[WikiEN-l] NY Times: Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book

[Joseph Reagle]

On Thursday 25 June 2009, wjhonson at aol.com wrote:
> Yes Joe but.
> Durova's point, with which I agree, is that they improperly cited their source.
> They lifted the picture *from* Wikipedia, and then cited the underlying source.
> This normally implies "I actually went to the source and viewed the image directly there."
> Which Durova has shown they did not.
> In scholarship that is considered a no-no.? You must cite the source *YOU* actually used, not the source your source used.

True enough, and my point about Public Domain is really about copyright, and Durova's point was about plagiarism and credit. So I missed the mark. However, had I more carefully responded I would have expressed that I think I would've made the same mistake Wired made. I would've seen "oh, this is in the public domain" and "oh, here is the source" and "and there's the author" and gone happily on my way. My trusty copy of Chicago Manual of Style (15th) similarly only concerns itself with permissions for copyrighted illustrations and images. Plus, there's no "cite this page" links there to provide guidance. The "Reusing this image" link similarly says nothing.

So I expect this is in part a matter of education, and so we be very clear about we would want such things to be credited. Is this a mutual credit, does the second credit go to Durova or Wikipedia? (There's so much info on that page, it's quite easy to get confused.)