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Licensing vote begins

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WMF petitions Obama, longer AFDs, UK meeting, and more

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Let's get serious about plagiarism

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2009-04-13

Licensing vote begins

By Phoebe

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More articles

License update, Google Translate, GLAM conference, Paid editing 15 June 2009 Licensing vote results announced, resolution passed 25 May 2009 Licensing vote begins 13 April 2009 Community weighs license update 30 March 2009 License update, Commons cartoons, films milestone, and more 16 March 2009 News and notes: Elections, licensing update, and more 8 February 2009 GFDL 1.3 released, will allow Wikimedia migration to Creative Commons license 17 November 2008

The Wikimedia Foundation-wide vote on licensing began on April 12. The vote, which is securely administered for the Foundation by Software in the Public Interest, is advertised through a CentralNotice for logged-in editors; the voting page can be accessed directly here.

Any editor (excluding bots) who has made at least 25 edits to any Wikimedia project prior to March 15, 2009 is welcome to participate. The vote is regarding whether the Wikimedia Foundation should adopt Creative Commons dual-licensing for the projects.

The voting page reads:

Specifically, the Wikimedia Foundation proposal is to amend site-wide licensing terms and terms of use for all projects as follows:

1. to make all content currently distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License (with “later version” clause) additionally available under CC-BY-SA 3.0, as explicitly allowed through the latest version of the GFDL;
2. to require continued dual-licensing of new community edits in this manner, but allow content from third parties to be under CC-BY-SA only;
3. to inform re-users that content which includes imported CC-BY-SA-only information cannot be used under the GFDL.

As is consistent with established policy and practice, and as is consistent with the CC-BY-SA license model, authors and editors will also be required to consent to being credited by re-users; at minimum, this will be done through a hyperlink or URL to the article they are contributing to.

The vote has three options:

• Yes, I am in favor of this change
• No, I am opposed to this change
• I do not have an opinion on this change

The vote will run until May 3, 2009. Voters may change their minds and resubmit their votes after voting.

If more than 50% of voters are opposed to the change, it will not be implemented and further discussion will ensue; if more than 50% of voters are in favor, it will be referred to the Foundation Board of Trustees.

The proposal has been the subject of much debate within the community, following the extensive process that resulted in the GFDL 1.3 license that allows for the switch. Much of the discussion has been on Foundation-l, but the main pages about the proposal are on Meta. The Foundation has answered some questions on the FAQ page, while some of the arguments against the proposal may be found at the open oppositional arguments page.

Questions regarding the vote can be referred to the Licensing committee; the proposal itself can be discussed on the FAQ talk page.

See also

• Vote for Wikipedia's Future! on WikiLog
  
  Reader comments
  

2009-04-13

WMF petitions Obama, longer AFDs, UK meeting, and more

By Phoebe and Tilman Bayer

Wikimedia Foundation joins protest against Obama's RIAA appointments

Wired reports that on 2 April the Wikimedia Foundation, together with 18 other "public interest groups, library associations, and trade associations representing the technology, consumer electronics, and telecommunications industries" (among them the Internet Archive, Public Knowledge, the American Library Association and Educause) has signed an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama expressing concern that

several of your appointees to positions that oversee the formulation and implementation of IP [ intellectual property ] policy have, immediately prior to their appointments, represented the concentrated copyright industries

Wired indicates that two of these are the former Recording Industry Association of America attorneys Donald Verrilli Jr. and Tom Perrilli who were appointed to two of the highest ranking positions in the US Department of Justice (Associate Deputy Attorney General and Associate Attorney General); the Department of Justice subsequently sided with the RIAA in an important lawsuit. The letter asks Mr. Obama

to consider that individuals who support overly broad IP protection might favor established distribution models at the expense of technological innovators, creative artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and an increasingly participatory public. Overzealous expansion and enforcement of copyright, for example, can quash innovative information technologies, the development and marketing of new and useful devices, and the creation of new works, as well as prohibit the public from accessing and using its cultural heritage.

AFD length extended, and discussions discussed

Following discussion, the length of the discussion period for Articles for Deletion has been changed to 7 days, instead of the current 5. The discussion was carried with 45 supports to 16 opposes. Arguments in favor of the change involved bringing AFD in line with RFA, where discussions are 7 days to allow editors who can only edit on certain days to participate; to increase participation and decrease complaints about unfair closes; and for fairness in discussions that may require research or extra effort to determine the best outcome. Arguments against included the potential increased workload, with more AFDs open at any given time; that it might increase early closings and that relisted AFDs would be open for as long as two weeks; and that the proposal was unnecessary as AFDs with no consensus after 5 days are already routinely relisted, and the majority of AFDs are resolved within only 3 days.

