To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Brian McNeil, I am a bureaucrat and accredited reporter on
Wikipedia's sister project, Wikinews (http://en.wikinews.org
<http://en.wikinews.org/> ). I am investigating allegations that have been
raised on Wikipedia that material has been copied from Wikipedia in your
publication.
The allegations center around the obituary for author James Crumley, the
online version of this is at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3062745/James-Crumley.html. The
current version of the Wikipedia article is located at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Crumley. This has undergone some revision
since Crumley's death, but some word-for-word identical sections remain.
While I wait on those who have made the allegations providing further
information I would greatly appreciate knowing who was responsible for the
Telegraph obituary, and what the paper's stance on such issues is.
While the term plagiarism has been bandied about in the discussion on
Wikipedia, it is more technically accurate - if true - to describe this as
an infringement of the license under which Wikipedia content is provided.
The license is the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL - linked to from the
foot of every Wikipedia page). The terms of this license are relatively
liberal in what reuse is permitted, but there is a "viral" clause to ensure
that those who profit from the material share their works. The upshot of
this would be that and work substantially derived from a GFDL article must
also be made available under such a license.
I look forward to your response on this matter, as I hope you appreciate
this is relatively urgent to maintain the timeliness of the news.
Regards,
Brian McNeil
Wikinews Bureaucrat & Accredited Reporter
Email: Brian.McNeil(a)wikinewsie.org
Mr Dear,
My name is Brian McNeil, and I am a bureaucrat and community accredited
reporter on the Wikinews (http://en.wikinews.org <http://en.wikinews.org/> )
website.
Allegations have been made on our well-known sister site, Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org <http://en.wikipedia.org/> ) that the UK newspaper,
The Telegraph has plagiarized from Wikipedia in constructing the obituary
for author James Crumley
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3062745/James-Crumley.html).
At the moment, I am in the very early stages of investigating these
allegations. The Wikipedia article on James Crumley is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Crumley and I am looking in to prior
versions of the article to try to identify which revision may have been
copied from.
The Telegraph obituary does not carry any byline, so the identification of
any single journalist at this point is not possible. However, some
indication from the NUJ as to their position on this issue would be
appreciated. Should there be a spokesperson, or other specific individual it
would be more appropriate for me to discuss this with, I would appreciate
their contact details.
Wikipedia content is licensed under the Gnu Free Documentation License
(GFDL). This is a quite liberal license and many forms of copying and
reproduction are permitted. However, it is a viral license and - as I
understand it - where a work is substantially constructed from GFDL content
said work must inherit the license. At the very least, those who have
created the Wikipedia biography would wish to see some acknowledgement of
the material's origins.
I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Regards,
Brian McNeil
Wikinews Bureaucrat & accredited reporter.
Email: brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org
Would all users on this list please be aware that a previous email to or from this list had a virus attached, known as Mydoom. This has been confirmed by #wikimedia-tech on IRC. Any users who receive a bounce message from the wikinews-I list with an attachment, document.zip should NOT open it, but please contact #wikimedia-tech on freenode IRC or #wikinews.
Thanks
Thorsteinn A. Malmjursson
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Success!
Now, one question is how do we get the revid to show up when you select a
flagged revision.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Cohen
Sent: 17 September 2008 03:26
To: Brian McNeil
Cc: Erik Moeller; jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: Wikinews and Google news
Hi Brian -
Ok, looks like we can include you. A couple of issues:
- There's a technical requirement that's going to cause some problems. We
need you to add three digits in the urls of the articles in question. You
can see more about this here:
http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=68323
<http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=68323&topic=116
65> &topic=11665
- Also, it would be great if you could include the details you've laid out
on your site. There's a ton of information about how the site works, but
not much on your editorial process. If this is a new change, if you can add
it when it's live, that would be ideal so it's clear that for an article to
hit your frontpage, it needs to be reviewed first.
Thanks,
Josh
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 2:39 PM, Josh Cohen wrote:
Thanks Brian. Let me take a look and come back to you.
