Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-01-10/In the media

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Excellent article! Smallchief (talk) 13:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the kind words @Smallchief:! I should emphasize that I'm somewhat embarrassed that, while we were trying to publish, I found @GorrillaWarfare:'s X video about the same topic as the top Ackman story. She did a wonderful job (in under 10 minutes). My 560 word text suffers in comparison. - Smallbones no relation

A while back I spotted an article on a Facebook history interest page that was a direct unattributed copy of a Wikipedia article that I had contributed to. I contacted the page admin (who was not the author of the piece) and it was removed. I suspect that (unattributed copying) happens a lot. Donald Albury 16:29, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It happens. I remember one time I asked another editor to translate a quote from Turkish so I could put it in an article. They did and I did. Later, I found the exact same words in Dawn. If I remember correctly, @Jenhawk777 found some of her WP-work in some sort of academic journal.

I liked Molly's little video-note on "Oxman is not currenlty on Plagiarism from Wikipedia - Correction, she wasn't when I recorded this, but..." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's true! The copyvio tester found almost the entire article on Biblical criticism, that I had written, copied word for word with my references, in an academic journal published in Africa! No credit was given - as if they had done the months of research themselves! (It was easy to prove it wasn't me doing the copying because of the dates.) I guess they didn't realize Wiki is global! I contacted the publisher and ratted them out.

Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A few years ago I was reading a planning application about the proposed demolition of a disused chapel building which I hadn't yet photographed. I was bemused to find that, as an attempt to justify the point that it was no longer required, the applicant (a housebuilding firm which wanted to buy the site) had copied and pasted the whole of one of my "List of places of worship in..." lists, with all the Wiki markup, images, references and everything else (in excess of 120KB!), into the Planning Statement. It was clearly an attempt to demonstrate that other places of worship existed locally; but in the largely rural area in question, the fact that it is irrelevant that churches of an entirely different denomination happen to exist anything up to 20 villages and 40 miles away was apparently lost on them. Needless to say, no acknowledgement of the copying was given. I never did get to photograph the chapel, incidentally ... it was demolished before I could visit the village in question! Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 21:23, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Molly's video is published on YouTube not on X/Twitter. Barkeep49 (talk) 22:07, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Ok, it's in both first in You Tube and then in X. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, plagiarism of Wikipedia has been an ongoing issue for as long as I can remember. Back in the day, I once found a magazine article on a topic I'd written about that was about 50% cribbed from the Wikipedia article. It will continue to happen, particularly in non-mainstream sources; the kinds of media that we normally consider reliable sources now use better anti-plagiarism software prior to publishing than they did in the "old days". Risker (talk) 22:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That' good to know. Thank you. Jenhawk777 (talk) 23:16, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I first came to Wikipedia because some of my work had been copied onto Wikipedia, and I was asked to make some corrections to the Wikipedia version. I resolved this by re-licensing my work under Creative Commons, so there was no copyright violation any more. Some people might be curious about plagiarism can be avoided in most, but not all, situations simply by complying with copyright law. The classic exception is self-plagiarism, where the same article is submitted a second time. There is no copyright violation, but it is still plagiarism because it is not an original work. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:26, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I have gotten in serious trouble a couple of times for copying myself - which I thought was allowed - and it is, but not without noting it in the edit summary. Big fire on head! Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:10, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Off-topic, but wanted to share Pantera - Wikipedia Fact or Fiction (Best of Compilation). -At the age of 15 you started a fire in your home to scare your sister, but you accidentally burned the house down. -I was 14 and I only burnt a great portion of the house down. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:19, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OMG! Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:09, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: - I just love the format on that show and think I've put links in about 20 Wikiarticles to the videos. Ice-T is my favorite, it shows him and his schtick much better than any words could, and essentially confirms the facts as stated in Wikipedia. Sure there are almost always minor grumbles and fine tuning interpretations, but for the series as a whole, the 14 vs. 15 and "only a great portion of the house" are about as extreme as the "mistakes of fact" get. I only quit putting these videos into articles because I don't really like heavy metal music. The genre goes back - as far as I can tell - to about 2005 on WBEZ radio. It appeared to me like some middle talent rocker showed up unexpectedly at the studio, and they wanted to do an interview but had done no prep. So just read the Wikipedia article and ask if it's true. Somehow I'd love to do a whole on-Wiki series like this, but I have no video production experience. Anybody want to volunteer? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:37, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not 20, but I did do Dee Snider. There was another thing called WikiWhat? And something called Actually me [1] that looked at WP at least sometimes. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:59, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The bit about Mendriq is really cool to hear, I think more cross-site integration like that for wikiprojects could go a long way in Wikimedia's future. Orchastrattor (talk) 17:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, there's plenty of groups doing small, well-organized scholarly websites with parallels to bits of our Wikimedia sites. I've been corresponding with one of the regional editors of Historic Markers Database about setting up links from Wikidata to their pages and back, and Commons, and ENWP especially our lists of landmarks and historic places. At Wikipedia Day NYC I saw an OpenStreetMaps guy explaining something to a Wikipedian and it was too bad the HMDB guy wasn't there to get in on that. Anyway I was busy explaining the birth and childhood of an article to a pair of WP newbies at the moment. Opportunities for collaboration are many, but of course we tend to become too busy playing around with our own insiders. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:54, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Three tangents: a) I wish there were a way to teach Wikipedia readers about the existence of Special:CiteThisPage, b) unattributed copies of Wikipedia are a pain because they can result in circular reporting, and c) old news but multiple counts of unattributed copying from Wikipedia were discussed (or found in some cases) by Hbomberguy for his "Plagiarism and You(tube)" video. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 21:51, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]