User:Franamax/Test essay


 * This is a candidate essay to be placed into the project space with the title "WP:How to avoid plagiarism". The intent is to provide a short and simple guide for newish editora on how to preoperly incorporate text from free sources.

Plagiarism is the copying of the works of others without giving sufficient credit to the original authors. When you directly copy or only minimally change someone else's work without quoting it, you are in effect presenting it as your own. Even if you provide a footnote, and even if you are copying from a free source, if you directly copy other people's words, you are plagiarising.

Plagiarism may also be a copyright violation. Copyright violations are taken seriously at Wikipedia and may get you quickly blocked. However, we will only discuss plagiarism here. Unlike copyright violations, plagiarism doesn't have to be removed immediately - but it does need to be fixed as soon as possible, and it's always best to make your edits in such a way that questions about plagiarism never arise. If you avoid plagiarising, you will often also avoid the risk of making a copyright violation.

Acceptable "free" sources
Copyright and free are short words but complex concepts.

There are many sources which allow you to make copies of their content. Some of those are perfectly acceptable for use as the actual text in an article, and most of them are acceptable when included within quote marks. Here is a short list of sources which you can often freely copy, and a few that you can't copy. Remember that when you make a direct copy of any wording, it's very important that you make clear where you got it from. We'll discuss the best ways to do that below.

Public domain works

 * See also Public domain

There are two main classes of public domain:
 * Copyright-expired works - works like the plays of Shakespeare that are old enough that no copyright applies anymore. They have passed into the public domain without the consent of the authors.
 * Copyright-ineligible works - these are works which are not copyrightable. An example is any publication produced entirely by the US Federal Government or its agencies, such as NASA.

Free (libre) works
Wikipedia is currently in transition to a new way of licensing our content. We will soon release our work under a dual license, both Creative Commons and GNU Free Documenation License. This will mean some changes (discussed here) in the way we can incorporate outside text. Here is the current state of play:
 * GFDL works - anything you contribute to any WMF wiki such as English Wikipedia is automatically released under the GFDL. GFDL is an example of a "free" license. Upcoming changes to the WMF licensing policy will soon mean that you also release your work under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license and also that you cannot freely copy material from GFDL-only sources.
 * Creative Commons - another example of a free license. CC licenses will soon be compatible with the new Wikipedia dual-licensing model, which means that you will be able to copy in any material licensed under CC versions 2.x or 3.x.

"Semi-free" works
Many websites, especially government-run sites, make their works available for copying but place restrictions on re-use. It's important to investigate these restrictions. For instance, Library and Archives Canada specifies that they must distribute their material directly and that they retain rights to the works, which can not be modified. Similarly, the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) permits copying but forbids commercial use and later modification of their text. In the case of ADB, there are two problems with copying text beyond limited direct quotes: The GFDL license does permit commercial reuse; and unless the text is enclosed in quotes, it is open for other wiki editors to change.

How to use free sources and not be a plagiarist
Free content is welcome here at the English wiki. You do need to be careful if you want to add free content to well-developed articles or engage in massive additions of newly-free content. This is always best done by starting a thread on the article talk page or at one of the Village Pumps, to get an idea of what other editors think about your idea.

If you have found a free source that will help you create new articles, or dramatically expand existing stubs, please do use it. It is always best, though, to discuss your intentions with other editors. Sometimes you may have missed that little technicality that prevents the supposedly "free" source from being used here.

Here are three ways you can successfully incorporate free text:

Read and reword
This is always the preferred option: assemble several different sources, read them all, think about it all carefully, then write a description of what the sources are saying. When you do this rewrite, don't actually look at the words in any existing text, because you may end up just copying it. Write with your own words, tell your own story. This is very important. Describe what you've read, don't just copy it. Then just place normal templates or whatever other way you choose to indicate where you got your information. Remember though that we're not allowed to insert our own opinions, we can only describe what the rest of the world sees.

Another good practice is to reread your new text after writing it to be sure you haven't unconsciously copied a source. Remember that we strive to produce articles written in our own words. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself which you use more when adding article content: the keyboard; or the mouse and the copy/paste keys?

Quote directly
For free sources, you can always copy as much text as you want, as long as you put it into normal quote marks or use the blockquote template to make clear that you're making a direct copy. You also have to make a direct attribution, usually by using a template to show the source. This is a good option when you want to include distinctively-worded statements in the article.

Contrast this too with the requirements of copyright, where you can't always quote long pieces of text.

Incorporate and attribute
This is a powerful method if you do it right. For sources that are truly free and compatible with our CC/GFDL license, you can copy the text right into our article (or make a new article) and we can all start the process of constantly improving that text. The very important thing is that you make clear exactly where you got the original text from. If you're using your mouse to copy-paste text from somewhere else, or if you're typing as you read a page, a footnote to the source text is definitely not sufficient.

If you're doing it this way, follow all of these steps:
 * Consider putting a note on the article talk page, where you say "I've added some text that I basically copied from [xxx], Please review my edits".
 * It's always best to copy the exact text onto the wiki, then start making changes to update language, add links, etc. This lets other editors exactly compare your original addition with the original source you cite.
 * Make clear in your edit summary that you are making a direct copy of someone else's writing.
 * Place either an attribution template or a hand-written footnote into the article to indicate that you have made a direct copy from a free source.