Wikipedia talk:Reusing Wikipedia content/Archive 1

Press coverage
From Press coverage
 * Note: If there are errors in a news articles, then please post the matter to the Wikimedia Communications Committee's talk page. This way, the Wikimedia Foundation can send an official letter to the editor, or request for a correction.

--Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 19:06, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Permission policy for linking to Wikipedia is needed
I think there should be a section on whether people can add links to Wikipedia pages on their webpages. I couldn't find any information on this anywhere in Wikipedia using simple Google searching. The answer is not obvious (I don't know, and I am a longtime editor) and deserves to be spelled out in multiple places in Wikipedia, IMO. David 16:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Crediting anonymous authors under GFDL
What is the procedure where the principal authors are not registered users? Should one credit "anonymous" and maybe add their IP address too? Or should one simply ignore the anonymous users and only credit the registered ones? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

Reuse violation
There's a "book" on google books which is a dump of various wikipedia articles. It does not contain the text of the GPL. It can be found here, entitled Terrorism & It's Effects By various. I almost used it as a circular reference.... -- 67.98.206.2 19:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll try reposting this at the help desk. -- 67.98.206.2 21:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Non credit
There is a link to a Times article in the J. P. R. Williams article used as a source but it is broken. Some of the material which was based on that article was removed in two edits on June 9 of this year. While looking new for sources to cover the deleted material I came across this article: "The last line of defence February 19, 2007. The section on JPR cearly a copies some of the J. P. R. Williams article on 15 February 2007 and does not credit Wikipedia or mention the GFDL. Is there a place were these things are logged? Do we have a policy on this? --Philip Baird Shearer 12:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Where can I ask for help?
I noticed that this IMDb article is a copy past from Wikipedia. Can anyone find out if this is a copyright violation. --Steinninn 03:39, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Raids Magazine
User Russoswiss has scanned this page from the French magazine "Raids" January's edition article on the Finnish Defence Forces. As it seems they did credit the graphic to Matthieu Pleissinger... when in fact I created the graphic and published it under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 at commons - commons:Image:Finnish Army.png. Obviously Raids magazine violated this license as they did not "appropriately attribute it" neither to wikipedia nor me. What can - respectively should - we do now? I'm happy anytime anyone uses one of the 104 Order of Battle graphics I created, but only if they at least attribute it to wikipedia and do not claim authorship themselves! Thanks, --noclador (talk) 18:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I just wish to add that I've scanned the Page 37, of the #260 (January 2008). I have not found any credits to Wikipedia nor to the original artist in the article. I wish to add that the article was written by Pierre Razoux, Matthieu Pleissinger apparently only supplied the graphic. Russoswiss (talk) 21:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I think this page (for the CC portion) or this page (for the GFDL portion) might help answer some of your questions. As I understand it, both answers should apply to print violations as well. I'll be interested to know how this turns out...--DO11.10 (talk) 22:52, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I just wrote them a detailed letter lining out what the CC license demands, how they violated the license, what repercussions this might have, that they need to attribute the graphic correctly in the next edition of Raids magazine and that nonetheless they are welcome to also use the other 103 graphics I created, as long as they clearly and correctly attribute them. Any answer I will get, I will post here. --noclador (talk) 22:49, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Cut and paste copyright violation
The following webpage is copied from Wikipedia's public domain page.

http://www.exampleproblems.com/wiki/index.php/Public_domain

No mention of the GFDL. I think this is very funny, myself. Sam nead (talk) 16:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Plagiarism of a wiki article
I've spent half an hour looking for somewhere where I can report copying of a wiki article by an outside site. I found a dozen ways to report Wiki material copying outside content but no way to report license abuse outside of wiki. Anyway -

www.squidoo.com/the-history-of-drum-and-bass

is blatant plagiarism of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_drum_and_bass

--Dustek (talk) 18:30, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Licence violation
By The Daily Mail here:. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.31.164.67 (talk) 10:36, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Contacting Wikipedia writers & CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GNU Compatibility
People for Earth, a new ECO online social community with a well integrated wiki Eco Guide has just been released. Our mission is to inspire and empower individuals to get green, take action and enjoy doing it. Moreover People for Earth aims to become the world's largest, free green wiki Guide, consisting of: Every start of a wiki is challenging and People for Earth need some quality content in the wiki section - an inspiring kick-start, with adding the hottest or most important green content. I have two questions: a) We are thinking of asking some of your editors that have created some of the best green content on your pages to contribute some content to People for Earth ECO Guide. What is WIKIPEDIA’s policy on asking such persons to contribute via Wikipedia’s websites and email? b) Our content is licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0. Is it already known when GNU and our licence will become compatible?. Thank you for your answer. Klemen Podjed, People for Earth —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.61.72.202 (talk) 09:58, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) How to articles (e.g. like on www.wikihow.com)
 * 2) What is (encyclopaedical) articles
 * 3) wiki green guides (our primarily goal).