After being mentioned on the mailing list wiken-l, a brief discussion ensued about whether the proposed change had been publicized well enough, and a notice was posted on the administrator's noticeboard. As a result of the mailing list discussion, a new page, Wikipedia:Advertising discussions, was created; it is about how to best advertise important discussions in the Wikipedia community.

Wikimedia UK to hold first general meeting

Wikimedia UK, which was recently re-formed and approved as a chapter by the Wikimedia Foundation, is holding its first Annual General Meeting at the University of Manchester Students' Union. The formal business of the meeting will include the election of a new Board of Directors and voting on several resolutions (focusing on election rules, membership rules, membership fees, and whether permission of the membership is required to terminate or amend the chapter agreement). A list of those running for the Board can be found here. Discussions during the meeting will focus on the priorities of the Board for the upcoming year and how to make the chapter a success.

Membership in Wikimedia UK is open to all, and is not restricted by age or location; current membership fees are £12 a year. This is the second time Wikimedia UK has been formed; it was first formed in 2006, then dissolved and re-formed in 2008.

Sanger speaks out

Larry Sanger posted an open letter to Jimmy Wales' talk page last week, outlining his dispute with Wales over the issue of who founded Wikipedia. Sanger, who said he was "finally speaking out," disputed Wales' version of Wikipedia's history from several interviews, including a recent Hot Press interview, and included two requests: that the Wikimedia Foundation issue a statement that both Sanger and Wales are co-founders of Wikipedia, and that reporters who interview Wales about the early history of Wikipedia also interview Sanger.

The lengthy letter was removed by Wales from his talk page with a brief edit summary of "Decline to participate, sorry"; the letter was then reposted by Sanger on the Citizendium blog and the wikien-l mailing list, where discussion ensued. After further discussion on his talk page, Wales posted a short statement saying in part "As I have said many times, I think the entire 'controversy' is silly....Larry didn't make Wikipedia, and neither did I. It was made by the community, and lots of people played interesting roles. If other people feel a burning need to discuss this, please do so elsewhere other than my talk page; I'm not interested in discussing it at this time."

The issue of Sanger and Wales' respective roles in the founding of Wikipedia, particularly whether they should be considered co-founders of the site, has been a source of contention in the past.

Ruling on public domain content

Ars Technica reports that a U.S. federal court issued a ruling on the copyright case Golan v. Gonzales, finding that it violates the First Amendment for a law to move works back under copyright after they have passed into the public domain. While copyright activists such as Lawrence Lessig and Anthony Falzone hail this as an important victory, further appeals are expected.

Briefly

• The chapter grants funding process deadline has been extended to April 21 (see previous story)
• The Films Wikiproject has elected new coordinators; they are Collectonian, Erik, Girolamo Savonarola, Lugnuts, Nehrams2020, PC78, and Sephiroth BCR.
• A physics paper called "Scale-free topology of the interlanguage links in Wikipedia" by Łukasz Bolikowski has been posted in the ArXiv; it focuses on the structure of the topical network of interlanguage links in Wikipedia. The results can be viewed interactively on Interwiki drifting.
  
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2009-04-13

Let's get serious about plagiarism

By Awadewit, Elcobbola, Jbmurray, Kablammo, Moonriddengirl and Tony1

Plagiarism, as Wikipedia's article on the topic explains, "is the use or close imitation of the language and ideas of another author and representation of them as one's own original work." At best it is intellectual sloppiness and at worst outright theft. As Robin Levin Penslar notes in Research Ethics: Cases and Materials, "The real penalty for plagiarism is the abhorrence of the community of scholars." It can bring a community into disrepute. Wikipedia's editors should create their own articles, not adopt the work of others. But while this is an easy approach to recommend, plagiarism may not be as simple as it first seems—it is often committed inadvertently. The best way to prevent plagiarism is to understand clearly what it is, how to avoid it, and how to address it when it appears.

Understanding plagiarism

Wikipedia is not a primary source and contains no original research; therefore, everything that appears on Wikipedia should be rooted in a reliable source. The problem with plagiarism is not that it involves the use of other people's ideas, but rather that other people's words or ideas are misrepresented—specifically that they are presented as though they were "an editor's own original work". Even if contributors provide a citation for a sentence, it may still be plagiarism if they do not clearly indicate with quotation marks the duplication of the source's wording. Citations are universally understood as indicating a source for information, not as a license to copy the original wording.

