Wikipedia talk:Plagiarism

"Attribution as described in this section is an addition to those requirements."

PBS, regarding this, what editor are you referring to? I ask because I don't see how this edit/edit summary I made makes it so that I am the editor you were referring to. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 09:12, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

See the last edit here. -- PBS (talk) 20:55, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:07, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Why is attribution of public domain established as compulsory by this guideline?

Public domain, by law, does not require attribution. Why does this page state that public domain must be attributed?

A thorough search on this guideline's history shows that this requirement was unilaterally added on June 2008 by @Franamax—a deceased editor. The requirement evolved to:

Whether copyright-expired or in the public domain for other reasons, material from public-domain sources is welcome on Wikipedia, but such material must be properly attributed.

The first question is why? The second question is, why is a guideline establishing a requirement? Are not guidelines principles that editors should attempt to follow rather than abide by?

IdlePheasant (talk) 05:40, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

All should be cited regardless if its free or not Wikipedia:Verifiability. This is also a common practice in academic communities. As its best to always show/lead your readers to more infomation by providing a source. Plus best to prove it's not copyrighted by providing the source.-Moxy (talk) 06:00, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Plagiarism is plagiarism (even if it's not copyright violation). Wikipedia cites its sources, even if they are public domain. This lets the reader know where to go for more information, prevents bogus copyright claims against the content, and helps other editors verify the information. Kaldari (talk) 06:20, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Another good reason for providing attribution is so that our readers are made aware that you copied the prose rather than wrote it yourself. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 11:57, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with the criticisms made by User:IdlePheasant and User:108.201.29.108 below. And I will go much further: Citing sources has nothing to do with plagiarism. We would do that anyway for the purpose verification. This guideline wants us not only to cite sources, but to do so in a way that employs wording that deliberately promotes those sources. I also detect a desire to spam our articles (and spam is the only word for it) with huge numbers of attribution templates and similar devices (in addition to normal references) in order to make reference sections completely incomprehensible or at least very difficult to read (by adding huge amounts of irrelevant material under which the real references are to be buried), and in all cases a stylistic abomination, and huge numbers of scare quotes in order to make it look like we are casting unwarranted doubt on uncontroversial plain facts. Also a desire to annoy editors, and make articles look absurd, by requiring the use of attribution methods that do not normally appear (and possibly never appear) in professionally published encyclopedias or treatises or works of reference, etc, are far above and beyond what is normal, and in some cases are actually forbidden (eg WP:MOSLAW requires the use of mandatory or normal legal citations, with good reason) or are just plain ridiculous. Also a desire to slow the rate of content creation to a glacial pace, and introduce factual errors and unverifiable statements into the project, by requiring unnecessary rewriting of public domain material, and to provide a pathetic excuse to wikihound creators of otherwise valid content, and endlessly nit pick over trivial quibbles, in order to further the cause of deletionism and trolling. Yes, I think we can all see what is going on here. This guideline violates a large number of core policies and guidelines including NOTPROMO, COI, NOTBURO, POINT, IAR, NPOV, V, NOR, MOSLAW and so forth. The whole thing needs WP:TNT. James500 (talk) 03:03, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Noting for the record that the change by User:Franamax was part of the evolution of the document before it was embraced as a guideline via RFC in 2009; the document was adopted as a Wikipedia guideline by community consensus after the text was added. It was entirely within process. The attribution of bad faith motivation is also puzzling. To continue the slew of initiations, this passed an RFC. Certainly WP:CCC, but we should also remember WP:AGF. I was part of those discussions in 2009, and before. Nobody was trying to slow things down or create bad content or spam anything- and certainly not User:Franamax, who was an incredible contributor who dedicated years of his life to collegially building an online encyclopedia. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:26, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Plagiarism of Wikipedia

Is it correct that there is no central place to list instances of plagiarism of Wikipedia? I see that this issue has been discussed. What is current practice? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:25, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

@User:Bluerasberry as far as I know there is no central place. Usually if text is copied from a source then it is a copyright violation. If it is only slightly changed then it will still be a copyright violation. This is covered by using the talk page and the guidance at Wikipedia:Copyright problems. If the text originates from a PD source or copyleft then follow this guidance. Often if it does not involved copyright and the editor has either left the project or is uncoprotive then just do it yourself. I do this all the time for text in Wikiepdia articles copied from PD sources that now appear on Wikisource (eg EB1911 or Dictionary of National Biography). -- PBS (talk) 22:45, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Acknowledged, that helps, thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:38, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry and PBS: I just found this article: Plagiarism from Wikipedia. fgnievinski (talk) 03:07, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