Photos
Is it possible to expand this policy to cover the reuse of photos. The case that inspired it is this article which just says (Source:Wikipedia) by way of attribution. AndrewRT(Talk) 01:52, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Reuse of images
This page should probably also discuss the reuse of images on Wikipedia, or at least obviously point to another page that discusses that. Mike Peel (talk) 05:27, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Came to make the same point. We should probably sofixit but I'm not strong on copyright law. Skomorokh,  barbarian  07:47, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I can help with that. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:44, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added. Some of the material is copied from the OTRS wiki, attributed in edit summary. A not particularly pretty list of authors below. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:14, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

* (cur) (prev) 20:20, 2 August 2009 Mwpnl (Talk | contribs) (1,509 bytes) (Updated in OTRS. Thank you) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 11:34, 30 July 2009 Moonriddengirl (Talk | contribs) (1,507 bytes) (status modified; Stifle's changes need to be implemented.) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 08:24, 16 June 2009 Stifle (Talk | contribs) (1,509 bytes) (CC-BY-SA) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 15:20, 21 July 2008 Guillom (Talk | contribs) m (1,423 bytes) (up-to-date) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 01:29, 19 July 2008 Mike.lifeguard (Talk | contribs) (1,421 bytes) (consistent spelling & link to COM:L too) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 14:27, 8 July 2008 Rjd0060 (Talk | contribs) (1,367 bytes) (Assessment and link to the system message) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 02:22, 25 November 2007 Cbrown1023 (Talk | contribs) m (Response:OTRS/en/Permission for image moved to Response:En-Permission for image: better name) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 01:18, 20 November 2007 Cbrown1023 (Talk | contribs) m (1,179 bytes) (Remove_OTRS_from_category) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 14:59, 19 November 2007 Guillom (Talk | contribs) m (9 revision(s) from meta:OTRS/en/Permission for image) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 21:47, 30 May 2007 Bensin (Talk) m (1,184 bytes) (re cat to Category:OTRS boilerplate messages in English) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 13:37, 27 May 2007 Bensin (Talk) m (1,152 bytes) (re cat) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 13:11, 9 June 2006 MaxSem (Talk) m (1,131 bytes) (Category:OTRS) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 16:52, 11 February 2006 Sannse (Talk) (1,112 bytes) (small change) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 02:52, 11 February 2006 Michael Snow (Talk) (1,115 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 02:12, 11 February 2006 David.Monniaux (Talk) (1,108 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 02:05, 11 February 2006 David.Monniaux (Talk) (907 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 05:53, 9 September 2005 Kate (Talk) (571 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (prev) 05:44, 9 September 2005 Kate (Talk) (584 bytes)

Reuse within Wikipedia
The copyright policies are not clear as to what type of attribution, if any, is necessary for content that is copied from one article to another. For example, content from here appears to have been copied to here and the original author wants to see attribution on the target page. Is a dummy edit summary or a talk page note sufficient? -- Mufka (u) (t) (c) 11:25, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * An edit summary link is typically all that is deemed necessary when forking an article. Skomorokh,  barbarian  07:48, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Although it has not yet been pumped, there is a proposed guideline for this process at Copying within Wikipedia. It seems to be widely misunderstood. Contributions to it are most welcome. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:43, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Now pumped. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:09, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Policy tag
The tag at the top of the page seems inappropriate, since this isn't policy for WP editors to follow, rather for the outside world to follow. Can we have a special version of the policy template for pages like this?--Kotniski (talk) 20:15, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I played with the policy template to solve that problem. (Though a better solution would be to do it with an explicit parameter in the template rather than with PAGENAME - that would require edit access to the pages though, which I don't have.)--Kotniski (talk) 21:29, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

