Talk:Dobson & Barlow

Plagiarism issues

To whom it may concern: the plagiarism issues with this article start with this: The creator of this site lifted the page on Dobson and Balow from page 9 of the MA Dissertation 'The Impact of Conflict and Political Change on Northern Industrial Towns, 1890 to 1990' published in September 2001, and ClemmRutter lifted it from there on 9th October 2009. The www.stmarks.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/wpdobsonbarlow.htm has since been deleted because the author of the original work pointed out that its contents was a blatant infringement of copyright. Weiterbewegung (talk) 13:57, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

It isn't possible to check the St.Mark's website of course, but I have checked the Masters' thesis and I concur that the very earliest versions of this article [1] contain a virtual cut and paste of the Halton thesis page 9 [2]. Thank you for bringing this copyright violation to our attention. The second section, "Later history" is adequately rewritten from the sources given, in my opinion. I have also checked the edits made more recently by Weiterbewegung,and they are also add content that are violations of copyright; unfortunately we have no release from Dr. Halton to permit this. As a result, I will be reverting to an early version of this article and will delete the initial paragraph. I encourage editors to build up the article again, using this very useful sources but rewriting the information in their own words, avoiding copyright violations and plagiarism.--Slp1 (talk) 15:30, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Not quite so clear see Grace's Guide which is GNU 1.2, could have been the source! --ClemRutter (talk) 17:22, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

That Grace's Guide page was created in October 2007[3] well after Halton's thesis was written in 2001. It appears that they have been hosting copyright infringing material, and we cannot and will not use them as a copyright laundering service. --Slp1 (talk) 17:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Not so clear Wikipedia:Plagiarism seems to define plagiarism as copying anothers work without acknowledging it. Wikipedia seems to be clear of any legal charge as Graceś Guide is clearly GNU 1.2. Now can Graces guide be accused of plagiarism if they add an acknowledgement? Open verdict. It is not a direct copy but a paraphrase. But six sentences out of 14 do contain remarkably similar material- is that enough. Each of those six sentences has be paraphrased. It seems reasonable that St Marks had innocently paraphrased those back to the original (not what I actually think but legally arguable). Are 128 or so words actually enough to show plagiarism. A further test is for similar grammatical structure? Unlikely but both sources could have come directly to the History that Maurice references, and for instance Textile Mercury 29 Nov 1890. I can't see it is so clear cut when the meaning of plagiarism is examined.--ClemRutter (talk) 01:28, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

ClemRutter. We are not talking about plagiarism but about copyright infringement. The text deleted here almost exactly matched the text in Halton's thesis. It is a clear-cut copyright violation, and it worries me that you continue to argue that it isn't. You didn't take this section from Grace's guide. As your citation says you took it from the stmarks page, a page later deleted for copyright violations, apparently. Trying to say now that you copied it from Grace's guide and amazingly changed all their changes back to Halton's version simply doesn't fly at this point. It is okay (and actually better in the long run) to admit that you made a mistake by copying the text on the stmarks website: it is not easy to know all the rules around here, and we all live and learn.--Slp1 (talk) 02:35, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

It is a mistake to try to personalise a debate. At this moment we are investigating plagiarism. That is what the subheading says. (For those new to this, it follows up from Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Re-opening_Weiterbewegung.2C_Maurice_J._Halton_and_revocation_of_licensing_for_posted_text The discussion is theoretical, we are trying to build an article using the same sources, and come up with some text that isn´t dodgy. We are discussing a further (as yet unrelated text)- where the author apparently was attempting to do the same thing- a text that is prominent and could be used by future editors as their source. Ignoring whether it is a copyvio- is it plagiarism. It has been changed from prose to list format hence all the main clauses are grammatically different, but a lot of common text is visible. There is a level of textually simplicity that cannot be regarded as plagiarism. Maurices thesis is extremely well written- and given the same text it is hard to imagine a better way of expressing it. Indeed, if one is doing the Grace's edit well- it is likely that one would come up with almost identical text- even if you hadn't read Maurices work. Guidance is needed- hence the debate.

On a supplementary point it is assumed st marks was taken down as it was a copyvio- this is speculation. A lot of UK ISPs just stopped web hosting which is why my site disappeared overnight. I think that blueyonder was one of those ISPs.--ClemRutter (talk) 12:49, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the stmarks site is still up. Only the Dobson and Barlow page has disappeared, lending credence to the copyright claim; along with the fact that a paragraph you sourced from that page turned out to be a virtual copy and paste of the thesis, as suggested by Weiterbewegung above. Note also that the stmarks site prohibits reproduction of their material without permission.[4].

In fact this discussion isn't theoretical, and it isn't about now about plagiarism, despite the heading. It is part of a very practical conversation about how a chunk of copyrighted material ended up in our article for a year or so. If there are other copy and pastes of copyrighted material out there, it would be good to go and fix them, by rewriting the text.

