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Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Usurped sources

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For other usurpation pages see WP:USURP

Usurped sources are websites (NYT, Guardian, etc.) whose content has been copied to another website, often without attribution and with the text modified. Editors often mistake this content as being legitimate and will cite it.

Background

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I have found a collection of websites which steal content from other websites and then use some kind of automated process to change them enough to make them appear original to search engines. All of these websites are connected by the same boilerplate in their "about" pages, with only superficial changes. None of these appear reliable. While looking into this, I found this news story from Monterey County Weekly about this group.

These are cited hundreds of times on Wikipedia. I haven't look at all of them, but so far, every source I've seen has been plagiarized from some other website. Only some of those original sources are reliable. Some are press releases, and some are tabloids like the Daily or niche blogs. Most (but not all) appear to include a link to the original story at the end, but they do not indicate that the story was a barely paraphrased copy of that story. They also do not credit these stories to the original authors.

Even the ones which come from reliable outlets have been modified in ways which makes them unreliable. As an example I've already fixed, one of these sites copied a story about runner Michał Rozmys losing his right shoe in mid-race and still finishing. This was changed to him losing his right leg in mid race and still finishing. What an athlete! That's indicative of the total lack of quality. This is more than plagiarism, it's just bad. -- Grayfell (talk) 00:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

List of domains

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List of domains

Other discussions

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