Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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How do you choose which articles to work on ?

Greetings! My question is the next. How do you choose the articles you want to work on ?

In my case, it's simple. I read articles on topics that interest me and I read the related articles (For example, internal links).

If I don't have time to work on it. I write a note on my user page to work on it later. Anatole-berthe (talk) 01:57, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that really depends on who you ask. Polygnotus (talk) 22:29, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Everybody's different. Some people are on a mission to document every professional cricket player, every TV station, every species of reptile, every politician in their home country, etc, etc. I like to explore the history of where I live and as often as not, my interest in a topic is sparked by going past some building or park and wondering if there's more there than meets the eye. And, just like Anatole-berthe, my user space is littered with stubs of future articles that never went anywhere. RoySmith (talk) 22:39, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aye, I figure that everyone will have different motives. I've ceased article writing because this list of articles I have worked on is also a list of articles I need to maintain, and it's gotten too long. Every year I do maintain that list. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:51, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everybody for yours answers ! Anatole-berthe (talk) 13:27, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a WikiSloth: I work on whatever catches my eye, most often merely to untangle awkward wording; though I pay more attention to areas where I think I know something, like heraldry and polytopes. —Tamfang (talk) 23:08, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What I like to do is to go to the list of all unreferenced pages (Category:Articles lacking sources), and I select a random page and add a reference to it. It's not that important but it passes the time. If you want anymore help--Usertalk:Timothy Venia Timothy Venia (talk) 18:45, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MOS article title discrepancy

I recently learned that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Visual arts includes the article title guidance "If the title is not very specific, or refers to a common subject, add the surname of the artist in parentheses afterwards". I encountered this when Peeling Onions was moved to Peeling Onions (Lilly Martin Spencer) for this reason by User:SilverLocust. This seems to be contrary to the general rule of not using disambiguation unless necessary, and is also not in sync with other comparable guidelines like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (music) which follow the general rule. Is there a reason for this local consensus overriding the global one that I am missing? Fram (talk) 08:37, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, I moved it from Peeling Onions(Lilly Martin Spencer) to Peeling Onions (Lilly Martin Spencer) after another user had objected to renaming it just Peeling Onions. But as noted at WP:MISPLACED#Other exceptions, there are some naming conventions that call for unnecessary disambiguation. The other thing people usually point to when disagreeing with WP:MISPLACED is WP:ASTONISH. Also, MOS:ART isn't a local consensus. SilverLocust 💬 08:46, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, "local consensus" was not the right choice of words, I meant a more specific guideline overruling the general one and not being in sync with most other ones. Fram (talk) 09:08, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But anyway, the question is, is there a good reason why the band, movie, album, book, .... "Peeling Onions" would all be at the title "Peeling Onions", but for the painting we need to add the name of the artist? Fram (talk) 09:39, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If there were two or more notable paintings called “Pealing Onions”, disambiguating by artist would be helpful.

Otherwise, we don’t need to be so specific. We can disambiguate as “Pealing Onions (painting)” to distinguish it from the book, album, etc of the same title. Blueboar (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Talk:Peeling Onions (Lilly Martin Spencer)#Requested move 20 December 2024. GTrang (talk) 17:56, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How to handle plagiarism from Wikipedia?

Hey all, hope everyone here is doing well. Today I woke up to discover that a podcaster I follow had plagiarised part of an article I wrote, as well as parts of some other articles (some of which I had contributed to, others not). The podcaster did not cite their sources, nor did they make it clear that they were pulling whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, but they ran advertisements and plugged their patreon anyway. This is not the first time an article I wrote for Wikipedia has been plagiarised and profited off (earlier this year I noticed a youtuber had plagiarised an entire article I had written; I've also noticed journalists ripping off bits and pieces of other articles). Nor is this limited to articles, as I often see original maps people make for Wikimedia Commons reused without credit.

