Daniel Mayer wrote:
My suspicion that we in fact were not violating any copyright was confirmed when user:sjc claimed authorship and stated that the text had been in the public domain for 12 years.
What should we do in such cases? Furthermore, should we make a rule that if a Wikipedia article "fails" the Google test AND is over a set number of weeks old, then we should give the original contributor the benefit of the doubt and /not/ delete the text?
This points to a need for a policy on procedures when someone suspects a copyright violation. I suspect that this issue will arise more frequently as Wikipedia becomes bigger. It doesn't do to have members deleting articles on the mere suspicion that it may violate copyright.
Eclecticology