[WikiEN-l] plagiarism

Tue Jul 19 09:35:24 UTC 2005

On 7/19/05, SCO Estmort <eudaimonic.leftist at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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

We cite our source (or should) when 1911 EB is used. Similarly, even
if there's no legal problem using stuff wholesale from somewhere, it
may be plagiarism to not attribute the source (as well as not being in
line with the Wikipedia guideline for citing sources).

It's important the distinction of plagiarism is made - even if an
existing policy such as the citing sources one is just amended to have
a more serious and major tone wrt. plagiarism. In fact, at the most
crude, the policy page could be renamed "Wikipedia:Cite your sources,
don't plagiarise".

The weight given to discouraging plagiarism should be increased, as it
does impact on how seriously Wikipedia is taken, how reputable we are,
and the potential for irate people to take legal action (*even* in the
cases where they have no grounds - people can get like that when their
work isn't acknowledged, even if it isn't absolutely copied directly)

Zoney

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