Wikipedia's Content Ripped Off More Egregiously Than Usual 284
Ultraexactzz writes "Wikipedia's content is licensed under the GFDL, which permits such content to be copied with attribution — and Wikipedia is used to its content being copied and mirrored. However, a new website at e-wikipedia.net appears to have taken this a step further by mirroring the entire English Wikipedia — articles, logos, disclaimers, userpages, and all. Compare Wikipedia's About page with e-wikipedia.net's. The site even adds to Wikipedia's normally ad-free interface by including text ads." Just try logging in or actually editing an article, though, and you'll get the message "The requested URL /w/index.php was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request." If there's credit here, I don't see it — sure looks like it's intentionally misleading readers.
Google advertising revenue, most probably. (Score:4, Insightful)
2. More hits, more ad revenue.
3. Profit!!
Hopefully, Wikipedia's GFDL license will make possible to have this website banned.
Re:This is perfect! (Score:2, Insightful)
This is perfect! Next time a teacher or other person in authority says I can't use Wikipedia because it is unreliable I just get the content from this site and I can say that it wasn't Wikipedia!
Crap like this is exactly WHY Wikipedia should not be cited formally as a reference. Even if Wikipedia could be trusted to be 100% correct (which it can't), how do you know you're not looking at some fake shit? Wikipedia is great for personal research. For formal citation, it's garbage. For one thing, the content can change. This is part of what makes it powerful, but it also makes it useless when cited on paper. You go to the URL and see something totally different from what the author was trying to cite.
Re:What!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is perfect! (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Or cite to the items the wikipedia article cites. I find wikipedia to be a nice "springboard", as I can go to the references, and then to the reference's references, and so on. Quick way to get useful and cite-able info.
Re:Google advertising revenue, most probably. (Score:4, Insightful)
If this new site doesn't provide anything above-and-beyond what Wikipedia provides, then few people will link to it, and its PageRank will be low. Without ranking high on Google, no one will find the site, and their ad revenue will be pathetic.
So, I don't really understand their business model here. Unless they offer some "value added" over the normal Wikipedia (quicker load times, vetted articles, better search, etc.), then they can't hope to attract eyeballs to their adds.
Forking is fine. A crappy fork, however, won't attract interest, and won't last long.
Evil Genius! (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 2) Secure Advertising
Step 3) Submit story on
Step 4) Profit!
-Rick
Re:Remote Loading/Leeching (Score:5, Insightful)
Short-living business strategies work, if you chain them together.
Re:This is perfect! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no encyclopedia (Wikipedia or otherwise) should be cited formally. It doesn't matter on how accurate it is, or who can edit it, or anything. An encyclopedia is not a primary source. It's a good starting point to find primary sources (and for those of us who aren't using it formally, a source of information) and general background information to pursue one's research, but that's it. This is most evident in Wikipedia's "No original research" stance - it knows it's not a primary source of information and it shouldn't be.
The fact that Wikipedia is freely editable means one should really go to the original source for information.
Re:This is perfect! (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Which is exactly how you should use wikipedia.
Re:This is perfect! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:S[cp]ammer alert? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Proxy someone else's site
2. Add Ads
3. Slashdot
4. Owners of original site block your IP from theirs.
5. NO Profit!
No ??? needed.
Re:This is perfect! (Score:1, Insightful)
Aren't you facing the exact same risk whenever you cite any other source, too?
Re:This is perfect! (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to check those tests carefully. On average, science articles in Wikipedia may be more accurate than those of similar encyclopedias e.g. Brittanica, but they're not better than dedicated scientific texts and journals.
Re:This is perfect! (Score:3, Insightful)
A challenge for you: make a change to wikipedia that is blatantly wrong and have it stay for 24 hours. The point being that if you could achieve that for wikipedia then you'd likely be able to get the error into a textbook. The difference is that once it's in a textbook it's wrong until the next edition, wikipedia is wrong until someone notices.
Re:This is perfect! (Score:4, Insightful)
Aren't you facing the exact same risk whenever you cite any other source, too?
Yes, anything can be misleading or inaccurate. That's not why citation matters. The purpose of citation is so that the reader can refer to the source to see (a) whether the source supports the interpretation you offer; and (b) how the source supports itself.
The second reason (b) is why you should always cite primary sources. The point isn't that primary sources are infallible, but that if they're truly primary sources, they'll support themselves. They'll give examples, evidence, etc. as to why the claims they're making are true, and the reader is then able to evaluate the claims on the basis of the person who originated those claims.
If you cite a secondary source, then you're leading the reader on a trail of citations that might go nowhere. I could cite you, you could cite someone else, that someone else cite yet another person, and off we go. You're essentially setting up a research project for the reader to figure out where the information actually came from.
Also, by the time the information comes through so many people, it can be distorted. It can be like a game of telephone, where what started out as a fact gets interpreted, and the interpretation gets interpreted, and that interpretation gets interpreted, ad nauseam. So by the end, you have no idea how distorted the truth is.
So seriously, if your research paper is relying on certain facts, try to find the original piece of writing that asserted those facts, and read that work for yourself. If you can't do that (in the case of a lost work that no longer exists, but is cited elsewhere), find the source that is as close as possible to the original, and cite that. Always go to the most original point, and always cite the primary work.
Wikipedia is a perfectly good place to start, and luckily they've started to encourage people to cite sources so that you can find the primary source for yourself. So when you want to use a fact from Wikipedia, follow their citation, read the work for yourself, and then you can cite *that* work as your primary source.
Re:Aaaand it's over (Score:2, Insightful)
The only question is.. how long will it do that?
If the site was really a leech site -- the operator may just start using random proxies and anonymizers to load the pages.
Or Tor.
If Wikipedia attempts to block those, they will also be blocking a portion of real Wikipedia readers/editors living in certain countries where they really need to conceal their identities, to protect against prosecution for what they choose to read on Wikipedia.
Re:Google advertising revenue, most probably. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It appears to be permitted (Score:2, Insightful)
My opinion is this: Plagiarism is not copyright infringement. While both terms may apply to a particular act, they are different transgressions. Copyright infringement is a violation of the rights of a copyright holder, when material protected by copyright is used without consent. On the other hand, plagiarism is concerned with the unearned increment to the plagiarizing author's reputation that is achieved through false claims of authorship.
I wrote all of that myself, in case you weren't sure. Honest.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
Every page has a history. It's possible to cite a page at a certain time and guarantee that it will be displayed regardless of what changes are made to the article. This, in addition to a diff system (and discussion), makes it better in some ways than hard print, because it allows the reader to map changes over time and consensus/disagreements over contentious topics.
Re:This is perfect! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is perfect! (Score:4, Insightful)
[citation needed]
Re:This is perfect! (Score:3, Insightful)
"review" != "peer review". And before you respond:
Let's see what Wikipedia itself has to say [wikipedia.org]:
Of course, peer review is not perfect (and some problems with it are handily documented by Wikipedia), but I don't really understand people's insistence that they be able to cite Wikipedia in acamedic situations. Importantly, lack of peer review is not the only reason citing Wikipedia is frowned upon. It has been traditional not to allow citation of encyclopedic sources for a number of reasons. Two pretty common ones off the top of my head:
So really, why cite Wikipedia? Any information you get from it should be available (probably in more detail) in a source cited by the Wikipedia article. Any information not cited should not be used anyway.