This should be interesting...

According to the Signpost:



Imagine that -- a regular-type author wants attribution for his content! I can imagine the Wikipediots circling the wagons on this, since just about all of them do this sort of thing frequently.

Indeed, the exact same thing was done to me multiple times on nl:Wikipedia.

Your definition of "interesting" obviously differs from mine.

And it seems your definition is different than Heise Online's, too?

If Ms. Destruction's opinion differs from Heise Online's, that certainly doesn't lower my opinion of her. That site isn't exactly one of the world's top news sites.

No, it's only one of the 600 most popular websites in the world, according to Alexa. That puts it about 700 spots higher than the Chicago Tribune's site.

Detective, what's the Alexa ranking of the website for which you're responsible or employed by?

Can we get it absolutely clear what's being said here? Is the claim that sites with good Alexa ratings are intrinsically better than those with lower ratings? If so, why do we have a whole site devoted to finding fault with a site with one of the highest Alexa ratings on the planet? Shouldn't we instead be concentrating on sites with lower ratings, which by this logic must be far less reliable?

Maybe someone could list the ten wikis with the highest ratings and therefore most worthy of our respect. I'm an admin on maybe two of them.

That's not at all what's being said here, but nice try.

So, what is being said? Is it claimed that Heisse Online is a worthwhile site? If so, are its Alexa ratings being adduced as any sort of proof or indeication of the site's worth? If not, why are they mentioned? If Heisse Online is not a worthwhile site, why is the fact that it disagrees with Ms Destruction worth mentioning?

What's being said is that a professional publisher that has 25,564,264 unique visits online annually, with over 139,000,000 page impressions, which employs over 500 people, has revenues of over $100,000,000 per year, probably has a better scope on what "people" would find "interesting" than what some anonymous character named "Eva Destruction" thinks.

Alexa ranking was just a quick data point that would at least suggest that the entity has "worth". I thought it would silence your claptrap, but I was wrong.

So in other words you are saying that Alexa ranking is indeed a criterion for deciding the worth of a web site (though not just for its own sake but because you regard it as a reasonable proxy for other criteria.) So that's one point cleared up.

Why is not Wikipedia (or WMF collectively), which has a far higher Alexa rating and far more unique visits online annually than that site, and has staff and substantial revenues, not also of substantial worth? And why is not Ms Destruction, one of the most influential and well-connected people on Wikipedia, not entitled to some consideration as a result of that? And how is she more anonymous than the 500 employees of Heise? How many of them can you name?

By the way, the primary meaning of "claptrap" is "language used or feelings expressed only to gain applause" hence "insincere or pretentious talk". So who is spouting claptrap?

I'd say the guy too chicken to sign his name to his ideas.

This discussion has clearly gone way off the rails when instead of actually talking about the case referenced in the opening message, all the discussion seems to be focusing on the issue of who finds the case interesting, or ought to find the case interesting, and the level of importance of the people and sites who find the case interesting or not, and the proper metrics for judging such importance, and so on.

If I'm to blame for that, my apologies to all.

I think the curious thing is... how does one usually successfully sue for plagiarism and/or failure to attribute? How frequent is that in a legal setting? What damages are ever won?

It would seem to me, and I am not a lawyer, that if I had a complaint about someone failing to attribute my work, rather than go to court, the defendant could simply say, "Sorry about that, I'll go now and attribute you as the source." And then the plaintiff could say, "Thanks a lot, I appreciate that."

You can always tell when you've won an argument on this type of board. It's when your opponent suddenly starts making silly ad hominem attacks on you.

Or, when the loser decides it's time to switch from the PowerCorrupts fictitious character to the Detective fictitious character. I mean, statistically speaking, of course. Pip pip, cheeri-o!

This is all going according to the script. When the ad hominem attack fails, Plan B is the false sockpuppet allegation. You see this all the time on WP. Thekohser is of course a professional pseudonymous contributor to WP hence an expert at being fictitious characters.

In fact, he is evidently eminently qualified to be a pseudonymous WP admin. Hold on ...

What's the fallacy called when you claim that you've won an argument simply because your opponent made an ad hominem attack?

