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Wikipedia:Copies of Wikipedia content (low degree of compliance)

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 68.187.232.169 (talk) at 03:31, 20 July 2004 ([http://www.virtualvermonter.com Virtualvermonter.com]). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Mirrors and Forks : (Numbers) ABC - DEF - GHI - JKL - MNO - PQR - STU - VWXYZ - All - Archive

This page lists sites that, in the opinion of the people who list them here, either do not comply at all, or fail in a very significant way to meet our licencing requirements. For instance they may claim their own copyright with all rights reserved on their pages. Wikipedia contributors are almost certain to take action against sites listed here. See the parent article for further details.

Please help preserve alphabetical order on this page.

Site Overviews

(A forum post.) See Talk:Alamanni.
  • No mention of Wikipedia
  • No mention of GNU FDL
  • Appear to be verbatim copies of (old versions of) many WP articles. Have not checked in great detail yet.
  • No mention of WP.
  • Main page mentions "free content", but no license info.
  • Looks pretty new - domain was registered 5 May 2004.
Please check facts before acting - I have not checked much, no time right now. Tualha 22:53, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Site seems to have updated with the wiki copyright
  • Most of main site is in Dutch
  • Copies the Semantic Web article completely
  • Mentions Wikipedia and has a link on the bottom (not clickable)
  • No GFDL Link
  • Sent standard GFDL email. David Newton 16:36, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(article about Howard Staunton)

  • link to current version of article, mentions Wikipedia as source
  • no link to GFDL (perhaps not needed - very short text)
    • I agree, but we could tell him to put source: wikipedia (under GFDL). wikipedia would link to article, gfdl to license?
    • It's long enough to be copyrighted, so they should probably license the entire thing under the GFDL. Which will be nice, because they have some nice photos we could use. Martin 10:41, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • Any more feedback for this? Should we tell them to license the entire article, or just add "(under GFDL)" with a link to the GFDL. The rest of the article is unrelated to the first part about Howard Staunton IMHO, so I don't see how it is even an extension of the Howard Staunton article. dave 18:28, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    • I suggest completely ignoring it. We're prominent enough that a link to our article with our name is ample notice that people can reuse that text. Chances are that we're better recognised as meaning open content than the initials GFDL are at this point... The picture of Howard Staunton appears to be a simple reproduction of a work made during his life and given his date of death and US law that means it is now in the public domain and can be taken from their site and used in the Wikipedia. Jamesday 21:05, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
  • Mention of wikipedia
  • No mention/link to GFDL
  • No link to wikipedia homepage or the article at wikipedia
  • Instead _they_ claim copyright of the article(s)
  • Examples: [1], [2], [3]
  • Sent the standard letter. --snoyes 18:16, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • Got the following autoreply - most probably chinese (don't know what character encoding they're using), can anyone translate it?:
ÄúµÄÓÊ??<thorn>ÒÑ??-ÊÕµ½¡£
ÓÉÓÚ1??ÖÏÈÉ??ú£¬¡¶Ö<ETH>1??<ETH>ÄÀíÈÈÏß¡·ÒÔ¼°¡¶½ñÈ??<ETH>ÄÀí¡·´??????<eth>ÔY´»ºÓʼ<thorn>*Éѯ»Ø¸´¡??
ºÎʱ»Ö¸´Áí<ETH><ETH>֪ͨ¡£
This seemed to be in Simplified Chinese. The first line is "Your mail has been received". The second is scrambled by the markup text beyond recognition ("due to...."). The third one seems to be "we would notify you separately on when to resume...". --Hlaw 15:10, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

(Several pages. [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16])

  • No mention of wikipedia
  • No mention of GFDL
  • Claims to own copyright
  • Standard letter sent by Arvindn 15 Nov 2003.
  • Still in violation - who sends another letter? Andre Engels 01:59, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Site's been down for a while -- Arvindn 12:55, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Site back up, follow up letter sent by me -- Arvindn 09:10, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC) Online contact form gives 404 when you hit "send", and email bounced. Any idea what to do? -- Arvindn 10:39, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • No link to original article
  • No mention of GFDL

