Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Indian Campaigns
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- The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was Delete. -- Jreferee t/c 21:05, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Indian Campaigns
It's an article on history, apparently either completely or extensively plagiarized from a U.S. Army account (here) with a potentially biased perspective. (U.S. Army was a party to the conflict.) Agyle 18:57, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Delete POV article, biased towards US, seems plagarised. Needs to be wikified and has no sources. NASCAR Fan24(radio me!) 19:07, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Comment Completely plagarised; but is not a copyvio as I'm pretty sure works of the US government are in the public domain. NASCAR Fan24(radio me!) 19:08, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Delete Kudos to Agyle for investigating and documenting a revolting example of word-for-word plagiarism. I'm fairly sure someone will argue that the solution would be to keep and improve, but no amount of cooking can remove the taste of tainted hamburger meat. Perhaps someone can write an original article in their own words, instead of pretending to do so. Mandsford 19:14, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Comment Well said. NASCAR Fan24(radio me!) 19:19, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Keep We use U.S. military sources for many things such as Medal of Honor recipients, United States Navy ships, and so forth. They are public domain because they are works of the US federal government. The addition of a simple attribution ends the "plagiarism" concern. The cautions at Wikipedia:Public_domain_resources#Please_don.27t_data_dump.21 are certainly appropriate. But we have no comprehensive list of U.S. military operations against the indigenous American population and this resource could be reformatted to be one; deletion is supposed to be a last resort only. Agyle has good intentions but may be unfamiliar with some of the materials we have used to flesh out the encyclopedia in the past and how we have incorporated them in encyclopedic and policy-compliant fashion. --Dhartung | Talk 20:58, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
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- Dhartung, I understand your point, and know that plagiarism is easily addressed by putting block quotes around the whole article, but my objection is that it's a one-sided account of a controversial military conflict. Uncontentious facts like medal recipient (who, when, what, and military's reason given) are different from an explanation of what led up to and took place during a military conflict. The general tenor is that the "treacherous" and unreasonable Indians kept leaving the U.S. with no choice but to kill them. As an example of bias, the first conflict describes U.S. losses to the "hostile Indians" as "disasters," and the U.S. victory as "characterized by Wayne's excellent tactics and the able performance of his well-trained troops." This is not an even-handed treatment of the topic. The material that isn't overtly biased-sounding still seems questionable; it may say "attempts at peace negotiations failed", while an impartial historian might describe that as "the tribe rejected U.S. demands." -Agyle 21:52, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- My point is that "plagiarism" of a public domain source is NOT a rationale for deletion. Nor do we need blockquotes; see, for example, the template {{DANFS}} or {{1911}}. If you believe this has no value as a WP:POVFORK of Indian Wars, that's one thing and we can debate that aspect, but there seems to be a witchhunt here where there is no justification. Wikipedia uses public domain resources all the time. If credit is missing, the appropriate quick fix is to add attribution. --Dhartung | Talk 22:32, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- I agree with your first sentence; I didn't suggest deleting it because it's plagiarized, I suggested deleting this plagiarized material because it's from the potentially biased perspective of the U.S. Army. I don't know the Army created it, so I said "apparently." GlobalSecurity.org also publishes the same text, without attribution, and may have supplied it to the Army. I was unfamiliar with citation guidelines for this; I just added citations according to the 1911 Britannica examples. -Agyle 01:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
- Right, but the US Army is a definitive source for a list of campaigns undertaken by the US Army, if you want that sort of thing. As for bias, even the 1911 encyclopedia articles are often full of outdated language or goofy and discredited ideas like eugenics. FYI, the Pentagon employs thousands of people who write these sorts of things, while GlobalSecurity.org is little more than one guy; and half their stuff is cribbed from the FAS anyway (which while not always attributed is usually from govt. sources). Anyway, I just found the right citation template, so I'll modify your attribution accordingly. --Dhartung | Talk 04:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
- I agree with your first sentence; I didn't suggest deleting it because it's plagiarized, I suggested deleting this plagiarized material because it's from the potentially biased perspective of the U.S. Army. I don't know the Army created it, so I said "apparently." GlobalSecurity.org also publishes the same text, without attribution, and may have supplied it to the Army. I was unfamiliar with citation guidelines for this; I just added citations according to the 1911 Britannica examples. -Agyle 01:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
- My point is that "plagiarism" of a public domain source is NOT a rationale for deletion. Nor do we need blockquotes; see, for example, the template {{DANFS}} or {{1911}}. If you believe this has no value as a WP:POVFORK of Indian Wars, that's one thing and we can debate that aspect, but there seems to be a witchhunt here where there is no justification. Wikipedia uses public domain resources all the time. If credit is missing, the appropriate quick fix is to add attribution. --Dhartung | Talk 22:32, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Dhartung, I understand your point, and know that plagiarism is easily addressed by putting block quotes around the whole article, but my objection is that it's a one-sided account of a controversial military conflict. Uncontentious facts like medal recipient (who, when, what, and military's reason given) are different from an explanation of what led up to and took place during a military conflict. The general tenor is that the "treacherous" and unreasonable Indians kept leaving the U.S. with no choice but to kill them. As an example of bias, the first conflict describes U.S. losses to the "hostile Indians" as "disasters," and the U.S. victory as "characterized by Wayne's excellent tactics and the able performance of his well-trained troops." This is not an even-handed treatment of the topic. The material that isn't overtly biased-sounding still seems questionable; it may say "attempts at peace negotiations failed", while an impartial historian might describe that as "the tribe rejected U.S. demands." -Agyle 21:52, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Delete - Attribution most emphatically does not excuse plagiarism. Regardless of whether the documents are public domain or not, there is no excuse for plagiarism in an encylopedia article. I'm sure a properly-written article can be created on the subject in the future, but there's no reason to keep an obvious copy-&-paste job here. -- Kesh —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 21:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
