This article, like a large number of Doug Coldwell's GAs, was delisted as a GA (part of WP:DCGAR) and deleted presumptively, on the basis that he had been close paraphrasing tons of stuff for a decade. Well, I was the reviewer for the GA nomination, and I suppose it is unusual to actually check all the sources during a GA review (??), but I did when I reviewed it, and I didn't see anything. If there is any actual evidence that this article was a copyvio, then fine, I have no objection to it being deleted, but otherwise, I don't think it is reasonable for it to stay in the shadow realm forever. The process of me doing a typical Doug GA nom involved the better part of a day extensively copyediting and writing, so it is fairly disheartening to have it all thrown in the trash without any actual evidence that the article is a violation. jp×g🗯️09:30, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fine with any individually-suspected COPYVIO article being restored to sandbox for checking and updating for a reasonable period of time. CP gives 1 week initially, so I don't see why we can't undelete and dole out one week extensions as long as work is either verifying no copyright issues exist or identifying and remedying issues that are found. Jclemens (talk) 16:56, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I do not have a detailed knowledge of the Good Article Review process, but I think that the fact that hours were spent on copyediting or rewriting an article, rather than declining the article because it needed copyediting, illustrates that something is or was wrong with the process, that facilitated its abuse. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:52, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you're supposed to fix the problems, rubberstamping them is frowned on. Typically this would be a collaborative process with the original author, but Doug tended to be very slow about fixing stuff, so I just took to doing it myself. jp×g🗯️20:47, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is purely technical - it was deleted because it was at CP for more than 7 days. There is a good claim that it is NOT a copyvio, so we should handle this request carefully, but I do think it deserves a second look. I'm not sure how to suggest to do that. A sandbox seems like a good spot for it. SportingFlyerT·C16:47, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An administrative review under COPYVIO rules may be a better option now that I'm coming back to this, possibly by the closer of this DRV. SportingFlyerT·C05:43, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm disinclined to support the restoration of anything with significant contributions from Doug Coldwell. The copying, misrepresentation of sources, and general low quality were very pervasive. I might support restoring the article as a draft if someone is willing to go through it with a fine tooth comb and really check for copyvio, close paraphrasing, and text-source integrity. My preference would be to have someone just grab the references and put those in draftspace or userspace, and then for jpxg or any other interested editor to write the article themselves. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:02, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Restore. In short: While it was justifiably presumed that the page contains copyright violations, on a second look it's only reasonable to presume that it contains some plagiarism, but not much; it's also quite possible that there isn't even any plagiarism.I looked at the article here. During Talk:Thomas Jefferson Ramsdell/GA1Earwig's checker [found] nothing from any online sources, per jpxg. Here, jp×g said that he actually check[ed] *all* of the sources, and then did some work on the article—presumably while continuing to look at some of the sources while making his improvements—so I believe that the situation with the online sources is okay. I did some checking of the online sources now and I don't detect close paraphrasing of non-free works. Still, "online sources" and "all the sources" don't match: It could be that there are problems of some sort in some passages with respect to the non-"online sources". (What does it mean for those sources to have been "actually" checked?) But most of the cited works that are not the "online sources" are not subject to copyright anymore, due to their age. Right? Due to this and in combination with the online sources being okay, the risk of actual copyright violations seems very low. Plagiarism of works in the public domain is different from copyright infringement and is not one of the WP:DEL-REASONs. Such plagiarism can be repaired without deleting the page, and can be treated as a maintenance issue. Of all the offline sources that can't be checked, is the content sourced to the The Lumbermen's Legacy the most questionable? That content can be removed. If restoring, I am against restoring anywhere other than mainspace, because problems of this sort are the same regardless of where the page is at.—Alalch E.15:28, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given all of the above, I'm okay with a restoration. There may well be issues with offline sources, but with no problems identified after some significant work, I'm okay with moving forward. If problems with copyright are found, we'll need to fix and maybe reconsider. Hobit (talk) 18:18, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