Dutch wiki freeler

  • Mentions the dutch wiki and freeler are partners
  • No link from freelerhomepage, so not yet in production
  • They (as yet) have not yet contacted the dutch wiki
  • They have a simple perl script directly querying the wiki servers, it is NO MIRROR. They are using wiki bandwidth, cpu and memory.
  • With the complete database of course also comes the GNU/FDL.
  • site unreachable on morning fr Jan 9, possibly in reaction to discussions on dutch wikitech.
Appears to be gone now. [ alerante 02:16, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC) ]


chocolateboy 03:43, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

( http://encyclozine.com/ )

Many articles, sometimes older versions, for example see Artzia/Law EncycloZine is organized into subsites which include: Artzia.com, Eluzions.com DiXionary.com Kosmoi.com and possibly others, all very liberally plastered with links to books available on Amazon. Wikipedia articles are most likely to be met with on Artzia.com and Kosmoi.com

  • Not always link to current version of article
  • Not always link to GFDL
Year Pages for Eurovision takes from wikipedia for example see: http://eurovisionarchive.members.beeb.net/Years/1969.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest_1969 (they have added the interval sections witch i amn finsihing at the moment and its not exactly the same).
  • No mention of Wikipedia
  • No mention of GNU FDL
    • If there is any its not on each page.
      • Standard letter sent by Angela, 11 November 2003 via the feedback form on their site.
        • They now have a link with "From Wikipedia, licensed under the GFDL", but they link to the main page, not to the specific article. Angela 01:56, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
          • The link and mention of Wikipedia has now disapeard. - fonzy
            • Most of the site seems to not be working now. Maybe they are in the process of doing something with it and will add the links back in. I can't access any pages used to have Wikipedia content on them. Angela. 23:36, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)
          • The site seems to be working and seems to be hosted by beeb.net, which has a no illegal acts policy for its end users. A polite email to abuse at beeb.net would probably take care of the matter. May want to give their customer another reminder first, since it appears to be an individual's effort and individuals do take time to get things done. Perhaps give three months to do it and say we'll ask the BBC to take care of it if not fixed by then? Jamesday 21:21, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)


  • Standard follow-up sent by mav 10:53, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)
  • Edited version of the World Chess Championship article (this is on the official site of the 2004 FIDE World Chess Championship, and is quite a high-profile page)
  • No mention of Wikipedia
  • No mention of GFDL (FIDE claims copyright)
  • Slightly altered standard letter sent June 18, 2004 by Camembert
  • Uses Wikipedia articles - text from country / city articles used to pad out car-hire listings for respective locations.
  • No mention of GFDL
  • No mention of Wikipedia
  • Examples: [19] from United States. See [20] for more.
  • Copied Hangover article (after adding his own ad to the bottom!)
  • Claims copyright, no link to GFDL
  • (Moved up from "Obsolete Section" 24 March 2004)
  • No mention of wikipedia
  • No mention of GFDL
  • Claims to own copyright
  • Doesn't seem clear to me. If there's copying from the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, they probably both borrowed from the CCEL.org version; I caught this (and credited the source) in the Philipp Melanchthon article. Joelwest 01:54, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • It seems clear to everyone else but you. The only theory that you have offered is that both numerous (probably in the double digits) _different_ wikipedia editors and the creators of greatsite.com misappropriated material from a mysterious third source. I'd like to know what this third source is. Take the example that I named above. The edit adds a paraph starting "Besides translating the Bible, Tyndale also held and published views which were considered heretical, ...". Now do you honestly claim that a wikipedia user and the creators of greatsite.com both found the same paragraph somewhere and copied it? Do a google search for this first sentence: [21] - you'll see that the only websites that contain this material have taken it from wikipedia. (Funny enough the wikipedia page is not listed there.) I don't see how it could be more clear that they took the material for the Tyndale article as well as others from us. Please give some valid arguments besides saying that it is not clear to you. --snoyes 19:10, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
  • Lack of acknowledgement and copyright infringement

The site seems to include a non-current copy of Wikipedia content, specifically our "History of <country>" articles. There is no mention of Wikipedia or GFDL, and it claims to own copyright ("This site is (c) 2004. All rights reserved.").

