Wikipedia talk:Contributor copyright investigations/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Just pulled Bozeman Carnegie Library from the main page -- input, please?

Hi,
I just pulled Bozeman Carnegie Library from the DYK section of the mainpage. I had looked at two phrases from the article and the source, and noticed:

• "The building is also opened for special events such as Historic Preservation Week." vs.
• "its new owners have opened the building to the public on numerous occasions for special events, such as Historic Preservation Week."

and

• "Their plan worked as the red-light district and Chinese population steadily dwindled away." vs.
• "the local Chinese population gradually dwindled and Bozeman's red light district soon withered and disappeared."

I haven't looked at the rest yet. Can I get a quick opinion on whether the phrasing is distinctive enough and it is to be considered plagiarism? If I'm overreacting, feel free to put it back. I have more articles from the same editor that concern me, e.g. in Cranberry Creek Archeological District "and was designated a State Natural Area in 1986" is copied word-for-word from the source. Opinions? Amalthea 10:04, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Without even looking to see who it is, I think that - while some of it is well-paraphrased - this contributor seems to cut corners a bit on rewriting content in his or her own language. For another example, the source says "local librarian Bell Chrisman urged the city to seek Carnegie funding", and the lead sentence in the article says "city librarian Bell Chrisman urged the city to seek funding from Andrew Carnegie". With something like this, I'd usually review his other work. If it seems to be a pattern, I'd consider using the {{close paraphrasing}} tag on the article, putting some examples on the talk page of the article, and explaining at the user's talk page where I see issues. I'd tweak the language of one of my form letters (this one) and offer several examples from multiple articles. I'd try to add something encouraging in there about the well-paraphrased sections (since some of them are well done) and acknowledge that it can be a pain in the neck to have to rewrite what seems to be serviceable language. Unless there are more extensive issues in other articles, I'd emphasize that this does not seem to be a major problem and could be easily resolved with just a bit more attention to potential issues. But I'd try to say that more diplomatically. I'm just up for the day. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:30, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm up for the day, too. Yay day! --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:17, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

LOL! :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:52, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I just mostly blanked Lonesomehurst Cabin, but I don't know if the history needs to scrubbed? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:14, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

• I have created WP:Contributor copyright investigations/PumpkinSky to organize the cleanup. Amalthea 19:11, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

One more finished

One more finished: Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/FlyingToaster. Can someone do the closing of this? Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:26, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Done! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:36, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

And another small one: Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20100506. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:59, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

 Done MER-C 04:48, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Another here: Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20101001. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 03:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done MER-C 07:58, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

On a roll, here's another: Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Chewygum. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 04:17, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done MER-C 02:56, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

One more: Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/PumpkinSky. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 15:25, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done MER-C 12:56, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Low-hanging fruit

Just a thought I'm tossing out there, would it be a good idea to get a list going of what CCIs only have a few articles left to look at (i.e. 100 or fewer)? It may help bring in users who want to help but may find some of the larger ones too daunting. Plus it might help us see which ones are close to being closed so we can knock down the numbers. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 20:44, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

That would be great! If you don't know any way to do that automatically (I'm clueless about what we can do automatically), I might be able to help list out a few over the weekend. I worry sometimes that people want to start with the oldest, not realizing that some of the oldest are oldest because they're really hard! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:56, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Nah, don't waste your time by doing that manually. They appear to be well-structured, I can try and write a script that analyzes them if that's desirable? Amalthea 23:11, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't mind doing a quick look through tomorrow and posting things. It wouldn't take me too long, I have an idea of which to look at and skip already. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 01:36, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Rough stats here. Amalthea 17:17, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Awesome :) A lot more under 100 than I thought, actually. Probably a good sign, at least I hope so. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 21:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Double-check I'm doing this right

I've been spending some spare time trying to help out with the backlog. I started at the top of the list and have helped to finish off what is left at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Paknur6. Looking at the other Paknur pages it seems that the contents get blanked when they are finished. Before doing so I wanted to double-check with ya'll. I wanted to make sure that I'm not doing something incorrect with the investigations and/or closing of the individual article reviews. If anyone has suggestions, comments, whatever, let me know. --TreyGeek (talk) 06:46, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks good. There's no need to blank: I'll wipe all the pages when I close the CCI. MER-C 07:01, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

CCI close request "Paknur"

All of the articles appear to have been reviewed for Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Paknur. The CCI should be ready to be closed by a clerk or admin. --TreyGeek (talk) 05:06, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

 Done MER-C 07:50, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Glad to know this has been closed, finally. It only took three years... — The Earwig ^(talk) 08:02, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I am astonished. And delighted. I had begun to think it was impossible. :O --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:29, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I would love to become a CCI Clerk

I know mostly all of copyright policies and copyright symbols and trademarks. --AlexakaAlex (talk) 05:11, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorted files in Category:File at CCI into subcategories

I think that CCI is a brilliant idea and Commons should perhaps have the same. But it seems that some of the CCI's are old and "dead". I do not know how many users that help check articles and files but we could probably need some more users to give a hand.

Personally I work on files so I have no experience with the CCI for articles. So this is why I only mention files here.

In january 2012 a lot of files listet on a CCI was tagged with {{File at CCI}}and send into Category:File at CCI to warn other users not to copy the file to Commons without checking the file carefully. I think that it is a good idea. But I think it was hard to find out why the files was in the category. So I changed the template to make a link to the relevant CCI subpage and to send the files into a subcategory.

That is however no real solution. We need to check that all the unchecked files at the CCI is tagged and that all the checked files are untagged. And ofcourse most important that all unchecked files are checked so the CCI can be closed.

Any ideas what we could do to improve the process? --MGA73 (talk) 09:48, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Something to start off with would be to go through all the CCIs and tag the images, since very few actually are. Doing that might raise a flag to others and we can get them to join in and help out. Beyond that, making the same thing over at commons would be useful, maybe it would help them get off their asses and actually close some of the six month old deletion debates. (As a side note, doing that helped me find a CCI that we never recorded on the list, so I added that.) Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 18:49, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I tagged some files related to the one you just added. --MGA73 (talk) 20:59, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Wikramadithya

All of this user's uploads appear to be copyvvios on first glance. I can't deal with this at the moment - could others look into it? It's small enough a CCI may not be necessary. Calliopejen1 (talk) 03:19, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Help requested for Raja Pratap Singh

In article Raja Pratap Singh, there is some definite copying but the material is likely now out of copyright. Can somebody familiar with Copyright in India confirm that for this book from 1876. More importantly, the bulk of the text was copied from this book from 1914. Thanks. -- Whpq (talk) 19:00, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Works published before 1923 are in the public domain in the United States per Wikipedia:Public domain. Whether or not the material is copyrighted in India doesn't have any effect on whether we can use the material, as Wikipedia isn't hosted in India. Hut 8.5 19:04, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Whpq (talk) 19:07, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

There is a request for closing a completed CCI at WP:AN

The request, from Rcsprinter123, is at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure#Rcsprinter123. Churn and change (talk) 00:41, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Clerking

It seems that Mer-C is having to carry most of the clerking load at the moment. I'm not sure if I would be suitable, but if it would help with some of that load I'd like to put my name forward as a trainee clerk. I wouldn't be able to put a lot of time to it over a full year, but with the semester finishing (and thus most of my teaching load), I shouldn't be too badly off for time until my classes start again in March, so I may be of some use. No hassles, though, if you feel I don't have the experience, or if there isn't the need at the moment. I'm cool with it either way. :) - Bilby (talk) 01:19, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Bilby, I have absolute confidence that you would be suitable as a trainee clerk, a clerk, and almost certainly even an admin based solely on what I've seen you do in copyright. :) You are quite right about Mer-C shouldering the burden here, and I would be delighted for any time you could give it. Assuming there are no protests from anyone else, I would be happy to walk you through the procedures myself. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:19, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I have no objections. MER-C 12:08, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Bonsort should be closed

Don't know how to do it - hopefully someone else can. Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:56, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

 Done VernoWhitney (talk) 00:52, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Also, Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Dogfacebob and Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Druidhills and Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Ksanthosh89! Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:28, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Got Dogface closed, any further ones I'll get tomorrow. Wizardman 05:51, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Closed the other two. MER-C 10:05, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Hotstox

This Wikipedia article on stock car racing appears to me to be one big copy vio. This is not my strong suit on Wikipedia however, and I'd appreciate a second opinion before officially filing it. Note that each section is footnoted to the June 2009 issue of a racing magazine. All in all, most odd. Article also has no talk page. Thanks. Jusdafax 03:04, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Timothy_Lawson-Cruttenden

• - Timothy_Lawson-Cruttenden (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Hi - Following a report at the BLPN - I did a google search and found matches on worddocs ascribd and suchlike - a single uncited addition from an IP - DIFF v - I saw Racepackets name there and I seem to remember a CCI case under his username - but there may well be no connection to him, as the more I look the more it seems a drive by addition from someone with a point of view I have removed it, so unless its replaced this is deal with - regards thanks - Youreallycan 14:18, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

The material seems to have been copied from [1], but that edit was clearly a serious BLP violation and the material should have been removed for that reason alone. Hut 8.5 14:43, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Hut 8.5, I appreciate the feedback - Youreallycan 14:48, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

CCI to close

Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20120828 is finished. Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:55, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Done. MER-C 02:42, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

A new template, presumptive deletion

In conjunction with Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Henry Delforn, I have created {{subst:CCId}} for articles which are tagged for deletion without verification of copyright infringement. Current policy supports this presumptive deletion in cases where it has been verified that an individual has violated copyright in multiple points. The template presumes listing at WP:CP and advises interested contributors how to help verify the copyright status of the material or to rewrite the content if interested in its preservation. It cautions against use in cases where previous contents can be restored (where the contributor was not the creator) and recommends instead verifying infringement where other contributors have invested time (and creative content) into the article. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk)

That works, but do you think that it would be a good idea to create to add a link to recruit editors to help clear the backlog? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:36, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm for anything that helps clear the backlog. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:35, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

GA review of article currently under CCI

User:Retrolord has begun reviewing Richard M. Daley at Talk:Richard M. Daley/GA1. The article is currently listed in Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/HughD with 123 major edits outstanding, although HughD (and possibly others) have since resolved at least some of the paraphrasing problems with this article.

