I’ve been trying to do some research on a couple of firearms for some articles I’m writing, and after going through my reference books I’ve been doing Google searches to see if there’s anything I’ve missed.
And I am astounded at how many information webpages are just a direct cut-and-paste of the Wikipedia article on the same subject.
For example, you might have a Website called “Fred Blogg’s World of Guns” and every single one of the information pages is a cut-and-paste of the relevant Wikipedia article, with a different coloured border and formatting and layout to fit the format of Fred’s site. Fred is, in short, mirroring the Wikipedia site, despite the cosmetic changes.
It’s one thing when they acknowledge that the article is from Wikipedia and are acknowledging there’s not a lot to add to it, but it’s quite another to just copy the article without acknowledging its source and then hope that no-one will notice.
Given that Wiki is the number one link that comes up whenever you type pretty much anything into Google anymore, what is the point of these “Mirror” sites with copied articles on them? What are they achieving? Why do they exist?
Wikipedia gives free access to the information and doesn’t prohibit reproduction elsewhere. They don’t even request notification that you’ve used content from Wikipedia. Rather than do their own work, many people choose instead to leach off Wiki contributors, which is perfectly legal and not prohibited by Wiki in any way.
So, yeah, if you have any ads or revenue-generating links on your site, using Wikipedia information to fill the void on your page can make money for you. All it takes is someone going to your website a small percentage of the time instead of Wikipedia. They get the same info, you get money, and Wikipedia gets slightly shafted.
I find it annoying and immoral, even if it’s not technically illegal, but what’re ya gonna do?
That’s what I’d figured, and I agree with you, but I still don’t see the point, since the number of people visiting those non-wiki pages must be so low as to be completely insignificant; ie, the advertising revenue wouldn’t cover the cost of the bandwidth (or so I would have thought)…
How can you be sure that “Fred Blogg’s World of Guns” wasn’t there first, and the Wikipedia article isn’t actually a copy of Fred’s writings, perhaps even written by Fred himself?
Given that some of the stuff I’m seeing on the “mirror” sites are cut-and-pastes of Wikipedia articles I wrote myself, yes, I’m pretty sure they’re copying Wiki and not the other way around.
Looking at the history page for the wiki article would indicate how it evolved on wikipedia and who has edited it. The page for the Colt 1911 has over 600 edits, for example. If the very first version of the wiki article was a duplicate of Fred’s, then we’re on to something. Or, since a lot of edits are for minor punctuation type things, you might find Fred’s is a copy of the 594th version of the wiki article by those minor clues in his article.
Here’s what reusers of Wikipedia content are supposed to do, according to the terms of the copyright license Wikipedia operates under. In particular, they require that the original Wikipedia page be cited and linked to, which isn’t always done.
That’s what I’d think too. But they ARE out there, so we’re obviously mistaken. I suppose it is like spam emails. The cost is so incredibly cheap that even a tiny response makes it worthwhile.
