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Question about deleting articles

How do people feel about the idea of deleting some of the suspected CopyVio articles completely? I know that would be a shame, but realistically do you think we can repair and rewrite well over 1,000 articles? (Also note that there are a fair number of Gastropod articles that GB created which were not placed in the Category:Molluscs of New Zealand or any of its subcategories including Category:Gastropods of New Zealand.)

What do people think about deleting some of the other non-gastropod categories of articles? Even if you are opposed to the idea of this, if we have made little progress in six months or a year's time, should we delete some at that point? Please keep your replies brief. Thanks. Invertzoo (talk) 15:55, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I have to repeat what I said on AN/I. I think, given the huge volume of material taken from one book, apparently, that the articles should be scrubbed by a bot ASAP. There is a species bot that writes algal species stubs and endangered plant species stubs that could run through the articles, get data from the taxoboxes, and simply rewrite all of the text as, "Snailus newzealandius is a member of the Listedfamilidae family." and leave the taxobox and reference to the book, while deleting everything else. Then administrators could remove the history, if necessary.

I can't see how members of this project can possibly rewrite this many articles in a reasonable amount of time. This means committing to leaving the copyright violations on Wikipedia for a substantial amount of time, even if they are in the edit history. --KP Botany (talk) 21:46, 14 March 2009 (UTC)21:46, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I am just one person, but that sounds like a great idea to me. Actually the first sentence in almost all the articles is actually OK as it stands, but I guess we would have to write a custom bot to include that and that would take time and work. Invertzoo (talk) 23:40, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Even though the bot sounds like a cool idea, I would perhaps like to see if we can assign a few articles to each person who is keen to work, maybe starting tomorrow, and see how the articles come out when they are worked on manually at least as a start. If that works, more info can be saved that way.

The problem with this, in my thinking, is the amount of time it will take. It took me about 4 hours total to research the one article and write it up with close to the same information. Let's say all of you are twice as fast as I am, we have 1000 articles, and five editors who will do one article a day, five days a week, for a total of 25 articles a week, leaving a huge copyright violation on Wikipedia for 40 weeks, counting just the New Zealand fauna, I believe. Or is 1000 the total articles including the NZ fauna?
40 weeks is a long time to be in the wrong possession of someone else's intellectual output without their permission. During this time his book is being archived and spread all over the web courtesy of Wikipedia.
I personally don't think we should do this without permission, not even weighing the issue of whether we are allowed to. --KP Botany (talk) 07:41, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I think now we hopefully won't need to even consider deleting articles. Instead we can convert them to temporary stubs which can after a while overwrite the CopyVio articles. We couldn't delete articles without an admin's approval anyway, and fortunately for us we can run any even vaguely radical idea past our expert-on-CopyVio-issues admin, Moonriddengirl (talk). We are lucky to have this expert advice available. Invertzoo (talk) 23:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I am more than a little offended that you not only wholesale dismissed, but then deleted my concerns[1] without allowing anyone else to comment upon them or address the underlying issue which you keep ignoring: it appears Wikipedia is now the web owner of a large portion of a copyrighted work.

I will allow WP:gastropod to deal with the issue as they see fit and bow out. --KP Botany (talk) 01:25, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

A quote from your message to me: "It appears Wikipedia is now the web owner of a large portion of a copyrighted work."
I am so sorry KP. I am only human and make mistakes like anyone else, especially when I am trying to get a process underway in a short time. I read your messages several times, but hurriedly, and I did not understand that that was the main point you were trying to make.
I do very much value your contributions to the gastropod project, and I apologize if you thought I was "dismissing" your concerns, which was not my intention. I didn't in fact delete your messages, I archived that whole thread, which is still at the top of the page in the archive for anyone to read and which I have now replaced in context. (I only archived it because I was trying to keep the subpage a bit streamlined so that newer people coming in to start clean-up would not be lost in a page of all different threads. I suppose I need to start another subpage.
As for the CopyVio: so far we are following Wp policy in the way this CopyVio is being treated. If you feel that the overall policy is mistaken, then you need to take that objection up to a much higher level. You could start off by talking to Moonriddengirl about it, since she is an admin who specializes in Wp CopyVio problems and policy.
Just to remind everyone, we are operating under crisis mode right now, in unfamiliar territory, so occasionally we may accidentally step on someone's toes in the rush. Please when that happens try your best not to take it personally. All my very best wishes to everyone, Invertzoo (talk) 12:36, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


GrahamBould

In case you hadn't noticed GrahamBould's recent contributions, [2], it looks like he has already fixed about 100 of the 1000 articles in question. (You called for tight cooperation, so this is just an FYI.) This message was left by Anna Frodisiak, 22:52, 14 March 2009. Invertzoo (talk) 23:44, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks but that happened in mid week. GB worked on about 30 articles, but they were all still no good because he just tweaked the preexisting prose, and did not re-write it. It was still a CopyVio. Best, Invertzoo (talk) 23:44, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Just some thoughts [This message is from our CopyVio expert admin]

As I have some experience in this area, I just wanted to share a suggested approach.

  • The first obligation is to stop disseminating this information. The bot that has blanked the articles with the copyvio template has taken care of this.
  • The copyvio template is not meant to remain on articles indefinitely, and it renders the articles useless the while it is there. It may be better to reduce these articles to stubs, maintaining a list of what needs rebuilding. We do not always delete infringement from the history of articles, and articles stubbed can be tagged {{cclean}} (be sure to substitute it; it adds your signature automatically) on the talk pages of the articles to explain the situation. Alternatively, a specific temporary template can be provided for this situation.
  • Once the triage is over—continued infringement is stopped, but publication is restored—a task force could systematically improve these stubs by whatever method seems best given the number of volunteers available and the relative importance. (I'm very much out of my field here. :)) The articles affected can be listed and subdivided at a subpage here, with volunteers claiming a group.

These are just suggestions; I'm not attempting to impose this order on this undertaking. But please let me know if you think this would be a viable approach. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:03, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

A fast way to create some improved stubs

I would be grateful if someone would take a look at these 3 articles, which are stubs I just created out of copyvio-stamped gastropod articles. Is this useful, or should we take a good deal more time, with Powell in hand, and delete in a more precise way? This is clearly better than losing all, but not very good.

Anyway, one can turn these out pretty rapidly, if this style is acceptable.

Tim Ross (talk) 14:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi. :) I am of the opinion that this is an excellent way to go about this, since we're talking about quite a lot of articles and this will allow some usable material, while letting contributors add detail at their leisure. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:15, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
This seems like a really good idea, fast and easy. But the main article stays put for the time being? And then at some point we delete the main article altogether and move the temp to the previous title of the article? Is it OK to have both versions up at once? For how long? At what point do the offending original articles get deleted? Invertzoo (talk) 14:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
There are two options for handling this. If your project wishes to replace the problematic articles with these new stubs, I will be happy to delete the older articles and replace them with the new ones. Alternatively, we can simply overwrite the existing articles with this new material. The copyright infringement remains in the article's history, but this is not uncommon for handling such issues. As long as a note of explanation, like {{cclean}}, is placed at the talk page, there is slim chance of restoration of infringement. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Great, thanks! I like the idea of the overwriting. Invertzoo (talk) 14:50, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually couldn't a bot create at least the basic framework for these temp versions? I understand that it takes time to develop and test a bot, so right now we need to do them by hand, but is the bot idea something we can investigate? After all, there are more than 1000 articles that need this doing to them. Invertzoo (talk) 14:56, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I have no clue about Bots. I would recommend asking User:Dcoetzee about the feasibility of this. Even if he isn't able to create a bot, he may know if it would be permitted on Wikipedia and who might help. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:58, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Glad this seems acceptable. I'll continue working on the "A" gastropods, and do them alphabetically. If someone wants to start on gastropods beginning with the letter "B", that would be great. (Not to mention clams, etc.!) Tim Ross (talk) 15:21, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Let me know when, and if I should start overwriting rather than posting as temps. Tim Ross (talk) 15:29, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Just noticed, above, that I get to do the "B" gastropods rather than the "A"'s. Not a problem. I'll get onto it. Tim Ross (talk) 16:14, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Tim, Since I am busy both trying to coordinate all these efforts and also prepping for a medical procedure tomorrow, I may not get much else done, so thanks for a start on the "A"s as well as the "B"s. Invertzoo (talk) 16:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I think this is sufficient, although, to be careful, the article of his I rewrote had the facts wrong about habitat. And about endemism. It wasn't endemic to New Zealand and living at 1300m, it simply was the location of the one specimen that had ever been found. So, possibly even narrower. Still, this would be quick and easy. I think a bot could do it with less and get around the concerns about accuracy. --KP Botany (talk) 20:50, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, GB was going by what Powell knew about distribution in 1979. Plus GB totally misunderstood the concept of "endemic". He thought it meant "lives in this area". He did not know that it meant "lives only in this area and nowhere else on earth".
I think the general idea is to get the 1,000 plus articles as rapidly as possible into some kind of simple stub form that is "clean" enough so that we can remove the CopyVio tags, and then after that we can slowly build them up again into proper articles. Invertzoo (talk) 21:05, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
User:JoJan suggests we focus on the genera, which I think is a good idea. My thinking is a bot can stubify the species, get the copyvios off, and gastropod editors can edit the species articles? --KP Botany (talk) 21:09, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