It feels necessary to inform the GA reviewer of the situation, but I'm puzzled as to what recommendation I should make about what the GA reviewer needs to do. Should the GA reviewer pass/fail the article based on other criteria alone, and assume that the CCI will clean up any copyright issues at a later date? (Thus, potentially, for a period of time we have a GA that may contain close paraphrasing.) Or, should the GA reviewer have to perform a complete assessment of whether or not there are outstanding copyright issues or not, before proceeding with the review? (And thus the GA reviewer will basically be carrying out that part of the CCI process.)

To put it another way, reviewing a GA nomination would normally only involve a requirement for a limited or cursory spot check of appropriate paraphrasing; does this particular set of circumstances change that for this particular review?

(Should I be asking this at WT:GAN instead?) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 10:22, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, they may have their own thoughts on where you should ask, but I would tend to think that if there are close paraphrasing issues they would preclude the article being "good". :) Close paraphrasing can range from "problematic as a plagiarism issue" all the way up to "potentially a legal problem", so I would not myself (if I were experienced with GA review) want to pass the article without carefully looking for it where we know the problem is more likely to exist. If the GA reviewer is so inclined, it would probably be sufficient to check the current version against the sources to see if copyright issues exist now. On the other hand, he or she may find it easier to compare the edits where the potentially problematic material was added. It's usually easier for me to do so, as it singles out the content. Once I've spotted the problematic material, it's easier to look for its remnants in current versions. My thoughts, anyway. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:34, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The GA nomination has been failed for other reasons, so this is no longer an immediate issue. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 11:54, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Please close Robertsch55

Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Robertsch55 is finished and can be closed. —Psychonaut (talk) 12:11, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've closed and archived the page. - Bilby (talk) 12:27, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Copying from NY Times

I ran across some copyvios by Sixth degree of separation (talk · contribs) and have mostly tagged them in some fashion. There are two redirected articles that remain untagged, Carla Anne Robbins, and Verlyn Klineborg that need to be looked at. Now the question. This particular user is a sockpuppet. Do we ned to do a CCI and go sockpuppet tracing? -- Whpq (talk) 11:41, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes: [2][3]. Will deal with this a little later... MER-C 06:25, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Notified user. MER-C 10:23, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Hello. If you look at my Wikipeia used page - User:No barometer of intelligence - you can see that I am quite publicly forthright about having used multiple accounts in the past (including my rationale at that time for having done so), along with the documented editing history showing that I stopped doing so in April, 2009, and have only edited under a single username ever since. As for "sixth degree of separation", I think my edits using that name were so minimal compared to the edits made under the other blocked/abandoned/voluntarily-surrendered accounts that I do not link to them from current my user page. Whatever contributions I made to the Carla Anne Robbins and Verlyn Klineborg articles were so long ago that I honestly do not remember them, except to say that biographical source material for members of The New York Times editorial board was fairly difficult to find on the web, other than the biographies on The Times website itself. If some of the wording used on Wikipeia is too literally close to something that appeared on The Times website and I am responsible for it being that way, I apologize. I would note however that I am scrupulous about anything that could potentially be construed as being plaigiaristic, not just on Wikipedia, but in anything I write or edit for any medium. Having said that much, I am not sure what else I can add for the moment. If you need any further assistance or clarification from me, I am happy to cooperate. - No barometer of intelligence (talk) 13:48, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

The diff above I linked is a blatant copyvio from 2011. MER-C 13:39, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

OK, I have carefully examined the edit that I made to the Ernst & Young article on April 11, 2011, and compared it to the story written by New York Times chief financial correspondent Floyd Norris in December of 2009 that my edit cited as a source. Rather than try to contest the "copyvio" claim, I am just going to plead "nolo contendre" (no contest), and throw myself at the mercy of the Wikipedia authorities. Some of the text that is verbatim the same in my edit as it appears in Mr. Norris' article is a series of quotes from the the director of the Enforcement Division of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and those quotes had to be preserved intact in order to be attributable to the person who said them, and did not appear at such length anywhere else on the web that I could find. But I could recognize other portions of my edit that were identical to Mr. Norris' report where i made no apparent effort to paraphrase and summarize, as is my usual practice when incorporating the essence of news reports into a Wikipedia article. As to my motives for the edit at the time I made it, I guess I was feeling some sense of personal vindication, as I had voluntarily provided information to the United States Department of Justice through the Houston office of the FBI that I felt had probably helped contribute to the charges against E&Y and former Bally Total Fitness executives that were settled by that record $8.5-million fine levied against E&Y and the injunction against some of their senior partners' participation in the audits of other publicly-traded companies. One of the FBI agents I talked to in August of 2003 was a CPA in addition to having the law degree that all FBI agents possess and had done one of the initial intake interviews with Enron whistleblower Sherron Watkins, and told me that my presentation of evidence as it related to my personal situation at that time was very similar to hers. When the Justice Department opened a public criminal investigation into possible accounting fraud in the case in 2005, I provided additional evidence to the government via the FBI that I felt might help in the course of that investigation. None of this necessarily excuses or explains the Wikipedia "copyvio" allegation that I am not really disputing; just offering some personal background. Below is a link to a post I made on New York Times chief financial correspondent Floyd Norris' blog in 2007, related to the case against E&Y which was announced in December of 2009. -

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/naked-shorting-redux/#comment-62057

Levy whatever penalty against me as a Wikipedia editor as is deemed appropriate, plus please factor into your deliberations the vast amounts of quality research and content that I have added to the encyclopedia over the course of my six years of editing work, and the fact that I am quite publicly forthright about my past use of multiple accounts, and that it is a practice that ended nearly four years ago and will not resume in the future. Best wishes. - No barometer of intelligence (talk) 14:40, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Opened Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/No barometer of intelligence. MER-C 11:59, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for putting that link on this page, MER-C - No barometer of intelligence (talk) 20:02, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Given that the autopatrolled right requires an understanding of copyright rules, it doesn't seem appropriate to me for users with open CCIs to have that right. However, I notice that a few of them do. Would it be worth adding something to the instructions saying that when a CCI is opened we should remove/request to have the right removed? And/or should we go through and remove the right from those on the list who have it? Nikkimaria (talk) 16:36, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

CC Violators?

I appreciate that Editors want to keep CCI free of the drama that occurs in other dispute areas & noticeboards on Wikipedia. But I was looking over the case of 20130819 (who, for some reason, isn't named) and was stunned by a) the amount of work following-up on a 6 year, 100K+ edit history Editor that volunteers at CCI have to do and b) the fact that this Editor is still editing, without any apparent instruction about proper copyright guidelines or any sanctions. For all anyone knows (looking at the Editor's Talk Page), this copy and paste practice could be continuing.

To an uninvolved Editor, it seems a little nuts that an Editor can get an indefinite block for creating a sockpuppet account or being uncivil and yet other Editors create all of this extra clean-up work for this project and face no repercussions at all or have to provide any assurances that they will, in the future, obey copyright rules.

I applaud that work of Editors who labor to eradicate copyright violations since it seems like there would be a big backlog and this kind of effort goes unrecognized. But shouldn't there be some kind of penalty and follow-up so that these Editors don't repeat offend? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:04, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi, User:Liz. I'm really sorry it's been so long since you've gotten an answer; I'm afraid that this talk page doesn't get a lot of attention.

From the start, the practice has been to avoid naming in the title of the CCI an editor who is or may be working under his or her real name to avoid real life repercussions. Copyright is a legal issue and very important, but often people who violate our policies are doing so in good faith. Many people think that if content is posted on the internet, for instance, that it is free of copyright or that because Wikipedia is non-profit we can reproduce content that is copyrighted more liberally. They don't understand how much paraphrase is required to avoid creating a derivative work or think that translations of non-English works are copyright free. Since copyright is one of those policies that people can violate in all good faith (even pretty egregiously), we try to balance the need to alert other editors with the need to avoid, say, costing somebody a job if their future boss decides to google them and finds that they've been at the center of a plagiarism scandal on Wikipedia.

Knowing when to block and when not to block copyright violators is always a little hard. I have seen editors who are subject to a CCI who have turned themselves around completely. All they needed was to understand what is required and they complied. I am very glad we did not block those people, since some of them remain prolific and valuable contributors. Others either don't care or are not competent to comply. Personally, if I find any editor who is subject to a CCI continuing to cause problems afterward, I block indefinitely.

