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Contributor copyright investigation

This CCI cleanup subpage has been opened because concerns of multiple point infringement have been substantiated and further steps are necessary to address the serious risk of copyright violation from the listed contributor. Listings are not intended to imply a presumption of bad faith on the part of any contributor, as copyright laws vary widely around the world and many contributors who violate Wikipedia's copyrights policy do so inadvertently through not understanding it or the United States' laws that govern it.

If you are here because of a note on an article's talk page explaining removal of text, please do not restore any removed text without first ensuring that the text does not duplicate, closely paraphrase or plagiarize from a previously published source. You are welcome to use sourced facts that may have been removed to create new content in your own words or to incorporate brief quotations of copyrighted material in accordance with the non-free content policy and guideline.

Instructions

All contributors with no history of copyright problems are welcome to contribute to clean up.

If contributors have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation, it may be assumed without further evidence that all of their major contributions are copyright violations, and they may be removed indiscriminately in accordance with Wikipedia:Copyright violations. However, to avoid collateral damage, efforts should be made when possible to verify infringement before removal.

When every section is completed, please alter the listing for this CCI at Wikipedia:CCI#Open_investigations to include the tag "completed=yes". This will alert a clerk that the listing needs to be archived.

  • {{CCI-open|Contributor name|Day Month Year|completed=yes}}

Text

  • Examine the article or the diffs linked below.
  • If the contributor has added creative content, either evaluate it carefully for copyright concerns or remove it.
  • If you remove text presumptively, place {{subst:CCI|name=Contributor name}} on the article's talk page.
  • If you specifically locate infringement and remove it (or revert to a previous clean version), place {{subst:cclean}} on the article's talk page. The url parameter may be optionally used to indicate source.
  • If there is insufficient creative content on the page for it to survive the removal of the text or it is impossible to extricate from subsequent improvements, replace it with {{subst:copyvio}}, linking to the investigation subpage in the url parameter. List the article as instructed at the copyright problems board, but you do not need to notify the contributor. Your note on the CCI investigation page serves that purpose.
  • To tag an article created by the contributor for presumptive deletion, place {{subst:copyvio|url=see talk}} on the article's face and {{subst:CCId|name=Contributor name}} on the article's talk page. List the article as instructed at the copyright problems board, but you do not need to notify the contributor.
  • After examining an article:
  • replace the diffs after the colon on the listing with indication of whether problem was found (add {{y}}) or not (add {{n}}). If the article is blanked and may be deleted, please indicate as much after the {{y}}.
  • Follow with your username and the time to indicate to others that the article has been evaluated and appropriately addressed. This is automatically generated by four tildes (~~~~)
  • If a section is complete, consider collapsing it by placing {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}} beneath the section header and after the final listing.

Background

 YHoshua

  • YHoshua (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  • Reported by The Devil's Advocate (talk)
  • Upon reviewing a Good Article nomination of the article History of Evansville, Indiana I noticed that several paragraphs in the article were directly copied or very closely paraphrased from third-party sources under copyright. This led me to examine other contributions the editor has made to find many other blatant violations. What I have found so far is:
  • History of Evansville, Indiana - Several paragraphs from the sections on "Foundation and early settlement" and "West side independence" appear to be copied from the following sources: [1] [2] [3]. One of them is a news article where a paragraph on religion in the source is directly copied to the article here and the other two are local government documents that would appear to fall under the copyright of those governments.
    • The paragraph on religion is a good point and one that was too carelessly used. That needs to be revised and I will work to correct it. The others, however, are paraphrased from numerous sources and not copyright infringement. As a principal advisor to the Mayor and contributor to the local government website's content, any other alleged infringement is either my own copy or used with permission. Most, however, are acceptable paraphrasing.--YHoshua (talk) 22:16, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lamasco - This article appears to be the origin of some of the offending information in the above article and was also added by the editor in question. It is the second link above from which the material was derived. Specifically, information about "Madduxport" and German immigration in the history section appears to be copied or closely paraphrased from the source.
    • There is no copying that I can find. If I'm missing something and/or was careless, please let me know so that it can be corrected. Right now I don't see anything and don't recall any sloppy paraphrasing.--YHoshua (talk) 22:16, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maurice Creek - Several phrases and sentence are taken verbatim or almost verbatim for a player bio here (only order is changed and a few words replaced with similar ones): [4].
    • This is a fair point, but by and large it is factual information (e.g. points scored in a particular year, etc.). Still, it does in fact need work, as do the next two. I'll work on these.--YHoshua (talk) 00:15, 1 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Victor Oladipo - Same as the one above. Much of the material copied from this bio: [5].
  • Will Sheehey - Again per above. From this bio: [6].
  • Alhambra Theatorium - Seems to be copied mostly from this source: [7].
    • One sentence in the article was verbatim, and I have since corrected it. But it isnt accurate to say its "mostly" copyvio. There are no other copyright infringements that I see. Additionally, I did not write all of the article.--YHoshua (talk) 22:16, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are additional articles where I have less certainty as it is possible the editor has permission given his association with the subjects, though they seem to be unnecessary copy-pastes that would represent COI issues:

  • Vectren - This edit appears to be a direct copy of the Corporation's website here: [8].
    • The entire article is far from a copy, but those sentences which are in fact derived from the website are done with full permission. Also note that not all contributions to this page are by me.--YHoshua (talk) 22:16, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library - Sole work of editor saved for minor automated edits that appears to mostly copy-past material from the library's website. Compare article section on library's locations to the various location pages here on the library's site: [9].

Even if the latter two were added with the permission of the copyright owners it does not appear that there is any mention of this permission provided on the articles or the talk page. I have not fully reviewed the History of Evansville article for possible further copyright issues, so that should be looked over fully in addition to any other article this editor has worked on or created. The Devil's Advocate (talk) 20:02, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Having just returned from helping to organize a Wikipedia meetup, I was disturbed to see these actions taken against me. I do not feel this warrants an investigation. To the extent any copyvio occurred, it was not intentional and is most certainly rare. In most of the articles above I always tried to dilute these paraphrases as far as possible so that, to my eye, they weren't "close." In many but not all cases, I also included my source in the article. Thankfully, he helped identify a few sentences which were in fact copyright infringement, and which I have corrected. And in any event, the matters can be handled by notifying me so that they could be cleaned up, and an encouragement to be more diligent in the future. Let's work to clean up and correct the mistakes identified here instead of engaging in needless and time-wasting full throttle investigations that will only serve to dampen the Wikipedia community.--YHoshua (talk) 22:40, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • [10] [11] [12] [13]. There is a need to systematically examine your contributions. The question is: are you willing to undertake this task in a self-directed manner? I agree that you did not deliberately violate the copyright policy. MER-C 12:45, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes--YHoshua (talk) 13:43, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Whether he is willing to do it himself does not address whether he should be doing it himself. His comments above suggest to me that he does not properly grasp the difference between using one's own words and shuffling around the words of others to make it look less like their words. Any look at the contributions of this editor should involve independent review and not be "self-directed" if we want to assure that all violations are addressed.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 15:38, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • On the contrary, I do properly grasp the difference and will be working to fix the areas of clean-up needed, which you have pointed out. However, this is not the proper venue for disputes over personal grudges you harbor. I'll work on cleaning things up.--YHoshua (talk) 16:06, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • Here's the survey, pick off any 10 items with problems, address them and post the diffs here with copyvio sources. Then I'll decide whether YHoshua is capable of addressing the close paraphrasing without a CCI. MER-C 04:22, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • Unfortunately I'm not sure how best to link to the changes, but I cleaned up at least ten errors on Indiana Hoosiers football. I'll continue to comb through pages and fix copyvio.--YHoshua (talk) 02:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • User has not edited in the past month. Accepting. MER-C 10:45, 10 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Contribution survey

YHoshua (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

This report covers contributions to 214 articles from timestamp 2005-01-19 23:24:09 UTC to timestamp 2012-07-08 22:55:55 UTC.

Articles 1 through 20

Articles 21 through 40

Articles 41 through 60

Articles 61 through 80

Articles 81 through 100

Articles 101 through 120

Articles 121 through 140

Articles 141 through 160

Articles 161 through 180

Articles 181 through 200

Articles 201 through 214

This report generated by Contribution Surveyor at 2012-08-10T10:44:42+00:00 in 0.15 sec.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations/YHoshua