Talk:Tomislav Merčep

Copyright problems

This article has been evaluated as part of an ongoing contributor copyright investigation. These investigations are launched when a contributor has been shown to have imported copyright content without permission on multiple occasions. This particular investigation is located here. Unfortunately, content added in this series of edits seems to be problematic.

For a few instances of copied and closely paraphrased text, see the following examples: This source says:

According to the declassified report, Mercep first acquired influence when he organized 2,000 men into a unit destined for fighting for Croatia’s independence in 1991. He allegedly committed or ordered numerous crimes in the same year. Allegations against him include torture, murder and disappearance of thousands of Serbs from Vukovar, Pakracka Poljana, Gospic and Zagreb.

Content placed in the article said:

According to the declassified report, Merčep first garnered notoriety when he organized 2,000 paramilitaries when the war escalated in 1991. He allegedly committed or ordered numerous crimes in the same year, including torture, murder and the disappearance of thousands of Serbs from Vukovar, Gospić, Zagreb and other areas.

This source says:

The Feral Tribune released a document which confirmed that, in September 1990, Merčep asked Branimir Glavaš to send him '50 kg of salami and as many caps as possible'. Salami was the code word for the explosive Vitezit 60. According to the Tribune, Glavaš had prior to this request already delivered 100 kg of vitezit, and Merčep himself took 500 kg of vitezit, 10 meters of slow burning fuse, a thousands meters of detonating fuse and 200 initial capsules from a rock quarry.

Content placed in the article said:

Feral Tribune released a document at one time which confirms that in September of 1990, Merčep asked Branimir Glavaš to send him “50 kg of salami and as man caps as possible.” Salami was code for the explosive Vitezit 60. According to the Feral Tribune, Glavaš had prior to this request already delivered 100 kg of vitezit, and Merčep himself took 500 kg of vitezit, 10 meters of slow burning fuse, a thousands meters of detonating fuse and 200 initial capsules from a rock quarry.

These are just samples; there are other problematic sentences, and there may be other sources not identified involved.

At this point, the article will either need to be reverted to an earlier version which does not contain this content or completely rewritten. I've blanked the article in case interested contributors would like an opportunity to do this. Content that was placed by other contributors is usable, as long as it was not modifying this problematic text in a way that would create an unauthorized derivative work. If not, after a week, the article will probably be reverted back to clean. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:49, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, I've reverted it to the pre-Rms125a state. Do we need to delete all those revisions from article history, and if so, what's the deadline? There was a lot of generic text in there that will be useful to reintegrate. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:00, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

...and by generic text I mean non-copyrightable factoids or bits of insight that we will simply attribute to their original sources like those B92 and Nacional articles, or other places. There's not much particularly original work here, a lot of this data is well known in the Croatian public. Indeed some original bits were copied with attribution from Feral Tribune, meaning we can just do the same under standard fair use and referencing guidelines. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:05, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Generally, we'd delete edits this extensive to avoid inadvertent restoration down the road. Content can be quoted from Feral Tribune, of course, and the information can be used from the sources that were copied/too closely paraphrased as long as the material is rewritten. I noted you as a major contributor in the article's history; would you be willing to salvage what you can prior to the deletion of those edits? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:09, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

It looks like most of the offending content was the stuff from the Nacional article. We had patched it up by better referencing before, but now it should be fully clean. I'll just record the remaining old citation tag here that I did not reuse because I didn't see anything directly useful at a glance:

"Tomislav Mercep: Let Boljkovac Explain Who Took $500,000 From Arkan". Yupress.com excerpts from Večernji list. April 2, 2001. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help)

...and now you should be free to remove the tainted part of the article history. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 22:51, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Note

I apologize for any text which violated copyright compliance. Moonriddengirl, with whom I have had numerous conversations, knows I am not a vandal and that I had no bad intentions. She and I have discussed how to rewrite text so as to avoid any copyright infringements, which I intend to do.

I would point out to Joy that "There's not much particularly original work here, a lot of this data is well known in the Croatian public" is irrelevant on Wikipedia, especially English language Wikipedia. Rms125a@hotmail.com (talk) 23:42, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

That was meant to exonerate you, you know :) If something is not subject to copyright protection, there can be no copyright violation. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:16, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

time when he was moved out of Vukovar

Rms125a tagged that sentence for verification. Googling confirms that via various Croatian veterans sites, which are barely citeable. It's known that Blago Zadro was the commander of Vukovar's defense when the battle started. Also the incidents where later relief convoys were stopped in Vinkovci were also attributed to Merčep. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:17, 25 April 2010 (UTC)