editprotected Please repeat the "policy" template with official policy (which will generate the correct text without the kludge of a switch in the policy template code).--Kotniski (talk) 12:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Related topic: this page might get a new policy category; the discussion is at WP:VPP. - Dank (push to talk) 23:30, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Book, not a website
I have discovered that a book, Global Encyclopedia of Islamic Mystics and Mysticism, incorporates text from Aissawa and other English Wikipedia articles. No credit given to Wikipedia, no mention of CC/GFDL, etc. I am not sure how or where to report something like this; there are instructions on what to do about websites, but not printed material. (I have already asked at Wikipedia talk:Mirrors and forks.) Also wondering how, or whether, to notify the book's publishers about it. See also: Mirrors and forks/Ghi, Talk:Aissawa. Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:45, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

CC example
Currently, we have;


 * 1 Text content


 * 1.1 Re-use of text under Creative Commons Attribute Share-Alike
 * 1.2 Re-use of text under the GNU Free Documentation License
 * 1.3 Example notice

The current example notice is all about GFDL, and I think that it would be more helpful to provide an appropriate example under CC.

The text explanations are complicated, and a 'copy paste' example would help, I think. I would imagine (from my attempt at understanding it) that this would do;

 An example notice, for an article that uses the Wikipedia article Metasyntactic variable under CC-BY-SA, might read as follows:


 * This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Metasyntactic_variable", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

I'd be grateful if others could check and confirm if that would be valid (and if so, maybe just add it in)  Chzz  ► 17:58, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
 * No comments, so ✅ as requested. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:38, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Grammar fix
editprotected Under "Fair use materials and special requirements", in the second paragraph of the section, there should be a comma between "comtemplate" and "it", as in: "As 'fair use' is specific to the use that you contemplate, it is best if your describe the fair use rationale for such specific use [...]". -- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 20:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Declined A comma here is possible, but not essential. It is purely a matter of style, and I see no compelling reason to overturn the original editor's judgement. JamesBWatson (talk) 21:16, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I think a comma would help. Otherwise, it can be misread, ie;

As "fair use" is specific to the use that you contemplate it is best if your describe the fair use rationale for such specific use


 * In addition, surely the word 'your' should be 'you'?  Chzz  ► 13:49, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Piotrus, 11 November 2010
Please add a link to commons:Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia to Images and other media section. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅. You didn't specify how you wanted the link included, so I hope that's okay. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Point to correct article in Example Notice?
In the "Example notice" section, do we want to point the link to the article to the actual article rather than the Wikipedia home page? If so, it should read
 * This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Metasyntactic_variable", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

-- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 05:57, 21 November 2010 (UTC)


 * ✅ —  Tivedshambo   (t/c) 08:30, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

"View authors"
Driven by the discussion of the large scale re-use on amazon (see http://www.amazon.com/wiki/James_Joyce) I'd suggest adding a "(view authors)", pointing directly to the page history on Wikipedia, in our Reusing Wikipedia content. --Pjacobi (talk) 12:02, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Minor endash issue
There is a minor endash issue in the "See also" section. Please change  to 
 * Meta:Importing and exporting table - table showing when it is OK to import from/export to various different licensing schemes
 * Meta:Importing and exporting table – table showing when it is OK to import from/export to various different licensing schemes

Cheers, — mc10 ( t / c ) 04:53, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ —  Tivedshambo   (t/c) 06:11, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Plagarism warning
I feel like this policy page should warn readers that using wikipedia content verbaitim, while legal, would be considered cheating in an academic setting. I know it's obvious, but the overall permissiveness of the page might fool some readers into thinking it's ok to use because it's legal. i kan reed (talk) 14:06, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Edit request on 28 December 2011
In the explanation of the example in "1.3 Example Notice", the GFDL is mentioned three times, although the example uses CC-BY-SA.

The current text:

("Metasyntactic variable" and the Wikipedia URL must of course be substituted accordingly, and you should replace the link http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html to point to a local copy of the GFDL text on your server.)

Alternatively you can distribute your copy of "Metasyntactic variable" along with a copy of the GFDL (as explained in the text) [...]

Should be changed to:

("Metasyntactic variable" and the Wikipedia URL must of course be substituted accordingly, and you should replace the link http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ to point to a local copy of the CC-BY-SA text on your server.)

Alternatively you can distribute your copy of "Metasyntactic variable" along with a copy of the CC-BY-SA (as explained in the text) [...]