  • Self-promotion

There have been numerous users created on Wikipedia whose purpose has been to subtly add links to our country pages to the history pages of those countries at historyofnations.net. List:

I didn't inform the site of this via e-mail. --Shallot 08:58, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The site is not necessarily in violation, as those history texts are from the State Department Background Notes. The spammer is a problem though, apparently abusing Wikipedia to try to get traffic to his various sites (another is ericdigests.org), all of which include copies of various public domain or GFDL material coupled with ads. The material is all available elsewhere without ads, so there is no purpose to it other than money-making. All links added by this spammer should be removed. Gzornenplatz 15:43, Jul 14, 2004 (UTC)
  • Mentions GFDL but clicking on it gives "!! ERROR !! PAGE NOT FOUND"
  • No name or link to original wikipedia article
  • Mention of the word "Wikipedia", but no link available
  • I'm going after this one. Quite a few articles that I have written mostly or exclusively are on that site, and that rather annoys me to say the least. David Newton 17:32, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • Standard letter sent. David Newton 17:41, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
    • Received a reply "Thanks for the email, I'll make sure to make the appropriate changes to my site." That was pretty quick, so I am optimistic over this one. David Newton 18:21, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
      • Second standard letter sent. David Newton 00:26, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Uses geography-related pages from wikipedia.
  • Mentions GFDL but clicking on it gives "!! ERROR !! PAGE NOT FOUND"
  • No name or link to original wikipedia article
  • Mention of the word "Wikipedia", but no link available
  • Same person as infopedia.ruv.net
  • Uses geography-related pages from wikipedia.
  • Mentions GFDL but clicking on it gives "!! ERROR !! PAGE NOT FOUND". (The main page of the website which is a copy of List of countries does not mention GFDL)
  • No name or link to original wikipedia article
  • Mention of the word "Wikipedia", but no link available
  • Same person as infopedia.ruv.net


  • Appears to be complete mirror of English Wikipedia (except images), including same layout
  • "We have integrated InfoWrangler? with Wikipedia"
  • Link to GNU FDL does not work -404 error.
  • Retains "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".
  • Claims Copyright © Object Positive Pty Ltd "All site content"
  • No link to Wikipedia or to article.
  • Sample article (Albania): Albania
Wow. This one is really obnoxious. They copy the site layout, even the edit buttons, so it looks like you're really on Wikipedia. Looks like it's a fairly old snapshot. Isomorphic 02:44, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment only: It demonstrates the run of a tool called infowrangler, as run against the Wikipedia database. Okay well, that seems like an interesting and innovative use of a wikipedia database. If they can tidy up their act a bit, this could become a good demonstration of what FSF licensing is all about. Now if only those folks could release infowrangler under the GPL ;-). Kim Bruning 12:18, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Does not acknowledge wikipedia authorship, links to wikipedia
  • States that the article is licensed under the GNU FDL.
  • Does not link to the relevant wikipedia page (or wikipedia at all)
  • Example: [22] from SARS.
Knowledgegeek now looks close to compliance, acknowledging Wikipedia as the original source and linking to the GFDL. Do people agree that they are now largely compliant? --Robert Merkel 04:30, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The site has definitely improved. However, witness all the 'summary' pages one level in from the root page (such as Coffee) still being composed largely of Wikipedia content without any acknowledgement. A sentence or two, lifted directly from Wikipedia is shown in many entries on those 'summary' pages (such as Drip brew, French press, Caffeine, etc. on the Coffee page above) yet you must click through to the full text before a Wikipedia or GFDL reference is made. A reference to Wikipedia and GFDL on all pages with even 'truncated' Wikipedia content (ie, the first few sentences of a bunch of articles) would still seem to be required. Potentially also worth mentioning is that the engine or template system used by KnowledgeGeek is used by StudioReview.com (documented on this page and supported/linked by Mark Coffman of KnowledgeGeek) and as of this writing, StudioReview has a low degree of compliance. I'm not suggesting that the owner/operator of KnowledgeGeek is able to accomplish this, but one wonders if it's possible to add compliance at an engine- or template-level for sites like this which are clearly copying Wikipedia content in huge quantities. Ds13 20:46, 2004 Mar 11 (UTC)
The remaining problems identified above seem to be addressed now. I would agree that they are largely compliant now. --Ds13 06:50, 2004 Mar 21 (UTC)


