Forum:Copying your own work from Wikipedia to TARDIS Index File wiki

Recently CzechOut copied an article's contents from List of Doctor Who writers to this wiki's List of Doctor Who television writers page, he had been the main contributor on Wikipedia of the article. (You are able to copy around content like this under the CC by SA).

As is stated in our T:WIKIPEDIA we are trying to create a unique and separate encyclopaedia from Wikipedia. However on real world articles this form of using material from Wikipedia is allowable, though highly discouraged.

However the MoS doesn't really consider the situation where a user who has largely created content on Wikipedia porting it over to this wiki.

Wikipedia and our wiki have fairly different styles and formatting, both of which introduce issues when performing such an inclusive copy of information.

As CzechOut has found and as he's stated on my talk page:


 * I'm finding I have quite a lot of site-specific tailoring to do:
 * *Story names are often different here than they are on Wikipedia
 * *The point of view is quite different because our readership doesn't need to have things spelled out quite so much
 * *A wikipedia article will often have links to articles that don't exist at all, so you have to re-edit your own work, line by line, to determine whether it's worth linking to the wikipedia article, or just removing the link altogether.
 * 15:26: Thu 29 Dec 2011 

So, should we allow this form of copying from Wikipedia?

I understand this particular situation is likely very limited given the number low number of articles on Wikipedia that have creators active on both sites. But I thought it best be raised now with an active issue/example. --Tangerineduel / talk 16:21, December 29, 2011 (UTC)


 * It looks like a bit of a mare's nest, but it strikes me as academically dishonest to quote your own unsupported assertions as a source. I very much doubt that was Czechout's intention and I can easily imagine a string of innocent actions that would lead to this. However, this wiki seems a lot more conservative in assumptions than others. This looks like a case of Jove nodding.Boblipton talk to me 22:12, December 29, 2011 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify, CzechOut isn't citing the Wikipedia page as a source, he's literally taking the whole page (which he created and for the most part kept updated) and then brought it over here. --Tangerineduel / talk 13:28, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

Aaah. That's an entirely different kettle of schnapps. Don't we get involved in copyright issues then? Isn't the copyright assigned to the Wiki foundation as unpaid work for hire? While it strikes me as reasonable for Czechout to twin his work, he may actually not have the legal right to do so. Are the legal entities for this wiki different from that wiki? If so, where was the article published first? This reminds me of how Gilbert & Sullivan premiered The Pirates of Penzance in America because of the coyright situation then. Welcome to the wonderful world of the Berne Convention.Boblipton talk to me 13:44, December 30, 2011 (UTC)


 * The article was on Wikipedia, where CzechOut created it.
 * The material you create on Wikipedia you own under the CCbySA, which is also how material created by users here is covered. As long as the source is cited by way of the Template:Wikipedia template being on the article, which you can see on The Tenth Planet (which, when originally created used content from Wikipedia). --Tangerineduel / talk 13:56, December 30, 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually, there's no legal issue. As was stated above, both wikis are under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.  As long as a link is given to the original article, even in the page history, all is well.  Such a link does exist in the page history, and the page is even in a category which proclaims its status as a Wikipedia fork.  We are satisfying our Creative Commons obligations by directly stating that it comes from Wikipedia, and providing a link to the original article. (We don't actually have to use the template.  We have a category which any user can choose to make visible.  And we're providing a link through edit summary.  That's sufficient.)


 * The bigger issue is sort of a moral one, as Tangerineduel has set forth. Under T:WIKIPEDIA, we would frown, these days, on taking an article in this way, under any other circumstances. Randomly copying an article from Wikipedia could well end up in Tardis deletion.  So is it a valid exception to take from Wikipedia what you personally have added to Wikipedia?


 * (I should point out that, in this case, it's largely theoretical now. The actual text the current revision of our article is about 15% shorter and in some cases quite differently worded to its Wikipedia twin.  And it's a bit of a stretch to call this an "article", anyway, since it's basically just a table. Still it's important to determine what we might do in the future, should the question again arise.)  14:14: Fri 30 Dec 2011