Roschnowski (talk) 10:13, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Anomie⚔ 16:33, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Technical note
I've been bold and added a brief note about technically how you copy an image. If someone's here, they're probably interested in both technical and legal aspects. My change should not affect any legal interpretation. Superm401 - Talk 18:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Just a thought
I know we care a lot about the subject - because poor reuse often undermines our widest goals and beliefs - but is this page really suited to being a policy? The header thing was tweaked because this isn't about Wikipedia editors. I'd hate to think that "Policy" was nothing more than the emphasis of a position, rather than a proper mechanism for ensuring things went smoothly. I realise inerteria is probably too great, but in general I'm a definite fan of limiting the amount of policies - or to some (disputed extent) the amount we expect new users to read. Any thoughts? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 19:03, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Just a thought
I know we care a lot about the subject - because poor reuse often undermines our widest goals and beliefs - but is this page really suited to being a policy? The header thing was tweaked because this isn't about Wikipedia editors. I'd hate to think that "Policy" was nothing more than the emphasis of a position, rather than a proper mechanism for ensuring things went smoothly. I realise inerteria is probably too great, but in general I'm a definite fan of limiting the amount of policies - or to some (disputed extent) the amount we expect new users to read. Any thoughts? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 19:03, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

The plagiarism of (not by) Wikipedia
The beginning of the following discussion was moved from the Help Desk:

Is there a place (such as a project or group) somewhere within Wikipedia that discusses plagiarism from Wikipedia? I'm interested in the question of whether Wikipedia can actually be plagiarized (saw an example at List of plagiarism controversies, saw one in the NYT 24 June). If an author grabs a paragraph and pastes it in her book, by the time the book is printed, the paragraph could be edited so that there's no longer a close enough correlation to call it plagiarism. Or it could be deleted altogether. This seems like an interesting philosophical problem. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:17, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe the talk page of WP:REUSE? – ukexpat (talk) 14:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is liscenced under GDFL and recently under CC-BY-SA. This means that any content on wikipedia may be copied, adapted and even sold. Under the new CC-BY-SA liscence the only condition is that any content used from wikipedia is a) Shared alike (Meaning that adaptions must be shared under the same liscence) and b) Wikipedia must be attributed (mentioned).


 * As for violations masked by edits, we can find them trough wikiblame and the page history which contains a complete copy of each page modification since it was placed. Excirial ( Contact me, Contribs ) 14:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * So from a legal standpoint, pasting a paragraph from Wikipedia without attribution into a book that is then published and put under its own copyright is or is not a matter of law? And what would the remedy be, since there's no loss to Wikipedia? (Or maybe there is.) The ethical issue is the same as with any plagiarism: the author passes off work as her own that isn't. (I assume it's the ethical dimension that would cause one to track down an older version and shame the violator in the public square?) As you note, contributors are warned that their work may be recycled elsewhere for profit. I still find it interesting in thinking about "intellectual property": Wikipedia is kinda like the Heracleitan panta rhei, everything's in flux, so when someone puts a dipper into the river and distributes it to people who want a drink, and then charges them money for it, what exactly has she stolen? The river itself is not altered. I'm not taking a position. Just thinking out loud (usually not a good thing, admittedly). Cynwolfe (talk) 15:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I support creating a list of such instances, it is badly needed to showcase the growing problem. Signpost has a list that's like not complete: Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-03-14/In_the_news, Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-01-16/Tim_Ryan_dismissed, Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-03-20/In_the_news, Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-01-08/Press_plagiarism, Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-11-19/Khobar_plagiarism. Recently we found an academic paper plagiarizing Wikipedia: Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources. I suggest adding such examples to List_of_plagiarism_controversies, and we could use a relevant para at WP:PLAGIARISM or such. PS. Here's a discussion of a plagiarism of Polish wikipedia content by an academic in a popular science article in an online sci-fi portal (all in Polish). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:37, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

User:Piotrus mentioned this thread at Wikipedia talk:Plagiarism, As I said there I have raised this issue before (see Village pump (policy)/Archive 50). I think a better way to go would be to distribute the information by producing a template for the top of the article's talk page (with a category). Then it would be available to editors who edit the page but are not aware of the existence of a particular list page, and the category would be an automatically generate a list. --PBS (talk) 19:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Another interesting story: Village_pump_(miscellaneous)/Archive_20. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 04:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Does anyone in the Wikipedia community check all the books sold by Amazon.com like that are described as "Edited by <> from high quality Wikipedia articles". These are not only being plagiarised, people are making money from other people's work on Wikipedia. It seems to be highly immoral -- SteveCrook (talk) 05:30, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Plagiarism of WP content
Hi,