There are three major ways to plagiarize:

1. Failing to acknowledge the source of quotations and borrowed ideas;
2. Failing to clearly mark copied language with quotation marks;
3. Failing to sufficiently adapt a summary or paraphrase and thus following the wording of a source too closely

Plagiarism and copyright infringement

It is not permitted to pretend the work composed by another person is your own, even if it is "out of copyright" and "in the public domain".

Plagiarism is not the same as copyright infringement: material can be plagiarized from both copyrighted and public domain sources. One report about a plagiarism scandal on Wikipedia claimed that "Wikipedia editors ... declared a handful [of the allegedly plagiarized articles] to be OK because copied passages came from the public domain." If this was indeed the reaction of Wikipedia editors, they were mistaken. To clarify this, think of the famous opening line of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice (1813): "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." The text of this novel, like the text of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, is in the public domain. However, these are Austen's words and even though no one owns the copyright to them any longer, we need to acknowledge that the wording is hers. By inserting this sentence without quotation marks into an article, Wikipedia editors would be plagiarizing Austen. Apart from the ethical need to credit her for her words, Wikipedia has a scholarly duty to inform its readers of the source of such a sentence, including the page number where the sentence can be found in the source.

Wikipedia policies say much about copyright violation, but far less about plagiarism. The guideline on the topic was written only last year and has yet to be adopted by the community. However, Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales took a clear stand on the issue in 2005: "Let me say quite firmly that for me, the legal issues [surrounding plagiarism] are important, but far far far more important are the moral issues. We want to be able, all of us, to point at Wikipedia and say: we made it ourselves, fair and square."

What to cite: the "common knowledge" exception

Not every fact contained in a Wikipedia article requires attribution. When a fact is "common knowledge"—that is, generally known—it is not plagiarism to repeat it, even if contributors learned it from a specific reference. For example, it is commonly known that Emily Dickinson published very few poems during her lifetime. Generally, if information is mentioned in many sources, especially general reference sources, and easily found, it is considered common knowledge. It is also acceptable to reproduce non-creative lists of basic information, such as an alphabetical directory of actors appearing in a film. While Wikipedia's verifiability policy encourages the citing of such information, a failure to do so is not plagiarism.

Although common knowledge and non-creative lists of basic facts do not "belong" to a source and do not require attribution to avoid plagiarism, less commonly known information, opinions and creative text do. Likewise, the creative presentation even of common knowledge, belongs to its original author. Contributors can safely re-use the fact, but not the language unless it is a title, as for a job or a creative work, or utterly devoid of creativity, such as a common phrase. From a copyright standpoint, the level of creativity required to claim ownership is minimal. The United States Supreme Court has indicated that under US copyright law, which governs copyright matters on Wikipedia, "[t]he vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, 'no matter how crude, humble or obvious' it might be." Similarly, most text will be creative enough that its replication will be plagiarism. Accordingly, while text such as "Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830" can be copied without quotation marks, care must be taken not to rely too much on the presumption that text is not creative. Further, one cannot copy an entire source in this way, claiming that it is "common knowledge" or uncreative text. In such cases, it can come down to the length of a string of exactly copied words; good editors get a feel for where it's starting to be dishonest not to attribute.

Less commonly known facts or interpretations of facts must be cited to avoid plagiarism, and creative text must either be quoted or properly revised.

Avoiding plagiarism

To construct articles that read smoothly while still remaining faithful to their sources, it is essential to learn how to properly use other people's ideas and words. Wikipedia contributors need to know when to give credit, how to adapt source material so that it can be used in an article, and when to use quotations.

Quotation

"Until the beginning of the 18th century, quotation marks were used in England only to call attention to sententious remarks."

When editors want to use verbatim excerpts of a source, there is one simple way to avoid plagiarism: use direct quotations. The words from the source should be reproduced exactly as they appear in the original, enclosed within quotation marks, and identified by an inline citation after the quotation. However, direct quotations should not be overused. They run the risk of copyright infringement if the sources used are not free. Wikipedia's non-free content guidelines offer some guidance on when to use direct quotations and remind us that the "[e]xtensive quotation of copyrighted text is prohibited." But even when free sources are used, the overuse of direct quotation produces articles that are simply collections of quotations. The risk is a fragmentary effect in which the broader context of the quoted material is unclear, and readers are left to piece together the information, which often involves shifts in writing style.

