Template:Did you know nominations/Paul Fejos

Close paraphrasing

Paul Fejos
Created/expanded by 66.212.78.220 (talk). Nominated by Deoliveirafan (talk) at 22:35, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * ... that Paul Fejos was a successful Hollywood film director before discovering 18 ancient Incan cities in Peru and becoming one of the most respected anthropologists in the U.S. ?


 * 5x expanded (from about 3400 to 17k), interesting hook, article is minimally sourced (though I do mean minimally). AGF on offline source. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:34, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Symbol question.svg I'm concerned that a 2901 word article is being entirely sourced (with one minor exception) from five pages in one book. The article has to be including just about everything that's in said book; even if well paraphrased, is it truly fair use to use so much of any source? Regarding the hook, "Incian" is an unfortunate typo, and "one of the most respected" is not inline sourced. Perhaps more disturbingly, none of the quotes are unless they appear at the end of a paragraph. Since there are available online sources, including a six-page obituary that ran in American Anthropologist, there is no excuse for not spreading the net more widely. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:08, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The reason that it has only one source is that it is the one source I have at my disposal. I did not set out to improve the Paul Fejos article entirely, just to utilize that one source I have to expand both this, and other articles. Could you please elaborate why that causes concern? It is a very useful book with a great deal of content that I have added to wikipedia. You're welcome. As far as pharaphrasing, I suggest you find yourself a copy of the source and check before you make accusations. The book in question is a large, hard-cover, small print book with 2 coulmns on each page. I would estimate that I used approximately one half of the information in that book, ALL PARAPHRASED. As far as the typo, boo hoo. "One of the most respected", its not phrased exactly that way but yes it is in the article. For the quotes, the original source does itself reference its sources, but does not indicate which sentences or quotes are attributed to which parts of the chapter. And since I used only one concerning source, I simply added the reference at the end of each paragraph to avoid pointless clutter. And finally, yes there certainly are other online sources, as I believe there is a Wiki rule: "So fix it". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deoliveirafan (talk • contribs) 12:20, July 25, 2012
 * That's not the greatest response. I had some concern about the use of only one book as a source, as I noted. My bad on not reading the hook as closely as I should've; I just looked for the 18 cities part. The "one of the most respected" should be stricken. If you want to convince BlueMoonset or another admin to promote this hook, you should address his concerns in a more constructive manner. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:22, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, I responded to both the tone and the concerns. And I didn't appreciate the "some people say"-esque accusation, which isn't exactly constructive either. My question is, given the nature of "Did you know?" is it absolutely necessary for the information needs more than one source. Do all recently created or expanded articles that have one aspect of their content in a Did you Know? section need multiple sources? It seems like the point is not the article as a whole but one specific piece of content from that article, which in a recently expanded article would I'm sure often have one source. If the concern was for the article to be rated as a Good Article, I would see your point, but given that this is a simple detail of the article I don't see what the big deal is. Honestly, I just happened to think that it was very interesting so I included it. And by interesting, I mean interesting to the CASUAL READERS of wikipedia, not the editors. But then maybe I'm the one with confused ideas about the point of this website.....maybe.--Deoliveirafan (talk) 22:22, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I checked with Nikkimaria on the issue of fair use and single sourcing, and she pointed out that it depends on both the structure of the source vs. the article (how similar they are), the amount used in proportion to the author's contribution to the volume, and a number of other issues including neutral point of view of the author. (If the author isn't neutral, other sources would help highlight this issue.) So in some circumstances, my fair use concern would not be germane or a reason to withhold approval for a nomination, though as always, care must be given in the material that used: this is a copyrighted work, and to use chunks of it for "this and and other articles" requires the utmost care.


 * One of the DYK requirements for the hook is that all claims made in it must be inline sourced immediately after the sentence that contains the information in question, because it is considered an extraordinary claim. I have no issue with "one of the most respected" per se, but to be in the hook it must be cited right away in the article, even if the same source will be cited again at the end of the paragraph. The same thing is true with quotes: they should be sourced at the end of the final sentence of the quote.


 * While the source is not available in full online, a Google books search by Nikkimaria turned up the following overly close paraphrases:"compare 'according to him his father was a captain with the Hussars and his mother was a Lady-in-waiting for the Austrian-Hungarian Empress, and that as a youth Fejos himself was an official of the Imperial Court' with 'have it that his father was a captain with the Hussars, his mother a lady-in-waiting to the Empress, and Fejos himself later an official of the Imperial Court', or 'able to get free film stock from the DuPont company, which was then trying to compete with the more established Kodak and Agfa' with 'Filmstock was obtained free from DuPont, then attempting to challenge the domination of Kodak and Agfa', or 'When sets or actors were unavailable, Fejos had his crew film close-ups of hands, feet, cars or anything else that stuck him as interesting' with 'when sets or actors were unavailable, Fejos kept his crew busy shooting closeups of hands, feet, cars, and anything else that took his fancy'."
 * Symbol delete vote.svg By DYK rules, this degree of close paraphrasing renders the article ineligible for inclusion on the Wikipedia main page without even considering the other structural or proportional issues. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:11, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow. Firstly, what exactly is the difference between "close paraphrasing" and "paraphrasing"? Secondly, all of those examples are simple facts, in the sense that they were events that happened (first example is the fact of a lie, but thats not the point), as opposed to feelings or opinions. Other than the first part of the third example, I simply do not see your point. I used the facts from the source, should I have invented other items for the third example instead of listed what the source said were included? At any rate, it IS PARAPHRASED and the initial "concern" was that I was simply copying the entire 9 page article word for word. I'm still waiting for my apology.--Deoliveirafan (talk) 00:44, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry you seem to think I was accusing you of copying an entire nine-page article word for word. In fact, if you'll read my first comment closely, I was under the impression (due to the source citation) that it was five pages, not nine, and my concern was the proportion of the article being used, "even if well paraphrased"—i.e., assuming good paraphrasing, which I could have expressed more clearly, and apologize for the ambiguity—was excessive. It's quite true that I thought you might well have used nearly all of the material in the entire five-page article based on my (inaccurate) estimation of its word length, not knowing the size of type or layout; as it happens, I was off by a factor of two: as you note, you used half of the material on Fejos from that book. That's still a very large quantity from one source. I had worried that it might be excessive, but as I discovered, that determination depends on other factors than simple proportion.


 * A working definition of "close paraphrasing" is on the WP:PARAPHRASE page: "Close paraphrasing is the superficial modification of material from another source." When large portions of phrases are not changed at all when incorporated into an article, that's close paraphrasing. Even if they're facts, you simply can't use identical wording or even almost identical wording: "father was a captain with the Hussars [and] his mother was a Lady-in-waiting for the [Austrian-Hungarian] Empress, and [that as a youth] Fejos himself [was] an official of the Imperial Court" clearly qualifies. Ordinary paraphrasing is summarizing the material "in your own words", which requires minimizing the use of your source's wording in favor of your own. (You can, of course, quote the source, but the amount of directly quoted material should be limited.) This is something that's basic to writing for Wikipedia; everyone who writes articles should have or acquire a working knowledge of using material from sources, what constitutes proper paraphrasing and what is too close to the original material, plus quoting and referencing. Simple facts can be expressed and assembled in many different ways. A hastily rephrased example that's a better paraphrase, though it still may be a touch close: "Fejos claimed that his father had been a Hussar captain and his mother served the Austro-Hungarian empress as one of her ladies-in-waiting, and further that he himself had previously held an official post at the Imperial Court". BlueMoonset (talk) 04:58, 28 July 2012 (UTC)