Wow, this argument is really stupid. What exactly does this have to do with the discussion this thread was originally made to discuss?

I count two posts on topic, both of them thekohser's. It's split time!

What argument are you talking about?

Speaking of splits, can I have a banana split, mods? And a hot chick doing splits, while you're at it.

Meanwhile back to the question. In general, no, of course you can't just publish someone's work without attribution or permission (although most jurisdictions recognize some kind of "fair use" doctrine - brief quoting, in effect). Publishing it without permission is just a breach of copyright. Publishing without attribution may or may not, I think, constitute plagiarism: the latter is falsely claiming someone else's work to be your own, but just leaving the author's name off might not rise to that.

As it happens, I did have the experience a few years ago of finding a paper I had written published without permission or attribution by a mainstream publishing house. They gave me money to go away in preference to withdrawing the book from publication; as the evidence that it was my work was pretty clear-cut, the publisher had no interest in going to court about it.

How does this play out with Wikipedia? I think it's made clear somewhere or other - where? - that contributors to Wikipedia relinquish copyright on their contributions. But contributing someone else's copyright work is a different matter.

(Yes, it is interesting.)

In theory and in policy, contributors to Wikipedia do NOT relinquish copyright on their contributions. They retain copyright and simultaneously agree to a special license for re-use by others of their content.

Now, in practice, that license is so often abused and ignored, it is as if contributors have relinquished copyright.

I'd be amazed if they have any copyright in the first place. For instance they are recording facts, which are not copyrightable, and what others have said, again not copyrightable however they rephrase it. Also they are not meant to be doing any original research, nor are they meant to be doing any synthesis of sources. So if an editor has anything on there that is copyrightable to the editor then it shouldn't be on there. Basically they are suck between a rock and a hard place. The only copyrightable stuff there is in the talk pages, the trolls, and the multimedia files.

That's why I try to include few facts in my work on Wikipedia.

I don't think that argument has any legs, legally speaking. A newspaper story may be entirely reportorial, contain no original research or editorial opinion, but would still be protected by copyright.* The same goes for interviews, and it's the writer/publication which holds the copyright, not the person whose words are reproduced.

Greg, do you have a link to the license under which users are supposedly working?

*This is consistent with the link in the previous post. The Supreme Court said that a list of telephone numbers didn't amount to a work of authorship. Write a just a strictly factual article about them, and you have some intellectual property.

Wikipedia's copyright policy.

Creative Commons' CC-SA 3.0 license under which Wikipedia content is released.

Amen. I also think that it is ill-advised to assume that because a viewpoint is popular then it must be meritorious.

That last part is the classic UK sweat of brow argument which Godwin said that US copyright rejects.




There in lies you second problem. You cannot simply write a factual article about "a list of telephone numbers" you have to write about what others have said about "a list of telephone numbers" IOW you are back to quoting. Under WP:OR you cannot be in bringing anything new/creative to the table, and you cannot be combine sources WP:SYNTH. All you can do is mangle the words of others so as not to be found to be too closely paraphrasing, but basically one is adding facts (not copyrightable) or taking just enough of someone else's work to get away with fair-use.

However, another option on Wikipedia is to cite sources, but mangle the interpretation of what those sources say, to say something altogether different and perhaps wrong.

I decided to try some "random article" clicking to see how long before I found such a case. First click -- Federalist No. 10, I didn't even want to try that one. Next click -- Fibroid disambiguation page. So, I click "Uterine fibroid", because I have some second-hand knowledge about them, from family history.

There, in the last sentence of the second paragraph of the lead:



But, if you read the abstract, it says...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

OBJECTIVE: To describe the effects of pregnancy on the growth of leiomyomas using sonographic measurements of leiomyomas taken longitudinally during pregnancy.

STUDY DESIGN: The study population included asymptomatic gravidas with singleton pregnancies in whom we identified uterine leiomyomas. We included all women whose leiomyomas were measured at least twice during the pregnancy. In a subgroup of women we also compared the size of leiomyomas before and after the index pregnancy. Using real-time sonography, we measured each leiomyoma in 3 axes and averaged the measurements. During subsequent studies we calculated the percent change in the size of each tumor. We assessed complications related to the presence of these tumors.