Quotations should generally be used in the following situations:

• "When language is especially vivid or expressive"
• "When exact wording is needed for technical accuracy"
• "When it is important to let the debaters of an issue explain their positions in their own words"
• "When the words of an important authority lend weight to an argument"
• "When the language of a source is the topic of your discussion"

Adapting sources: paraphrasing and summarizing

Source text is usually adapted using a combination of paraphrase and summary. These two styles generally differ in their level of detail. A summary is more likely to be used for longer expanses of text and to cover only the major points in a passage, omitting or touching lightly on examples or definitions; a summary is generally expected to be considerably shorter than the original source. By contrast, paraphrasing is more likely to be closer to the original and may be nearly as long as or even longer than the source.

Adapting source text, whether by paraphrasing or summarizing, is a valuable skill, and contributors to Wikipedia need to be alert to the potential for inadvertent plagiarism. Many editors believe that by changing a few words here or there—or even by changing a great number of the words found in the original source—they have avoided plagiarism. This is not necessarily the case. Nor does the mere rearrangement of clauses, sentences, or paragraphs avoid the problem.

Problems in paraphrasing

In this example, Wikipedia's article text is an attempt at paraphrasing the source. However, almost all of the original word choice, word order and sentence structure is retained.

Source

"A statement from the receiver, David Carson of Deloitte, confirmed that 480 of the 670 employees have been made redundant ... At least 100 Waterford Crystal employees are refusing to leave the visitors' gallery at the factory tonight and are staging an unofficial sit-in. The employees say they will not be leaving until they meet with Mr Carson. There were some scuffles at one point and a main door to the visitors' centre was damaged ... Local Sinn Féin Councillor Joe Kelly, who is one of those currently occupying the visitors' gallery, said the receiver had told staff he would not close the company while there were interested investors."

Wikipedia article:

"A statement issued by the receiver, Deloitte's David Carson, confirmed that, of the 670 employees, 480 of them would be laid off. The workers responded angrily to this unexpected decision and at least 100 of them began an unofficial sit-in in the visitors' gallery at the factory that night. They insisted they would refuse to leave until they had met with Carson. Following the revelations, there was a minor scuffle during which the main door to the visitors' centre was damaged. Local Sinn Féin Councillor Joe Kelly was amongst those who occupied the visitors' gallery."

Analysis:

• "A statement issued by the receiver, Deloitte's David Carson, confirmed that, of the 670 employees, 480 of them would be laid off" vs. "A statement from the receiver, David Carson of Deloitte, confirmed that 480 of the 670 employees have been made redundant". – The structure of Wikipedia's statement is essentially the same as the original. Changing a single word and slightly reordering one phrase is not enough to constitute a paraphrase.
• "They insisted they would refuse to leave until they had met with Carson" vs. "The employees say they will not be leaving until they meet with Mr Carson". – The structure of this sentence is the same.
• "there was a minor scuffle during which the main door to the visitors' centre was damaged" vs. "There were some scuffles at one point and a main door to the visitors' centre was damaged". – The structure and language of the two sentences are the same.
• "Local Sinn Féin Councillor Joe Kelly was amongst those who occupied the visitors' gallery" vs. "Local Sinn Féin Councillor Joe Kelly, who is one of those currently occupying the visitors' gallery". – This slight rewording does not change the fact that the underlying structure and language are the same. Minor changes, such as "was amongst those" --> "is one of those" and "occupied" --> "currently occupying", are not enough to constitute an original rewriting of the passage.

Good adaptation practice

In terms of both plagiarism and copyright, the author of a text not only "owns" the precise, creative language he or she uses, but less tangible creative features of presentation, which may incorporate the structure of the piece and the choice of facts. In terms of plagiarism, but not copyright, the author also "owns" the facts or his or her interpretation of them, unless these are, as mentioned above, common knowledge. Revising to avoid plagiarism means completely restructuring a source in word choice and arrangement while giving due credit for the ideas and information taken from it.

In this paraphrase, the language and structure of the passage has been significantly altered, making it an original expression of the ideas. The ideas have, of course, been properly credited.

Source:

"In earlier times, surveillance was limited to the information that a supervisor could observe and record firsthand and to primitive counting devices. In the computer age surveillance can be instantaneous, unblinking, cheap, and, maybe most importantly, easy." — From Carol Botan and Mihaela Vorvoreanu, "What do Employees Think about Electronic Surveillance at Work"? p.  126

Paraphrase:

"Scholars Carl Botan and Mihaela Vorvoreanu claim that the nature of workplace surveillance has changed over time. Before the arrival of computers, managers could collect only small amounts of information about their employees based on what they saw or heard. However, because computers are now standard workplace technology, employers can monitor employees efficiently (126)."