  • Lots of stuff taken from Wikipedia, like Magnetism article, biographies under "Magnetic personalities", and a few others.
  • It says Copyright 2002 - GNU Free Documentation License. This is hyperlinked to a year 2000 version of the GNU license!
    • Linking to the old version is OK. We used that initially.
  • No mention of Wikipedia anywhere, no link to article
  • Is this a breach? If so, what should we do?
    • Yes it is a breach. Wikipedia has to be credited and either a link back or list of 5 authors is needed. Time to send a letter. --mav
      • Actually Wikipedia doesn't have to be credited, since it's just another publisher of the user-copyrighted text, like all the other sites on this page. Only a list of five authors is necessary (the link back can be in lieu of that).
  • Standard letter sent by: dave 19:28 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)
  • Received reply from scott.madsen@nationalimports.com, and they are willing to fix it. Can someone tell me exactly what to tell them to do? I know they need to link to the original Wikipedia article, but what about the GFDL? Can they link to a local version or a gnu.org version? Anything else? dave 18:44 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • See above ^"Linking to the old version is OK." However you should suggest they link to the newest. MB 20:08 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
  • Finally sent reply to Scott Madsen today outlining what he should do to fix it, and telling him all the articles that were lifted from Wikipedia (he had emailed me asking which articles were from wikipedia). I'm confident they'll fix it although I'd expect it to take a while. dave 07:25, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)
  • They have the very odd 'Copyright 2002 - GNU Free Documentation License' at the bottom of each page now which does not give any author info or links to Wikipedia. I just sent them a letter and noted that I am the primary author of the bismuth article they copied. --mav 12:51, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)
  • Received this reply: Were sorry for the oversight. We'll correct the link as soon as possible. --mav 18:33, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)
  • No link to Wikipedia article
  • no link to GFDL
  • No contact information
  • Example - University of Delaware
  • Standard letter sent by: ?
  • No link to Wikipedia article
  • no link to GFDL
  • No contact information on the main page of their website. Can anyone find it?
  • Standard letter sent by: ?
  • I posted a message. --mav 10:45, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedians Montrealais and Menchi basically wrote that article from scratch, so it is original, to Wikipedia. I'd know, I'm Menchi and I think I know Montrealais well enough.
Well, if we ever had spare lawyers and wanted publicity, "Wikipedia sues Chinese government for copyright infringement" would be hilarious. =] --Delirium 12:29, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)
  • Confusing display of license and authorship information
  • No link to wikipedia homepage or the specific article page
  • Standard letter sent by mav 11:59, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Response:

I did have a link at one time. My engineer has been making some changes
to the template, so I guess we dropped the link at some point. I'll make
sure it's put back.

--mav 23:21, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

  • Unchanged still. Also, it'd be nice if they'd avoid titling their pages "Articlename - Wikipedia", which seems like borderline trademark infringement (though the line between attribution and infringement is fine, I'll acknowledge). --Delirium 12:37, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)
    • Keeps coming up at the top of my google searches these days... we need to nail these guys. +sj+ 16:20, 2004 Mar 28 (UTC)
  • I just sent a standard Violation Letter Follow-Up. Andrewlevine 04:01, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

UNCONFIRMED Contact info via online sources: 508-481-3336 listed for three names:

  • Frances A Barry, 1126 Concord Rd, Marlborough, MA 01752
  • Skip Guss, East Coast Golf Academy, 333 Southwest Cutoff Northboro MA 01532 Golfrite@aol.com
  • Shawn P. McCarthy, Diagonal Media Group, Inc. 37 Woodridge Road Marlborough, MA 01752
    • service@diagonalmediagroup.com
    • shawn.mccarthy@diagonalmediagroup.com
    • internaut@diagonalmediagroup.com

Notes:

  • McCarthy appears to be author of 'The Art of .COMbat', and a Lycos developer
  • Phatnav is shaping up to be the top leech site of Wikipedia content.

