[WikiEN-l] Sourcing "popular culture" items

Fri Nov 10 16:00:01 UTC 2006

On 11/10/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> First of all, let me note that the current version is not the version
> that had the copyvio problems.
>
> Second of all, and I can promise you that this is an experience that
> anybody who has ever taught a writing course can verify, when it
> comes to identifying plagiarism, you know first, and then you go back
> and find proof.

If you llok at the deletion log I found the source.

> There are various things about plagiarized writing
> that just stick out. In the case of the Jeli Mateo article, in its
> old version, here are the two that I look at and go "Ah, plagiarism"
>
> "A towering beauty at 5'8, Jeli never fails to make heads turn."
>
> Clearly a POV paragraph, but more to the point, it seems out of
> context. The writer of that sentence has some sort of perspective
> that is not the same as Wikipedia's. The sentence assumes some sort
> of proximity to Mateo such that the observation of heads turning is
> possible.
>
> "What does she want to prove in Idol? That she's beauty, brains and
> talent all in one package."
>
> The present tense here throws. Yes, the sentence was added the day
> before her elimination, but even still, the tone of the sentence
> sounds like it's intended for an ephemeral context. The "beauty,
> brains and talent all in one package" line is also clearly a
> promotional slogan.
>
> These are more than enough to label it "probable" copyvio, and
> frankly, even if the paragraph weren't a POV puff piece, I'd remove
> the paragraph on probable cause even if I couldn't Google the phrases.
>
> -Phil

On wikipedia other reasons would be:

Lack of wikification.

Flows. Even our best writers tend to produce well polished sentances
of strung together factoids. Most of our writers are not that good.
Wikipedia style tend to priorities presenting information over haveing
a flowing narative. This tends not to be the case with stuff from
elsewhere

Waffle. Wikipedians tend to pad out word counts with trivia rather than Waffle.

Pics that are just too good. While there are a few very good pics
taken by wikipedians for the most part high quality pics of recent
events means problems. And if the editor has uploaded a questionable
pic it worth cheacking the article.

Ultimately though it comes to to experence to a extent.

-- 
geni