This adaptation, from the featured article about Thomas Eakins' The Swimming Hole, displays attribution of opinion and uses a combination of paraphrase and quotation:

The Swimming Hole represented the full range of Eakins' techniques and academic principles. He used life study, photography, wax studies, and landscape sketches to produce a work that manifested his interest in the human form. Lloyd Goodrich (1897–1987) believed the work was "Eakins's most masterful use of the nude", with the solidly conceived figures perfectly integrated into the landscape, an image of subtle tonal construction and one of the artist's "richest pieces of painting". Another biographer, William Innes Homer (b. 1929), was more reserved and described the poses of the figures as rigidly academic. Homer found inconsistencies in paint quality and atmospheric effect, and wrote that the painting was unsuccessful in reconciling antique and naturalistic ideals. For him, "it is as though these nudes had been abruptly transplanted from the studio into nature".

Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule for how much revision is necessary to avoid plagiarizing. In evaluating copyright concerns, the United States courts adopt a "substantial similarity" test that compares the pattern and sequence of two works, finding such similarity where "the ordinary observer [reading two works], unless he set out to detect the disparities, would be disposed to overlook them, and regard their aesthetic appeal as the same." Even if all of the language is revised, a court may find copyright infringement under the doctrine of "comprehensive non-literal similarity" if "the pattern or sequence of the two works is similar". Likewise, plagiarism may exist if readers comparing the two works would come away with a sense that one is copied from or too heavily based on another.

Editors should always compare their final drafts with the sources they have used to make sure that they have not accidentally come too close in language and structure or failed to attribute when necessary.

Research and writing methods: tips for avoiding plagiarism

It is best to organize your sources either electronically or with a paper filing system.

One way editors can minimize the tendency to reuse text is to not copy and paste text into their working drafts. Instead, editors should assemble and organize their notes, excerpts, and other source materials by topic. This can be done either in hard copy or by using an electronic filing system. Editors should then read and absorb what the sources say and proceed to writing a draft version, in their own words, of each topic. These drafts can be assembled according to the editor's own organizational schema. There are a number of ways to organize material; editors should not slavishly follow a source's structure, either in overall organization, or in the composition and arrangement of sentences and paragraphs within each section. This method reduces the temptation (and makes it harder) to adopt verbatim language and organization from the sources.

At the same time, when taking notes from a source for their own use, editors may find it useful to take them verbatim, with quotation marks, if they will not have access to that source as they are writing their final draft. If a different language is used in note-taking, an editor may find him or herself accidentally restoring some of the author's original words when constructing a draft. Being able to see at a glance exactly how the source was written can help avoid this.

Use multiple sources, if possible. Editors may find it more difficult to avoid following that text too closely if they rely on only one source, as they will necessarily be limited to those details selected by the author of that original source. It is not impossible to revise and reorganize a single source sufficiently to avoid plagiarism or copyright infringement, but it is more difficult.

Spotting plagiarism

Editors should be careful not to add plagiarized material to Wikipedia, and can help to protect the integrity of the project by spotting plagiarism and helping to correct it. When large sections of a source are copied word-for-word into an article, it is often easy to spot and repair. The use of ideas or uncommon facts without credit, possibly the most common form of plagiarism, can be repaired by sourcing. Detecting and dealing with subtler forms of plagiarism may be more challenging, but is usually possible.

Red flags for plagiarism include:

• Inconsistent authorial voice: Although many articles on Wikipedia are multi-authored, sudden switches in tone throughout an article may still be a sign of plagiarism. For example, if the "History" section in an article on a city sounds like a tourist brochure and the "Climate and geography" section is filled with highly technical and jargon-filled language, readers might suspect that sources have been followed too closely. A particular tip-off is the sudden introduction of sophisticated text or ideas that seem inconsistent with the authorial voice of the material surrounding it.
• Inconsistent language: If the tone of an article or passage is colloquial or does not feel "right"—for example if jargon or idioms are used incorrectly—a source may have been misused.
• Atypical elegance: A reader may have cause for concern if a section of an article seems to have been written "too well". Much writing on Wikipedia is not at the level of professional publications. Therefore, when readers suddenly come across professional-level writing on Wikipedia, with no spelling or grammatical errors, they may want to investigate further. If the article has been extensively copy-edited, such as in undergoing the featured articles process, such polish is in itself less of a red flag, though even extensive copy-editing does not guarantee the absence of plagiarism.
• Rapid maturation: Fully developed articles that appear in very few edits may signal plagiarism. While sometimes editors construct articles in sandboxes or off-wiki, sometimes a sudden maturity of text signals that material has quickly been added without careful attention to the issue of plagiarism.

