Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2014 May 24

24 May 2014
SCV for 2014-05-24 [ Edit]

Copyright investigations (manual article tagging)

 * Matthew Ridgway ([ history] · [ last edit] · rewrite) from, which quotes Dupdet reports 3 verbatim copies, totaling 666 words. —&#91;   Alan M 1  (talk) &#93;— 11:07, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, User:AlanM1. This is an interesting one - I did a history search on the phrase "which had been deployed", as it was one of the first intact phrases from the dupdet and found that it entered our article in 2003, 8 years before the book was published. Looking into the possibility of a backwards copy. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:32, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The copyright on the book says it was published in 2007. This is what dupdet looks like from December 2006: . At that point, the longest phrase copied included the words "ridgway gained the nickname". This phrase entered our article in April 2006 as part of a new sentence. It was added after this text: "...when General Douglas MacArthur was relieved of command by President Harry Truman, Ridgway was promoted to full general, assuming command of United Nations forces in Korea." The website suggests that the book says "When General Douglas MacArthur was relieved of command by President Harry Truman in April, Ridgway was promoted to full general, assuming command of all United Nations forces in Korea." That fragment, too, has been in the article since 2003. If we look back all the way to the first edit, we can see signs of the material there - for instance, "He led his troops in the counter-offensive in 1951, and when General Douglas MacArthur was sent back to the U.S., Ridgway was promoted to general, and given command of United Nations forces in Korea." The external site says "He then led his troops in a counter-offensive in the spring of 1951. When General Douglas MacArthur was relieved of command by President Harry Truman in April, Ridgway was promoted to full general, assuming command of all United Nations forces in Korea." These signs of natural evolution suggest that - if that website actually is quoting the book and not the Wikipedia article - that the book may be heavily and closely based on Wikipedia. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:01, 1 June 2014 (UTC)


 * That would be surprising, given that the author, David Halberstam, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Note the slightly older ISBN 1401300529 claims a pub date of September 25, 2007. Also note the author's death on April 23, 2007. I also saw that we have an article on the book, the last paragraph of which provided another idea – that it was quoted in his book, too. More to follow. —&#91;  Alan M 1  (talk) &#93;— 15:31, 12 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I checked out ISBN 1401300529 from the library. More to follow... —&#91;  Alan M 1  (talk) &#93;— 11:18, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Feliformia has copyright material taken from this source. This has been in place since 2008 when User:Valich also made other copyright violations, for example in Canidae, where I have just rephrased the section concerned. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:05, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, Cwmhiraeth. I can see that content added here was copied from, but am having trouble finding that content in the current article. Unfortunately, the duplication detector is not helping me. :/ I'm not sure it's working properly with that site. Can you help point out where copying remains? I really appreciate your finding the issue, and this extra help would be very welcome. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:52, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Copyright violation is not really my field! I noticed a whole section of copy and paste in the article Carnivora on which I was working so I partially rewrote that section. Then I said to myself "I wonder if this user, who no longer seems to be active on Wikipedia, made other copy/paste violations?" and I found that he had, in Feliformia, and may have in other articles, but I was lazy and did not investigate whether the violations were still present in the current version of Feliformia or what else he might have done. I apologise. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:46, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Cwmhiraeth, no apologies necessary. :) I truly appreciate your conscientiousness here, and that's the approach we frequently take to multiple copyright issues from the same user. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't overlooking something in the current article! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:25, 5 June 2014 (UTC)