Wikipedia talk:Plagiarism

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

If an editor is adding valuable content while relying on a source they believe in good faith to be reliable, a citation is required to avoid plagiarism. So if another editor removes that citation because they believe it is not reliable enough, haven't they also committed plagiarism? Dhaluza (talk) 00:15, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

That question seems to avoid the core issue. If the passage relied on an unreliable source so extensively, then the entire passage should probably be removed. Ideally an/many alternate reliable source(s) can be found. No piece of text on Wikipedia, save for quotes, should rely on a single unreliable source so heavily that it could not be replaced by a reliable source. I don't see what good faith has to do with anything here. Someone may well have added a paragraph or section based on an unreliable blog, fully believing it was an adequate source. That doesn't mean their good-faith mistake is now protected from scrutiny or exempt from WP:RS. 156.34.242.108 (talk) 00:42, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

By valuable content I meant that the content should remain because it is verifiable in other sources, so the source was reliable for the information cited. Naturally if the source is unreliable, then the content isn't valuable and should be removed.

To be more specific, assume an editor is citing a work authored by a subject matter expert from a publisher that is reliable on that subject and has not been questioned before. But after that content is added based on those good faith assumptions, the publisher is later questioned for publishing unreliable information on another subject, and the consensus is to depreciate that publisher in favor of more reliable ones. I believe removing the cite for an ancillary reason like that could constitute plagiarism if the original editor relied on that source when developing the content. The exception would be if the cited text was general knowledge in the subject area, so the original citation source was only for verifiability and was not actually a source of inspiration. Dhaluza (talk) 13:03, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Huh; I guess my count of the number of venues in which you're raging about HB's script was short. In any event, the sensible response to your question here is "Don't be absurd." Ravenswing 18:56, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

@Dhaluza This issue came up with text copied from BCW project (by David Plant, 2001-15.) back in July 2009. The problem was that about a score of articles had text copied from that website. However that website uses a copyleft that is incompatible with Wikipedia (because it included no commercial copying). So I removed all the text from the articles that included text from that website. In most (all?) cases this involved deleting the article and rewriting it as the article had been created with text copied from the website.

David Plant is an unreliable source. However on his website he provides his sources. So if you extract a fact (not a copy of the text) from his website you can use WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT until such time as you can find another source to support the fact. I have used this format many times for information on the Darryl Lundy website thepeerage.com. However be warned. Although most of Lundy's information is based on reliable secondary source so WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT is admissible, some of his "facts" are based on things like emails which of course makes Lundy an inadmissible source to support those "facts" on Wikipedia.

In the case of both Plant and Lundy, when cross checking their facts based on reliable sources, they are usually accurate. However there are a lot of internet websites where one can not trust a word that they write because WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT simply does not work (so delete the text as well as the citation to an unreliable source, but if the fact does not look too outlandish then {{citation needed}} for a few months will keep to the spirit of WP:V "In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references; consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step."). Then there are those difficult ones like Medieval Lands by Charles Cawley, because he tends to cite primary sources and synthesise information from them. These are good examples because the first two authors work on their own articles in a similar way to Wikipedia editors. Creating text via reliable secondary sources. However Charles Cawley's text is often in breach of WP:PSTS and WP:SYNTH, and as such, is useless as a source for a Wikipedia article even if one uses WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT because the primary sources are not usually valid sources on Wikipedia.

-- PBS (talk) 15:52, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

See also: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2021 September 14#Template:Citation-attribution

Until the templates for discussion conversation I did not remember that {{PD-notice}} existed. There are three templates with similar but different wording and their use is different. This guideline currently states:

The wording of {{citation-attribution}}, {{source-attribution}} the first is for use inside in-line citations, the latter for the references section at the bottom.

• "One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a work now in the public domain:"
• "This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:"

{{PD-notice}} outputs the text:

• "This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain."

Both {{citation-attribution}}, {{source-attribution}} can either be place before a the text of the source. Or the source can be added as into the templates. This means that the text is usually a postscript to source. This is the standard layout in Category:Attribution templates.

