User:Paleorthid/Sandbox/Stub

Analysis
Doncram, and others, have opined that, per WP:REF, text copied from public domain should be placed in quotes....
 * "...See WP:REF and other sources about what is proper referencing in wikipedia. (When text)... from a public domain website ... is copied word for word, it should be put in quotes or block quote formatting.... If you have reworded the material, you may avoid need for quotation marks but you still need the reference footnote to describe the source." User:Doncram 03:04, 13 January 2008 diff, uc


 * "...material in this article is copied from a published source. Proper referencing is needed, including using quote marks and sources for any copied text." User:Doncram 17:48, 14 January 2008 diff, uc


 * "Each fact with a big text copied from a PD source, does need to be supported. ... each sentence needs to be put in quotes, to show that the wording, not just the content, is from the given source. The better alternative is to put the whole text in a big quote." User:Doncram 01:04, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

... with in-line citations.
 * "...material in article is copied from a published source. Such material needs to be referenced properly: copied text needs quotation marks and in-line citations." User:Doncram 20:28, 14 January 2008 diff, uc

Supporting Statements
 * "(I) support the right to place that kind of text in block quotes, or remove it." Slimvirgin 18:16, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * "...if an article is a total quote from PD but the quoted part is not indicated, and if someone wants to reword a paragraph, how will the reader know what has come from the original source and what may have been altered and therefore may not represent the original PD author?" Mattisse 00:14, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Opposing Statements

There is no issue.
 * "PD text doesn't need to be in quotes. There's no legal or ethical requirement for this... even our copyright/plagiarism critics have never complained once about our use of PD text." --W.marsh 21:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC) diff


 * "I completely disagree with the principle that all PD text must be placed in blocks of quoted text. Our uses of DANFS are not a copyright violation, because the source is public domain. They are not plagiarism, because they are properly sourced. Finally, they are encyclopedic, because they come from an encyclopedia." TomTheHand 14:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Concern with source cannot not be remedied using a style guideline...
 * "Having blockquoted text discourages people from editing it. From what I've read so far, your main worry is that people don't judge the validity/quality of the text they're copying and that they're just blindly pasting it in. Well, then that's what citation needed, dubious, update needed etc. tags are for. I don't think Wikipedia has ever cared about plagiarism, just copyright violations. The quality of the writing and source of the writing are two different issues. If I paste in PD content that's poorly written and POV and whatnot, it should be challenged by other editors. PD material certainly may be out of date, in which case it can be improved upon, but PD text should be treated the same as prose written by Wikipedians -- edited mercilessly." Howcheng 05:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC) diff

...thus not addressable through WP:REF.
 * "...such a change is far beyond the scope of this guideline, or indeed any part of the manual of style." —Random832 08:40, 26 January 2008 (UTC) diff

Existing practice is to use a PD source statement at the end of the article to credit the source.
 * "(It is proper attribution to attach a footnote at the end, or a template that states that text is incorporated from somewhere. This agrees) with our longstanding practice of doing exactly that. The entire purpose of the (PD source) template at the end of the article is to credit the source. There are other potential problems with copying long parts of text from public domain materials, but simply failing to adequately credit the author isn't one." — CBM 14:12, 20 January 2008 (UTC) diff

Existing practice is consistent with the fundamental free-content nature of Wikipedia.
 * "(Please note Wikipedia's) longstanding practice, as illustrated by the contents of Category:Attribution templates. A key motivation for free content is the we can reuse free content by others and they can reuse the free content we create. — CBM 04:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC) diff

Comment


 * "If specific facts need to be supported, and rely on the PD edition, a suitable inline citation should be provided." Gerry Ashton 23:53, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * "There is no difference between facts in reused PD text and facts in original text. If each sentence of original writing requires a citation to support its facts, then indeed each sentence of reused PD text needs a citation to support its facts." -- SEWilco 05:06, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * "Rather than placing (PD sourced) material in quotes, would it not make more sense to write it up as your own summary? Cutting and pasting (can) lead to strange-looking writing.... Also, the point of Wikipedia (as I see it anyway) is that it's meant to be 100 percent our own work, free for others to use. Not 100 percent someone else's work, copied and pasted by us." Slimvirgin 14:26, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * "In my view, our own work should be our own work. That's a separate issue from whether we're allowed to copy PD texts, because of course we are. I suppose the question is why anyone would want to, when the articles could be rewritten fairly quickly." Slimvirgin 16:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * "I see between 12K and 15K articles (here) that still include its text from EB1911. Considering the proliferation of PD source templates,... the style issue that we are discussing surely affects several 10s of thousands of articles." --Paleorthid 17:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)