Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20200212

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Contributor copyright investigation

This CCI cleanup subpage has been opened because concerns of multiple point infringement have been substantiated and further steps are necessary to address the serious risk of copyright violation from the listed contributor. Listings are not intended to imply a presumption of bad faith on the part of any contributor, as copyright laws vary widely around the world and many contributors who violate Wikipedia's copyrights policy do so inadvertently through not understanding it or the United States' laws that govern it.

If you are here because of a note on an article's talk page explaining removal of text, please do not restore any removed text without first ensuring that the text does not duplicate, closely paraphrase or plagiarize from a previously published source. You are welcome to use sourced facts that may have been removed to create new content in your own words or to incorporate brief quotations of copyrighted material in accordance with the non-free content policy and guideline.

Instructions

All contributors with no history of copyright problems are welcome to contribute to clean up. Contributors who are the subject of a contributor copyright investigation are among contributors with a history of copyright problems and so are not welcome to directly evaluate their own or others' copyright violations in CCIs. They are welcome to assist with rewriting any problems identified.

If contributors have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation, it may be assumed without further evidence that all of their major contributions are copyright violations, and they may be removed indiscriminately in accordance with Wikipedia:Copyright violations. Contributors who are the subject of a contributor copyright investigation are among contributors who have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation and so all of the below listed contributions may be removed indiscriminately. However, to avoid collateral damage, efforts should be made when possible to verify infringement before removal.

When every section is completed, please alter the listing for this CCI at Wikipedia:CCI#Open_investigations to include the tag "completed=yes". This will alert a clerk that the listing needs to be archived.

{{CCI-open|Contributor name|Day Month Year|completed=yes}}

Text

Examine the article or the diffs linked below.
If the contributor has added creative content, either evaluate it carefully for copyright concerns or remove it.

Evaluating for copyright concerns may include checking the listed sources, spot-checking using google, google books and other search engines and looking for major differences in writing style. The background may give some indication of the kinds of copyright concerns that have been previously detected. For older text, mirrors of Wikipedia content may make determining which came first difficult. It may be helpful to look for significant changes to the text after it was entered. Searching for the earlier form of text can help eliminate later mirrors. If you cannot determine which came first, text should be removed presumptively, since there is an established history of copying with the editor in question.
If you remove text presumptively, place {{subst:CCI|name=Contributor name}} on the article's talk page.
If you specifically locate infringement and remove it (or revert to a previous clean version), place {{subst:cclean}} on the article's talk page. The url parameter may be optionally used to indicate source.
If there is insufficient creative content on the page for it to survive the removal of the text or it is impossible to extricate from subsequent improvements, replace it with {{subst:copyvio}}, linking to the investigation subpage in the url parameter. List the article as instructed at the copyright problems board, but you do not need to notify the contributor. Your note on the CCI investigation page serves that purpose.
To tag an article created by the contributor for presumptive deletion, place {{subst:copyvio|url=see talk}} on the article's face and {{subst:CCId|name=Contributor name}} on the article's talk page. List the article as instructed at the copyright problems board, but you do not need to notify the contributor.

After examining an article:

replace the diffs after the colon on the listing with indication of whether a problem was found (add {{y}}) or not (add {{n}}). If the article is blanked and may be deleted, please indicate as much after the {{y}}. The {{?}} template may be used for articles where you were unable to determine whether or not a violation occurred, but are prepared to remove the article from consideration – either because the material is no longer present in the article, or it is adequately paraphrased so as to no longer be a violation (please specify which).
Follow with your username and the time to indicate to others that the article has been evaluated and appropriately addressed. This is automatically generated by four tildes (~~~~)

If a section is complete, consider collapsing it by placing {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}} beneath the section header and after the final listing.

Background

Mark Sublette

Mark Sublette (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Check requested by Rs chen 7754
Several articles written with unnecessary quotations like Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center and 1934 United Airlines Utah crash and Zodiac balloon accident (where almost half the article is quotes) and there are many others that are like this. I also see instances of close paraphrasing - compare [1] with [2], [3] with [4], [5] with [6], [7] with [8], [9] with [10]. I suspect that many of the newspaper citations may be closely paraphrased as well but I let my Newspapers.com subscription lapse and can't check it. --Rs chen 7754 07:18, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Is there any action going to be taken on this? --Rs chen 7754 07:12, 12 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Accepted. The very first article I checked (John Scott Williams) is also a copyvio [11]. MER-C 20:24, 12 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is really bad- This user appears to have also faked references. For example, this edit cites Rodgers, Phil, "Dakota Heroes", Flypast, Stamford, Lincs., UK, Number 53, December 1985, pages 24-27 - Whatever this is, it does not exist; No trace of it can be found through an internet search. Another example if The newspaper cited here; the referenced newspaper story does not exist. This is going to make presumptive removals necessary, as material insered by this user now runs afoul of WP:V and possibly WP:HOAX. Moneytrees🌴^{Talk🌲Help out at CCI!} 03:00, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Flypast reference that you questioned is to a well known aviation magazine - we have an article about the magazine -Flypast magazine, and from [12] - a site selling back issues of the magazine, it seems that the article referenced did exist - while it may be difficult to confirm whether these dead tree reliable sources have been closelyparaphrased, we shouldn't be assuming that they are non-existant just because a search on the internet doesn't find them - oss line references are still allowed.Nigel Ish (talk) 22:24, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nigel Ish, Hmm... that makes this easier and harder. On the one hand, there isn't an imminent threat to the truthfulness of articles. On the other, this means that the sources used are obscure and hard to find..... I don't want to do a bunch of presumptive deletions, but it's going to be hard not to, unless we can get some help from some aviation database or someone who happens to have access to a bunch of old aviation magazines and books. Moneytrees🌴^{Talk🌲Help out at CCI!} 23:14, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The newspaper article is available online [13] - the text in the article is almost identical but I don't know if it's still copyrighted. Peter James (talk) 16:14, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]