• <ref>{{citation-attribution| {{cite book}} }}</ref>

The problem is that {{PD-notice}} although it can preceded the citation in many cases it has been used inline and placed after the text of the source. eg:

• <ref>{{cite book}}{{PD-notice}}</ref>

I propose that a bot job is run to change all the instances of <ref>{{cite book}}{{PD-notice}}</ref> is altered to <ref>{{citation-attribution| {{cite book}} }}</ref>. NB {{cite book}} may in many instances be text citation and not a template citation, but in either case {{citation-attribution}} should come first. Where the format is <ref>{{PD-notice}}{{cite book}}</ref> then simply change the {{PD-notice}} to {{citation-attribution}}

Once that bot job is finished then {{PD-notice}} can be redirected to {{source-attribution}}. Thoughts? -- PBS (talk) 16:42, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• This is a duplicate discussion to Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2021_October_3#Template:PD-notice. Primefac (talk) 18:53, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• I think given the nuances of the issue, and the fact that two of these templates have been part of the guideline documentation for over 10 years this is the better forum to discuss this, a point I made in the original previous TFD which closed just before I wrote this proposal. -- PBS (talk) 11:44, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

When I originally wrote {{Source-attribution}} and {{Citation-attribution}}—as I had done for many other templates such as {{EB1911}}—I could of written one template and had a switch as User:Primefac proposes. I did not do so because the two templates then ran the danger of people claiming WP:CITEVAR and editors unfamiliar with templates would be confused/intimidated by names parameters being used as switches. The intention was to keep the templates as simple as possible (no switches) so that no-one would have a reasonable objection to their use. Since then other templates such as {{ISBN}} have been created and accepted and not rejected. But like {{Source-attribution}} and {{Citation-attribution}} such templates do not take any parameters other than an unnamed one. With {{Source-attribution}} and {{Citation-attribution}} although they can wrap around an unnamed parameter, they can also be used as is just in front of a citation. If named parameters are added then (1) it becomes more complicated for an editor not familiar with templates to use them, (2) editors may complain under WP:CITEVAR (3) it actually makes a single template more complicated to write and hence maintain than two simpler templates. -- PBS (talk) 11:44, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I want to establish a consensus regarding removing CorenSearchBot from tools section. The bot is no longer active, and it has last edited almost 6 years ago. There is also no chance that the bot will become active in the future. If it does, then we can add it back to the tools for detecting plagiarism. I want community consensus before removing its name. Or, there can be another alternative as well. Instead of removing it completely, we can strike it off, and give the reason for striking it off as a comment. Itcouldbepossible^Talk 05:23, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, just be bold and fix it There's no reason to confuse editors with obsolete tools that are no longer active. However, we should probably strike it out and provide a reason instead of just removing it. By the way, it's probably better if you didn't start this RFC, because there was no discussion on the topic prior to the RFC. You should have just been bold. Not every topic requires an RFC. 2601:647:5800:1A1F:25E9:7819:F430:D78 (talk) 23:41, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

This is probably too silly to include in any Wikipedia guidelines, but I can imagine trolls and vandals might take full advantage of the directions:

https://www.gocomics.com/fminus/2024/03/07

— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:08, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

“https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6ofuz1qwzji59p8fe4d78/File-03-04-2024-6-54-12-PM.txt?rlkey=z2c1uk0ovsvhnvjei1d9p5tef&dl”=“PDF” 46.222.159.247 (talk) 16:58, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights § Paste Check feature - coming next week. That post has details about this upcoming feature, which should help to remind editors (especially newcomers) to think carefully about pasting larger quantities of text, thus hopefully helping to reduce the quantity of copyvio problems. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:08, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi! I'm not sure about the etiquette on adding screenshots (or even how to do so) just yet, but I've noticed that the layout around the "Helpful links" info box gets increasingly confusing on layouts wider than 640 pixels. This happens for me using the Vector (2022) or MinervaNeue skins on Firefox 151.0.1, with little to no issue using any other skin.

The core of the issue seems to be that the quote frames are full-width regardless of page size (as it has the CSS width: fit-content; and the content is more than one full line in length), and so the infobox completely breaks the flow of the text; there is a huge gap between the title "Free and copyrighted sources" and the actual contents of that subsection. Decreasing the width of the browser window can mitigate this to some degree because the text for "Forms of plagiarism" subsection takes up enough height to fill the space, but only at most halfway, since that paragraph is rather short. Susurrusss (talk) 05:34, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't see the layout problem myself, but I noticed that the "Copyright" and "Helpful links" navboxes were partly redundant. The Copyright navbox was off-topic so I removed it. (Copyright and plagiarism are not the same thing, and are governed by different rules.) Does this make the layout work better on your screen?--Srleffler (talk) 13:54, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes! That works perfectly. Susurrusss (talk) 20:09, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

When translating this guideline, I notice that the last paragraph in the "Where to place attribution" section does not seem to follow: It's unclear what "This practice" is referring to, as the paragraph starting with "A practice" above logically belongs to the case "a significant proportion of the text is copied or closely paraphrased", while the former belongs to the case "copying verbatim". Digging into the history, I found this issue was introduced in revision 807113518 by @Prototime, when the content was reorganized. Can this be fixed through e.g. moving the paragraphs together? --Srapoj (talk) 19:28, 21 July 2026 (UTC)