Talk:Nondeterministic finite automaton with ε-moves

Hard to understand for beginner
I'm going to add a header for a simple explanation because this article is very convoluted given how simple the topic really is. If this is not OK please revert my edit but I'm doing it. See "In layman's terms" --Leidegren (talk) 19:58, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Splitting Copyright violation
This article contains text which appears to be copied verbatim from other non-free sources, constituting a copyright violation. (It is outside the scope of my purposes to analyze whether those websites copied it from some earlier writing). If the plagiarized material is simply removed, the article will be unintelligible gibberish (not that the subject matter is all that easy to follow under the best of circumstances)See WP:COPYVIO. Some of the text may appear in more than one website, but as an example, http://www.cs.iit.edu/~cs561/cs521/automata/nfa.html says For example, if it is in state 1, with the next input symbol an a, it can move to state 2 without consuming any input symbols, and thus there is an ambiguity: is the system in state 1, or state 2, before consuming the letter a? Because of this ambiguity, it is more convenient to talk of the set of possible states the system may be in.

Thus, before consuming letter a, the NFA-epsilon may be in any one of the states out of the set {1,2}.

Compare to the present article: "For example, if it is in state 1, with the next input symbol an a, it can move to state 2 without consuming any input symbols, and thus there is an ambiguity: is the system in state 1, or state 2, before consuming the letter a? Because of this ambiguity, it is more convenient to talk of the set of possible states the system may be in. Thus, before consuming letter a, the NFA-epsilon may be in any one of the states out of the set {1,2}."

Edison (talk) 16:02, 29 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The book "Information Systems for Indian Languages: International " by Chandan Singh et al, 2011, page 83, also contains an identical 101 word text section beginning with "Which allows a transformation" and ending with "the set {1,2}." as in this new Wikipedia article. Again, I do not know if those authors copied it from some earlier writing, but unless it can be shown to be public domain, or unless someone can release it as copyright owner to Wikipedia with the proper licensing, it cannot be added to this article. Edison (talk) 16:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * First of all I didn't copy it from anywhere. I was only moving content from one page of wikipedia to another. Someone else must have copied. And, I understand your objection. It took me bit of time to understand the charge. Sorry for earlier half baked analysis on your talk page. I agree the paragraph in question should be removed. I will fix the page but give me about a week to do so.Ashutosh Gupta (talk) 16:55, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The enotes cite did say it came from Wikipedia, but http://www.cs.iit.edu/~cs561/cs521/automata/nfa.html claims a copyright, as does the book Information Systems for Indian Languages: International Conference, published byu Springer-Verlag. It would be helpful to cite the edit where this text was created by some Wikipedia editor and added to a Wikipedia article, before any book author or other website copied it. A Google search only shows it presently in this one article amongst all the related Wikipedia articles. Did you do a cut-and-paste move of this text from another article on Wikipedia?Such a move can violate the licensing, since now it appears as your work rather than the work of the initial author (if it was indeed someone else.) A bigger concern is that it comes from some classic textbook on the subject from years earlier, though I did not find it in older books in Google Book search.  Edison (talk) 16:59, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I moved the paragraph from nondeterministic finite automaton. According to you this is already a violation. If we are not allowed to move content then working on wikipedia will be impossible.Ashutosh Gupta (talk) 17:08, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * We need to preserve attribution when moving text. I took a look at the history of Nondeterministic finite automaton and see that the text evolved. It seems to date to May 19, 2007, in edits by User:Linas:. If the text is just removed from the other article and pasted here, it looks like your original work, and he doesn't get credit. Certainly there is a way to properly split articles (other than simple cut and paste), and it likely requires a dummy edit in both the sending and receiving articles, as well as perhaps a template on the two talk pages. I will look for the details. Edison (talk) 17:26, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It looks like Splitting is the exact guide we need to take care of licensing/attribution in this case, where a new article was created by cutting text from the old article and pasting it] in the initial version of the new article. Edison (talk) 17:49, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I have now taken care of the attribution/licensing by adding a dummy edit to the history of each article, and a template to the talk page of each article. Edison (talk) 18:28, 29 February 2012 (UTC)