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Contributor copyright investigation
This
CCI cleanup subpage has been opened because concerns of multiple point infringement have been substantiated and further steps are necessary to address the serious risk of
copyright violation from the listed contributor. Listings are not intended to imply a presumption of bad faith on the part of any contributor, as copyright laws vary widely around the world and many contributors who violate
Wikipedia's copyrights policy do so inadvertently through not understanding it or the United States' laws that govern it.
If you are here because of a note on an article's talk page explaining removal of text, please do not restore any removed text without first ensuring that the text does not duplicate, closely paraphrase or plagiarize from a previously published source. You are welcome to use sourced facts that may have been removed to create new content in your own words or to incorporate brief quotations of copyrighted material in accordance with
the non-free content policy and guideline.
Instructions
All contributors with no history of copyright problems are welcome to contribute to clean up. Contributors who are the subject of a contributor copyright investigation are among contributors with a history of copyright problems and so are not welcome to directly evaluate their own or others' copyright violations in CCIs. They are welcome to assist with rewriting any problems identified.
If contributors have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation, it may be assumed without further evidence that all of their major contributions are copyright violations, and they may be removed indiscriminately in accordance with
Wikipedia:Copyright violations. Contributors who are the subject of a contributor copyright investigation are among contributors who have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation and so all of the below listed contributions may be removed indiscriminately. However, to avoid collateral damage, efforts should be made when possible to verify infringement before removal.
When every section is completed, please alter the listing for this CCI at
Wikipedia:CCI#Open_investigations to include the tag "completed=yes". This will alert a clerk that the listing needs to be archived.
If the contributor has added creative content, either evaluate it carefully for copyright concerns or remove it.
Evaluating for copyright concerns may include checking the listed sources, spot-checking using google, google books and other search engines and looking for major differences in writing style. The background may give some indication of the kinds of copyright concerns that have been previously detected. For older text, mirrors of Wikipedia content may make determining which came first difficult. It may be helpful to look for significant changes to the text after it was entered. Searching for the earlier form of text can help eliminate later mirrors. If you cannot determine which came first, text should be removed presumptively, since there is an established history of copying with the editor in question.
If you remove text presumptively, place {{
subst:CCI|name=Contributor name}} on the article's talk page.
If you specifically locate infringement and remove it (or revert to a previous clean version), place {{
subst:cclean}} on the article's talk page. The url parameter may be optionally used to indicate source.
If there is insufficient creative content on the page for it to survive the removal of the text or it is impossible to extricate from subsequent improvements, replace it with {{
subst:copyvio}}, linking to the investigation subpage in the url parameter. List the article as instructed at the copyright problems board, but you do not need to notify the contributor. Your note on the CCI investigation page serves that purpose.
To tag an article created by the contributor for presumptive deletion, place {{subst:copyvio|url=see talk}} on the article's face and {{
subst:CCId|name=Contributor name}} on the article's talk page. List the article as instructed at the copyright problems board, but you do not need to notify the contributor.
After examining an article:
replace the diffs after the colon on the listing with indication of whether a problem was found (add {{y}}) or not (add {{n}}). If the article is blanked and may be deleted, please indicate as much after the {{y}}. The {{?}} template may be used for articles where you were unable to determine whether or not a violation occurred, but are prepared to remove the article from consideration – either because the material is no longer present in the article, or it is adequately paraphrased so as to no longer be a violation (please specify which).
Follow with your username and the time to indicate to others that the article has been evaluated and appropriately addressed. This is automatically generated by four tildes (~~~~)
If a section is complete, consider collapsing it by placing {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}} beneath the section header and after the final listing.
@
MER-C:, I'm trying to get all edits before 01/01/2011 (with minor edits included and a max diff of 200) but I'm getting a 500 error when I do so. Would you know if there's some sort of fix/workaround?
Moneytrees🏝️Talk/
CCI guide03:50, 16 March 2021 (UTC)reply
Too many edits. I can populate this via the offline version, but that will have to wait until I'm no longer sick of CCI.
MER-C12:20, 16 March 2021 (UTC)reply
Sandbox edits.
User:Douglas Coldwell/Sandboxes/Cyprus (page 03) is based on
this "source", content pasted to
Cyprus lunar sample displays (page 02). There is one sentence too closely paraphrased, but that's in sandbox. I don't have to rephrase in sandbox do I? Can we just CSD a sandbox after it has been checked and we know/flag to where the content moved? Because the same thing has to be dealt with back on the real article. How to avoid double work, after figuring out to where the sandbox content was copied ?
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
05:50, 25 January 2023 (UTC)reply
if the content was cut-pasted from sandbox to mainspace and that person cut-pasting it was the only one who wrote it, it should be okay. If we just remove the mainspace content we don't have to worry about CWW either way though. The easiest way to prevent double work is to presumptively delete Coldwell content, but I'm not sure on the community temperature of that drasticness; the response is tepid at best to our nuclear approach with ILT and Hathorn.