Regarding rewriting and the future. I would forget about the Grace's Guide website. It is a wiki, and it is unclear what the editorial control is, and so it doesn't make the grade as a reliable source. You could always check at WP:RSN if you want to get other people's views on this matter, but overall, the Halton thesis is a much, much better source. Use that as a referenced source for facts but rewrite all the ideas in your words. Slp1 (talk) 13:32, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I hadn't done a further search on St Marks. I am still interested on comments on the title heading- this page will now take care of its self as we do have the November 1890 Textile Mercury article (p376) online that can be used- but the limits of plagiarism need to be defined as there are limited resources available if you can't travel into Bolton- and we must have something prepared to advise future editors in this field. --ClemRutter (talk) 14:24, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Why would you need to travel to Bolton? To get the Halton thesis? No need. It is available online with the link given in the article as I write this.

It is actually not difficult to avoid both copyright violation and plagiarism. To put it simply, do not copy and paste material into WP. Take facts and ideas from what you read, and then rewrite the information in your own words. Add inline citations at the end of every 1-2 sentences showing where you got the information you have rewritten. If rewording an occasional sentence is very difficult then use intext attribution (e.g. According to Maurice Halton......), with quotation marks if you are quoting directly, and without if you are using a close paraphrase of what the author wrote. --Slp1 (talk) 15:14, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

One final try. The page plagiarism is very fluid. Todays page is very different from that in August 2009, when == What is not plagiarism== read

 This section deals with situations where plagiarism is not a concern (although, if the source is not free, copyright infringement may still be an issue in
 some of these situations). However you may still need to cite sources because of Wikipeda's policy on verifiability.

Here are some examples where attribution is generally not required:

    * Use of common expressions and idioms, including those that are common in various sub-cultures such as academic ones. In order to qualify as a "common
 expression or idiom":
          o the phrase must have been used without attribution at least 2 years ago by someone other than the originator and in a reliable source, in other words
 one that is likely to have watchful editors and lawyers.
          o there must be no evidence that the author(s), or publisher(s), of the unattributed use later lost, or settled out of court, a lawsuit based on the 
unattributed use, and that the publisher did not issue an apology, or retraction, for plagiarism relating to the the unattributed use. Since it is impossible to
 prove completely that something does not exist, Wikipedia editors who suspect plagiarism is involved must provide reliable evidence of such a legal judgement,
 out-of-court settlement, apology, or retraction.
    * Phrases that are the simplest and most obvious way to present information. Editors who claim that the phrasing at issue is plagiarism must show that there is
 an alternative phrasing that does not make the passage more difficult to read. If a proposed rephrasing may impair the clarity, or flow, of a paragraph, they must
 propose a rephrasing that avoids such side-effects, possibly by rephrasing content preceding and following the disputed passage, or even the whole paragraph. An
 objective measure of whether a proposed rephrasing makes the passage more difficult to read can be obtained by a readability tool such as Dispenser's Readability
 Analyser. However issues about clarity and flow will have to be resolved by discussion.
    * Definitions of terms, theories, hypotheses, etc. In these cases accuracy and avoidance of original research take priority. However the attribution may be 
advisable for other reasons, for example new definitions, hypotheses, etc. may not yet be consensus in the relevant fields, and unattributed use often implies that
 quoted, or paraphrased, content is the mainstream view (see Wikipedia's policies on undue weight and neutral point of view).
    * Simple, non-creative lists of information, such as a list of song titles on an album, or actors appearing in a film. If creativity has gone into the
 producing a list by selecting which facts are included, or in which order they are listed, then reproducing the list without attributing it to its source may
 constitute plagiarism. In any case such judgements, if not supported by a citation, may violate Wikipedia's ban on original research – for example in a cast list,
 decisions about which roles are major and which are minor, or totally unimportant. U.S. law on such lists is illustrated by the case Feist Publications v. Rural 
Telephone Service.
    * Mathematical and scientific formulae which are part of the general background knowledge of a field. More complex formulae will require a citation anyway,
 because of Wikipedia's policy on verifiability.
    * Simple logical deductions. Complex logical deductions, in contrast, generally require a citation, because of Wikipedia's policy on verifiability.

Your suggestions are a good start (I omit the one that related to Copyvio as they must be distinguished)

• Take facts and ideas from what you read, and then rewrite the information in your own words. -- but this could be Close paraphrasing and thus Plagiarism. the Section on WP:PLAGIARISM#Close paraphrasing would define it as such- but is not sufficiently well written to give the guidelines on the limits that we need- it too strays off threadinto Copyvios.
• Add inline citations at the end of every 1-2 sentences showing where you got the information you have rewritten.- Fine- my POV but a little tedious when you are using just one source- and that a web page- or even data from a well written thesis, that contains all the info you need on one page.
• If rewording an occasional sentence is very difficult then use intext attribution (e.g. According to Maurice Halton......), with quotation marks if you are quoting directly, and without if you are using a close paraphrase of what the author wrote.- Yes good- how do we quantify occasional- by percentage of the paragraph or percentage of the page. I can see the situation where it is appropriate to use a quote of 128 words in this way- I personally would not be comfortable in using a quote that more that was more than 12% of the page.

The principle of triangulation has been mentioned, which I thororoughly support, but in this case it cannot be done without references to a second source- one other than Maurice's work. Following the inline references in his work we see that most of the documents are in Bolton, and only in Bolton. I am still keen to sort Plagiarism out when writing about defunct company histories and still welcome further insight. I suspect it we will have to wait for the Plagiarism page to become stable before we can progress.--ClemRutter (talk) 17:34, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

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