@Fgnievinski and PBS: Okay, enough time has passed and there seems to be no central place to discuss this. The topic is notable enough for a Wikipedia article that Bri started. I started a Wikipedia internal documentation page to complement that - Wikipedia:Plagiarism of Wikipedia. Thanks everyone. Blue Rasberry (talk) 09:29, 26 August 20&19 (UTC)

@User:Bluerasberry See also WP:BACKWARDSCOPY and the template {{backwardscopy}}. -- PBS (talk) 17:11, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

This article makes an invalid point

I think here we miss the point that the nature of an encyclopedia is that it DOES plagiarize within the definition provided for in this article. Further, when you give references, the references in and of themselves constitute so-called "attributions", unless one is below average IQ. To the contrary, with certain things, we are even EXPECTED to give only direct quotes of the authoritative source. (such is particularly significant with American Supreme Court Law, because in order to be completely accurate, we need to use the EXACT words of the court.) Food for thought, but none of this makes any real practical sense other than providing certain people something to gripe about. I recommend doing away with this policy entirely to keep the conflicts at a minimum. 108.201.29.108 (talk) 06:17, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Is there a template?

Is there a template which says "This article section may contain plagiarised text"? All this guide says is to go in and fix it, and I don't have the time. Adpete (talk) 04:01, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

see WP:CPI.--Moxy (talk) 04:40, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

That's not really what I'm looking for. In this case (and I've seen it a few times) the text is more or less cut and pasted from the subject's "About Us" page, so the copyright holder wouldn't object (in fact, it may well have been the copyright holder who did the edit). Adpete (talk) 05:00, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

{{copypaste}}. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:25, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Perfect - Thank you! Adpete (talk) 22:00, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

• Adpete, Plagiarism (copying without attribution, whether or not the material is copyrighted) is completely separate from copyright violation (unlicensed copying of copyrighted material, with or without attribution). We cannot use copyrighted material based on our interpretation of the copyright owner's intent, ever, for many reasons. First, it's illegal. Second, We assert that all material on Wikipedia is available under CC-BY-SA, which among other things allows other people to modify it and use it for any purpose, so the copyright owner's intent would need to stretch that far, which is too much to infer. -Arch dude (talk) 01:25, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Wording of paraphrase examples

I'd like to propose a minor change in the wording of our last two examples of OK paraphrasing:

• Wikipedia text: Michael E. Brown suggests that political change, such as the move from an authoritarian government to a democratic one, can provoke violence against the state.
• Wikipedia text: Political change increases the likelihood of violence against the state.

I'd like to suggest changing "against" in those two sentences to "within". Brown's original text is from a chapter on "internal conflict". The immediate context is here (Google Books). It discusses ethnic conflict, repression of minorities, elite power struggles, and other kinds of internal strife. But with one exception (a brief mention of attacks by criminals against the government of Columbia) I couldn't find any mention of violence against the state.
Another idea, which I considered suggesting, is "by" the state. In the original text, Brown's sentence is itself a paraphrase, citing an article by Mansfield and Snyder (here JSTOR and here free earlier version). This article argues that "democratizing states – those that have recently undergone regime change in a democratic direction – are much more war-prone than states that have undergone no regime change." It's specifically about war with other states, not internal conflict. As a summary of Mansfield and Snyder, "by" seems better, but I don't think it works as well as a paraphrase of Brown.
In a sense it doesn't matter, since any of these words will serve to make the point about plagiarism. But other things being equal, I think it's better for a paraphrase to be accurate, so I'd like to propose "within". – Margin1522 (talk) 09:11, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Reverse Plagiarism

After editing the plagiarism article doing some research on "Reverse Plagiarism"/"attribution without copying" it made me wonder if wikipedia had a policy on this. I assume there is probably a fair amount of false attribution in wikipedia, so reverse plagiarism is almost certainly something that occurs. It seems like there should be a formal statement regarding the activity. I had some difficulty even getting the section on "Reverse Plagiarism" added since it is a relatively unknown term without significant research or reference sources - but after considering the issue, my gut feeling is it occurs much more often than we think. (And in retrospect I feel as if I almost inadvertently committed reverse plagiarism in order to increase the validity of reverse plagiarism itself and get it added as a section to the plagiarism article)

The ease of hiding sources in books/non-digital media, or in long pdfs or articles, simply using them as "filler sources" seems to essentially be a form of reverse plagiarism, although it may also be simply false citation depending on what degree the attribution of the content is.