The editor involved in that CCI is aware of the issue and actively worked towards cleanup of some of the identified problems. In the best of all possible worlds, we would have some kind of "aftercare" system where we monitor these people to make sure that they aren't continuing to contribute issues, because honestly it makes me pretty unhappy to find out we have to expand a CCI because somebody we knew was a problem kept being a problem. The issue is that we simply don't have the manpower. We have a horrible backlog at CCI and have only just recently caught up what I thought was going to be an insurmountable backlog at WP:CP. The number of editors and admins working on copyright issues is, compared to the number of issues that exist, tiny. :( --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:30, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Multiple IPs

Hi,
There's a CCI open for 24.57.81.185. However, the same person also seems to have edited as 24.57.110.189 (talk · contribs · WHOIS). I think it would be a good idea to merge 189's contribs into the CCI. What do y'all think? bobrayner (talk) 16:53, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Makes sense, User:Bobrayner. CCI tool doesn't work on anonymous only, I don't think. At least it wouldn't for me, although it seems like it has before. User:MER-C, do you know? If not, I'll just list them manually or something. Or try to do them myself. I've already deleted a AFC he submitted. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:37, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

It only works on some IPs for some strange reason. I'll try to fix my offline tool tomorrow. MER-C 13:00, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I generated a rough (it looks ugly but it contains all the articles) listing. It's the same program I used to generate the IEP CCI, but slightly improved. MER-C 13:21, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

CCI-request template wording tweaking

I find that all, or nearly all, of CCI's I request are the result of a good faith contributor being unaware of the rules regarding copypaste and/or close paraphrasing. It's therefore both a little awkward for me, and in many cases quite alarming (or unpleasant, or whatever) for the contributor reported.

The first thing the contributor is likely to look at, after the notice on their talk page, is the CCI request itself. Therefore, the intial wording there has a significant impact on their perception of what is happening.

I'm wondering if we could change what Template:CCI-request produces, from "Reported by: Demiurge1000" to "Check requested by: Demiurge1000". Or some similar slightly less AWOOGA! AWOOGA! wording. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:57, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Seems very sensible to me. I've been bold. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:25, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Where to report a user?

According to multiple warnings on User:Doc thompson's talk page, he has received a number of warnings over the last few days about adding copyright violations and is apparently continuing to do so. 2601:D:9400:3CD:C576:5BBF:D9EA:83DF (talk) 04:28, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

According to policy, such issues are reported at WP:ANI. They can also be reported at WP:AIV, but my experience is that admins there tend to block only in extremely clearcut cases. Thay may have blocked in this one, but no need to test that. :) I've issued a temporary block - a little longer than I would ordinarily block for a first time, but he went three days between edits and I don't want him to miss this, as the behavior needs to stop soon before we wind up losing somebody altogether. Thanks for following up on that! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:48, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Permission to assist

In my early years of editing, I was negligent in both my understanding and application of guidelines concerning the use of non-free text. The most embarrassing instance was this September 2009 word-for-word copy and paste of two paragraphs from another website. This egregious error was brought to my attention on my talk page earlier this year. Since this was part of a problem that had also been pointed out to me in February 2010, and I feared there might be other undiscovered errors, I've slowly reviewed all of my edits for the years 2008 through mid 2011. I did not come across any additional instances of copyright violation like the one above but I did find instances of close paraphrasing, which I have repaired. I'd like to offer some assistance with the backlog here but wonder if I qualify per the WP:CCI instruction: All contributors with no history of copyright problems are welcome to contribute to clean up. Comments? Suggestions?-- — Keithbob • Talk • 21:45, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

What a wonderful thing for you to have done. :) Thank you, User:Keithbob. Those instructions were there largely because people who have had an issue with copyright themselves may not recognize it when they see it or, sadly, may not much care. Without naming any names, I recall one specific incident in a WP:CCI where a user was marking content as clear that was quite obviously not - I don't know if he was even checking, since coming along behind him I found blatant copy-pasting. People like that don't help at CCI; they hinder. I doubt that would be the case with you. I would say that this is probably time to consider WP:IAR. If you feel sure that you can bring the necessary diligence to this work, then I say bring it. We need you sorely, and your help would be appreciated. If you have doubts about your ability to assess a particular article, well, there are a ton of other articles to assess. :) Volunteers choose which CCIs to help out with and even which listings within a CCI. If you have any doubts about whether or not something is too close, you can always leave that listing (and even place the sources at the listing, so the next person to check it knows about your concerns) or ask somebody. You're always welcome at my talk page, for instance. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:35, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi User:Moonriddengirl Thank you for your response and warm welcome. I shall jump right in and will consult with you should I have any questions. Thanks again! -- — Keithbob • Talk • 14:11, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Completed CCI

I just finished Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Caracas 2000 -- what a mess! Could someone do whatever needs to be done to officially close it? Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:59, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

 Done, thanks for wrapping that up Wizardman 00:17, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Bot to flag articles

Hi, guys. User:Itsmejudith left a very sensible note at the talk page of Eugen Fischer:

This is going to be a nightmare. I wish we had known before that the text edited by Virago250 was a copyvio. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:01, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like a really good idea to me. Before I start poking at people who make bots to ask them if there's any way to flag talk pages to let people know that an article is part of a pending CCI and that they can help (perhaps with a link to the instructions on the CCI page), I wanted to float it here and see if anybody thought it was a horrible idea for reasons that I haven't thought of. To me, it sounds kind of genius. :) Also, if anybody botty happens to see this and wants to weigh in on whether or not they can help make it happen, awesome.

In the interest of attracting comments, hi User:Wizardman, User:MER-C, User:Diannaa, User:Dana boomer, User:Voceditenore, User:Ymblanter, User:VernoWhitney, User:MLauba, and User:Madman. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:20, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

The talk pages of all articles should be flagged IMO until it is dealt with. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:25, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of flagging talk pages, although that would be a freaking lot of articles being flagged... According to AmaltheaBot, there are something over 66,000 articles pending investigation (man, that's depressing). Would the talk page tags be removed when the check was performed? By bot or by human? Tagging the talk pages might bring in more people to help, though... Dana boomer (talk) 21:23, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

No objections, but I suggest placing another tag on the article because it is a problem our raders need to know about. MER-C 13:22, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Not sure the notification system works as it should, Moonriddengirl, I certainly didn't get the red label alerting me to this discussion :) For mainspace, why not consider an editnotice instead? MLauba ^(Talk) 11:45, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, User:MLauba, that might be because I miscapitalized your name to begin with, so it didn't know who to notify? Maybe it doesn't notify when you edit a name. :) Anyway, this is looking a little complex - I think we'd need to figure out where the tag would go and what it would look like and how it would get removed. (For instance, could a bot remove it when the CCI is closed? Or is that one more task a CCI evaluator needs to do? The latter is probably not worth it. :/) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:50, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• I think the best way to do that might be an opt-in situation, like doing it for a handful of CCIs first to get an idea of how it would work. It would not only get others involved ideally, but if we went the pick-and-choose route, we wouldn't have to throw it up on the CCIs where maybe 5% of the articles are an issue; doing a bot for those would be a timesink. Wizardman 15:21, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• I'm probably talking out of my arse but I expect AWB would be a far more practical tool than a bot for the tagging or edit-notice activation? But aside from the feasability question, the probably tough question is indeed: where do you draw the line between leaving and tagging? The obvious cases of the serial violators who persist and come back to CCI multiple time with socks is pretty clear-cut, but there are also more marginal cases - one former arbitrator or a certain flying kitchen appliance come to mind as examples of edge cases. MLauba ^(Talk) 11:50, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

• I don't know the difference between bots and AWB, but I like the idea of selectively choosing which ones to flag. It's a good point that some are borderline issues that don't require the widespread tagging and I would also be reluctant to shame good faith contributors who are actively editing. That needs careful handling. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:00, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

If there is interest in such a task I could certainly run it. Anything I've read so far is simple enough considering that I already parse the case pages for the report. A few comments on the above ideas:

• Talk page tags are least intrusive, edit notice would work as well, article maintainance tag will be seen as too intrusive if added indiscriminately, i.e. for trivial diffs.
• From experience, it's always good to implement such new mass-tagging tasks slowly (even after approval). A handful of select CCIs, or only diffs that added a significant amount of text. And probably only a talk page tag for now.
• Bot can certainly remove the tag automatically once the diffs are handled, but edit notices would require an admin bot to automatically delete the notice pages again, or a semi-automatic process where an admin batch deletes them.
• AFAIK, to get an Echo notification an edit needs to add a valid username link as well as an unexpanded signature. ;)

Amalthea 13:52, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

So what do we do now, User:Amalthea? Bot request group approval? :) I'd support a trial run on a CCI or two, talk page probably. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:26, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

This is entirely reasonable. I wouldn't go for an edit notice because adding and removal require admin attention. Mainspace tags should be reserved for the worst of the CCIs. What happens now? Coding, debugging and then a BRFA. MER-C 05:30, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Ok, Tasks:

• Someone needs to design the talk page template. Besides some intro text pointing out the potential problem it should probably have more detailed information (collapsed?) or a link to a landing page that explains how to help out, the link to the relelvant CCI case pages, and possibly a list of the diffs (presumably helpful for editors trying to fix the issue, but a redundant list of diffs might also provoke duplicated effort).
• Someone needs to pick one or two CCIs that seem like good test cases, and have a look at a few of the diffs: Does it appear to make sense to tag all the article talk pages, or is some sort of cutoff a better idea (based on bytes added (simple) or amount of added text (harder), I'd assume)
• Unless someone else jumps on it I'll do the coding and the BRFA, I expect either next weekend or after Christmas.