If you suspect plagiarism, you may wish to start by checking the article's history. If the article has a multi-authored feel but appears to be largely single-authored, there could be reason for concern, as this may suggest a contributor has borrowed too heavily from the diction of multiple sources. It may be worth checking the contribution history of an editor across a number of articles, to see if there is a discernible authorial voice or if there is a pattern of such inconsistency. There may be a history of such issues on the editor's talk page.

Another good starting point is to review the article's sources. Particularly when plagiarism results from misunderstanding—rather than intent to deceive—a contributor may clearly identify the sources from which s/he has plagiarized, and even link to them. If the source is in another language, for instance, the contributor may be under the mistaken belief that the act of translation is a sufficient revision to eliminate concerns of plagiarism. On the contrary, whether or not the work is free, the obligation remains to give credit to authors of foreign language texts for their creative expression, information and ideas, and, if the work is unfree, direct translation is likely to be a copyright violation as well. Concerned readers can also use search engines and automated plagiarism detection. When searching manually, it is helpful to isolate small sections of text from an article. However, some results found this way may be from mirrors and forks of Wikipedia itself, particularly if the article is not newly created.

Addressing plagiarism

There are templates such as {{Copypaste}} or {{Close paraphrase}} that are added to the top of a suspect section or article and may draw attention to the problem; concerns might be noted at an appropriate WikiProject or forum. Just as Wikipedia currently has no clear guideline or policy on plagiarism, it has no clear forum for addressing plagiarism concerns. However, Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup stands to assist where plagiarism may co-exist with copyright infringement, and, even where it doesn't, project members may be able to assist with plagiarism.

If an article seems to follow the language and structure of another work too closely, first consider whether it is a matter of copyright infringement or plagiarism. If the source is not free and the text may represent a legal concern for Wikipedia, follow the procedures set out at Wikipedia's copyright violations policy. If the source is free, steps should be taken to remedy plagiarism. Wikipedia's proposed guideline on plagiarism suggests politely discussing concerns with the contributor. Further steps may need to be taken to address contributors who persist in plagiarism after being made aware of the problem, through Requests for comment or—if the contributor proves disruptive—through a report at the administrator's incidents noticeboard. The plagiarism will also need to be repaired as soon as possible. If it can be attributed, revised or turned into a usable quotation, it should be. If the editor who discovers the problem is unable to repair it or uncertain of how it should be addressed, it should be brought to the attention of other contributors.

As the main page says, Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Anyone can, and should, repair plagiarism.

Links

• WikiProject Copyright Cleanup
• Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing
• Plagiarism.org
• Quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing, Purdue University

Notes

Reader comments

2009-04-13

WikiProject Color

By Cryptic C62

In previous editions of the WikiProject Report, the Signpost has generally focused on those projects which are large, active, and have a wealth of featured content under their scope. In this edition, we cover WikiProject Color, which has a mere seven members and three Good Articles (Color blindness, Green, and Pigment). Wrad is here to tell us about his experiences with the project and to try to generate more interest for this important work group.

1. Tell us about your history here. How did you become interested and involved in Wikipedia?

I got involved in Wikipedia when I saw an article that had some bad information on it. I knew it was wrong, and somebody had marked it with a POV tag, so I figured I would fix it. Later, I saw that the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight article had been featured in the news as an example of a poor Wikipedia article. Gawain is one of my favorite poems, so I worked to get it up to featured status. My work in that article led me into several interesting areas. I developed several of the articles related to Gawain, such as Green Knight, Long hair (the Green Knight has long hair), Girdle (especially the section on literature), and Green.

2. In working on Green, you have the unusual distinction of being the only editor to have brought a color to Good Article status. Can you tell us about your experience working on the article?

When I began the article, it was mostly just a list of anything and everything passing editors and readers had thought could be connected to the color. It was a real mess. I began with the top section, "Etymology", and worked my way down. I removed anything in the list which I either couldn't find sources for, or which didn't seem to belong. In the "Culture" section, anything which didn't directly add to an understanding of what green represented in human culture was removed. It wasn't enough just to list green things, the article needed cited explanations of what green symbolized in cultures around the world. The article needed to say more than "Ireland's flag is green." It needed to say why. After the "Culture" section, I did the Science section last, as I am personally less experienced in that area. The science section explains why different things might be green (e.g. frogs, fireworks) on a chemical level.

