[Wikimedia-l] Real identifies when dealing with copyright issues

[George Herbert]

I would agree with Brad; in this case, a private (arbcom?  WMF?) contact to establish the author's position or assertion there seems at worst harmless.  They will either answer yes, no, or object to answering.  If it's yes they can essentially / publicly anonymously verify by echoing a requested edit confirmation on their talk page.  If no, then the issue is valid and you move forwards.  If they object or decline you are no worse off than when you started...


George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 19, 2012, at 9:54 AM, Newyorkbrad <newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:

> One possible approach would be to contact the author directly.
> 
> Newyorkbrad
> 
> On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 12:43 PM, James Heilman <jmh649 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Someone has posted a question about WP:OUTING. We are currently dealing
>> with a copyright issue ( a textbook has copied liberally from Wikipedia
>> without proper attribution and the author claiming the work as their own ).
>> Before we inform the publisher however we need to make sure that the author
>> of the book is not a Wikipedia editor who wrote the original content and
>> than released it under a different license. In this instance this was not
>> the case.
>> 
>> However is the simply fact of attempting to verify that an author is not a
>> Wikipedian considered WP:OUTING? Not attempting to verify it before
>> informing the publisher and amazon however would be unethical as we may
>> harm someones career and need to make sure we are correct. Other peoples
>> thoughts?
>> 
>> --
>> James Heilman
>> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
>> 
>> The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
>> www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>> 
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l