Amalthea 10:22, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I've started working on this now, lucky for me I've kept it vague with 'after Christmas'. ;)
Does anyone want to select a few good CCIs and think about wording for the template?
Amalthea 22:39, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Here's three points I'd look at for a trial CCI to give this a shot on. One, picking a CCI that has enough articles to give a good sample size but not too many to make it overkill. The 200-300 range should work for this. Two, we should do a CCI that involves some more travelled articles just to see if it makes people take notice. Three, it should be a CCI where a good number of the edits are issues. The first two can be figured out with a cursory read, but the third one is tough if the investigations haven't had good progress on them. I'm not sure if there is an "ideal" CCI that has all three, but there's quite a few that fall into two of the three here. Perhaps it should be one where the issues are sourced and it's just copypaste issues to start as well. Or maybe I'm overthinking it and we should just pick one semi-randomly. Wizardman 03:11, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I did some trivial-diff removal from Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Patapsco913, and what's left is ~150 articles with a mix of popular pages and smaller ones. As a result this would probably be a good starting point. As for what to put on the template to note it, It might depend on each case. In this one everything's reffed, it's just that the information is copypasted from the ref, and should be reworded. Now, should we do more than just tag the talk pages? I ask since those aren't commonly viewed in most cases. I'd say tag the main one but I can see how that would be iffy. Wizardman 04:06, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

This seems to be such a good idea. I was asking here if there was any chance it could be brought to the point of a trial. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:32, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Request for Help

Hi. I've may have missed this somewhere on the main page, so apologies if I'm asking about something that's already covered.

I strongly support the elimination of copyright violations from Wikipedia, and congratulate you all for taking on a tedious and unlovely task. However, I feel that one of your colleagues has been perhaps over-zealous in his performance of his duties. How do I bring this to the attention of the appropriate forum, correct matters, and ensure that this does not happen again?

RomanSpa (talk) 05:34, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

The appropriate forum in the first instance is the talk page of the user in question, or of whatever the specific page in dispute is. If after engaging with this user, you are unsatisfied that the problem has been or will be corrected, then here is probably the next best place to raise the issue. —Psychonaut (talk) 06:26, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

He/she has indeed posted on the user talk page. Please see User talk:Justlettersandnumbers#Your Recent Edit to Education Theory. Comment welcome, here or there. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:42, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Ebay pictures

There was someone else that did this in the past (forgot who) claiming no copyright on many images from eday. As see here¸this is happening again ..are these ok --Moxy (talk) 20:29, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

As I recall, in the previous discussion it was agreed that unmarked American publicity photos published earlier than 1978 are in the public domain, as at the time they were produced, the law required a conspicuous copyright notice. In the past discussion it was established that the uploader had verified that both the front and rear of the photos contained no copyright statement. I spot-checked a few of the uploads and it seems that they meet these conditions, or other conditions which would also place them in the public domain. The biggest problem, then, is that the images should be on Commons, not on Wikipedia. —Psychonaut (talk) 06:33, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I looked into this a bit more and found that the user is banned indefinitely from commons for this specific reason, thus why the images are here. O well will let others deal with this as I see at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Wikiwatcher1 this is a huge problem and I have not had any luck with this in the past. -- Moxy (talk) 22:35, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

CCI tag for some userpages

The problem I'm hoping to address is a way to alert people dealing with a sockpuppet of a WP:CCI subject that copyright maybe an issue. Just today I opened a CCI for User:DendroNaja (a blocked sock of User:VeronicaPR) and have gradually discovered that these copyright issues stretch back years. Yesterday, I blocked yet another sock of User:FreshCorps916, who is blocked for serial copyright infringement. CCI has a scattering of these users, who persist in violating copyright through multiple accounts.

I believe that many people who show up at CCI are working in good faith and will contribute constructively after they understand our copyright policies and approaches (I've seen many of them do it), but this assumption of good faith doesn't extend to the ones who do it repeatedly, under multiple accounts. While I would be very unhappy if CCI became some kind of black mark on a typical user page, I think we would benefit from a tag for at least people who use multiple accounts so that those who find future socks are alerted to the need to list their contributions for review or proactive cleaning.

I wanted to broach the subject here before bringing it up perhaps at AN - I want to be sure that this has consensus and there isn't a better way. Realizing that this page isn't heavily trafficked, I'd really appreciate any thoughts. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:10, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

CCI request evaluation

Could someone please take a look at the two requests that are currently outstanding? I'm not seeing anything major, and I don't have the energy to look deeper (and won't for the near future). MER-C 12:59, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, User:MER-C. I'm just seeing this. I'll of course be happy to help out. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:10, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

One done. I'll do the other later, but am out of time. Days knocked off of WP:CP = 0. CCIs opened today = 2 Copyright work is such a rabbithole. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:07, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Request to close a case

How do I formally request than an investigation be closed? It seems that a bot has listed an enormous number of my contributions without any real intelligence behind the listings. The vast majority of them have turned up without any issues. My contributions deserve no more and no less scrutiny than anyone else's. If someone has a problem with any particulars ones, please go through the normal process of contacting me, and working with me together on them. Greg Bard (talk) 19:32, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

The bot lists all contributions without any intelligence at all - it's role is to list all contributions, not to evaluate them. Every CCI is done exactly the same way. This is the normal process for dealing with contributors who have demonstrably had copyright concerns in multiple articles.

I think closing the CCI would be a mistake. I just did a random check of three articles that have not already been checked, and all three of them were copyright problems either now or in the past - copyright issues in Thomas Fitch, V did exist, but were cleaned up by others some time ago; Jennie Cave was an unrepaired copyvio even though issues were identified long ago - it is now blanked for rewriting; Ruwen Ogien was a violation of the license of the French Wikipedians whose article you translated without proper attribution (now repaired). I don't doubt there are other articles that are perfectly fine, but two of the three I checked needed repair for copyright issue. That suggests that this cleanup remains necessary.

I'm sorry that you've been having to wait so long; I doubt that cleanup on yours would be that difficult, and I wish we had the manpower to just get such things done and over with. We just have a huge backlog. You could, of course, help with this - you are welcome to identify issues and clean up after yourself, although we ask that you not "close" the listing for the day. It will just make it much faster when people are able to take the time to complete the review. We don't really have a process for requesting closure without completion. If you want to request closure without processing in spite of the current issues I've just flagged, you might try WP:AN. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:36, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Clerk volunteer

Is there any need for another clerk to help open, evaluate, and close requests here? If so, I could probably help out from time to time. I've been active cleaning up copyright problems here and on Commons for about ten years. On CCI I've posted fourteen requests (Noormohammed satya, Cooly123, Ragib, Noodleki, IWannaABillionaire, Driftwooddrwho, Snigdhasinghsweet, Norden1990, Emykcul, Bormalagurski, Wdixon, Coramandel23, B. Mandal, and Zeniaacharya21), all of which were accepted, and I've helped process a good many of these and others to completion. I have experience finding sockpuppets, a reading knowledge of several languages, and access to full-text academic journal indexes, so I might be useful for evaluating complex requests involving multiple accounts, infringing translations, and/or copying from closed scholarly sources. —Psychonaut (talk) 08:33, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

• Support. While I've only been back for a couple of months, I've observed two relevant things for present purposes. The first is that another CCI clerk would be useful. From memory there have usually been about two non-admin CCI clerks at any one time, so Psychonaut + me for the moment would make it about right (And in my case I think I'm probably better at working through CCIs than doing clerking; I only seem to have become a clerk by default when I gave up the admin tools). Also, the requests have been coming in at a fairly strong rate over the last few weeks. My second observation, from recent experience and trawling around the CCI archives, is that Psychonaut is well-qualified: has excellent attention to detail and files (very) comprehensive and accurate CCI reports. --Mkativerata (talk) 09:53, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
• Support. Beyond your experience in CCIs, I've certainly had occasion to see you at WP:CP. You do great work in this area. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:09, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
• Support. -- Diannaa (talk) 14:18, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
• Support. From everything I've seen of Psychonaut, unqualified support. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:51, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

This seems both stale and uncontroversial -- no need to wait any longer! [4]. BTW, as an aside, I've been pondering on how to address the current CCI request for some time now, given the large number of sibling socks. I'm still doing so, but please don't let that stop anyone else from jumping in. --Mkativerata (talk) 10:52, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for your unanimous support! I am looking forward to helping out. —Psychonaut (talk) 07:43, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Bože pravde

Could I suggest a block for User:Bože pravde? This is one of the suspected sockpuppets of User:Bormalagurski whose edits are being investigated at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20140915. The pattern of copyvios (namely, copying from official tourist board websites of the former Yugoslav republics) matches that of a different but confirmed sockpuppet, User:WikiMB. But even on the off-chance that this isn't a Boris Malagurski sockpuppet, it's still a serial copyright violator, and could cause headaches down the line if it one day resumes activity unnoticed. —Psychonaut (talk) 20:30, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Ongoing and persistent copyvio, yet CCI closed with no followup

Instructions here are too complicated ... detail is on wt:med. [5] Previous CCI closed, nothing said to or done about persistent violator, and more of same has continued for more than a year. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:24, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll have a look over the IPs contribs over the next few days to see if we should re-open the CCI with the new contribs. Of more immediate concern than a re-opened CCI, and not one that I can help with in my current desysopped state, is the need to block the IP. --Mkativerata (talk) 23:05, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

IP blocked, unfortunately looks like we have to re-open the CCI, given how bad the editing was in the CCI originally. Wizardman 23:18, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Something to keep an eye on

I don't know if a full CCI is warranted yet, but I've had to revert a lot of this users recent contribs (4 today alone) as direct copy/paste: Swarupskd.wiki. His talk page is loaded with copyright warnings in general for files, drafts, etc. His User-talk space edit count is zero. Crow^Caw 22:47, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Looking at all of those warnings on the talk page, no doubt all ignored, I'd suggest a block might be of equally immediate importance as a CCI. --Mkativerata (talk) 23:05, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

