Talk:Ella Campbell

A fact from Ella Campbell appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 February 2016 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that while everyone else thought the field horsetail growing on nursery land in Palmerston North was ornamental, Dame Ella Orr Campbell correctly identified it as an invasive species?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2016/February.

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Copyright problem

Ambrosia10 has expressed (here) some perplexity at the copyvio blanking of this page. To try to make clear what the nature of the problem is, here's a comparison between the text of our article and the source"

Our article	The source
Her most productive research came after her retirement in 1976, in which year she was awarded a Doctor of Science by the University of Otago. She continued to occupy her office at Massey as an honorary research associate and the 1980s saw her study the Metzgeriales and Marchantiales, as well as produce a long series on New Zealand hornworts, for which she used scanning and transmission electron microscope images to depict the spores and other features of the plants. She maintained a large collection of living bryophytes in a courtyard of Massey's Ecology building, which was often under threat of removal for her methods of cultivation involved tatty looking plastic bags that proved an eyesore.	Her most productive research came after her retirement in 1976, in which year she was awarded a Doctor of Science by the University of Otago. She continued to occupy her office at Massey as an honorary research associate and the 1980s saw her study the Metzgeriales and Marchatiales, as well as produce a long series on New Zealand hornworts, for which she used scanning and transmission electron microscope images to depict the spores and other features of the plants. She maintained a large collection of living bryophytes in a courtyard of Massey's Ecology building, which was often under threat of removal for her methods of cultivation involved tatty looking plastic bags that proved an eyesore.

The only difference I can see is that a spelling mistake ("Marchatiales") in the source has been corrected. The source carries a clear copyright notice: "©2000-2015 ITHAKA. All Rights Reserved". With very few exceptions, all content added to Wikipedia must be written entirely in your own words; the facts of the source can be freely copied, but the form of expression, the actual text used, may not. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:46, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the copyvio detector report it's clear that prior to the WP article being blanked there was close paraphrasing/copying in the "career" and "retirement" sections of the article from this Global Plants article. However, it is also clear that the article as a whole is not a mere copy-paste but includes well formatted references from half a dozen reliable source. I'm going to re-write the two offending paragraphs now, and then return the rest of the article content as it was before. OK? Witty lama 18:24, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Wittylama, that's fine as long as (a) you are an admin, copyright clerk or OTRS agent and (b) (as you will of course know to do if you are one of those three things) you thoroughly check the whole text of the page for other copyvios, and review the user's other contributions in case there are other articles where the same has occurred. Otherwise it might be better just to observe what the copyvio template says: "Do not restore or edit the blanked content on this page until the issue is resolved by an administrator, copyright clerk or OTRS agent". You or anyone else is free to start on a rewrite of the page at any time, following the instructions on the template. It's important not to copy any content from the previous version of the page unless you are 100% certain that it does not violate any copyrights. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:46, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

just wow. if you don't want to restore it Wittylama, i will. i am extremely confident we would get admin concurrence with your judgement. as far as i'm concerned Justlettersandnumbers, you are part of the problem, go pound sand. Duckduckstop (talk) 18:59, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm halfway through a rewrite Duckduckstop. I'll ping all concerned here when I've (re)published so people can help smoothing and polishing ;-) Witty lama 19:05, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

we will have an editathon on friday, Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Women In Science, so it will come up then, no rush. Duckduckstop (talk) 19:08, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify: anyone who wants to rewrite the page should do so at this page. An administrator will then review it, and in due course move into the place of the existing copyright-violating article. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:26, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Justlettersandnumbers, Duckduckstop and Ambrosia10 (the original author), I have now returned the article to 'full size' having undertaken a large rewrite - particularly of the sections that were copied directly. There is more work that can be done, certainly, but the copyvio detector report now has subtsantially reduced amounts of red :-) A lot of the remaining items flagged by that report are technical phrases or proper nouns that can't easily be altered. Despite the instructions that Justlettersandnumbers pointed to, I've been bold and directly restored the article rather than going via a bureaucratic process. This decision was on the basis that I believe the initial cutting back of the article all the way to a one-line stub to be an overzealous application of copyright-violation patrol. At most the offending two paragraphs could have been deleted and the references in those sections moved elsewhere pending a re-write. So, now that those sections have been rewritten, and a whole bunch of new content added (including authority-control data and info about her success on the hockey field!!) I've brought it back to life. I hope everyone can be satisfied with this as an outcome and can help improve/polish the article from here (and further reduce the remaining close-paraphrasing). Witty lama 20:56, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wittylama, it is beyond me to understand why you could not follow our well-established procedure here after it had been explained to you in excruciatingly tedious detail. Are you an admin, copyright clerk or OTRS agent? I believe you are not. For what it's worth, I belong to the second and third, but not the first, of those categories. You appear to have set yourself up as some kind of higher being not subject to the same rules as the rest of us; why exactly do you think you have the right to make changes that you know to be out of process? In deference to that self-appointed higher status, instead of reverting your out-of-process edits to the article as I would normally have done, I am going to ask a couple of experienced copyright admins, Moonriddengirl and Diannaa, to review the changes you have made. They are probably fine. Your attitude is not. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:28, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have had a look at the copyvio report and there's still some sections that need work. The paragraph that begins "In 1945 Campbell took a position" still contains extensive wording that is identical to the source, and the wording "series on New Zealand hornworts, for which she used scanning and transmission electron microscopy" is identical in a later paragraph. Regarding the behavioural issues, I would like to point out that we have an extremely small cadre of people (less than five) who work on copyright concerns each day, while there's huge backlogs of articles that need checking. User:Justlettersandnumbers is one of the very few people working in this area, and telling him to go pound sand and acting like he is some kind of policy wonk because he tried to insist that the long-established procedures for copyright clean-up be followed is not on. We can't afford to lose any people who are prepared to work in this important area and I hope you will apologize for these remarks. -- Diannaa (talk) 22:30, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Copyvio clean-up is done. -- Diannaa (talk) 23:02, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