3. Why do you think none of the other colors have been brought to GA status?

One other article, Red, is close, but not quite there. It is pretty difficult to write about colors. Colors cover a very broad variety of subjects. If you know a lot about science, then you probably won't know much about their meaning in human culture, and vice versa. It's also very easy, while writing them, to get distracted and just write about things that are green, rather than about the meaning behind those things. Articles which are linked to thousands and thousands of times (I would say overlinked), tend to merely be lists of tidbits of information taken from all the linked articles. It takes work to make such articles a complete whole. Still, it's worth it, and you learn an awful lot. Articles that are so often linked to by other articles can become, if expanded, articles which provide a valuable context to wikipedia's content. Unfortunately, they are neglected more than they should be.

4. WikiProject Color has merely 6 members [sic], some of whom have been inactive for several months. Do you believe the project would benefit from the participation of editors with a wide variety of skills rather than just those interested in colors themselves?

Absolutely. People who are interested in color can only provide a small window of information as compared to what the actual scope of the project is meant to cover. The project could use some science-minded folks, especially, as well as those with humanities expertise.

5. Do you foresee Green, recent WP:ACID collaboration Yellow, or any of the other colors reaching Featured Article status any time soon?

Absolutely, but something would have to change. All it takes to get an article to a higher quality is a group of knowledgeable and determined editors. If enough editors decide to get together and improve content with a specific goal in mind, there is little that can stop them. I believe that many on wikipedia spend too much time arguing about little things, rather than the important things. Yes, the wording in that introductory paragraph may be a little off, but that pales in comparison to the gaping content and citation holes in the body of the article. And how can you write a good introduction—which is supposed to summarize the article body—without having anything good to summarize from! Anyway, as long as wiki-editors can keep themselves from getting distracted, anything can happen.

6. Thank you for your time. Do you have any final thoughts or words of wisdom for potential WikiProject Color members?

First, if you have a scientific mind, please consider joining the project. We need you. Second (and lastly), my work on color articles is part of a larger belief of mine that articles on more general, basic topics are ignored on wikipedia more than they should be. As I said earlier, they provide an important background and context to wikipedia's content, and add meaning and understanding to everything they touch. Take a look at WP:CORE and WP:VITAL and see if there are any articles there which you could add something to, even if it is only a small thing. I might even say especially if it is only a small thing.

Reader comments

2009-04-13

Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations

By Phoebe

The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see our previous edition.

Centralized discussions

• Unreferenced BLPs A proposal to make unreferenced Biographies of living persons speedy-deletable after three months.
• FlaggedRevs autopromotion A poll on the criteria needed for autopromotion for reviewers for Flagged Revisions.

Proposals

• Arbitration policy A new Arbitration draft policy is currently under discussion.
• Merger and Split tags A discussion about enabling the display of the "date" parameter in all Merger and Split tags.

Requests for comment

• Article Rescue Squadron Should templates be within the scope of the Article Rescue Squadron? In particular, should the {{rescue}} tag be applied to templates currently at templates for deletion?
• Mistagged public domain images Most images tagged PD-US or PD-old are incorrect, and will be deleted if they are moved to Commons. What should we do about this?
• Free and Open Source software notability Should we change the notability guidelines for FOSS packages?
  
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2009-04-13

Approved this week

By X!

Administrators

Four editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: AlexiusHoratius (nom), Toon05 (nom), Tassedethe (nom), and AdjustShift (nom).

Avraham (nom) was promoted to bureaucrat status this week.

Bots

Six bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: DustyBot (task request), WaldirBot (task request), Robotic Garden (task request), CataBotTsirel (task request), AnomieBOT (task request) and DFBot (task request).

Featured pages

Thirteen articles were promoted to featured status this week: Samuel Johnson's early life (nom), Paulinus of York (nom), Phagocyte (nom), Cyathus (nom), Acid2 (nom), Murray Chotiner (nom), John L. Helm (nom), M249 squad automatic weapon (nom), Arular (nom), Stamata Revithi (nom), To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World (nom), California State Route 78 (nom), and SY Aurora's drift (nom).

