The Copy-Paste Cleanup Thread

Uh what a mess. Wasn't aware it was that widespread.

You can tell these people don't stalk Edit Banned, or else they'd know.

Oh really? Is it really *that* common an offense?

Edited by FernandoLemon on Jun 24th 2021 at 1:01:36 PM

Recently, yes. It's been happening constantly and people have been getting banned constantly.

Do we have an Administrivia page specifically about it? I know the mods are like "you learned plagiarism is wrong in grade school," but the thing is, a lot of other wikis have different licenses and allow copy-pasting (some of them even copy-paste from us). So people coming from other, laxer wikis may assume it's okay to copy-paste official descriptions and such. Hell, I think I even copy/pasted descriptions when I was younger to make fanfic pages and stuff.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jun 24th 2021 at 1:02:20 PM

Speaking practically, I don't think anyone is going to sue us for infringement of fanfic descriptions. Regardless, we should try to avoid it. I'll see if I can work something into Welcome to TV Tropes. We also have About Images and Copyright, which could reasonably mention this.

Edit: I have updated About Images and Copyright. I'll put in redirects from Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 24th 2021 at 1:39:55 PM

I asked this on ATT, but someone pointed out this thread exists, so I'm reposting my query here:

What is the tolerance range for copying from other websites?

I ask because it looks like the RWBY Recap pages are being created with the identical summary that's on the Rooster Teeth website. This is only a sentence or two at most, so it doesn't look like a lot. However, because it's the official episode tag-line, it's 100% copied.

Do these Recap summaries need to be changed?

Examples of the Recap page summaries: here, here and here.

Edited to add: Looking at the Recap index page, it looks like the summary for each volume's summary is also copy/pasted from the show's official synopsis for the volume. For example, see the RWBY Volume 8 summary, as compared to the official synopsis advertised in a CBR article.

Edited further to add: I've gone through all the RWBY recap pages and the copy/paste issue covers the following:

• Volume 6, Episode 6 is where the individual episode pages begin to have copy/pasted summaries. The issue therefore covers from that episode to the most recent (Volume 8, Episode 14), including the Volume 6 Character Short. All other recap pages are fine.
• Recap.RWBY: Volume 1-8 summaries are all copy/pasted from official promotional material.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jun 27th 2021 at 1:54:04 PM

That sort of wholesale copying is definitely unacceptable. Can you determine if any troper or tropers are distinctly responsible for it?

What I would do, if you don't feel up to rewriting all the descriptions, is remove them and replace them with something like this:

NOTICE: This description was plagiarized and has been removed. Please write an original description.

Make it really fucking obvious. Refer them to this thread in the edit reason.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 27th 2021 at 9:59:24 AM

Edited to add: I did try linking directly to edits, but it doesn't seem to be working. I've never tried doing that before, so I'm probably doing it slightly wrong and could use some advice.

The majority of edits can be pinned down to three tropers in particular. There are other tropers who have done it, but usually once or twice rather than making a habit of it. It comes down to who edits the recap pages first for a new volume (recap index page) or episode (creating a new recap page), which seems to be why the same names crop up. The oldest copy/paste issues go back to 2016 on the Recap.RWBY index page. The oldest copy/paste issues on individual episode recap pages go back to Recap.RWBYV 6 E 6 Alone In The Woods (page created on the 1st December 2018).

For the Recap.RWBY page's volume summaries, all eight of them are copy/pasted from official synopses, with just one troper responsible for six of them.

• The12thDoctor for Volumes 1-5 (edits made between 2016-17, for example, Volume 1 (7th April 2016), Volume 5 (21st October 2017)) and Volume 8 summaries (July 26th 2020). Note: the Volume 4 copy/paste was actually started by Wixelt (3rd October 2016), and The12thDoctor completed it (15th October 2016).
• The Volume 7 summary was done by buckyb (6th July 2019), who has done a lot of the individual episode pages (see below).

