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Wikipedia is contributing to the slow death of what could have been, and almost was, a web of independent pages maintained by individuals and groups. I have had

Wikipedia is contributing to the slow death of what could have been, and almost was, a web of independent pages maintained by individuals and groups. I have had a recurring experience of skimming a Wikipedia article, only to get the feeling that the text is familiar - then tracking it down to the book or article that it was lifted from, without attribution. If a "vibrant free web" means routine copyright theft committed by a homogenizing, centralized collective established as some kind of anonymous authority, I can do without it.

mlinksva 8y ago
Please take the next step https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_Copyright_Violations_101 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_Copyright_Viola...
- leephillips 8y ago
  Nearly 2000 words on how I can police their website for them? No, thanks. If they took this problem seriously they would build a system to catch copy-paste before it went live on their site.
  - fasafsafsf 8y ago
    I think they already have such systems via bots, but they don't block or undo things automatically because I assume it's hard to know programmatically the licence of things that are posted on the Internet.
    - mike22223333 8y ago
      It it is hard, that they should not run wikipedia.
      - fasafsafsf 8y ago
        That is crazy. Even systems like ContentID are full of flaws.
      - balp 8y ago
        Kinda hard like the lawers are still after years trying to figure out the issue between Oracle and Google, Apple and Samsung... It's a really hard legal issue, expecting it to be easy for a computer to solve. It's naive.
  - afandian 8y ago
    There is no 'them'. The Wikipedia community comprises everyone who wants to participate. WMF is small in comparison.
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    Sure, the magical internet gnomes can know what every book in the world contains and detect copy paste like that. I would expect to read such an uninformed comment on Fox News comment section.
- mike22223333 8y ago
  Wikipedia should verify the copyright before allowing changes. It should not be the publishers responsibility to enforce the copyright. Wikipedia should be responsible because they decided they wanted to allow anyone to edit. They should hire moderators, and if they cannot moderate, they should not run a platform of theft.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    > It should not be the publishers responsibility to enforce the copyright. Why not? Copyright is an unnatural right created in the name of encouraging creative output; if the person who owns the rights to control copying a work don’t enforce it, why should the rest of us do it for them?
    - fnord123 8y ago
      Don't you have a bloom filter for all content ever created with which you can compare the content?
  - vkou 8y ago
    How can I verify that your post is not a violation of copyright? Did you crib it from somewhere? Maybe we should shift the burden of proof on you? Can you prove that you are not violating copyright with your post? If you can't do it, how on earth can Wikipedia do it? In the Soviet Union, this was called "Prove that you are not a camel."
  - hnbroseph 8y ago
    surely then, all forums should "verify the copyright" of posts before they are accepted. all email providers should screen all the mails users send.
  - jotm 8y ago
    People who think like this should really chill the fuck out. Ownership of thoughts and ideas is pathetic at best, if you don't want it shared, keep it to yourself. But nooo, "I want everyone to hear me and I want them to know it was me who said it. Me me me. I'm important, I want to feel like it". Get the fuck over it. And if you want to make money off of it, there are plenty of much better ways besides braindead ads. GDPR seems to pander a bit too much to carebears.
ghaff 8y ago
There's actually an, at least arguable, point in your first sentence before you get to the copyright infringement. And there's a whole round-robin of content (or just "facts") being lifted from Wikipedia to put on other sites and from other sites to be put on Wikipedia that's often hard to sort out. There is a broader point that centralization of content being found by search engines isn't ideal--even if Wikipedia were more pristine than it is a lot of the time.
- leephillips 8y ago
  You're right twice. But when I see things on Wikipedia lifted from textbooks published before there was Wikipedia it's not hard to sort out. As to your second point, I think the combined effect of Wikipedia and Google's popularity-based search ranking is hurting the web. It's not a conspiracy, just a result of the system.

mlinksva 8y ago

Please take the next step https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_Copyright_Violations_101 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_Copyright_Viola...

leephillips 8y ago
Nearly 2000 words on how I can police their website for them? No, thanks. If they took this problem seriously they would build a system to catch copy-paste before it went live on their site.
- fasafsafsf 8y ago
  I think they already have such systems via bots, but they don't block or undo things automatically because I assume it's hard to know programmatically the licence of things that are posted on the Internet.
  - mike22223333 8y ago
    It it is hard, that they should not run wikipedia.
    - fasafsafsf 8y ago
      That is crazy. Even systems like ContentID are full of flaws.
    - balp 8y ago
      Kinda hard like the lawers are still after years trying to figure out the issue between Oracle and Google, Apple and Samsung... It's a really hard legal issue, expecting it to be easy for a computer to solve. It's naive.
- afandian 8y ago
  There is no 'them'. The Wikipedia community comprises everyone who wants to participate. WMF is small in comparison.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Sure, the magical internet gnomes can know what every book in the world contains and detect copy paste like that. I would expect to read such an uninformed comment on Fox News comment section.
mike22223333 8y ago
Wikipedia should verify the copyright before allowing changes. It should not be the publishers responsibility to enforce the copyright. Wikipedia should be responsible because they decided they wanted to allow anyone to edit. They should hire moderators, and if they cannot moderate, they should not run a platform of theft.
- ben_w 8y ago
  > It should not be the publishers responsibility to enforce the copyright. Why not? Copyright is an unnatural right created in the name of encouraging creative output; if the person who owns the rights to control copying a work don’t enforce it, why should the rest of us do it for them?
  - fnord123 8y ago
    Don't you have a bloom filter for all content ever created with which you can compare the content?
- vkou 8y ago
  How can I verify that your post is not a violation of copyright? Did you crib it from somewhere? Maybe we should shift the burden of proof on you? Can you prove that you are not violating copyright with your post? If you can't do it, how on earth can Wikipedia do it? In the Soviet Union, this was called "Prove that you are not a camel."
- hnbroseph 8y ago
  surely then, all forums should "verify the copyright" of posts before they are accepted. all email providers should screen all the mails users send.
- jotm 8y ago
  People who think like this should really chill the fuck out. Ownership of thoughts and ideas is pathetic at best, if you don't want it shared, keep it to yourself. But nooo, "I want everyone to hear me and I want them to know it was me who said it. Me me me. I'm important, I want to feel like it". Get the fuck over it. And if you want to make money off of it, there are plenty of much better ways besides braindead ads. GDPR seems to pander a bit too much to carebears.

ghaff 8y ago

There's actually an, at least arguable, point in your first sentence before you get to the copyright infringement. And there's a whole round-robin of content (or just "facts") being lifted from Wikipedia to put on other sites and from other sites to be put on Wikipedia that's often hard to sort out. There is a broader point that centralization of content being found by search engines isn't ideal--even if Wikipedia were more pristine than it is a lot of the time.

leephillips 8y ago
You're right twice. But when I see things on Wikipedia lifted from textbooks published before there was Wikipedia it's not hard to sort out. As to your second point, I think the combined effect of Wikipedia and Google's popularity-based search ranking is hurting the web. It's not a conspiracy, just a result of the system.