Talk:Tom Skinner (trade unionist)

How to use duplication detectors

I compared an old version of this article to the source allegedly copied, and the result is here doesn't convince me of the allegations. The relatively few copied phrases appear to largely include titles and names of organisations and the dates the person was elected/appointed to those positions and organisations, so this looks to be a case where discussion is needed. In other words, I don't agree with what has been said here and here. This looks like a case of using a duplication detector for rote checking without looking at the text that is the same. I can see why close paraphrasing was raised, but I think the allegation of copyvio made in the edit summary here should be withdrawn. I am going to invite the original editor and the two reviewers at the DYK nomination to comment here. At a minimum, when allegations of close paraphrasing and copyvio are made, those making the allegations should be able to suggest a rewrite and explain what phrases were changed and why. Carcharoth (talk) 01:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I never used a duplication detector in the reviewing of this article. My concerns are all detailed at the DYK nomination page. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:33, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

To state the obvious, the DYK nomination page is closed. This is the place to continue discussion. Are you prepared to actually discuss and edit this article? Making allegations like that in a review carries an obligation to follow through with any subsequent discussion. You said there "most of the article was indeed copied word-for-word from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography". I'm not seeing 'most' of the article duplicated, only scattered phrases. Can you point to the version of the article in question and examples of text copied word-for-word? The version I looked at was this one. Carcharoth (talk) 02:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I already answered all these issues at the DYK nomination. I provided a list of nearly word-for-word sentences. Those were four out of the first five sentences I checked (the first sentence I checked looked clean, the next four were those). rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:20, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Then either bring those examples over here, or reopen the nomination so they can be discussed there. Carcharoth (talk) 05:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Anyone can read them at Template:Did you know nominations/Tom Skinner. If you want to paste them here for convenience you are welcome to. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• Well, for one the first entry in that report could easily be rephrased. Even stuff like "he became vice president of the auckland trades council in 1952 and was elected president in 1954" could be rephrased, like "Skinner became Vice President of the Auckland Trades Council in 1952 before being elected president in 1954". Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• But is that not close paraphrasing? You've only made minimal changes and done exactly what you've accused Grutness of doing. The point here is that there are only a limited number of ways to write this, and there is little to no creative writing in that sentence. I agree that using exactly the same words is not best practice, but writing depends very much on the context and whether multiple sources report the same thing in the same way, as is common in biographical writing. If enough sources write on this topic, then pretty soon all the ways to phrase the above will have been used. What then? And looking at the article overall, this is clearly a genuine expansion done by a long-term editor. What should have happened here was discussion and editing and rewriting (if needed), rather than "yes it is" - "no it isn't" arguing (just providing examples is not enough, examples of how you would rewrite it and not just minimal examples like you provided here were needed once it was clear that there was disagreement). As it is, the article is now tagged rather than improved. It would be much better if you and Rjanag demonstrated by example how this article could be rewritten. If you two don't, I may, but the onus is really on you and Grutness to discuss here, not argue and then depart in different directions leaving the article tagged. Carcharoth (talk) 02:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• There has never been a rule on Wikipedia that editors can't point out problems unless they're willing to fix them themselves. That's the whole point of tags. I pointed out what I felt was a pretty obvious problem with the article, and Grutness threw a temper tantrum about it. I'm frankly not interested in spending any more of my time helping an experienced editor fix mistakes like these that he should have known not to make in the first place. He nominated the article for DYK and I pointed out that it wasn't appropriate; it's not my responsibility to rewrite the article. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• There are two editors here that don't think it is obvious. Three if you include Grutness. Of course he shouldn't have stormed off like that, but equally article tagging shouldn't be what DYK is about. A review at DYK should result in changes and improvements made to the article. The editors best placed to make those changes are you and Crisco and Grutness because you have either reviewed or worked on the article! To expect someone else to come along later and repeat the work is terribly inefficient. It would have been perfectly possible to place the nomination on hold, work on the article, and then return to the nomination. I'm prepared to do that even if Grutness isn't. Carcharoth (talk) 05:04, 15 September 2011 (UTC) Though I see a fourth editor has addressed the concerns- Rjanag and Crisco, has that addressed your concerns? Would you have passed the nomination if those changes had been made?