Jokestress 05:06, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Phatnav's pages still claim copyright. Straight mirror of WP content. Makes near fraudulent claims (they copy some of our pages that say "content provided by visitors to this site", further implying content is theirs). I can still see no GFDL or WP links, pages imply they are owned by PhatNav.

This is just about the worst possible violation (straight copy / adding ads / claiming copyright / not crediting authors) and given that they have not responded to previous letters, I propose we escalate according to standard protocol (please drop me a line if you want to work with me on this one). Mat-C 20:41, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Violation still going stong. <quote>PhatNav's Encyclopedia - A "Wikipedia"</quote> sounds like trademark dilution to me. --Spikey 21:28, 21 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Appears to be compliant now. "A Wikipedia" no longer displayed, and although it's in VERY tiny print, at the very bottom of each page they say "The Wikipedia is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. It is offered as open source and is free to reuse according to the GNU Free documentation License. The original version of this page can be found at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/<ARTICLENAME>." Their copyright notice states "All content Copyright 2003 - PhatNav and Diagonal Media Group Inc. (Except as noted on pages containing separately licensed content.) All rights reserved." Catherine | talk 18:33, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Link to main page of Wikipedia
  • Very small section of article about Edgar F. Codd (1 paragraph)
  • No link to GFDL or the article
  • Uses a part of the article about Public Domain (1 paragraph)
  • Mentions Wikipedia with no link
  • Contains a section of the Fair Use Doctrine of the U.S. Copyright Act, stating something about "fair use", but no GFDL Link.
  • More than one paragraph, AFAICT. Martin 10:22, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • No visible link to current Wikipedia article
  • no link to GFDL
  • Standard letter sent by: ?
  • It is an HTML copy of the print version so "Retrieved from "http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=RSA"" is on the page. But there still isn't a link to the GFDL. We really should add that to our print page template. --mav 02:19 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
  • Link & mention of GFDL
  • No link to/credit given to wikipedia article; only a generic notice: "some of the initial information in Cunnan was taken from the Wikipedia but has been, or will be rewritten to make it relevant to people interested in medieval re-enactment"
  • Example: [27]
    • As this is another wiki it is hard to control what other users put in. There is a general directive on the Village Pump to credit all wikipedia articles appropriately, and there has been a recent effort by several users to track down and tag such pages when they have become apparent. Even considering that the citation here was not appropriately credited, I am not entirely sure why this was listed as a low compliance site when there were both links to wikipedia and GFDL. Conrad Leviston 13:13, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Contains a small section of the article about vendor lock-in
  • Mentions Wikipedia, but has no link
  • No GFDL Link
  • The page known allies combines material from various Wikipedia pages, possibly with other text included as well.
  • No mention of Wikipedia
  • No mention of the GNU/FDL
  • many articles on this site are verbatim copies of Wikipedia articles (too many to list; as with KnowledgeGeek, all content may actually be driven dynamically or statically off Wikipedia)
  • no mention of Wikipedia
  • no mention of GFDL
  • admin and domain registrant of site is Ron Vreeland and has the following contact addresses: mailto:ron@cherone.com , mailto:webmaster@studioreview.com
  • site is listed as a supporter of KnowledgeGeek (also accused of non-compliance) and appears to be driven by same or similar content and engine as KnowledgeGeek
Seems to have undergone same improvements as KnowledgeGeek.com. Largely compliant now? --Ds13 06:53, 2004 Mar 21 (UTC)

(bizarrely, they have a copy of our Jordan disambiguation page! Amongst other content.)