Obviously I'm not against people reusing and adapting the work we do here, as it's freely licensed under creative commons. But it bugs me that no attribution is provided, especially when it is required by the license; attribution is literally the least that is required. I would like attribution of Wikipedia to become more common and normalised, but I don't know how to push for people off-wiki to be more considerate of this. In my own case, the 'content creators' in question don't provide contact details, so I have no way of privately getting in touch with them. Cases in which I have been able to contact an organisation about their unattributed use of Wikipedia/Wikimedia content often get ignored, and the unattributed use continues. But I also have no interest in publicly naming and shaming these people, as I don't think it's constructive.

Does anyone here have advice for how to handle plagiarism from Wikipedia? Is there something we can do to push for more attribution? --Grnrchst (talk) 13:59, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly there are plenty of lazy sods who think that copying directly from Wikipedia is "research". This has happened with some of the articles that I have been involved with. It's rude, but hard to stop.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 14:13, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would start by writing to the podcaster and politely explaining to them that they are welcome to use the material but are required to provide attribution. They may simply be unaware of this and might be willing to comply if properly educated. Failing that, I assume the podcast was being streamed from some content delivery service like YouTube. You might have better luck writing to the service provider demanding that the offending material be taken down.

Realistically, crap like this happens all the time, and there's probably not a whole bunch we can do to prevent it. RoySmith (talk) 14:37, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To support RoySmith's point, for those who may not have seen it, here is a very long youtube video about youtube and plagiarism [1]. (Works just having it on as background audio.) CMD (talk) 14:59, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Funnily enough, plagiarism from Wikipedia comes up a couple times in that video. MJL also made a very good response video, which I think was a useful addition in the conversation of crediting Wikipedians. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:10, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'll give that a listen. CMD (talk) 15:18, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aye, I figured it be an uphill battle trying to accomplish even minor changes on this front. As I can't find a way to contact the creator directly, sending an email to the hosting company may be the best I can do, but even then I doubt it'll lead to anything. Thanks for the advice, anyhow. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:12, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it's a copyright violation (e.g., exact wording), rather than plagiarism (stealing the ideas but using their own words), then you could look into a DMCA takedown notice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:25, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: It was more-or-less word for word, with a couple tweaks here and there. I don't want the episode pulled, I really just want Wikipedia cited, but I can't figure out any way to get in direct contact with any of the people involved. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:16, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible that the way to get in touch with them is a DMCA takedown notice. Having your platform take down the whole episode tends to attract attention. You could make it easy on them by suggesting a way to fix the problem (maybe they could add something like "This episode quotes Wikipedia in several places" to the end of the notes on the podcast?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:33, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious as to what the plagiarized article in question is. Often there is no majority authorship of an article (in terms of bytes added), which might complicate DMCA claims. Jay Cubby 18:35, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone who contributed enough content to be copyrighted can issue a DMCA notice. The glaring problem with this approach is that the DMCA only applies if the copy is published in the United States. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:51, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What about servers or companies based in the States (perhaps I've misremembered what little I know of copyright law)? Jay Cubby 18:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@JayCubby: It's an article I wrote 99.9% of, minus minor copyedits by other users. I'm cautious about revealing which one as I think it would make it easy to figure out the podcast in question, and I'd still prefer to handle this privately rather than go full hbomberguy. Also, having now gone through more of the episode, it's not just that one article that got text lifted from it; text was also copied in whole or in part, without attribution, from other Wikipedia articles I have contributed to (but didn't author) and an article on another website that publishes under a CC BY-NC-ND license. I don't know how I would handle notifying the other parties that got plagiarised either. I haven't combed through the entire episode yet, but already a sizeable portion consists of unattributed text, either identical to the source or with minor alterations. --Grnrchst (talk) 19:29, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One man deserves the credit, one man deserves the blame...