• The purpose of a DYK is not to improve articles (although, of course, when improvement happens it's great); it's to see if the article meets the DYK criteria. If an article doesn't quite meet the criteria but can be repaired then it is given time to do so; if it looks like an article is lightyears from meeting the criteria it is failed. If we have a conceptual disagreement about the purpose of DYK, that should be discussed at WT:DYK. For the specific issue here, I encountered a nomination with serious problems (no inline sourcing whatsoever, large amounts of text lifted directly from a source, and a recalcitrant editor who was--at least at first--unwilling to improve the article) and made the decision that the article did not meet the criteria and was not likely to meet them soon. If you or anyone else wants to improve the article you're welcome to, but I won't be guilt-tripped into fixing someone else's mistakes just because I had the audacity to review an article. Like I said above, reviewing an article does not and should not make me responsible for rewriting it; such an attitude would just discourage people from pointing out legitimate concerns. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• The point is that you think there were problems with the article. Sometimes the editor will disagree with you. Sometimes not. When there is disagreement, one way to discuss what changes are needed is not to say "this is a problem, fix it", but to say "this is a problem and this is what I would do to fix it". Can you see what I'm saying? Instead of saying "rewrite this", say "this could be rewritten this way [insert example], I'll leave you to fix the rest". It is the difference between at-a-distance reviewing and collaborative editing. If you have time, could you look at the current state of the article and see if the changes were adequate? I may disagree with the tagging, but when a tag is removed I would hope that you or Crisco would check the article and see if you agree with the changes and the removal of the tag. If not, there is little point in having placed the tag in the first place. Carcharoth (talk) 05:25, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I discovered this article because of a thread at ANI indicating that Grutness was terminating his editing because of the accusations of copyright violations. I found it intriguing because it was unusual (for me at least) to witness two admins fighting over this kind of an issue in an article. So, I took a look at the text added by Grutness and the text at the website source. And I kept flipping back and forth, back and forth - made me a little dizzy, actually - trying to decide whether it really was too much copying or "close paraphrasing". I've now done it again because of this discussion, and my sense is that it's neither a copyright violation nor a close paraphrasing. What I came away with is that there was an awful lot of text put in by Grutness, the source of which was the website biography. It had a bad feel to it, like our biography was lifted from someone else's. It's as if Wikipedia predicated an entire article on another encyclopedia's entry, although revamping the text sufficient to avoid charges of plagiarism. It still feels wrong to me. Assuming that's really the core issue here, rather than the accusations, the question becomes is that prohibited? I'm not aware of any policy that says this can't be done, but there are a lot of policies I'm unfamiliar with. Even if it's not prohibited by policy, is it a good idea? Not in my view. As an aside, I do think that inline citations to the biography would have been a better way to go than to stick the biography in the References section without tying it to the long textual addition. Yet, I also noted that Grutness was very careful to cite the biography exactly as the biographer requested.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:58, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

That is indeed a valid concern. It is usually referred to as over-reliance on a single source (or only a few sources). The tension will be between wanting our article to be as comprehensive as possible, and not wanting to (as you say) essentially duplicate work already done by others. The usually approach is to summarise the sources used, rather than reuse nearly all the information contained in the source. When using a book-length biography as a source, such summarising will be easy due to the differences in length. For people that don't have book-length published sources, things are not so easy as the main sources will be biographical dictionary entries that will be largely the same length and format as the articles we write, and will largely be competing for the same readership. In my view, it is essential to 'add value' by finding and bringing in new sources, or tracking down the original sources used by the biographical dictionary and (with care) expanding on elements they may have had to exclude due to space requirements. If you find and bring together enough separate sources, the concern about writing largely from one source is usually dealt with. A good example of bringing in new sources during a rewrite is at Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing under the 'Example: close paraphrasing repaired' collapse box. Another way to bring in different sources is to look up in source B the exact year, date or place for an event mentioned in source A, and to then add this information to the article, replacing source A with source B.