GB articles about subspecies, etc

People may not want to bother with this now, but it would make a lot more sense as we progress through these at some point to combine separate articles which are about subspecies into one article about the species, which will includes notes on the subspecies. Same thing with the unnamed (unnamed in 1979 that is!) species of Powelliphanta such as Powelliphanta "Nelson Lakes", Powelliphanta "Baton" and the other 7 similar. These can probably be compressed into one longer article. Invertzoo (talk) 18:44, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the group of Wikipedia editors who say any species is relevant enough for an article. That said, the one stub I upgraded probably should just be merged into its species article, since it is known, and poorly, only for a single specimen. --KP Botany (talk) 20:53, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Certainly I agree 100% that any species is relevant for an article, but I don't really think that every named subspecies of every organism is suitable to make an article on, especially since in the past some workers handed out subspecies names like candy. As for Powelliphanta "Nelson Lakes", Powelliphanta "Baton" and the other 7 similar, I have no idea whether those "species" were actually officially named after Powell's book came out or not. If they weren't, then they are not valid species. And "Powelliphanta "Nelson Lakes" is a very peculiar article name because "Nelson Lakes" is not a real species name at all, just a place-holder. These days when species are unnamed people call possible new species "A", "B" and "C" and they don't write articles about them until the species has been officially named/described. Invertzoo (talk) 21:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I read too quickly, as I'm trying to get done and do some real world work. Subspecies, yes, generally without thought. Sometimes a new subspecies will get a write up in Science or Nature as a subspecies X, then it can have its own article, but probably not at all is a better choice for 1979 write ups of unnamed species. --KP Botany (talk) 21:30, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Work! I must have more work!

Well, actually, I'm not too eager, but I have finished with the "B" gastropods. Please assign me a new letter, and I'll try to tackle it tomorrow. Tim Ross (talk) 21:10, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Tim, that is so great. Want to start on the "E" gastropods? if you get fed up after a while, please do take a break for a day or two and then come back again, don't run yourself into the ground... Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 21:17, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

A survey of the articles

Most of the lede paragraphs appear to be sufficiently different from Powell to avoid copyvio. However, in Barbatia novaezelandiae the second sentence of the lede is almost exactly taken from Powell. In this article, where Powell says it is found down to over 50 fathoms, GB says 50 metres, which is inaccurate. A fathom is 1.8288 m. In other articles, GB translates from fathoms to metres more accurately.

I don't know where GB is getting his pictures from. They appear to be professional pictures, and all that I looked at are taken with the same camera. They are not from Powell (all the pictures there are monochrome), or from A Photographic Guide to Seashells of New Zealand.

Other articles I looked at were Offadesma angasi, Spisula aequilateralis, Proneomenia quincarinata, Iridoteuthis maoria, Craspedochiton, Rhyssoplax aerea aerea, Cadulus teliger, Dentalium tiwhana, Columbarium wormaldi, Lissotestella caelata, Powelliphanta hochstetteri obscura and Tugali elegans. In all these cases, the description closely follows that given by Powell, with the main difference that Powell's style is very terse, and GB has added a few words to improve the flow (eg. "Colour variable" becomes "Colouration is variable", which is not sufficient to avoid being a copyright violation). GB mostly uses only parts of the description, omitting some of the detail.-gadfium 04:25, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello Gadfium, All the photos are mine, & thanks for the 'professional' comment. You can see the lot in the category I set up for them 'Photographs by Graham Bould' the mollusc images being nearly all from my small collection plus a couple of rare ones snapped at the museum. My camera is an American underwater camera made by Sealife (which I mainly use above water). BTW, many pictures in Powell are in full colour.
I'd only had my copy of Powell for a few hours when I said that, and hadn't yet seen any of the full colour ones.-gadfium 09:07, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately, it looks like any second or third images are being lost in the article stubbing.
Any more questions just ask - I've been away for the last 3 days. GrahamBould (talk) 06:45, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Progress tracking

I've added a status section near the top of the page so that volunteers can get an at a glance view of where we are, and who is doing what. I've tried to set the current status to what everybody is doing based on the comment. Apologies if I have not credited somebody's work properly. I'll pick a letter for myself later today after I've had a chance to look at some sample articles and have a good block of time. -- Whpq (talk) 17:47, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

The progress tracking list is a really great idea, thanks Whpq! And thanks so much for getting through the "F" section today! Invertzoo (talk) 22:05, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

How to find the articles

I am currently unclear on how to find the articles. My understanding was that we were to work through Category:Molluscs of New Zealand, and its subcategories by letter. But I just noticed in the discussion that Category:Molluscs of Australia also contains problem articles. Can we have a definitive list of categories to review so we do not miss things. I've reported F as complete, but it appears I am mistaken. -- Whpq (talk) 19:13, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I think your sectioning is a great idea. :) I believe that currently Category:Gastropods of New Zealand is the focus. Under that understanding, I am marking the Fs as merged, since I've merged all of your stubs there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:18, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Yes currently Category:Gastropods of New Zealand is indeed the focus. It represents the great bulk of what was tagged as CopyVio. Most of the Gastropod Project people are happy to work on the gastropods, but after we finish the gastropods, hopefully we can move right along and tackle the relatively few articles in the other classes of New Zealand molluscs: the Aplacophorans (1), the Bivalves (99), the Cephalopods (7), the Chitons (56) and the Tusk shells (10).
The possible CopyVio status of Category:Molluscs of Australia is unconfirmed and has not been "run by" the authorities yet, so that category is currently untagged. Maybe User:gadfium can check with the Powell book and see if we indeed do have a problem with those too?? It is also possible that there might be CopyVio problems with many other of GB's articles, on fish, etc, etc, etc, but as far as I know, no-one has checked any of those thousands of other articles yet. Invertzoo (talk) 22:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Request for help

Haustrum haustorium has had content edits by another user. I don't want to remove that contribution, and I'm not at all familiar with the subject matter. Could one of the editors from Wikiproject Gastropod working through the cleanup please review this article and do the copyvio cleanup? Thanks. -- Whpq (talk) 01:17, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Note to whoever cleans up the article: I've completed the rest of the H articles so please mark H complete when you finish the cleanup for Haustrum haustorium. Thanks. -- Whpq (talk) 01:38, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and attempted it myself. Feel free to check my work and improve upon it. -- Whpq (talk) 10:33, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Clarification needed, Iridoteuthis maoria

At the temporary page, Talk:Iridoteuthis maoria/Temp, User:GrahamBould indicates that the original of this one did not infringe on Powell. Can somebody with access to that book verify? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:07, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

He's questioned several in this fashion. I've decided to go ahead and complete the merger and have advised him to discuss with other contributors if it is appropriate to restore material. Unfortunately, since the initial copyright violation was his, we can't take his word for it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:19, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

This was a marginal case. No complete sentence was used from Powell, but the phrase "Conspicuous features of I. maoria are the very large eyes ..." came directly from Powell's "Conspicuous features are the very large eyes ..." I think it's safer to leave it as the rewritten version.-gadfium 21:15, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm very glad you have the book. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:18, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

List of willing participants

This is a list of people who are willing to give a substantial part of their wiki time to cleanup of CopyVio articles, or to organization of that clean-up process. If at some point in the future you lose interest in these tasks or are unable to persevere because of other priorites, please remove your name from the list; you can always add it back on again later still. Thank you.