One of those edits is a restoration of a copyvio. Blocked. In addition, I have deleted two previously undetected copyvios in draft space, so this needs further looking at: Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Swarupskd.wiki. MER-C 12:54, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Sockpuppets & CCI

One sock account out of many was the subject of a CCI. At least some other accounts have also engaged in copyright violations, and the likelihood is that many of them have done so. What's the best way of addressing the contributions of an editor who has copied material using multiple accounts? He's been prolific, so this could turn out to be a major project. (FYI: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Ctway/Archive, Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Jetwave Dave, & Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Ose\fio) Rezin (talk) 21:14, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

What we'd usually do is look at re-opening the original CCI and listing all contributions of the other socks to be checked. Given the sheer number involved here, this could take a little time. Thanks for picking it up. --Mkativerata (talk) 22:06, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Going forward, should I compile a list of all known and suspected socks, and perhaps list a few instances of copyvios to indicate the need? Or what can I do to help this along? Rezin (talk) 22:53, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

That would be very helpful, thanks. As a first step, if you can find a few examples of copyvios from socks we'll definitely know we need to expand and re-open the CCI. At that point, we'll use a full list of the socks to run through the automated contributor survey and throw everything into the re-opened CCI. --Mkativerata (talk) 22:57, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I haven't forgotten - this is still on my 'to do' list. Rezin (talk) 19:39, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Courtesy links

I can't find a definitive answer on links to copies of copyrighted material, what I believe are known as "courtesy links". Are they permitted in cases where the hosting website doesn't mention any permission from the copyright holders? It's come up in the case of a specific website to which many WP pages have citation links. links website discussion. Examples of their pages include: [6][7][8] Is it OK to keep links to these hosted articles? (Let me know if this is the wrong place to ask). Rezin (talk) 19:51, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi! I think WT:Copyright problems would have been a better place for this (and please feel free to move my reply there if you choose to move your post). I think the answer you are looking for may be in WP:LINKVIO: "if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work". In the absence of any indication that the articles are reproduced with permission I'd be wary of linking to them at all. The numerous OCR-type errors may indicate copying from printed source. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:49, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Socks and CCI, round two

Folks, just a heads up that I strongly suspect the return of ItsLassieTime. Though a recent SPI failed, I have seen two other accounts that have a familiar behavioral pattern. My question here, pending evidence one way or the other as to an SPI, is if there is a way to watchlist contribs for copyvio before a whole bunch more articles are destroyed beyond recognition? This user's pattern includes making dozens of very small edits to articles (one word changes and then a save) and fixing it all is a nightmare. The dup detector checkers aren't real helpful here, either, as close paraphrasing is the problem more than copy and paste. Montanabw^(talk) 05:31, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

• I don't think you can watchlist "Special:" pages, but you can get a feed of them: go to the page in question and click the Atom link in the left-side Tools menu. Crow^Caw 20:33, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm. Watchlisting that they have edited is only a beginning; the bigger problem is figuring out where they have added close paraphrases and where thy just make up stuff wholesale. I'm a little leery of taking on this particular sock because they have a tendency to be intense and relentless, but I think I'm seeing three socks - but not sure I can convince an SPI on this. Is there any tool that has effectively caught close paraphrases, as opposed to flat-out plagiarism? Montanabw^(talk) 05:35, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Request for advice

Folks, I'm not sure whether this is the right place to ask this question, but I'm hoping someone could help. I've just been listed for CCI violtions, and although I note from the page that if I disagree with the nomination I should say so, I'm not sure exactly how to do so - as in, on what page do I make my case? Can someone help? Thanks.

Fulleraaron (talk) 22:52, 14 April 2015 (GMT)

Hi @Fulleraaron: I'm the one who reported you and left the message on your talk page. I reported you because it appears this goes back to at least 2011 and includes recent edits. I don't have the resources to review all your contributions, and I have no way of knowing if you've been warned before. First, I would definitely suggest you take some time to review the Wikipedia Copyright FAQ for some guidelines on contributions. You must rewrite all sourced material. You cannot copy/paste whole sentences, even if you credit the source. Unless it's a list (e.g., "She speaks eight languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish") you should not have more than probably six consecutive words of the same sentence from a source. I'm not sure what you mean by "make your case" - but to be clear, here are examples of violations, starting with Ursula Brennan:

Source article, UK.gov press release, 2010: After a variety of health-related jobs, she moved on to social security, covering policy on all the main social security benefits and then into operations as a Director of the Department’s Information Technology Services Agency, responsible for a range of IT projects and contracts. From there she became Director of Change Management at the Benefits Agency, leading the agency’s change programme and heading a directorate of over 1,000 staff. In 1997 she returned to policy, with responsibility for benefits for long term sick and disabled people.

Your article, 2011: After a variety of health-related jobs, including that of Private Secretary to the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Henry Yellowlees, she moved on to social security, covering policy on all the main social security benefits and then into operations as a Director of the Department's IT Services Agency, responsible for a range of IT projects and contracts. From there she became Director of Change Management at the Benefits Agency. In 1997 she returned to policy, with responsibility for benefits for long term sick and disabled people.

That was four years ago. Here is a recent article, Martyn Goff:

Source article, 26 March 2015 obituary: Born to Jacob and Janey Goff in 1923, he grew up in Hampstead, London. His father was a Russian fur dealer who had emigrated to Britain and became a supplier to department stores.... Aged 22, he set his sights on becoming a bookseller, opening the first of several shops in 1948.... Much of his life’s work was a crusade to encourage people to read — and more importantly to buy and own — books. His main platform was the National Book League (NBL), later renamed the Book Trust, of which he was director for 18 years... he launched the Bedford Square Book Bang, a literary festival in London that attracted 50,000 visitors. He also introduced the NBL’s annual ritual of presenting the Queen with a package of books for her summer reading at Balmoral. It was a gimmick, but the object was to emphasise that books should be at the heart of the nation’s life.... He became involved with the Booker when its administration was passed to the NBL.... Always immaculately dressed and occasionally sporting a flamboyant tie, he embraced his reputation as a dandy... His routine centred on his three main interests: literature, music, and the arts, particularly picture collecting.

Your article, created 27 March 2015: Born to Jacob and Janey Goff in 1923, he grew up in Hampstead, London. His father was a Russian fur dealer who had emigrated to Britain and became a supplier to department stores. Aged 22, Goff set his sights on becoming a bookseller, opening the first of several shops in 1948... Much of his life’s work was a crusade to encourage people to read, buy, and own books. His main platform was the National Book League (NBL), later renamed the Book Trust, of which he was director for 18 years... he launched the Bedford Square Book Bang, a literary festival in London that attracted 50,000 visitors... He also introduced the NBL’s annual ritual of presenting the Queen with a package of books for her summer reading at Balmoral, with the object of emphasising that books should be at the heart of the nation’s life. He became involved with the Booker when its administration was passed to the NBL... Always immaculately dressed and occasionally sporting a flamboyant tie, he is said to have embraced his reputation as a dandy. His daily routine centred on his three main interests: literature, music, and the arts, particularly picture collecting.

And the same pattern persists with the other articles. I hope you understand why this was reported. —Мандичка^YO 😜 05:23, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Fulleraaron, you put your response within the listing box, but please review the examples given by User:Wikimandia above first. They demonstrate some editing that is inconsistent with our copyright policy. In general, information you take from your sources must be put into your own words, except for brief and clearly marked quotations used for good reason (see WP:NFC). The exception is when content is drawn from demonstrably public domain or compatibly licensed sources, when you may copy from your sources liberally, but you must acknowledge explicit copying, in accordance with Wikipedia:Plagiarism. Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing is a helpful essay to explain the issue and how to avoid it. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:16, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick responses, clarification, and advice, User:Wikimandia and User:Moonriddengirl. I'll give them all a good read as soon as I can, but in summary, from what I've read so far, the bottom line is that while I might have meant well, I've screwed up. I will go through all my biography articles, and try and resolve the problem myself, and change my approach in future. If you don't mind, I'll write on your own talk pages with more background on why I wrote the articles in the way that I did, and with some questions, rather than clutter this page with what could turn into a long discussion that might get off-topic. In the meantime, I have had a go at redrafting Martyn Goff, and the 'similarity count' is significantly lower. (I know that the number's not the be all and end all, but it's not a bad indicator of progress.) Thanks again. Fulleraaron (talk)

@Fulleraaron: No need to write us long explanations. If you didn't know the policy, you didn't know the policy. (This is why we have the WP:AGF guideline - we don't assume you were doing this on purpose.) You can just go back and rewrite them as soon as you can. If you need help just ask. —Мандичка^YO 😜 15:31, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Still pending?

