Miscellaneous desk
< April 3	<< Mar \| April \| May >>	April 5 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 4

Copyright and wikipedia

So i'm a student, and i have some books that claim to use wikipedia as a reference. and i say claim because i don't know if they actually use it as a reference or they just put it there so that students can go to wikipedia, i just don't know. but those books also say that all rights are reserved. what should be done about it? Pancho507 (talk) 08:11, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is a collection of previously published information, not a primary source in itself. Everything on Wikipedia should have a source to a previous publication such as a book, journal article or website. That is what you should be citing, not the Wikipedia article. --Viennese Waltz 08:50, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the book you're reading may well quote accurately a Wikipedia article as it was when the author of your book was consulting it, but by the time the book is published and readers get to read it, the WP article almost certainly no longer says that. That is another reason why you should always cite the sources WP used, never the WP article itself. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:05, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As to the question "What should be done about it?", probably nothing, pancho. Why would you expect to do anything about it, if they are not books written by you, they are just books using Wikipedia incorrectly, but it is not your problem, is it? --Lgriot (talk) 13:44, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's really very simple. When someone says their information is sourced to Wikipedia it probably is. The reason they do that is because the licence says that Wikipedia may be freely copied, but when you copy it you must say so. (Better to write the OP's name with a capital "P" otherwise people might think you're being funny). 2A00:23C0:7D00:FB01:9085:F688:DA72:51F1 (talk) 15:03, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, Cisco? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:47, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Fair use. —Nricardo (talk) 01:23, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean "use Wikipedia as a reference" or "literally copies Wikipedia articles"? Obviously if they are claiming copyright over work they did not create, that claim is invalid. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:11, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On that note, my impression of your original question, which could be the wrong impression, is that you assume that when Wikipedia's creative commons license requires "all derivative works" to carry a compatible license, that this includes works referencing Wikipedia. This is not the case. A derivative work is one that includes major copyrightable elements of a prior work. Simply referring to a prior work does not make a new work derivative. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:16, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Beside that, 'referencing WP' doesn't mean necessarily that the whole book builds upon WP, so there can be parts of his work on which the autor has some rights to reserve. 89.204.138.56 (talk) 16:54, 8 April 2019 (UTC) Marco Pagliero Berlin[reply]