  • no link to article
  • no link to GFDL. Standard letter sent by: MB 08:01 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • no response received as of Jul 18. Will contact via domain name administrative contact arasa@emirates.net.ae. Does anyone know what country .ae is? Does anyone know of a translator program, or know the language of this country? MB
      • Sounds like United Arab Emirates. Guessing from their location, I'm guessing they speak Arabic (perhaps a different dialect, but I doubt it), like all the other countries around there. There should be a lot of English too. dave
      • .ae is the United Arab Emirates, and the main languages include Arabic, English, Persian, Hindi, and Urdu.
  • Looks like typesyria is down, but typenetwork.com still has several coppies of Wikipedia, including almost the entire site typeencyclopedia.com. It uses a very old, outdated version of Wikipedia. LDan 04:09, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
  • No link to original wikipedia article
  • No GFDL link
  • standard letter sent by LDan
  • The same network as typesyria.
Wikipedia printable version
  • Links to current Wikipedia article, but not at the stable URL (not a clickable link either)
  • No GFDL link
  • I think we should send the developers the standard letter - I already submitted a feature request and mentioned this issue on their mailing list; no response whatsoever. It is very important that the printable version is OK per our copyright since that is a nice clean HTML copy of an article. --mav 10:46, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)
  • Works now. :) Martin 14:27, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    • What does this mean? +sj+ 16:20, 2004 Mar 28 (UTC)


  • No mention of Wikipedia except in HTML page title.
  • Links back to Wikipedia article.
  • No mention of GFDL.
  • Sample article: Albania - http://www.vagabondpoet.com/infopedia/al/Albania.html
  • Says "Copyright 2003 Brenda Buckley All Rights Reserved."
  • Links to ruv.net, see infopedia.ruv.net above.
  • Contact listed on page, Brenda Buckley:
    • bb(at)ruv.net
    • vagabondpoet@hotmail.com


  • Does not acknowledge wikipedia authorship, links to wikipedia
  • States that the article is licensed under the GNU FDL.
  • Does not link to the relevant wikipedia page (or wikipedia at all)
  • GNU/FDL link does not go to English the text of the GNU/FDL, but to a copy of the Japanese Wikipedia page on the GNU GPL
  • Example: [28] from List of Canadian Ministers of Finance.
  • Contact: mailto:securevoyagenow@voyagenow.com
  • I'm also going after this one, again articles of mine have been copied, leading to particular annoyance. Standard letter sent. David Newton 17:59, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
    • Second standard letter sent. David Newton 00:34, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Uses Wikipedia content on a large scale by copying and pasting.
  • Has no links to or mention of Wikipedia.
  • States that all text is available under the GFDL.
  • Example: Psychiatry and wikiMD:Psychiatry

I believe that if it were possible for them to import our page history they would. They use MediaWiki 1.2.4. When our developers get Import page working, hopefully they will be able to upgrade and import all the page histories required for the GFDL. Guanaco 18:42, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

  • Uses wikipedia content
  • No link to wikipedia, nor mention of it
  • No other source information
  • No GFDL mention
  • Lots of ads
  • "The contents of this web site are Copyright © 2003 Otherground, LLC and Vietnam-War.info.

All Rights Reserved. Please review our Privacy Policy."

Obsolete

These are articles which either no longer exist, or they no longer use Wikipedia content.

  • References Wikipedia, but no link back to original article.
  • No GFDL link.
  • Contact: gyrocopter@sympatico.ca, j.ednie@sympatico.ca, John Ednie. Letter sent to both email addresses by dave 15:46 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

  • Article no longer exists. dave 07:13, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

  • Link to Wikipedia article
  • no link to GFDL
  • Standard letter sent by: ?

  • Article no longer exists

  • Link to current Wikipedia article
  • no link to GFDL
  • contact point: webmaster (tailwindwebmaster@tailwindtandemclub.com)

  • Standard letter sent by: dave 07:38, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)
  • I think they removed it. Waiting to hear from webmaster if they changed URL or not. dave 18:18, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Old lengthy discussions

(but not obsolete yet)

