[Foundation-l] Allegations of Wikipedia plagurism by Brandt/Websites he has stirred up sending nasty notices

Mon Oct 23 18:08:34 UTC 2006

On 10/23/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> Mr. Brandt has posted a long listing of articles to his website making
> allegations of plagurism
> of wikipedia articles from copyrighted sources.

Good fortune is when you can count on your detractors to help you with
your goals. :)

In any case, I wish Brandt had done a little more homework because
while I have no doubt that some of his findings are legitimate
problems, some of them quite clearly are not.

For example, his second case, [[Charles Wheatstone]], has a large
amount of text copied from Heroes of the Telegraph by John Munro
(1849-1930) [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=979].
This has been documented on the talk page all along. Brandt claims the
text came from some other site but what we have is a case of another
site copying the PD text without attribution.  A good example of why
attribution is important even when not required by law.

In any case, waiting a week or two then taking those articles from the
next dump should resolve any problems which you've had.

I find it interesting that people would complain to you prior to
complaining to Wikipedia.