82

Decided to do some reviews today and came across this suggested edit to a tag wiki. The content for the wiki is copied verbatim from the wikipedia page for S-Plus. You can even see the citation/edit markers were copied.

So I went to go reject vote it as "Copied Content" but by the time I voted 3 others had voted to approve. Not a single reject.

Since I could no longer vote to reject the edit, I thought I would then go and flag it for moderation, and found there was no flag option. Is this by design or is it such a rare occurrence for tag wiki needing moderation that it was left out?

It doesn't seem a rare occurrence since on my search through meta on finding a way to get this flagged these came up:

Mass updating of tag wikis with content copied

How to deal with plagiarized content in tag wikis [duplicate]

The tag wiki suggested edit review mechanism encourages low quality wiki content

Wiki edit reviewers are not catching plagiarism

These being in the last couple months. And the only one that really mentions a way of flagging the tag wiki is the answer on Tag wiki suggested edits and robo-reviewers, which suggests finding a post of the user and flagging that. But that seems a misuse of the question/answer flag system.

The same user also copied directly from Oracle's BEA AquaLogic Service Bus 3.0 User's Guide for the ALSB tag wiki. In both cases I have edited each to contain the attribution for the source.

Because of cases like this I think we need a flag option for tag wiki. Have a text box to go with the flag. This would allow for us to say why we think it is copied content, and provide the source for which we think the content came from.

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  • What's the stance on a copy with citation?
    – Tanner
    Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 10:32
  • Well when there is a citation there isn't a problem. The original source has been cited so the content is no longer thought of as original to this site or the user who added it. In the case of a site not wanting their content copied I don't think they will mind as long as there is a link back to their pages. Who doesn't want free advertising? Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 10:58
  • Seriously, we should just get rid of suggested edits to tag wikis altogether. It's bad enough that I have to fix nonsense edits by users that have full tag wiki edit privileges. Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 11:21
  • What's wrong in adding a tag with contents taken from WikiPedia? Isn't it a good source of information? So, the wiki tags would be high quality and accurate. Methinks. Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 11:41
  • @R.MartinhoFernandes: Or restrict the ability to review tag wiki edits to... I don't know, trusted users?
    – Andriy M
    Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 11:42
  • 1
    @FrankN.Stein: The main problem is when the contents are taken verbatim without attribution.
    – Andriy M
    Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 11:45
  • I see. When I do add an excerpt from a link, I also post the link itself. I thought this was a generalized way of doing. Sorry for my ingenuity. Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 11:48
  • @FrankN.Stein, no one is saying its wrong for you to do it that way, we are saying that is how it should be done. But not everyone does this. Either way that is not the issue here. The issue is we need a way to flag improper edits to tag-wiki. Right now we have to flag a post that has nothing to do with the tag-wiki edit in order to bring attention to it. It just seems wrong to have to flag something irrelevant to the issue. Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 12:49
  • OK, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something the wrong way. So I asked. Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 12:56
  • 4
    "when there is a citation there isn't a problem" -- I'll respectfully disagree with that claim. A citation improves the copying from a legality and ethical point of view. But frankly, those are the least important issues. The bigger problem is that the content is almost never written in a way that is actually suitable when used in a tag wiki. And having the content discourages others from adding content that is good. Please see meta.stackoverflow.com/a/309384 for a recent, very well-written presentation of that concern. Commented Nov 3, 2015 at 3:41

3 Answers 3

35

This sounds like a good idea to me - if a reviewer marking a suggested edit as plagiarism (with source indicated) and this flag appeared automatically for subsequent reviewers (i.e. without having to bring up the "Reject" dialog first), this could help get more bad tag wiki edits rejected.

Note, this user has a bunch more plagiarism edits that have gotten through (and a few that have been rejected):

Also, with 17 suggested edits rejected and 68 approved, this user is getting pretty close to an automatic suggested-edit ban.

4
  • Note, this question also deals with the same user: User is introducing several low quality wiki edits
    – CDspace
    Commented Jul 16, 2014 at 22:32
  • Yea, thought he might of had more edits like that but didn't go back further than the current day. Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 2:55
  • 2
    @PatrickEvans: I know this really doesn't matter too much, but this is a pet peeve of mine: it's "might've", which is a contraction for "might have". "might of" makes no sense (grammatically or logically) whatsoever.
    – wolfPack88
    Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 20:12
  • 2
    @wolfPack88: The might of might have been... Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 0:15
14

This is mostly to bump this request - I've been finding quite a few of these (disturbingly easily, too). I'd like to see a flag button added to tag wikis, only allowing custom text to be entered.

I just tested it, and moderators can simply rollback to Community's revision, or rollback to the last revision without copied content. This should be fairly easy for moderators to handle.

It seems like this would fit right into the flag queue:

enter image description here

As a <20ker, I can't do anything about this myself. Also, if I was >20k, moderators wouldn't notice and be able to send the user an anti-plagiarism message.

At the very least, guidance on how to flag these would be nice. Do I just flag the first post in the tag? Flag one of the plagiarizer's posts?

2
  • 5
    Yes please. I just wasted seven or eight Reject votes this morning on these. Admittedly, I could just re-write the excerpts, but it's hard to re-write something you know nothing about other than "this text was copied verbatim" Commented Mar 23, 2015 at 17:58
  • I agree with the need for a flag feature. It would also be helpful for 20k users to have the rollback privilege for tag wiki. As you say, editing is possible, but in addition to the lack of moderator notification (for which the flag is needed), it's not possible to delete the tag excerpt content. So if one is going to try to fix the tag wiki, one actually needs to be able to write a good excerpt, which is not always possible for those who simply know the content was copied from elsewhere. Commented Nov 3, 2015 at 3:46
11

We absolutely need this, for nonsense like this and this.

Seriously, people, what the damn hell?


EDIT - Ugh, another case of "I'm not sure what they're trying to say, and I don't know how to fix it, and I don't know how it got approved (okay, I know how), but it needs to be flagged and rolled back."

4
  • "Just a blogging platform" - no, a ghost can also refer to the dead...
    – Jamal
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 19:28
  • Seriously though, for now, you may just have to flag a post, reporting the repeated approvers to the mods.
    – Jamal
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 19:31
  • Woo, mission accomplished. High fives all around Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 19:41
  • Yay! Now we can make like a ghost and vanish. :P
    – Jamal
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 19:42

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