Hi guys, I'm User:Huggi, is the investigation on me still pending, just wanted to ask because I never heard anything back from you guys. Thanks! --huggi - never stop exploring (talk) 06:52, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Fair use status of Timed Text

Hello all, a discussion regarding the fair use status of text within the Timed Text namespace is being held at Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Fair-use_status_of_Timed_Text, if you are interested please join the discussion there. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 04:10, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

User:Shootingstar88

Will one of the clerks here open a case on Shootingstar88 (talk · contribs)? See this section for detail. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 20:50, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

CCI clerk

@Psychonaut and Mkativerata: I'm interested in becoming a clerk here, as there seems to be only one active clerk. I have read the instructions on the instructions page. Most of my work with copyrights have been with images; however I understand all current copyright policies, for both images and articles. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 15:59, 20 January 2017 (UTC) Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 15:59, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I haven't been as active here (or indeed anywhere on Wikipedia) recently as I'd like to be owing to offsite commitments. More help here is always welcome. :) Can you point to some past work of yours in tagging or cleaning up copyvios that we could examine? —Psychonaut (talk) 10:09, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

User:Psychonaut Sorry for the late response, didn't see this until I checked the talk page. I am looking for that now (I'm on phone so it may be a while). Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:01, 23 January 2017 (UTC) Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:01, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Much of my article related copyvio work has been either fixing my own mistakes in making article too close to source. (See Project SAINT), or else in articles where such things are rarely caught due to lack of interest (see Iazyges before I re-wrote it). I am still looking for more. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:20, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Another example is Y Sap mine and Bombing of Nagaoka in World War II, whose copyvios I worked on for DYK. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:31, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Also USS Tallahassee (later became redirected to another article.) Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 18:56, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@Psychonaut: Pinging as you appear to have missed earlier ping. -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 19:51, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, one thing is for certain: we need all the help we can get! Iazyges, this is an area that requires a fairly detailed knowledge of our copyright policy and our ways of dealing with copyright problems. WP:SCV used to be a good place to acquire or refine some of that, but is no longer active. Unless anyone has a better idea, I'm going to suggest that you might spend some time at CopyPatrol and also work through a small CCI (or part of a bigger one) in an area that interests you. In either case, if you're not sure what to do, you can always list at WP:CP, or ask one of the tiny handful of admins with real knowledge and experience in this area. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:08, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: I can't help with CCI currently, as I am not a clerk of Administrator. (Per instructions on the instruction page). -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 23:19, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Iazyges, what I meant to suggest was that you choose an open CCI in an area that interests you, and work through some of it. That's work that any editor in good standing can do. though not many do. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:56, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: Ah that makes much more sense (sorry for late response), I have begun working on the CCI of No barometer of intelligence, and have fixed several articles that had close paraphrasing. -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 05:07, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

@Iazyges: Thanks for your efforts in rewriting copyvios, and sorry for the delayed response. I think you've demonstrated that you can detect and correct copying and close paraphrasing (and can also tell when verbatim copying is OK, such as in modest amounts of direct quoting). I personally wouldn't have any objection to you helping clerk the new requests as described at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations#Role of CCI clerks and admins, which is mostly about verifying evidence presented by filing parties and setting up and removing the individual case pages. Is there anything about the process that you have any questions about?

@Mkativerata, Moonriddengirl, MER-C, Justlettersandnumbers, and Diannaa:, any objections to adding Iazyges to the list of clerks? —Psychonaut (talk) 20:52, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I have no objection. But note the CCI page is pretty dormant right now, with activity being focused on https://tools.wmflabs.org/copypatrol/ and WP:CP instead — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 21:04, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

@Psychonaut: In the absence of objections, should I begin working, or should I wait for approval from the rest? -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 04:12, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

In the absence of any objections and any further discussion, I've added you to the list of clerks. Happy clerking! —Psychonaut (talk) 10:19, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Welcome, Iazyges! Thank you for offering to help here, where help is sorely needed! If there's anything we can do to help you get started, please just ask! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:47, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

User:Fetx2002

For a long time now but I am not sure on all images but there were a fair number that I reported on wiki-commons that this editor uploaded which I knew were copyrighted material. This user I am sure is still doing that I wasn't sure how to report a case here (didn't want to mess up the main page!) and feel for the benefit of wiki to report him for a multitude of violation in uploading copyrighted photos. Govvy (talk) 08:52, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

User 20171021

I have been going through the articles listed for this user and dealt with all the ones that had not been checked by other users, so the investigation could be closed. I found little wrong with the shorter ones but some close paraphrasing in a few of the longer ones. The problem mainly was that the amount of information in the sources used was limited and written in a rather stilted style, and our articles tended to use the same words because of lack of alternatives. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:27, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Backlog back to 2010

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I recently tagged an article as copyright violation and over the copyright issues encountered this site. This page has a massive backlog back to 2010 and is thus obviously not working. Removal of copyright violations, however, definitely has to work. A localized discussion here will simply not work so I will skip the steps at WP:RFC and make a RFC directly: How do we fix this backlog and make sure it doesn't come back again? Lurking shadow (talk) 21:37, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

• Deprecate venue and tag {{historical}}. The scope is a fork of ANI. We don't have a specific venue for other specific issues, and urgent copyright issues are dealt with in other ways. This is unfortunately out of date. wumbolo ^^^ 22:07, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
• This is a very important function, and one we see very frequently here on WP. I think it does need it's own venue but needs to be active. Could the grunt work be automated somehow? --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:14, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

  I have a means of reducing the number of diffs in new CCIs by about 10%. I'm running it now as I fill out the September 2018 cases. MER-C 11:56, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. Closing the venue won't make the problem go away. What's really needed is proper detection and blocking of copyright violators (as in, admins should always block indefinitely for copyvios) and their sockpuppets and always using presumptive removal when socks are involved. MER-C 11:56, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support measures to 1. always indefinitely(not necessarily infinitely e.g. unblock after discussion with blocking admin) block editors for violating copyright, to 2. remove all contributions of copyright violators with more than 4 copyright violations and more than 10 edits under presumptive removal, 3. to permanently and automatically siteban all people who were warned and/or blocked for copyright violations more than twice(excluding illegitimate warnings or blocks) and 4., should first two measures be enacted, to mark this page historical.Lurking shadow (talk) 14:41, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

  Even if you do all those things (which cannot be guaranteed), one needs pages like this to track progress regarding presumptive removals. MER-C 21:00, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

  That's probably true.Lurking shadow (talk) 22:33, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose the idea of closing this is nuts. First off, the number of active admins who are actually somewhat knowledgeable with how Wikipedia handles text copyright can be counted on your fingers. Sending this to ANI is crazy. Also, there is a backlog, yes, but its better that it exists than doesn't exist: at least there is something to organize and track this problem. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:47, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • The question how to handle the backlog remains, then. Not doing anything is hardly a valid option.Lurking shadow (talk) 20:54, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose There is a backlog because people brought here have hundreds, if not thousands, of articles that have to be checked. The ones from years ago all show this pattern. And you want that at ANI? That board is already such a wonderful place to be we wouldn't want to add anything to throw that off balance. If you want an opinion on how to handle the backlog it could be to, I don't know, help? Check the pages that need to be checked. Clean them if need be and then put a {{revdel}} request on it for an admin to take action. As already stated, the number of people that actually deal with copyright problems here is incredibly small. Any additional help would be appreciated and of course help with the backlog. --Majora (talk) 03:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I have made this thread because a indiscriminate cleanup as advertised in the front page for situations like this(ten-thousands of unchecked violations back to 2010) is a blunt tool with ramifications.Lurking shadow (talk) 09:21, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose closing this page, but I have a lot of sympathy for the problem. (I came here from CENT.) If there are ways to automate some of this, that would be very good. (Would there be something to request at the Community Wishlist at meta?) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:15, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

There is long-standing consensus that poking people on noticeboards is not helpful in dealing with backlogs (e.g. see any "AIV backlog" thread on ANI), and without a tangible proposal beyond "what should we do", that's essentially what this RfC is. Further, talk page discussions have generally not resolved workload issues in the past and I don't imagine they are about to now in one of the most poorly understood administrative areas on Wikipedia. I have removed this discussion from {{Centralized discussion}} for the time being. TheDragonFire (talk) 05:41, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

• If there is such a massive backlog the methods how to handle this have to change. I already did make some suggestions how to handle this backlog and make sure it doesn't come back again.Lurking shadow (talk) 09:21, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Tentative proposal

I fully agree with the basic tenet here – the backlog is unacceptably large, something has to change. Obviously that something is not just saying "oh well, 80000 potential copyvios unchecked, let's just archive them". Equally, we can't go on relying on a minuscule number of dedicated volunteers to deal with this, it is a community problem and needs the help of the full community to solve it.

I suggest we should look at the possibility of setting up a partially-automated process to start chipping away at it, perhaps something along the lines of what was used to deal with Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Darius Dhlomo (over 23000 articles). I'm not at all bot-literate, but tentatively: a bot tags (say) 200 articles a day with a new prod-type notice which can be removed by any extended-confirmed user once the page has been checked; after (say) a week, the bot notifies relevant WikiProjects of any page that still has the notice; after a further week, the page can be deleted (or not) by any admin, just like an expired prod. As I understand it, the Darius Dhlomo notice actually blanked the article in the same way that {{copyvio}} does; that might be effective, but might also run into some strong objections.

