Wikipedia talk:Suspected copyright violations

This project page was nominated for deletion on 8 November 2017. The result of the discussion was mark as historical.

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• Occasionally check [1] for all pages using the CSB template - sometimes the bot forgets to add reports to SCV
• If something is copied from a Wikipedia mirror, it may still be a problematic article. Make sure it isn't a repost of deleted content or fallout from a copy and paste move.
• When in doubt, leave a note here and another editor will provide feedback
• Common reasons an article gets reported, but is not a copyvio:
  • Copied from a public domain source like the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships or any other work of the US Federal government. However, when created this way, the source needs to be noted in the article.
  • Created by
    WP:AFC. These requests sometimes take months to process and get mirrored, creating false positives. Often the external site reported will look like [2]
    , or it will include a lot of other AFC articles. Also, most AFC creators will note what they're doing in the article history.
  • Copy of a Wikipedia mirror. Common signs: Artifacts from Wikipedia layout like a "history" tab, "external links", "references" section and a table of contents, URL similar to Wikipedia-style, links to other Wikipedia-copied articles
• Note that content released under GFDL only is no longer permissible since we switched to dual licensing on June 16, 2009 (see Wikipedia:Licensing update).

@Moonriddengirl: or others: Today I worked on some articles from this list. Per the instructions at the top of the page I added SCV templates (such as 'cleaned' and 'deleted') next to appropriate individual article entries on the list after I determined the article had been deleted or after removed the copy vio concern from that specific article. However, when I came back later I saw that the SCV templates had been removed and the article listings which they referenced remained. What am I doing wrong?-- — Keithbob • Talk • 22:42, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing at all, User:Keithbob. :) When the pages get behind, it sometimes takes a while for the updates to reflect on the master. If you look at [[3]], you can see that your changes are all still there. The article deleted template is entirely optional - the redlink tells us it's gone. The "cleaned" template is especially helpful. Thank you! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:32, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks. Must be an issue with my browser as the other day my posts were gone and the articles remained. Thanks for the feedback, I'll keep working on the list now that I see I'm doing the right thing. Cheers! -- — Keithbob • Talk • 16:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've been keeping an eye on

Some of the people I've thought of who might care ([[User: MER-C | MER-C ]]—[[User: Wizardman | Wizardman ]]—[[User: James086 | James086 ]]—[[User: Justlettersandnumbers | Justlettersandnumbers ]]—[[User: Sphilbrick | Sphilbrick ]]) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:41, 8 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking this "pinggroup" template didn't work. :) I'd have expected somebody to say something, even if, "Um...." User:MER-C, User:Wizardman, User:James086, User:Justlettersandnumbers, User:Sphilbrick. Hey. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:40, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There are way too many dumb false positives for this to stick. That said, I welcome blanking anything with a "Plot" or "Synopsis" section. MER-C 12:45, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ping Group fail. Now looking at underlying issue.--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:48, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A couple thoughts, apologies for being all over the lot.

I haven't handled any SCV items in some time. I think the answer is simple, but boring. My watchlist got out of control, I worked on cleaning it up, and SCV may have been a casualty of the purge. While this affects only me, and you are raising institutional questions, I think I am correct that the admin dashboard entry for copyright issues is only those tagged for CSD. I glanced at the link to other backlogs, and did not see SCV on the list, so could part of the problem be out of sight out of mind

I see some SCV entries in

wp:CP

. Am I correct that SCV is only bot generated, and only items seven days old or more get transcluded to CP? I'll note in passing that when I glance at CP to see whether I should allocate some time there, the SCV reports are hidden, so my subconscious assessment of the backlog excludes those items. I'm not ready to propose that the decision to hide them be changed, just making an observation.

I once proposed a concept called User:Sphilbrick/Tour of Duty. It has implication beyond Copyright issues, and the proposal failed to gain traction, but I still think it has value. My hope would be that editors interested in becoming admins would be encouraged to sign up for a TOD, one of which might be spending quality time at SCV, CP or CCI. I don't want the average newbie tacking these, but someone about ready to go for an RfA might be a good candidate. (I understand that this would be a lot of heavy lifting just to deal with copyright, but I hope that if I decided to try to push for it again the copyright team will be supportive.)

As a shorter term solution, it might help to make sure that SCV shows up, either as an additional backlog, or directly in the admin dashboard.

And after all this, I haven't responded to your original suggestion. I confess that when I work on a CP item with the template, my initial reaction is oh crap, a couple extra steps needed to resolve this one. Not a strong reaction, as I accept that the template might be delivering some value, but it colors my view, and my initial reaction is not all that positive. That said, it would raise some awareness, as well as simultaneously reinforcing our commitment to the issue, so maybe it is a good idea. Sorry to be lukewarm, I wish there were better options, as I know you wish as well.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:36, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm squeezing this in here, because I want to answer some specific questions for

WP:CP just to make sure that the listings aren't completely ignored, with a secondary benefit that sometimes after a day is completed, a page is recreated. I have more than once found that a copyvio G12ed has been replaced and the bot didn't catch it the second time. When the system is functioning as it should, this works really well - by the time an admin or copyright clerk gets to SCV (ideally), the masses of cheerful copyright checkers have gone through the day's listings and either closed everything or left only the difficult ones, which take more time. And, yeah, there's no obvious solutions here to me. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:08, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

I didn't get the group ping, and was anyway away from home. It goes without saying that I'd welcome any change that might get more people involved, so I support Moonriddengirl's suggestion. My only concern is that the same people who currently remove the bot tag from articles without fixing the problem will blithely continue to do so. Questions:

1. Would it be possible to limit removal of the tag to, say, autopatrolled users?
2. Would it be possible to make pages that have been tagged by the bot show up in a different colour (orange?) at Special:NewPages?
3. Should the wording of the header of that page be changed to read something like "Please be sure to check all new pages for possible copyright violations ..."?
4. Could an additional filter (e.g., "tagged as a potential copyvio") be added to Special:NewPagesFeed?
5. Per
   WP:FICTIONPLOT
   .