Greatsite discussion

Similarities with Wikipedia's Martin Luther passage:
  • [30] appearts to be based on Martin Luther. If you look at the history of our article (for example, the creation of the second paragraph of the "Exile at the Wartburg Castle" section in [31]), it seems to have been built up piece-by-piece, so I think it's pretty clear that they've copied us rather than the other way round. Camembert
  • Sent the standard letter. --snoyes 02:49, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • As the one who started this whole thread, I believe the evidence is more consistent with either Wikipedia copying this site or both copying a third source (hopefully public domain). The problem was introduced in the 18:18, 01 July 2003 revision; see the new sections "struggle to find peace with God", "Warburg Castle" and "Luther's writings" which are almost verbatim quotes. It is quite possible both were taken from a 3rd source (since it reads like the work of a scholar or theologian) but google did not find it. GreatSite.com lists a specific author with its copyright, and is willing to let the work be reproduced with credit (scroll to bottom). Joelwest 01:54, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • But much of the content we had before that July 1 edit is included in the greatsite version as well. For example, compare the beginning of greatsite's "Martin Luther and Judaism" section with the penultimate paragraph of this Wikipedia version of January 7, 2002. They are nearly the same. So if the Wikipedia version has been copied from another source (either greatsite itself or a shared third-party publication), then it's been copied in bits and pieces by many different people in many edits over the course of two years. That seems unlikely, to put it mildly. More likely, greatsite has copied a Wikipedia version and edited it a bit. Don't underestimate the ability of Wikipedia contributors to write like scholars or theologians - some of them are. --Camembert
  • I have ruled out the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopediaand the Catholic Encyclopedia as the source of both articles; see the Luther stories at CCEL.org. Joelwest 01:58, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
  • Possible GFDL violation by greatsites. The 05:51, 9 Aug 2003 Melanchthon correction is present there. The 00:45, 30 Sep 2003 Pope Leo III to X correction isn't, so the copying seems to have happened between those two dates. The remaining edits between those dates don't help to narrow it down further. Lots of other corrections and edits prior to 9 Aug are at greatsites, so I conclude that it almost had to have been after that 9 Aug edit. In more detail: greatsites.com appears not to have had much coverage of Martin Luther on 2003-02-06 [32]. Regrettably there is no more recent archived copy of that site to compare with. The Luther's German Bible section is present and that was added at 20:26, 25 Jun 2003 so the copying seems to have happened after then. There's an extra sentence in the copy which doesn't seem to have ever been present in a copy of ours and the 1922 date differs from ours as well. Luther's early life was expanded at 17:47, 5 Jul 2003, including a mention of a copper mine starting from this 17:47, 5 Jul 2003 edit so the copying happened after this edit. this 14:17, 6 Jul 2003 edit changes text from "a few days later" to "the next day" and greatsites has that change. The changes in the 21:02, 8 Jul 2003 edit at the start of this examination are present. Until this 15:04, 11 Jul 2003 edit our text contained "From the viewpoint of the Roman Catholic Church". The greatsites version doesn't contain that, suggesting that the copying happened after this edit. Until this 18:34, 11 Jul 2003 edit our text contained "called to testify". The edit changed it to "summoned to either renounce or reaffirm them" and greatsites contains this change. The edits of 19:43, 11 Jul 2003 are present at greatsites. The Eck change of 21:47, 11 Jul 2003 is present at greatsites. The 18:28, 30 Jul 2003 near to nearby change suggests copying after this edit. The first of the 18:39, 30 Jul 2003 edits is present. The 07:31, 31 Jul 2003 changes are present, so it was after this. The 05:51, 9 Aug 2003 Melanchthon correction is present. Jamesday 10:39, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Here is a second example of similar text between Greatsite.com and Wikipedia:
  • Their Tyndale article has wording in it that was made to the old encyclopedia article on wikipedia by an anon user: [33]. Again it should be clear that they copied from us and not the other way arround. --snoyes 06:33, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

wordIQ discussion

I checked WordIQ today. They mention Wikipedia and give a link to our article. The images aren't coming from us anymore. They mention the GFDL and link to the GNU page. Their terms say "...sole property of wordIQ or its licensors...", which would be us. The only problem I see is that they should really provide their own copy of the GFDL, instead of pointing to GNU's copy. Does anyone else see any problems? Perhaps it's time to move their section to "high compliance"? Tualha 01:00, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree Tualha, wordIQ seems pretty complaint to me. They're linking to wikipedia so that's great for us. We should put them on the high compliance list. Compared to all the offenders out there, wordIQ is very legit and has really cleaned up its act. -- Jimbo

See http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16564 RickK 21:06, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)