[Wikipedia-l] Re: another copyright issue

Fri Nov 16 17:51:44 UTC 2001

I feel that some sort of 'Sources' namespace would be a good way of
ensuring the information about the article has proper attributions.
Whether it's personal knowledge (and therefore adding your name as
someone personally knowledgeable about the subject) or lecture notes, a
paraphrasing from a reference or text book or copying wholesale from a
public domain source, it'd be good to know.

Perhaps we could have a third entry box for sources used when
creating/editing an article, which appends to the 'Sources' namespace
for quick entry, whilst still allowing the editing of the Sources should
the whole entry require judicious destruction / major rewriting.

> Hello wikipeople!
> 
> How can we ever be sure, that those people who (often anonymously) write
> new articles for wikipedia didn't just copy'n'paste it from another
> site?
> 
> I think we can't.
> 
> Take for example
> http://de.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Gopher
> http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/rus/42/internet/gopher.html
> and chapter 2.6 here:
> http://www.fitug.de/bildung/allgem/inetein2.html
> 
> Is it all from the same author? Or is the wikipedia article just a
> ('stolen') copy? Or the copy of a revised (but 'stolen') copy? Or is the
> source under the GNU Free Documentation License?
> 
> How can we be sure about that?
> 
> I think nobody wants that just authors with prooved identities (who are
> responsible for their writing) are allowed to contribute to wikipedia.
> 
> But are we on the save side if we just close our eyes and wait for
> people to come and force us to delete articles that many people have put
> much work in, but that are based on their text?
> 
> Sorry for my bad English, I'm German. If you don't understand what I'm
> talking about I'll try my best to make it clearer.
> 
> Bye,
> Kurt
>