Out of 35 affected episode pages, two tropers are responsible for 23 of them. The remaining 12 pages are a handful of different tropers who only did it once or twice:

• buckyb for 6 episode pages in Volume 6 and 8 episode pages in Volume 7 (14 examples total). To give some examples (all the very first posts of the history page):
  • Volume 6 pages (edits made in 2018-19): Episode 6, Episode 10, Episode 13
  • Volume 7 pages (2019-20): Episode 2, Episode 5, Episode 8
  • Note: buckyb's first edit (Volume 6, Episode 6) was the first episode page to experience this copy/paste issue; their last copy/paste event was Volume 7, Episode 8, but the copy/paste issue continued via other tropers (mostly stewbacca94, who finished off 4 of the remaining 5 Volume 7 recap pages, but doesn't seem to have done any copy/paste edits either before or since (his last copy/paste edit is 1st Feb 2020)).
• peripheraldevotee for 9 episode pages in Volume 8. Examples:
  • Volume 8 pages (2020-21): Episode 1, Episode 8, Episode 14 (this last one isn't the first page edit; it's the sixth).

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jun 28th 2021 at 5:02:56 PM

The 12the doctor has already been suspended.

The others I don't think have come been handled yet.

Edited by miraculous on Jun 27th 2021 at 4:11:57 AM

Albeit, they're suspended for an unrelated issue.

buckyb was already suspended for something else related to RWBY and hasn't edited or posted since 2019. I have suspended peripheraldevotee.

Edit: Upon investigation, all three of the accounts mentioned above (including stewbacca94) are the same person. I have now bounced them for ban evasion.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 27th 2021 at 7:20:39 AM

Wow. Okay, I wasn't expecting a ban evasion to be uncovered.

It's a bit late in the day for me now, but I'll start cleaning up the content tomorrow.

Thanks very much for the responses.

O_o

Well, that's that.

x6 @Wyldchyld: Gonna take a wild guess that you were afflicted by this bug.

Edited by wingedcatgirl on Jun 27th 2021 at 6:42:38 AM

I was also afflicted by that bug as well on my macOS Safari.

Also, I've brought the ban evasion up on the Ban Evader Reversion thread here. Their edits may need to be reverted in any case.

Edited by gjjones on Jun 28th 2021 at 12:10:45 PM

Ah, yes. That looks like the problem. I've edited the links to add that into the url. They should work now.

Thanks for that tip!

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jun 28th 2021 at 5:12:30 PM

At least the bug has been fixed on my end.

I've already taken care of the Volume 8 descriptions to remove any potential copyvio summaries and added some original summaries.

Edited by gjjones on Jun 28th 2021 at 2:43:03 PM

Thanks for the help, gjjones. I've amended the Volume 6 and Volume 7 descriptions, and the Volume 6 character short description.

The only thing left are the volume summaries on the Recap index page, which I believe another troper was going to take a stab at, so I'll wait for them to respond.

My, my, my... what are we going to do with this?

Weiß Survive — the opening paragraph is ripped off from the show's wikisite, which the intro flat-out admits its stolen.

Usually we'd contact the guys who made the page, but since the last update was from 4 years ago...

Edited by RobertTYL on Jun 29th 2021 at 6:38:47 PM

That description is so bare bones that I'm not sure it's a problem, but I'm equally not sure the article itself is worth keeping.

If you ask me it can be cutlisted.

Deep Sigh...here we go again...

~SilverFangirl, from the beginning of her(?) edit history on the 29th August 2020, has added tons of Recap pages for various media onto the wiki. As you've probably guessed, the summary for every single recap she's posted seems to have been copied and pasted over from official sources. And it's not just the summaries. She's also added things onto trivia pages that have been lifted from other sources as well. Her whole edit history looks full of this.

Examples:

This was copied and pasted from here

This was copied and pasted from here

This was copied and pasted from here

And this was copied and pasted from here

Unfortunately that's not all. The troper also seems to have a nearly identically named second account, ~FangirlSilver1, that's also pumping a bunch of plagiarised content onto the site, as seen here:

This was copied and pasted from here

Summary they added here was copied and pasted from here

And this was copied and pasted from here

The edit histories of both accounts look to consist of only the occasional valid entry sandwiched between tons of copy and pasted content, so a full scale clean up is unfortunately going to be required.

Edited by Atlantis1930 on Jun 29th 2021 at 8:36:26 PM

Jeeee-zus. Well, the bans are taken care of. Unfortunately that's just the start.

Edit histories: FangirlSilver1, SilverFangirl

We clearly need something more firm to teach people to not do this.