Another point worth making, not always realised by those checking on such things, is this:

"Close paraphrasing is also permitted when there are only a limited number of ways to say the same thing. In general, sentences like "Dr. John Smith earned his medical degree at State University" can be rephrased "John Smith earned his M.D. at State University" without copyright problems. Note, however, that closely paraphrasing extensively from a non-free source may be a copyright problem, even if it is difficult to find different means of expression. The more extensively we rely on this exception, the more likely we are to run afoul of compilation protection." - from Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing

This in fact applies to what I said to Crisco above (his suggested rewrite was close paraphrasing, but an acceptable form of close paraphrasing). It is still better, though, to do a proper rewrite if possible, as if multiple people independently do the above, the sum total can end up with the compilation protection problems mentioned in that quote. Carcharoth (talk) 03:31, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I really don't think there's a compilation issue. Just as the footnoted (famous) case states, it's often used to copyright an otherwise uncopyrightable list of facts by virtue of their arrangement and selection. Although, in principle, you could apply it to the facts in a biography, it's highly unlikely it would enjoy protection on that score. Most biographies, just like the one here, are chronological - there's nothing particularly original about the arrangement. Even the selection of facts are generally the high points (and maybe low points) in the person's life. I think compilation issues are the least of our problems here.--Bbb23 (talk) 03:44, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Carcharoth, in the version of the article I reviewed no attempt was made to "summarize" the source. It's quite obvious that much of the source was pasted in en masse and then the editor went through later changing/switching words here and there. The general structure of the article, most of the paragraphs, and most of the sentences mirrored that of the source. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm still not seeing that. You make your case you need to: (a) link to the version you are talking about; (b) link to the source you are referring to; (c) demonstrate that rewriting is possible. If you can't put the same information in the article using different words or with a restructuring of the article, how can you expect anyone else to do so? Saying "this is wrong" only goes so far. At some point you have to show what sort of article you would write given that source. Seriously. Start with a blank page and the source and see what sort of article you come up with. Bbb23 above has stated that his "sense is that it's neither a copyright violation nor a close paraphrasing". There is disagreement here and the only way to get past that is to get down to the specifics of what people are disagreeing about. That will take time, but that is time that you commit to giving when you review an article. Either that, or re-open the nomination and let others review it and work on it with the editor. Carcharoth (talk) 04:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The links are at Template:Did you know nominations/Tom Skinner. The source is the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, as I said there. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:23, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, this was the version you reviewed. The changes made since then are here. The source you were concerned about is here. As you said on my talk page, you don't really want to stick with this any further given the way the discussions with Grutness went, and I can understand that, but I'll leave the links here for the record. Carcharoth (talk) 05:35, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Rjanag, you are becoming increasingly combative with other editors. There never was a significant copyright issue with the article, as you would understand if you had experience writing such articles. You have unjustly called an editor, who has contributed far more to Wikipedia than you have, a liar. This article was nominated only two days ago. Now walk your talk, and show us peons how the article should be written. Otherwise, reopen this nomination, which now seems up to DYK standard. --Epipelagic (talk) 06:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that's a bit harsh. Frankly, I think this copyright tempest should have been handled differently. It shouldn't have been a battle of edit summaries. Yet, AFAIK, Rjanag did not call Grutness a "liar", and comparing two experienced editors' contribution levels is not very helpful or even relevant.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

You may feel differently if you look at some more background, such as here and here. Rjanag's combative style here is not an isolated example. --Epipelagic (talk) 14:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I had read it but not the last couple of comments. I've struck part of my comment above.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:29, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• The current article is much better. Regarding the (way) above, it is less close than the original, and could be massaged further. Naturally, we cannot change the name of the groups he was a member in. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:47, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The Skinner article is now in at least as good a state as your own current DYK nomination Crisco, both checked against one prominent source. Job titles and the names of organisations in the Skinner article must certainly be ignored when you assess "plagiarism" issues, as Rjanag inappropriately calls it. The issue has become seriously out of balance. And I see Rjanag's response is to walk away from the unjust travesty he has created here. --Epipelagic (talk) 04:33, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• I agree 100% that organization names cannot be changed. The article as it currently stands is in much better condition than it was when it was nominated. If it were nominated again it would probably pass, and I would oppose an attempt to speedily close it as it still qualifies under the DYK rules as they are currently written. Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Then Crisco, at this point it would be the right thing for you to reopen the nomination. You made a good faith closure, but it was based on what has turned out to be unbalanced and unjust accusations made by an aggressive and unbending administrator. This has resulted in much needless distress to one of our most prolific and long term editors, not to mention his possible loss to Wikipedia.

I have been rapped over the knuckles for drawing comparisons between Grutness and Rjanag. Given the gravity of this situation I think it is entirely appropriate to point out that Grutness has contributed far more useful content to Wikipedia than Rjanag has. That is not denigrating Rjanag, it is simply putting things in perspective. You do not throw away an editor with the calibre of Grutness without decent enquiry.

Or perhaps that's my naivety. On Wikipedia, it appears all too often that these matters are just ignored, and basic decency is not on the radar. I see a dismal procession of injustices to content editors where witnessing editors, including myself, just walk away. Content editors (who are mostly not admins) walk away either because on Wikipedia they are powerless and are afraid they will be blocked and become victims themselves, or because they came here to write an encyclopedia, and know that getting involved in the bickering that goes on here can be an endless sink of energy that goes nowhere. I asked another admin who works in the DYK area to reopen the nomination, but it appears from his silence and inaction that he is not going to do that. I don't feel I can reopen the nomination, since I do not do DYK maintenance. But I am persisting with this issue, because no one else seems to be, and it matters. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Just a comment that has little to do with your request. Wikipedia is a strange world, and I gain a better understanding of how it works each day, including its strengths and its weaknesses. As you already know, I don't agree with all of your points, but I feel compelled to commend you for taking a stand for what you believe to be right.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:10, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• I'd suggest using a new nomination to avoid any stigma. Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:19, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that Crisco. I will do just that. --Epipelagic (talk) 23:27, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Epipelagic, regarding my failure to respond to more messages here: I left a message several days ago at User talk:Carcharoth#Template:Did you know nominations/Tom Skinner explaining my reasons for recusing myself of further discussion of this. Besides, you are not a neutral party here, I remember in the past you got angry at me at Template talk:Did you know/Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences and User talk:Rjanag#Your deletion after I [correctly] pointed out that an article you submitted didn't have any third-party sources. I'm not interested in participating in a vendetta with you, and several editors have agreed with the plagiarism concerns of the original version of this article (on my talk page and on the talk page you linked to above). If you think I did something wrong and need to be punished, feel free to report me somewhere; otherwise, I have nothing more to say. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:45, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

It is disappointing, Rjanag, that you have reignited this issue and are refusing to allow a fresh start for the Grutness article. You assert you are "not interested in participating in a vendetta", and then give the lie to that by promptly reflaming the issue. Yet you keep stating you have recused yourself from the matter and have nothing more to say. You must be aware at some level by now that none of the positions you present stand up to close examination.

To answer the new points you raise, I am not a neutral party here, but it is presumptuous of you to imply I got angry with you for pointing out that an article didn't have enough third-party sources. That was perfectly reasonable and legitimate. I got angry with you because of the mean-spirited way you went about it. I had to get another administrator to intervene.

