Talk:Thomas A. DeFanti

Dewikification undone
I just undid the de-wikification of the article, see here by the new user:Tiffanyfox. The article has been carefully constructed according to wikipedia standards, and there seems little need to remove this all. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 01:03, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Reverted to older version.
Material added after this point in the history contains egregious copyright violations. In addition, it contained insufficient sources to establish notability. Bacrito (talk) 00:15, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Worksection removed
Due to possible violation of copyright, see WP:Copyvio, I have removed the worksection of this article for now. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 09:19, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Reverted to older version.
Material added after this point in the history contains egregious copyright violations. In addition, it contained insufficient sources to establish notability. Keep it up man.

You just repeated the theft of material from http://www.cs.uic.edu/~tom/ Bacrito (talk) 09:46, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Second opinion

 * The following two talkitems are copy/pasted here from the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup, see here

I like to ask for a second opinion about possible copy vio's detected in the articles Thomas A. DeFanti, Werner Ulrich and G. A. Swanson. I have the impression that the current detection, not by me, is over the top. It is my understanding that things like the biography section and the listing of publications for example can't be considered a copyvio according to WP:Plagiarism because both are sort just neutral representation of facts. I used this assumption to selected possible copyvio's in my other work.

But if I am mistaken here, I have a lot more work to be done. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 00:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * First, WP:Plagiarism has nothing to do with WP:Copyrights and should not be read as giving any indication of what you may or may not use under the copyrights policy. Plagiarism and its handling on Wikipedia are matters of consensus. Copyright is a matter of US law, and the policy is devised to help keep us compliant with it.


 * That said, a list of publications is not a copyvio if you are not reflecting human creativity. You can reproduce a complete list of publications. You can reproduce a list of publications between year x and year y. You can produce a limited list of your own devise, but you cannot reproduce a limited list if it reflects creativity on the part of the original compiler: say, "the best of."


 * I'm afraid that material doesn't get clearance just because it's listed in a biography section. While a sentence like "Thomas DeFanti was born in Kentucky" would be a bare presentation of facts, text like "In the 20 years has been at University of Illinois at Chicago, DeFanti has amassed a number of credits, including: use of EVL hardware and software for the computer animation produced for the Star Wars movie", at, is certainly copyrightable, and I'm afraid that your "In the next 20 years at the University, DeFanti has amassed a number of credits, including: use of EVL hardware and software for the computer animation produced for the Star Wars movie" infringes on that. Complicating matters further, copyright covers not only the language used, but less tangible elements such as selection of facts. Close paraphrasing may clarify that. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:06, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok, thanks. Your are right about that Thomas A. DeFanti example. One way or an other last the July 7, 2009, see here, has to be checked for possible copyvio's, and these have to be solved.


 * I have contacted User:Davepape how started this article, and maybe we will hear from User:Tiffanyfox again, who recently updated this article, and we can work this out. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 02:11, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * While I don't have the time at the moment to redo Marcel's expansion properly, if that's what's sought, I see that this was relatively early work of mine here, and as such lacks proper references etc - I'll see about setting that right, at least. --dave pape (talk) 19:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Please someone, there needs to be a "Mercy rule" here
"Your are right about that one example." Consider the implications of that sentence, in the light of everything that's been said to Mdd by admins on the copyright issue. He's wasting his time waiting for any of you to turn out to be "wrong" on this stuff. And then he says,

"One way or an other last the July 7, 2009, see here, has to be checked for possible copyvio's, and these have to be solved." This page. He's talking about checking "possible copyvio's" in the history of a page on which the copyvio's have already been addressed, in the context of second-guessing the editing done to solve them.

I'm serious, that is disturbing. Bacrito (talk) 02:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I rephrase "the one" with the specific "Thomas A. DeFanti" I mean. In no way I want or wanted to express it is just one example. See also my talkpage, see for here and on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Systems, see here. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 14:02, 12 October 2009 (UTC)