should do more research and become more familiar with the matter before determining that copyright has been infringed (or have the ORTS handle it). Now given the article's unfortunate edit history I do understand your concern and I am sure it was in the article's best interest to point out those passages have been copied word for word from another source. I will add those 2 bullet points again once I have done the needed research. 基 (talk) 10:28, 12 December 2014 (UTC)