Wikipedia talk:Mirrors and forks

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[edit] Mirrors not respecting GFDL

Can someone check these out (linking to Toronto as a reference article):

Delhigrid and Vsax

I'll add more if and when I find them. Mindmatrix 21:10, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

And two more, obviously run by the same person/group: MyNiche and silvertopics. Mindmatrix 21:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Some more: 3g.co.nz and Bvio (this is from an old archive, it seems). Mindmatrix 01:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bad mirror: encyclopedia.vestigatio.com

I don't know exactly how to report this, and the rules seem a bit long, so I'll just mention it here:

No mention of Wikipedia or GFDL, every page claims "©2006 Vestigatio". Melchoir 10:44, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

You can help by adding an entry of it. Thanks. -- Jared A. Hunt 02:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mirroring wikipedia namespace

Help.com is mirroring ( under the correct GFDL licence ) at least Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion -> [[1]]. very wierd thing for them to do, could this be an accident or is this just a result of webcrawlers ? Peripitus (Talk) 02:32, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

No, they downloaded the database dump at some point and is running it. -- Jared A. Hunt 02:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, they're definitely live-mirroring/screen-scraping. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quickseek.com is mirroring, they claim copyright, no credits given, framed by ads

Like Melchoir (two above), I'm not clear how to report (yes, I know there is a description which is clear to others): Quickseek.com is putting forward Wikipedia pages as its own copyright for commercial gain; the format is as for example "Advocate-QuickSeek Encyclopedia" which is a ripoff of [Advocate] , with a cheeky claim that all material is copyright of Quickseek and is not to be reproduced without their permission. 82.41.229.75 09:24, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

You can help by adding an entry of it. Thanks. -- Jared A. Hunt 02:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welsh nationalism

Please see this breach of WP:FORK, at the Welsh nationalism Redirect. --Mais oui! 18:44, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Improperly used screenshot of wikipedia article

The following URL appears to be using an edited/modified screenshot of the wikipedia's Space Needle article and appears to be in violation of both Wikipedia's GFDL and the photographer's Creative Commons license under which the article's image is licensed. There is no attribution, inclusion of the licensing terms, etc., etc. http://labs.live.com/photosynth/whatis/smartphotos.html

I posted a similar notice on Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems and Talk:Space Needle. A reply to the former article recommended I post here. I am not a contributor to the article in question or on wikipedia logos or anything (thus I'm not a copyright or trademark holder), so I don't think there's anything I can do here, but I wanted to point this out for others to address. I've already contacted the photographer via Flikr whose image was included on the wiki page. --205.201.53.207 20:41, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mass Live Mirror, GFDL violation, webspam Problem

Hello,

in the last days I am finding a lot of sites, evidently from the same people, who are using LIVE MIRRORs of Wikipedia and are also violating the GFDL. They have a number of sites with nonsense or semi-nonsense domain names all of which are built with similar templates and are fetching any Wikipedia page from any language version live. This is serious webspam problem, these people are parasites. I list the sites I find recently (but not linked):

  • en.bushleague.info/Special:Recentchanges
  • en.7-of-100.info/downtown-los-angeles-hotels/Special:Recentchanges
  • en.anysearchengine.info/hotel-in-niagara-falls-ontario/Special:Recentchanges
  • en.blogservices.info/Special:Recentchanges
  • en.feederpolitics.info/sony-ericson-phones/Special:Recentchanges
  • en.54of100e.info/Special:Recentchanges.html
  • en.andmoretop.info/Special:Recentchanges.html
  • en.comedypage.info/Special:Recentchanges
  • en.feederpolitics.info/Special:Recentchanges
  • en.centraltest.info/Special:Recentchanges
  • en.getsearchinformation.info/Special:Recentchanges
  • en.allrssfeeds.info/Special:Recentchanges

Replace the initial "en" with any Wikipedia language version, e.g. "ja".

I am reporting these sites to the wikitech-l list as I find them, and admins are sometimes blocking them, but I think this is a larger problem needing serious attention. Wikiwatcher 23:58, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to sign letter when contacting non-complying sites

When contacting a mirroring site that does not comply with GFDL requirements, should I sign my email with my Wikipedia user name, or my real-life name? What has been people's experience? what are the pros and cons? --InfoCan 20:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] can anyone make a profit off of us?