Sennecaster (
Chat)
15:44, 2 February 2023 (UTC)reply
Ugh. It's not delete-worthy from a licensing perspective (although it does need a tag for the underlying work), but I can't see how that's useful. It's just a white line across a public domain NASA image. In the actual photo that Doug was basing this off of, both the center of the flag and part of the wording is covered by sticky notes/paper, and it doesn't look like this creation. I'm going to remove it from the article.
Hog FarmTalk01:45, 7 February 2023 (UTC)reply
The problem with this is that commons basically goes by their own rules whether there's CV or not, so I'm not sure how we're going to get these removed.
Wizardman19:57, 10 February 2023 (UTC)reply
If you can demonstrate why it is a copyvio per Commons policy, such as Freedom of Panorama, then it can be easier to nominate those files for deletion. So far, I've found 2 FOP issues with sculpture images and linked
Commons:FOP US in the nominations.
MrLinkinPark333 (
talk)
01:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)reply
Just checking diffs here is not enough. Having read through and corrected the
30 articles here, I found that citations are not always attached to the content they pretend to verify, and that what may look like it is not copyvio is later found to have come from a different source. It's like DC put up text, a lot copy-pasted or barely paraphrased, and then stuck whichever citation on it was closest at hand. As you continue reading sources, you may find something you thought was clear came from a different source!
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
21:22, 9 February 2023 (UTC)reply
NLiber sine nomine (4 edits): Y The first three of these four diffs were reverted soon afterwards as plagiarism. The fourth included a long copied translation and some close paraphrasing, the most obvious of which I removed. —
David Eppstein (
talk)
17:24, 8 September 2022 (UTC)reply
Conscript Fathers? following a lengthy dispute, this was redirected to
Roman Senate. Some content was merged, but was quickly removed by another editor around that time for quality issues. Long story short, I don't think any of this remains. ♠
PMC♠
(talk)20:23, 8 September 2022 (UTC)reply
@
SandyGeorgia and
Vami IV:, I helped DC on this article and I am so disheartened to have read about the extent of the subterfuge to add text with copyright violations. I am happy to work on cleaning up the article. Is the goal to: delete all the content added in each of the diffs that SandyGeorgia identified + then tag the article with a {{Copyvio-revdel}}, including relevant urls and the range of versions to be deleted? Thanks!–
CaroleHenson (
talk)
00:59, 27 March 2023 (UTC)reply
CaroleHenson, the diffs are identified by a script (not by me :) No, that is not the goal. This particular article is well edited by others, so isn't really a candidate for
WP:CP; each bit of text written by DC needs to be looked at and
WP:PDELd if sourced to offline sources or rewritten if too closely paraphrased, and RevDel might be needed if copyvio is found. I have held off on looking at this article as, on the surface, it appears to be in not as bad shape as the rest. We can resume discussion on article talk.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
01:06, 27 March 2023 (UTC)reply
Portions of this article are closely paraphrased from
this source. The paragraph beginning "Lambert designed a sales brochures..." in our article uses multiple uncommon phrases copied from the source, and the following paragraph borrows its structure heavily from the source. ♠
PMC♠
(talk)04:35, 7 September 2022 (UTC)reply
Street light interference phenomenon (23 edits): ? Despite the scary-looking wall of diffs that was here, almost all the Coldwell content was scrubbed in 2014, and what remains are properly attributed quotes. No action needed on our parts unless someone wants to revdel stuff from a decade ago. The quotes aren't a great way of writing an article, but I don't think they rise to a copyright issue.
Trainsandotherthings (
talk)
02:45, 28 February 2023 (UTC)reply
Cone Mills Corporation (3 edits):
(+11685)(+222)Y I've removed almost all of Doug's work and
replaced it with my own or stuff I've otherwise confirmed is fine. Recommend REVELing old versions from before my diff which include confirmed copyvios of
this. -
Indy beetle (
talk) 23:57, 9 February 2023
Noted, I have added the template. Though I plan to rebuild the article in the near future so there would be no reason for anyone to revert back regardless. Just have to find the motivation to work on my next FAC first...
Trainsandotherthings (
talk)
02:35, 28 February 2023 (UTC)reply
Roman Senate (2 edits): ? First edit was related to the Conscript Fathers redirect, see entry above, long gone. Second edit was a different contribution, but it too has disappeared from the article.
Wasted Time R (
talk)
22:52, 5 March 2023 (UTC)reply
Reviewed this article's GAN and checked all sources manually; didn't find any copyvio in the current text. jp×g19:52, 30 March 2021 (UTC)reply
JPxG this article today has unattributed copy-paste from public domain. Please recheck everything you have indicated on this page as cleared, as they are not.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
23:37, 3 February 2023 (UTC)reply
WP:PDEL'd offline sources, have not checked rest. Although the remainder are public domain sources, one has to evaluate anyway as DC often took content from one source then cited it to another, and often verification is failed and copyvio can be presumed.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
14:20, 21 March 2023 (UTC)reply
NA Stillness at Appomattox (1 edit): Y, removed problem content and revdelled a bunch of revisions going back to the Obama administration. Couldn't verify all of Doug's page numbers because I have a 1958 paperback edition and I think Doug was using the '53 original, but all of the Catton refs are certainly not copyvio; he was just citing parts of the book to identify their features.