I have tentatively added some user names with a ? where people either mentioned to me before that they were interested in helping, or appeared to be interested by what they wrote on the WP:AAN/I page. Please confirm or delete your listing.

Official members of WikiProject Gastropods (WPG) who wish to participate, and a suggestion as to whereabouts (in the list at "Category: Gastropods of New Zealand") you can start, in your cleaning up of articles by creating new temporary stubs:

Not currently in the WPG but willing to help in some way:

  • KP Botany I edit gastropod articles regularly, but usually on the sly. Thanks! Invertzoo (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2009 (UTC) Start from letter "D"
  • Moonriddengirl is helping as an admin who is expert on CopyVio problems and process
  • ?CYGNIS INSIGNIS
  • gadfium. I'll get a copy of Powell from my public library tomorrow, so will be able to confirm any question of whether text is directly copied.

.... Maybe you gadfium can start by checking to see if there are overall patterns of copying. I believe the first sentence is usually not copied and OK to retain? What else is usually OK?

Terrific! I see you are in Australia, great! These CopyVio problems also probably apply to all the articles in the Category:Molluscs of Australia. As for the library, I suppose you may want to see if you can take out items such as Photographic Guide to Seashells of New Zealand, New Zealand Shells and Shellfish and Reef and Beach Life of New Zealand as well as similar books on the Australian marine fauna. Probably GB did not copy from these sources, but it would be worth checking a few things, and also I assume that these other books could maybe give us a fresh take on information about the species, genera etc. Invertzoo (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
I can get Photographic Guide... and Reef and Beach Life..., but not NZ Shells and Shellfish. I'm in NZ, not Australia.-gadfium 23:58, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Even better! Thanks so much! If you are able to get it, you will be the only one so far who will actually have a copy of the Powell book in front of them. Thanks again, Invertzoo (talk) 02:01, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Folks, like Moonriddengirl, Whpq also has had previous experience with large widespread CopyVio problems and their clean-up. Please Whpq take a look at what we have already done and the current plans we have on how to proceed, and let us know what you think. Many thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 17:44, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Clarification on article order

Are we to be working through our assigned letter from the last entry in the category to the first, or are we supposed to now work with categories starting at the letter Z snd backwards through the alphabet? Or both? -- Whpq (talk) 16:06, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Start from the letter Z up, please. The bot seems to have tagged earlier letters, but I chose T to work on because of the complication of all the "talk" subpages and discovered that none of them had been tagged with the copyvio template. That means that the infringement is still being published in those. I checked one of the Z articles and found it also exposed. I assume it stopped at some point short of T. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:08, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Original page header

This subpage is for communications related to organizing clean-up efforts on the roughly 1,000 articles that have been tagged (or should have been tagged) as possible CopyVio, dating from March 13th 2009. The majority of these articles are in the Gastropods Project, but there are also a fair number of other articles on other molluscan groups. The first batch we are handling are all in the Category:Molluscs of New Zealand [8] and all of its subcategories including by far the largest subcategory, Category:Gastropods of New Zealand. [9]

Unfortunately there may also be numerous articles that need fixing in the Category:Molluscs of Australia but that has not been determined yet.

If you would like to start working on fixing up the CopyVio articles right away, first read the "Instructions for volunteers". Despite good intentions and enthusiasm, please do not simply follow your own impulses, instead please try to follow the basic plan we have here, so that we all know what is going on. Thank you.

A Note on Policy: Even though I took it upon myself to try to put together these new pages, and to try to "rally the troops", to encourage and help coordinate a start on the clean-up efforts (since no-one else was doing that) I am certainly not in the business of inventing new policies on how a widescale CopyVio problem should be tackled. Wikipedia has some basic policies about CopyVio. These are laid out on the relevant guideline pages. In this rather extreme and widespread case of CopyVio, policies are being expressed and interpreted for us by Moonriddengirl (talk), an admin who is an expert in CopyVio problems, and who is very kindly helping us. If you disagree with how we are going about this, please read the CopyVio policies and read everything that Moonriddengirl has written to us quite carefully.

Starting March 16th, we are fortunate enough to have help from another editor who has had previous experience with large and widespread copy violations, Whpq (talk). Please welcome both editors as experts in copyvio cleanup. Thank you.

I hope no-one minds: to make it easier for beginners to find relevant info on this page, I may archive a few threads that appear to have been settled, in order to keep this page at a reasonable length. Invertzoo (talk) 23:44, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


Tracking progress on the Category:Gastropods of New Zealand

This is a tracking list to help cleanup volunteers identify which alphabetical sections of the category have been cleaned, which ones are a work in progress, and which ones have not been tackled yet.


  • Well done!
  • Not unexpectedly there were a few that may have been overlooked. At this point, the best place to find them is at Category:Possible copyright violations. They're easy to recognize, as their titles rather stand out. Please make your changes directly to the article page, removing the copyright violation templates as you go. They will disappear from the listing after that copyvio template is removed. (I'm also working on this, as some of them are merges that I missed.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
Extended content

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please move up from the bottom (letter Z up), as the bot that tags these does not seem to have made it through the entire category. These can be stubbed right over the top of the infringement. I have a temporary template that you may wish to use to note why on the article's talk page at User:Moonriddengirl/sandbox. To use this (your signature will be automatically included), please paste {{subst:User:Moonriddengirl/sandbox}}. The "subst" must be included, or whatever is in my sandbox will wind up being transcluded to those pages. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:09, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please move up from the bottom (letter Z up), as the bot that tags these does not seem to have made it through the entire category. These can be stubbed right over the top of the infringement. I have a temporary template that you may wish to use to note why on the article's talk page at User:Moonriddengirl/sandbox. To use this (your signature will be automatically included), please paste {{subst:User:Moonriddengirl/sandbox}}. The "subst" must be included, or whatever is in my sandbox will wind up being transcluded to those pages. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:09, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Other subcats in Category:Molluscs of New Zealand

First sentence is OK to be used in the gastropod articles

Hi Tim, Just wanted to say that you can add the first sentence intact to each article, as it is OK as it is in the GB version. It is not a CopyVio, as it is in a very different form to the way it is in the Powell book, I am talking about, like this:

"Acteon milleri is a species of small sea snail, a predatory marine gastropod mollusc in the family Acteonidae, the barrel bubble snails."

But only this sentence, not the rest of the intro, which is likely to be suspect.

Best, Invertzoo (talk) 16:54, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Species lists are also OK to go in as they are

Since they are just plain information. Invertzoo (talk) 17:30, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Probably a few articles are incorrectly tagged as CopyVio

Am I misreading the history, or did GrahamBould, indeed, make no contributions to the copyvio-tagged Bartrumella? Is this just tagged by mistake? I'll just ignore it, unless advised otherwise. Tim Ross (talk) 18:22, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes you are quite right, GB did not contribute to this one, therefore we can assume it is fine as is. A few other articles like this one (not too many I hope!) may certainly have gotten accidentally caught in the "sweep" just because they are about New Zealand mollusks and are in the Category. I would say just go ahead and take the CopyVio template off of that one, and explain in the edit summary why. Thanks for noticing! Invertzoo (talk) 18:44, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

A note from Anna Frodesiak on "C"s and strange black boxes

Almost all of the 100+ Cs were fine. Five were strange. There, as usual, the black box told me to follow the link to the temp page. At the temp page, I encountered another black box directing me to a \temp\temp page. So I didn't do those because it would not let me save the page, I think. Crosseola bollonsi, Crosseola cuvieriana, Crosseola errata, Crosseola favosa, Cytora pallida. Thanks. Please check a sample or two of my work and assign me some more if I did an okay job.--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:02, 17 March 2009 (UTC)"

I have spotchecked Anna's versions of the articles. They look fine. As for the oddball ones with the black box, it looks like Anna created a version with the copyrighted material removed, but forgot to remove the copyright violation template when she did it. All that is needed is to go to the temp page and remove the copyright violation notice. Note that I have the cleanup page watchlisted so feel free to post questions there. I will see that new material is posted and read it. And by centralising the discussion, others can benefit. For example, any other other editor running into the black box situation as Anna would also see the answer. -- Whpq (talk) 13:44, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much Whpq! Yes I will post this exchange on the cleanup page, and try to locate all relevant discussions there. Invertzoo (talk) 14:03, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


