Talk:Ida Mett

Notes on Heath 2006
Following on from my discovery while researching Olha Taratuta that Nick Heath had pulled directly from Esperanto Wikipedia, I figured it would be worth looking into possibilities of citogenesis in other articles that I had cited him in. In this case it's trickier, as Heath has not only written a biography on Mett for Libcom.org but also wrote a biography for the 2017 edition of her book on the Kronstadt rebellion. For now, I'm going to be assuming good faith on the book version and focusing on the Libcom article. For this one, Heath doesn't cite any of his sources, so it's harder to gauge where he's pulling the information from. Boulouque 2001 had already released a biography on Mett in French and there is indeed a certain amount of overlap between them.

I then looked to other Wikipedias for their articles on Mett. The only one that was published before Heath's libcom article was the French Wikipedia article, so I looked at the latest iteration before Heath published his article. (Like the Esperanto article on Taratuta, this version also doesn't cite its sources) Here it was a bit more clear-cut, as the entire paragraph on Mett between 1940 and 1946 appears to copy a paragraph from the French Wikipedia article almost word-for-word. The only difference being what I assume was a mistake, changing "May" to "June". In contrast, Boulouque's paragraph on the same period doesn't include exact dates, doesn't mention them being transferred to Marseilles and doesn't mention them attempting to flee to the United States. All of these details are in the French Wikipedia article and in none other source than Heath 2006. (Heath doesn't even say any of this in his 2017 biography in the preface of Mett's book)

I noticed that parts of Heath 2006's first, second, fourth and eighth paragraphs appeared to be very closely paraphrased from the French Wikipedia article, but these sections were verifiably mentioned in other sources (like Boulouque 2001). The only clear-cut case of citogenesis I could find in this case was the detail about them moving to Le Pré-Saint-Gervais. There were some details that I only found in Heath 2006, not even in the French Wikipedia, but I can't know where he got them from because he didn't cite sources. In this case, although there wasn't quite so much obvious citogenesis, I think its apparent paraphrasing of French Wikipedia and lack of citations would make it best practice to remove it and information cited solely to it. I'll check Heath's 2017 biography later, but I'll assume good faith for now. If anyone takes issue with this removal, feel free to bring it up here. --Grnrchst (talk) 12:07, 1 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Just went through Heath 2017 alongside the French Wikipedia and, unlike his 2006 blog post, I haven't found any clear-cut cases of close paraphrasing or plagiarism here. The only thing that appears to be closely paraphrased is the description of Smarhon as a "predominantly Jewish, small industrial town". But as Smarhon was indeed a small industrial town with a mainly Jewish population, I can let this slide. -- Grnrchst (talk) 12:27, 1 June 2023 (UTC)