Fifteen lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of acquisitions by Juniper Networks (nom), List of awards and nominations received by WALL-E (nom), List of awards and nominations received by Sheryl Crow (nom), List of awards and nominations received by Ratatouille (nom), List of One Piece episodes (season 5) (nom), List of churches and places of worship in Crawley (nom), List of Chicago Blackhawks players (nom), Michael Faraday Prize (nom), Paulini Curuenavuli discography (nom), Veronica Mars (season 2) (nom), List of number-one albums of 2008 (U.S.) (nom), List of Silver Slugger Award winners at third base (nom), 2008 NBA Draft (nom), Boston Reds (1890–1891) all-time roster (nom), and Gene Kelly filmography (nom).

No topics were promoted to featured status this week.

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: Shackleton–Rowett Expedition, Florida Atlantic University, Motörhead, The Raft of the Medusa, Riven, Ironclad and White Deer Hole Creek.

Former featured pages

Six articles were delisted this week: Cheers (nom), Cambodia (nom), Mini (nom), SS Andrea Doria (nom), Convention on Psychotropic Substances (nom), HTTP cookie (nom)

Two lists were delisted this week: List of countries by Human Development Index (nom) and List of awards and nominations received by Bloc Party (nom).

No topics were delisted this week.

Featured media

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Canals of Amsterdam, Gadwall, Joss Bay Beach, Watson and the Shark, Wawona tree, Shroud Of Turin and Common scorpionfly.

Two media files were featured this week:

Ombra mai fù

(nom)

Richard Nixon resignation speech

(nom)

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

Seventeen pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.

• 
  Jelly Bean Plant
• 
  Karnak
• 
  Frieze of Parnassus
• 
  Idi Amin
• Nazi campaign poster
  Nazi campaign poster
• 
  Steroidogenesis
• 
  Sunflower macro
• 
  M777 howitzer
• 
  Polemonium reptans
• 
  Circus clown
• 
  Lighting through the ages
• 
  Volume rendering
• 
  The Wicked World
• 
  Traumatic insemination
• 
  Republican costume
• 
  George Atzerodt
• 
  Lilium

Reader comments

2009-04-13

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

By Aude

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Please note that some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.4 (a8dd895), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

Bug fixes

• action=purge now works for image/file pages. (r49151, bug 18311)
• When block log entries are suppressed (with hideuser), these entries no longer appear in recent changes. (r49222, bug 18346)
• The suppression log now displays in the user interface language (specified in preferences), rather than the content language. (r49378, bug 18361)
• Uploading files with single quotes in their names is now allowed. (r49051, bug 18263)
• When doing a search using Internet Explorer, when one hits enter in a text field, it performed a "go" search, which finds an exact match rather than return a search results page. This bug is fixed. (r47840, bug 17161)

Other news

• Wikimedia Deutschland is offering short term contracts for a number of projects, including the evaluation of flagged revisions on the German Wikipedia, rewrite of CatScan, storing interwiki links in the database, improving the Gadgets extension, and implementing full support for TIFF files. ^[1]
  
  Reader comments
  

2009-04-13

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

By X!

The Committee announced that an Audit Subcommittee has been established, which will investigate complaints concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight privileges on the English Wikipedia. Additionally, the committee has prepared a provisional draft of an updated arbitration policy for initial community review.

The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week, and closed one, leaving eight cases open.

New cases

• Aitias: A case regarding Aitias's use of his administrator tools.

Evidence phase

• Tang Dynasty: A case about editing conflicts on Inner Asia during the Tang Dynasty.
• Ryulong: A case regarding Ryulong's use of his administrator tools.
• Obama articles: A case opened to review behavior of editors of articles related to Barack Obama.
• West Bank - Judea and Samaria: A dispute about editor behavior in discussions about naming conventions for certain Israel- and Palestine-related locations.
• Date delinking: A case regarding the behavior of editors in the ongoing dispute relating to policy on linking dates in articles. An injunction has been issued prohibiting large-scale linking or delinking of dates until the case is resolved.

Voting

• Prem Rawat 2: A case concerning the continued behavioral problems on the pages about Prem Rawat, and related articles. A previous case, Prem Rawat, was closed in May of last year.
• Scientology: A case regarding behavioral problems in Scientology-related articles; the case is related to the prior case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/COFS.

Closed

• MZMcBride: A case brought after administrator MZMcBride deleted numerous "secret pages". This case reviewed administrator conduct by MZMcBride, and did not rule on the appropriateness of the pages themselves. MZMcBride had previously been admonished for his administrator actions in a previous Request for Arbitration. In the final decision, among other things, the Arbitration Committee took note of MZMcBride's decision to resign his adminship before the case closed, and noted that if MZMcBride wishes to regain adminship in the future, he may either submit a new request for adminship or make a request to the committee.
  
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