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- As long as they're attributed, there's no policy against wholesale use of public domain text. You might want to check out Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, currently numbering in the tens of thousands. Thomjakobsen 23:34, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- And attribution is a simple fix. --Dhartung | Talk 04:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
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- Some of us are more disgusted by plagiarism than others. The whole point of Wikipedia, as I've understood it, is that it invites everyone to contribute, regardless of their writing skill or experience, and that those who participate improve their abilities. As Kesh says, attribution does not excuse plagiarism. It's unethical, and no matter how many Wikipedia principles you can argue to say that it's okay, it's never okay. It's the difference between someone learning to knit a sweater, and someone shoplifting a sweater. I don't want the stolen item, no matter how fine its quality. I'm not sure why anyone, who has taken the time to write a contribution, would want to defend some dumb asshole who takes 15 seconds to cut and paste a new article. Mandsford 19:08, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
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- Delete Topic is already covered by the Indian Wars article. Edward321 21:39, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Transwikify to Wikisource and link to Indian Wars. As an aside the community has no problems with plagiarism with articles using text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition with a mass of articles populating Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica its only plagiarism if an attempt is made to pass off the work as your own, and has been already stated this work is in the Public domain and there is a willingness for attribution. I guess the main concern is not so much with plagiarism as with the bigoted and outdated attitudes. However rather than being a POV that serves the purposes and reputations of the US Army and the US people, this article condemns with their own words. KTo288 23:57, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- KeepImportant part of American history. If someone thinks the United States version is biased, then by all means cite well documented Native Amercan sources for balance. If the areticle copies public domain sources, then it is in the best tradition of Wikipedia starting off with copies of the 1911 Britannica public domain articles. Edison 02:41, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
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- I hope you meant that "best tradition" bit as irony. The use of the 1911 Brittanica at the beginning may have added bulk when WP needed bulk, but it shackled us with a immense amount of out of date content with obsolete POV, disregard for a century of scholarship, and an air of having adopting the features of an old-fashioned encyclopedia. Personally, I love the old EB--read with the appropriate skepticism, its a marvelous way to get the feel of a different era than our own. And I'd say the same or worse for much of the PD content added at the time. We're just beginning to emerge from our outdated and irresponsible treatment of the serious side of human history.
- This source isn't quite that bad--its a convenient summary of narrative history from authoritative sources. But it's a source, to be rewritten as appropriate for WP, with careful attention to POV and implications. I call attention to the parent page [1] and to the very useful bibliographic resource U.S. Army Chief of Staff Professional Reading List Again, the solution to editing problems and POV problems is not deletion, but editing., so
- Keep and edit I think all in all its a useful start at a summary. DGG (talk) 08:31, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
- I hope you meant that "best tradition" bit as irony. The use of the 1911 Brittanica at the beginning may have added bulk when WP needed bulk, but it shackled us with a immense amount of out of date content with obsolete POV, disregard for a century of scholarship, and an air of having adopting the features of an old-fashioned encyclopedia. Personally, I love the old EB--read with the appropriate skepticism, its a marvelous way to get the feel of a different era than our own. And I'd say the same or worse for much of the PD content added at the time. We're just beginning to emerge from our outdated and irresponsible treatment of the serious side of human history.
- Delete and transwikify. The value of this article is the out of date attitudes and POV, this tells us most about these people and their attitudes, than as a chronological summary, it is most useful as a source that illuminates the motiviations greed, prejudice and avarice for these campaigns. If it was left here and edited in line with Wikipedia policy that POV will be lost and with it any real reason to keep it than to write it from scratch. This is pretty much a primary source and the next best thing to putting the entire article in block quotes as suggested by Agyle is to move it to Wikisource. KTo288 11:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
- Delete as unencyclopedic. Can be sent to Wikisource if desired. Stifle (talk) 20:31, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
- Keep and rewrite - currently poor and possibly POV, but could be made good.--Voxpuppet (talk • contribs) 07:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
- Delete Since this is plagiarism, it would be better to restart from scratch - if and when it is demonstrated that there is a need for this article (i.e. that it isn't a content fork of Indian Wars). Sheffield Steeltalkstalk 18:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletions. —User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 20:25, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
