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Contributor copyright investigation

This CCI cleanup subpage has been opened because concerns of multiple point infringement have been substantiated and further steps are necessary to address the serious risk of copyright violation from the listed contributor. Listings are not intended to imply a presumption of bad faith on the part of any contributor, as copyright laws vary widely around the world and many contributors who violate Wikipedia's copyrights policy do so inadvertently through not understanding it or the United States' laws that govern it.

If you are here because of a note on an article's talk page explaining removal of text, please do not restore any removed text without first ensuring that the text does not duplicate, closely paraphrase or plagiarize from a previously published source. You are welcome to use sourced facts that may have been removed to create new content in your own words or to incorporate brief quotations of copyrighted material in accordance with the non-free content policy and guideline.

Instructions[edit]

All contributors with no history of copyright problems are welcome to contribute to clean up. Contributors who are the subject of a contributor copyright investigation are among contributors with a history of copyright problems and so are not welcome to directly evaluate their own or others' copyright violations in CCIs. They are welcome to assist with rewriting any problems identified.

If contributors have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation, it may be assumed without further evidence that all of their major contributions are copyright violations, and they may be removed indiscriminately in accordance with Wikipedia:Copyright violations. Contributors who are the subject of a contributor copyright investigation are among contributors who have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation and so all of the below listed contributions may be removed indiscriminately. However, to avoid collateral damage, efforts should be made when possible to verify infringement before removal.

When every section is completed, please alter the listing for this CCI at Wikipedia:CCI#Open_investigations to include the tag "completed=yes". This will alert a clerk that the listing needs to be archived.

Text

  • Evaluating for copyright concerns may include checking the listed sources, spot-checking using google, google books and other search engines and looking for major differences in writing style. The background may give some indication of the kinds of copyright concerns that have been previously detected. For older text, mirrors of Wikipedia content may make determining which came first difficult. It may be helpful to look for significant changes to the text after it was entered. Searching for the earlier form of text can help eliminate later mirrors. If you cannot determine which came first, text should be removed presumptively, since there is an established history of copying with the editor in question.
  • If you remove text presumptively, place ((subst:CCI|name=Contributor name)) on the article's talk page.
  • If you specifically locate infringement and remove it (or revert to a previous clean version), place ((subst:cclean)) on the article's talk page. The url parameter may be optionally used to indicate source.
  • If there is insufficient creative content on the page for it to survive the removal of the text or it is impossible to extricate from subsequent improvements, replace it with ((subst:copyvio)), linking to the investigation subpage in the url parameter. List the article as instructed at the copyright problems board, but you do not need to notify the contributor. Your note on the CCI investigation page serves that purpose.
  • To tag an article created by the contributor for presumptive deletion, place ((subst:copyvio|url=see talk)) on the article's face and ((subst:CCId|name=Contributor name)) on the article's talk page. List the article as instructed at the copyright problems board, but you do not need to notify the contributor.
  • replace the diffs after the colon on the listing with indication of whether problem was found (add ((y))) or not (add ((n))). If the article is blanked and may be deleted, please indicate as much after the ((y)).
  • Follow with your username and the time to indicate to others that the article has been evaluated and appropriately addressed. This is automatically generated by four tildes (~~~~)

Background[edit]

 Aetheling1125

After that I checked two other related articles and they both included the citations from Professor Glyn Roberts and attribution to EB1911. diff between Sir_Richard_Wynn,_4th_Baronet and Professor Glyn Roberts text shows copying while Sir John Wynn, 5th Baronet does not appear be a copy from Professor Glyn Roberts other than the list of sources, but also it does not appear to be from EB1911. So I decided to look further. I have found two more examples:

All these are from 2005 but given that the editor Aetheling1125 has not responded to my posting to the editor's talk page, I think it worth running a more comprehensive check. -- PBS (talk) 20:17, 5 December 2013 (UTC) PBS (talk) 20:17, 5 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi PBS

