Mr Dear,

My name is Brian McNeil, and I am a bureaucrat and community accredited reporter on the Wikinews (http://en.wikinews.org) website.

Allegations have been made on our well-known sister site, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org) that the UK newspaper, The Telegraph has plagiarized from Wikipedia in constructing the obituary for author James Crumley (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3062745/James-Crumley.html).

At the moment, I am in the very early stages of investigating these allegations. The Wikipedia article on James Crumley is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Crumley and I am looking in to prior versions of the article to try to identify which revision may have been copied from.

The Telegraph obituary does not carry any byline, so the identification of any single journalist at this point is not possible. However, some indication from the NUJ as to their position on this issue would be appreciated. Should there be a spokesperson, or other specific individual it would be more appropriate for me to discuss this with, I would appreciate their contact details.

Wikipedia content is licensed under the Gnu Free Documentation License (GFDL). This is a quite liberal license and many forms of copying and reproduction are permitted. However, it is a viral license and – as I understand it – where a work is substantially constructed from GFDL content said work must inherit the license. At the very least, those who have created the Wikipedia biography would wish to see some acknowledgement of the material’s origins.

I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Regards,

Brian McNeil

Wikinews Bureaucrat & accredited reporter.

Email: brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org