i stand by my remarks; we cannot afford to lose editors. copyright is an important issue. the small cadre of copyright scolds, give it a bad name. by your censorious attitude, you make the problem worse, since the good faith editors are driven away, and the battleground editors remain. by your gatekeeping, you are returning to a failed model, nupedia. if you think what i say is a personal attack, you can imagine what i will be saying at the Smithonian Institution archives on Friday. but then, you cannot consider off wiki behavior, lol. Duckduckstop (talk) 14:46, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you are not prepared to obey the copyright policy, Wikipedia is not the website for you. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously, and copyright materials should not be added to the site, even temporarily. Please pass this information along to your editathon participants: that violating copyright is against the law, and violators will be blocked from editing. -- Diannaa (talk) 18:56, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bless Your Heart, when i go to the Smithsonian on Friday, i will apologize for you, but what possible excuse can i give for your behavior? --should i say: don't panic, they're reading vogon poetry; or no one expects the spanish inquisition; or sorry about the police boots? Duckduckstop (talk) 14:27, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think sarcasm is going to help your case Duckduckstop, though I do of course sympathise with the point you're making about being welcoming to newcomers. Equally I sympathise with Justlettersandnumbers and Diannaa who are trying to maintain the standards and policies of the project. I too go to New Page Patrol, filtered for "pages created by new users" and see a disproportionate number of new biographies that are blatant hagiographies and/or copyvios so I understand the feeling of trying to "defend the gates". Equally, I do indeed recognise that by removing the Copyvio tag from the article and directly rewriting the content, I was going against the procedure explained in the template. As explained before, my reasoning for doing so was that I believe the blanking of the whole article was an overzealous application of anti-plagirism policies, given that it was clear the article had been edited together using multiple sources and that the two paragraphs which were the direct copy-paste parts could have been removed, rather than the whole document.

The wider issue was that this is an article by Ambrosia10, who has declared on her userpage that she is new here, has done her best to 'learn the ropes' using Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure, and is actively involved in both a GLAM project (the Smithsonian Transcription Centre) and also the Gender Gap activities (i.e. is both a woman herself, and working on biographies of women scientists). As such, Ambrosia10 is exactly the kind of person that we so desperately need to join the community and, with a quick view of her userpage, anyone can see that this is not an inveterate spammer/plagiarist but someone who is working in good faith. The wall-of-text boilerplate message for copyvios that was placed on her userpage is applicable as a level-1 warning for blatant plagiarists but is only going to scare-off well-intentioned newbies. As Shirt58 also said on her userpage it was a somewhat unpleasant introduction to the Wikipedia project (and linking those keywords to WP:BITE).

So, my out-of-process restoration of the article is in response to the mis-application of the process in the first place. And no, I don't "set myself up as some kind of higher being" as was claimed, I'm simply improving the article directly rather than forcing a valid article through a bureaucratic process which would take longer, create more work for several people (who, as mentioned are already busy), result in it a not-as-good quality outcome (because those people are busy), and demoralise the original editor to the point of wanting to leave - please also note the message she left on my talkpage.

We're all on the same team here, trying to improve the encyclopedia... Witty lama 22:33, 25 March 2015 (UTC) p.s. Ambrosia10, it's not always this acrimonious, don't worry :-)[reply]

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://plants.jstor.org/stable/history/10.5555/al.ap.person.bm000365733. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and according to fair use may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Diannaa (talk) 23:02, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0028825X.2004.9512921. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reasonably confident that the article contains no more copyright violations. However, to be sure – in view of the piecemeal and out-of-process way this has been handled – I'm going to ask Diannaa if she would be kind enough to cast an eye over it. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]