Echopedia

[Brian-M]

Has anyone else noticed that there are a lot of sites that contain sections of text word-for-word identical to Wikipedia, without any kind of attribution ?

I've noticed it a few times when looking up various obscure topics out of curiosity, doing a web-search when Wikipedia has too little information on the subject, and end up finding several sites with Wiki-identical information.

Most recently, I was looking up the origin of the lyrics to Scarborough fair. In the Wikipedia page I find....

The oldest versions of "The Elfin Knight" (circa 1650) contain the refrain "my plaid away, my plaid away, the wind shall not blow my plaid away" (or variations thereof), which may reflect the original emphasis on the lady's chastity. Slightly younger versions often contain one of a group of related refrains:

Sober and grave grows merry in time
Every rose grows merry with time
There's never a rose grows fairer with time

These are usually paired with "Once (s)he was a true love of mine" or some variant. "Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme" may simply be an alternate rhyming refrain to the original.

Wanting to find more information about these earlier versions, I find (amongst others) these pages...

http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/moneychords/scarboroughfair.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101120103454AAACW9i
http://www.authorsden.com/categories/article_top.asp?catid=50&id=60720
http://homesteadblogger.com/scarboroughfair/author/lillyandgish/page/3/

Each of which contains the exact same text, word for word identical, with no mention of where it came from.

I've also noticed the same thing on other subjects. For example, the first sentence of the Wikipedia page on spark printers reads:

A spark printer is an obsolete form of computer printer which uses a special paper coated with a layer of aluminium over a black backing, which is printed on by using a pulsing current onto the paper via two styli that move across on a moving belt at high speed.

These pages all contain the same sentence:
http://www.ovguide.com/spark-printer-9202a8c04000641f8000000000253768#
http://woo.jamesruse.nsw.edu.au/san.../cheuk-s-class-work/190810-displayinghardware
http://gender.www.tomeverett.freebase.com/view/computer/views/computer_peripheral_class

Once again, they give no indication that the text was copied from another site.

At least on http://www.encyclo.co.uk/define/Spark printer they unambiguously attribute Wikipedia as the source for this text.

Anyone have thoughts on this phenomenon?

 

[Careyp74]

Can you ascertain which site is copying off of which? Wiki contributors could be getting their info from the other sites. The references at the bottom of the wiki page might help.

 

[jasonpatterson]

I can't say that I like it; it makes me sad to see so many people plagiarizing. I'm not surprised by it though, there is a basic notion that anything on the internet is free game and that attribution is old fashioned. I'm continuously trying to get it through my students' heads that this type of thing is inappropriate, and yet they still do it and fail as a result. Without even a teacher looking over their shoulder, I can't expect that the majority of people will behave well in this regard. The reverse is true as well, of course. There are a great many places where wiki articles are copy/pasted from other sources (though usually with attribution, to be fair to wikipedia.)

In short, many people are lazy about this because they don't see it as being important and there are no consequences for failing to attribute material to the original authors.

The problem can go both ways, though, with wiki articles plagiarized from other sources. Usually there are attributions on wiki.

 

[Careyp74]

The problem can go both ways, though, with wiki articles plagiarized from other sources. Usually there are attributions on wiki.

That is true. There should be a check box any time you edit or update an article, asking "where did you get this information" with options from "I made it up" to "from another source" with the latter then asking for the source.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Wiki is intended to be used by other people. If a person didn't want people plagiarizing their words they shouldn't contribute to an entry.

Personally I wouldn't want to quote Wiki without attributing the quote to the source, but I'm not sure the Wiki site itself intends that to be the case. The concept is public exchange.

 

[Careyp74]

Wiki is intended to be used by other people. If a person didn't want people plagiarizing their words they shouldn't contribute to an entry.

Personally I wouldn't want to quote Wiki without attributing the quote to the source, but I'm not sure the Wiki site itself intends that to be the case. The concept is public exchange.

They offer their content for public use, but still requires the information to be sourced.

"Projects are required to grant broad permissions to the general public to re-distribute and re-use their contributions freely, so long as that use is properly attributed"

"When you submit text to which you hold the copyright, you agree to license it under: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (“CC BY-SA”), and GNU Free Documentation License (“GFDL”) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).
(Re-users may comply with either license or both.)

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use

This tells me that anyone can use the material found on the Wiki pages, but must comply with either of those two license agreements.

 

[CORed]

Has anyone else noticed that there are a lot of sites that contain sections of text word-for-word identical to Wikipedia, without any kind of attribution ?

I've noticed it a few times when looking up various obscure topics out of curiosity, doing a web-search when Wikipedia has too little information on the subject, and end up finding several sites with Wiki-identical information.

Most recently, I was looking up the origin of the lyrics to Scarborough fair. In the Wikipedia page I find....



Wanting to find more information about these earlier versions, I find (amongst others) these pages...

http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/moneychords/scarboroughfair.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101120103454AAACW9i
http://www.authorsden.com/categories/article_top.asp?catid=50&id=60720
http://homesteadblogger.com/scarboroughfair/author/lillyandgish/page/3/

Each of which contains the exact same text, word for word identical, with no mention of where it came from.

I've also noticed the same thing on other subjects. For example, the first sentence of the Wikipedia page on spark printers reads:



These pages all contain the same sentence:
http://www.ovguide.com/spark-printer-9202a8c04000641f8000000000253768#
http://woo.jamesruse.nsw.edu.au/san.../cheuk-s-class-work/190810-displayinghardware
http://gender.www.tomeverett.freebase.com/view/computer/views/computer_peripheral_class

Once again, they give no indication that the text was copied from another site.