I'm a bit confused about why Wikipedia is allowing this. It seems that we are doing all this work to write articles, and some other person is making profit off of it by mirroring it on their site with ads. Are there any restrictions at all? As an extreme example, could a hate group or a terrorist group fund themselves by selling printed copies of Wikipedia? It seems that if our articles are making money, that money go to the Wikimedia Foundation. What is Wikimedia's logic behind this policy? --Arctic Gnome 21:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

So long as they comply with the GFDL, other people can do what they want, including making money. Some call this freedom. --Henrygb 23:58, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
That makes editing feel a bit less meaningful, especially for new users. Spending hours upon hours of your free time writing "a free encyclopedia for anyone to use" sounds a lot better than spending hours upon hours of your free time writing "a encyclopedia that will make some random person you don't know rich". --Arctic Gnome 00:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
It's free as in freedom. I feel much better because Wikipedia is under the GFDL. Among other things, it means no one will ever have to pay (or see ads) to use Wikipedia. If the Wikimedia Foundation ever started charging or showing ads, someone could create a gratis fork. The fact that Wikipedia is free also means people can sell CDs or printed copies to those without Internet access (they might not be able to do this if charging wasn't allowed). Also, since people can create as many mirrors or data dumps as they want, the content of Wikipedia will never die out the way some sites have. Superm401 - Talk 04:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] coolestmatter.info

Firstly, allow me to apologise for not adding this straight into the list. I am awful at following those kinds of style (and also I don't know the info for all the fields mentioned on the main project page), so I figure if I just mention it here, hopefully it will be added by someone else, or maybe it's already been in there and since been removed, or something.

http://www.coolestmatter.info/

I found this site a little moment ago when doing a Google search for a word that only exists both on my userpage on here, and on one other site relating to me on the internet (at deviantART), and it seems that my userpage has been mirrored on coolestmatter.info, in a peculiar form, right down at the very bottom of the page in a little box, below the "More interesting resources" notice. It does the same with the Wikipedia article on most other pages (or all, I haven't checked all pages). It seems that all references to Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and most other Wikimedia projects have been changed to the word "Database" (apart from in the URLs for the relevant articles, which are copied over intact), though some still remain unchanged. See http://www.coolestmatter.info/Database_Database, for examples.

Database's sister projects
Database is hosted by the Database Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other projects:
Database Dictionary and thesaurus Database Free-content news Wikiquote Collection of quotations Wikibooks Free ::textbooks and manuals Wikispecies Directory of species Wikisource Free-content library Wikiversity Free learning ::materials and activities Database Shared media repository Meta-Wiki Database project coordination

It even contains all the categories. As mentioned previously, Userpages seem to be transferred over, as do talk pages (http://www.coolestmatter.info/Talk:Wikipedia), Wikipedia pages (http://www.coolestmatter.info/Wikipedia:Verifiability), Portals (http://www.coolestmatter.info/Portal:Culture), among others, probably. The realm of images seems to be mirrored over, but "." seems to be substituted for " ". So therefore, http ://www.coolestmatter.info/Image:Example.png shows the following:

Image:Example png
No file by this name exists; you can upload it.

Interestingly, clicking the words "upload it" (all links are intact)goes to http://www.coolestmatter.info/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=Example_png, but only up until the / after info is actually recognised, so that is a mirror of the Wikipedia article on W.

At the bottom of every page is the text "Copyright © coolestmatter.info".

What happens next? Did I miss something out? Was this not necessary? I've added this page (as well as /ABC) to my watchlist, so let me know if possible. --Dreaded Walrus 09:27, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

You're in the right place, and we do like to have all mirrors listed. However, it appears that the site is no longer using Wikipedia content, but just randomly generated junk. Let me know if I'm wrong. Normally we would archive it, but I guess that's not necessary since there was never an entry. Superm401 - Talk 05:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
It seems you are partially correct. I checked a few pages on there, and the Wikipedia content was no longer there, and so I was in the process of typing up a response here saying it was gone. However, if you go to the following URL:
http://www.coolestmatter.info/Wikipedia, and scroll right down, once the page has fully loaded (it loads in stages, it seems), and you should see something like the following, just below where it says "More Interesting Resources": [2]
I have just reloaded that page multiple times now, in Firefox, and sometimes the content from Wikipedia appears, and sometimes the following appears:
"could not open XML input http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=Wikipedia&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss"
So it appears that on some occasions it uses information from Wikipedia, but other times it tries to use a Google blogsearch result. Does this still qualify? I've refreshed that particular page 10 times now, and 4 out of those 10 it has used Wikipedia content, 6 out of those 10 has been the invalid blogsearch thing. --Dreaded Walrus 06:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I've just tried it with a few other pages, and it seems to be the case for those, too.
http://www.coolestmatter.info/ham
http://www.coolestmatter.info/Jesus
http://www.coolestmatter.info/YouTube
They all seem to randomly switch between the failed XML, and the Wikipedia content, and it's about even odds for them to choose either. It seems to be 50/50. --Dreaded Walrus 06:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Of course it qualifies. Whenever it displays Wikipedia content, it must comply with the license. The page isn't loading for me at all, now. Feel free to file an entry, though. Superm401 - Talk 07:45, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I have found two more sites. I haven't looked at them in-depth, but the Medlibrary.org MedWiki, at http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/ seems to contain Wikipedia content. The front page of Medlibrary.org seems to suggest it is medical information only that is being used, yet, for example, Jimbo Wales' userpage is mirrored on there, as is my own, and probably many others. (http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/User:Jimbo_Wales) The other site found is http://www.referenceencyclopedia.com/. Examples of pages include http://www.referenceencyclopedia.com/?title=Wikipedia and http://www.referenceencyclopedia.com/?title=User:Jimbo%20Wales. Sorry, again, for not adding these directly to the list, but I am awful at filling out forms, which is similar to this. --Dreaded Walrus 10:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Foreign Pages

