History-Detroying Merges Are Plagiarism

In view of recent demonstrations that Wikipediot Administrators really do have the ability to carry out article merges in ways that preserve their contribution histories — operating in accord with their one and only rule WP:DUI (Damn U, Iwanna) — there is really no excuse for their engaging in the brands of Internal Plagiarism that I've been documenting above.

Still, WP:DUI rules over all.

Prescisive_Abstraction ¤ Merge ¤ Delete

Jon Awbrey

When you edit any page in the wiki, you are publishing a document. This is a public act, and you are identified publicly with that edit as its author.

Jonny,

I believe that in spirit you are absolutely right, but in terms of the GFDL license, I don't see how can you legally complain about this.

Anyone who contributes ANYTHING on WP is saying "you can do what you want with my work, as long as my work is cited in the article history".

So, is your problem the fact that your name is NOT cited in the article history?

If this is the case, they are in violation of the license and you could sue them for copyright violations.

However, you wouldn't be able to get back anything much more than your court costs because you couldn't easily prove that you had sustained a financial loss due to this action.

In terms of the paragraphs of tightly written, brilliantly reasoned prose that you've contributed above … well, consider your audience …

They're not worth it.

I have always been talking about the Ethics of Scholarship. An organization that pretends to have an educational mission cannot be in the business of promoting bad ethics. It is really no more complicated than that.

It's plagiarism, it's unethical, and it violates the license and Wikipedia's guarantees to its volunteer contributors.

Yes, we're all in agreement about that.

But the question remains: what can one legally do about it?

Quite frankly, I don't believe that much can be done in the US legal system. In Europe, where the notion of moral rights has much more validity, you'd probably have a case … but you'd spend a fortune trying to win it.

The problem as I see it is that those of us in academia operate on the basis of professional and ethical standards appropriate to a career in academia, where personal reputation matters. The same kind of consideration applies to journalists who prepare bylined stories for the popular press about topics from academic research.

Wikipedians do not seem to subscribe to comparable standards, nor is there any incentive for them to do so, given their anonymity and volunteer status.

As a result, about the best we can do is to point out that Wikipedia defines itself as an enterprise apart from either journalism or scholarship when it comes to normative professional and ethical standards.

History-Destroying Merges Are Plagiarism

In view of recent demonstrations that Wikipediot Administrators really do have the ability to carry out article merges in ways that preserve their contribution histories — of course, they do that only when it serves the purpose of this or that Cabal Vendetta, all in accord with their one and only rule, WP:DUI (Damn U, Iwanna) — there is really no technical excuse for their engaging in the brands of Internal Plagiarism that I've been documenting above.

Still, WP:DUI rules over all.

Prescisive abstraction ¤ AfD ¤ Merge

Jon Awbrey

Removing Plagiarized Content

I have removed several instances of plagiarized content from the Peirce article. The violations of due attribution have been documented at this location. Kato9Tales (talk) 17:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Jonny, did you see this?

User Talk:Jon Awbrey&diff=177503579&oldid=83460559

That's unbelievably cruel and below the belt of JzG to ask that you can make comments to the article's discussion when he knows full-well that you are banned.

The cruelty of these people never ceases to amaze me.

Removing Plagiarized Content

I have removed several instances of plagiarized content from the Peirce article. This material was copied from several articles that were deleted along with their contribution histories. Using work without proper attribution is plagiarism. These violations are documented in the corresponding deletion logs and also at this location. JustZeFaxMaam (talk) 04:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

JustZeFaxMaam has removed the plagiarized content that I documented above from the Wikipedia article on Charles Sanders Peirce, placing the following notice on the discussion page:


Jon Awbrey

Lucasbfr restores the plagiarized material:

Charles Peirce&diff=179329655&oldid=179329472

and blocks your sockpuppet (inaccurately) as a "troll":

Special:Log&type=block&page=User:JustZeFaxMaam

Luna Santin protects the article:

Charles Peirce&diff=179330446&oldid=179329655

They see the one problem — that you're socking — clearly enough, but the other — that they're plagiarizing you — is lost on them.