I have posted at the Village Pump Idea lab with the goal of getting some clear policy/procedure guidance on addressing external plagiarism of WP content. Since this issue comes up frequently on this talk page, I am hoping that by posting here I can promote broader discussion of the topic at WP:VPI with the goal of eventually getting some guidance and template language to direct others to, even if the process itself is dependent on individual initiative.

thanks.

UseTheCommandLine (talk) 20:24, 5 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Discussion now archived at Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 9 -- PBS (talk) 10:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Backwards copying: when Wikipedia had (or may have had) it first
This is not (now) the correct page to discuss problems of unattributed backwards copying of Wikipedia text. There is guidance of what to do (and mention a suitable talk page template backwardscopy) when such cases are found at Copyright problems and discussions about that guidance should be addressed to the talk page Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems. -- PBS (talk) 10:11, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

See Mirrors and forks for advise to Wikipedia editors on how to make requests to external websites that they acknowledge Wikipedia copyright when they are clearly in breach of that copyright. -- PBS (talk) 10:23, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

May 2013 changes
I've made some changes here to try to make sure we offer sound guidance to our reusers. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:57, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I added the word "generally" to text reuse. Just as some images are used under fair use, so is some text. This is addressed in the body.
 * I duplicated part of a note about local jurisdictional laws from the body into the lead. This is an important point, as some text that is PD in the US is not PD in the rest of the wo45rld.
 * I borrowed from Commons notice of potential other issues.
 * I suggested an alternative route (licensed attorney) to finding out specifics of their own use.
 * I made clear that an example in the body was an example and not the extent of that particular issue.

Wikimedia project not linking to source material
I have noticed that both Wikipedia and Creative Commons, among other shared-content sites, both recommend linking to re-published source materials when possible.

Recently, a Wikimedia project that borrows heavily from a CC/SA licensed website has stopped linking back to its source material. It seems to be the doing of a single motivated user, but the rest of the community has gone along with it simply because they dislike the website they borrow their content from (which owns none of said content).

I think that's neither here nor there, but it does seem to fly in the face of both best practices and common courtesy to the original authors of that content, not to mention copyright. Is there anything I as an individual can do to prompt them to change back their page attribution so that it is easy to locate the original authors of the content they're republishing?

There is a discussion happening here:

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Travellers%27_pub#Are_we_breaking_our_own_rules_of_attributing

Thank you, Travel doc96 (talk) 23:00, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I see that your account at Wikivoyage is rather new and you have contributed, to date, two content edits there. Your record on Wikipedia as less impressive. Do you have any other history with Wikitravel, or with Wikivoyage, or any other WMF project, perhaps under another name?
 * You could direct your enquiries to the WMF legal department, who could give your complaint the attention and response it deserves, rather than Wikipedia, which has no jurisdiction over Wikivoyage. In case you were not aware, they are separate projects.
 * I request that you declare any conflict of interest before further discussion. I would not like you to claim you were not warned. &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:17, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 13 July 2014
Remove the blank line after  in the lead, as it's causing unnecessary whitespace.

Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 14:27, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There isn't one. There's a blank line before though, and that may be what is causing the gap. But I do think that the  should be moved to the top, per WP:HNP. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:32, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done I've removed the extra whitespace and moved the hatnote to the top. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 04:32, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 26 August 2014
The header says "Re-use of text under Creative Commons Attribute Share-Alike", which is not the correct name of the licence. It should say "Re-use of text under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike".

Vclaw (talk) 11:05, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 12:28, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Hybrid neural networking & predictive modeling?

 * Proposal: create new section on this page, or create new page.
 * Plan:
 * 1. Discuss artificial neural networking, biological neural networking and hybrid neural networking.
 * 2. Highlight fusion memetic concepts, based on published studies, that highlight the remarkable potential of hybrid networking.
 * 3. Explain how hybrid networking combined with TempDer predictive modeling combined with TZ de-identification can significantly improve problem solving and other conceptual abilities, and may serve as a useful foundation for Wiki-reform movement.
 * To do...

