Template talk:FOLDOC

Intentation
The indentation of the FOLDOC boilerplate makes it look unusual on some pages, e.g. Apache HTTP Server, where it follows a bulleted list. Does anyone object dropping the ':' in the template, and just adding it to those pages where it is required? -- Jon Dowland 17:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree. See, for example, Antinomy. Ideally the References section in that article would contain "* " and "* ", but because of the ':' this can't be done. Will change in a few days if no-one replies. --Romanski 14:45, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, since most articles include this in the References section anyway, I think the colon should be changed to an asterisk. Will change in a few days if no-one replies. --Romanski 10:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Not sure, if the somewhat unusual "text only" appearance is down to the age of this template, but I think, this should be changed into an info box (at least by default). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 13:35, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Pre-discussion for deletion
From the template:


 * ...which is licensed under the GFDL.

Why should FOLDOC be attributed on the actual page when it's contributions are no different than mine or any other wikipedian? If the content is not attributed in the page's history then it should be, at best, a reference.

Again, why are FOLDOC's GFDL contributions more special than mine to merit this template? Cburnett 16:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I have posted this for deletion since there was no response. See Templates for deletion/Log/2006 December 31. Cburnett 04:16, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Not exactly true in all cases
A very early version of this boilerplate message, seen here read "This article (or an earlier version of it) contains material from FOLDOC, used with permission." While the new text is superior in most ways, it lacks the implication that it's possible the FOLDOC material may have worked its way out of the article. Perhaps it'd be helpful to have a "|old" option to trigger an alternative text:

Earlier versions of this article were based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

This avoids the implicit statement that FOLDOC material is present in an article when, in fact, it may now be purely resigned to the article's history after a complete rewrite. Given the unsourced OR nature of the source, one would hope this would be a quite common problem. MrZaius talk  05:22, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * A very good idea. An "old" parameter should be added. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 13:35, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Readers don't care about this!
This information is purely of historical interest and should be relegated to the articles' talk pages or removed altogether. (However, this template itself should not be deleted, so that future researchers will know what the FOLDOC template meant.) Does anyone disagree? If not, I'll change the template documentation to say this and begin the move to talk pages.--greenrd (talk) 23:48, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree, it is a bit disturbing running into this "text only" template in an article. Since it isn't boxed and uses the normal typeface and color, it cannot easily be distinguished from normal article text.
 * Also, it represents a piece of licensing information, which belongs into the edit history and/or the corresponding article's talk page, not into the article itself. Otherwise, FOLDOC receives undue weight compared to other contributions to an article. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 13:35, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I've been working on formatting issues with this template. The template is sometimes included in the References section and somtimes just dropped in near the end of the article somewhere. I've had one objection from pertaining to my formatting "improvements". Should I really consider just removing the template? Should I let sleeping dogs lie? ~Kvng (talk) 20:59, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Kvng, either a contribution was included under a compatible license, then we don't need to specify it in an article individually because it is covered by Wikipedia's terms of use (which does not allow individual pages to have deviating overriding licensing terms), or a contribution was not included legally in the first place, then it should be removed (but probably would have been removed already long ago).
 * I don't think any licensing or prior-author-info belongs into an article -- IMO, that's meta-information belonging into the edit history or, if not suitable for inclusion there, onto an article's talk page, like we do f.e. when merging articles.
 * I consider the inclusion of the template in article space an annoying namespace violation, a bit like WP:SRTA -- it's as if a Wikipedia author would enter his/her signature into the article rather than on the talk page. If there are specific sentences cited from FOLDOC, then that info belongs into a specific, but formatted like a normal reference, not like "This article...".
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 21:25, 23 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I have a number of objections to this template.
 * For its use at Intel MCS-48, it was not clear that any information was pulled from the equivalent FOLDOC‎ article. In fact it was not even obvious which FOLDOC article was being claimed - I had to go hunting. References in WP should go directly to where the information is - without requiring an undirected hunt and definitely not just linking to the home page of a large website.
 * FOLDOC is a user generation resource, similar in kind to Wikipedia. WP:USERGENERATED prohibits references from sources like that.
 * It does not follow the same style as the other references - ie, it looks different.


 * I do applaud you efforts but feel that they are misguided.  Stepho  talk 21:31, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * , it is not clear to me that the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing is WP:USERGENERATED. It looks like users could make suggestions but I don't see anything about directly generating or modifying content. Some of the material apparently comes from Jargon File which had a book format which presumably required significant editorial work to produce. ~Kvng (talk) 17:32, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

I've reviewed this talk page and the 2006 deletion discussion. It looks like we can address everyone's concerns by moving this template from the article endmatter to the talk page header. Any objections? ~Kvng (talk) 17:40, 25 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I've let it rattle around in my head for a few days and I think I can agree to putting it on the discussion page. Bear in mind that it does mean that the WP article was copied from FOLDOC before November 2008, so its really only for historical purposes.  Stepho  talk 09:03, 29 August 2020 (UTC)


 * So  instances would have to be handled differently? I haven't seen any of these yet so it may be moot.
 * do you have any thoughts? ~Kvng (talk) 15:23, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I never ran into one of them either. There are only 6 instances around:
 * insource:/\{\{ *[Ff][Oo][Ll][Dd][Oo][Cc] *(link)?/ insource:/\{\{ *[Ff][Oo][Ll][Dd][Oo][Cc].*\| *new *=/
 * I would treat them the same as without the new parameter, that is, move them to the talk page. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 15:53, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I see that most of these "new" examples are actually framing the template into a block. This looks reasonable as well. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 16:04, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I won't make any chages to FOLDOC instances in footnotes ( blocks). ~Kvng (talk) 15:22, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have updated the template's documentation to add the proposed flexibility in how the template may be used. ~Kvng (talk) 15:46, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether readers care
The discussion above, and the footnote in the documentation (added here) seem to miss something. There is a difference between normal attribution, normal editing contributions to an article, and what is required when we copy verbatim from another source. Typically we paraphrase other sources and then reference them with an inline citation. When we use material from another source directly, however, we are required to explicitly say so in the article itself. Otherwise what we have done is plagiarism. It doesn't matter whether we have a license to use the material. It doesn't matter if the material is public domain. Copying text verbatim without saying so is plagiarism. Contrary to what the footnote says, the guideline requires material copied verbatim from another source to be identified as such within the article. WP:FREECOPY identifies public-domain attribution templates in an article's References section as an appropriate way to do this. It does not matter whether readers care about this. It doesn't even matter whether editors care about this. It is a matter of principle, and a requirement of our guidelines.--Srleffler (talk) 19:48, 30 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Well, that discussion started over 13 years ago spanned 10 years and none of us apparently looked at Plagiarism. The key relevant point appears to be, Inserting a text—copied word-for-word, or closely paraphrased with very few changes—from a source that is not acknowledged anywhere in the article, either in the body of the article, or in footnotes, the references section, or the external links section.
 * In most cases it is not immediately apparent how FOLDOC relates to the current article content. The Earwig tool may be able to help us determine this and understand how deep of a mess this is. Another alternative is to try and roll back all the work I did in 2020.
 * I guess the place to start is to revert the notes that track the discussion here but appear to be at odds with Plagiarism. ~Kvng (talk) 23:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The section has specific requirements that go beyond the passage you quoted in green above. --Srleffler (talk) 05:11, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * What have I missed? ~Kvng (talk) 15:14, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Public-domain attribution notices should not be removed from an article or simply replaced with inline citations unless it is verified that substantially all of the source's phrasing has been removed from the article. When we copy verbatim from a source (even a public domain one) a citation to that source is not enough. Attribution of the text to the source is required.--Srleffler (talk) 03:02, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Srleffler, what I've done on the first articles I went through is to add an inline FOLDOC where I found verbatim copy. FOLDOC has attribution as opposed to citation language so it looks to me like this will meet the requirements we've quoted. LMK your thoughts. See Lightweight Directory Access Protocol note 11 and Backus–Naur form note 2. ~Kvng (talk) 14:53, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That seems fine. Thanks for doing this.
 * By the way, thanks for all the work you do on reviewing and copyediting articles. I've noticed your edits for many years and very much appreciate your careful, thorough approach.--Srleffler (talk) 17:17, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * To assess where we stand with this issue, I've reviewed 7 of the articles where I moved FOLDOC to talk pages and found and corrected potential WP:PLAGIARISM issues (as I currently understand it) with 2 of them (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, Backus–Naur form). I can put further checking on my to-do list but there are over 300 of these to be checked, it is not something I'm likely to prioritize, so it is not something that will be finished soon. ~Kvng (talk) 18:40, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

MDY date format
In the article IBM System/360 that should use the MDY date format this template is used but this template uses there displays DMY. However: "June 16, 2009, content from FOLDOC added after 1 November 2008" in the doc is inconsistent.. Could the template add a MDY paramater (or just be changed?). comp.arch (talk) 11:59, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Small text
To be consistent with similar templates, e.g. FS1037C, I have removed the directive to make small text. You can wrap the template in refbegin refend for standard smallness. ~Kvng (talk) 22:03, 21 August 2020 (UTC)