Wikipedia:Plagiarism
This guideline is under construction, see Wikipedia:Copyright problems for the current guideline on plagiarism on Wikipedia.
 | The following is a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. |
Plagiarism is the copying of material produced by others, either verbatim or with only minimal changes, without attributing that material to the original author. Material can be plagiarized from books and other printed media, websites, and GFDL-licensed works, such as the work of other Wikipedia editors. The copyright status of the work is irrelevant, directly copying a public-domain work is still plagiarism unless the original work is noted. Material in infoboxes (corporate data, species taxonomy, etc.) is not considered as plagiarized.
Copying the works of others and presenting them as your own is not acceptable practice at Wikipedia. Editors who continue to after warnings can be blocked.
Wikipedia will naturally refer to and include some material that comes from outside sources. This material may be in the public domain, may be included under a fair use argument, or it may be under a license compatible with the license used on Wikipedia, the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Examples of public-domain works include text and images from United States Government publications, and older works—such as the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica—that are no longer, or never were, covered by copyright. Some further examples are at Category:Attribution templates.
Even when material is not covered by copyright, it is still important to state its origin, including its authors or creators. Failure to include the origin of a work is misleading and also makes it more difficult for readers and editors to refer to the material's source. It may also violate the terms of the GFDL.
Material that is plagiarised but which does not violate copyright does not need to be removed from Wikipedia if it can be properly sourced. Add appropriate source information to the article wherever possible, or move unsourced material to an article's talk page until sources can be found.
If an editor has copied text or figures into Wikipedia without proper attribution, politely refer him to Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Citing sources, and/or Help:Citations quick reference. Editors who have difficulties or questions about this guidance can be referred to the Help Desk. Editors engaged in ongoing plagiarism who do not respond to polite requests may be blocked from editing.
Public domain sources
- See also Wikipedia:Public domain
How to properly attribute PD material
Use blockquote or one of the handy attribution templates
Also needed here - when to remove the attribution template...
What to do if you find plagiarism
Plagiarism doesn't have to be immediately removed, unlike copyright violations. It does need to be properly attributed to its source. If you find an example of plagiarism, contact the editor responsible, point them to this guideline page and ask them to provide the proper attribution. You can also change the copied material or provide the attribution on your own. If you find that an editor persists in plagiarising other work after being notified of this guideline, report them at WP:AN so that an administrator can deal with the issue.
What is not plagiarism
Factual information in infoboxes.
Lists of information [need some copyright opinions here!]
The history of plagiarism on Wikipedia
Large portions of articles have been directly copied from PD sources in the past. For instance, Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 was used as a source to build many articles in 2002. These articles were noted by use of the {{1911}} template.
At a certain point in the development of Wikipedia, we welcomed new content no matter what the source. This is no longer the case. As a mature encyclopedia, we now insist that all contributions are properly attributed. (shaky ground here, just putting it out there)
It is quite likely that many other articles consist of text directly copied from other sources. If you find examples of this and they are not attributed to the source, do something - either attribute the text, change it or flag it with the xxx-template so others can deal with it.