Ghost-of-Diderot (talk) 22:11, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content. How does your proposal fit in with that? -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:44, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Example notice links back to article deleted on Wikipedia
In the last paragraph of the Example notice section:
 * Another "example notice" can be based on a more informative and only slightly longer notice used (very easily used, because it is in a very short template) on Wikia. See example in use at http://fisherymanagement.wikia.com/wiki/Template_talk:Taxobox_begin

Following the links Wikipedia or (view authors) on the Wikia page takes the user to pages on Wikipedias that have been deleted. Please can the link be fixed to e.g. http://fisherymanagement.wikia.com/wiki/Lutjanidae which is functional? Rob Kam (talk) 14:37, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done I've replaced the Wikia links with a link to the newly created Template:En-WP attribution notice, and I've included an example of the template output as well. That should sort out the deleted links problem and provide some future-proofing as well. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 07:15, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

How to attribute correctly to deleted articles?
How to correctly give attribution when the original Wikipedia article and its history have been deleted? However before the deletion the article was exported from Wikipedia along with its full history and this is still available in the other wiki. -- Rob Kam (talk) 19:06, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The important thing is that the authors get attribution. If you have exported the page history, then that already contains all of the authors, so that may be enough to provide attribution from a legal standpoint. I would also mention that you exported it from en.wikipedia.org, and provide the URL to Wikipedia's deleted article, so that readers know to look on Wikipedia for the authors' user pages rather than trying to find them on your local wiki. If in doubt, you can provide attribution by including a full list of authors (minus extremely small/irrelevant contributions) on the talk page. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 05:54, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Linking to Wikipedia
Please add a link to Linking to Wikipedia in the "See also" section. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:41, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Done. Killiondude (talk) 03:07, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Remove interwiki (hu)
Please remove Hungarian interlanuage link (there is a more matching page, see Wikidata). Thanks! --Tacsipacsi (talk) 12:43, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Removed all interwiki links &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:56, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

add link to Copying within Wikipedia
Request to change the hatnote at the top from to 92.64.31.85 (talk) 14:11, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * No opposition so ✅. I've also shortened it a bit - this latter change is revertable on request. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:11, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 27 November 2015
ShannonStringfield (talk) 16:19, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format.  Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 21:52, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Protected edit
For the sake of grammar, please change the text  in the GFDL section to. I also wonder whether the HTML format is really a "transparent" copy, but that's a separate issue... — This, that and the other (talk) 10:56, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 13:17, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Technical content
Hello! I can't find any hint of how can I reuse some technical content from Wikipedia. I mean templates source code, Lua Modules source code, documentation, etc. Is it assumed as "text content", or is it "non-text media"? What is it? Is it subject to licensing in Wikipedia? Should I add "This template uses material from Wikipedia" banner for imported templates in my new wiki? ~ Nirvanchik ~ ⊤άλҟ 22:27, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, at least I'll add an edit comment attributing imported text/code to Wikipedia. ~ Nirvanchik ~ ⊤άλҟ 17:31, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Public listing.
How can I delete a public listing so it does not conflict with my business site Moya Singh (talk) 03:27, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

wikia.org
How about that wikia.org. I've read some interesting info here. Some I do not think is correct. Some I did not know. Some that I need a new Bachelor's to begin to understand. However, this other website who horrifying to me. Kind of reminded me of this one that I have made creating new talk sections as a hobby of mine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rip Van Winkle and Humpty Dumpty (talk • contribs) 04:56, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 15 January 2017
顓如 (talk) 17:17, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Empty request. — xaosflux  Talk 17:24, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Have an explicit (Re-use) link on image thumbnails
Please comment there. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:53, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

CC BY-SA 3.0 licence requirements for keeping intact disclaimers
The CC BY-SA 3.0 licence under which many works on Wikipedia are licensed, imposes the following obligation on redistributors of works licensed under the licence:


 * You must keep intact all notices that refer ... to the disclaimer of warranties with every copy of the Work You Distribute ...
 * - from 4(a) (in Restrictions section)

After traversing the Wikipedia Disclaimers link, I found that there were in fact six Wikipedia disclaimers (at the time of writing): Content disclaimer; Legal disclaimer; Medical disclaimer; Risk disclaimer; Survey disclaimer; and General disclaimer.