Anyway, just an idea that I was pondering that seems like it should be addressed. I welcome any contributions to the plagiarism article as well if anyone has any specific insight or if there is any additional research on the area. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.110.209.50 (talk) 22:12, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing and plagiarism

Joe Roe, regarding this and this, do you have any thoughts on my statements in those edit summaries? I'm thinking of where WP:Close paraphrasing states, "Limited close paraphrasing is appropriate within reason, as is quoting, so long as the material is clearly attributed in the text. [...] Close paraphrasing without in-text attribution may constitute plagiarism, and when extensive (with or without in-text attribution) may also violate Wikipedia's copyright policy, which forbids Wikipedia contributors from copying an excessive amount of material directly from other sources." And also what Wikipedia:Plagiarism#What is not plagiarism and Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing#When there are a limited number of ways to say the same thing state.

If you reply, there is no need to ping me. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:31, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Outside of Wikipedia, close paraphrasing is a phrase only used to describe a form of plagiarism. I explain it to students every year [1][2][3]. The close qualifier is there to distinguish it from acceptable paraphrasing. Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing is in line with this: it essentially says to treat close paraphrase like a quotation, so it can be used but only with clear, quote-like attribution, and/or from a public domain source, and should be avoided for the most part.

I thought Wikipedia:Plagiarism misleadingly implied that close paraphrasing was acceptable – a way to "avoid plagiarism". The actual solution is not to closely paraphrase but to just paraphase. I don't think dropping the qualifier changes the meaning of that passage. It just avoids muddying the message with the technical term close paraphrase. – Joe (talk) 06:00, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Joe Roe, thanks for replying. I only recently (yesterday) saw your reply after I'd logged off. This is where someone would say that I should have been okay with being pinged. But still, I don't need to be pinged to this page.

Regarding the matter at hand, I simply meant that WP:Close paraphrasing states, "Limited close paraphrasing is appropriate within reason, as is quoting, so long as the material is clearly attributed in the text." There are often cases where there are a limited number of ways to say the same thing. I understand that close paraphrasing shouldn't be the aim unless necessary or unless it's unlikely to be considered a serious issue. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:24, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Removing citations and plagarism

If an editor is adding valuable content while relying on a source they believe in good faith to be reliable, a citation is required to avoid plagiarism. So if another editor removes that citation because they believe it is not reliable enough, haven't they also committed plagiarism? Dhaluza (talk) 00:15, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

That question seems to avoid the core issue. If the passage relied on an unreliable source so extensively, then the entire passage should probably be removed. Ideally an/many alternate reliable source(s) can be found. No piece of text on Wikipedia, save for quotes, should rely on a single unreliable source so heavily that it could not be replaced by a reliable source. I don't see what good faith has to do with anything here. Someone may well have added a paragraph or section based on an unreliable blog, fully believing it was an adequate source. That doesn't mean their good-faith mistake is now protected from scrutiny or exempt from WP:RS. 156.34.242.108 (talk) 00:42, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

By valuable content I meant that the content should remain because it is verifiable in other sources, so the source was reliable for the information cited. Naturally if the source is unreliable, then the content isn't valuable and should be removed.

To be more specific, assume an editor is citing a work authored by a subject matter expert from a publisher that is reliable on that subject and has not been questioned before. But after that content is added based on those good faith assumptions, the publisher is later questioned for publishing unreliable information on another subject, and the consensus is to depreciate that publisher in favor of more reliable ones. I believe removing the cite for an ancillary reason like that could constitute plagiarism if the original editor relied on that source when developing the content. The exception would be if the cited text was general knowledge in the subject area, so the original citation source was only for verifiability and was not actually a source of inspiration. Dhaluza (talk) 13:03, 19 August 2021 (UTC)