[Wikimedia-l] Copyright infringement - The real elephant in the room

[James Heilman]

The Wikimedia Foundation needs to wake up and deal with the "real tech
elephant in the room". Our primary issue is not a lack of FLOW, a lack of a
visual editor, or a lack of a rapidly expanding education program.

Our biggest issue is copyright infringement. We have had the Indian
program, we have had issues with the Education program, and I have today
come across a user who has made nearly 20,000 edits to 1,742 article since
2006 which appear to be nearly all copy and pasted from the sources he has
used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DrMicro#Copyright_infringement
This
has seriously shaken my faith in Wikipedia.

This is especially devastating as there is a tech solution that would have
prevented it. The efforts are being worked on by volunteers here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Turnitin and has been since at
least March of 2012. We NEED all tech resource at the foundation thrown at
this project. Other less important project like FLOW and the visual editor
need to be put on hold to develop this tool.

-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian

The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com