Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2015 August 7

7 August 2015

Copyright investigations (manual article tagging)

Timothy Dwight Hobart (history · last edit · rewrite) from http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fho01 Several sentences were lifted directly from this source: "From his Gray County headquarters he surveyed, fenced, improved, and sold the White Deer lands until 1924", "Throughout his later years, Hobart devoted himself to civic improvements in Pampa". Crow^Caw 20:19, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note, this was tagged in February but never listed here (or got removed), so fast-track would be nice if possible. As it stands the 2 sentences objected to in the report are still there, but there may be close paraphrase issues remaining, given a cursory EWbot search, so I'm not sure that just cleaning those 2 sentences is sufficient. Crow^Caw 20:19, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The author has made some tweaks, and I've done a couple as well. These are on the temp page: Talk:Timothy Dwight Hobart/Temp. Note also, this is part of a larger CCI (Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20110727), so additional eyes would be welcomed. Crow^Caw 19:58, 8 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So much for the fast track, Crow! I looked at this, and found it worrying. My thinking: the initial version of the page is so very closely paraphrased from the source as to risk being considered a derivative work; and much of the content from that version seems to be in the rewrite. Given that this a CCI, I wonder if stubbing the page might not be a better choice here? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:20, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Justlettersandnumbers: Yes, that version will be nuked from orbit. See the rewrite at Talk:Timothy Dwight Hobart/Temp. Crow^Caw 21:47, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Crow, I may be right off track here, but that is the version I looked at. My concern is still that some of the unacceptably close paraphrasing of the initial version has been carried over into the rewrite, and thus has not been completely removed. I'm also concerned that by keeping much of the original content, albeit in a slightly modified form, we risk putting a "seal of approval" on material that is in fact unacceptable. In this case, there appears to be substantial copying from this page too. Isn't the best approach in a CCI to presumptively remove any and all material that cannot definitely be confirmed to be acceptable? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:56, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's why I brought it here, yes, as I'm admittedly not well versed in the chronic (CCI) side of things yet. (Also your above post confused me when you linked the Earwig from the initial version... I got it now though! :) ). Crow^Caw 21:34, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So, Crow, I've gone ahead and stubbed the page, as I still feel that the rewrite is not useable; I'm open to discussion or correction on that. However, there seems to be a more serious problem: the editor is still active, but does not, I believe, understand what constitutes copying, despite his CCI. He had placed a version of the article, complete with copyvios, on its own talk page, with a note "there is no copyright problem". I've just blanked and listed Susan Pamerleau, created 2 days ago, where there are passages lifted verbatim from at least three sources. Mary Booze was flagged by CSB; the initial version shows unacceptable close-paraphrasing, though later edits seem to have smoothed that out (the copyvio was never removed, of course, just fudged on the spot). I'm far from convinced that this user should be free to edit here. Pinging Moonriddengirl and Diannaa for their opinion(s). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:16, 8 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What we did with a similar recent case (Epeefleche) is added to the case once we were sure that the problems were still ongoing and had 5 examples, same as the threshold we use for opening a new case. The user received a final warning that any further copyright violations would result in an indef block. The material is still on the user's talk page, here. Epeefleche has ceased editing, and I am monitoring for his return. -- Diannaa (talk) 23:39, 8 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oi, Diannaa, Justlettersandnumbers and Crow, this is a difficult case. The user was indefinitely blocked in September 2011 for copyright and BLP vios. WP:RBI consumed a ton of time during his block evasion (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Billy Hathorn/Archive), and he caused a lot of collateral damage. He ignored all efforts to get him to work within process and request an unblocking. He simply kept socking. He was unblocked because blocking him did not work. I did a review before he was unblocked and didn't find any issues in his recent edits. By that time, he was down to occasional close paraphrase, probably not blatant enough to rise to copyvio. (See [1] and User_talk:Amalthea/Archive_7#I_believe_Billy_Hathorn_is_back.) User:Amalthea's idea was that unblocking him would allow us to keep an eye on him, since he was editing anyway, but, of course, nobody has time to keep an eye on him, and no editor should have to dedicate their time to just cleaning up behind somebody who refuses to stop. There's serious WP:BEANS implication in this discussion in itself, but the underlying issue remains "What do you do when....?" --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:26, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Moonriddengirl, that isn't an easy question; nevertheless, as I see it, there's only one possible answer: you do whatever it takes. Because otherwise it just makes a mockery of everything the rest of us, including particularly you, try to do here. The user shows not a glimmering of understanding (1, 2, 3) of what the problem is, and should not be free to edit. Just a random thought: could it be of any help if you put your other hat on to think about this? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:53, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It might, Justlettersandnumbers, but aside from processing emergencies my other hat is not always an avenue to immediate solutions to now problems. :/ For structural notes, we are a small team primarily focused on three core workflows related to supporting volunteers (especially community functionary groups like OTRS admins, ombudsman commission, checkusers, stewards), supporting staff (in areas related to community engagement; one of us is in Tokyo with ED Lila right now) and trust & safety (liaising with the FBI on threats of violence, overseeing child safety issues related to imaging, etc.) We also handle correspondence to the WMF (snail mail, email, including business proposals). We have room for a couple of major projects, generally, and one of those right now is our harassment research & upcoming consultation. (We'll be running a survey in November.) We're also trying to find a way to make wmf:answers expand to better serve community (it's mostly used by readers and outside entities), refining our policies & processes related to handling child pornography, and bringing in a large group of stewards for a meeting this month on improving steward workflows. This context is because I want you guys of all people to understand that "We will not be fast" does not mean "We do not care." :) Beyond that, we are not a tech team, and where solutions to problems are techy, we have to get fixes on the joblist of a team that is (perhaps the rather new mw:Community Tech team), which means working with whatever priorities they assign or have had assigned to them. We may also have to coordinate with grants or learning & evaluation or some other team, if it proves to dovetail with their existing work or focuses.

All that said, all of our priorities are guided by the WMF overall strategy, which is set by the Board. (this year's.) One of our goals is to "Identify community health metrics and test projects to improve them." And "how to handle the unblockable" strikes me as a massive community health issue. So I think this conversation is doable.

I suspect that getting something like this on the radar would require:

(a) metrics to help define and demonstrate the scale of the problem.
(b) a showing of community support for putting WMF resources (time, money) to address it, and
(c) ideally some preliminary ideas for what addressing it might look like.

(c) is not really a requirement, just a "nice to have," but it's a really "nice to have." How do you block a long-term harasser from India, for instance, where there are 35 people for each IP address? Or from North Korea where there are 24,000 people for each IP address? (cool stats) Or when a US vandal just moves from library to library in a major metropolitan area? Or when she understands how to exploit unidentified open proxies? Of course, it's not an all or nothing solution. If we can find ways to even improve current practices through tool or cultural changes, then all to the good. :) But this particular problem is a hard one, I think, and people tend to shy away from making a major investment when they aren't sure if it will lead to anything constructive.

When community helps scope out projects, it can be a lot easier to get them considered. If community doesn't help, I can put stuff together myself or ask one of the other CAs to help put something together, but it's going to be assigned a lower priority than our quarterly and annual commitments, which means it will certainly not happen quickly, because we are hustling to meet our quarterly commitments.

I imagine that a good place to start with a project like this is talking to the community most likely to be able to help with (a) - CUs and SPI clerks, admins and users who have dealt with long-term vandals - and getting some handle on scale and support. With that, it'll probably be pretty easy to reach out to the global community of stewards and ask their input.

I guess the question now is degree of interest in looking into this and if you have any degree of interest in involvement in this, Justlettersandnumbers. :) If you don't, but you'd like me to explore it, I will put it on my list of things to discuss with the CA team at our next meeting. I know my team pretty well; we all know this is a problem, and it's one we'd love to see solved. There's a person on my team who could be ideal at exploring this. But it probably won't be fast. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 10 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Justlettersandnumbers and Moonriddengirl: Hi all, back from travel so I can turn my focus back here. A suggestion regarding the above and associated beans (I like that essay btw... have to remember that one). Rather than play sock-hunt, perhaps if CSB tags his submissions we just summarily G12 them until the message is received? At some point there would hopefully be a "hey, why are these all being G12'ed)... Also to JLAN, no problem on stubbing off the rewrite. You've got an excellent sense for close paraphrases, and I'm not the best re-writer on topics I have no knowledge on. Crow^Caw 16:33, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Crow, welcome back (and thanks for that undeserved compliment)! I've rather rudely not replied to Maggie/MRG's careful and detailed response here because … well, I just don't know what to say. My thoughts, such as they are, are roughly:

if someone has an open CCI, is still infringing copyrights and is still steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that there's even a problem, that person should not be able to edit here
if there's going to be collateral damage from that (extra work for admins and checkusers, possible copyvios by undiscovered socks, whatever), we have to accept that as the cost
there should probably be a LTA record for this user (how does that happen, I don't know?)
if the Wikimedia legal or technical teams could find ways of limiting the capacity of long-term abusers to access or to damage the project, that would be brilliant
I'm not clever enough (nor, to be perfectly honest, dedicated enough) to play any significant part in making that happen – I'd rather write a stub article on some obscure topic
But unless MRG or Amalthea (who hasn't edited here since July) advise against it, I might take this to ANI to see what the community thinks
I take your point about zapping anything tagged by CSB, but CSB didn't pick up Susan Pamerleau; the copying there is not very extensive, but I don't think it's negligible
along the same line of thought, it might be an idea to prioritise the CCI …

None of that leads me to any firm conclusion; the only thing I'm sure of is that we shouldn't be unblocking bad eggs for pragmatic reasons. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:50, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maggie, I'm very concerned about the rationale for this unblock--I think Justlettersandnumbers's analysis very much to the point. Agreed that our tools are limited, and from what I understand there may be very great difficulty in devising effective ones, but that is to reason to stop using what we do have as best we can. (and in this particular case the articles are easily identified by style) I do not want to take any direct action myself, because I have a long-standing dispute with the editor concerned over his contributions in general. going back to my first year on WP. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 18 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

DGG, the decision was neither proposed nor made by me. I have a lot of respect for the admin who made it, and I understand his thinking there, but it's not the call I would have made, either. Still, I don't think it's the best choice for me to take direct action myself. I was quite dedicated to WP:RBI before the unblock, and I would not want to give the appearance that this is personal. I would not feel comfortable taking action myself without being able to demonstrate egregious ongoing concerns. With that, I could act and stand my ground. Without that, I feel better taking a support role. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:08, 18 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

in which case, this needs either AN/I with respect to the individual block, or ANB as a policy matter in general. Personally, I think it would be fairer to have a discussion in general about what to do in these circumstances. DGG ( talk ) 20:31, 18 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

DGG, MRG/Maggie, Diannaa, Crow, this has been weighing on me for a couple of weeks now. Rightly or wrongly, I've now posted about it at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Unblock of Billy Hathorn in 2013. I've linked to this discussion. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:15, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This has been cleaned, and the discussion on ANI is for banning. Closing this out. MER-C 17:35, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

User:Dgeskin63/Ultrasonic degassing: European Research from [2].

Article cleaned by investigator or others. No remaining infringement. Speedy deletion requested. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:42, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]