Bruce Catton needs checked for copvio too, as there was what appears to be a
WP:CWW notice in the edit summary that originated the text. Sourcing is definitely not great, but the nothing appears to be wrong; I've tagged the worst source used although this definitely needs cleanup in the future.
Hog FarmTalk04:21, 20 March 2023 (UTC)reply
NGeorge J. Seabury (1 edit): Y However, there was unattributed copying and close paraphrasing from an old but not quite public domain source. See
this for a copy of 1943 the Dictionary of American Biography, an earlier version of which is cited as a source in the article. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)16:55, 8 September 2022 (UTC)reply
NLeverett Candee (1 edit): Y However, there was unattributed close paraphrasing of an old but not quite public domain source; see
here for a copy of the 1943 Dictionary of American Biography, an earlier version of which is cited as a source in the article. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)17:12, 8 September 2022 (UTC)reply
Unprodded, so rewritten to remove close paraphrasing, remove puffery and UNDUE, and use reliable source (provided by Red-tailed hawk via Newspapers.com).
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
00:46, 5 April 2023 (UTC)reply
Source: During his retirement years, Sauder created Sauder Village ... a nineteenth-century community to educate people about the past.
Article: During his retirement years, he created Sauder Village, a nineteenth century historical outdoor museum showing life of that time period in Ohio.
Which by the way I forgot to remove as I was dealing with reliability, notability and failed verification! Thanks for finding the AP source!
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
02:44, 5 April 2023 (UTC)reply
Yep, I totally missed that. And not a problem with the AP source. I would expect that newspapers.com is probably going to have more on him if the AP wrote an obit for him, so he may well have enough material written about him to get the article back to GA at some point. —
Red-tailed hawk(nest)03:18, 5 April 2023 (UTC)reply
Red-tailed hawk, it is concerning the extent to which DC dug up utter tripe from newspapers.com (anything written in some obscure local paper), but in this case, because it originated with AP, it was worth the effort to fix the article, so I do appreciate you finding it. As to both of us failing to (initially) fix the copy-paste, when I'm working on a DC article, I usually find myself with about eight windows open, as he often took content from one source while citing another-- and then I forget where I am and what I've done! It's not easy work, and I expect mistakes from all of us :)
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
14:52, 5 April 2023 (UTC)reply
Red-tailed hawk, I've now discovered why you missed that copy-paste. DC's original paraphrasing was so poor, that a subsequent editor's copyedit introduced the copy-paste (logically, and probably innocently, as the way DC wrote the paraphrase was so poor that the copyeditor restored a better construct, which turned out to be exactly the original), so you would not have seen it when checking only DC diffs. See
this edit by
Truthanado.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
15:13, 5 April 2023 (UTC)reply
Noema (1 edit): ? Iffy sourcing (something about a kids' spelling bee?), almost entirely removed in the years since; last bit redone now for good measure.
XOR'easter (
talk)
12:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)reply
This needs re-evaluation with all diffs together. Quite often, DC later changed sources in a way that obscured the original copyvio as well as introducing failed verfication.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
15:01, 22 March 2023 (UTC)reply
Southern Highland Craft Guild (3 edits): ? A twist – DC was trying to rewrite an existing article that itself was a blatant copy-paste from the subject's promotional materials. But the DC additions were sparsely and sloppily cited and he left some of the copy-paste intact. I have removed all promotional and/or uncited and/or copy-paste material and refined the citing a bit and flagged some other items for citeneeded. I don't think there's any copyvio remaining.
Wasted Time R (
talk)
19:14, 2 April 2023 (UTC)reply
There's a difference between "is it plagiarism" and "is it legal". This was legal (I agree it is a PD source) but, as a word-for-word copy of someone else's text, not credited to them, it was definitely plagiarism, and inappropriate for Wikipedia. —
David Eppstein (
talk)
22:20, 8 September 2022 (UTC)reply
All it needs is a {{USGS}} template to say where the text came from, though. Anyway, I'm not criticizing you, I'm just saying that if you happen to run into any more of these on this CCI, it isn't a major concern. ♠
PMC♠
(talk)22:23, 8 September 2022 (UTC)reply
That's not quite all it needs. A citation to the copied document itself is also necessary. And in this case, minor changes made in copying from that document also introduced errors of fact (the source said it flowed into another glacier; the copied text omitted that part and said it flowed directly into the sea). —
David Eppstein (
talk)
22:47, 8 September 2022 (UTC)reply
This needs to be re-evaluated with all diffs (from page 02) together. Often, DC returned to alter the sources used which obscured copyvio and introduced failed verification.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
15:22, 22 March 2023 (UTC)reply
Copy-paste along with changing meaning while removing quotes and attempting to paraphrase; the usual works here, reverted to pre-DC and requested Revdel.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
02:45, 25 March 2023 (UTC)reply
foundational copy-paste.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
03:17, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Sent to
WP:CP. Moved from page 02 to evaluate together.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
03:17, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
vandalism revert.
Wasted Time R (
talk)
12:23, 28 February 2023 (UTC)