Article holding pen

Resolved

The articles about Paphies are much fuller than typical - could somebody check whether they too are copied from Powell? – Sadalmelik ☎ 07:26, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Paphies australis
Paphies subtriangulata porrecta
Paphies subtriangulata quoyii
Paphies subtriangulata subtriangulata
Paphies ventricosa

Also for Tiostrea chilensis it would help to know exactly what coming from Powell. – Sadalmelik ☎ 12:57, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

You can ask User:gadfium to check these, because as far as I know he is the only one who has a copy of the book in hand. All best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 17:22, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Paphies australis contained no copyvio, at least from Powell. The other contained varying degrees of near-identical phrasing, in some cases just a few words, but I have deleted even this minimal copying. In Tiostrea chilensis the entire description came almost unchanged from Powell, although some of the detail was omitted. As elsewhere, the size comes from Powell but has been rewritten so there is no copyvio in that line.-gadfium 21:09, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for checking! – Sadalmelik ☎ 06:24, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

'P' almost completed

Resolved

'P' is almost completed with the exception of the articles below. They are mostly longer articles with several content contributors and I have run out of time to look at them:

regards, ascidian | talk-to-me 14:59, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

All completed now bar Powelliphanta, I don't think it has any copyvio in it judging from the history and Gb's contribs but I would appreciate a second pair of eyes? ascidian | talk-to-me 00:06, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
And it appears I missed Paua. Article was not started by GB and has many contributors (including GB). It doesn't seem to be a copyvio but again I would appreciate a second opinion. ascidian | talk-to-me 10:58, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
I checked his contribution with diffs. He did not introduce any copyright material. His changes to the text were based on the original article text. -- Whpq (talk) 11:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for looking, that's what I thought too. I've marked this section as resolved. regards ascidian | talk-to-me 12:08, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


Book check request

User:Gadfium, when convenient, can you check Pleurobranchaea maculata? It does not cite Powell, so I don't know if it's involved at all. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:23, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

There was no copyvio from Powell, who doesn't provide a description. However, phrases were taken directly from Morley's A Photographic Guide to Seashells of New Zealand, so I've wiped the description.-gadfium 20:55, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

The question of the Category:Molluscs of Australia and articles on other subjects altogether

I already asked User: gadfium if he can check and see if we also have a CopyVio with the articles in the category Molluscs of Australia. Unfortunately I think this is quite likely, because I believe the majority of the Australian mollusk articles were started by Graham Bould.

I noticed the mollusk articles first, as that is my areas of special interest, but is also possible that there might be CopyVio problems with large numbers of other articles that were started by GB, for example on fish, etc, etc, etc, but as far as I know, no-one has checked any of those thousands of other articles yet. I have asked WikiProject Fisheries and Fishing to take a look at the fish articles. I don't know where else to start with the possible wider problem. I suppose someone could ask GB himself and see if he gives a useful reply. Invertzoo (talk) 19:08, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

A sampling indicates that only a few of the articles in Category:Gastropods of Australia are by GB. These articles have the same copyright problems as the New Zealand articles ie the description is mostly copyvio. The distribution, habitat and size information is substantially reworded from Powell and is not a copyright violation.-gadfium 04:12, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
So how should these be handled, folks? Should we strip the description, leaving the other material? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:08, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
I would say yes, to me that seems like a nice simple idea, easily implemented. Invertzoo (talk) 14:34, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Massive archival

Hi. As this page was getting unwieldy, I have done some massive archiving. I've tried to leave content necessary to provide guidance to newcomers as well as anything that seemed open and needing acting. If I've inadvertently archived something you think is useful, please bring it back. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:38, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Request

Could people please link here in edit summaries, and not to the WP:ANI discussion which is now buried in an archive? My first attempt to find out what was happening when one of GB's older articles on my watchlist was stubbed a few days ago failed, and it took me more than half an hour to find this page today.dramatic (talk) 22:20, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

If the article began with P or Z that was me and yes I will link here instead of the ANI discussion in future. Apologies for the confusion. regards, ascidian | talk-to-me 00:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
You've been leaving the template at the article's talk pages, as far as I can see. The ANI link there is to the archive, which also links here, so I'm surprised if it was that difficult to track. I've been using my standard copyright problem infringement template (ala here.) As the contributor wasn't specific, maybe he's talking about the bot's edit summary, which was to the live thread? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, the link followed was in an edit summary in the page history, specifically http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chlamys_zelandiae&diff=next&oldid=277117132. dramatic (talk) 02:25, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
Ah, yes. That was the bot set up to initially blank the articles. This page didn't exist, I don't think, when it did that. Sorry for the frustration you encountered. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:45, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Time to reorganize?

It seems like it's time to reorganize the top instructions. Do the participants of this project who are working here object to our continuing to use this space in addressing non-gastropod contributions of concern? I'm still busily at work merging for the moment, but I'd be happy to hear ideas about how to proceed further. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:16, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I for one would not mind talking about non-gastropod stuff here, or even non-mollusk stuff. But we will see what others say. If we do want more gastropod stuff, how about tackling the Gastropod section of the Category:Molluscs of Australia? We can perhaps start by asking gadfium if he would check a few of the articles to see if they were started by GB and then check against the Powell book and see if the copying situation is much the same as the NZ category was? Thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 14:23, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
Ah yes, I see that gadfium has already replied on this question under "The question of the category molluscs of Australia.........", and we are discussing whether to strip the description from those articles that GB started. Thanks. Invertzoo (talk) 14:38, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
I've asked User:Dcoetzee if it is possible for him to redo User:Dcoetzee/ContributionSurveyor:GrahamBould, eliminating the parent cats & subcats of Category:Molluscs of New Zealand and Category:Molluscs of Australia. I believe this would help us determine a good methodical way to proceed from here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:02, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

The copyright issues all stem from the same reason. If anybody wants to review what was done to address teh copyright conerns, it's probably simpler to have this documented in one place rather than scattered across multiple locations. We already have an archive documenting the early efforts put in. Continuing that archive would then allow for easy review. -- Whpq (talk) 16:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

If I haven't done something silly with AWB, there are only 16 Australian molluscs started by GB that are not included in New Zealand molluscs. – Sadalmelik ☎ 17:46, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

  1. Actinoleuca campbelli macquariensis
  2. Calliostoma megaloprepes
  3. Cantharidus capillaceus coruscans
  4. Cymatona tomlini
  5. Eumetula macquariensis
  6. Falsilunatia pisum
  7. Fusinus novaehollandiae
  8. Hemiarthrum setulosum
  9. Ischnochiton mawsoni
  10. Lepidopleurus fairchildi
  11. Nacella kerguelenensis
  12. Nacella macquariensis
  13. Nerita atramentosa
  14. Plebidonax deltoides
  15. Puncturella pseudanaloga
  16. Sinezona subantarctica
I've listed them above and opened instructions for handling. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:11, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


Letters and letter sections

Fish articles, and do we have a bot that can sort GB's stuff by category?

