User talk:Jrwhite2013

From the George W. Housner entry:

"Housner received his Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Michigan where he was influenced by Stephen Timoshenko ."

Partial List of Achievements

 * Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Michigan
 * Masters and Doctorate degree from Caltech
 * Written numerous journal articles on earthquake engineering
 * Chairman of engineering committee of Academy of Sciences
 * Formed Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
 * UNESCO representative to International Institute of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering in Tokyo
 * AEC advisory panel on safety against ground shock
 * AID consultant at University of Roorkee, India
 * Chairman of Geologic Hazards Advisory Committee for California State Resources Agency
 * Chairman of Panel on Seismic Design and Testing of Nuclear Facilities for International Atomic Energy Agency
 * On Los Angeles County Earthquake Commission
 * Member of Earthquake Engineering and Hazards Reduction Delegation to Peoples Republic of China
 * President of Seismological Society
 * Consultant to Japanese Atomic Energy Commission and Italian Nuclear Energy Commission and numerous nuclear energy projects in the U.S.
 * Elected to National Academy of Sciences 1972
 * Named Braun Professor of Engineering at Caltech 1974
 * Chairman of NRC's Earthquake Society and International Association

Unblocked
I have lifted the block on your account, as it has become apparent (from certain off-Wikipedia discussions) that you are not the same person as User:Shustov, and that you were only acting under his (decidedly misleading) direction.

Despite his repeated statements to the contrary, Mr. Shustov engaged in a number of acts which were contrary to both Wikipedia policy and basic academic standards. While his intentions were no doubt good, he failed to respond productively to any criticism or guidance that he was offered. After repeated warnings, his editing privileges were suspended. To this day, he insists that his conduct was above reproach. It is unlikely that he will be allowed to edit Wikipedia again in the future unless he acknowledges a basic understanding of the problems with his previous behaviour.

For what it's worth, I fully agree with Mr. Shustov that our article can and should be expanded to more fully address his significance and accomplishments. The notion that Wikipedia, it's editors, or its administrators are interested in minimizing Dr. Housner's contributions or otherwise attacking his work is absurd.

The chief problem with Mr. Shustov's edits to our article on George Housner is that none of Mr. Shustov's edits was original writing. While viewing any article on Wikipedia, one can view the entire history of edits to the page by clicking on the 'History' tab near the top of the page. It is also possible to display the difference between any pair of revisions in an article's history to see what changes (if any) have been made; on Wikipedia, this is called a 'diff'. Using these tools and some Google expertise, it is often quite straightforward to detect when text is taken from outside sources.

Compare
 * The first version of our article, contributed by Shustov.
 * PEER News obituary
 * LA Times obituary

The third and fourth paragraphs of the Wikipedia article were direct copy & paste from the PEER obituary (passages starting with Housner pioneered... and As a consultant and advisor...). The second and fifth paragraphs are direct lifts from the LA Times obituary (passages starting with In 1981..., In a 1988 White House ceremony, and In 1945...). The article was also adorned with an image (File:George W Housner.jpg, now deleted from Wikipedia) drawn for a copyrighted source but misidentified by Shustov as being available under a Creative Commons free license.

On Janary 3, I detected the copying and plagiarism. Following standard practice on Wikipedia, I removed all of the non-original content. Unfortunately, very little remained &mdash; this clean version was all that was left.

The Wikipedia project must necessarily be very sensitive to issues of copyright infringement, as we want our materials to be freely available for download and use for any purpose by anyone under the terms of our free license: the GFDL. We are also quite troubled by acts of plagiarism – even where such plagiarism does not infringe copyright – as a moral issue. (From a purely pragmatic standpoint, allowing plagiarism to stand would also undermine Wikipedia's credibility in the eyes of the academic community, and tend to discourage the participation and contributions of academics who depend on honest credit being given for their work.)

While I won't detail those issues here, User:Shustov had an established track record of edits to Wikipedia that incorporated directly-copied text from outside sources with little or no citation and no use of quotation marks. Repeated prior attempts had been made to explain the problem with these sorts of edits, and how to avoid plagiarism in the future. For a university lecturer, such instruction should not in any case be required.

Shustov's response to removal of copied content from Dr. Housner's article was to attempt to 'make [it] TenOfAllTrades-proof': diff. While the diff may make it appear that major changes were made, it is somewhat misleading. A closer reading of the text demonstrates only minor and cosmetic changes:
 * The image and some carriage returns were moved, added, or deleted;
 * Housner pioneered... was changed to Housner stood at the cradle of...
 * As a consultant and advisor... became His outstanding contribution...
 * His professional and public service included... was modified to For years...
 * ...and a few other similar tweaks of phrasing.

The difficulty is rather like that seen when a high school student or university freshman is told to use his own words to paraphrase a source &mdash; and so reaches for a thesaurus to replace a handful of words.

After the copied text was yet again removed, Shustov repeatedly restored the plagiarized material without responding to urgent pleas to talk about the problems with the content. At first he used his own account; after that account was blocked from editing Wikipedia he created two additional accounts and  and once again attempted to re-add the copied text. He even used SoSoEngineer to comment on Hofferich's edits: diff. (He has used a number of additional alternate account names to edit some other articles and post spurious complaints about me, as well.)

Three weeks later, you – using the brand-new account Jrwhite2013 – appeared at Dr. Housner's article and as your very first edit to Wikipedia attempted to add much of the same content yet again. At the time I was unaware that Shustov had sent out a recruitment request, and made the reasonable assumption that you were yet another Shustov account. (In any event, Wikipedia policy forbids blocked users from recruiting other individuals to make edits on their behalf.)

I removed the plagiarized content once again (I expect that you had no idea Shustov had misappropriated it), but left the list of accomplishments which you had compiled (as it appeared to be original work). That pretty much brings us up to the present.

I have now unblocked your account, as I have determined that you're a unique individual rather than an alternate account of Shustov, and I'm more than willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you were misled here by Shustov's messages. Based on the content of your talk page, it is apparent that you're interested in contributing positively to Wikipedia.

I hope that this explanation might take some of the bite out of your unfortunate introduction to Wikipedia. I apologize for any inconvenience or embarrassment that may have resulted from being blocked. Finally, I offer a sheepish – but earnest – invitation to you to volunteer your expertise and knowledge here on this project now and for the future.

Best wishes and sincere apologies,

TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)