[WikiEN-l] Plagiarism Policy, was A Missing Policy

Tue Jul 19 04:28:27 UTC 2005

Plagiarism is simply the use of a source without attribution; passing
others' work and ideas off as one's own.  But on Wikipedia, we should
not be passing off ANYTHING as our own (No original research).  Thus
it can be seen the Wikipedia goal is different than that of an
academic paper or suchlike.  In academia, the crime is one of claiming
credit to oneself that deserves to go to another.  On Wikipedia, we're
not writing for individual credit.

Thus, it is unsurprising that Wikipedia has no explicit plagiarism
policies; it is subsumed under WP:NOR and WP:CITE.  Although, as Fred
Bauder says, we probably should have a page on it in policy anyway, so
as not to confuse people coming from outside.

In general, if a Wikipedia article (or a section of it) is a
paraphrase of another work, that may mean that insufficient sources
were used in its writing.  That can be corrected.

-Matt (User:Morven)