Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2014 June 8

Copyright investigations (manual article tagging)

 * Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Imperial College Debating Society. The mainspace version of this article was deleted as a copyright violation of https://www.union.ic.ac.uk/scc/debating/?page_id=11 . However, when I examined this web page, the format looks like a Wikipedia article, and I considered that the copying could have been in the other direction.  I don't know how to tell. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 08:20, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, Anne Delong. :) There are a couple of things we can do to identify "backwards copies". There are a couple of tips at CP. There's more at Copyright problems/Advice for admins. In this case, the wayback machine doesn't have the page archived - which doesn't prove anything either way, unfortunately. :/ We know the source url predates the article, because it was cited in the oldest version of the article that was deleted. I've checked the history of edits to look for my red flags for backwards copying - the biggest "tells" for me are when somebody changes the content on our website, and it brings it closer to the external source. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything. The content was added in one big bulk by one user. We have to presume that they had it first. However, given the username of the person who added it both times (the same person), it looks quite likely to me that permission could be forthcoming. One of the purposes of the copyright template is to give them an opportunity to provide that permission before content is deleted. I'll tag it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:21, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Er, no I won't. I'll delete it and explain why. I didn't realize that the page was created so long ago and the editor blocked. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)