[WikiEN-l] Our content gets *everywhere*

[michael west]

On 17/08/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It's a sentence and a half of essentially unremarkable text with no
> > easily identifiable author or significance. Good luck sorting out who
> > they ought to credit...
>
> At the very least they could say "[Taken from
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature]". While not anywhere near enough for
> GDFL compliance, it's still much better than nothing.


lol, I think the same phrases appear about a hundred times on google without
a mention. the problem that we have is that plagerism only seems real if it
can be googled (or in our case if we know the text quoted). Text from books
could go unnoticed for months unless an editor smells a rat. Four sentences
from a Wikipedia article (albeit follow through sentences) have shook enough
people to respond, how about if four verbatum sentences from a book were
posted in wikipedia? would we be shocked at the copyvio?

Not sure how the theatre guide thing works - all the biogs seem to follow
the same flow. Maybe the editor of the programme is also a wikipedia editor
and finds our styleguide more helpful than the puff of most programmes.

mike