[WikiEN-l] Slashdot: Book plagarized Wikipedia

[Oldak Quill]

On 13/11/2007, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Up on slashdot:
> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/13/0356203
>
> Referencing:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ydorb/khobar-copyvio
>
> On first glance, the claim appears valid; User Ydorb wrote the material in
> question before the book came out, there's a clear copying of the material,
> etc.
>
> Ydorb says he's public-domained most of his contributions, but rightly
> points out that other WP contributors were involved in the apparently
> plagarized version, and that the WP GFDL sharing license would require
> attribution anyways.

A users contributions may be PD, but the article is GFDL and the
passage is GFDL (based on the fact that other users edited it prior to
the copy who didn't release their contributions into the PD).

I'm not sure the legality of the copy is the main issue. Did the
writer at least reference the Wikipedia article or it's editors?

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)