Talk:Maxwell Woosnam

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Whilst I appreciate the 'efforts' of some to write extended entries for Max Woosnam, I would be grateful if they could desist. It is clear that they are merely taking large chunks from a biography of the man, written by myself and published a couple of weeks ago. The last entry was over 3,000 words, much of it lifted directly from my book, without thought for copyright or courtesy. Having spent several years piecing together Woosnam's life, I would be grateful if those, particularly someone who professes to be an author himself, would ponder for a moment before lifting large excerpts of my work to provide an internet entry. Thank you. Mick Collins

[edit] Request for Comment

I can't comment on the charge of copyright infringement but the [last significant edit] of this article suffered POV issues and was in desperate need of a rewrite. Future edits should avoid the rhetoric and social commentary and stick to the facts. The current verion looks pretty good to me. BFD1 15:38, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I came here from RfC. If the author's comments above are true, it is definitely a copyvio (copyright violation) to use his material on this page. You can either:

1. make a fully credited quotation from his book, in which case the passage needs to be short enough to qualify as a fair use; and/or
2. you can use the information contained in the book, without any limits, but it must be expressed here in your own words. Also, he must then be credited as the source (which Wikipedia requires because of WP:V anyway). AndyJones 08:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The latter is pretty much what I'm sure I did — I certainly never deliberately copied out any passages from the book, and if any sentences were similar it would have been entirely by accident. Certainly the entire piece was in no way a complete rip-off. And the book was listed, as it is currently, as the only reference. Angmering 09:31, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I strongly agree with User:BFD1 above that the style of this version of the page is far too journalistic to be acceptable as an encylopedia entry, and that this version is better. If my item 2 above represents what User:Angmering really did, then the author has no cause for complaint. If Mike Collins wants to pursue the copyright issue, perhaps he could post here some passages which he alleges are copied from his book. Otherwise, I think the RfC should be considered closed. AndyJones 12:31, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Sometime in the next week when I get the time I will make an effort to go through the book and the last version of the page based on my edit and see if there are any passages that appear to be too similar for comfort. I shall change / remove any that seem to be so and then go back to that version, if that seems acceptable. Angmering 13:28, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion a definate copyright infringement has taken place here. I'm not sure if it would be considered so in terms of the the wiki guidelines, and do be honest I don't care, because looking at it from the legal perspective a fairly massive plagerism took place. Just because the text is not identical to Collin's work does not mean it is not a plagerism. I think Mr Collins is quite right to be unhappy that this has happened after conducting the only major research on Maxwell Woosnam. It is in the interest of wikipedia.org to remove the previous version from the history of the article, along with any other archived instances. If I was in the position of Mr Collins I would have commenced litigation immediately. I'm not connected with Mr Collins, just a bit sick of how wikipedia seems to think it has a license to operate above and beyond the law, defaming people along the way, while maintaining a beligerent attitude towards culpabilty. Mr Collins has conducted real in-depth research, burrying his head in hard to find documents, and first person interviews, unlike the rag tag bunch of TV-Times excerpts that fabricate 90% of Wikipedia. It is rediculous to claim that a massive article that springs up immediately after the only first book on the subject in 70 years is in no way plagerising or infringing the copyrights of the book's author. McGonicle 14:18, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

• Thank you. I acknowledge that is your opinion. However, unless someone can point to something specific that is alleged to be plagiarised from the book then no-one here will be interested in taking the action you have described. AndyJones 19:05, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Woah! This is all getting a bit heavy for me. So — while I still maintain that my version of the article was not a copyright infringement, merely using the information contained in the book as its reference material — in the interests of a quiet life I am going to bow out here and refrain from any future contributions to this page. Angmering 20:43, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's your decision and I can't force you to work on this page if you don't want to. I'm sorry to see you feeling bullied by a rant like McGonicle's, though. His personal feelings are just that, personal feelings, and to the extent he purports to be expressing law, he's got it wrong. If you really haven't copied or plagiarised Collins then you've done nothing wrong. This is how encycopedias work. People who write encyclopedias read the published works about the subject, then they write an article based on what they've learned. That is how it's supposed to be. (For what it's worth, if I was Mick Collins, I would be glad of this article, and the plug it gives to my book. But I can't force him to feel that way, either.) AndyJones 12:30, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Rationally I know all of that's true, of course, and it's very kind of you to support my position on the copyright status. But there's also the fact that as I enjoyed Collins' book so much, I feel a bit bad about upsetting him in this manner. Angmering 17:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

That's fine. At least the RfC is closed, so I've taken the page off my watchlist. AndyJones 07:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I was ranting, I was just giving my comment. Its a shame that the article has to be cut back so much on a much neglected character, but the fact is that the article was compromising the copyright in Mick Collin's book. An encyclopedia is a summation of published works, but Mick Collin's book is the ONLY published work on the character, and the only work referenced, and it is obvious that the article's authors substantial efforts were exclusively based on the recent publication. Unfortunately, that has to be considered a plagerism. If the article was written the same way and there were ten references at the bottom of the article then there may be more of a case. I also think it is rather shortsighted to refer to articles on wikipedia in terms of a traditional encyclopedia. A conventional writer of a paper encyclopedia would have a remit to write with so many words. Wikipedia has no fixed remit, so it is easy for articles to drift way beyond where any normal encycolopeida would. The article that was here was far beyond what you would find in an encyclopedia or even a historical journal. However, again, there is this slightly contemptuous attitude towards commerical writers wh oare tryign to earn a living from their work and recoup a small amount of money from their professional work. Hard work, research, serious business, which peopel invest into and risk with publishing runs, that will come back and get pulped if they don't sell. If you give away that expensive research and work for free, you will find that you end up with the majority of reseach that takes place being the tin-pot hobby research which has little academic merit McGonicle 10:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

What a self-important, pompous little prig. If you dont like it you know what to do, where to go, etc. Samgb 12:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Five blues?

Cricinfo, quoting Wisden, has this to say:

Going up to Cambridge, he did not get a Blue for cricket, though he was 12th man in the 1912 match against Oxford...

That doesn't fit with the "While there he earned five blues" in the article. Wisden isn't foolproof of course, but something's not quite right somewhere. Loganberry (Talk) 23:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "greatest all-round sportsman that Britain ever produced."

It's difficult to argue this line. He achieved one appearance for England at one sport. CB Fry represented England at cricket and football, chalking up 26 Tests in the former, in the days when Tests were few and far between. Add a world record for long jump and various other accomplishments, and I think Woosnam would probably be in (glorious) second place to Fry. --Dweller 18:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

It's been a month now and no comment. I'll edit carefully and hope ppl agree to the change. --Dweller 08:28, 14 November 2006 (UTC)