Lazy YouTubers and WP’s role in enabling plagiarism

[kepchup]

Sorry if this post is in the wrong subforum or if the subject’s already been discussed before.

So, I’m fairly certain this is out of the interest sphere of WO’s demographic, but I’m still interested in knowing what others may think about it. A big story broke last year about several successful YouTube essayists and commentary channels being rife with plagiarism; basically them getting thousands of Patreon bux to regurgitate unattributed chunks of Telegraph articles and Netflix documentaries - and Wikipedia articles! - at you, and acting as if they came up with the research themselves.

I guess what got me thinking about WP’s hand in all this was the fact that one creator who talked about this issue pledged to make donations to all the creators he found whose work had been plagiarized… including a significant donation to Wikipedia.

Of course, I couldn’t help but think about those who edited the articles highlighted (I was only able to identify the film theory (T-H-L) article for certain so far, but I’m still rewatching the vids to check which ones he specifically mentioned). While working uncompensated to edit these articles is a reality most WP users have to accept, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that articles have no real copyright protections from grifters like James Somerton using them for profit while WP editors themselves have a huge onus on them to be copyright compliant lest they suffer the wrath of WP:CCI

I know that at least one WP article about autism came up in these investigations (basically one YouTuber lifting all of Brian Deer’s MMR - what they didn’t tell you and calling that research she did herself).

Whether or not WP:MEDRS adjacent articles are any good objectively, I won’t deny that earnestly trying to write a good MED article is probably really fucking hard. I can’t imagine how it would feel to be one of the editors who worked on that article find out that a YouTuber got paid thousands in ad rev, patreon money and sponsorship kickbacks just to read an uncredited chunk of your article in the most boring cadence possible for five minutes among other acts of intellectual property theft.

And then another YouTuber pledging to pay a presumed few thousand to the WMF— a nonprofit that is very clearly not in need of as much funding as they say they do, who does not a whit to protect its community’s work from being exploited and will probably spend the money on some stupid techbro vanity project the community doesn’t want, but still gets to have the credit because nobody owns their work on Wikipedia (except when they do, because WP:OWN is a rule that applies to some more than others in my experience).

I’m sure there are plenty of editors in that space who drink the “knowledge for everyone” koolaid and don’t mind the irony of the WMF taking in fiscal credit for work that their editors did when plagiarism was discovered. It’s noble enough, I suppose, but it doesn’t change the fact that I feel their goodwill is being taken advantage of.

[ltbdl]

wikipedia donation thing at 3:25:13

[Hemiauchenia]

It's a bit strange to make a whole thread about this and not even link the hbomberguy (T-H-L) video that you're talking about
. Wikipedia plagiarism makes up comparatively little of the runtime, though it's been known for years that many YouTubers are lazy and will just read Wikipedia without doing deeper research into a topic. I think that speaks more to the nature of YouTube content creation than anything about Wikipedia though.

[kepchup]

It's a bit strange to make a whole thread about this and not even link the hbomberguy (T-H-L) video that you're talking about.

Yeah, that was my bad. I was having a really hard time with getting the video markup to work when I was writing this up so I was going to try again later, but you both beat me to it.

[Giraffe Stapler]

Of course, I couldn’t help but think about those who edited the articles highlighted (I was only able to identify the film theory (T-H-L) article for certain so far, but I’m still rewatching the vids to check which ones he specifically mentioned). While working uncompensated to edit these articles is a reality most WP users have to accept, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that articles have no real copyright protections from grifters like James Somerton using them for profit while WP editors themselves have a huge onus on them to be copyright compliant lest they suffer the wrath of WP:CCI
...

I’m sure there are plenty of editors in that space who drink the “knowledge for everyone” koolaid and don’t mind the irony of the WMF taking in fiscal credit for work that their editors did when plagiarism was discovered. It’s noble enough, I suppose, but it doesn’t change the fact that I feel their goodwill is being taken advantage of.

Look, I'm pretty cynical, but the entire raison d'être of Wikipedia to give everyone access to information, so it seems pretty odd to get salty when people are using it. Yes, there's no getting around the fact that just reading Wikipedia is lazy research, but that's literally what it is there for. On the other hand, if someone is quoting chunks of Wikipedia without acknowledging the source, that's plagiarism, but I'm not about to watch a 3 hour video to find that out. Should the WMF be getting money because of that? nope.

[ArmasRebane]

It's a bit strange to make a whole thread about this and not even link the hbomberguy (T-H-L) video that you're talking about
. Wikipedia plagiarism makes up comparatively little of the runtime, though it's been known for years that many YouTubers are lazy and will just read Wikipedia without doing deeper research into a topic. I think that speaks more to the nature of YouTube content creation than anything about Wikipedia though.

It's probably a function of familiarity, but I see it way more with stuff like podcasts, where it's extra obvious that at best hosts are reading the Wikipedia article and sprinkling in extra stuff from the sources linked in the references. At worst, it's just the article, often even more badly organized.

[LeftToLeft]

Speaking of lazy YouTubers, I believe there is already a YouTube video slightly about this.

[kepchup]

Thats by MJL (T-C-L), right?

[LeftToLeft]

Thats by MJL (T-C-L), right?

Yes