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 2:39 AM, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org>
wrote:
The article is created before flagging, but is not visible to unregistered
users unless they know the exact URL to get to it (eg, they wrote it). So,
if I log out of my Wikinews account and create
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Pure_vandalism Googlebot will not see it. You
need to know the URL to get to it, and even then you are warned it is
unreviewed.
Assuming I was not vandalising and created
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Must_read then I could try to bypass the review
by putting the {{publish}} template on it. This would fail, the article
would get flagged in recent changes, and someone would move it to the
{{review}} stage. Previously putting {{publish}} immediately got things on
the front page, they now cannot get there without being reviewed and
sighted.
The Newsroom (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Newsroom) lists articles
that are not yet ready for publication, but this is flagged to not be
spidered.
If this doesn't answer your question please let me know!
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Cohen
Sent: 15 September 2008 22:38
To: Brian McNeil
Cc: Erik Moeller; jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: Wikinews and Google news
Hi Brian -
Yes, I'm the right contact for this. One thing that I'm not totally clear
on with the Flagged Revisions feature is whether these take place before or
after the article is posted. Will the non-logged in user, e.g., the
Googlebot and any users sent to articles we find, only see articles that
have gone through this review process before posting?
Thanks,
Josh
On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 6:47 AM, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org>
wrote:
Hi Josh,
Erik Moeller, the Wikimedia Foundation's deputy CEO, gave me your email
address as a Google contact who - if not able to help - at least is someone
who would know who at Google I should be talking to.
I am one of the senior editors on the Wikimedia Foundation's English
Wikinews project (http://en.wikinews.org <http://en.wikinews.org/> ) and it
has been a long-term goal of mine, and of many of the other contributors, to
see our little project listed in Google's news index. In the past we've been
briefly listed but dropped due to the nature of the project; as a wiki
anyone can edit and this causes issues for accuracy and reliability in our
reporting, something which - quite understandably - is a concern to those
trying to maintain a high standard for the Google news index.
However, a major new development in the MediaWiki software has been enabled
on our wiki that should address most of the concerns over the nature of the
site. This is the Flagged Revisions extension which allows trusted
contributors to mark specific revisions of our articles as having been
checked, effectively giving us a degree of editorial control. This
extension, as a privilege, has been granted only to administrators of the
site and those with a well-established reputation for creating factually
accurate articles. The net effect is that anyone not actually logged into
the site - such as the GoogleBot - will only see versions of articles that
have been checked, copyedited, and given a basic review. My personal opinion
is that this technical enforcement of a 2-3 person review of each article is
a more stringent standard than many of the blogs and PR-machine sites that
are listed in Google news.
If you are an appropriate person to discuss this with, please let me know
any questions you may have on the subject. If not, I would greatly
appreciate an introduction to someone within Google who is involved with
news.google.com. At the moment, the Flagged Revisions MediaWiki extension is
still on the radar of the developers and there are a few options Wikinews
has open to be more stringent in our editorial control. A listing is - for
many of our contributors - a holy grail that should bring the publicity and
exposure the site needs to draw in additional contributors and increase the
breadth and depth of our coverage. I would welcome any opportunity to liaise
with Google staff and make this a reality.
Regards,
Brian McNeil
Wikinews Bureaucrat and Accredited Reporter
Below is an email I have sent to someone at Google (a contact Erik Moeller
was gracious enough to share).
Keep your fingers crossed, and keep putting those review templates on the
talk pages!
Brian McNeil
Subject: Wikinews and Google news
Hi Josh,
Erik Moeller, the Wikimedia Foundation's deputy CEO, gave me your email
address as a Google contact who - if not able to help - at least is someone
who would know who at Google I should be talking to.
I am one of the senior editors on the Wikimedia Foundation's English
Wikinews project (http://en.wikinews.org <http://en.wikinews.org/> ) and it
has been a long-term goal of mine, and of many of the other contributors, to
see our little project listed in Google's news index. In the past we've been
briefly listed but dropped due to the nature of the project; as a wiki
anyone can edit and this causes issues for accuracy and reliability in our
reporting, something which - quite understandably - is a concern to those
trying to maintain a high standard for the Google news index.
