Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/Multiple Books Created from Wikipedia Without Attribution

Multiple Books Created from Wikipedia Without Attribution
These books have all been created by mass copy / paste from Wikipedia, with no original input. The editor who despite having three accounts (User:Quachtahnh, User:Kysuthanh, User:Qtt1964) always edits via an IP and never responds to any request to stop copy / pasting. Numerous pages have been tagged as copyright violations, deleted, recreated and sometimes deleted again without any attempt from the editor to communicate or respond to comments noting the correct process for attribution. As an aside I find it particularly reprehensible that the editor claims "authorship" on all these books - a claim I have removed today - while denying the moral rights of those who actually created the material by refusing to follow the correct process of requesting imports or at least providing proper attribution as required by the site license.

I have trawled these books over the preceding months and probably sample checked 40% of the pages. I find that everything appears to be a copy from Wikipedia, always without attribution. I propose they should all be deleted and, if necessary, protected from re-creation to stop the editor continuing to abuse the moral rights of contributors to these projects.


 * Physics Theories
 * Digital Electronics
 * Electronics/Electronics Formulas
 * Electronics Machines and Systems
 * Engineering Handbook
 * Geometry Course
 * Calculus Course
 * Fundamental Digital Electronics
 * Arithmetic Course
 * Electronics Communication
 * Electronics Handbook
 * Communication Course
 * Physics Course
 * Electronics Fundamentals

