User talk:VernoWhitney

Thanks for checking.

I want to get more involved in copyvio issues, but early on, like to have someone double-checking.--SPhilbrickT 17:14, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

That's fine, we can use all the help we can get. Thanks! VernoWhitney (talk) 20:37, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Another question - this one about VWbot

Ha, I had a question related to VWBot, and I was thinking of asking you. Then I realized I should find out who operates the bot, and of course it is you.

I'm looking at the Georgi Sugarev in 5 Dec Copyright problems. It is listed as a copy paste, but no source indicated. My guess is that no source means it is an internal copy of another WP page. Is that right?

I tried finding some of the text, and I can find it in User:Mkd07/Sugarev, Georgi. Looks to me like the editor created a draft in user space (as we would like), but rather than move the draft, the text was copy and pasted into the article. My understanding is that it is slightly preferable to move (to preserve history) but in the case of a single editor, it doesn't make much difference. If I'm right, we don't have a copyvio problem as a result of this copy. If the original draft was copied, obviously that's a problem, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I haven't done an exhaustive search, but I tried a few key phrases and found no matches.

That doesn't mean we have no problems. It's a bio with no references, and he doesn't obviously pass notability. What is usually done in this case? I see it is tagged for lack of references. Can we clear it from the copyright problem list, and leave the other issues to others?--SPhilbrickT 23:08, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

VWBot isn't very bright for the most part, so all "Copied and pasted." means is that someone tagged it with {{copypaste}} and neglected to indicate a source. In this case the history of the article tells us that the tagger thought it was copied from museumstuff.com which is a mirror site and so the tag was the removed. You are correct that a single author can cut/paste their own material without problems, but as soon as other authors are involved moving is greatly preferable (see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia for more gory details). As to the other problems, yes: we can just mark it as a false positive on the copyvio list and leave the rest of the cleanup to others. Obviously you can of course do more if you'd like, that's all that needs to be done with regards to the WP:CP listing. VernoWhitney (talk) 23:52, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I'll move on to some of the other copyvio problems.--SPhilbrickT 00:25, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Blanked Karim Sadjadpour

I'm sorry you found me in violation of copyright law. The problem (it seems to me) is that while Karim Sadjadpour is mentioned quite a bit on the internet, the talk shows and oped pages that note him all seem to quote the same bio information from his Carnegie web page. Hense it's hard to get away from that source.
Will this earn your consent:

--BoogaLouie (talk) 01:07, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Your rewrite looks fine, thanks! VernoWhitney (talk) 14:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi. I saw your reply on BoogaLouie's talk page. So in light of what you have said, what should be done about BoogaLouie's's POV-forks/parallel articles like this [1] and this [2] which are permanent pages, essentially used as a blog entry pushing a certain point of view, using cherry-picked copy-righted material. Shouldn't they be speedy-deleted or put up for deletion? Kurdo777 (talk) 01:48, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll continue this at their talk page where it started. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:36, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Note: I've added to this thread on BoogaLouie's talk page. Sorry this mess has come up again as I'd like to not dive in again, but I for one am opposed to blanking those pages. SnowFire (talk) 03:00, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

AN/I

Okay: say I ask a stranger on the street to take a photo of a friend (or celebrity) and me with my own camera and want to put it on my WP userpage. I couldn't use it if I reveal that I wasn't actually behind the shutter, or that I hadn't gotten that stranger to sign a copyright release? What about "timed" photographs: you know, setting a timer before jumping into the photo with other people. Who is the photographer in that case? Me if I set the camera, but not if someone else set it? Doc talk 23:17, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) That's the way US law currently works. Wacky, isn't it? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:25, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

My explanation is somewhat more detailed than MRG's, but hers is accurate. Now to answer in reverse order, timed photographs which you set up are okay because there's no creative input at all from any other person - it's all you. Similarly webcams/video camera frames/etc. Now, if anyone else takes the picture then they are the initial copyright holder unless it is a work for hire - i.e., you employ them and taking the picture is part of their normal job function. Now usually this isn't an issue because if you say "Hey, would you take a picture of me?" and they say "Sure." then we get an implied contract. This lets vacation photos and the like be generally usable under copyright law, even without relying on fair use, without any more formal agreement between you and the person using your camera. Implied contracts aren't enough for you to release it under a free license, however, because they are limited to what a person would agree to if there was an explicit contract - and we don't know that your friend would necessarily be okay with it being posted on Wikipedia and reused commercially, etc. Implied contracts are also revocable unless you provide consideration and this is incompatible with the non-revocable free licenses we use. So basically, yes - if anyone else takes a picture of you then they should be the ones uploading it to Wikipedia or emailing OTRS to confirm permission. VernoWhitney (talk) 23:34, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation! I figured the implied contract was applicable to that photo, since there's seemingly little chance there would be a copyright dispute between friends at a baseball game: but I'm no lawyer. Cheers :> Doc talk 23:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Bless you, but be careful!

Thanks, but I don't know if CM outranks you, so please be careful. He obviously outranks me. I've more to say, but I'm at a loss for words, except to say I should have figured out a way to keep his sourced edits in and remove the unsourced edits all in one shot instead of reverting and putting back in verbatim his sourced edits. That angered him, and was my fault; but I know from EJ and other webpages he came to the page with certain assumptions.Edstat (talk) 14:26, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about his status with Wikimedia UK, but as far as on Wikipedia activities he has no special rank or authority that I'm aware of. Admins are subject to the same policies and guidelines as everyone else. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:35, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Of course I don't "outrank" anyone: all editors are equal. I do know Wikipedia format, and an article should have a lead section, not start directly on biographical material. I do know what "undue" means in terms of biographies: and actually most readers do also. Shlomo Sawilowsky has suffered from poor organisation and undue detail, obscuring the reader's view of Sawilowsky's work, for far too long. There is no ratchet saying all referenced facts about someone can be accumulated in a biography, without regard to purpose.

But I'm not going to edit war there further. User:Edstat has a history of personal attacks on other editors, and it is time for a conduct RfC if this doesn't cease. The dispute resolution mechanism is there to be used in these cases, and if User:Edstat wants to be "dragged through the courts" that can be arranged. I'm an ex-Arbitrator, so in that sense can claim at least a clear view of what that involves. I do want User:Edstat to understand as clearly as I do. Basically if I start an RfC, which is quite justified, it is an invitation at the very least of an unpleasant pile-on. (If you think this is not from personal experience, you'd be wrong.)

I have proposed an alternative, namely that User:Edstat should work on educational statistics. This would seem to be win-win. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm inclined to disagree with you about undue detail in the article given the background that lead to its current massive amount of referencing, but that's a conversation better carried on at the article talk page. I think your suggestion regarding educational statistics is eminently reasonable. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:19, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Continuing the spirit of Charles's suggestion as seconded by VernoWhitney, I would like to mention that the article on education in the discipline of statistics, "Statistics education", has featured peaceful editing & a productive talk-page. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 20:54, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Bot mal-edits

Most of the recent bot action seems to be reverting edits in the name of copyright violation that has nothing to do with copyright violation. It's undoing punctuation corrections, additions of valid external links and wikilinks. Could you please go back and check the edits, rollback the mistakes and turn off the bot. Thanks Span (talk) 05:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

It's undoing every action which added greater than 100 bytes (since that is the default setting for copyvio checks at WP:CCI) which is not a likely revert by a sockpuppet of an indef-blocked known repeat copyright infringer. I will go through and check the edits as soon as possible, and your feedback is appreciated for the bot trial. VernoWhitney (talk) 05:52, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Some of the edits may have been by a copyright infringer but they also did a lot of good work. The edits to Derek Walcott, Robert Bly, Elizabeth Bishop, Major Jackson, Iris Murdoch and Thom Gunn revert just very useful additions of the Paris Review ext links, copy editing and every edit made since. Accotink2 has done a great deal of work in the last few months. Most of the reverts are taking the articles back to a distinctly shoddier state. Span (talk) 06:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I understand that, but unless some full-time volunteers start popping out of the woodwork to help with copyvio cleanup, this or something like it is the only way to get through their edits along with the growing backlog of 45 other CCI cases to be investigated in a timely fashion. As I said, I will go through and check the edits and restore those which are obviously clean. VernoWhitney (talk) 06:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, you can relax for now - I caught a bug and shut the bot down until I can fix it. VernoWhitney (talk) 06:37, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) It's a pity to lose good work, but unfortunately it is the copyright infringer who puts us in this position. As VernoWhitney notes, we have over 40 CCIs open and have not yet even been able to complete review of the work done by this blocked serial copyright infringer in his former account. Our policy on copyright violations is that "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." This is certainly not the first approach that we tend to take on Wikipedia, or we wouldn't have the backlog we do at CCI. But this is not an ordinary situation. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:50, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The bot reverted my restored-and-cleaned edits to Grace Lin just now. I am not sure I have a suggestion of how to avoid this problem, and the greater good of getting rid of accotink's potential copyvio is probably paramount. Syrthiss (talk) 13:54, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll have to look into that article further. The revision the bot reverted prior to was using Reflinks and so clearly not a copyvio issue, but since it added 300 bytes to the article it fell into the definition of major contribution and at this point the size is all VWBot's looking for. Sorry about the extra work for you. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

So can I understand that as the vast majority of what was undone had nothing to do with copyright violation, and the bot had a bug, you are happy to undo all the bot edits? Span (talk) 17:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

No, you misunderstand. The bug is that the bot was not reverting far enough, which is why it's been mostly catching small adjustments and not content additions. I am happy to undo the bot edits after they have been checked to ensure that copyvio isn't being restored. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:18, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Marie Rutkoski

Your bot seems to be functioning oddly at this article. --Dweller (talk) 13:21, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The first edit through was a bug - the bot wasn't rolling back the article as far as it should have. At this point every major edit of Accotink2's is presumed copyvio until it's been checked so I corrected the bug and it went back through for its second edit and reverted all the way back to remove all of their major edits on this article (and 79 others where the bug manifested before I shut it down last night). VernoWhitney (talk) 14:01, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

VWBot - foreign language links, cat fixes

Hi,

VWBot seems to be reverting some technical changes to articles, such as category fixes and the addition of foreign language links.[3][4].

The Elie Wiesel link is interesting because the bot was removing Ser Amantio di Nicolao's edits, but all that user did was add a category and the bot didn't even remove the category he added.

Is there any way that the bot can be set to: 1. ignore edits by users under investigation if all they did was make a technical change such as adding a cat 2. when reverting, keep such technical changes in place?

Thanks, GabrielF (talk) 14:15, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Never mind the middle part, I reread the edit summary and realized that Ser Amantio was not the user being reverted. GabrielF (talk) 14:20, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

VWBot could be coded to ignore some technical changes (adding interwikis, cats, refs, and the like); it would involve grabbing the full text for every change and some text-parsing but it could probably be done. Getting it to ignore the edits for either of those articles you mentioned is trickier though, since it was not a merely technical edit. Something like that which involves a template not inside a reference could also be a large block quote or something else which includes copied material. If there are some additions which can be safely ignored as being not copyvio beyond reasonable doubt and someone's willing to help me with some efficient regular expressions to avoid false positives and missing things, I'm certainly open to adding this to the task.

Keeping cats and interwiki links from the latest edit is also doable since they're easy to grab, but they're not always applicable to the version reverted to: see this edit, for example. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:32, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I've reversed a bot action

I've restored the version prior to [5] this bot action. I could not see any copyvio. DuncanHill (talk) 14:37, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I checked their short sentences against the source and agree that it's not copyvio. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 14:40, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I just reverted about 10 and I feel compelled to go through the bots edits because after glancing at about 20 or 30 I havent found 1 yet that was a copyvio. --Kumioko (talk) 15:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) sorry for talkpage stalking, but thats the really insidious problem with socks like accotink: it is entirely possible that many of their edits are not copyvio, but their prolific editing makes it very hard for a real life person to check them. reverting the articles back to before they were edited by accotink helps reduce the cross section of copyright vulnerability of the encyclopedia. at that point, as has happened with some of the editors on this page, the articles can be restored to full content when the copyright status was confirmed. I think this message is getting muddled by the bot acting in unforeseen ways, and by histrionics of some editors. Syrthiss (talk) 19:09, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I enjoy being stalked, and I greatly appreciate that you at least understand the situation which led to this trial. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:15, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

This is ridiculous

I am sorry, but as much as I admire how you are trying to prevent copyvio, recent edits you have been reverting from Accotink2 are clearly not copyvio. Every single one of them that I have seen so far, are clearly not copyvio!! What is more you are reverted edits by other authors! Hello! Problem please stop! The best example I have seen so far of just how bad this bot is functioning is this edit! Accotink2 didn't even contribute 8,000 bites, nor were any of the edits significant content contribution, instead most of it was formatting and references. PLEASE STOP THIS. This is very unproductive, and a little rash. Did you even check if any or many of his contribution have significant copyright violations? Doesn't look like it, not from my end at least I have had to revert at least 4-8 edits from this bot and I hardly watched pages that Accotink2 worked on! This is rediculous. Sadads (talk) 15:21, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate your concerns, and yes, there have been plenty of copyvios introduced by Pohick2 (the sockmaster for Accotink2) - who we still have an open CCI on with over a thousand other articles which need to be checked beyond the hundreds introduced since he was indef-blocked and began socking. Feel free to volunteer to work on CCIs (we have 46 open - plenty to choose from!) and other copyright cleanup and encourage others to do so and no such drastic measures would ever need to be considered. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid that part of the reason that the recent edits are unlikely copyvio is because there is a bug in the code (so I have blocked VWBot until it is fixed) and it is missing the earlier and more likely copyvio edits - see for example the history of Runcorn Priory. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:32, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I think I am hearing you say that you are reverting all articles that this person ever worked on back to a state before they touched it and that this includes any history is that correct? If thats the case then this is a really really....really bad idea. In the case of Ernest Spybuck for examples he made a number of edits earlt in the development of the article and since then there have been a lot of other improvements by other editors. I do not think it possible to remove only Accutinks edits so that means that 'all edits would be reverted essentially undoing a lot of work that has been done to this (and hundreds or thousands of other articles. I would suggest that if there have been more than say 5 edits since Accutink added data or if the data since his edits is more than say 1500 bytes, that it not be reverted as it will be more damaging to the article than needed. I also think that if the article has been through a GA or higher review or peer review since this user edited that the article be skipped because any contentious info would have been identified most likely and either removed or properly sourced. I have seen a couple cases of you bot reverting articles that have gone through one of these processes and it reverted massive amounts of information needlessly. I understand the reasoning for the bot but I doubt this is what was envisioned when it was agreed that the editors contributions be reverted. --Kumioko (talk) 15:51, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, your description of how the bot is currently working is correct. If you have suggestions for improving its function your feedback would be appreciated at WT:CCI where there's already an ongoing conversation: there has been little in the way of feedback except support for the idea since it was proposed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/CCI, so now that more editors are noticing perhaps some better ideas can be put forward. As I have mentioned repeatedly above, I will be reviewing the edits as soon as I can, and a good portion of them should have been reverted further than they actually were which means they may have missed actual copyvio since it tended to be introduced earlier with formatting fixes later which were still big enough to count as major contributions. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:03, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

(e/c)I assume it is ok to revert the bot edits if the reversions show that the removed edits to the article was not copyvio? For example these edits to Karen Blixen and Hunter S. Thompson, which only removed some minor copyediting and some source corrections. --Saddhiyama (talk) 16:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

By all means. If you check them and you're not restoring copyvio then there's no reason you can't revert the bot. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:12, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok. I have reverted the bot in those two articles. --Saddhiyama (talk) 16:15, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! VernoWhitney (talk) 16:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I just went and left a not on the Incidents page listed above. Sorry for the frsutration on this last part (I'm trying to breathe, I really am) I notice a lot of folks there were frustrated by the fact that they werent getting much help. Rather than run a bot and forceother editors to comb through the rubble maybe a better way would have been to put the conversation in a place like the Village pump that people would actually know about it rather than burying it 2 or 3 subpages deep under a page that relatively few (mostly admins and even then not all of them) even look at. It seems like a sure way to have knowone read it. --Kumioko (talk) 16:25, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for moving your comment to the active conversation. This task for a bot was discussed there while people were still riled up about the Darius Dhlomo incident so it had the opportunity for at least as much notice as the mass blanking by Uncle G's bot. I also posted to WT:COPYCLEAN and WT:CCI before filing the BRFA and renewed the discussion at WT:CCI before and after the first trial which received no complaints at all; I was by no means attempting to keep it from being read. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:53, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Point taken but I doubt that the intent was for what is currently happening and I don't think that we should be forced to manually go back and review the edits of an automated bot. That is a bad use of a bot if you ask me. May I ask how many articles were affected? Also, how far back in the history of the article did you look for the revert logic? --Kumioko (talk) 16:59, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

If the intent wasn't for what is currently happening (minus the bugs) then it was certainly not what was communicated before now. It's not a matter of being forced to manually go back and review the edits of an automated bot, it's a matter of being forced to manually go back and review the edits of a serial socking copyright infringer - the bot simply removes their material from public view until it has been reviewed. A few hundred articles have been affected - I can't say exactly because I interrupted the run, but the total will be 897 unless I adjust the diff size between now and the conclusion of the trial later today. This isn't including the 500 or so articles they created which were deleted yesterday under WP:CSD#G5, of course. The bot checks every single edit from Accotink2, the bug in the revert logic and why I blocked it until I get home to fix it is that it has only been reverting to remove their last major edit (currently defined as adding 100 bytes or more) instead of reverting to remove their first major edit. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:15, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

If they Created and article thats one thing (except if maybe it had made its way through the GA+ processes which is fairly unlikely. What I am referring too is reverting articles that clearly don't have any COPYVIO. If the edit was adding a link under external links then its extremely unlikely that theres any Copyvio. These would have been clearly noticible in any test run and could have been fairly easily adjusted for. --Kumioko (talk) 17:24, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Again, no feedback with regards to parsing all of the text means I have not incorporated that into the bot yet. The addition of just an external link would not rise to 100 bytes and would not and has not triggered any of the reversions - fully templated citations which have been added in a number of articles include a large number of characters which could also be text and so rise to the level of major contribution that has been defined so far. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:32, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• Why has Evelyn Waugh been attacked? There are no edits from Accotink2 that I can see. This must be a mistake: explain yourself, please. Brianboulton (talk) 18:43, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

A) It has not been attacked.

B) Accotink2 edited it right here.

C) I'm sorry for the false positive and appreciate your assistance in reverting the bot. Cheers. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello, VernoWhitney. You have new messages at Sadads's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I support Sadads points and suggestions above. Span (talk) 18:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Which suggestions did Sadads make besides "please stop!" ? VernoWhitney (talk) 18:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Erm ... what Sadads has written on his talk page - suggesting the use of tagging instead of instant reversions. I think it's important to differentiate between problems. This bot problem is not about Accotink2 is about an error in bot usage. It's human and understandable but needs addressing in its own right. Just blaming Accotink2 for this will not get anyone very far. Span (talk) 19:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying. Since you said "suggestions above" I presumed you meant above on this page. Do you honestly feel that tagging a page for a likely copyright problem will result in serious action being taken to uncover copyright problems beyond what already occurs by listing an article at WP:CCI? I ask because one article was similarly tagged here and nothing has been done for 2+ years. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:12, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

VWBot on T. S. Eliot

I see you've just stopped the bot, so you may have seen the problem already: a couple of edits today have misidentified quotes as copyvios. I reverted the T. S. Eliot one but the other didn't seem worth saving, so I left it. Best. --Old Moonraker (talk) 16:07, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Once a human looks at them and confirms there's no copyvio aren't copyvio there's no reason the bot can't be reverted - it was doing it's bit because there are simply too many to be handled by the regular copyright cleanup volunteers. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Harold Bloom

A pretty bad edit to Harold Bloom, too. — goethean ॐ 16:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting it then. Input about the bot is welcome at WT:CCI. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:50, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Barlow pics otrs

Hi Verno, regarding this file and this file - both allegedly from the same concert and taken with the same camera, and the OTRS, I have previous issues with some of this contributors previous claims of copyright that were incorrect. I see there is ongoing discussion? He has stopped the clock again on the first one, I saw you are involved, if you need and added detail or have an update for me that would be appreciated, thanks. Off2riorob (talk) 16:24, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

As far as those images go all I'll say regarding OTRS is that we don't have usable permission. If we don't have anything by the 16th I do intend to see them deleted, since they can always be restored later if permission comes through. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I thought that was your position, regards. Off2riorob (talk) 16:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

VW Bot

Could you please make your bot mark edits as bot edits? john k (talk) 17:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I can and will before it resumes running. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:32, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Article tagging

I don't really know what the solution is, but this edit to Ernest Hemingway seems a little over the top. Accotink2 added a perfectly valid external link to the article that I personally checked - now that talk page has a allegation of copy-vio. Seems draconian - especially since I've spent most of my wiki time in the past month rescuing articles from yet another serial plagiarizer but without tagging all her articles - simply getting on with it. Anyway, I've replied to your bot's messages. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:01, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

If there was a confirmed copyright violation removed by a human then the usual template is {{cclean}}, for presumptive removals there's {{CCI}} which is what I primarily based VWBot's message on and why it's so bulky - all those legal details. If you do have any suggestions with regards to the message in particular or the rollback in general input at WT:CCI would be greatly appreciated. Even if it takes a complete overhaul I think it would be great if this could be made to work somehow. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

How can an external link be confirmed copyvio - it's simply an external link. No more, no less. No text was added. I think the bot might need some tweaking, quite honestly & quite honestly I think you should remove the copy-vio allegation from the talkpage. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:14, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not talking about that particular situation - I'm saying that the bot left that message on every article it's reverted so far, whether there's actually copyvio or not, because per policy all of their contributions are assumed copyvio in the absence of other evidence (i.e., specific human review). The use of more advanced techniques than just size increase such as text parsing to eliminate references and external links has been discussed above and at WT:CCI. There's no allegation of copy-vio; it's a statement that a known copyright violater edited the page and so the bot did too. As far as removing the message from the talk page, I probably will (or you can), but there are hundreds of articles involved to review and I'm more concerned with the content of the articles than their talk pages at this point. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:21, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

You're not getting my point and I'm getting frustrated - in essence you've tagged the article as having copy-vio. It doesn't. I wrote it; I brought it to FAC; I tend it. I checked Accotink's edit - as I do every edit to that page - and as it happened it was a very useful edit. Yet, there's an ugly message on the talkpage letting everyone who visits know the article has copyvio. This is overkill in my mind. I've spent hours and hours on a different serial plagiarizer and haven't placed ugly tags on all the articles - I've rewritten them which takes a lot of time. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:26, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

This goes to my comments above as well. If the article has gone through GA or higher review its a pretty safe bet, although Ill grant you maybe not 100%, that the copyvio is gone if it was ever there before. --Kumioko (talk) 20:31, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

As you may or may not be aware, Truthkeeper88 has been cleaning up articles which have been peer reviewed and I pointed out another CCI of a serial infringer with peer reviewed articles in my reply at WT:CCI, so it should be pretty clear that it does not mean that copyvio doesn't enter those articles. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:34, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)As I said before, it's not a statement that the article has copyvio (if it does actually say that, I'd appreciate it if you could tell me so we can clean up the template for use at other CCIs since it's not supposed to), it's a statement that it was revised because of the possibility of copyvio. And also as I said before, if you want to remove the "ugly tag" feel free, otherwise I'm afraid the best I can tell you is that I'll remove it when I get around to it. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:32, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the logic is wrong here. Yes, Accotink was a serial plagiarizer as was SusanneNYC - but really - she had hundreds of edits to all her articles, and particularly to the articles I've scrubbed. Accotink made a single edit to Hemingway & it's tagged? The bot is too heavy handed. You're making assumptions and accusations that are wrong and upsetting people, fwiw. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:42, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Could you please point me to an actual accusation I or the bot has made in this matter? And if you have any input as to how to make the bot less heavy handed, it would be greatly appreciated if you could tell me so I could try and fix it. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The talkpage section is called "Copyright problem" - not "possible copyright problem" or "notice" or anything like that, but straight-out, in-your-face copyright problem. Okay, I'm a new reader - I read the article with the little gold star & then I have a look at the talkpage and I see in the TOC a copyright problem section. End of story, won't read anymore, as a new reader I knew not to trust wikipedia anyway, so I click out. I think this is being done in a very heavy-handed manner - cannot think of any other way to express that. Since your bot placed the message on the page, your bot should clean the message away. I came to work on the Miss Moppet page for a few moments & instead find myself in this. It's just not making sense to me. Sorry. And since your message at the top of the page tells me to be nice and I'm normally very nice, I'll leave this to others. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your specificity, I know it's hard to pinpoint the problem areas to communicate. I'll figure out a better wording than "Copyright problem" for the header, and I really will clean up the talk pages when I have time. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:01, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I have input about how to make the bot less heavy handed: don't use it. The way to check for copyviolations is to do it by hand, using human intelligence. Don't start that bot up again on presumed violations. Binksternet (talk) 21:03, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Would you like to help out and clean up some copyright violations? We have 46 CCIs open and waiting - plenty to choose from! VernoWhitney (talk) 21:07, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the point of this bot run should be as a recruiting tool for the project. In almost every comment given to you the point about being busy is brought up that we could help out rather than the bot run. Thats not how things should work. Now there is clear opposition to this all or none attitude so the bot needs to stop and stay stpped until it can be fixed to be more specific. Does that mean it has to catch every single problem, no but it shouldn't arbitrarily assume that every article is a Copyviolation, wipe out good edits and plaster comments on its talk page. I understand that the editor in question did a lot of bad edits and that was a foul thing for them to do but they also did a lot of good edits, which although it does make things more difficult, needs to be taken into consideration. --Kumioko (talk) 21:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Plus one to that. The bot must stay stopped until and unless it can be modified so that a human examines each possible change to decide whether a copyviolation is observed. Doesn't matter whether the CCI has a huge backlog. Binksternet (talk) 21:51, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

That's what I've been doing with the SusanneNYC situation. Yes, it takes time - edits need to be looked at, sources checked on g-books and library visits are necessary. The plagiarizers are indeed foul and suck up time from editors that could otherwise be put to writing article, but in my view, the only way to scrub a plagiarized piece is to follow the time consuming method and check each edit. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 21:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not being run as a recruiting tool, it's being run as a cleaning tool. You say it's not an either/or to help out or let the bot run. Sure, I never said otherwise, but if editors are going to suggest that I do more work it's certainly fair for me to ask them to as well. The bot was created and run because there was support from those who actually bothered to comment about it. Now that you've noticed it you don't like it, and that's fine. It's still in trial and not approved to be run at will, and never was intended to be. And Truthkeeper88, I appreciate your view that the only way to clean copyvio is to check every edit, but unless you're going to try and get WP:CV changed policy still allows us to assume copyvio from repeat infringers, so that's not the only way to clean, just the preferred way when it can be done. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:37, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

My point - which is getting lost - is that in the case of the Hemingway page, Accotink2 only made this edit. If a bot is to be run, then it should be written to look for multiple edits, or for edits to text only. To tag an article because a good external link has been added, and because the serial offender edited the article a single time, in my mind, is heavy handed. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:49, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your constructive feedback; it's sounding like implementing text-parsing to be able to eliminate cites and links and such is the way to proceed then. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:52, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know enough about writing a bot, but can't commands be added to exclude certain sections such as "External links" which never have text & therefore by definition, can't have copyvio? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 23:03, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

In a roundabout way, yes. It could be programmed to ignore any changes to text which meets certain patterns, such as ==External links== and anything following it (or between it and the next ==, things of that nature). It could also be programmed to ignore any changes between and including <ref></ref> and {{cite}} no matter where they occur in the article which I had put on my list of things to check for if I was going to parse text once GabrielF mentioned it to me this morning. VernoWhitney (talk) 23:14, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Can't it be configured with an interrupt which requires human approval for any changes at all? It can run through articles but if it sees something actionable, it will not perform the action unless a human okays it? That's the only way I see this bot being used for copyvio correction. Binksternet (talk) 00:17, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

That's an entirely different problem than this task. The idea here is to create a completely automated tool to remove all likely copyvio edits from a known infringer when they start socking rather than stick with their original account and make an honest effort to shape up and so their contributions can all be assumed copyvio. A semi-automated tool as you propose would also be useful, of course, and for more general CCI situations and has been suggested at User talk:Sadads. VernoWhitney (talk) 00:27, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

To put it another way, yes - and I could sit there and push 'y' a few hundred times. It would just be the same effect as this morning's run except slower unless it was designed around a different framework with a GUI mostlike to allow usable previews, and not be a bot at all. VernoWhitney (talk) 00:38, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

It does not appear that any of us are getting through to you. This morning's run was a complete disaster—you deleted the careful work of a lot of editors who came by after Accotink and you created a load of work that others felt required a major correction. Through it all, you blandly discuss how this sort of action is okay because an editor's "contributions can all be assumed copyvio." NO, they cannot be, not under any circumstances. Binksternet (talk) 00:41, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you should read the Wikipedia:Copyright violations policy. VernoWhitney (talk) 00:43, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, indeed, they can, per long established policy: "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." I'm unwell, and I've been off computer today, but I wanted to check in and so how this was going. I understand that this is disconcerting, but, please, let remember who caused this problem. It's not the people who are trying to address it. We need to work as a community to deal with problems like this. This bot was approved with the understanding that human contributors with an interest in the articles would be able to evaluate the content that has been removed and determine if there is due cause for concern. The message at the talk page invites as much. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:48, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment Moonriddengirl - I'm was disconcerted to find a copyvio notice on a page I tend. I think the message should be reworded to allow contributors to remove the message if there is no cause for concern. The message references the "major contributions". I'm sorry if my messages seem unfriendly and shrill but I feel strongly that tagging a featured article because the user in question added a single useful edit to the external links section is not necessary, which is not a "major contributions". Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:58, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it shouldn't be tagged for a single useful external link, which is why I'll start looking into some detailed text parsing before I propose any more trials. The issue with most of the complained-about edits today comes down with what is a "major contribution", and in the absence of any substantial feedback before now the bot was simply set for the default used to list an edit for review at CCI, which is adding at least 100 bytes of content. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:06, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and if you have some wording you think should be improved, please go ahead and improve them at User:VernoWhitney/Sandbox2. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The guideline states "that all of their major contributions" should be considered copyvio, but what we saw the bot do was revert minor contributions, helpful ones. Only human judgment can determine what is major and minor. This should not be an automatic bot. Binksternet (talk) 01:29, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

And here is another where Accotink only added references. I'm struggling to think as to how that could possibly be considered either a major contribution or a possible copyvio. I think the parameters on what could be a copyvio need more work.The-Pope (talk) 06:14, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

As I've said, since there was very limited specific feedback before this trial, I had simple parameters set up to define "major contribution". If you have specific criteria you'd like to suggest for what qualifies as a major edit, it would be greatly appreciated if you could provide explicit suggestions of what does/doesn't constitute a major edit here or at WT:CCI so that the task can be improved. VernoWhitney (talk) 11:57, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I came here because I saw this quite destructive edit by VWBot on my watchlist. It would have taken about three seconds of human review to see that this edit was not a copyvio - far less time than what other editors have presumably spent on the corrections and improvements that were undone by VWBot, not to speak of those like me seeing and trying to make sense of VWBot's edit and the bold claim that it made in the talk page headline. And looking at other edits just from yesterday, several other users who have not spoken up here have been busy reverting VWBot (e.g. Spanglej, DuncanHill, Xanthoxyl).

I do appreciate the work of the copyright cleanup project (I have worked to remove many copyvios myself). But there has to be some proportion between the amount of work that a bot edit creates for the bot operator and the amount of work it creates for the rest of the community. I think it is entirely reasonable to suggest including a three second human review of the possibly infringing edit in the process.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 12:31, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate you spending three seconds to confirm that it wasn't a copyvio and revert it. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:36, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

When you get a chance & have a moment, can you remove this thread from Talk:Ernest Hemingway. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 13:12, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Again, feel free to remove it yourself or I'll remove it once I finish reviewing VWBot's contribs for article content, since I feel that's more important. I'm afraid my answer's not going to change no matter how many times you ask. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:39, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I think it should be removed from the talkpage by the person/bot that placed it there. I wouldn't want to be accused of ignoring potential copyvio problems on the page, or removing copyvio notifications. But, as I said, when you get a chance & have a moment. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:18, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done since I'm away from my computer I've been using to check article content. If you'd like to add some language indicating that the talk page notice can be removed by any editor if it's confirmed to be clean, feel free to bring it up for {{CCI}} or at User:VernoWhitney/Sandbox2. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:50, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you - I appreciate it. As soon as I have the opportunity to get caught up, I'll look at the relevant discussions. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:29, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

No, it took considerably more than three seconds to understand what the bot's edit was about, read through the explanation on the talk page, find the offending edit (from a month ago) in the version history, and revert the bot's edit in the article and the talk page. All this would have been unnecessary if the three-second review would already have been done during the bot's run. Anyway, I didn't question your good intentions and I appreciate that you are now helping out yourself with cleaning up after the bot.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 13:54, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I came across as snippy earlier; I think your comment hit a nerve because it would've taken rather more than three seconds for me to check it before the edit too since it was never intended to be a semi-automated tool, it was programmed based on the feedback I had previously received which supported full automation and it doesn't pull the actual content (see earlier in this thread). I do honestly appreciate that you took the time to check their contribution and make sure it was clean and I will continue checking after the bot when I have time. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:39, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

So do I understand that you will check and amend 900 changed articles one by one when you have time? Span (talk) 16:27, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I will continue to check the articles which have been edited. There are not 900 of them. I will "amend" those which have not already been reverted where the introduced content is clearly not copyvio. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:50, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Not 900? I'm seeing nearly three full pages of bad edits in "view 500" mode beginning with this unneeded change to Rafael Ferrer (artist) at 05:15 on 10 December 10 going at the rate of about six edits a minute until this unneeded change to Talk:Shelby Foote at 06:33, 78 minutes later. Following this, you ran the bot again, starting once more at the same Rafael Ferrer (artist) article, reverting to an even earlier state this time, the bot running from 12:45 to 15:20, 155 minutes later. I estimate almost 1400 bad bot edits were carried out in the 233 minutes it was running. Binksternet (talk) 17:44, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

At the risk of stating the obvious: Edits are not articles. Talk pages are not articles. If you've had the time to review every single edit and confirm that they were all bad, do please let me know. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:48, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

You want somebody else to review all of your bot's edits? The 75 or so articles I've examined had no copyvio. Binksternet (talk) 18:02, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I was simply wondering whether I should continue reviewing them or not. As you have not examined all of them I shall continue. Cheers. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:04, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I've also reviewed around 300 and there is no end in sight. Yes, please keep reviewing. The longer it's left, the more edits since the bot reversion. Span (talk) 08:57, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Have you considered that you're not seeing copyright problems because you're skimming over them too quickly? VernoWhitney (talk) 14:00, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Patrick Ward

The bot's changes to Patrick Ward did nothing but remove external references: the only edits Accotink2 had made to the article. I've restored the pre-bot version of the page and subsequently made several more edits to generally tidy it up, plus to add several more references. Format (talk) 21:37, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:53, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Allen Ginsberg

There was a problem here, too. Make the bad bot go away! Rumiton (talk) 13:33, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your constructive feedback. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:40, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Recommendation to change slightly the policy regarding the edits made by known copyright violators

Due to the ongoing discussions here regarding the current policy of dealing with copyright violators I started a siscussion at the Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) here to modify slightly the wording of the current policy. --Kumioko (talk) 15:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the notice. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:18, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thx for lightning response

... on User talk:Moonriddengirl/Archive 30#The Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory. --Thomasmeeks (talk) 16:47, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:51, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

old copyright cases

Can't you please just check out one edit per case in turn, once per day with the old cases? That would take like only a few seconds and won't hold anything up, and since you'll be taking turns with everyone's cases each day it would be fair. It would be great if that were an established policy. if every single trustworthy editor/admin on wiki just took a few seconds off to look at a single edit in a copyright case, most of them would have been closed by now.Дунгане (talk) 12:23, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to make an effort to put work into your CCI on a regular basis; one of the caveats of working with all volunteers is that we can't make anyone do work they don't want to, and copyright isn't very exciting for most people. Thanks for your patience and for putting in explanations of your edits on your own page, it's much appreciated. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:07, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

'Sup with CP?

Zorglbot seems to be gone. Any chance you can get your bot to do the new listings, too? We've got none showing. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:34, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

VWBot already does that backup job, and while Zorglbot was down late last week it recovered last night. What you're (not) seeing is the result of the page simply being too big, or rather it's transclusions are too big. This has come up more than once before (I think you were on vacation the last time it happened) although I can't seem to find the archived conversations just at the moment. If you go to edit CP and then just show a preview of it you get a nice red message at the top of the preview saying "Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included." There's a Wikipedia-wide software limit of 200KB of transclusions per page as I recall, which means when the daily page listings get too big and/or there's too much of a backlog Wikipedia:Copyright problems/NewListings won't get transcluded, it just shows a link to it instead. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:44, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, okay! I thought that VWbot did back up on that, but when it wasn't there, I presumed I was mistaken. I'm trying to knock out some of the backlog; maybe that will bring it back. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:49, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

DMCq

DMCq was already forewarned as you can see here: Pls see below taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Global_warming_controversy#Tinkering_with_scientific_data_is_dangerous

The IPCC isn't suing anybody. It isn't even blaming anybody. Dmcq (talk) 21:35, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm...I see no proposal here for improving this article. Please keep in mind what talk pages are for: "to discuss changes to its associated article or project page. Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject."

Thanks.CurtisSwain (talk) 21:57, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
but still continuous here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Global_warming_controversy#Climate_Change_leads_the_era_in_the_acceptance_of_unscientific_data_by_so_many. He is like a small kid who wants to "beat around the bush"20:00, 13 December 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.31.108.46 (talk)

Re: Chuck Jordan

I blanked this article as copyvio since GFDL has not been a compatible license for importing text since 1 November 2008. You can read the gory details atWikipedia:Licensing update if you'd like. The article will remain blanked for at least a week, after which time will be deleted unless it is rewritten on the temp page linked to by the blanking template. If you've imported any other articles from wikicars it would be greatly appreciated if you could rewrite them and/or let me know about them so we can get them cleaned up since we can't use their content. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:46, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello, I was unaware of the incompatibility between licenses. To clarify, I have not imported anything else from Wikicars. Traditionally I wouldn't import anything from anywhere, EXCEPT I do think this guy deserves a Wikipedia article and I don't have much time to write a full article. I suppose I should have written a stub and let it grow. Alternately, it may be nice to have a GM Designers page to give an overall overview of various chief designers for GM, because while current designer Ed Welborn is notable, as is Harley Earl, there were a couple guys in the list who are not. -- Guroadrunner (talk) 05:37, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, it's easy to miss that different free licenses don't always play well together, so no worries there. If you would like to write up a quick stub for him feel free to use the temp page provided and I can go ahead and move it over the blanked article, so there will at least be something for others to build on. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 14:02, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Copyright Violation

I need your comment/explanation here and here.Shankar2001 (talk) 01:54, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

User:Managerved

User:Managerved has created a number of promotional articles all of which have been deleted, to support these article and related images File:MC-left profile.jpg File:MC on Taxiway.jpg File:MC aircraft.jpg the user keeps quoting OTRS ticket 2010121310004144 I tagged one of these and another image File:Mc view.jpg as no evidence of permission as the name Patrick Holland-Moritz appears in the meta data before I noticed the OTRS info on a deleted version of that images. Interested to know as far as you are allowed if this ticket is relevant and should be tagged with the correct OTRS tag. As an aside the user has a clear WP:COI problem but any help appreciated, thanks. MilborneOne (talk) 22:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

It looks like that ticket covers http://www.flightdesign.com/index.php?page=product&p=18 and http://www.flightdesign.com/index.php?page=product&p=35. None of those images appear to be included on those webpages, so we would need more communications to use them. The OTRS permission obviously also has no effect on COI/spam issues. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:32, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that appreciated. MilborneOne (talk) 22:35, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome. I did just notice that File:MC-left profile.jpg doesn't mention Patrick Holland-Moritz in the Exif data, so it's not actually a "no permission" candidate, although if they don't provide permission for the others it probably belongs at PUF. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:38, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks didnt notice that. MilborneOne (talk) 22:42, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

playing the telephone game with copyvio edits

suppose i get a user to rewrite copyvio edits, and then another user to rewrite his version, and so on, like in the Telephone game where a message gets passed between people until it barely remotely resembles the original message, or if i just rewrite the copyvio versions myself, what is the policy on that? Right now, I'm not interested in adding new content, I can spend more time doing rewrites.Дунгане (talk) 03:05, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure I understand your question, so I apologize if I'm answering the wrong thing. The thing to be careful with when it comes to rewrites is creating derivative works, if you just go through and change a word here and remove a word there then it would still be a copyright problem. WP:PARAPHRASE gives some good examples of problems like that. Now in practice if an article goes through enough iterations (different people in the telephone game) that there's little-to-no resemblance to the original source then there's no copyvio problem. Of course, you could rewrite content by yourself and that would be fine too, again so long as there's no resemblance to the source. Since close paraphrasing can be pretty subtle, it may take feedback from others to make sure it's all clean. VernoWhitney (talk) 03:22, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, VernoWhitney. You have new messages at Kudpung's talk page.
Message added 05:15, 16 December 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

FYI :) Kudpung (talk) 05:15, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. Their article looks clean enough copyright-wise so I don't believe I have anything to add. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:34, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi!

Hi. Thanks for your review. I'll rewrite the John Creaney and Cyril Axelrod articles. I just wanted to make sure the actions of the banned sock (User:Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) were properly reviewed. Yours, Rms125a@hotmail.com (talk) 17:22, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate you going through and marking their edits - I probably would've missed that they needed a second set of eyes otherwise. If you'd like I can restore those articles and just blank them so you have all the formatting and references to work with on a temp page. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:25, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Reginald de Braose

You blanked this page for a copyright issue. Surely it would be more helpful if you pointed out the issue on the talk page and allowed it to be resolved, rather than losing the whole page. Your action appears to be disruptive rather than contributing to a resolution. Doug (at Wiki) 23:17, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

My action was in the interest of confirming that copyrighted material which has been copied onto Wikipedia is either freely licensed or removed from Wikipedia promptly. VernoWhitney (talk) 23:22, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the suggestion on which page to reference regarding donating material. I saw someone else refer to the OTRS page, and used it without reading it carefully, so missed that it was directed at the wrong audience. I'll try to use your suggestion next time. --SPhilbrickT 19:29, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, unless you spend time reading through all of the different pages it's not obvious which one's useful when. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 20:43, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Confirmation OTRS template

You added this template recently to some of the talk pages of articles I have edited concerning the Braose family. Is it permissible for me to add the same template myself to talk pages for articles where the same appearance of copyvio might occur when I edit in future? It would save unnecessary admin work. (I'm sure you have realised that I am both Dougatwiki and the author of the Braose website.) -- Doug (at Wiki) 20:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Generally only OTRS members should add those templates, but I know there have been similar situations in the past so let me ask Moonriddengirl (who's been doing OTRS work for a while longer) about the best way to handle it. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:40, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I may be the only person who does it this way, but I've never had any complaints. :) Here's what I do: User:1rapunzle, User:Flamedeluge, User:Kelsievans, User:Brandopedia. If you like this approach, it should be easy enough to tailor the notice at the userpage to indicate that anyone may import content from that site. Since the template is placed on the userpage (a user subpage would probably also do) by an OTRS agent and since the notice placed on the talk pages refers to it, there should be no problem. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Too complex. I just thought I could save the fuss. It's not usually been me who does the copying! But since I have licensed it I thought it would be good to let those who patrol for copyvio know that it's already been sorted. There is nothing on the template documentation to say that its use is restricted. Perhaps I'll just see how it goes. Doug (at Wiki) 23:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Well I went through all of the Braose articles I could find today and tagged those which had at one point been copied or closely paraphrased from your site. Many of the others started using information from there but didn't actually copy the prose. I may have missed some of course, but I think all of the clearer cases so far are covered. If any information is copied over in the future any OTRS agent can double-check that ticket # and add the tag. Alternatively, if you don't mind widely advertising the fact that the site is freely licensed you could add a notice to the bottom of the pages, similar to the Wikipedia disclaimer, and then even if/when it's copied here by others it would be pretty quick for any editor to notice that it's not a violation (assuming they attribute you of course). VernoWhitney (talk) 23:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure it's too complex? :) The template in your userspace would be generated by one of us. All you would have to do is paste something similar to the instructions at User:Kelsievans, where the user simply has to place on the talk pages of articles {{Permission OTRS|2009042710062083}}Licensing under GFDL and CC-BY-SA. See [[User:Kelsievans]] for more information. --~~~~ (Although now that I've more experience under my belt, I know that we should include the name of the website too!)It's not any more complex on your end than the usual OTRS template is. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:22, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

User:VWBot/Trial

I find it disturbing that the page User:VWBot/Trial lists User:Boleyn as a "problem editor". The tags were either false positives (no resemblance to the external site) or public domain text from the old DNB. You need to be very careful before labelling an editor as a problem based only on an error-prone bot. DuncanHill (talk) 13:57, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I find it disturbing that you feel the need to edit a page which is only being used for bot trials which may never turn into actual tasks and then quote me as saying something I haven't said. I also hope you noticed that some of the articles were created in violation of Wikipedia:Plagiarism and Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I must have missed the notice forbidding other editors from editing the page. I don't think the plagiarism is a flyer - Boleyn does attribute to DNB, just a)not always with a template, and b) not always in the milliseconds the bots allow. I don't think paraphrasing "worrisome editor" as "problem editor" amounts to "quoting you as saying something you haven't" - especially as I didn't actually quote you. DuncanHill (talk) 15:32, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I never said you couldn't edit it, it's just telling that you feel the need to. Re: plagiarism, see below. Perhaps you should avoid using quotation marks if you are not actually quoting, just a thought. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:13, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I felt the need to because of the number of incorrect taggings by the bot. Of course, you may have reasons of your own for objecting to people pointing out incorrect taggings. DuncanHill (talk) 16:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I know there are false positives: many (most? I haven't counted) of the editors whose articles are repeatedly tagged and show up there are because they copy lengthy list of works or PD sources without templates or article splits (since the bots are limited in what they understand); the reason I have my bot generating that list is because it's a problem when editors show up who aren't doing those things and have articles repeatedly tagged (and easy to forget earlier taggings if they're months apart or were handled at SCV by a different volunteer). I can remove "worrisome" from the edit summary if that's the part that's bothering you. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:25, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

That would be a start, as would an explanation of what the page is for and who is allowed to edit it. DuncanHill (talk) 16:27, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done VernoWhitney (talk) 16:58, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Edit summary

RE: [6], the material was already correctly attributed, so no plagiarism. Please be more careful in your edit summaries. DuncanHill (talk) 15:37, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The information was cited as coming from that source, it did not indicate that prose was copied from that source. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:08, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Quick question

Hello! So you may remember that I'm helping out with WP:Suspected copyright violations. So when I tag an article for speedy deletion, and it gets deleted, do I just keep the tag that says "copyright concerns remain"? Thanks! Endofskull (talk) 18:41, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi! You can just leave the note when the article's deleted (that's what I do), but it wouldn't hurt anything to remove them if you wanted to. VernoWhitney (talk) 00:58, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

how does the bot operate

Does corensearchbot actively do searches on the internet to tag for copyvio? Is it possible to have the bot search in google books and google scholar, first by copying and pasting contributions and then searching them in the goolgle books. Some people who are not aware of copyvio also provide citations to the specific book they are using, it can easily be searched on google books up to the page they are violating content from. i notice Corensearchbot or whatever his name was focuses mainly on websites which are mostly text, google books realies on some kind of image file to display text, is google books included in Corensearchbot's field? Many books are readily availible on gbooks, even if the user didn't use gbooks the book can still be found there, and it could be useful for determining copyvio.Дунгане (talk) 21:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

CorenSearchBot searches on internet for new pages that are created. I'm afraid there isn't a straightforward way for it to search in Google Books/Scholar because their terms of service preclude automated searching, so CorenSearchBot uses Yahoo as its search engine. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:33, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

why was my work on the "Captivity" section thrown out?

Sir or Madam, on 10 December 2010 you removed all the information I recently added to the "Captivity" section of Lafayette's biography, work that was based on years of research in the primary sources and published this past summer by an academic press as _Lafayette: Prisoner of State_ (U of South Carolina Press, 2010). Your reversion to the previous, simpler and inaccurate draft even erased reference to the book in the notes and bibliography. As I understand it, you gave as your reason a "copyright violation." There was no copyright violation. I summarized the new information, briefly, and did not quote any passage of the book directly. This is the first time I have ever contributed to a Wikipedia article. Could you please explain why you think there was a copyright violation and, if you are satisfied with my explanation that the information I supplied did not commit any violation, return my work to the "Lafayette" article? I look forward to hearing from you or seeing my information re-inserted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.106.128.248 (talk) 03:57, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Assuming that you are talking about Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, there wasn't an issue with your edit - the article had been edited before you by a known repeat copyright infringer who was recently discovered evading their block. Because of this many of the articles they edited were reverted by a computer program to versions from earlier this year, prior to their first major edit, in order to remove any possible copyright violations from view before a human editor could follow up and check them each individually. I have checked their contributions to the article and as they appear to include no copyright violations I have restored all of the material, including your additions. I apologize for the inconvenience. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:41, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

ANI

Hi. This is a courtesy notice; your bot and your reaction to the recent reversions it performed have been brought up in another matter at ANI, here. I have to admit that I hesitated over mentioning it, because I think that it's a distraction from the issue at hand, but, off-topic or not, it's there. You are now non-trivially referenced, and I think the spirit of notification requires that you be alerted. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Apparently Kumioko forgot to notify me that he had decided to vent on yet another forum instead of actually talking to me or staying on-topic. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

A bot suggestion

I know that I have been critical of your bot for reverting so many articles unnecessarily but I have an idea for a bot that I think will help us editors and the CCI team. I noticed that the CCI rarely infoes the contributors or the WikiProjects that the articles fall under and I thought that a good idea for a bot might be to watch for {{Cv-unsure}} and potentially others and if it sees it, add a message to the contributors on the article history (at least the first and major contributors) and the WikiProject(s) its associated too. For example, in the case of Arkansas Post Office Murals it appears that the above template was recently added but Iser:Eagles 24/7 manually added a notification to the talk page oif the initial contributor (in many cases no notification is given at all). In this case I just added banners for WPUS and WPArkansas but in my opinion the projects should get notified of this as well. For the projects I would suggest something like how alertbot does it that the projects could link too (see the announcements section here. --Kumioko (talk) 19:50, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea, I think it breaks down into multiple tasks though and there are some complications - and I'll be addressing this in no particular order, so I'll apologize in advance for that.

First, WP:CCI isn't the same as regular text copyvio examinations (like Arkansas Post Office Murals) which go through WP:CP. With CCI the contributors are advised with {{CCI-notice}} or similar and if they read through the instructions linked to it tells them to watchlist the pages if they want to see what actions are being taken. The notice could probably explicitly state that point, but leaving dozens (or hundreds) of notices on sometimes (often?) good-faith editors talkpages seems excessive, which is why the default is to not notify them unless they ask. That's certainly something that could be altered though to an opt-out system instead of opt-in. CCI also does generally notify projects when a new CCI is opened which clearly affects them, but that's subjective since it's pretty much whichever WikiProjects are obvious to the person opening the CCI based on a skim of the contributor's focus(es).

Now ignoring CCI and talking about copyvio in general there's an issue that there are multiple different copyvio templates: in rough order of severity {{db-copyvio}}, {{subst:copyvio}}, {{copypaste}}, {{close paraphrase}}, and {{cv-unsure}}. Only the first two prompt for notification of the contributor (and copyvio tagged listings are routinely relisted when the contributor isn't notified). Perhaps copypaste just needs to provide a similar notice to add or even be phased out and replaced with copyvio?

The notifications should really be going (at least) to the editor who actually added the possibly problematic material, and I've proposed this as a task before, but I couldn't get it accurate enough to get the message to the right person (and I think you'd agree that telling the wrong person they might've added a copyvio is even worse than leaving a message on an article's talk page where there's no copyvio) so I've withdrawn that BRFA until I spend the time to improve the algorithm which I haven't yet. Notifying the article creator is certainly possible, as well as major contributors in terms of # edits to the article (maybe there's another relatively easy way to calculate major contributors, but size of content additions isn't the way to do it as you pointed out regarding my last trial).

ArticleAlertBot used to list those blanked with {{subst:copyvio}} for WikiProjects; the replacement doesn't yet although that does seem like something it should already be able to handle fairly well and User:AAlertBot should probably be modified instead of putting another bot on it, and it should be able to handle the other copyvio templates too.

Thoughts? VernoWhitney (talk) 20:28, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick and thourough reply. I'm still learning all this CCI stuff and trying to get smarter in an area that still seems to operate in the shadows (no offense intended).

The problem with the CCI notification is that in most cases they don't know until the article either gets deleted or it pops up on a watchlist. I agree that it might be excessive and in some cases unncessary but I think at the very least there should be a message to the originator or maybe to folks that have it on their watchlist. Maybe even something generic like: "Article X is being discussed here regarding CCI". Not sure what it should say but it seems like at the very least the originator needs to know.

I also don't agree that the editor only needs to be notified in certain cases. If its important enought to warrant a CCI tag and review by a CCI member then the contributor shoudl know. I am guessing that most cases are honest mistakes and not intentional Copyvio. Honestly not sure though. Regarding Copy paste, is it always a copyvio if its cut & paste. Its bad writing for sure but not necessarily copyvio. For example information contained on the Army Center for Military History or DANFS is freely copyable and therefore not a copyvio, just bad writing.

I think rather than tell the editor they added it we could say something like an article you edited or created was found to contains Copyvio, please review it to ensure it meets WP policy or it could be deleted or reverted. If we don't point them out and poke them in the chest I think it will be better received.

In regards to your bot run, your right, I railed pretty hard but I think the bot task is still doable but needs some refinement. I think the problem was you were trying to undo every edit in the assumption that they were all bad. You were painting the picture with to wide of a brush in the hopes of cleansing every problem. I think if you just refine the logic as I suggested before and target the things that absolutely are problems (and Corenbot isn't a 100% either but I don't think thats yours) you will still capture a lot of the actuall Copyvio issues without all the drama. Is it going to fix every problem, nope, but it will cull down the list and allow the subjective ones to be addressed as needed.

I think thats a good Idea about Alertbot, Wolterbot might be another one that would be useful to this. Do you want to suggest that be added to the list of things they support or do you want me to do that? --Kumioko (talk) 22:00, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I think you are confusing the various copyright cleanup projects and processes. WP:CCI does not at all operate in the shadows; it is not a project, but a process board for administrator attention, just like WP:SPI or WP:3RR. The only difference between them and CCI is that while administrators assess and address all listing at those boards, any contributor without a history of copyright infringement is welcome to participate in cleanup of a CCI after an administrator or CCI clerk has opened the investigation. Contributors are notified when a CCI is requested on them, unless they are already blocked for copyright infringement. If they have not been notified of the request, and sometimes even if they have, they are notified when it is opened. (Cf. [7]) Projects are notified when a CCI is opened if a contributor has significant articles of concern to them. (cf. [8]; [9]). This process board is distinct from WP:CP; it has different procedures that are generated to deal with its specific demands. These are typically high volume cases where the contributor has been confirmed to have violated copyright on a significant number of occasions. No contributor undergoing a CCI should be unaware of it, unless he is banned or has retired before notification was supplied. Some CCI subjects have contributed hundreds of articles or images, a significant percentage of which do contain problems. It is the equivalent of a mass deletion request on Commons--but instead of flushing all, like Commons does, we do evaluate content to make sure it remains clear...except in very rare circumstances, such as that surrounding User:Pohick2, an indefinitely blocked serial copyright infringer (his indef block was reviewed at ANI) who came back to do it some more. This has been applied, so far as I recall, three times in the dozens of CCIs on record, policy allowance notwithstanding.

Articles tagged for WP:CP, on the other hand, may be contributed by somebody with one or a few problematic articles. Unless the article qualifies for speedy deletion under criterion G12, these articles are not supposed to be deleted unless the contributor has been notified. Even when an article is G12ed, the contributor is supposed to be notified.

If you want to know more about the various processes and boards for addressing copyright concerns, there is a somewhat outdated overview at Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/How to clean copyright infringements. WP:COPYCLEAN, which is a project, is not very active. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:24, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you proposing that whenever a new CCI is opened the creator/major contributors for every article receive a notification? Off-hand I'd guess that a couple thousand new articles are added to the CCI lists every month which would mean a lot of notifications going out.

Regarding copypaste, there's a recently added option in the tag for copypaste from PD material, but I think it's only present in 2 transclusions, so in practice it's effectively just a copyvio tag. Other cleanup tags are generally more appropriate for archaic/awkward wording where there aren't copyright issues.

Part of the notice which {{copyvio}} prompts you to leave includes the warning that persistant copyright violaters can be blocked, and that's something that needs to be said so we don't block without warning. The notice should only be given when there's a legitimate concern of copyright violation, just like any warning template. Obviously if we're leaving messages for article creators/editors who didn't add the material we don't want to imply anything like that so we would need a different message along the lines that you proposed.

Regarding my bot, I will be incorporating some ideas to try and narrow its focus to ignore those less likely to be copyvio (such as references, infoboxes, and other things you and others mentioned) and narrow it to prose contributions.

AAlertBot's still in trial and last I checked the developers are asking not to be bothered about new features (or old features which haven't been reimplemented) just yet since they're still tweaking it as they go. I'm not as familiar with Wolterbot, but I thought it only ran on database dumps every few months which doesn't really help when articles are cleaned or deleted in about a week. Once AAlertBot is approved/taking feature requests I'm perfectly willing to ask them to list copyvio-tagged articles. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:52, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Good question

Usually, a big, unwikied article under an implausible title tends to raise red flags to me. If you think it isn't a copyvio, I can put it back. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 21:02, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I tend to have the same suspicions, but we just got an OTRS ticket asserting permission and I wanted to see if it matched up with the source. If we have no identified source then we can just take their OTRS declaration on good faith and I'll go ahead and restore the article unless further evidence arises. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Fredler Brave

Every single report I've filed and confirmed on this user have all been Miami Heat related content.. So just going by his track record, I wholeheartedly believe that it's a copyright violation. -- ĴoeĴohnson|2 21:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for getting back to me. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:39, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Jacques Bourboulon

I have seen that you have restored that article. Could it be possible to restore the Discussion page which has been deleted as well. Thanks and nice vacations. Hektor (talk) 19:15, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done I hadn't even thought of that, so thanks for the reminder. The text is still just in history so you'll have to unarchive the conversations by hand if you want them, but they're there. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:20, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks! I'm sorry I lost track of it and didn't help out more. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:20, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Curved Bow et al.

I hereby affirm that Michael Bach the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive copyright of http://www.otherminds.org/shtml/Bach.shtml

I agree to publish that work under the free license "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0" (unported) and GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).

I acknowledge that by doing so I grant anyone the right to use the work in a commercial product or otherwise, and to modify it according to their needs, provided that they abide by the terms of the license and any other applicable laws.

I am aware that I always retain copyright of my work, and retain the right to be attributed in accordance with the license chosen. Modifications others make to the work will not be attributed to me.

I acknowledge that I cannot withdraw this agreement, and that the content may or may not be kept permanently on a Wikimedia project.

Michael Bach Dec. 22, 2010 <email redacted for privacy> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pierre201012 (talk • contribs) 15:08, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid that since we have no way of verifying your identity via your Wikipedia account you need to send this release to permissions-enwikimedia.org. Your patience is appreciated. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:13, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

OK

It is already sent by Michael Bach.

Pierre