[WikiEN-l] plagiarism

Tue Jul 19 01:21:25 UTC 2005

About the plagiarism issue, there's nothing wrong with taking information 
wholesale if 1) it's not copyvio 2) it's encylopedic and suits the 
encylopedic context. I personally think that if anyone finds their text on 
Wikipedia and it was freely licensed or public domain, they wouldn't mind 
anyway, as long as it was being used well (that's why they released it under 
free license/public domain, no?), the only problem would be quality and 
copyediting for language, which can be fixed easily. After all, we do take 
things wholesale (with copyediting here and there) from the 1911 Encylopedia 
Britannica....and no doubt the article will evolve after that. If anything, 
it seems all the policies are sufficient. Copyright, manual of style, 
reference to sources, and being encylopedic. There's no need for a 
"plagiarism" guideline. If anything, any problems with plagiarism violates 
one these issues. If they don't (ie. like 1911 Britannica), then I see no 
problem.

Natalinasmpf