You say there are editors who have "agreed with the plagiarism concerns of the original version of this article", that is with your false plagiarism claims. I can't find these straws you are clutching at. Surely you don't mean Flagstaff1? If so, his supposed support of you was the subject of an ANI. Nor is there another supporting editor on some talk page linked above, unless you mean this one. That is just someone saying that he hasn't time to look into it, but the the duck evidence you initially presented was strong. Yes, well I would have thought that too, if I didn't take time to look into it. That is precisely the problem, that you skillfully present what at first blush looks like a convincing case, but it falls apart on closer examination. --Epipelagic (talk) 05:17, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Plagiarism

Rjanag had made serious allegations that Grutness, the primary author of this article, is a plagiarist and a liar. Grutness has now withdrawn in a distressed state from the project. Rjanag has made it clear she is persisting with her allegations and will not engage in rational discussion. She offers, as her only alternative, reporting the issue elsewhere. As a preliminary to doing that, I am setting the plagiarism issue out below.

Rjanag's accusations of "plagiarism" can be found here. Rjanag takes this version of the article and compares the following text with what is in this source:

• Article: Skinner was heavily involved in many community organisations, among them the New Zealand Coastguard Service and the New Zealand Institute for the Blind.

  Source: Skinner was involved in several community organisations, including the New Zealand Coastguard Service, the New Zealand Institute for the Blind...

• Article: He was actively involved in rugby league as both a referee and administrator, and was manager of the 1960 New Zealand national rugby league team's tour to Britain.

  Source: He was actively involved in rugby league as a referee and administrator, and was manager of the 1960 New Zealand rugby league team to Britain.

• Article: In 1940, Skinner was elected secretary of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Plumbers Union, and soon became involved in several other smaller unions...

  Source: In 1940 Skinner was elected secretary of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Plumbers Union. He also became secretary of a number of other small unions in Auckland...

• Article: He largely withdrew from public life after Molly’s death in 1985, and died in Auckland on 11 November 1991.

  Source: He largely withdrew from public life after Molly’s death in 1985 but continued his involvement with the St John Ambulance until 1989. Tom Skinner died in Auckland on 11 November 1991.

Looking at the first example, it is not plagiarism to include the title of an organisation. So we can remove the text referring to the "New Zealand Coastguard Service" and the "New Zealand Institute for the Blind". This leaves remaining, the matching phrase "community organisations".

Similarly, using job titles in relation to organisation names is not plagiarism, as in "secretary of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Plumbers Union" and "manager of the 1960 New Zealand rugby league team". So following through on this basis, we are left overall with the following matching phrases:

"community organisations", "He was actively involved in", "a referee and administrator, and was",
"In 1940, Skinner was elected", "He largely withdrew from public life after Molly’s death in 1985"

This is the total plagiarism by Grutness as found by Rjanag.

As a contrast, let's look at the featured article Not One Less. This includes text based on this source. Some of the matched phrases from the source are:

"find work in the nearby city of zhangjiakou", "are still there when he returns", "to find work in the",
"from the festival and", "that the film was", "of not one less" 

This is a little less matching text than in the Grutness case, but then a smaller amount of text was involved. If the Grutness text was plagiarism, as Rjanag insists, then the featured article has been plagiarised as well. The plagiarised text was added by Rjanag.

Well of course, plagiarism was not involved in either article. What was involved in both articles was some close paraphrasing. But not according to Rjanag. --Epipelagic (talk) 10:27, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Uh how can close paraphrasing be the primary problem in the Grutness case? Grutness has said that several of the lines weren't seen in the source and arose because of their similarity of writing styles with the author and both of them using the same third source (which wasn't IIRC cited by Grutness at first). Whether or not there's a problem, Grutness can't be closely paraphrasing lines which they didn't read. Nil Einne (talk) 13:44, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Just to be clear I'm not saying Grutness is lying in fact to be honest I don't really want to get involved in the dispute. My point is we either assume Grutness did closely paraphrase all those lines from the original source in which case we can perhaps AGF they are not remembering correctly when they said they didn't read the lines. But even with that AGF, their statements that they didn't as well as their reasoning are not ideal. In that situation, perhaps accusing Grutness of lying was too far but it's easy to see why it would be seen that way. Alternatively we can assume Grutness did not closely paraphrase and instead really came up with some of those lines independently due to the similarity in writing style and from following the other originally uncited source. In that situation, your suggestion that the Grutness case was primarily close paraphrasing seems incorrect. Nil Einne (talk) 16:54, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