Jay Cubby 00:42, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've found Wikipedia plagiarized in scientific journal articles. I have no tolerance for that and I contact the publishers directly. But little to nothing comes of it. In the one instance, I waited almost a year but nothing really happened. Upon pushing the matter, the publishers allowed the authors to make some trivial changes but there was no retraction. (See my banner notes at the top of Talk:Semi-empirical mass formula if you are interested in this example.) Fortunately, this kind of plagiarism may be common in less prestigious journals and by less prestigious authors from universities in countries that may not care about plagiarism of Western sources. Jason Quinn (talk) 08:39, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jason Quinn Wrong section? You wanted to post below? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 17:03, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it was. Sorry about that. I moved my comment (along with yours) to the proper spot. Jason Quinn (talk) 21:12, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jason Quinn PS. Make sure to use PubPeer and comment on those articles! _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 17:04, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll check it out. Jason Quinn (talk) 21:12, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the publisher has a ... somewhat questionable reputation to put it politely. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:10, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some years ago, we found a source saying that the 20% of lowest-ranked journals had a higher risk of copyright violations. (They did tend to be journals from developing countries or otherwise with limited resources – think "Journal of the Tinyland Medical Society".) I have discouraged using journals from the lowest ranked quintile ever since. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:42, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As an aside, I'm pretty sure I've been the "benefactor" of scholarly citogenesis several times—uncited additions from a decade ago that I'm scouring for cites and pondering whether to rewrite from scratch, when I find a passage that pretty much has the same structure and specifics (uncontroversial stuff, mind) and I smile. I do wonder if I should be so happy, but I figure they're qualified to conduct original research and this isn't likely to introduce poor quality infomation. Remsense ‥ 论 04:48, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When the plagiarism is substantial, please remember to tag the talk page with {{backwardscopy}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:49, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Syrian flag

Just a heads-up: for obvious reasons, the default Syrian flag is now the flag of the interim revolutionary government. If you want the Assad-era flag, you will want {{flag|Syria|1980}}, not just {{flag|Syria}}. You can explictly get the revolutionary flag (with precaution against it being changed if the national flag changes again) by using {{flag|Syria|revolution}}.

For the bulk of places where the Syrian flag is used, this is correct, and it spares us an insane number of edits. However, unfortunately, a lot of articles about the recent war used/use {{flag|Syria}} for the Assad side, and now show the wrong flag. These would probably be the highest priority to change.

Similar issues might arise with (for example) participation in international competitions and conferences, granting of awards, etc., but those seem to me to be much less potentially misleading than ones related to the revolution itself. I see things that long predate 1980 that were just using {{flag|Syria}}, so it is not as if there has been great discipline around this in the past.

(If someone needs my attention to a response here, please ping me. I do not maintain a watchlist on en-wiki.) - Jmabel | Talk 23:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel I think you're right about this issue but I have few ideas for its resolution.

A possibility is to give an unique name to each flags.

For example we erase {{flag|Syria}} that gave the next result :

Syria.

We keep {{flag|Syria|1980}} that gave the next result

Syria

The same for {{flag|Syria|revolution}} that gave the next result

Syria.

We can do the same for others flags. For example instead of {{flag|United States}} that gave the next result

United States.

We keep {{flag|United States|1960}}

United States that gave the flag of nowadays with 50 stars.

To get the previous flag {{flag|United States|1959}} =

United States.

I discover a thing. If you write {{flag|Country of your choice|Year}} you get the flag of this country in force during the year selectionned for some countries.

It doesn't functionning for all countries. Anatole-berthe (talk) 00:27, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly don't oppose someone taking on a major, multi-person-month approach to the entire {{flags}} template, but I would not want to see us delay the solution to this immediate issue and have it wait for a massive, broad project. - Jmabel | Talk 00:31, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think a project like this would need 10 people or more. What do you think about the number ? Anatole-berthe (talk) 00:56, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indigenous territory

Are there Indigenous territory in Ecuador, Suriname? What about Honduras, Guatemala, and Salvador? Kaiyr (talk) 05:20, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure what specifically is being asked, but I'm fairly sure you didn't mean to ask it at the village pump? Remsense ‥ 论 05:26, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This might be a question for the Wikipedia:Reference desk. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:27, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suggested Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities on their talkpage. CMD (talk) 07:43, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's a good bet that all of the territory has been there longer than any colonizer. —Tamfang (talk) 21:18, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]