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A fact from Sir James Clark, 1st Baronet appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 27 October 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that physician Sir James Clark is said to have contributed to the agonising death of poet John Keats by putting him on a starvation diet consisting of a single anchovy and a piece of bread a day?
Latest comment: 13 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
Although the article allegedly copied is indeed one of the major sources for the text, it has been comprehensively rewritten, apart from some irreducible phrases such as the titles of publications. If there are any remaining phrases which can be identified and which inadvertently violate copyright, they can also be rewritten. Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:47, 18 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
I tagged this as a close paraphrase for some follow-up, because while I'm not sure it rises to the level of copyvio, it does closely follow the source in structure and language in some parts (and I know some of this is simply due to the chronological ordering). One example that stuck me as being too close, for example was the article says:
After the ship was wrecked off the coast of New Jersey, he returned to Great Britain, where he was promoted to surgeon and served on the HMS Colobrée, which was also wrecked
The 'Thistle' was wrecked off the coast of New Jersey. Clark returned to England, was promoted to surgeon, and joined the HMS Collobree, which was also wrecked
Some others fall a little too close for my comfort, but I'm not very good at rewriting so I'm just noting it here for now. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:28, 21 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
It's a slightly tricky one, because there is, in effect, only one source for much of the article - this, which itself, incidentally, is a (more than) close paraphrase of this earlier document - and because it is written in a straightforward style which is generally pretty close to the style I try to adopt myself when constructing biographical articles. But I take the point and will have a go at reducing the paraphrasing further. Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:39, 21 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
If all that came from the earlier source, if it's old enough then the original source could be in the public domain and you can paraphrase it to your heart's content. Do you know any of the details about the Munks Roll to know when it (or that portion of it) was published? VernoWhitney (talk) 15:52, 21 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
At the risk of sounding like I'm talking to myself, I found a source which indicates that Volumes I-III were published at least by 1878 and copyright in the UK lasts for 70 years after the death of the author, but even without checking on the details of the author, those works can safely be assumed to be in the public domain. So since the biography was published in Volume III, you can paraphrase or even copy the Munk's Roll text, just not the parts of the other source which aren't in the older text. The phrase I quoted above isn't present in the older text, so I think it still needs to be revised, but this should give you some more leeway to work with. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:14, 21 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for your help and advice. I've now made further text edits, based as closely as possible on the 1878 document. If this overcomes the problem, I'd be grateful if you could remove the tag. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:24, 22 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
Done Thanks for working on this. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 15:04, 22 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
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Done Thanks for working on this. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 15:04, 22 October 2010 (UTC)