Do you think we should handle mirrors that don't copy from English Wikipedia? It kind of seems like we should pass those on to the language versions that are copied from. Superm401 - Talk 05:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Semi-aside
Alerted by email by SG (and snooping following the back and forth user talk posts) reached the project page following this, so find the 'form' given and page intro doesn't say where the given form is used and applied. So suggest some editing fixups for context and backlinks, whatever applies. Cheers! // FrankB 18:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spamming Wikipedia with links to mirrored articles

From working with WikiProject Spam, I frequently see spammers adding links to ad-rich sites that are nothing but Wikipedia mirrors.

I've opened a discussion on the topic at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Mirrors and forks, scrapers and spammers. It seems like there are synergies between what people here are doing here and what the anti-spam volunteers are doing. Please feel free to join in the discussion there.

Observations, questions and suggestions:

  1. I encourage you to consider adding {{linksearch}} to the standard form, Template:Mirror, used here to list mirror sites. This would produce a clickable link to the Special:Search web links results page for that domain. Users could either track down the resulting list of links themselves or report the possible spam problem at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam
  2. I think violation of our copyright should be automatic grounds for adding a domain to the Foundation-wide link-blacklist at m:Talk:Spam blacklist. First, our guidelines specificly prohibit linking to sites that violate anyone's copyright. Second, such links are probably going to have been deliberately spammed in bad faith >>90% of the time. Is such blacklisting already being done or does something need to happen to start the ball rolling? Note that there is an appeals process for getting off the blacklist, so any mistakes can be rectified.
  3. Inter-project cooperation: it seems this is likely an area of interest for all projects in all languages. Is there any cooperation, perhaps on Meta as there is with the spam blacklist?
  4. Shadowbot is loaded with problematic domains that have not yet become a severe enough problem to warrant blacklisting; it reverts suspicious link additions and cautions the editor. This bot is another potential resource to consider.
    --A. B. (talk) 15:59, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Linking to mirrors

"When posting links, make sure you include <nowiki> and </nowiki> around the links so that search engines don't cache or index them". Does this still apply now that nofollow is automatic? — Feezo (Talk) 21:57, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not a mirror, but a paper using Wikipedia materials

How do we deal with the GFDL-noncompliant use of one or several articles? [3] Conscious 18:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Confusing mirror

I found a site located at http://en.wikipedia.b4d.pl/wiki/Main_Page a very confusing mirror of Wikipedia. The website is in fact a near perfect mirror of Wikipedia, in the sense that apart from the domain, there is hardly anything different between Wikipedia and the site. One difference that I could find was that since it can only fork content, and not push content, nothing happens when you click the "Save page" button. There is nothing wrong I could find with what they are doing, but since they don't have an identity of their own, it is difficult to enlist them in the mirrors and forks record. Can anyone help? — Ambuj Saxena (☎) 11:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

List it under "b4d.pl" - right now it seems to be carrying changes up to 15:54 today --Henrygb 21:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
On a second look, I find that the website is blatantly infringing on the copyrights of the Wikimedia foundation by using Wikipedia and Wikimedia logos without any express permission. I think we need to take on the issue with their web-master. However, we would face one issue while doing it. Since it copies everything, there is no identity of its own, and thus there are no contact details. — Ambuj Saxena (☎) 07:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Organization using Wikipedia material

Check this out - [4] - currently they have a paper about ENP on the front page. The summary uses the Wikipedia ENP map. but has "(c) Copyright CEPS" below it. Shouldn't they place "(c) Wikipedia" instead??? Alinor 06:38, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It actually uses the old (pre Bulgaria/Romania accession) version, but [5] and [6] do indeed seem to be the same apart from scale. --Henrygb 23:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
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