Merging and GFDL

Usual reading of the GFDL is that there is no violation since the full list of authors remains stored in the database. The list of authors from any particular deleted article can be asked at the Administrator Noticeboard, if needed. Please do not disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point. — lucasbfr talk 04:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Note that Prescisive abstraction is not deleted, and its history is readable. I have undeleted Kaina Stoicheia and The Simplest Mathematics, and their history is now readable too. — lucasbfr talk 04:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

A specific explanation of any other problems would be appreciated, should there be any. — Luna Santin (talk) 04:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Source. Talk:Charles Peirce&oldid=179333215#Merging and GFDL

Jon, can I make a suggestion? I know this really bugs you, that they're dicking about with your writing. Easy permanent fix.

Detail this all — the chain of attribution for your GFDL material, and where they broke the chain, and in the plainest (I mean *REALLY* stupid and dumb it down) language, write this all out that any halfwit could understand it and follow it. Make it so a moron could see the plagiarism, and use no fancy language or made up words. Then …

1. Post it here.
2. Mail it into OTRS (again, keeping it simple/plain).
3. Right after mailing it, call the Wikimedia Foundation, and explain, point blank, that they are plagiarizing you and will be taking legal action based on this. Tell them if they don't take down the offending material, you will file a DMCA takedown.
4. They'll take it down — they have to.
5. If they don't, put in a weekly update to OTRS with that same plain jane documentation, and fax it to the Office as well.
6. By now, Cary Bass will be dealing with anyone fucking with you, as legal action is involved. Cary if needed will be required to tell Guy to back off.
7. If they don't back off, you file a formal DMCA take down notice, faxed, snail mailed, and e-mailed back into OTRS, and then call Cary again.
8. If they STILL won't take it down, guess what? They're in breach of the law unless they counter notice you, and if they do, bickety-bam, post a PDF of the notice here, and Daniel Brandt laughs his way to the Section 230 lawsuits.

[I am trying to engage the Public at Large in dialogue about Wikipedia. That is the way forward, and everything else is just distraction.

Jon Awbrey

But if you saw Man in the Moon, you might appreciate that edutaining the public is another, orthogonal, objective.

Jon,

Fair enough. I suppose I just always have more of a, "What is the best way to resolve and win this?" mindset about just about everything. I always try to look for a solution, rather than the critical ways of thought that go from an educational environment such as you came from. I'd guess that you generally will see things in the context of why and how can you get to your goal, where I see them in the context of how and when can I get to my goal.

Cheers.

In the case of Awbrey, the reason he was banned was because whatever he said, no matter how superficially reasonable, came down to "and this is why you should accept my original research rather than what the sources say". He was given months and months to reform or learn to play nice, and he obdurately refused to do so. After he was banned he carried on posting here in the same style until he was banned from here as well.

Source. Guy Chapman, Re:Featured Editors?, Wikienlist, 10 Nov 2007 UTC 12:10

Systematic Administrative Plagiarism @ Wikipedia (WP:SAP)

And, of coarse, of coarse, JustZapitGuy resolves the ethical issue in his usual fascism.

Jon Awbrey

You may want to take a look at this development -- WAS 4.250 asking Jimbo to intercede on JzG.

I hope that my posting it here doesn't sour the natural progression of that Jimbo conversation.

Greg

It's curious how 99% of all drama and tension problems on Wikipedia are literally focused around a tiny, tiny minority of the users.

Typically, these are the same users who accuse others of seeking drama.

I was banned on the basis of false testimony by pathological liars, and everything they have said since about the reasons why has been cut from the very same shabby cloth. They can only get away with lies like that, within their parochial fold, by excommunicating anyone who counters them. Outside the fold, the truth will out.

You may want to take a look at this development -- WAS 4.250 asking Jimbo to intercede on JzG.