It would be useful for Wikipedia to add some official clarification on whether all these disclaimers need to be included for redistributing CC BY-SA 3.0 material obtained from Wikipedia. Currently, Creative Commons don't seem to make this disclaimer requirement very clear (which doesn't help either).

--MarkJFernandes (talk) 16:50, 13 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I would suggest asking the question at Wikipedia talk:Reusing Wikipedia content. This page is for discussing improvements to the Wikipedia disclaimers category. --Bsherr (talk) 18:03, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm trying to do that. I'm not yet autoconfirmed so can't edit the semi-protected talk page for the page you've mentioned (trying to make 10 edits so that I get autoconfirmed). Regardless, I do think it's worthwhile mentioning it here as it may be a good idea to add clarity as to which disclaimers (if any) need to be included, in this disclaimers section. I know that personally, I went here first, before I discovered the Wikipedia page on reusing Wikipedia content. --MarkJFernandes (talk) 18:14, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Understood. I've requested unprotection of that talk page. Then we'll go from there. Meanwhile, I'll leave the conversation here. --Bsherr (talk) 18:25, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
 * You've been granted the confirmed user right, and I've moved the conversation now. --Bsherr (talk) 05:24, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

CC BY-SA 3.0 licence requirements for credits in adaptations/collections that also has credits for other non-CC works
4c(iv) of CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, with its context and associated note, reads:


 * "If You Distribute, or Publicly Perform the Work or any Adaptations or Collections, You must, unless a request has been made pursuant to Section 4(a), ... provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing:" "... consistent with section 3(b), in the case of an Adaptation, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Adaptation (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). The credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors."

So, in my project I have works under the UK's Open Government Licence (OGL), with CC BY-SA 3.0 works obtained from Wikipedia. It's a collection (and actually also adaptations). Because of the OGL, most of the OGL works have author credits in my main legal notice. Now, my problem is that I made use of very many Wikipedia articles for the project (probably much more than 600), and I'm not sure the exact dates when I used them nor do I have copies of the pages frozen at the precise time I made use of them. But even if I could figure out the author credits applicable to exactly when I used the pages, figuring out the authorship of just bits and pieces of the pages I used, appears to be something of a nightmare.

I was hoping that simply linking to the pages would be sufficient which is roughly hinted at, on this Wikipedia guidance page. However, in light of the excerpts above, it appears this isn't necessarily the case, at least for my project based on works under a mix of licences.

However, there is a possibility that linking to the pages will be enough, if "...a request has been made pursuant to Section 4(a)..." (as outlined above).

So finally, to get to my specific issue, is it taken as granted that such a '4a' request is made for content provided by Wikipedia, thereby allowing for me (and other people in similar positions) to only need to link to the Wikipedia pages in relation to providing sufficient credit? If this is the case, I think it is a good idea to make it explicitly clear that this is the case, on this Reusing Wikipedia Content page.

Additional Information

 * 4a request:
 * "... If You create a Collection, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Collection any credit as required by Section 4(c), as requested. If You create an Adaptation, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Adaptation any credit as required by Section 4(c), as requested.:

--MarkJFernandes (talk) 14:44, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
 * My best short answer to your question is from the text of this wiki policy:
 * "To re-distribute a text page in any form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using"


 * You quoted Creative Commons license text and asked about that. Wikipedia uses these licenses but of course Creative Commons the legal organization maintains those and are the most authoritative source for interpreting them. Know that you are not directing your question to the organization which maintains the license.


 * The time you pulled content from articles does not matter. All content is in the Help:Page history, which explains how the URL connects to authors. Click "history" at the top of any article to see the logs, and click page statistics for a visualization of that data. There is a presentation of authorship there.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:46, 18 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. At least one person has replied.
 * So first to address whether this enquiry is better addressed to Creative Commons: from looking at the advice from CC, and reading the legal code, it appears the credit you suggest is just not sufficient in my circumstances. So starting from that starting point, given the prominence of Wikipedia, and the likely very large number of materials licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, I wanted to get further advice on reusing Wikipedia materials from Wikipedia. At the heart and soul of Wikipedia is the notion of being able to freely reuse such information. Therefore, being able to reuse Wikipedia material is likely very important to Wikipedia.