At least on http://www.encyclo.co.uk/define/Spark printer they unambiguously attribute Wikipedia as the source for this text.

Anyone have thoughts on this phenomenon?

I have noted that plagiarism is rampant on the internet. Many times when searching on some subject or other, I will see multiple paragraphs that are identical on several sites, never with any kind of attribution. It's usually impossible to determine which site (or which book) it originated from.

 

[AvalonXQ]

I'm continuously continually trying to get it through my students' heads that this type of thing is inappropriate, and yet they still do it and fail as a result.

Sorry; fixing a pet peeve.

 

[CORed]

I can't say that I like it; it makes me sad to see so many people plagiarizing. I'm not surprised by it though, there is a basic notion that anything on the internet is free game and that attribution is old fashioned. I'm continuously trying to get it through my students' heads that this type of thing is inappropriate, and yet they still do it and fail as a result. Without even a teacher looking over their shoulder, I can't expect that the majority of people will behave well in this regard. The reverse is true as well, of course. There are a great many places where wiki articles are copy/pasted from other sources (though usually with attribution, to be fair to wikipedia.)

In short, many people are lazy about this because they don't see it as being important and there are no consequences for failing to attribute material to the original authors.

The problem can go both ways, though, with wiki articles plagiarized from other sources. Usually there are attributions on wiki.

Pehaps I am a hopeless curmudgeon from the Era of Dead Trees, but to me, copying large blocks of somebody else's work verbatim, without attribution, and presenting it as your own is a sleazy, unethical thing to do in any context, academic or not, whether it's copyrighted or not.

If you're going to copy somebody else's words verbatim, you should ask for permission, at least if it's more than a short excerpt, and regardless of length, identify it as a quote and identify the source. It's just the right thing to do.

 

[Evilgiraffe]

Pehaps I am a hopeless curmudgeon from the Era of Dead Trees, but to me, copying large blocks of somebody else's work verbatim, without attribution, and presenting it as your own is a sleazy, unethical thing to do in any context, academic or not, whether it's copyrighted or not.

If you're going to copy somebody else's words verbatim, you should ask for permission, at least if it's more than a short excerpt, and regardless of length, identify it as a quote and identify the source. It's just the right thing to do.

This.

Also copying from wikipedia, even with attribution, is pretty low. What's wrong with referring back to original literature? Not doing so just screams laziness.

 

[Careyp74]

Sorry; fixing a pet peeve.

Teachers these days

 

[jasonpatterson]

Sorry; fixing a pet peeve.

Teachers these days

continuous (adj) - uninterrupted in time

related form - continuously (adv)

It's a word, and it's used properly. Yes, there is a similar word that would have done the job.

ETA: Oh the fun of a grammatical error in a response to a complaint of a grammatical error. Also, because this is a thread about attribution, or the lack thereof, in writing on the web, I forgot to include an attribution of the definition I pulled off of the internet. It came from dictionary.com.

 

[Careyp74]

continuous (adj) - uninterrupted in time

related form - continuously (adv)

It's a word, and it's used properly. Yes, there is a similar word that would have done the job.

ETA: Oh the fun of a grammatical error in a response to a complaint of a grammatical error. Also, because this is a thread about attribution, or the lack thereof, in writing on the web, I forgot to include an attribution of the definition I pulled off of the internet. It came from dictionary.com.

I hope you interrupt that time occasionally to teach them other things.

Not trying to start a fight. AvalonXQ is right though.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Yes. Something that you find yourself doing "all the time," that is, over and over again, is something you do "continually". Most people continually eat for their entire lives, and most people also continually defecate for their entire lives.

Something you do constantly, without ever stopping, is something you do continuously. Pretty much nobody eats or defecates continuously for any significant fraction of their lives; even eating or defecating continously for two hours is usually considered disgusting. Eating and defecating continuously would be even more disgusting (as, by definition, neither would be interrupted during the other).

The words are related but not the same.

 

[Agular]

Get over it people. It happens all the time and there is nothing you can do about it, except bitch. It's not just wikipedia, it's all over the net. Google any symptoms of a disease.

 

[geni]

There are a massive number of such sites with differing levels of compliance with CC license terms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks

 

[Careyp74]

Get over it people. It happens all the time and there is nothing you can do about it, except bitch. It's not just wikipedia, it's all over the net. Google any symptoms of a disease.

Well, let's close down the forum then.

 

[geni]

That is true. There should be a check box any time you edit or update an article, asking "where did you get this information" with options from "I made it up" to "from another source" with the latter then asking for the source.

Err most of my more recent edits have been adding pics so that wouldn't really work.

 

[Brian-M]

Can you ascertain which site is copying off of which? Wiki contributors could be getting their info from the other sites. The references at the bottom of the wiki page might help.

Using text from other sites (unless in the public domain or under a creative commons license) would violate Wikipedia policy. (But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.)

Even if it were the Wikipedia authors copying from other sites, the situation wouldn't be any better.

It happens all the time and there is nothing you can do about it, except bitch. It's not just wikipedia, it's all over the net.

I think we're all aware of this. That's what this thread is for, an opportunity to "bitch" about it.

 

[rjh01]

Can you ascertain which site is copying off of which? Wiki contributors could be getting their info from the other sites. The references at the bottom of the wiki page might help.

One way to find out is to make a reasonable amendment to Wikipedia. Then see if the other sites get amended. If they do then you have your answer.