I checked a couple shark articles (e.g Blotchy swell shark, Blackspot shark) and they are using content copied from FishBase. Unfortunately, FishBase is licensed under CC-BY-NC (at the end of [10]), so it seems they too need to be cleaned. The exact number of articles started by GB is by the way 2543. – Sadalmelik ☎ 22:36, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Yikes. I'll appeal for more admin assistance at AN. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
I've been looking over his earlier fish articles, and Collins Guide to the Sea Fishes of New Zealand (Tony Ayling & Geoffrey Cox, 1982) seems to be his main source. Most also cite Fishbase, however the articles on many of these species are low on any information, so the body of information most must be derived from Collins Guide. I don't have access to this book - could someone who does check to see whether we have a problem here as well? Kare Kare (talk) 08:59, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
I'll get a copy tomorrow.-gadfium 09:03, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
I've checked three shark articles: Australian ghost shark originally had some parts copied from Ayling, but none remains, with at least some removed by GB recently; Kitefin shark and Pygmy shark had small amounts of copyvio which were a very small proportion of the text overall, which I removed.-gadfium 04:32, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Copied from User:Geronimo's talk page:

Okay, the [Powell NZ mollusk book]'s on order. I'm would be happy to look at the GB entries to do with fishing and fisheries, but, as I indicated above, it is not easy to manually look at 26,000 edits in the edit history to determine which are the relevant articles. Nor do I see how the people in the fish project can be of practical assistance, unless the script which listed the gastropod articles is modified so it lists all the articles GB edited by category. Then the job would be relatively simple. This script could also be used on future occasions where mass copy violation occur. --Geronimo20 (talk) 19:28, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
I agree. I did post on the Project fish talk page too but I don't know if anyone has seen that yet. I will ask around and see if someone can find out whether we have a bot that can do that or can customize one to what you suggested. We have just now determined that at least some of GB's fish articles also appear to have CopyVio problems. Thanks again, Invertzoo (talk) 20:44, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Regarding the script: AWB can do it. I can try and play around with it tomorrow, if I have time. – Sadalmelik ☎ 21:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
The list of fish articles started by GB can be found here. – Sadalmelik ☎ 17:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
997 articles. Technically speaking, that's less than 1,000 so I suppose we should feel a little lucky. -- Whpq (talk) 18:24, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


New Administrator's Noticeboard discussion

As it now seems quite likely that this is even larger than we knew, I have opened a new thread on the matter at the administrator's noticeboard. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Alternative sources

I've checked the following public domain sources, as suggested by Snek01:

Suter provides a description for about half the articles that GB has written about using Powell. The description isn't as readable as the one in Powell, but perhaps better than nothing. Suter died in 1918, making his work public domain in New Zealand and in the United States. I've substituted Suter's description in the articles Gadinalea conica, Glaphyrina caudata, Gundlachia lucasi and Gundlachia neozelanica.

I haven't found Hutton useful so far.-gadfium 04:39, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Great idea! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:02, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Commentary

I feel that the issue of how far copyright extends in Zoology/Botany articles needs to be discussed at a wider level. I've an engineering rather than a biology background, but it's my understanding that the type description of a species is framed in formal language which generally does not allow for synonyms. Surely this makes it uncopyrightable? Or is knowledge of a species doomed to forever be trapped in a single out-of-print limited edition book because no one may copy it? Similarly, any attempt to paraphrase the distribution of a species is likely to introduce original research or errors. Someone has already commented that guides tend to give near-identical descriptions of species. If the same information appears in multiple places, then it cannot be copyright to either one of them? From some recent research in the field of chemical safety/medicine I observer that it seem to be accepted practice (in peer-reviewed journal articles) to quote extended sections of background information from earlier sources rather than risk altering meaning by paraphrasing.

Perhaps the easiest resolution to this specific incident might have been to contact the original author and ask him to consider a GDFL release of the information? I gather from the discussion above that there are some cases where information in Powell has been superceded, and that, of course, needs addressing. dramatic (talk) 22:20, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I did think of contacting Powell, but he died in 1987. Trying to locate who now owns copyright to his book (probably his son, whose name and location I don't know) and explaining the issues to them seemed too hard. For about half the species, there's a public domain description in Suter's 1913 work, linked to above in #Alternative sources.
I'm not sure that we can usefully debate whether the descriptions are or should be copyrighted here. It would require a legal opinion from the WikiMedia Foundation and needs to be discussed at a broader forum, perhaps WP:WikiProject Biology.-gadfium 22:46, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
In my opinion, at least, there are usually many ways to describe a taxon. The formal original description may or may not be highly detailed and clearly written. Later ones can improve or simplify, and can use a wide array of synonyms and phrasings. A quotation may be perfectly in order if the original wording needs to be preserved, but that would be unusual. Tim Ross (talk) 10:23, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

The question of "fish" articles

Okay. There are a lot of these, and we need to figure out an approach. In the case of fishbase.org, we all have the ability to compare. I've sectioned the list off alphabetically (which breaks the numbering into sections as well). Why don't we divide it up alphabetically again? (We may need subdivisions within larger letters.) We can revise right on the articles themselves, and I'll be happy to devise a specific template for the talk pages to explain (what do you think of the one I used?). Some of them may not have much trouble, but some of them do. I randomly checked on Olive rockfish and found that the description is based entirely on the source, with a few pronouns thrown in for nicety. I'm going to treat it as we treated the molluscs, leaving the opening sentence.

How does that sound?

Are there other sources involved here? (Forgive me if I've forgotten something we already know; this is complex, and other CP issues are also marching on, plus I've had two articles listed at GA for about a month, both of which suddenly came active yesterday!) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:21, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

  • If the content comes from FishBase it will be easy the check and fix. There are few articles like Flower Cardinalfish -- a redirect created by GB, which was later made a proper article by another editor. It looks similar than others, but paraphrases FishBase correctly and contains no infringing material. But what about articles like One-spot puller -- has it been copied from Ayling & Cox? I suppose the best would be listing all similar articles here for further checks. Or tag them with {{subst:copyvio | Ayling & Cox}} so they do not get lost. – Sadalmelik ☎ 10:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • I think for sharks and morays, the main source is fishbase, but for the rest it's likely Ayling... If that's the case, then a custom talk page message might be good. We may have to gut the fish articles blindly. – Sadalmelik ☎ 10:46, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
    I've blanked the instructions above pending resolution here. I'm a bit distracted today because an article I've had up for GA forever (not quite literally, but close: it got to be the oldest listing on the page!) is undergoing review, and it has eaten many hours. Tagging articles with the Ayling & Cox source might be a good idea. We could go through and clean the fishbase ones. Dumbbot will make a handy listing of the others, which we can evaluate after the fishbase ones are clean or, if we so determine, simply stub as we did the Powell text. What do you think? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:22, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

There a few additional sources used in articles, but I have no idea whether text has been copied from them:

  • Compagno, Dando, & Fowler, Sharks of the World, Princeton University Press, New Jersey 2005 ISBN 0-691-12072-2
  • G M Branch, C L Griffiths, M L Branch, & L E Beckley, Two Oceans, A Guide to the Marine Life of Southern Africa, (David Philip Publishers (Pty) Ltd, Claremont, South Africa 1994) ISBN 0-86486-250-4
  • Wade Doak, A Photographic Guide to Sea Fishes of New Zealand, (New Holland Publishers (NZ) Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand 2003) ISBN 1-877246-95-6

Probably more, too... More significantly, there is (at least) one other on-line source (www.niwascience.co.nz, fully copyrighted, of course), see e.g. Giant bully. I guess its the best way forward, clean fishbase & niwa articles, tag almost all others as copyvios and take no action only if it is certain that there is no copyvio (e.g. some articles has been extensively rewritten). Articles like Fiordland brotula should probably be tagged, too, even though the content does not come from fishbase. Poor Dumbbot... – Sadalmelik ☎ 20:04, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

  • All right. I'll update the instructions accordingly. Meanwhile, I've got an out of town guest this week who s going to be cutting into my wikipedia time. :/ But I'll do as much as I can, while still keeping on top of WP:CP. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:38, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


BTW, there is also Commons:Category:Drawings by Dr Tony Ayling, which have been uploaded by GB. Permission is claimed on talk... – Sadalmelik ☎ 20:08, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Leonard Compagno's Sharks of the World, which Sadalmelik mentioned above, is widely used in the shark articles, of which there are quite a number. Maybe it would be useful seeing if someone on the shark project with access to this source can help. --Geronimo20 (talk) 12:14, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I left a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sharks. – Sadalmelik ☎ 08:59, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


Just a note

The Plebidonax deltoides article I cleaned from the Australian Molluscs list above had been copied from an Australian Government site. Just a heads up. ascidian | talk-to-me 23:45, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Another source of infringement? Great. :/ Good catch. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:23, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Take care!