Apologies for random and probably impracticable thoughts, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:26, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody got the group ping; it just didn't work. Either I did something wrong, or...it just doesn't work. :D There's a lot of technical stuff in here that I don't know. So I'm going to ping a colleague of mine who knows almost everything to see if she knows about potential filters and colors and whatnot. WhatamIdoing, no pressure - I did say you know "almost" everything. :) Do you know if these kinds of things are possible? Easy? Historically never granted? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:28, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Quick answers:

1. Would it be possible to limit removal of the tag to, say, autopatrolled users?

   Yes. You'd use the same logic that handles removal of CSDs by article creators. In fact, using exactly that logic (restricting only the page creator, as the most likely source of a new suspected copyvio) might be more appropriate than restricting it to only a tiny fraction of editors.

2. Would it be possible to make pages that have been tagged by the bot show up in a different colour (orange?) at Special:NewPages?

   Yes, it's possible, but it would require dev support, it feels like the thing that might be rejected for performance issues, and I doubt that they would do it anyway, since I believe that they'd rather that you were using Special:NewPagesFeed, instead of trying to further develop the older one. On the other hand, all right-thinking devs love Maggie and hate copyvios, so if you really believe this would be helpful, then the first step is probably to find a group of people who say that they personally would change their editing (e.g., to do more copyvio removal) in response to this change, and get them to decide exactly what they want.

3. Should the wording of the header of that page be changed to read something like "Please be sure to check all new pages for possible copyright violations ..."?

   This is easily done, if people want to do it. Any admin can change MediaWiki:Newpages-summary.

4. Could an additional filter (e.g., "tagged as a potential copyvio") be added to Special:NewPagesFeed?

   Yes. Steven Walling will know how to do this.

5. Is there any point at all in seeking a consensus that Plot, Episode summary and Synopsis sections should, like all other WP content, be supported by independent reliable sources?

   IMO, and speaking as an editor who has followed WP:V, RS, and NOR for years, this discussion would be a waste of your time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:38, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Requiring sourcing for plot summaries does not discourage copyvios -- in fact the editor who I CCIed and blocked yesterday had sourced plot summaries. It's also the wrong way to write a plot summary. You need to watch the show first. Plot summaries in reliable reviews sometimes regurgitate the show's marketing and never contain spoilers. MER-C 01:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all for replies. It looks as if 1, 3 and 4 might be fairly straightforward to implement (5 was always totally unrealistic, of course). Is there any consensus that any of those three is remotely desirable, or likely to be of any use at all? (as a complement, not an alternative, to Moonriddengirl's suggestion). Also, ping Steven Walling in case he has any comment. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:29, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I just did a brief check and found that almost every single Taiwanese drama created has copy-right issues....

What, if anything, should we do when there is obvious Copying within Wikipedia but it's not clear what the source article is, in those all-too-frequent cases when the the contributor does not respond to requests to provide attribution (a single random example is Karosa LC 757)? Day after day here gets hung up on these after all the more serious problems have been dealt with. I've tagged some of these articles with {{Copying within Wikipedia}}, but I happened to look at the documentation and find that it is "highly unrecommended". Why is that, I wonder? Slightly more drastic would be to redirect the page with a note to say "please restore only with proper attribution"; might that be an acceptable approach? Pinging Moonriddengirl, Wizardman, MER-C, Sphilbrick, Crow – who did I forget? – in case any of them has any comment. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:11, 11 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If the authors aren't properly attributed, then Wikipedia's use of the material is a copyright violation. If the material obviously comes from a Wikipedia article, but it isn't possible to tell which one, then there is no way to provide proper attribution. In that case, the page needs to be deleted, see

Stefan2 (talk) 14:33, 11 February 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

• @
  WP:NOATT. To the more general case, I've got a similar one I'm working with where the author doesn't respond to queries. In that case, I did a specific enwiki-only google search for the infringing content, and spent an hour or 2 identifying the oldest appearance of that text likely to have been the source the author used. That's not particularly definitive that this is where the author took it from, but at least ensures the original writer of those words is identified. (I then have a related problem where he continues to create articles without attribution, I may need help with that, but not to derail your topic). Crow^Caw 22:22, 11 February 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • If he gets some of his articles deleted per
    Stefan2 (talk) 22:27, 11 February 2015 (UTC)[reply
    ]

• user:Crow, I will block editors who CWW repeatedly without attribution, just as I will block editors who copy content from other websites repeatedly without attribution. I will generally put more time in the former into attempted to educate, but in the end it comes down to one thing: people who will not stop violating copyright policy need to be stopped. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:43, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks [[MRG. I'll give you the details later, but for now, I'm afraid my side-issue has derailed JLAN's original question, if you could opine on that so he doesn't kill me. ;) Crow^Caw 22:35, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(

Stefan2, I fear that G12 nominations would in many cases simply be declined by admins. So Moonriddengirl's firm position is music to my ears; if desperate, I may draw the attention of some editors to it. Meanwhile I've been toying with a talk page template for those uncooperative editors, based on {{Uw-copying

}}, but adapted to cases where the source page is not known. So far I've got this: