User:RoySmith/How to check for copyvios

Copyright violations (copyvios) are a serious problem in wikipedia. Some copyvios are obvious. Sometimes it takes a bit of detective work to figure out if a copyvio exists or not. This essay gives some tips for doing an effective copyvio check. This isn't the only way to do it, just what I do.

Earwig
Start by running Earwig. If you have MoreMenu installed, it'll be under the Page menu (Analysis / Copyright vio detector). Otherwise.you can go directly to opyvios.toolforge.org/. There's a bunch of options you can set, but I usually just use the default settings. Be patient, can take a minute or two to run.

You will get a numerical result like "Violation Possible 47.4% similarity". You should pretty much ignore this, as it is based on a naive mechanical text comparison. There will be both false positives and false negatives. It's your job to sort though this in greater detail.

You will also get a listing of web pages that matched various bits of text from wikipedia. The wiki text will be on the left side, the other page on the right side, with matching text snippets highlighted. You need to evaluate each on to determine if it is significant.

Saint Barbara
This is the title of a published paper which appears under "Further reading" and is also cited in a research paper. Ignore it.