However, a major new development in the MediaWiki software has been enabled
on our wiki that should address most of the concerns over the nature of the
site. This is the Flagged Revisions extension which allows trusted
contributors to mark specific revisions of our articles as having been
checked, effectively giving us a degree of editorial control. This
extension, as a privilege, has been granted only to administrators of the
site and those with a well-established reputation for creating factually
accurate articles. The net effect is that anyone not actually logged into
the site - such as the GoogleBot - will only see versions of articles that
have been checked, copyedited, and given a basic review. My personal opinion
is that this technical enforcement of a 2-3 person review of each article is
a more stringent standard than many of the blogs and PR-machine sites that
are listed in Google news.
If you are an appropriate person to discuss this with, please let me know
any questions you may have on the subject. If not, I would greatly
appreciate an introduction to someone within Google who is involved with
news.google.com. At the moment, the Flagged Revisions MediaWiki extension is
still on the radar of the developers and there are a few options Wikinews
has open to be more stringent in our editorial control. A listing is - for
many of our contributors - a holy grail that should bring the publicity and
exposure the site needs to draw in additional contributors and increase the
breadth and depth of our coverage. I would welcome any opportunity to liaise
with Google staff and make this a reality.
Regards,
Brian McNeil
Wikinews Bureaucrat and Accredited Reporter
Rico,
I'm very sad to read this.
I'm not a native speaker either, and some of my stories from Belgium are probably not important as well. You were a prolific contributor and I was proud we had a Taiwanese reporter.
Bullying by local press occurs all around the world, in Belgium as well. This is, to an extent, understandable: we move into a field were professional journalists earn their money. I saw an interview with a French reporter on CNN a few weeks ago; they had difficulties reporting from the Democratic National convention because they had limited access, and had to compete with US bloggers! I've been pushed around by Reuters photographers... I just pushed back :-)
I hope your experiences are a lesson for us Wikinewsies and how we should make more efforts to communicate and be more welcoming to "outsiders", who don't speak perfect English, etc.
I'm glad to see you will remain active on the Chinese Wikinews, but mostly, I'm sad that it had to become such a frustrating experience.
I wish you all the best in your future projects!
Steven Fruitsmaak
From: ricoccshen(a)wikinewsie.org
CC: wikinews-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org; scoop(a)wikinewsie.org
To: jason.safoutin(a)wikinewsie.org
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:43:22 +0800
Subject: [Wikinews-l] Quit for a long rest......
If anyone see this e-mail written by me, it meant that I had quitted
Wikinews AR from this time.
Dislike to do this, but I have to do......
Since I joined Wikinewsie Team, I got more opportunities to participate in
several press events especially TAITRA Taipei Trade Shows, but several
things below confused me until now because....
1. English-language skill (majorly for Wikinews)
2. I'm bulled by several local reporters especially United Daily News in
several press conferences ("Serious than last")
3. I didn't believe some Wikipedians from Taiwan because of several unhappy
experiences at Wikimania 2007
4. No ONE think my articles are "IMPORTANT"
Because of them, I always think that the Wikinews (in any language) should
have more articles related to TAITRA Taipei Trade Shows different from the
other news organizations. But several postponements on my articles drove me
to quit this group ASAP and start a new life for me. In fact, I wanted to
make an e-book from my written articles related to Taipei Trade Shows for
all Wikinewsies, but this will be no longer available because I quitted the
AR although I ever did an experiment on this file
(http://brockf5.googlepages.com/Wikinews_Print_Edition_2008_Taste_of.pdf).
Hope my experience will be a great lesson for the Wikinewsies who is not
native in English. I will start a long-time research for Taiwan's Exhibition
Industry and its history and transfer my work to Chinese Wikinews. In
addition, I will also prepare another Wiki site for my research at Wikia to
harm my unhappy experience at English Wikinews.
Regards,
Rico Shen (former Accredited Reporter of Wikinews in English)
_________________________________________________________________
Alle fun stuff van Messenger nu verzameld op één coole site!
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For those who have yet to see it, here is the video of Brian McNeil and Craig Spurrier's Wikinews presentation at Wikimania 2008.
The video is 33 minutes long and a 353 MB download.
http://movies.archive.bibalex.org/2336.mpg
--SVTCobra