I have been contributing articles to the best of my ability for a long time. I think it is about ten years now. Back then, in those early days after Wikipedia first began the site was a different beast to what it is now. In many ways it has improved. In many other ways it has morphed into something rather oppressive. The fact that I am now "on trial" here is almost like something from a bad StarTrek episode and frankly seems self indulgent. In the past I had some quite hysterically confront me accusing me of plagiarism regarding an article and after a long, stressful and antagonistic process where it was repeatedly suggested I was lying it transpired that the article I was supposed to have copied from was actually published AFTER the wiki I wrote had been created - and had been copied from what I wrote. I am not saying this is the same thing this time - regarding the BBC claim - but it is possible. There are many people working for the BBC in their online section and it is quite possible that someone there, tired, just lifted something from the site. So I ask you - rather than initiate this frankly rather nasty and intimidating process against someone who has GIVEN a great deal to this site over a long time why not simply amend the article in question and avoid any of this unpleasantness. I have not committed a crime. I am a high school teacher and I am incredibly busy and I appear to have missed your message on my page. I don't contribute much to Wikipedia any more because (a) it is very comprehensive now, and (b) it has become a place dominated by a small introspective and jealous clique contact with whom I have rarely found an enjoyable experience. What is worse is the seemingly deliberate over-complicated "procedures" and ornate "policies" which are created by this in-group who now run Wikipedia. These rules, procedures and regulations are FAR too confusing and appear to me to be designed to make Wikipedia increasingly inaccessible and too time consuming for ordinary people with day jobs to get to grips with. You say it is "very unlikely" that the BBC copied a Wikipedia page word for word - but do you have any PROOF?? No. How about comparing the dates? I am very confident that the Fulford page is entirely my own creation. I recall writing it but it feels to me that I am accused and guilt is presupposed. No doubt I am writing this comment in the wrong place and will be chastised for that too. I am sure you must be aware that many more editors contributed to Wikipedia in the past than do now. The site was not so rigorous as it is now back then and over the years I/we have learnt a great deal about referencing etc. As I said before, this process is unnecessarily accusative. If something has been copied from Encyclopedia Britannia 1911 (which is surely out of copyright now?) in the Wynn articles which I think were written pretty much as stubs a long time ago then I politely suggest you amend them. I am very sorry for any upset caused and I will remember to avoid Wikipedia in the future.Aetheling1125 22:31, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

There is no trial here and I am delighted that you have responded so quickly as this should help us clean up any problems much more quickly (and that is all this process is designed to do). I approached you on your talk page and would have been happy to have conducted the conversation there, and I left it a week for you to respond before I posted here.
The BBC and your initial text match as I said above it may be a backwards copy and if you say it is -- and there is no evidence to say otherwise -- then I personally assume good faith and it is as you state.
The reason why I posted to your talk page was I assumed that as a ((1911)) template had been placed by you on the article that text had been copied from an EB1911 article. When I could not find an article on Sir Owen Wynn or the Wynn family (I also tried under Winn), I search using Google hoping that I could find it -- I quite often do this for example see this edit I made today at 18:06. If the text comes from the EB1911 then of course it is copyright free and can be incorporated into a Wikipedia article providing proper attribution is given (as described in WP:PLAGARISM). As many article back in 2005 did not include what is now considered adequate attribution, adding it is something that a number of editors do for the 9,380 articles that need modifying to include a EB1911 article name in the template.
So I was surprised when instead of finding the text was copied from EB1911 it appears to have been copied from the Welsh Biography Online. If you did copy text from other copyright sources back in 2005 approximately when did you stop copying from such sources? Knowing this will help us (that is all Wikipedia editors including you) to fix any potential copyright problems you may have inadvertently caused. -- PBS (talk) 23:57, 5 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think the only instance of such copying occurring was when a number of very similar pages regarding members of Wynn family were being constructed as stubs back in 2005. So to answer your question, such a mistake would only have been made on the Wynn family members pages and I think all of these were constructed within a short space of time with each other. Chances are this error only affects a couple of these pages. When constructing such pages material was copied from sources to a notepad so as to retain key facts. The prose was then re-written but retaining the key facts. What probably happened is that what was thought to be a quote from EB1911 had become muddled up with something copied from Welsh Biography Online. I have never and would never intentionally say a quote was from EB1911 when I knew it was from another source. That would presume I was trying to deliberately deceive people and make them think something was from EB1911 when in fact it was WBO... I can see no motive for anyone doing such a thing, I would not stand to benefit in any way and this is an error in attribution when collating material from different sources in a scratchpad.Aetheling1125 10:19, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
If you look through some of the examples of copying listed on this page you will see that there are various motives for copying information. As a show of good faith would you be willing edit any pages that currently contain copyright material that you edited, and while I appreciate that it can happen by accident, I have not looked at many pages, but even so this problem has been present on other pages as well (eg Rhos (North Wales).
The tool that is run if this investigation is taken forwards can he found in this section I have just run it over your account
  • The first edit returned is here running a test diff on it here I can see that text is duplicated. However I do not think it originates from there, but I do think you copied it from somewhere. But when you did you did not cite you sources, and as the originals were in Welsh the translations my be under copyright (or they may be PD) without adequate cations it is impossible to tell without more investigation.

