Wikipedia talk:Republishers

Wikipedia mirror
Using Wikipedia mirror for now, but we probably need a purposed template as the format develops. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:25, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Alphascript and Betascript
Do Alphascript and Betascript from VDM Publishing belong here?

Advantage to maintaining multiple lists?
Hi. I just wanted to see if there's any advantage to maintaining this list separately from Mirrors and forks, which lists "publications that mirror (copy exactly) or fork (copy, but change parts of the material) Wikipedia." It seems a bit of duplicating effort to me, and I note that recently a lot of entries from the older list were copied over here. Wouldn't it be easier to just maintain the one list? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:31, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that one list would be easier as long as it falls within the scope of Mirrors and forks. Does it matter if the content is not online? Many republishers solely offer print-on-demand books and are not mirroring/forking online. Gobōnobo  + c 23:54, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No, it's fine if the content is not online. There are a number of book publications at Mirrors and forks. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:56, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose to merge this back into Mirrors and forks so that we only have one list and do not run the risk of failing to maintain both. The bulk of the content in this page was copied from that list, which is (of course) considerably longer than this one but to which all the points made here still apply. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:23, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Support merge. Yes, centralized works best. Look at it this way, someone just mentioned it here and I had no idea it existed. And that page has two lists of self-publishers as well, and these mirror-like items are next on that project's to do list. And let me take this opportunity to plug the fact that membership in that project is free for the rest of this month. History2007 (talk) 19:55, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment. Maybe there is something I don't get, but this page lists republishers of Wikipedia content in book form, while Mirrors and forks lists websites that duplicate Wikipedia content. So shouldn't this page be merged into List of self-publishing companies? Nageh (talk) 20:03, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I have just found Moonriddengirl's comment in the section above. I think it would make sense to separate web pages from book publishers. The former are way more plenty but usually easy to identify, while the latter are the ones most easily to sneak in as a reference in an article. Nageh (talk) 20:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually that is an interesting question in the context of Ontology (information science). One can use "paper vs web" as an attribute or use "repackage vs self-publish". E.g. Vantage Press, etc. are self-publishers (which charges authors) to publish. In most cases, Vantage type operations live on the money the authors (sometimes old people !) pay . These other Wiki-mirrors live on the money they collect from the public. Their business models are very different. History2007 (talk) 20:35, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, there are odd cases where a "publisher" (e.g., Tebbo) offering print-on-demand publication is used by a third person to repackage and sell Wikipedia content (e.g., this). So does the "publisher" count as a republisher? Is it a self-published source? Or is it a self-published source repackaging Wikipedia content?
 * As for the distinction, we could also use a two-level hierarchy, that is, a "paper" and a "web" list, and then include two sections, "self-published" and "republished". Or the other way around. Nageh (talk) 20:58, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, as always the business models often morph into each other. Although we can not use that term, the real title is "rip off artists". So the lines do get fuzzy, but it is not the end of the world as long as we make it clear they these are not WP:RS. History2007 (talk) 21:01, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Given that no one has objected to the merge, I think we can just do it, unless there are specific objections. I can then use that list to generate a report that flags their use, as in the case of self-publishers. History2007 (talk) 07:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

❌ This has been stale for nine months, so closing the merge. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:43, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

books used as sources
See  We are using Wikipedia pages via Hephaestus Books as sources on 57 articles in many languages. These need to be checked and fixed. Maybe we should an edit filter to a) warn the editor, and b) catch them when they do occur. John Vandenberg (chat) 09:22, 19 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, indeed. I am sorry, I was going to write that report generator and was distracted. Will try to do it tomorrow. There are three issues here:


 * The edit filter may be a good idea eventually, but will impose a burden on the Wikipedia servers, given that it will need to apply to every edit made to any page.


 * If a user just uses a book by ISBN, then the publisher name will not show and he edit filer will not block it. That is why the report generator needs to look up the ISBN eventually. I posted above about ISBN lists, but have not had a response yet. Looking the publisher on Worldcat may take over 5-10 seconds and is too long to impose on the filter.


 * If a user just uses a book title, and no publisher, neither of those two approaches will work. The report generator will need to look the book up on Worldcat and get the publisher name. That may well take 10-15 seconds, and hence should really run in the background.


 * I will try to work on that tomorrow. I will try to do the reports by project, so each project will know about the key pages in that project which have republisher, or self-publisher references. History2007 (talk) 10:40, 19 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The edit filter has been proposed before for mirrors, and was rejected as it would hit the filter limit— you can only invoke the edit filter so many times per page. Better to have a bot run through the lists of mirrors and republishers and mark them as unreliable sources. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 15:26, 19 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, that was my reasoning too. But, as a start I will try to generate a report for the self-published items, because some self-published items, e.g. A New Kind of Science are ok to use etc. Eventually a bot can be made, of course. On Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wikipedia reliability and Talk:List of self-publishing companies there were some discussions. But that was mostly for self-publishers rather than mirrors. History2007 (talk) 15:49, 19 May 2012 (UTC)


 * If we could gen a list of articles, I could run through them with AWB. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 16:01, 19 May 2012 (UTC)


 * By "list of articles" do you mean a list of articles per project? Else please clarify. Does AWB detect mirrors? History2007 (talk) 16:13, 19 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Anyway, FYI I wrote the program anyway given that it took only an hour or so. First version is working now, just needs touch up to present the results right, so in a day or two I will post some first reports, and then if you want to run through those with AWB, your help will be appreciated. History2007 (talk) 12:28, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry, I was distracted and did not work on the report. But now it is here for self-publishers. I will do a version for mirrors later, once we get feedback on this one. History2007 (talk) 08:15, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

eM Publications Contact Information
Does anyone know how I can contact the user behind eM Publications republishers? I want to make sure they are using WMF marks appropriately. Jking (WMF) (talk) 16:10, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Another book to add
Not sure if I should add it on the page, but will list here just in case. I found a book on Socks that copies articles as is from Wikipedia and then puts the book author's name in the copyright tag: http://books.google.com/books?id=0dgxZsGBMgEC Sold for 8 USD.


 * Title	Socks
 * Author	Ida Tomshinsky
 * Publisher	Xlibris Corporation
 * ISBN 1477160515, 9781477160510

Teemeah 편지 (letter)  09:04, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Encyclopaedic biography of world great geographists (Anmol Publications)
See my post at the help desk some months ago. It would be great if someone could check other books published by Anmol, thanks. Axolotl Nr.733 (talk) 15:54, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Found Contact Info for Global Vision Publishing House
I don't really know how to format the contact information correctly, so here is the link: globalvisionpub.com/globalbooks/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=17 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.183.240.104 (talk) 16:23, 30 November 2020 (UTC)