Talk:Gearóid Mac Eoin

Done so

Just confirming that I have done so, Cavila (talk) 12:35, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Close paraphrase

The text at Talk:Gearóid Mac Eoin/Temp reads like a close paraphrase of this biographical sketch, which is explicitly marked as © 2010 Gearóid Mac Eoin. Changing the wording of source materials, either from outside sources or from earlier versions of Wikipedia with copyright concerns, is not sufficient to satisfy Wikipedia's policies on copyright. Cnilep (talk) 18:47, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your attention, Cnilep, but could you be more specific? Any particular parts which are too close for comfort? I agree that there's room for improvement and there are some sentences I haven't even touched (the editor before me may have had), but it's not like the entire text has simply been run through a thesaurus, has it, with sentence clauses swapped round and passive voice made active? One random example. If the information to be provided is as dry as Mac Eoin's date of birth and the schools he attended (original text: "Gearóid Mac Eoin was born on the 25th January 1929. He received his primary education at the Model School, Limerick (1933-1942) and his secondary education in Good Counsel College, New Ross, Co. Wexford (1942-1947)."), how exactly is this a problem: "Gearóid Mac Eoin, born on 25 January 1929, went to Model School (An Mhodh Scoil) in Limerick and to secondary school in New Ross (Co. Wexford)." Cavila (talk) 20:41, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I have revised some and removed a little more, but I believe that this still remains a close paraphrase. While facts are not copyrightable, creative elements of presentation - including both structure and language - are. Using multiple sources can go a long way to helping eliminate this problem, as article creators are not required to rely on one source and the facts and sequence it presents for their own text. The essay Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing contains some suggestions for rewriting that may help avoid these issues. The article Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches, while about plagiarism rather than copyright concerns, also contains some suggestions for reusing material from sources that may be helpful, beginning under "Avoiding plagiarism". --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:51, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Cutting down on the amount of (extra) information, which is essentially what you did, seems to be a good way to avoid close paraphrasing, so I went ahead and revised things a little further. Cavila (talk) 09:08, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

It can certainly help, thanks. While some details are so basic that they might be presumed to be in any biography (he was born; he did this; he died), there are frequently certain details a biographer chooses to emphasize that do reflect creativity. One of the things the US courts (that govern Wikipedia) look for is "comprehensive non-literal similarity", when one work closely follows on the structure or sequence of another. Even in the absence of literal duplication, this can be sufficient for a court to determine copyright infringement has occurred. Rewriting a detailed passage based on a single source so as to avoid this problem is really hard. Anyway, I really appreciate your taking the time to work on this. I hate to see good articles lost for copyright concerns, and it's always great when people notice problems with articles and pitch in. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Cavila, for your work on the rewrite. I'm sorry to say that I can't be very much more specific. The thing that caught my attention was that when I picked a sentence from the rewritten text (I've forgotten which one, I'm afraid, but I think it was the first or second sentence from one of the two 'Dublin' sections) and put it into Google, the search engine returned the page http://gearoidmaceoin.com/bearla.php. Something like half the words I searched were present in the same order, though with other words, verbs in other tenses, etc. among them. As you say, these were probably words that would be in any bio of MacEoin, such as place names or names of schools. I noticed, too, that the order of the paragraphs on that page is fairly similar to the order of subsections on this one. It seemed to me a borderline case. I'd also note that I Am Not A Lawyer and I have no particular expertise in understanding US copyright regulations. This is just a personal opinion. Cnilep (talk) 19:13, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

It looks much better now anyway. I don’t think the devil was in the details, in particular uses of words, syntax, etc., or in the order of the information presented. The original biography is simply a dry chronological summary of the main points of Mac Eoin's career (year X, school Y, discipline Z, etc.), with lots of ‘datasets’ similar to “Dr. John Smith earned his medical degree at State University”. I think we’ve managed to be more creative than what the guideline asks from us (which apparently accepts a rephrase like “John Smith earned his M.D. at State University”) and there is no copyright on chronological arrangement, but the trick was really to pick out the bare bones from what is largely a skeleton. Selection of material. If you feel we need to cut out more, just let me know. I'm not a 'lawyer' either. Cavila (talk) 00:14, 9 April 2010 (UTC)