I sometimes notice articles that appear to have translated content that is not attributed, and I have a question about how to properly flag this. I'm thinking, a new maintenance template at the top of the article is perhaps needed.

I'm aware that if an article contains content translated from an outside source, this would fall under COPYVIO rules, and might not be permitted at all, depending on standard Copyvio conditions. (These must be difficult to catch or prove, as standard plagiarism tools will not work on translated material. Not sure what, if anything we can do about this right now, but this post is not primarily about this case.)

The issue I wish to raise now, is about content added to en-wiki that is translated from another Wikipedia or sister project. As I understand it, this is governed by WP:CWW and is generally permitted, as long as required attribution to the source article is provided. However, attribution is not always provided. My question is, what to do about such articles, when one finds them? This case seems not quite as serious as plagiarism from outside sources, so blanking the article with a big, red banner while investigation is underway about attribution from another Wikimedia project would seem like overkill to me. I was thinking a new template is needed, that could be placed on top of an article, saying something about suspected translated content and missing attribution, and linking to CWW, ATTREQ, and so on. {{Interwiki copy}} is not the right template, and WP:TFOLWP says nothing about this case. I'm thinking of a new template, along the lines of {{Cv-unsure}}, but geared more to translation rather than copy-paste, and with verbiage about proper sister project attribution, rather than copyright violation from an external copyright holder.

For a real world example, you could have a look at Talk:Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet#Unattributed translations. I placed a {{Proofreader needed}} template on to of the article itself, but that template really doesn't address the atribution issue at all, which is what got me to thinking about this situation, and whether we needed a new template. Feedback would be appreciated. Mathglot (talk) 00:22, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For a mockup, please see User:Mathglot/sandbox/Templates/Template:Translate attreq. Mathglot (talk) 01:21, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What I normally do is perform a tiny edit to the page so I can retroactively add the attribution myself via an edit summary, like this: Attribution: content in this article was translated from [[:fr:example]] on November 17, 2018. Please see the history of that page for full attribution. Then I place a {{translated}} template on the article talk page, and I notify the editor how to do it properly the next time, like this: Hi. I see in a recent addition to [[:fr:example]] you included material translated from the French Wikipedia. That's okay, but you have to give attribution so that our readers are made aware that you copied the prose rather than wrote it yourself. I've added the attribution for this particular instance. Please make sure that you follow this legal requirement when copying from compatibly-licensed material in the future. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 02:21, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Diannaa, thanks. Yes, I've used dummy edits for adding edit summaries retroactively myself, as well as adding the {{translated page}} templates to the talk page more than once. That works, once we know that it's a translation, and where the translation is from. The situation I'm trying to address is generally before that point, analogous to a {{cv-unsure}}. As far as editor notification, I had considered creating a uw template as well, to provide some boilerplate to a user, along the lines of what you suggest above, and that might be a useful template as well. Mathglot (talk) 10:14, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Following a previous conversation on admin TonyBalloni's talk page; could someone look at this GA nomination for Copyright infringement? [Earwig's CopyVio test] brings up some issues, but aparently most of these are reverse copyvios. Could someone look at 8-bit central against the article PlayStation Portable for infringements. It's all a bit beyond me, and I don't want to continue a nomination if it fails the immediate failure conditions. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:01, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I'll have a more in depth look later but the link you've given there looks like they copied Wikipedia - the table halfway down looks like a screenshot of a table on Wikipedia, because they couldn't be bothered to reproduce Wikipedia's table formatting. Hut 8.5 18:38, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for your time. I get nervous around copyvio issues; as it's not something I have much background with. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:07, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Does anybody know if Barnes and Noble has a pattern of plagiarising Wikipedia articles for book summaries? I was investigating a 10-year-old copyright vio allegation on the talk page of Paradise Regained. I started with Earwig's, got an exact match (minus mark-up) for [1]. I can't do date checks due to a lack of archives for B&N, yet the I find the poor prose far more becoming of Wikipedia than a bookstore. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 17:15, 4 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another URL in the Barnes and Noble domain, using an older version of the page (and executing it quite poorly). —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 17:19, 4 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely looks like they're copying Wikipedia. For example both article and link use the sentence "Thus, antonyms are often found next to each other, reinforcing the idea that everything that was lost in the first epic will be regained by the end of this "brief epic"." This version of the article from 2009 says instead "Thus, antonyms are often found next to each other throughout the poem, reinforcing the idea that everything that was lost in the first epic is going to be regained by the end of the mini-epic." This indicates the text has developed dynamically over time, instead of being copied from an external source. Somebody claimed here that they'd dealt with the copyvio allegation on the talk page, FWIW. Hut 8.5 21:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 December 4#Template:Trademark (seems to have a dubious use case on this wiki, even if it may serve some purpose on Commons).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:17, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Early in the morning of 29 November 2018 I wrote an edit of the "live data subsection of the "Backup article, as a combination of material that was currently in the subsection, material that had been in the subsection until it was deleted by JohnInDC the previous day [2], and material that I had written from scratch early that morning. AFAICT the subsection had been previously basically unchanged since around 2008, so I was amazed to discover that User:Username_Needed had reverted my edit and placed a copyvio template on my Talk page about 2 hours later. I immediately protested "I am mystified ..." on a new section of Username Needed's Talk page, ending that comment with "Please tell me—or have your bot tell me—where the copyright violation lies, so that I can fix it."

(To preserve a comprehensive narrative, I have copied comments I originally made in that section of Usermame Needed's Talk page into this section of my own Talk page.)

About 18 hours after his/her reversion of my edit, User:Username_Needed reverted that reversion with the Edit Summary "SelfRev- misidentification". Still no comment from him/her on where the copyvio lay. Another 7 days later User:Username_Needed put on my Talk page a first feeble apology, which said "I had misidentified an edit as a copyvio when the actual material was elsewhere. Sorry for the confusion." I responded to that with "What does 'elsewhere' mean? In the 'Backup' article, but not in the 'Live data' subsection? In some other article?" My response went on to describe tests I had made with Earwig's Copyvio Detector before and after his/her original reversion of my edit, which showed a 15.3% probability of copyvio before the original reversion in a (properly quotemarked and footnoted) quote in a completely different section of the WP article, and showed a 16.7% probability of copyvio in the "Live data" subsection after the original reversion. Much of the "Live data" subsection appears to have originally been written based on the notes of a 1997 University of Wisconsin lecture by a database administrator; if that 16.7% probability represents a a genuine copyvio, it's likely to be related to that (not quotemarked but properly footnoted) lecture note material—which the database administrator may have copied from Oracle Corp.'s 1997-era documentation.

User:Username_Needed then replied on my Talk page "I was using User:Crow's copypartol tool, which has quite a complicated interface, and I misread it. I have no idea if there ever was any copyvio, whether it has been removed and whether it is still in the revs." I replied on User_talk:Username_Needed#Backup "I just used that CopyPatrol tool to discover a "copyright violation", but it's in the reverse direction! [3] is [explicitly at the top of the blog] dated 10 April 2013, which by internal evidence is almost 5 years after the existing material I edited in the "Live data" subsection was written. If you use View History for the WP article, and go back to a version before that date, it will become pretty obvious that [a consultant in Los Angeles County] copied at least that subsection of the WP article without AFAICT crediting Wikipedia."

(In apparent reaction to a message I—perhaps naively—left on his voicemail the other day, the Los Angeles County consultant has now removed the copyright-violating material from the current version of his blog—but it remains captured on the Wayback Machine on 18 May 2014; I have substituted the Wayback URL in the link in the preceding paragraph.)

What User:Username_Needed's bungle reminds me of is something that happened while my father was teaching me to drive around our suburban neighborhood in 1956. Disregarding his warning I went around a small traffic circle too fast, and ended up going across someone's lawn. Having a bit more intestinal fortitude than User:Username_Needed, I apologized to my father as soon as—not 7 days after—he drove our car off the lawn and around the corner and told me to get back behind the wheel. Maybe WP editors should be required to go through a Learner's Permit phase under the supervision of another CopyPatrol-experienced editor before being allowed to use CopyPatrol to identify copyvios on their own.

Earwig's Copyvio Detector didn't detect the reverse copyvio, but that may simply be because Earwig's Copyvio Detector doesn't look at non-institutional blogs such as that of the Los Angeles County consultant. OTOH Earwig's Copyvio Detector may have coding to detect reverse copyvios and ignore them (comparing in only one direction and seeing which file creation date is earlier are two simple-minded techniques that occur to me); maybe CopyPatrol should have similar coding added. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 10:44, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I will not be using the Crow's copyvio tool in the future, but could you please stop trying to insult me. I get that you're angry at being accused of something that you didn't do. This is justified, but throwing insults isn't going to help. Again, I apologise for upsetting you with an incorrect accusation, but it was a mistake. No malicious intent or upset was intentional. Also, I was offline for a while, hence why I did not respond immediately. ^{[Username Needed]} 10:52, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You forget that I saw the results of your CopyPatrol run on the "Backup" article before those results were invalidated by the Los Angeles County' consultant's deleting his reverse copyvio material. They showed 6-7 pages of text that was highlighted as being a copyvio. That IMHO would have alerted any WP editor experienced with copyvios that the copyvio might be in the reverse direction. Since the Los Angeles County consultant had explicitly put a 10 April 2013 date at the top of his blog post, it would have taken that experienced WP editor no more than 5 minutes to use View History to access a version of the "Backup" article written before 10 April 2013. 2 minutes of manually comparing text would then have convinced the experienced WP editor that the Los Angeles County consultant had copied from the WP article, rather than in the other direction. I think the foregoing thoroughly establishes your need for some Learner's Permit time; sorry you consider that an insult.

Next we must consider your delay of over 7 days in giving me any statement of what my alleged copyvio consisted of. The only conceivable answer you could have given from the CopyPatrol run is that I had copied essentially the entire "Backup" article into WP, and 2 minutes using View History would have convinced anyone that that answer was nonsensical. Do you have evidence that you asked any other WP editor for advice? No, you apparently just sat there with your mouth shut until I pressed you for an answer. And after 7 days you blamed your problem on the CopyPatrol interface. I think your lack of intestinal fortitude in this matter is pretty well demonstrated; you should have grown out of that in your teenage years. Heck, I just admitted in this section that my phoning the Los Angeles County consultant was an error in judgement on my part. We all have room to grow morally and intellectually. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 12:11, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NB. I have had several conversations with this editor about WP:NPA, WP:Civility and their variants about 3/5 of the way into the section here. JohnInDC (talk) 12:19, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It was not the article As a whole that insulted me, it was the line "Having a bit more intestinal fortitude than User:Username_Needed". I was not waiting to respond, I was merely offline. I also consider bringing me personally into this conversation in the first place was continuing on with a mistake that already had been resolved. ^{[[[User:Username Needed|Username]] Needed]} 13:06, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with both points - that this is beating a dead horse (at needless length to boot), and that the complaint was gratuitously insulting. JohnInDC (talk) 17:11, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Copied from my personal Talk page, with elisions of the Los Angeles County consultant's name. You'll see the reason for the copy below:

It doesn't violate copyright. He can use it freely. See WP:Copyrights. Probably all he needed to do was to add an attribution somewhere on his blog page - if that. I wonder - is this better, or worse, than making a mistake with an unfamiliar copyvio tool? JohnInDC (talk) 11:56, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Except I didn't say in my voicemail message that [the Los Angeles County consultant] should delete the copied WP text. I just stated that there appeared to be a copyright violation, and gave my phone number. By no particular coincidence, yesterday I took a fast look at the appropriate WP article on copyright. I think you're correct that adding an attribution would have been sufficient, probably accompanied by adding back those few citations that were in the WP article as of 10 April 2013. But then that wouldn't have showed off [the Los Angeles County consultant]'s consultative brilliance to the same extent. Should I have just said nothing?

As far as "making a mistake with an unfamiliar copyvio tool", I've replied to Username Needed's complaint of having been insulted here. I didn't mention my temporary decision to quit editing Wikipedia for at least 3 months, made before Username Needed reverted his/her reversion. Thank the Lord I didn't hit anyone rolling across that lawn in 1956. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 12:55, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you should have said nothing. Because you don’t know what you are doing, you left a misleading message on a private party’s voicemail claiming a “copyright violation“ on material which with only the most minor of adjustments, he is fully entitled to use, and caused him to take an action that he didn’t need to take. The effect of your dispute here is now rippling outside of Wikipedia. You are making things worse, not better. JohnInDC (talk) 13:12, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'll concede that Username Needed's intestinal fortitude may be the equal of that of Luke Skywalker or Lara Croft. But that concession means we would have to find another reason for the 18-hour delay in reverting his/her reversion, and the further 7-day delay in providing an explanation that proved to be inadequate. I hereby propose that, in searching for copyright violations in a great many WP articles, Username Needed is stretching himself/herself too thin. IMHO Username Needed has admitted above that he/she should do less WP editing, and do it more thoroughly.

If JohnInDC works his way through the links in the Wayback Machine version of [the Los Angeles County consultant]'s Web page, he will find this page that also includes an 18 April 2013 article entitled "Viruses, Trojans and Malware in general". A Google search on the phrase that consists of the first 6 words of that article led me to this page which—in an updated version—still exists on Cisco's website. Truly "The wicked flee when no man pursueth ...", but someone connected with Cisco—which may have insisted on his/her adding more than an attribution—seems to have pursued the Los Angeles County consultant about that part of the Web page. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 18:35, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

DovidBenAvraham (talk) 19:04, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I will say again. This horse is dead. Also wikilinking my name pings me. I am getting 3-4 pings everytime you make an edit. As explained above, I was offwiki for 18 hours, then breifly came back on, noticed that I had made an incorrect edit, and reverted it, lacking the insight to realise that you wanted an explanation, until you elaborated further. Sometimes people make mistakes, and then do not realise that they have made them until a day later. 09:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

The reason for the copy above is that CopyPatrol raises several policy questions for the "WP copyvio detection squad", which is my term for the editors who detect and deal with copyvios:

• Should CopyPatrol now be used by the "WP copyvio detection squad"?

  Not at all, IMHO, until both its GUI and its user documentation is greatly improved. CopyPatrol, whose "seekrit" documentation is here, is AFAICT an apparently new combination of Turnitin and the database in User:EranBot. Trigger warning: The rest of this paragraph will almost certainly cause the reader to slap his/her forehead, and may cause him/her to roll on the floor laughing/crying. The "Backwards copies" paragraph in "Usage" starts out with "Note also the possibility of backwards copies, where the source appeared to copy content from Wikipedia. This is not necessarily a false positive ...", which does not really disclose that CopyPatrol shows reverse copyvios (at least more often than Earwig's Copyvio Detector)—which IMHO is what really confused Username Needed on 29 November. Also, because CopyPatrol—to avoid repeats of lengthy compare processing—maintains a database containing the results for every WP article already compared, there appears to be no way in the GUI to initiate a rerun of an article already checked; that database already contains the results of compares made in October 2016—probably with Earwig's Copyvio Detector rather than CopyPatrol—for the "Retrospect (software)" WP article. (This makes sense for the Turnitin commercial product, because high school and college students must at the least re-submit—presumably as a different document—any paper that has been previously flagged for plagiarism.)

• After CopyPatrol has its GUI and user documentation fixed, should it be used by the "WP copyvio detection squad"?

  Not unless each squad member allowed to use it has gone through supervised "Learner's Permit" training that teaches how to distinguish between an outside-article-to-WP-article "normal" copyvio and a WP-article-to-outside-article "reverse" copyvio. Moreover, when Username Needed told me on 7 December that he/she had used CopyPatrol on 29 November, I was able to recognize the "reverse" copyvio because of three special circumstances: (1) The Los Angeles County consultant had (stupidly IMHO) inserted a 10 April 2013 date at the top of his copy. (2) I knew that the first 7 pages of the WP "Backup" article—highlighted by the CopyPatrol GUI—had not previously been substantially edited since 2011. (3) I was willing to spend some time on this, because it was allegedly my copyvio. Those circumstances combined to enable me to identify a "reverse" copyvio, but a member of the "WP copyvio detection squad" would be unlikely to encounter them again. So in addition at a minimum CopyPatrol needs a facility to report the File Creation Date of the outside document being compared to the WP article (whose Date Added can be approximated from View History), but I don't know enough about the details of Turnitin to know if that's feasible for a non-WP Web document.

• Once CopyPatrol is ready to be used by a re-trained "WP copyvio detection squad", should ordinary "squad" members—or anyone—be allowed to communicate with perpetrators of "reverse" copyvios (which CopyPatrol will detect a lot of)?

  Not ordinary members, because the experience reported in my 12:55, 12 December 2018 (UTC) comment shows that that communication requires a more delicate touch than I—for one—possess. IMHO an ordinary "WP copyvio detection squad" member, upon discovering an apparent "reverse" copyvio, must communicate that fact to a supervisory "squad" member having further specialized training and HR talent. However the supervisory squad member should not hesitate to communicate with the perpetrator, because AFAIK (IANAL) a years-long history of failing to pursue "reverse" copyvios may eventually result in a judicial decision that Wikipedia has lost its right to insist upon attribution. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 04:27, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm trying to make sense of the wall of text above. It looks like somebody misidentified something as a copyvio when it was in fact a reverse copyvio and fixed the mistake and apologised when this was pointed out to them. In which case there isn't much to discuss here. People are human and make mistakes from time to time, the only thing we can do in that situation is fix the mistake and apologise. Every automated copyvio detection tool is only an aid to human judgement, the results should never be used blindly (the way you're quoting Earwig confidence percentages suggests you're doing this as well). You've now graduated to making very elaborate proposals involving the creation of something called the "WP Copyvio Detection Squad", several ridiculously bureaucratic proposals which will basically ensure nobody does any copyvio detection work, and technical proposals which aren't very workable. There's no need to spend so long harping on over a simple mistake. Hut 8.5 07:57, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've watched this entire episode unfold in real time. I wasn't able to keep it from unspooling further, but I couldn't have summarized it better than that. Thanks and well done. Now perhaps we can be done with it. JohnInDC (talk) 11:46, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The text in Lighthouse Tender Joseph Henry is from Smithsonian [4]. Unless I am missing something, Smithsonian is CY-NC-SA, and I tagged the article for speedy deletion, but also writing here to double-check.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:25, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]