Neochanna has been listed as a copyvio by User:Geronimo20 apparently without adding the appropriate entry on the Wikipedia:Copyright problems page, without discussion on the article talk page and without discussion here. There is no evidence given for the alleged copyvio and simply slapping the copyvio template on an article is an abuse of process if you are not prepared to back up your action with explanation or evidence. As have stated on the article's talk page unless these issues are resolved within 24 hours, I will revert the addition of the template. - Nick Thorne talk 22:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Given that we have already addressed over 1,000 articles and have nearly 1,000 more to investigate, we have agreed to allow the bot to list them at CP, as the instructions above make clear. Please do not revert the template unless you have access to the book and are able to verify that there is no infringement present. The editor whose work we are analyzing has verifiably violated copyright from a number of books and websites and his work needs thorough investigation, as per the discussions at WP:ANI and WP:AN, here and here. Wikipedia takes copyright concerns very seriously, and there is ample reason to be concerned here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:31, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


Couple of questions

Apologies for my lack of copyvio knowledge, I have couple of questions:

  • Longtail stingray had been copied from Discover Life. I removed the copied material as a precaution but was I correct in doing so? The Discover life site doesn't have much in the way of copyright info that I can find, apart from images.
  • Whilst looking at Lowland longjawed galaxias I was searching for the phrase "lacks scales and has a thick, leathery skin" as a potential copyvio phrase which is repeated in many of the galaxiid articles. (see this list). This phrase seems to have first appeared in the Kokopu article, which GB did not start but did edit. The Kokopu page as started by User:Zanuga (inactive since 2005) would also seem to be a copvio of this website but I can't tell which was there first (i.e. was the content copied from wikipedia)? What should I do?

regards, ascidian | talk-to-me 15:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

For item 1, there is no information identifying specifically any copyright, but neither does it indicate any release under a GFDL compatible license so be default, it's copyrighted. For item 2, I would use the copyvio template and add the URL of the site that potentially may be the source of the text and leave a comment on the article talk page indicating your concern. -- Whpq (talk) 15:50, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I have done as you suggested. ascidian | talk-to-me 16:07, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Timeouts on fishbase

I've been having trouble with timeouts to Fishbase. Are others having the same problem or do am I just unlucky on my internet connection? -- Whpq (talk) 12:12, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

No, sadly, it's fairly chronic for me. :/ I've sometimes found that I can search for the official name of the fish at google search and access a cached version of the Fishbase article. This often goes more quickly for me than following the link. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:39, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Yup, problem for me too, on the other side of the world. When fishbase is down and google has not cached the article (and it usually hasn't), you can still use Copyscape to check things like whether there is a copy violation in the lead. --Geronimo20 (talk) 13:02, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


Sharks and Compagno

Hi all, I started work on Flabellina species yesterday and then came across the GB discussion. Just to let you know, I have both

  • Compagno, Dando, & Fowler, Sharks of the World, Princeton University Press, New Jersey 2005 ISBN 0-691-12072-2
  • G M Branch, C L Griffiths, M L Branch, & L E Beckley, Two Oceans, A Guide to the Marine Life of Southern Africa, (David Philip Publishers (Pty) Ltd, Claremont, South Africa 1994) ISBN 0-86486-250-4

and if you'd like to check any possible copyvio with me, please feel free. Seascapeza (talk) 06:37, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Of the four you asked to be checked, the only one that copies Compagno is the Lined Lanternshark.

The African Angelshark is fixed, and both the other articles directly contradict Compagno on several important points such as depth found and max length. Seascapeza (talk) 06:45, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Fish locations

I have some difficulty trying to paraphrase the locations of fish. Take, for example, "the redbait is found off South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the south west Pacific". This is a kind of list. The locations can be reordered, and little changes can be rung in a descriptive phrase like "south west Australia", such as "south western Australia" or "west south Australia". But these cosmetic changes seem very trivial, and you can't really get away from the root words. Is it reasonable to treat a string of locations like this as simliar to say a species list, and not really a copyright concern, or what? --Geronimo20 (talk) 20:47, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

IMHO these sorts of mini lists that follow a natural sequence - for example the one you quoted could be categorised by a geographic direction (in this case west to east), a particular type of list which I have often used when writing about the distribution of fishes - can not reasonably be claimed to be copyright unless it uses an unusual wording. Similarly for alphabetical lists, or lists in some other order, perhaps size or in order of year of discovery etc. I think the key here is whether it is simply a list or sequence of purely factual information rather than containing some sort of narrative or at least required intellectual creativity of some sort by the author. In your example the locations are just the names of places and no one can claim copyright for names in common use. Of course I stand to be corrected by those more knowledgable than I about copyright law... - Nick Thorne talk 05:45, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


Letters and letter sections

Gastropods

User:Sadalmelik/Others

Molluscs

User:Sadalmelik/Others

Other

User:Sadalmelik/Others

Some of the articles in this section can be quite different from the articles cleaned so far. If you are uncertain how to proceed with an article, blank it with {{subst:copyvio|url=see [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gastropods/Subpage for organizing CopyVio Cleanup]]}}

Australian Fish Articles

Hi guys, any of the articles affected by that BD copyvio issue that are in the Category:Freshwater fish of Australia come into my area of interest. I have a reasonable library on the subject and am happy to re-write these articles in a non copyvio but properly referenced manner. I am very busy with work at the moment, but I will get to them as I can. If there are any paticular questions about any of these articles, please feel free to leave a question on my talk page, or on the talk page of the article in question, as I have them all on my watchlist. - Nick Thorne talk 22:16, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

List of affected Australian freshwater fish articles:

Please feel free to add other relevant effected articles to this list, or the one on my user page. Nick Thorne talk 12:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm keeping an eye out in those articles I'm cleaning, but I haven't noticed anything yet. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:21, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
There's five more created by GB. There are probably some articles he has edited but AWB cannot handle more than 25,000 edits. – Sadalmelik ☎ 16:43, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks(?)! I'm still pretty busy with work and RL, but I'll work my way through these as time permits. Of course, if anyone else wants to have a go, fell free <grin>. - Nick Thorne talk 13:19, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Moving forward

As far as the articles created by GB, this should be the current status:

  • 950 articles in Category:Molluscs of New Zealand, Category:Molluscs of Australia and their subcats are clean. Not all of these were started by GB.
  • 1,000 fish articles - of these roughly 2/3 has been checked and sorted out
    • roughly 350 fish articles remain tagged as copyvios, and either use Ayling or Compagno as reference
  • Around 240 gastropods and 70 molluscs which were not in the above mentioned categories still remain. Most of these are genus articles, but some are species articles and contain text from Powell. Some of them has been cleaned up, possibly by people working on one of the several ContributionSurveyor reports.
  • Finally, ca. 300 various misc articles, which on cursory glance seem to also contain infringing material. A fair number of genus and higher order articles, though. The number also contains some molluscs, which did not contain a direct link to Mollusca, and probably gastropods too without a link to Gastropoda. I should probably sort out these again...

So there's still roughly 1,000 articles to clean ;) But first, how will we continue with the articles that are currently tagged as copyvios (from Ayling and Compagno)? – Sadalmelik ☎ 13:28, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

It seems like a consensus approach may be necessary. Unless we can get scads of contributors with access to those books to help evaluate those 350 fish articles in a timely fashion, we may need to stub them to remove potentially infringing text. This would allow publication of something, at least, and let contributors in those areas address the issues at a more leisurely rate. If we go that route, a temporary template to explain the problem could be placed at each talk page. I should have time to dedicate to that process. We're trying to get a dispatch out on plagiarism which has been somewhat consuming, and meanwhile I've been distracted by several other massive copyright infringers. :) (It never stops!) Thoughts? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:29, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Barring other opinions, I am leaning towards stubbing with a note of explanation at the talk pages. But I would be pleased for feedback, agreeing or otherwise. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:07, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Based on what I've seen of GB's contributions, it's very likely that these articles are in fact copyvios. Stubbing will allow an article to exist as a base for expansion without violating copyright. This also keeps the information available in the article history so that if it is established that there is no copyright violation, we can easily bring that version of the article back (without administrator action). So, I support the stubbing action. -- Whpq (talk) 13:26, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Stubbing sounds ok to me, too... There's probably very little content we would be able to salvage even if we all had the books. At least that's my expression based on the usage of various on-line sources, though they are also easier to copy verbatim. – Sadalmelik ☎ 07:40, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

←All right. I have a new template at User:Moonriddengirl/sandbox. Does this cover the situation adequately, do you think? I'm a bit hesitant in linking "rewriting" to Wikipedia:FCDW/Plagiarism, which is set to run this weekend. It offers good advice on how to revise material to avoid plagiarism which is equally useful in revising material to avoid copyright infringement. Thoughts? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:40, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

The comments on plagiarism and the pointer to the new essay seem excellent to me. Standardising the note is also important, because it makes it easy to locate the affected articles later with a simple search.--Geronimo20 (talk) 13:00, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
Then I propose, barring any other ideas, that we list the letters of Category:Articles tagged for copyright problems above so people can choose. Not all of these are fish articles, but it should be obvious as we go. We stub the articles and place the template at the talk page. If there's general agreement on this, I'll clear out the old instructions at the top and replace them with this. Good? :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
Sounds good to me --Geronimo20 (talk) 01:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Instructions added. If there are problems with them, please fix or let me know. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:33, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Next steps

The clean-up on the copyvio-tagged articles seems to be going relatively quickly. Based on User:Sadalmelik's note in the section immediately above, this will leave about:

  • ~240 gastropods/70 molluscs, many of which are genus articles but some of which need cleaning
  • ~300 misc. articles, some of which are genus & higher order articles.