But no banned editor has the right to edit here? Or are you claiming they do? In which case you should not DO SO. Defending some banned troll and in the process attacking of our most respected admins isnt right. What is going on, WAS? Normally you behave impeccably but this looks like trolling to me. Thanks, SqueakBox 23:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I read the ANI discussions. They said they banned you because they could not understand what you were saying whenever you wrote.

Well that does make for more of a conspiracy. SlimVirgin and the Harsbara Fellowships were trying to corrupt Wikipedia's "no original research" policy and you opposed it so they made up an excuse to ban you.

You may want to take a look at this development -- WAS 4.250 asking Jimbo to intercede on JzG.

I hope that my posting it here doesn't sour the natural progression of that Jimbo conversation.

Greg

Jon Awbrey spent something like a year faithfully contributing to Wikipedia based on his widely acknowledged expertise in Charles Peirce and his work, a very important figure in the history of logic. That expertise made his contributions to logic/math articles to be beyond reproach to people who knew the subject (although readability by non-experts was and is an issue). But he ran into trouble on articles like Truth where he had to edit with people who could not understand his specialized expert vocabulary and Jon was poorly equipped to fully appreciate WP:NPOV leading to charges of breaking WP:NOR leading him to go to the policy talk page at WP:NOR where he was abused and misinformed by that page's owners;

The user in question did not, in fact, have the expertise that you seem to be assuming for him, and the problems he encountered on Truth were perhaps not because the other editors didn't understand the specialist vocabulary, but because they did understand it.

====Kant====

[[Immanuel Kant]] discussed the correspondence theory of truth in the following manner. Kant's criticism of correspondence theory is one of numerous examples of why so many thinkers who examine the question of truth are not satisfied to rest with this first theory that usually comes to mind.[[Image:Kant_2.jpg|thumb|125px|right|Immanuel Kant]]
<blockquote>Truth is said to consist in the agreement of knowledge with the object. According to this mere verbal definition, then, my knowledge, in order to be true, must agree with the object. Now, I can only compare the object with my knowledge by this means, namely, by taking knowledge of it. My knowledge, then, is to be verified by itself, which is far from being sufficient for truth. For as the object is external to me, and the knowledge is in me, I can only judge whether my knowledge of the object agrees with my knowledge of the object. Such a circle in explanation was called by the ancients Diallelos. And the logicians were accused of this fallacy by the sceptics, who remarked that this account of truth was as if a man before a judicial tribunal should make a statement, and appeal in support of it to a witness whom no one knows, but who defends his own credibility by saying that the man who had called him as a witness is an honourable man.<ref>Kant, Immanuel (1800), Introduction to Logic. Reprinted, Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (trans.), Dennis Sweet (intro.) (2005)</ref></blockquote>
According to Kant, the definition of truth as correspondence is a "mere verbal definition", here making use of Aristotle's distinction between a nominal definition, a definition in name only, and a real definition, [[Definition#Essence|a definition that shows the true cause or essence of the thing whose term is being defined]]. From Kant's account of the history, the definition of truth as correspondence was already in dispute from classical times, the "skeptics" criticizing the "logicians" for a form of circular reasoning, though the extent to which the "logicians" actually held such a theory is not evaluated.<ref>Kant, Immanuel (1800), Introduction to Logic. Reprinted, Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (trans.), Dennis Sweet (intro.) (2005)</ref>

I'm not familiar with the "correspondence theory of truth" but it sounds a lot like one of the mantras one hears in Systems Theory: The Map is not the Territory, and the Model is not the System. But we try to achieve an appropriate degree of fidelity, nonetheless.

Korzybski's dictum ("The map is not the territory") is also cited as an underlying principle used in neuro-linguistic programming, where it is used to signify that individual people in fact do not in general have access to absolute knowledge of reality, but in fact only have access to a set of beliefs they have built up over time, about reality. So it is considered important to be aware that people's beliefs about reality and their awareness of things (the "map") are not reality itself or everything they could be aware of ("the territory"). The originators of NLP have been explicit that they owe this insight to General Semantics.

SlimVirgin is complaining about the section added on the Truth article about Kant. The second quotes Kant and then analyzes what Kant wrote. However the only source it gives is Kant and Kant can be interpreted differently so the interpretation of Kant is original research.