Any thoughts? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

It would be better, probably, if those drastic measures would be taken, and indeed they probably have to be taken because 80000 is a realistic number and we don't have the contributors necessary to remove them all, to revert to the version before their edit, and to revision delete everything in between. If that would be also too much then unilateral prod + deletion is probably necessary.

but either we make this process permanent or the automatic removal and revision-deletion... depending on what works.Lurking shadow (talk) 14:29, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

This approach would help bring down the backlog and is useful. The bot would have to be programmed to either only remove copyvio content, or to PROD articles that are primarily copyvio. The backlog dates back to 2010 so it's possible a lot of articles have been improved or changed since then in significant ways. It will also have to update the lists here. It is definitely something that will bring down the huge backlog.--Tom (LT) (talk) 23:40, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Above struck through. Oppose this proposal as above per some discussions below. Whilst good in theory, a bot that indicates what is a problematic edit would be very useful, but it would be impossible to with absolute certainty have it go about removing copyvio content. --Tom (LT) (talk) 07:03, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose closing, but I'm all for this: "How do we fix this backlog and make sure it doesn't come back again?" Willing hands, I think. Any contributor without a history of copyright issues can help. (Also open to tool usage, where and if that will work. :) As per below.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:23, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

• I don't think the tentative proposal above is going to be practical. We did blank all pages created by Darius Dhlomo as part of that CCI, but that was an exceptionally serious one and we didn't blank all pages affected by the CCI (if I remember correctly it only 10,000 pages were blanked). Having spent a lot of time staring at his edits I can tell you that he wasn't able to compose the anything other than the most bare-bones of prose without copying it from somewhere, and he was probably responsible for thousands of copyvios. This makes it rather more serious than the typical CCI. Nor was the blanking very effective, plenty of pages were unblanked when they still had copyvio in them by people who didn't bother to check or didn't check properly. Blanking 90,000 pages, almost all of which are clean, would cause a huge mess. Oppose closing though, that would just be a case of sticking your head in the sand and pretending the problem doesn't exist. Hut 8.5 22:04, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose the "tentative proposal". No blanking of pages unless there is evidence demonstrated that they contain copy vios, no bots, no assumptions.Smeat75 (talk) 01:25, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

• Just for the record, presumptive blanking based on that assumption is already policy. "If contributors have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation, it may be assumed that all of their major contributions are likely to be copyright violations, and they may be removed indiscriminately." (WP:CV) However, except in a very few rare cases, I have not seen this invoked, and I don't think it should be. This process was created at least in part so that it would not have to be. There are many articles that are largely clean with small patches of problems and some that have none at all. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:44, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Options for removal of backlog

• I think the options here are clear:

Option 1:Delete all pages these copyright violators edited indiscriminately, unless they were checked off in CCI

Option 2:Prod and blank all pages these copyright violators edited(checked pages excluded) indiscriminately per bot(and then delete them after short notice)

Option 3:Manually revert to the last version and revision delete anything inbetween/speedy delete if it is the first version or otherwise speedily deletable.

(Option 4:Try to manage the backlog by individually examining every page.)

(Option 5:Do Nothing)

Option 1 is the quickest and safest method to deal with it, but also with the largest damage to genuine articles.

Option 2 may take longer and these things should be removed as fast as possible... but a few high value pages could possibly stay.

Option 3 will take significantly longer but the damage inflicted is lower(but still quite high)

Option 4 won't work because that's what's responsible for the backlog in the first place - it is too much work with not enough helpers.

Option 5 does not conform with our copyright policy and WP:PILLARS and is not legitimate.Lurking shadow (talk) 07:00, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

I have tested this and the selective deletion of pages(especially of old pages with thousands of revisions) is far more workload than the deletion of pages(which I selected when the page was created by a violator). I extrapolate that the mass-deletion of pages is feasible while the selective deletion is not.

As such, I support Option 1, maybe 2. Oppose Option 3(and 4 and 5)

• The only one of those which is acceptable is option 4.Smeat75 (talk) 23:32, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

  Option 4 has been proven to be too inefficient. You need better arguments.Lurking shadow (talk) 07:08, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

• Option 4 is the only acceptable option. Yes there is a huge backlog but we will be significantly damaging the encyclopedia by randomly deleting large chunks of text. If the articles are not individually examined, or there is some doubt that the editor has a not small amount of good faith not plaigarised text in between, the damage done outweighs the potential risks for the Wikimedia movement getting bad press or being sued (in which case I would presume the first step would be for the complainer to notify the movement regarding the affected articles, which could then be prioritised and changed). --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:25, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
• Would it be practical to have an automated process to identify and locate any pages or edits that would fall under Options 1 and 2? That is, automate the way of finding them, but not actually delete or blank anything automatically. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Open cases"

The majority of the backlog are 'open investigations' which (as I understand it) is intended to be investigationn for copyvio, rather than cleaning up known copyvio. A bot could definitely assist with this process, by marking the % of copyvio'd edits (or marking which edits) are copyvios. Starting with editors with low edit counts may help, as it is impractical and probably quite time consuming to deal with editors that have a long edit record. Thoughts? --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:44, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Actually, removing copyvio is part of the process (it's mention as the final step, quite an important one). Identifying is the first step, however. I'd be all for speeding this and cutting down this dreadful backlog, but I'm unsure how effective a bot would be, Tom (LT). Sometimes these individuals copy content from books or, for instance, do direct translations of copyrighted sources. Bots could help with some, but maybe not such contributors. What do you think? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:21, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

@Moonriddengirl that's a good point. I can see a use for this bot in some cases - particularly egregious copying from online sources in editors whose activities are primarily copyvio. The bot would be useful evaluating them and marking edits. This may help with a proportion of cases but from the looks of things given the extensive workload a few tools are probably needed.--Tom (LT) (talk) 00:30, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Tom (LT), Moonriddengirl, just to clarify: I'm not for one moment suggesting that a bot should be trying to remove copyvios – I don't believe such a program is realistically possible, and I don't believe that the community would accept it even if it were. All I'm suggesting that we might try to automate is (a) the initial placement of the notice and (b) notifications to interested WikiProjects in some cases. The rest has to be done by real people – us. My thought is that by tagging the pages with a large notice we may be able to involve more people in the process, and so perhaps start to reduce the backlog instead of just watching it grow (my 80000 figure is well out of date, it's now just shy of 90000). We don't need to search for copyvio in these articles – we've already established that nothing written by these editors can be trusted; we just need to remove every word they wrote, whether by editing the article text, by reverting to the last version before their first edit, or by deleting the page entirely. That's a huge amount of work, but much less than checking them one by one for verifiable violations. If I'm talking nonsense, please just say so! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:19, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

OK! You are talking nonsense.Smeat75 (talk) 23:19, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

I, Crow, Earwig et al have discussed the scopes of programming a bot to run over CCI cases. AFAIR, there was a consensus that it was quite non-feasible due to the vast amount of credits required for running such intensive trawls.

I'll link the discussion, once I find it. ∯WBG^converse 10:06, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

All what's needed right now is a bot that deletes or proddelete-tags all articles edited by all the copyright violators currently in the frontpage. Everything else is not feasible anyways, and that should be possible.Lurking shadow (talk) 12:25, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Wow. Completely ridiculous, you guys over here want to run a bot to delete all articles ever edited by everyone listed on the front page?!?It would destroy this project. Not going to happen. You have to go through every article and identify copy vios and then remove them, you cannot delete whole articles because a suspected "copyright violator" made an edit.Smeat75 (talk) 23:17, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

No, absolutely not. The deletion of 80000 articles is not the end of the world. It is not nice, it is not really desirable, but necessary.Lurking shadow (talk) 07:10, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

@Smeat75 agree it would be completely ridiculous for a bot to blank delete 80,000 pages or even content, or have any automated deletion at all. But there are useful automated things bots could do to help - eg scanning requests to provide a likelihood of plaigiarism, or scanning through edit logs to indicate which ones have likely plagiarised from sources that the bot can access (which won't be all sources, but will help). A human will have to be involved at some point to make the final decision but if bots can help speed or ease this process up I'm all for it. --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:59, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes what you are saying is perfectly reasonable User:Tom (LT) but that is wholly different from Lurking Shadow wanting to run a bot that deletes or proddelete-tags all articles edited by all the copyright violators currently in the frontpage and if that means deleting 80,000 articles it would not be "the end of the world".Smeat75 (talk) 13:58, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

FWIW here is the bot request I wrote on this topic ages ago. Didn't get any interest, but perhaps some bot operator now would be willing to pitch in. (Assuming that we could get the necessary number of queries for the Earwig tool.) Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:39, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

I'll have a go at the weekend. I'm pretty sure I can write some sort of script to run a few revisions highlighted in a CCI through the Earwig API mentioned in that bot request. The first thing to establish would be whether that output is actually useful before we try to scale it up. Hut 8.5 20:04, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks @Hut 8.5. Having bots help out in whatever way possible will make the best use of the few hands here. --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:59, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Would an admin or editor experienced in copyvios please comment on this AN posting?

Here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:12, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

• I've left a comment there. Hut 8.5 21:57, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Helping out

Hi. I've tried to start helping out at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/ItsLassieTime, but I'd like to make sure I am doing this right before going deeper. Can someone take a look? Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 02:06, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

• Maybe I’m not the one to say this, since I’m starting out here too, but you seem to be doing fine. 💵Money💵emoji💵^💸 23:47, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

  @Money emoji: So I've been going through Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20170522-2, and I've made some progress. But, I've come across 2 articles that do appear to be copyright violations in a major way - what should I do? --DannyS712 (talk) 05:00, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, Money emoji, thank you both for your interest in helping to deal with this monstrous backlog. Anything helps – even just marking as OK any edits that are no more than the addition of an image or an infobox is valuable. I think the most important thing to remember here is that we're not looking for copyvio, but looking to see what is certainly, verifiably not copyvio. Anything else should be presumptively removed – these articles are listed here because we've already established that nothing written by these people can be trusted (there's no room left for AGF). So, DannyS712, in Army Ordnance Corps (India) for example, I would suggest presumptively removing all running text added by the editor, even though Earwig is not showing any significant violation (that I can see); whether or not you choose after that to rewrite a sentence or two is really up to you.

You may or may not know that there's a special version of {{cclean}} for CCI clean-up:

{{subst:cclean|url= ADDRESS, INCLUDING "http://" |CCI= SomeUser }}

When marking an article on the list as checked, you can remove the diffs, replacing them with the check result.

Please feel free to ask if you have any doubts or questions. I'll try to answer – if I can. And thanks again! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:54, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: So if I see or think there is a copyright violation, just remove it but leave it in the page history? DannyS712 (talk) 15:58, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: Also, some entries at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/ItsLassieTime were checked by a user that is now checkuser-blocked. Do those need to be rechecked? DannyS712 (talk) 16:00, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, if you can verify copyvio in any of the content you remove, then do please request revdeletion so that it can be hidden in the history. Others may disagree, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea of revdeleting material that's been removed on presumption alone, so I think we may have to leave that in the history. Yes, I expect that pages checked by the now-blocked user should be re-checked (as if there wasn't already enough to do!) – do you want to give me an example? Once again, all help here is greatly appreciated – this is far and away our biggest backlog. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:40, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: Okay, will do. For blocked users, see some of the entries at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/ItsLassieTime#Susanne2009NYC Articles 61 through 80, Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/ItsLassieTime#LaSylphide Articles 21 through 40, and Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/ItsLassieTime#EatNoPig Articles 1 through 14 DannyS712 (talk) 17:45, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, The editor you are talking about, User:PumpkinSky, was blocked here for abuse after being implicated by a checkuser on commons. I looked through their contributions to their CCI and can verify that they did nothing wrong. 💵Money💵emoji💵^💸 19:00, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: For example, looking at Kulwant Singh Gill, there are some issues that, as far as I can tell, date back to its creation? Do I tag it for normal copyright cleanup? Remove anything that could qualify as copyvio and request revdel? Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 01:28, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, it's always going to be a judgement call; listing at WP:CP is always an option. My choice there would be to remove all running text added by the editor (which I think is all of it?), write a short sentence or two, and leave it with the structure and references in place for some interested editor to develop. If it were listed at WP:CP and I picked it up, that's what I'd do. Of course, if there's sourced text that you can securely confirm is not copied, then do leave that in place too. If you've verified copyvio (I haven't looked), then yes, do please request revdeletion as well. Unusually, you do have another option in that page: to revert to the very first revision, which is surely clean; but I think that produces a worse result than the approach I suggest. This is just my take, by the way, others may have different ideas of what's best. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:57, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: Thanks. I just completed 2 CCI - Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Hvant and Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20170522-2 - if you want to take a look --DannyS712 (talk) 00:07, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Virginia Cooperative Extension

Could I have some assistance with the cleanup at Virginia Cooperative Extension? Some of it is obvious copyvios. Others are very close, while some I have had to dig around other to verify the information existed on different pages before Wikipedia. This is for Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Huskers110110. Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 19:36, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

CCI Clerk

I have seen that there is only 1 active clerk, And I would like step up and help here as a Clerk. I have been working Copyvios and CCI and I have not had any copyright problems. Any Supports or Opposes is welcome. Thanks, Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(You Asked?) (What I have Done.)} 19:02, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

The4lines, Not right now, I'd recommend a few more months (3 or so) of experience, and closing some CCIs. Your work in the area is good, I think you should stick around in the area for a little longer before becoming a clerk. Your work on the Cacrats CCI is good, keep that up. Moneytrees🌴^{Talk🌲Help out at CCI!} 19:10, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Moneytrees Got it, will keep on working. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(You Asked?) (What I have Done.)} 19:11, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Questions about missing differences and including references in a copyvio

Hello. I have two questions relating to two CCIs:

• 1): I was wondering why there are differences missing in the Older list of contributions section for Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Trident13. There are differences provided between 1-500 but not the other 220.
• 2): At Andy Gomarsall for Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/GordyB, there are references included in a copyvio paragraph of this - The paragraph starting with "On the club scene". While 3/4 of the edits are indeed copyvios when looking for exact copying or close paraphrasing, I was wondering what should I do with the club scene paragraph. Of the second paragraph, only the first two sentences have copyvio issues. These addition of references seem to be by different users.

Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 01:00, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

MrLinkinPark333, for the first one, the articles listed there are listed above with differences, so I'm not really sure what's going on there. For the second one, I rephrased the remaining close paraphrase. For a fair amount of CCIs, content will be copied from already cited sources; this can make things easier and harder. Moneytrees🌴^{Talk🌲Help out at CCI!} 02:25, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Moneytrees: Yeah. With this one, references were added making to part of a copyvio, though it wasnt by the same user. It was an obvious case of copyvio, but the non-related references make me consider whether to rephrase that bit or not. Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 02:42, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Moneytrees: Just had a check for the first one. It seems that some of the ones in the older contributions section (like John McNamara (fraudster) and Ford Southampton plant) dont exist under the initial 500 articles. I'm guessing some of the articles were edited by the user on two separate occasions, but I don't understand why ones that were edited on one occasion don't have edit differences. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 20:49, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

MrLinkinPark333, Those are on the subpages Moneytrees🌴^{Talk🌲Help out at CCI!} 21:27, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Moneytrees Ahh! I didn't notice the subpages. Then maybe thats why the older contributions have no differences, as they are on sub-pages. Strange. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 22:23, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Attribution question

Hello. I was wondering if I did the attribution correctly (this is the first CCI i've done for attribution issues). So far, I've done 1950 in North Korea and 1972 in Iran for Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Jackninja5. Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 01:06, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

That suffices, though if you want to err on the side of caution you can also add Template:copied to the talk page, though I limit use of that to more large-scale issues. Wizardman 00:37, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I did add the Copied template on both the source/destination pages on their talk pages. Of the two, the North Korea one has more infriging content in comparison to Iran (+5651 edit compared to a +500 one). Also did 1981 in Iran which was a +4213 edit. So, if it's really major leave the copied templates and if not, then just the attribution in the edit sumamry? --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 00:56, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Yup, the major wholesale ones i'd do the copied template. Wizardman 02:49, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Attribution part 2

Hello again. Another question about attribution: when an article is copied from another wiki (i.e. Wikia/Fandom), the text is allowed to stay but attribution is required correct? While looking through Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Koala15, I came across a copy of Toy Story of Terror! where the plot is from this version of Fandom. Also, does the Copied template apply here or only to Wikipedia articles that copy other Wikipedia articles? Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:22, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

MrLinkinPark333, Sorry no one got to you; you would attribute it using the CC-notice template, which I went ahead and did. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 02:21, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Alreight. It was the first time I came across that. Otherwise, I've seen Fandom ones from American Dad articles on a different CCI but they had been redirected. If I do come across ones like that, then I'll do what you did. Thanks! :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 02:23, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Duplicate edits in a CCI

Hello. There are some duplicate edits in the 2018 section of Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Almodaa when comparing to the first 83 articles in this CCI. Should I x the duplicates in the 2018 section and leave the first instances up for checking? Otherwise, it'd be covering the same articles twice. Examples of duplicates are Canada–Saudi Arabia relations, Elliott Broidy and United Arab Emirates. Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 02:16, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Remove the duplicates from the listing; I think that was a one time glitch since the contributor survey was new. Leaving them just creates unnecessary work. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 02:23, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Alrighty. A few of them Wizardman already did in the 2018 section, so i'll remove them from the older section. We both checked the same edit from Serena Williams lol! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 02:25, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

IP address in a SPI linked to a open CCI

Hello. I was wondering if 213.149.159.237 should be added to the open CCI on Angel Angel 2. The IP was temporarily blocked in a recent SPI case related to this user. The reason why I'm asking is because their CCI is currently still open. I've checked the IP edits and haven't found any copyvios so far. Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 20:18, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

MrLinkinPark333, No, they didn't make many substantial edits and most of their edits appear to be reverted. Since the user is socking and there's a CCI open on them, their edits can just be uncontroversially reverted, which I've done. Looking at the article historys, I'm concerned it wasn't the only sock, however. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 03:25, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Open requests

Hello. Thrres quite a bit of open requests on the CCI page that havent been decided whether a full CCI should be opened or not. Thougjt I leave a note here so they can be looked through. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:11, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

CCI clerk

Once again I would like to step up and become a CCI clerk. I think I earned the needed experience to become one. Best, Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(You Asked?) (What I have Done.)} 23:43, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

CCIs and SPIs

Hello. Could CCI cases be updated to include socks from SPIs that have not already been included? For example: Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations/IWannaABillionaire is missing three socks that came from Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/KirkleyHigh/Archive plus IP addresses. Money already has some listed at User:Moneytrees/CCI Sort but I would want to be sure that all users with socks have their socks checked as well. If an indepth list is needed to show which ones are missing from each case, I can list them.

I also wonder if any more of the closed cases have socks besides the four that Money listed. A separate section could be made with Closed CCIs with socks that haven't been fully checked. Yes, I know it's making more work, but I feel that all should be checked. If all socks are already done like Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20130702 then they could be skipped. Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 20:09, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

File usage of deleted images

Hi. Is there a way to find out the file usage of images on WP.EN that were already deleted on Commons, such as for this one, for example? Any tool for that? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 13:38, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I think the least worst way is to look at the contributions of CommonsDelinker or whichever bot is removing images at the time. MER-C 20:02, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

New template

As {{?}} looks like it may be deprecated, I've gone and created {{WP:CCI/T}} that produces  , a much better icon in my opinion. It also supports additional parameters. E.g.  Wow! . I made this because no other templates really look great for using. If people think this isn't needed, I'll be happy to WP:G7 it. — Yours, Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 18:49, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

@Berrely: I like it! I'll have to remember to use T instead of ?. Might I suggest Q for question? Otherwise T is fine :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 21:24, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Copyright violations § Template:Copyvio-revdel

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Copyright violations § Template:Copyvio-revdel. (Apologies if this isn't the ideal place to put a notice; I'm not sure exactly which pages are generally watchlisted by copyright folks.) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:19, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

• @Sdkb: you're probably more likely to get a response at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup. Hut 8.5 20:02, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks, will try those! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:31, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Copyvio-revdel § Changing the wording

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Copyvio-revdel § Changing the wording. — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 16:09, 4 August 2021 (UTC)