RESULTS: We evaluated 137 leiomyomas in 72 women (average, 2.3 +/- 1.8 per woman). Each underwent an average of 3.7 +/- 2.1 scans. The average gestational age at the time of first assessment was 14.4 +/- 5.4 weeks. The average diameter of the leiomyomas at the first study was 34.2 +/- 23 mm. On average, there was no significant change in the size of leiomyomas during pregnancy. We found that the size, location and our ability to visualize leiomyomas varied significantly during pregnancy. Four of the 72 women had obstetric complications related to the presence of leiomyomas.

CONCLUSION: The findings of our longitudinal sonographic assessment of 137 uterine leiomyomas suggest that despite the commonly held belief that they tend to enlarge during the course of pregnancy, this phenomenon is in fact quite rare.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So, the study says the thing that's "quite rare" is the enlargement of fibroids during the course of pregnancy, but Wikipedia says that what's "very rare" is the interference of fibroids with pregnancy.

The study said that 4 out of 72 pregnant women with fibroids had obstretic complications related to the presence of fibroids. That is over 5.5%. For Wikipedia, that is "very rare" and a case of "original research".

The article is viewed about 50,000 times a month.

So we have the copyrightable parts of wikipedia to be the trolls, the talk pages, and the downright lies. Which would be amusing watching Godwin's replacement argue in court that something should be afforded copyright protection because it was nonsense. But would even that work? It would be a bit like the NPG arguing for protection over an image due to it having a colour cast.

All their policies say that their intent is to represent the 'sources', and in the disputes, particularly those involving BLPs they'll argue that they are simply following whatever the 'sauce' says. In effect they claim to be simply turning the handle of a machine which any competent automaton could do.

I suspect they already know that which is why they haven't done anything about this:

http://copyright.co.tv/

all of wikipedia's text, and no attribution anywhere. However, you'll note that there are no copyrightable parts there,: no media files, no talk pages.

Alexa ranking in the 8 millions. Not worth Godwin's replacement's trouble.

Obviously I don't agree, but it's no big deal. There are good articles on WP - as well as the trolly ones - which are no more or less creative than print encyclopedia articles. WP asks (although it doesn't always get it) that editors provide citations in order that statements which might be challenged can be verified. When done with common sense (and it often isn't), that's normal scholarly practice for print books and articles.

Reviewing sources, selecting information for an article, ordering it, and writing it in an accessible tone is not the same as mangling other peoples' words (not necessarily, anyway), and writers who do that in print are protected by the law. (WP Synth only prohibits interpreting sources in a way which promotes an "original" position, not selecting from sources in order to elucidate positions taken in the literature.)

I don't see a good argument that WP is any different, although tracking down who wrote what might be a pain in the ass.

COMMENT:

Sometimes WP authors can't help themselves from adding commentary that you won't find in any source. One of my favorites is still in the Wiki on The Ten Commandments (1956 film):







Stop pointing out plot holes for us, Wikipedia!

As to the idea that WP rules are not the same as for most academic works, I think you are wrong, KD. Wikipedia forbids authors to even give an argument more weight than it has in academia, just because they personally believe it. It also forbids them from pointing out obvious conflicts between sources, unless they can find some OTHER source that has also noticed the same conflict. Which can be excruciating for a writer when he or she runs across some dumbass thing, or some obvious error or contradiction.

Of course, most Wikipedians ignore the letter of SYNTH. But as I've long held, the best articles on WP are written in SPITE of its policies, not due to them. WP's policies are mostly moronic.

Speaking of which......

Retarded indeed. But at least they're not getting into trouble.

Whatever keeps em off the streets and out of th' poolhalls, as my grandfather used to say.

This was a Feature Article last year just look at this section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_1_A..._1801#Aftermath

and page 14 here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0lIg-lGwq...inadoes&f=false

That which isn't in cut&paste from Max Boot is cut& paste from Wheelan. So tell me just how much of that section of the article is copyrightable to the wikipedia editors?