Thank goodness someone has been bold enough to solve the problem once and for all.

Jon Awbrey

Moulton says "Now this is interesting..."
Moulton says "You consider yourself reasonably knowledgable about Immanuel Kant, right?"
Moonbeam says "Kinda. Though one of my detractors would disagree "
Moulton says "I suppose you've not only read scholarly writings about Kant, but some of Kant's own writings."
Moonbeam says "As little of Kant's own stuff as I can get by with, actually. He's not exactly readable."
Moulton says "And you can therefore write a synopsis of Kant's position on something he opined about, such as Kant's Theory of Truth."
Moonbeam confines herself to Kant's theories that apply to journalism, which includes the famous categorical imperative."
Moonbeam says "Why do you ask?"
Moulton says "But if you were to write a paragraph describing one of Kant's theses that you have gleaned from reading Kant firsthand, that would be defined as Original Research, and therefore not allowed in Wikipedia."
Moonbeam says "I don't know Kant's Theory of Truth. The Categorical Imperative is a Theory of Justice."
Moulton says "So, correspondingly, if you wrote on Wikipedia about his Categorical Imperative, you'd have to go by a secondary source -- an accredited scholar who interpreted it for you."
Moonbeam says "Encyclopedias confine themselves to summarizing stuff that's already out there, not to publishing new interpretations of it."
Moulton has read many novel interpretations of his own desires and intentions, as researched by the WPID crowd.
Moonbeam says "I'll bet "
Moulton says "There is this guy named Jon Awbrey who did his academic thesis on Charles Peirce. He wrote a bunch of articles on Peirce and his seminal ideas, some of which are academically arcane. Then Awbrey got banned, much like me. So now they redact anything he writes since being banned."
Moulton says "But Wikipedia has this Gnu Free Distribution License, GFDL, which says that anything written on Wikipedia is freely distributable, as long as you preserve the original attribution. But they took most of his specialized articles and folded the material back into a single article about Peirce, keeping the text, but discarding the discussion and history pages, thereby obliterating any record of the original contributor."
Moonbeam says "Idiots."
Moulton says "So he went in and deleted that material as plagiarism, since it now violates GFDL. Meantime, SlimVirgin is now saying that Awbrey was writing his interpretations from primary sources (since he studied Peirce), and so it was all Original Research anyway."
Moonbeam says "Oy."
Moulton says "But she made the case not relative to his writings on Peirce, but to an incidental one on Kant's Theory of Truth, which relates to a comparable theory of Peirce."
Moonbeam says "Primary sources for Peirce would be Peirce or his letters to people."
Moulton says "And she is saying he was not an expert on Kant, only on Peirce."
Moonbeam says "Most theses are written from secondary sources to begin with."
Moulton says "But the argument SimVirgin makes would apply to the Peirce stuff just as well, since it's still OR."
Moonbeam thinks you will prolly drive them nuts because you love to split hairs, and they don't.
Moulton says "So SlimVirgin is making the case on Jimbo's talk page that Awbrey's stuff is all his original research and therefore not permitted, and should be deleted. And Awbrey wants it all deleted since the attribution has been redacted. So they want the same outcome, but for different reasons. And the surviving editors want to keep the text, but deprive Awbrey of attribution."
Moulton says "Colloquy here on Jimbo's talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...Wales#JzG"
Moulton says "I wonder if Wikipedia is a good candidate for a RICO investigation. "
Moonbeam agrees with "This is just poisonous. It's toxic. the whole thing is toxic."
Moonbeam is avoiding toxic this season.
Moulton says "They have this spaghetti platter of rules and guidelines and everything violates something or other on the platter. So it's RICO, where each partisan faction picks out the strand of spaghetti they invoke to bar the other faction. And it bounces back and forth."
Moulton says "SlimVirgin had tried to revise the guideline on Original Research to bolster her interpretation. Awbrey actually got thrown out partly because he fought for a more liberal interpretation of allowable OR using primary sources."