Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2018 April 13

13 April 2018
New Zealand Sea Cadet Corps Much of the wording is identical to this source. I have been trying to remove the violations but have been reverted. I have now rewritten the lead section which was identical to the first paragraph of the Sea Cadet Corps page linked above. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:27, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Like I explained quite a few times to Cmwhiraeth already, our text is from 2005. The source he claimed our text is copied from has that text now, but older versions (as found through the wayback machine) didn't have our text. So the text in our article may be a copyvio of an unknown source, but not of that page. See User talk:Fram and Talk:New Zealand Sea Cadet Corps for more attempts to explain this basic issue. Fram (talk) 13:39, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It is likely that the similarities between our article and the organisation's website is because both are derived from an earlier version of the website and that our article is therefore a copyright infringement. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:19, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Cwmhiraeth, I have shown you the earlier version of the website repeatedly (through wayback machine), and there is no similarity between the enwiki text and the old versions of the website. It may be that both the current version of the website, and the 2005 enwiki article, take their text from the same source, but as long as that isn't identified, there is just as much chance that the current website has taken its text from enwiki, and no chance that enwiki has taken its text from the current website. Fram (talk) 06:55, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * See also SoWhy's comment above listed under 23 February 2018. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:37, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Which is a website created late 2014 - early 2015... Time to close this as this is a waste of time. Fram (talk) 10:17, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Not so. I'm hoping that this will be looked at by somebody independent. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:39, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * How is an editor following another editor to a page which they already had cleaned from copyvio and listing this here after it had been repeatedly explained why their "evidence" of copyvio was wrong, and continuing to insist they are right despite not offering anything resembling evidence of copyvio for months now, not a waste of time? Yes, we desperately need someone independent to close this and trout you. Fram (talk) 12:32, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * In the absence of clearly datable source, what I do is look for corroborating evidence- usually "Did our text evolve to be more or less like them?" If incremental changes take us further away from the source, the evidence mounts that we copied from them. If incremental changes take us closer to the source language, the evidence supports the other conclusion. In this case, I find the following:
 * The article was created with the sentence: "It's members are civilians." This was corrected to "Its" in May 2006. The external site uses "its."
 * The article was created with the sentence:"Members have no obligation to head into the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) however some do choose to join the NZDF." In April 2007 another user removes "head into". The next day, a differenteditor adds "join" to that sentence, so that it now reads: "Members have no obligation to join the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) however some do choose to join the NZDF." The external site uses the last language in that chain.
 * In May 2006, Brian starts crafting a significant new sentence: "The community, is represented by the Sea Cadet Association of New Zealand." (In the same edit, he adds the paragraph on history we see at the other site.) What's significant about this is the mistake. In the May 2008 cleanup I'll discuss a few bullets below, another editor cleans that error up, but introduces a new error: " At community level, The SCC are represented by the Sea Cadet Association of New Zealand." The external site uses the last language, complete with the new error.
 * In December 2006, another user, Quadra, adds the sentence, "The NZDF is partnered with the civilian Sea Cadet Association of New Zealand (SCANZA)." This sentence is found in the external source.
 * In May 2008, editor BlakJakNZ does some general cleanup, including but not limited to adding the clause "as a component of the New Zealand Cadet Forces." This clause is present in the external source, as are his other changes.
 * In June 2009, yet another editor starts adding information about how many Cadet Units there are. At that time, he thinks there are 13, but soon expands the info and changes that to 20. In November 2011], somebody changes it to 17. The external site uses the later language and the number 17.
 * At this point, I think there is good enough evidence that the content evolved here naturally on Wikipedia, with edits by multiple editors over a span of time that brought the content into the shape in which they have it published, to lend to a conclusion that they likely copied from our article. I would not myself remove this content.


 * It seems like both of you are really interested in doing the right thing here. We don't want to get rid of content if we don't have to (and I really hate to lose it to reverse copying, which is kind of insult to injury :)), but we also don't want to keep it if we can't. Usually, there's some other context clues, like these, that can help figure this out. Because of the context clues here, I'm going to close this without action, but appreciate your being attentive to the issue, User:Cwmhiraeth. Obviously if new evidence comes up, like an earlier website than the ones that User:Fram and I have found that does use the content, we can reconsider then. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:58, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you Moonriddengirl for your very detailed investigation into this matter. Although it seems that I was wrong, I am very glad it has been fully investigated and appreciate your hard work. It seemed (and seems) to me so unlikely that an organisation like the New Zealand Sea Cadet Corps should have used Wikipedia as their source. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:59, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Cwmhiraeth, I would be more surprised if I had not encountered this before in such diverse contexts, from academic textbooks to a state government guide. I think many people either don't understand copyright at all or don't understand our copyright restrictions. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:51, 1 July 2018 (UTC)