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Wikipedia's Content Ripped Off More Egregiously Than Usual
Ultraexactzz writes "Wikipedia's content is licensed under the GFDL, which permits such content to be copied with attribution — and Wikipedia is used to its content being copied and mirrored. However, a new website at e-wikipedia.net appears to have taken this a step further by mirroring the entire English Wikipedia — articles, logos, disclaimers, userpages, and all. Compare Wikipedia's About page with e-wikipedia.net's. The site even adds to Wikipedia's normally ad-free interface by including text ads." Just try logging in or actually editing an article, though, and you'll get the message "The requested URL /w/index.php was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request." If there's credit here, I don't see it — sure looks like it's intentionally misleading readers.
1. That site will sooner or later be indexed by Google, misleading unwary googlers to the fake site.
2. More hits, more ad revenue.
3. Profit!!
Hopefully, Wikipedia's GFDL license will make possible to have this website banned.
This is perfect! Next time a teacher or other person in authority says I can't use Wikipedia because it is unreliable I just get the content from this site and I can say that it wasn't Wikipedia!
Crap like this is exactly WHY Wikipedia should not be cited formally as a reference. Even if Wikipedia could be trusted to be 100% correct (which it can't), how do you know you're not looking at some fake shit? Wikipedia is great for personal research. For formal citation, it's garbage. For one thing, the content can change. This is part of what makes it powerful, but it also makes it useless when cited on paper. You go to the URL and see something totally different from what the author was trying to cite.
It's funny, but you have to consider that the site is a live mirror of Wikipedia. So, they are using Wikipedia's content, through Wikipedia's servers, and then serving ads and spam on top of them. These get nuked by the Wikimedia server administrators quickly.
1. Cite to a specific version of an article.
2. Or cite to the items the wikipedia article cites. I find wikipedia to be a nice "springboard", as I can go to the references, and then to the reference's references, and so on. Quick way to get useful and cite-able info.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Step 1) Duplicate highly successful web site, rip off all content, images, layouts, etc... /. and Digg about rampant abuse of IP
Step 2) Secure Advertising
Step 3) Submit story on
Step 4) Profit!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Because it took how long until this was noticed? They almost certainly made their domain-registration fee back and then some.
Short-living business strategies work, if you chain them together.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Actually, no encyclopedia (Wikipedia or otherwise) should be cited formally. It doesn't matter on how accurate it is, or who can edit it, or anything. An encyclopedia is not a primary source. It's a good starting point to find primary sources (and for those of us who aren't using it formally, a source of information) and general background information to pursue one's research, but that's it. This is most evident in Wikipedia's "No original research" stance - it knows it's not a primary source of information and it shouldn't be.
The fact that Wikipedia is freely editable means one should really go to the original source for information.
1) Fail. Because the if the specific version of the article is false or misleading, you will have used invalid data.
2) Which is exactly how you should use wikipedia.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
1. Proxy someone else's site
2. Add Ads
3. Slashdot
4. Owners of original site block your IP from theirs.
5. NO Profit!
No ??? needed.
Aren't you facing the exact same risk whenever you cite any other source, too? The key words are "exact same" risk. No, the risk is not exactly the same. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and is peer reviewed by none. Compare this to an article in a scientific journal or a textbook. The level of attention to accuracy is not even close. Wikipedia is good for an encyclopedia, but it is leagues away from anyone being able to consider it to be a reliable source.
You need to check those tests carefully. On average, science articles in Wikipedia may be more accurate than those of similar encyclopedias e.g. Brittanica, but they're not better than dedicated scientific texts and journals.
While you are right and scientific journals/textbooks are usually the most accurate source I would argue that wikipedia is definitely peer reviewed and sometimes even more accurate than (some) textbooks.
A challenge for you: make a change to wikipedia that is blatantly wrong and have it stay for 24 hours. The point being that if you could achieve that for wikipedia then you'd likely be able to get the error into a textbook. The difference is that once it's in a textbook it's wrong until the next edition, wikipedia is wrong until someone notices.
Aren't you facing the exact same risk whenever you cite any other source, too?
Yes, anything can be misleading or inaccurate. That's not why citation matters. The purpose of citation is so that the reader can refer to the source to see (a) whether the source supports the interpretation you offer; and (b) how the source supports itself.
The second reason (b) is why you should always cite primary sources. The point isn't that primary sources are infallible, but that if they're truly primary sources, they'll support themselves. They'll give examples, evidence, etc. as to why the claims they're making are true, and the reader is then able to evaluate the claims on the basis of the person who originated those claims.
If you cite a secondary source, then you're leading the reader on a trail of citations that might go nowhere. I could cite you, you could cite someone else, that someone else cite yet another person, and off we go. You're essentially setting up a research project for the reader to figure out where the information actually came from.
Also, by the time the information comes through so many people, it can be distorted. It can be like a game of telephone, where what started out as a fact gets interpreted, and the interpretation gets interpreted, and that interpretation gets interpreted, ad nauseam. So by the end, you have no idea how distorted the truth is.
So seriously, if your research paper is relying on certain facts, try to find the original piece of writing that asserted those facts, and read that work for yourself. If you can't do that (in the case of a lost work that no longer exists, but is cited elsewhere), find the source that is as close as possible to the original, and cite that. Always go to the most original point, and always cite the primary work.
Wikipedia is a perfectly good place to start, and luckily they've started to encourage people to cite sources so that you can find the primary source for yourself. So when you want to use a fact from Wikipedia, follow their citation, read the work for yourself, and then you can cite *that* work as your primary source.
The only question is.. how long will it do that?
If the site was really a leech site -- the operator may just start using random proxies and anonymizers to load the pages.
Or Tor.
If Wikipedia attempts to block those, they will also be blocking a portion of real Wikipedia readers/editors living in certain countries where they really need to conceal their identities, to protect against prosecution for what they choose to read on Wikipedia.
My opinion is this: Plagiarism is not copyright infringement. While both terms may apply to a particular act, they are different transgressions. Copyright infringement is a violation of the rights of a copyright holder, when material protected by copyright is used without consent. On the other hand, plagiarism is concerned with the unearned increment to the plagiarizing author's reputation that is achieved through false claims of authorship.
I wrote all of that myself, in case you weren't sure. Honest.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
I'm amazed at how many people are missing Wikipedia's built in protection against this.
Every page has a history. It's possible to cite a page at a certain time and guarantee that it will be displayed regardless of what changes are made to the article. This, in addition to a diff system (and discussion), makes it better in some ways than hard print, because it allows the reader to map changes over time and consensus/disagreements over contentious topics.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
Anyone can review Wikipedia, but in the real world, only people with spare time and adjendas do review Wikipedia.
Which is a lot more work than just citing a primary source in the first place. You shouldn't be citing a source you don't understand anyway.
After all, I am strangely colored.
[citation needed]
"review" != "peer review". And before you respond:
Let's see what Wikipedia itself has to say:
Of course, peer review is not perfect (and some problems with it are handily documented by Wikipedia), but I don't really understand people's insistence that they be able to cite Wikipedia in acamedic situations. Importantly, lack of peer review is not the only reason citing Wikipedia is frowned upon. It has been traditional not to allow citation of encyclopedic sources for a number of reasons. Two pretty common ones off the top of my head:
So really, why cite Wikipedia? Any information you get from it should be available (probably in more detail) in a source cited by the Wikipedia article. Any information not cited should not be used anyway.