The wonders of wikignomes

[Kelly Martin]

In one of my infrequent checks of my old user talk page, I noticed that some idiot, by the name of Bistropha (T-C-L), back in January of 2014, accused me of copyright infringement in relation to an article (Lombard College (T-H-L)) I wrote on Wikipedia way back in 2005. This wikignome discovered that the article was virtually identical to some random website, and concluded that the article I wrote in 2005 was copied from this website, which was obviously scraped from Wikipedia sometime in 2007. In 2011 someone "helpfully" added an link to the scraped page to the article.

The article I wrote would likely have been deleted as a copyright infringement of itself, if our dear friend Ira Matetsky weren't in the habit of monitoring my talk page (one must wonder why he does that), and hadn't stepped in to resolve the situation. One wonders how many Wikipedia pages have been deleted or otherwise attacked for being self-infringing in this manner, given that there are thousands of pages on the Internet that are scraped from Wikipedia.

Note that I don't really care about the article; what I find interesting about this is that this sort of thing happens at all. Is Bistropha unusually stupid for a Wikipedian, or is this normal? And why is Ira monitoring my talk page? I certainly don't, except once every six months or so.

[enwikibadscience]

In one of my infrequent checks of my old user talk page, I noticed that some idiot, by the name of Bistropha (T-C-L), back in January of 2014, accused me of copyright infringement in relation to an article (Lombard College (T-H-L)) I wrote on Wikipedia way back in 2005. This wikignome discovered that the article was virtually identical to some random website, and concluded that the article I wrote in 2005 was copied from this website, which was obviously scraped from Wikipedia sometime in 2007. In 2011 someone "helpfully" added an link to the scraped page.

The article I wrote would likely have been deleted as a copyright infringement of itself, if our dear friend Ira Matetsky weren't in the habit of monitoring my talk page (one must wonder why he does that), and hadn't stepped in to resolve the situation. One wonders how many Wikipedia pages have been deleted or otherwise attacked for being self-infringing in this manner, given that there are thousands of pages on the Internet that are scraped from Wikipedia.

Note that I don't really care about the article; what I find interesting about this is that this sort of thing happens at all. Is Bistropha unusually stupid for a Wikipedian, or is this normal? And why is Ira monitoring my talk page? I certainly don't, except once every six months or so.

Define "unusually stupid for a Wikipedian."

[EricBarbour]

1) this is a semi-routine occurrence. Because there are so many AFDs and speedys every day, one or two legitimate articles aren't noticed. Now that plagiarism from/into Wikipedia is commonplace, and NO ONE is keeping track of it, we'll never know how many times similar things have happened. The Israel/Palestine area is where a lot of that happened. If someone created an article the Israel extremists didn't like, it was sometimes made into a "copyright violation", then deleted; whereas there are some Israel-positive articles that are plagiarised, and still sit on Wikipedia today unmolested.

2) Ira does what all Wikipedia insiders do--places the talkpages of his "enemies" on his watchlist. So the "enemies" can be attacked should they ever return. This is one of MediaWiki's most popular internal bureaucratic functions. Especially amongst administrators on WMF projects.

[enwikibadscience]

1) this is a semi-routine occurrence. Because there are so many AFDs and speedys every day, one or two legitimate articles aren't noticed. Now that plagiarism from/into Wikipedia is commonplace, and NO ONE is keeping track of it, we'll never know how many times similar things have happened. The Israel/Palestine area is where a lot of that happened. If someone created an article the Israel extremists didn't like, it was sometimes made into a "copyright violation", then deleted; whereas there are some Israel-positive articles that are plagiarised, and still sit on Wikipedia today unmolested.

2) Ira does what all Wikipedia insiders do--places the talkpages of his "enemies" on his watchlist. So the "enemies" can be attacked should they ever return. This is one of MediaWiki's most popular internal bureaucratic functions. Especially amongst administrators on WMF projects.

I found a lot of plagiarism in an article, and basically I was accused of finding circular plagiarism. It wasn't. Let's see, it was the CrossFit (T-H-L) article, having plagiarized its own press releases and memos. You can find the dates for this stuff, and you can use even the most basic internet search engines to search for the dates when different materials were put up, which I did. But, CrossFit found an admin dupe, then cleaned up their web history, so there article is pretty safe. It's one of the worst corporate articles on en.Wikipedia, and I feel sorry for them, as if they don't deserve it--they describe, wikilink and personally relate every CrossFit exercise in the article.

Jump rope
The most common variation in CrossFit is the "double under" in which the jump rope makes two revolutions for each jump.[41]

The country controversies are probably worse, but the corporate world is still, in spite of the thin bright line, one of the places to find the absolute worse crap on en.Wikipedia.

<--- the CrossFit double under

[Newyorkbrad]

... if our dear friend Ira Matetsky weren't in the habit of monitoring my talk page (one must wonder why he does that)

I have my watchlist set to automatically watch any page I edit. (It's a box I clicked sometime around 2006.) I am sure I edited your talkpage at least once, so it is on my watchlist. I don't remember the specifics of this incident, but I am sure that when I saw the edit summary "copying text verbatim may be a copyvio" posted to your page, I said to myself, "this is surely a mistake; let us fix it." I would have done the same if the same message had appeared on the talkpages of at least several hundred other present and past editors who are also on my watchlist.

[Casliber]

I automatically watch all pages I edit through ticking the same box, though discovered that when it hit 10,000 pages or so the damn watchlist took so long it'd crash the browser on my smartphone, so wiped it sometime last year. Some people's talk pages are amusing for all sorts of different reasons.

[Silent Editor]

... if our dear friend Ira Matetsky weren't in the habit of monitoring my talk page (one must wonder why he does that)

I have my watchlist set to automatically watch any page I edit. (It's a box I clicked sometime around 2006.) I am sure I edited your talkpage at least once, so it is on my watchlist. I don't remember the specifics of this incident, but I am sure that when I saw the edit summary "copying text verbatim may be a copyvio" posted to your page, I said to myself, "this is surely a mistake; let us fix it."

"Let us fix it"?
Is that the royal 'us'?

[Kumioko]

I have just a little over 22, 000 pages on mine including most of the active admins and arbs. I does tend to load slowly on my phone but does fine on the computer.

[thekohser]

... if our dear friend Ira Matetsky weren't in the habit of monitoring my talk page (one must wonder why he does that)

I have my watchlist set to automatically watch any page I edit. (It's a box I clicked sometime around 2006.) I am sure I edited your talkpage at least once, so it is on my watchlist. I don't remember the specifics of this incident, but I am sure that when I saw the edit summary "copying text verbatim may be a copyvio" posted to your page, I said to myself, "this is surely a mistake; let us fix it." I would have done the same if the same message had appeared on the talkpages of at least several hundred other present and past editors who are also on my watchlist.

Sounds like someone's got a crush on you, Kelly.