Sadalmelik, are you able to sort these into handy lists? :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:25, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

The list is here. The categories are not very accurate, there are few hominids among gastropods and molluscs etc, but at least all the articles should be there. Some of them have already been fixed or checked by people working from DistributionSurveyer lists. One of the misc articles I checked was Alpheus bisincisus, but the reference database has migrated to another domain and is not redirecting. This should be the current address (very slow site...).
Once all these articles have been handled, we probably should ask Dcoetzee to run his script once again excluding all the articles either started by GB or otherwise checked. There won't be many contributions left, I think. – Sadalmelik ☎ 16:30, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
That's what I like to hear: optimism! :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:14, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm moving some comments to the new section at the bottom, for clarity.

Military matters

Some of the articles in others-category are rather long... Battle of Kufra, Pillbox affair, Italian submarine Barbarigo (well, this one was not started by GB, so it not listed here), Marcello class submarine, Maungatautari Restoration Project etc. I suppose we could let the people at MILHIST to join in the fun, too. – Sadalmelik ☎ 19:32, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

So much for optimism. :) Maybe we should separate out the "Others" section and work first on familiar terrain. We can invite MILHIST to come join us. While we should stub molluscs & gastropods as we go, we obviously would not want to do that to articles that have been extensively edited by others. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:47, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
And, yes, there are problems. The cited source, in snippet view: [11]. Our article: "By good fortune there was every prospect of a ministerial reshuffle in the offing." Major unhappy sigh. I'll notify the project. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:54, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it might be best to leave that section later. Most of them are still various creepy crawlies, but there are few totally different, too. We could sort out the typical stubs first, and then see what's left. – Sadalmelik ☎ 20:13, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Do you have something automated to help you separate out military articles from the "other" list? That could be very helpful. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:18, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
No, sorry. I have used AWB to make these lists, and it has 25,000 article/contribution limit. – Sadalmelik ☎ 20:23, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Well, we could ask whoever takes a section in the O to separate out military articles into a new division. Finding infringement in those may be challenging. I had to go to google books and search there to pick up the snippets that proved infringement in the one article. A general google search may not be productive. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:27, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the notification. Are you expecting many more military history articles to be added to the list at User:Sadalmelik/Others? Nick-D (talk) 23:52, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) That list is complete but only for the articles he has started. I tried to spot the military articles from User:Dcoetzee/ContributionSurveyor:GrahamBould and came up these:

There is probably few more down the list, and I might have missed some, but we'll see once the animals have been finished. – Sadalmelik ☎ 07:28, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. We're working through them at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators Nick-D (talk) 01:35, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Here's anuthrrrr... Auto-Saharan Company --Geronimo20 (talk) 08:07, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Aviation matters

There are also a few articles which perhaps WikiProject Aviation might like to look at: Supermarine Air Yacht, Supermarine Baby, Supermarine Commercial Amphibian, Supermarine Nanok, Supermarine Scylla, Supermarine Sea Eagle, Supermarine Sea King, Supermarine Sea Urchin, Supermarine Seal. Some of these overlap with the military project above. --Geronimo20 (talk) 08:20, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

And the joy spreads. :/ I'll let them know. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:17, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Here's another one: British Marine Air Navigation Co Ltd --Geronimo20 (talk) 06:30, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
The British Marine Air Navigation page does look suspiciously similar to the external link in the article. - Most of the aircraft articles,however, look OK to me, with many being expanded beyond recognition since their created by the banned editor, while several of the others being virtual stubs anyway, with little more than basic specifications anyway.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:34, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Is what I am doing with gastropods OK?

Hi Moonriddengirl, I will be going away for 3 weeks leaving next Sunday, 19th April. In the meantime, I am slowly working my way through a list of GB gastropod articles at [[12]]. I hope that is OK with what is going on here? If it isn't, do let me know. Invertzoo (talk) 23:31, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

That's fine, although we may have some overlap, as some of those are replicated in the sections above. I've noticed a few I've come across that have already been handled; certainly, I don't mind when I do. :D Three weeks. Quite a trip. Safe travels. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:15, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I figured there would be some overlap, but as long as people don't find that annoying, it's OK with me. (Thanks for the good wishes, yes it is a long outing, it's our main trip of the year. It's to Nevis.) Once I have gone through the list I have, I will check the related articles that are linked in each of the articles for copyvio too. The more I do of this copyvio stuff the more I admire what you do on copyvio problems here on WP. More power to you! Invertzoo (talk) 13:11, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Biographies

Arthur William Baden Powell was started by GB and it appears that some phrases are copied from here. How are we dealing with these other articles? -- Whpq (talk) 15:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I've paraphrased the article so it now gets a clean bill of health from Copyscape Premium. It could still have a residual problem with Powell's own book, New Zealand Mollusca. I'll check this shortly when I regain possession of this book. --Geronimo20 (talk) 22:43, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

It also looks like John Marwick may have some issues with text taken from [13]. -- Whpq (talk) 16:24, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

This was extensively copied - now paraphrased and clean. --Geronimo20 (talk) 12:22, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! -- Whpq (talk) 12:50, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


Information: Subpage: the history of this CopyVio event [14]

Gastropod articles: Subpage listing additional suspected CopyVio gastropod articles by GB, UPDATE: as of early April 2009 there are still quite a number that need checking and copyvio deleting, see the list on this page: [15]

Other articles: Here is a list of every article (other than Category "Molluscs of New Zealand" that GB contributed to. The list is organized by size of the largest edit made by GB. [16].


This subpage is for communications related to organizing clean-up efforts on the extensive copyright infringement issue raised on March 13, 2009. The articles that are affected by this include 1,000 within the Gastropods Project and other mollusk classes, but also well over a thousand on other topics including Fish. The cleanup of Category:Molluscs of New Zealand and Category:Molluscs of Australia is complete. Efforts are underway to organize evaluation & cleanup of other articles and categories.

If you would like to start working on fixing up the CopyVio articles right away, first read the "Instructions for volunteers". Despite good intentions and enthusiasm, please do not simply follow your own impulses, instead please try to follow the basic plan we agree upon here, so that we all know what is going on. We are guided in our plan by Wikipedia:Copyright, Wikipedia:Copyright problems and Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins. As this situation is unusual, the response has necessarily evolved as we go.

If you are a gastropod specialist who wants to check gastropod articles for copyvio and possible clean-up, please check the page and list here: [17]. Bear in mind that a great deal of the copyvio was taken from books which are not available on-line, and thus googling for a phrase and not finding it is not sufficient to ensure that it is not copied.


List of willing participants

Please add your username if you are interested in helping. If at some point in the future you lose interest in these tasks or are unable to persevere because of other priorites, please remove your name from the list; you can always add it back on again later.