I understand this could be controversial, and I'm talking about a lot of material, but I believe there is a fundamental violation of the principles of collaboration and a breach of the terms of use. QU TalkQu 22:38, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete, in agreement with your thoughts on the principles of collaboration. --Thereen (discuss • contribs) 01:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete if this guy is the only contributor. But I think protecting the pages to prevent recreation is an overreaction that might well prevent legitimate future contributions.  It would be better to block the offender.  --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 01:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I think that problems of copyright violation from other Wikimedia projects are easily fixable, by anyone, so the only reason for deletion would be the lack of relevance of sufficient derivation from the original and that they could be speedily deleted, unless the articles are themselves under the risk of deletion at Wikipedia, then I would support a keep.
 * As for the protection I agree with Jomegat, this book titles are too generic to be good wikipedic articles titles. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 02:54, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I can't see the problems as "easily fixable" - the editor has been on a mission for months to copy hundreds of pages from Wikipedia and continues to do so despite requests not to. Unless some admins want to volunteer to do all the trawling, importing and history merging then it isn't going to get fixed. This is a large problem created by someone who clearly doesn't care if they breach the moral or legal rights of others - and continues to make the problem bigger faster than anyone could reasonably keep up with them. Especially as the complete lack of attribution and refusal to discuss the problem means we have to do our own searching to find the source material. Blocking the user requires a policy change or agreement that copy / pasting repeatedly without attribution is a blockable offence - personally I think it is but I may be in a minority. QU TalkQu 20:27, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see anything about a block in this case that would require change to the blocking policy. Some choice passages from the policy page:
 * "Blocks should only be applied if all other possible attempts to resolve the issues have been considered." &mdash; If we implement consensus here to delete, and the problem persists, we'll be about there.
 * "All blocks ultimately exist to protect Wikibooks from harm, and reduce likely future problems, not to punish users." &mdash; Check.
 * "persistently violating other policies or guidelines." &mdash; Check.
 * --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 21:56, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Symbol delete vote.svg Delete. The copyright violations are definitely the official reason for deletion that I agree with.  Additionally, due to English not being the contributor's native language or due to the synthesis of material from various sources, the books' prose is poor (random capitalization of words is especially irritating).  I struggled just with trying to make some corrections initially to the material, so QU's discovery of copyright infringement doesn't surprise me.  I figured that the material, at the least, had to have been poorly translated from another language version of Wikibooks (note the global usage of some of the images used in the books). – Adrignola discuss 20:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm going to check some more of these pages. Those that aren't copied from WP appear to be, where they have content enough to be checkable, copies from vi Wikibooks and pre-date the copy here. Given the use of an IP to edit with it then becomes even more problematic to determine if the material was original at vi Wikibooks then copied here, original at Wikipedia and translated to vi Wikibooks, then back to en Wikibooks (explaining the close matches to WP where the language has been mangled but the structure is identical) or something else. I'm happy to add an attribution link to vi WB and leave vi to determine if it thinks the original is okay or not. Where a page is a WP copy I'll tag it with . It'll take time though. Also, as many of you will know, lots of these pages are duplicated across the books here so the same page appears three or four times in some cases. QU TalkQu 22:19, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes that was what I meant by "easily fixable" it includes deletions of exact duplicates (or with limited level of derivation) and sticking the required general attribution to Wikipedia to the works. The rest is up for the editor and/or the administrators to go any further (requesting the transwikis and page history actualizations). --Panic (discuss • contribs) 23:04, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I think a temporary block (indefinite, but with the intent of being manually lifted) would be appropriate and in harmony with the blocking policy. If nothing else, it will get the disruptive editor's attention and either force him into a dialog, or drive him away.  Either outcome is acceptable (though the former is preferred), as it puts an end to the disruptive edits.  I propose that if he does not respond after some set period of time as explained in the block notices (multiple accounts), that the pages be deleted then, but not sooner than that.  The deadline should be determined based on how often this user typically edits here (twice the average interval and then some rounding might be good), but I wouldn't make it longer than a month. --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 23:36, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Block with eventual delete seems appropriate to me as well. Though I am content to arbitrarily choose a week  or two as the period to wait.  But if someone else wants to calculate something more reasonable, that could work as well. Thenub314 (talk) 04:10, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * A cursory check shows that the pages are edited about once every 8-ish days. I think two weeks would be about right. --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 16:38, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * keep - If there's a problem then it can be fixed. We can do something about the lack of attribution to the original Wikipedia editors.  I don't really get this moral rights thing that you're suggesting though.  People who contribute to Wiki projects generally reject all this ownership of text kind of thinking - it's one of the reasons most of world use Wikipedia regularly, download music and video for free and read / write blogs.  Basically, I don't think any of the original authors particularly care about their moral rights with regards to these books / articles.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 23:15, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Moral Rights is a UK / EU concept which doesn't apply given this site is US based. However, let me put it differently then. It is immoral to put your name on a book as the author when in fact you copied it from someone else and did not attribute it to them at all. The editor doesn't just do this implicitly by copy / pasting, they do it explicity by adding "Author:XXXX" along with their alleged academic qualifications on the main page of each book. To me this is immoral, gives the impression that this person is the author of various works when they aren't and is also a breach of the license conditions. It isn't easy at all to fix the attribution - I've tried that several times and the editor, by refusing to engage in any conversation, leaves us having to hunt down where it was copied from (and it isn't always WP) and import / merge the history. On a busy day this editor can add 50+ pages which can then take several hours to fix. In the meantime he / she is off copy / pasting the same material into several different variants of the book here. There's two ways to approach this in my opinion - prevent the individual from extending what I believe is a breach of the Terms of Use by violating the conditions of the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License by blocking the addition of new material until they agree to comply with those Terms. Or just ignore the breach and let it extend hoping nobody ever complains and ignoring the immorality of it. Retrospectively fixing it is only an option if someone wants to invest hours and hours of work in it - that's not me I'm afraid, I just don't have the time QU TalkQu 10:45, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Symbol delete vote.svg Delete I am convinced. Delete the books and block the account that created them. --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 13:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * An IP editor has recently been around and removed the RFD tags from most of those books. I've blocked the user but he may be back.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 16:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That's the same IP that created a lot of the copy / paste problem in the first place. Normal mode of operation for them - just ignores requests to engage / comment and sets off on their own track. QU TalkQu 19:22, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Didn't have time to check that user's previous edits so didn't notice that they were also the pages' creator.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 22:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Symbol delete vote.svg Delete and block user. Preventing recreation doesn't make sense to me since the user could just as well choose other titles, can't he or she?. --Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs)