Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Help desk/Archive 4 (section)

== Confused over copyright ==

Being a newcomer I have a question regarding creating a new article.  Say I wanted to write an article on widgets, I've read a couple of books on widgets and could piece together an article.  I'm not going to copy sentences word for word, but inevitably I'm going to use the information in the books, perhaps facts, phrases, etc.  At what point is this ok and when would it become a copyright issue?  Say I used a fact that was only in one of the books and indeed in no other books on widgets... does the author of that book have ownership of the fact, even if it is worded differently?  I guess what I'm getting at is that all information is taken from somewhere, even experts in a field have assimilated some of their knowledge from others as well as their own experiences.  If someone's exact words aren't copied, does copyright apply?  Hope that makes sense! [[User:Tomfly|Tomfly]] 22:12, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

:Copyright covers the writing- How it's written, the style of layout, the exact words chosen. It does not cover the facts. It is absolutely fine to rewrite in your own words. You do not violate copyright if you do this.  [[User:Theresa knott|theresa knott]] 22:22, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

::We already have an article on [[widget]]s so you could just expand it. It isn't much more than a stub. Or didn't you mean that literally? ;) [[User:Rmhermen|Rmhermen]] 17:03, Jul 14, 2004 (UTC)

::: Indeed ;)  But now I'm tempted... [[User:Tomfly|Tomfly]] 22:31, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

::::However, paraphrasing is plagiarism.  You cannot, for example, take an article and write the whole thing over in your own words, that's plagiarism, because you're parroting someone else's ideas, rather than coming up with ideas of your own.  So, if you haven't done any 'work' to create the article, it's probably plagiarism.  [[User:Quill|Quill]] 05:23, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

:::::Quill, I'd have to respectfully disagree with you.  My Hodges' Harbrace Handbook (granted, it's not canonical, but it illustrates the point) says that paraphrasing is not plagarism, as long as the material is a true restatement of gleaned material.  However, retaining the same sentence structure while substituting synonyms for the author's words would be plagarism.  In any case, if you write a research paper for say, college, there's not much expectation that you'd developed original ideas, but rather have incorporated the ideas of many writers in your own unique and suave way.  Regardless, it would be proper to include sources in the wikipedia article.  Just my thoughts.  [[User:Ocon|Ocon]] | [[User talk:Ocon|Talk]] 05:32, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)