  • Invertzoo - working on gastropod articles from the additional list at [18]
  • Tim Ross
  • Anna Frodesiak
  • Moonriddengirl
  • gadfium (has a copy of the Powell mollusca book, also Morley's A Photographic Guide to Seashells of New Zealand, Miller's Reef and Beach Life of New Zealand and Ayling's Collins Guide to the Sea Fishes of New Zealand. The books are transferred to User:Geronimo20.
  • geronimo20 – now has possession of the books listed by gadfium above - 20:19, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Whpq - I currently don't have much time available. -- 10:29, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
  • ascidian
  • Sadalmelik
  • Bilby
  • Snek01 - has done a little checking on the untagged articles [19]
  • JoJan, an admin - has done a little checking the untagged articles [20]
  • Dramatic - mainly reassessing all the stubified mollusc articles for WPNZ - many had been classified start class. (Please assess again if you rebuild an article up to the point of start class again)

Instructions, next phase

The articles are listed at User:Dcoetzee/ContributionSurveyor:GrahamBould/remaining and subsequent. They are divided into two major sections: those that are being addressed article by article (as containing more substantial edits) and those that are being addressed section by section. When a page is completely clear, please update the link just below the instruction header to the next page in line.

Article by article

  1. Pick an article from the list and mark it with {{y}} before starting, so everybody will know it is being done.
  2. Look at the history of the article and the talk page to see if copyright concerns have already been addressed. If so, move on.
  3. If not, check for creative content added by User:GrahamBould. Stub or remove such content unless there is a complex editing history and you think contributors to the article might like a chance to revise. In that case, mark it {{subst:copyvio|url=See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gastropods/Subpage for organizing CopyVio Cleanup}} The article will automatically be listed at WP:CP for later evaluation.
  4. If you have stubbed or removed content, add {{subst:User:Moonriddengirl/sandbox}} to the talk page. The text added to the talk page explains your actions. Your signature will automatically be included. Please be sure to "subst" the template.
  5. Give yourself a brief pat on the back and move on to the next article.

Section by section

Begins on the first page, with "Evaluate by sections." All subsequent pages are sectional. Sections get larger and presumably easier to clear as we go.

  1. Pick a section from the list and put your username under the section header so others know it is being done.
  2. Check the "diffs" for User:GrahamBould for each entry in that section, looking for creative text.
  3. If you find creative text that has not been effaced by later editing, remove or stub it unless there is a complex editing history and you think contributors to the article might like a chance to revise. In that case, mark it {{subst:copyvio|url=See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gastropods/Subpage for organizing CopyVio Cleanup}} The article will automatically be listed at WP:CP for later evaluation.
  4. If you have stubbed or removed content, add {{subst:User:Moonriddengirl/sandbox}} to the talk page. The text added to the talk page explains your actions. Your signature will automatically be included. Please be sure to "subst" the template.
  5. When you finish a section, delete it from the list, including its header. This will help others more easily see what work remains to be done on a page.
  6. Give yourself a brief pat on the back and move on to the next article.

Fabulous! Moving forward. :)

User:Sadalmelik suggested above that we now "ask Dcoetzee to run his script once again excluding all the articles either started by GB or otherwise checked." I don't know how such magic is done, but I will ask the wizard if he can. If our meeting place were not virtual, I swear, I'd bring a cake. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:10, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey. :-) I'd be glad to help. The only difficulty is identifying which articles have been checked. Can you give me a list of objective criteria? For example, I could look for articles without a copyvio template, articles not started by GB, articles with an edit containing a particular edit summary, articles edited by a particular set of editors, or any combination of similar things. Let me know. :-) Dcoetzee 17:34, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
Hmm. I was going to ask Sadalmelik what he'd suggest, since he seems to work in equally mystical realms to me, but I see he hasn't edited in a week. Hope all is well. :( I was going to say that we could exclude all articles that he had not started that were in the checked categories, but then it occurred to me that the exclusion would make no sense. I'm sure there are articles in the cats that we haven't checked just because he didn't start them. Excluding contributors to this clean-up who have a history of working in this field could also be counterproductive. Anybody have any ideas? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:54, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
I've kind of lost track of what is going on. What is it that remains? What class of articles is it that we are trying to hunt down? -- Whpq (talk) 20:15, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
I guess those that GrahamBould contributed to, but didn't create? This was the suggestion of Sadalmelik at the section above. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:32, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

From what I can tell, all of the articles that we have been dealing with were from lists that are based on GB being the original author. Please correct me if I am wrong on that point. So the criteria we are looking for the second major effort is a list of articles where GB is a contributor, and is not the original author. If we want to eliminate any articles we incidentally worked on where he was a contributor and has been since cleaned, we should additionally exclude based on a unique text string in the talk page that is contained in the boilerplate explanation from Moonriddengirl's sandbox. I think that should do it. -- Whpq (talk) 20:59, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Whpq although I would add that we already have 3 lists of articles that we know have been checked (and should be automatically excluded) : Category:Gastropods of New Zealand, User:Sadalmelik/FishList and User:Sadalmelik/Others. Although the latter two may have only included articles started by GB (not sure), excluding articles in Category:Gastropods of New Zealand may be useful in reducing the list of articles to be checked as we have already checked those. ascidian | talk-to-me 23:08, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I have been away for a while :/ The complete list of the 2,500 articles started by GB is at User:Sadalmelik/List. They have now all been checked and fixed if necessary—except apparently for some of the articles covered by MILHIST. The other significant list at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gastropods/Subpage listing additional suspected CopyVio articles by GB was derived directly from User:Dcoetzee/ContributionSurveyor:GrahamBould, and includes articles either expanded or started by GB. Excluding the articles in these two lists from the ContributionSurveyor output should do the trick. The articles in Category:Molluscs of New Zealand were all tagged as copyvio, but predominantly we were fixing the articles started by GB at the time—I'm not sure if that category should be included or excluded. – Sadalmelik ☎ 09:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

You're certainly welcome to have a life and do other things. Given that I seem to have taken up permanent Wikiresidence, I can't help but worry when I notice somebody missing. Natural disasters and serious illnesses are the first causes to spring to my mind. :) I wonder how many articles in that category have been edited by, but not created by GB. If Dcoetzee could make two lists, we could check that one separately. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:48, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Sadalmelik: I can do that relatively easily. :-) Will take a look at it in the next couple days. Dcoetzee 21:05, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
This list is now ready at User:Dcoetzee/ContributionSurveyor:GrahamBould/remaining. It's still 9 pages long, but only the first few have any significant prose edits. Definitely getting there. :-) Dcoetzee 04:35, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Next steps, thoughts?

Well, this is good news. Here's what I'd suggest. Start at the top of the list. Mark the article with a {{y}} before you start. That will keep us from duplicating efforts. If there is creative text (not lists, for example) by User:GrahamBould, remove or stub his creative text unless there is a complex editing history and you have reason to believe other contributors might like a shot at revision. In that case, mark it {{copyvio}} (with a pointer to this page). Meanwhile, I'll subdivide the end of the list into groups of about 15 articles. Most of these are probably just going to require a glance, since Graham probably didn't put any text to speak of into them. When you get to that point, just put your username under the header. If there's a Green tickY next to an article name or a username under a section header, we will all assume that the article(s) affected will be dealt with. Does that sound like a workable approach? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:55, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

The list page is very long. To help ease editing, I think I'll subdivide the beginning, too. I'll make clear when I hit the "these are handled by groups" section, if others agree that this is a good approach. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:59, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
In the "encouraging word" category, I did the first article on the list in a matter of a few minutes. Graham added quite a lot to it, but only lists. There was no substantial text. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:02, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
When information is removed from an article, do you want the explanatory {{subst:User:Moonriddengirl/sandbox}} transcluded on the talk page? --Geronimo20 (talk) 01:38, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, that would be good. Forgot that part. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:40, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

←Wow. You guys are already going gangbusters. :) Given how long it is taking me to arbitrarily divide sections, I've decided it would be just as quick for me to evaluate and clear the last few pages right away. They have very minimal contribution from Graham and aren't likely to be a problem. I'll blank them as I go. Meanwhile, the directions are above. Please fix any flubs. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:24, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Doh... I've just realized what a capable software developer you are Dcoetzee. We have only to click on relevant edits in the strings you provide in your liost to get the diff. I wasn't expecting that level of competence, so I wasn't looking for it. With an article like New Zealand, which I laboriously examined over many thousands of edits without using your diffs, the speed up must to be a factor of fifty!. Thank you so much, you are a gem :) --Geronimo20 (talk) 09:15, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Thank you, I appreciate the kind words. :-) In the future I shall have to explain more carefully what the things in my results mean! Dcoetzee 15:43, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
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