 * Looking at the policy you have quoted, technically, the policy doesn't specify that that is all that is required for author credit. And as I have pointed out, with reference to the actual licence legal code, more is (or at least seems to be) required. From my research, things probably would be okay if version 4.0 of the licence had been used.


 * Thanks for pointing out that it doesn't matter that I don't know the time I pulled the content.
 * --MarkJFernandes (talk) 19:00, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I also wish we could adopt CC 4.0 for text. The situation is challenging because we are sort of locked into 3.0, whereas 4.0 has a provision for perpetual version updating.
 * The most active discussion forum in Wikimedia projects for copyright is Commons:Commons:Village pump/Copyright. However, people there mostly discuss non-text media and wish to avoid most discussion of Wikipedia. My view of the present circumstance as it applies to you is that ambiguity is part of the current practice. I cannot resolve your concerns, but if I were to make a recommendation, it is that a show of good will and intent to fully comply with attribution terms generally satisfies the Wikipedia community.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  19:27, 18 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your advice.


 * Re. being locked into 3.0, I suggest you change your licensing so that for all new contributions, they are licensed under 4.0 (and not 3.0) if using the CC-BY-SA licence. For all past contributions, I suggest you send a communication to all your users, requesting that they re-licence under 4.0 (instead of it being under 3.0). The sooner you do these things, the better, as the passing of time makes these changes more difficult. Must be forward-thinking about these things.


 * Then hopefully the majority of your CC-BY-SA works will become licensed under version 4.0 rather than 3.0; you can still use 3.0 for those works for which you were unable to 'up-version' the licenses.


 * All the best,
 * --MarkJFernandes (talk) 11:53, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
 * See meta:Terms of use/Creative Commons 4.0 and meta:Talk:Terms_of_use/Creative_Commons_4.0. This is the best information I have. Feel free to ask there.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  12:10, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Full protection?
Why not template protection?It IS a template.have you tried 30/500 protection-it might stop vandalism. Gale5050 (talk) 22:26, 25 February 2020 (UTC) And why is this also semi protected and not like anyone can edit?Gale5050 (talk) 22:27, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Legal reasons. JJP...MASTER![talk to] JJP... master? 23:28, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Remove deprecated parameter from syntaxhighlight
Please change <syntaxhighlight lang="html5" enclose="div"> to to remove it from Category:Pages using deprecated enclose attributes. syntaxhighlight's enclose parameter is deprecated. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)  19:56, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ — xaosflux  Talk 16:01, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link to libre in the "Fair use materials and special requirements" section
Maybe it's supposed to link to Libre (word) instead? &horbar;JochemvanHees (talk) 23:36, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Added edit request template since it's been a while &horbar;Jochem van Hees (talk) 10:05, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Also in the "Text content" section there's a piped link to WP:GFDL, which is also a disambiguation page; it was added in Special:Diff/299879575, when it still was a redirect to Text of the GNU Free Documentation License. &horbar;Jochem van Hees (talk) 10:10, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ — xaosflux  Talk 15:13, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Does reuse of ideas from Wikipedia, not involving copyright, fall foul of the reuse restrictions of Wikipedia's terms & conditions?
Can't seem to get an answer on this, after having looked through Wikipedia help pages, as well as other brief internet-search research.

CC BY-SA & GFDL are copyright licences (AFAIK). Certain information extractions constitute reuse that falls outside copyright law, and so aren't governed & regulated by these licences: you can ignore such licences in such cases. In UK copyright law, we say that copyright covers the expressions of ideas, and not the underlying ideas themselves, and I think that likely applies to copyright worldwide.

This page seems to imply that when the Wikipedia terms & conditions mention content reuse, it refers only to reuse of the copyright in content. But it's not crystal clear. For example, if one Wikipedia article says that the present UK prime minister is Rishi Sunak, can I deliberately take that information from the Wikipedia article, and post it using a non-close paraphrasing of the information, on my personal public blog, without concerning myself with the content-reuse restrictions of the terms & conditions?

Thanks MarkJFernandes (talk) 10:51, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Your Rishi Sunak example seems fine, being an uncopyrightable fact. WP:Copying within Wikipedia (guideline) and WP:Copyright in lists (essay) cover similar concepts. Aside from WP:Copyright in lists, I didn't see anything particularly helpful in the first page of 20 results when searching Wikipedia: space for uncopyrightable fact. Flatscan (talk) 05:22, 5 December 2022 (UTC)