Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Vintila Barbu


 * The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.  

A summary of the debate may be found at the bottom of the page.

This request for comment was filed at 00:18, 17 December 2006 (UTC). Having been endorsed within 48 hours it has met the threshold for consideration by the community.



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Statement of the dispute
''This is a summary written by users who dispute this user's conduct. Users signing other sections ("Response" or "Outside views") should not edit the "Statement of the dispute" section.''

Description
At times, Vintila contributes to articles in absolutely flawless, perfectly punctuated English. When he needs to express himself in response to questions, though (and also in some of his contributions), his English is simply good, but definitely imperfect, non-native English. This pattern seems very suspicious in terms of possible plagiarism.

Evidence of disputed behavior
(Provide diffs. Links to entire articles aren't helpful unless the editor created the entire article. Edit histories also aren't helpful as they change as new edits are performed.)


 * Example of his writing in an article. Note especially the passage beginning, "The programme of re-education progressed in four stages."
 * Example of his writing in response to a query
 * Note, for example, "subreptitiously",
 * Further example of his writing in response to a query
 * Note, for example, "plagiate", "peace and calme"

Added by Dahn on December 18:
 * Backing observations on grammar and tone: The following are edits by Vintila Barbu which also show various, obvious, and repetitive mistakes. See the original version of an article he contributed, and especially two proposed entries for the DYK - "that in the years 1949 – 1952 took place in the Piteşti prison the largest and most intensive form of brainwashing through torture ever carried out in the "Eastern bloc", and "that the Silesian-born scholar Heimann Hariton Tiktin, who initially was destined to be a rabbi, became eventually one of the founders of the modern Romanian linguistics?" (note that this particular word order is not present in any of the problematic sentences, and note that both of these denote Vintila Barbu has used consistently used obviously incorrect English in articles, not just on talk pages).


 * Pointing out precedent: On the article SLOMR, which Vintila Barbu had initiated and to which I contributed in late November 2006, I noticed that he had copied verbatim from at least one source (were it not for this precedent, I would have not asked Jmabel to offer his opinion on the matter). Therefore, I proceeded to rephrase the text and indicate the sources, and I left a message in Romanian on Vintila Barbu's page, letting him know that I had made note of it, and asking him not to do it again. I shall translate the relevant part of his answer, which was partly in Romanian and partly in French (I'm leaving aside his answer about formal pronouns in Romanian, which is not relevant to the debate): "You are perfectly right. It is later that it occurred to me, but it was too late. In trying to avoid "original research", one ends up adopting "word by word". Thank you !". [Sic] The excuse was far from satisfactory in relation to what had happened, but I chose not to pursue the matter any further at the time (since I thought I had gotten my point across). Dahn 00:30, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Applicable policies and guidelines
{list the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct}
 * Potentially Citing sources, if unacknowledged sources were used.
 * Potentially Copyright violations, if, furthermore, those were copyrighted sources.

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute
(provide diffs and links)
 * Dahn raises issue of possible plagiarism
 * Jmabel raises similar concern
 * Vintila responds to Jmabel
 * Jmabel's concern is actually escalated by that response
 * Vintila responds again

Users certifying the basis for this dispute
{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute} I hesitate to bring this RFC, because up until recently I simply considered Vintila Barbu a good contributor, but recently Dahn raised issues that some of Vintila's edits suggest possible plagiarism, and when I addressed the question to Vintila, his response only raised my level of concern.

It is possible that there is a perfectly innocent explanation, and I hope this is the case, but at this point my level of concern is high enough that I think an RFC is the correct way to deal with this.
 * Jmabel | Talk 00:42, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Dahn 02:11, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Response
''This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.'' ''

{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}

Users who endorse this summary:

Outside view
I'm not sure I understand why the concern is troubling. Yes, his English is obviously better when contributing to articles. But what does that prove? Almost everybody I know spells and uses grammar much better when writing formally than when just informally writing things to other people over the internet. For some people, it takes lots of time to write correctly, so they only do it when it is required for some reason or another, and don't otherwise. Chatspeak came from people not caring about proper English when informally communicating over the Internet. So without many concrete examples of plagarism, I don't see a reason to think it's a problem. -Amarkov blahedits 21:08, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:
 * 1) Amarkov blahedits 21:08, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) Eron Talk 23:56, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Lethaniol agree, need more examples of consistent plagiarism if this is really to be an issue. 15:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Further remark from Jmabel
As discussed above, Vintila's refusal to actually deny the accusation of plagiarism was particularly troubling to me. He has now done so, although he has chosen to do so on his own user talk page, apparently because he refuses to participate in this RFC. In those remarks, he also explcitly cites his source for the edit that Dahn complained about. I feel a lot better about the situation given that we are out of "non-denial denial" mode. I take it that Dahn probably still has an issue, and clearly Vintila now has an issue with Dahn. I'd suggest that they should seek mediation, since they are both significant contributors to articles in the same subject matter areas, and will continually be crossing paths. - Jmabel | Talk 03:20, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Summary
Vintila denies plagiarism, and no source has been identified. The paragraph is currently unreferenced. There bein no evident way to progress from here, all parties appear content to move on. Guy (Help!) 21:56, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Discussion
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