Template talk:Backwards copy/Archive 1

Archive 1

Take care using this tag

If a website has a block of text on its web site and an editor copies it into Wikipedia in violation of copyright, and a 3rd party later copies it from the original source with permission, and the original source goes offline, it may appear that the 3rd party copied it from Wikipedia.

The same thing can happen if the original source changes URLs, such as after a company renames itself or gets acquired. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:40, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Underutilized

As of 17:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC) this tag is not being transcluded into any article talk pages. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It's had a slow uptake. I reckon it'll find future use, and a couple of admins have said the same thing; better ways of advertising its existence might be good. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

There needs to be a 3rd version: PossibleCopyVio, for cases where it is unclear what came from where. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:20, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Version number as parameter

As WP articles evolve through time, and it can sometimes be difficult to track down the version which has been copied from us, I would request the WP version number as an additional parameter for the template. For info, I spent quite a few hours trying to identify which version of Shaquille O'Neal was plagiarised (ie used without attribution). Please refer to discussion here. I believe it would be helpful if the original version could be linked to in the template, for GFDL purposes for future reference. Also, in the above case, there were two sources of almost identical copying, so I have used two templates. I do not know how often this occurs, so will leave it to you to decide whether to create a multiple-source template. Ohconfucius (talk) 11:09, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

An optional parameter id has been added to the template - feel free to tweak further. – Sadalmelik ☎ 13:06, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

• Thank you. Ohconfucius (talk) 01:11, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Slow up take

Should this be taged Category:Copyright maintenance templates so that people can see it exists?--Aspro (talk) 20:10, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes! Great idea. :) I'll leave you the honors. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:13, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Linkage

I'd suggest the addition of a parameter to capture a linkage id for the copy, e.g. DOIs, ISBNs, OCLC numbers. Otherwise, must resort to using the comment field. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:38, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Small v. Collapse

I prefer the collapsed note section, since these notes can be very lengthy (as I know, having composed a few behemoths :)). I've reverted to the earlier version pending conversaion about the change; is there a reason that small should be preferred? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 02:16, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Only that I thought it worked better when considering that the template may now have comments, comments2, comments3, all of which apply to only a single listing. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 18:08, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Hidden category

I suggest that if it has not already been done a hidden category is added to this template, and noted in the documentation so that people can easily see how many articles have been copied and what they are called. (see {{1911}} for an example) -- PBS (talk) 00:26, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I have implemented a hidden category called Category:Wikipedia article talk pages incorporating the backwardscopy template. It will take time for the software to place all the pages in there but it will do so over the next few hours, giving priority to those talk pages that are edited. -- PBS (talk) 12:04, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

This template generates an error if it does not have a URL

As seen in Talk:Portland, Oregon, this template generates an error if it does not have a URL. I believe that this is because it is using {{cite web}}, which requires a URL. Not all publications derived from WP will have a URL. I suggest using {{citation}} instead. Does anyone see a drawback to making this change? – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:07, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

There's a different error at Talk:Aaron Ruben, where the url has had to be disguised because of the spam blacklist. This template needs to be more forgiving than the citation templates. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:43, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I worked around that URL restriction for you, since we should have the web address in there. It's not linked, but it can be copied and pasted. The restriction on blacklisted URLs is a feature of WP itself, not of the citation templates, as far as I know.

I also changed the code of the citation to use {{citation}} instead of {{cite web}}. I checked a random sample of Talk pages that transclude this template and they looked fine to me. If you see any problems, make a note here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:28, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

We need backwardscopy to handle many sources copying from us

Needs to handle at least 10 and than we just keep adding. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:10, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Away to automate this would be have a bot look for the templates at Category:Wikipedia article talk pages incorporating the backwardscopy template and exact the urls from the templates to create a list. -- PBS (talk) 12:03, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes would be good. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:57, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Clarify documentation and use with caution

I attempted to clarify the template's documentation. Rather than repeat myself here, I also pointed out some internal contradiction's in <!-- hidden comments --> in the documentation's text. However, my primary concern is that the documentation does not give sufficient guidance on when to use the template, and when not to. The documentation indicates that the template should be used if the other publication may have copied from Wikipedia; it even says that a variant of this template should be used when the other publication's copying Wikipedia is "confirmed" (boldface in original), which implies that this template should be used when the other publication's copying Wikipedia is not confirmed. To put it bluntly, erroneously failing to tag a copyright violation by Wikipedia because of this template has more serious consequences than erroneously tagging original Wikipedia content as a copyright violation.—Finell 02:34, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Finell, it's not another template, it's a template redirect that summons the same code with a different name. The caution is against labeling unconfirmed instances of copying OR properly attributed copying from Wikipedia as "copyvio" (it is, in fact, a copyright issue to use content from Wikipedia elsewhere without attribution, but people should not be accusing others of copyright infringement without a fair degree of certainty and it isn't a copyright issue if they meet the licensing requirements).

Wikipedia does not commit copyright violations, because Wikipedia is not a legal entity. :) Copyright infringements on Wikipedia are the responsibility of the individuals who placed them here. The Wikimedia Foundation that manages Wikipedia is not a publisher, but an online service provider and hence responsible only to the degree that it does not conform to OCILLA, including responding to validly formatted DMCA takedowns. I am personally sensitive to the problems of allowing copyright issues to remain anyway, not the least because of potential damage to copyright owners and to downstream reusers of our content.

All that said, if you think more clarification is useful, I think making specifics explicit here instead of adding hidden comments to the documentation might be a good idea. The documentation for the template has been stable for a long time (and, in fact, I don't see that you actually added any hidden comments at all?). --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:24, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Unclickable "link" in rendered template

Hi Jonesey95, John of Reading, or any (talk page stalker). At Talk:Planned Parenthood, the template renders: Click to show/hide further details., but it is not clickable (it is just plain text). Also, the template will render a show/hide link on other Talk pages I have seen this template used on and all that happens when you click on the show/hide link is that a one-line blank field of nothing opens up. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 23:54, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I fixed the message, which was confusing, and then I adjusted the template to provide a collapsible section only if |comments= was populated. For some (probably historical) reason, the existence of |title2= was causing the collapsible section to exist, but the template shows up to three sources no matter what, so testing |title2= didn't make sense (to me). I removed the test for |title2= from the show/hide setting. Revert me if I did something wrong. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:43, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

"id" parameter

What's the "id" parameter for, and how should it be used? All the examples include "|id=123456789", but there's no explanation of it. TJRC (talk) 23:08, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

See the section above Template talk:Backwards copy/Archive 1#Version number as parameter. Care to do the honours and document it? -- PBS (talk) 09:38, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Yes, I will. TJRC (talk) 19:05, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

 Done TJRC (talk) 22:09, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Contradictory instructions on the use of this template

The template documentation says:

This template name, i.e., {{Backwards copy}}, should be used in preference to the redirect {{Backwardscopyvio}}, unless it has been confirmed that a reverse copyvio has occurred.

This seems to imply that {{Backwards copy} should be used if it hasn't been confirmed that a reverse copyvio has occurred. But Wikipedia:Copyright problems says:

If you confirm definitely that the content was on Wikipedia first, please consider adding {{backwardscopy}} to the article's talk page with an explanation of how you know.

This seems to imply that {{Backwards copy} shouldn't be used if it hasn't been confirmed that a reverse copyvio has occurred; but it doesn't say what should be done in that case.

This contradiction should be resolved. Joriki (talk) 07:44, 18 March 2019 (UTC)