Talk:George E. M. Kelly

Untitled

The information from Findagrave is attributed to Findagrave. The other information comes from the cited public domain article in the New York Times.

I saw that the information originally came from the NYT article, but the wording closely mirrors the findagrave bio. For example, the article says:

Kelly was attempting to land his military aircraft in San Antonio, Texas when a front strut collapsed. This caused his aircraft to veer toward an encampment of the 11th Infantry

and the source says:

Kelly was attempting to land his aricraft when a front strut collapsed, causing his aircraft to veer toward an encampment of the 11th Infantry

You have closely paraphrased every part of the findagrave bio. There is no problem with using the information from the NYT article or even using its text verbatim so long as appropriate attribution (e.g., {{PD-old-text}}) is supplied, but unless I'm missing something the particular creative wording is from findagrave and not present in the PD article. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:25, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

You can't copyright a fact, not yet anyway, is there a particular word or phrase you want changed? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:06, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

While facts are not copyrightable, creative elements of presentation - including both structure and language - are. The less creative the expression, the looser copyright applies, but even so close paraphrasing becomes a great concern when there are long passages that include fragments of the original and the structure of the original is retained. In this case, you closely paraphrase the entire copyrighted source, so the "particular" phrases that need to be changed are all of them which were copied (with your minor adjustments) from Find a Grave. 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". VernoWhitney (talk) 18:13, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, what you personally found an infringement has been removed. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:05, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! VernoWhitney (talk) 21:07, 20 October 2010 (UTC)