A few small comments

1. First, let me say thank you for those "fighting my corner" above.
2. To those who have said "you should have stayed and fought it out", that last time I got into a major conflict at Wikipedia, my health collapsed and I ended up in hospital. I am not willing to have that happen again.
3. It became clear to me fairly quickly that Rjanag was not in a mood to discuss the situation - I was being called a plagiarist and a liar. Not only did I find this personally appalling, in my position as a professional writer any such allegations could seriously affect my career. As such, rather than let it continue into a full-blown battle, I decided that withdrawing from Wikipedia was the best expedient.
4. When I originally expanded the article, I took information from several sources. Most of this work was done at the public library, as I did not have home access to the hard-copy books from which several parts of the material were taken. Unfortunately, I wrote down page numbers but not full information of the books' title, authors, ISBN etc. I constructed the article offline, and later at home added more information from the DNZB web article before uploading the full article to WP. The following day, I returned to the library and found the information about the original publications and added it to the references section. I can understand Rjanag thinking that large amounts of the information came from the DNZB article, simply because for a few hours that was the only listed reference. The thing that surprises me the most - and clearly made Rjanag suspicious, correction, accusatory - is that several key phrases agreed with that article, especially in sections which had not come from that article. In these cases, for the most part - as pointed out above - official titles were a major contributing factor (in fact, the longest identical phrase found by the duplication detector was, IIRC, "knight of the Priory in New Zealand of the Order of St John in 1970 for his contribution to the St John’s Ambulance Association"). I'd also point out that at least one of the "plagiarised" lines Rjanag linked was poorly written in the original, and I would not have copied it ("manager of the 1960 New Zealand rugby league team to Britain" is ungrammatical). I'd also note, as I did to Rjanag, that I have worked with the author of that article, and as such, it is perhaps not surprising if we have a similar writing style.
5. Again, thank you. I intend to stay clear of Wikipedia for the time being at least, though a considerable number of editors have contacted me both via my user talk page and email to ask me to reconsider. At the moment the real world is throwing up large amounts of work (I am currently involved in writing a book on art and also have extra newspaper work, and I have also returned to musical performance), so any return to Wikipedia will have to wait for a while. Hopefully it will also give this a chance to further blow over.

Grutness...wha? 23:13, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Namesake cat

As a point of interest (but probably not worthy of inclusion in the article), the resident cat at the University of Canterbury Students' Association in the early 1970s was named "Tom Skinner". The UCSA has often had a resident cat - a more recent one had a bar named after him. There is a grave marker for Tom Skinner Cat (died 1974) outside the UCSA building. dramatic (talk) 20:21, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for this info. While it is possibly wrong for the article, it is the only answer I found on the web about the message on the plaque on that rock. It seems Wikipedia talk pages are not indexed by search engines, so the only way I got here was through a very specific Google search ("tom skinner" "cat" "ucsa" - with the quotes) and a Wikiwand page - it took me a while to realise that this was just a normal English Wikipedia talk page. "Suppressed" is perhaps too strong a term, but you get the idea... I didn't know if the mention of Tom Skinner on the plaque was satirical (I vaguely knew he was something to do with unions, and was presumably dead), or if he was a real cat, so in a practical sense this does have relevance to the article. The more recent cat was Bentley - he was always very friendly and I'd stop and give him a pat when I rounded the UCSA building corner by the Student Health end (within about 3m of that rock), unless he was asleep in the bushes. As I write this, that end of the building is all that stands currently, and will be demolished over the next few days. (FWIW, because this will all be suppressed.) Adx (talk) 00:21, 26 September 2016 (UTC)