I think in this instance: "Three Closures and Disclosures of the Island; First the head of Bran Fendigaid, which Owain the son of Macsen Wledig buried under the White Tower in London, and while it was so placed no invasion could be made upon this Island; the second was the bones of Gwrthevyr the Blessed [[[Vortimer]]], which were buried in the chief harbour of the Island, and while they remained there hidden all invasions were ineffectual. The third was the dragons buried by Lludd ab Beli, in the city of Pharaon, in the rocks of Snowdon. And the three closures were made under the blessing of God and his attributes, and evil befel from the time of their disclosure. Gwrtheyrn Gwrtheneu [Vortigern], disclosed the dragons to revenge the displeasure of the Cymry against him, and he invited the Saxons in the guise of men of defence to fight against the Gwyddyl Ffychti (Picts); and after this he disclosed the bones of Gwrthevyr the Blessed, through love of Ronwen Rowena, the daughter of the Saxon Hengist. And Arthur disclosed the head of Bendigeid Vran ab Llyr, because he chose not to hold the Island except by his own strength. And after the three disclosures came the chief invasions upon the race of the Cymry." - this is an actual Welsh Triad. It is not copyright, it is about a thousand years old. Yes they are the originals. I am not making any attempt to deceive anyone and make out they are not. Of course they are the originals of the verses - that is the point??? Should we re-write sections of the Bible??? The issue is the referencing but this example is not the action of someone seeking to pass off work as their own.Aetheling1125 11:45, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Rhydderch Hael: the sixth on down the list is a clear copy (in 2006) from the source you gave as the reference. There is nothing on the web page from which you copied the text to say it is free of copyright. This was more than just inadvertent chance copy as you explained away the copied text on the Wynn family members pages.

This is an old version that doesn't exist any more. I hold my hands up, this is a bit naughty and done in the first year of my contributions to the site in 2006. It was soon altered and made Wikipedia's own and in the seven years since has disappeared. This is embarrassing for me but I am afraid to say that I was far from alone in the old days of Wikipedia. I actually thought this process was about examining content live NOW on the site, but I see this whole process is retrospective covering every edit someone has ever made even if those edits do not exist in the present anymore? Is this North Korea? Swastikapedia... Yes I confess, during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s sometimes I doubted Chairman Mao but I am a loyal and obedient member of the party now and have been for decades Aetheling1125 11:58, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I am not going to go through any more. I will leave it to others to decide whether a full investigation should be carried out. -- PBS (talk) 21:04, 7 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
[1]. MER-C 12:32, 9 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
May I ask what it means when an N appears before an article? Aetheling1125 20:39, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Those are the articles you created. MER-C 09:09, 9 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Contribution survey[edit]

Aetheling1125 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

This report covers contributions to 521 articles from timestamp 2005-09-28 14:48:39 UTC to timestamp 2013-11-23 12:10:11 UTC.

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This report generated by Contribution Surveyor at 2013-12-09T12:31:40+00:00 in 19.70 sec.

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