Please don't copy-paste text from other web sites

Question

This has come up before, but based on what I'm seeing on my family feed, it looks like it needs to be brought up again. 

There is a style guide page about copying and pasting from other web sites. See http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Copying_Text

Instead, add links to such a web site. For example, please do not copy and paste the contents of a Find-a-Grave profile page into the profile of the same person on WikiTree. Instead, add a link under "See also:" below the Sources section. 

Speaking of Find-a-Grave, it's been my experience that most profiles there include little to any source information; therefore, please use caution about relying on Find-a-Grave pages as a source for information you provide on Wikitree profiles. Like any derivative source, it can be used for clues, but should not be relied upon.

Comments

I fixed the link, it didn't work because of the period at the end of the sentence.

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Yes the link works for me now Anne.

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Thanks, Anne.

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So, here do you mean?  I can copy/paste the url to Find a grave.com to a profile.  Just not a url to my ancestors page on Find a grave,com.  Is that right? 

Thanx 

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Mary, You are safe copying and pasting the link to the individual FAG memorial. You should not however copy and paste the text of the memorial, using the names,dates, and locations is fine but put the information in your own words, not exactly the way they post it.

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Yea what Dale said

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I see.  Thanx

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As far as FAG goes, I've probably corrected/augmented info on a couple dozen of their profiles of ancestors and others I've worked on here. Everyone should be doing that when certain of their info.

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Bruce, that's great that you and others do that. I don't have enough time for wikitree much less other sites.

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Well do what we can, Jillaine. It's definitely not a competition. :)

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Good point! 

When Find a Grave was privately owned it was sourced more often than not by actual Obituaries from newspapers.

When James Tipton sold it to Ancestry, in my opinion, it began a slow deterioration.

Eventually, over-zealous people started adding their own family members without checking the established profiles and many duplicates were created.

Granted it is the nature of transcribing to default to unintentional mistakes at times. 

I personally have been trying to get one of my 4 th great uncle's untangled from the wrong FAG of two different DNA Randolph lines for years! 

Does Ancestry Own FindAGrave? What You Need To Know 

Answer 1

I also wish to speak to this topic. I responded to someone here in the G2G on another subject, but as it turned out someone had copy/pasted his information from another website into ours, without even giving credit. He was nice enough about it, but did ask that it be removed, mostly because he felt it was no longer the way he would like the information to appear.

Many of us here consider ourselves to be genealogists (beginners, amateurs, hobbyist, serious). As genealogists, I feel we should be, at least, a step above pure "copy/paste" as a final product.

And, there is never an excuse for "copy/paste" without proper attribution.

Comments

How about copying short excerpts with proper attribution and linking?  This is generally how such info is handled.

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Short excerpts, even longer ones when appropriate (like wills), within quotes (or using <blockquote>) and with proper attribution are considered quotes. And yes, they are totally ok and as Michael has said the way "such info is handled" usually. It's not the same thing as wholesale copy/paste from websites or books.

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And on the rare occasion that you find material not on the web that you feel is crucial to your profile, it never hurts to be diligent and write an email, letter, or otherwise formally request permission to use more than what constitutes "fair use". From what I've seen out there, you'll very rarely find someone who will refuse a nicely worded permission request, especially if you make it clear that this is not for profit, for genealogical purposes, and that you will include proper credit for their work.

If it fits within the "fair use" principle (i.e., you're only using bits and pieces of their material and not a whole quoted block of text or more), then I usually just provide a citation in the sources to indicate that their information was used in the creation of this profile.

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You can quote a whole block of text but not the whole book or article.  As always it is best to paraphrase.  An easy way to do this:

Read the source, switch pages to where you're writing and write what you just read, but from your own memory.  When you're done, proofread to match dates/locations.

I believe that the "fair use" rule of '76 limits use of copied text to 500 words.  Of course, either way, it needs to be sourced.

Answer 2

Jillaine, First your link will not work for me, I get a page not found error.

Second whenever I copy and paste anything anymore I put it into a Working Notes section and then just rewrite it using the facts but in my own words and then place the rewritten results into the proper section of the profile.

I agree with you about Find-a-Grave and always try and find another source to back up that information, but sometimes there is no other source to be found.

Comments

Sounds like a great plan, Dale! I do something similar as well.

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I concur.

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Actually, if you don't provide the source of the information, it's still a problem, even if the words were rewritten.

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As Pamela said, rewritten words need source citations.

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A Wilson, I was not saying to remove FAG as a source but that we should not use just that as a source for a profile if we can find another.

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I didn't say you did remove FAG as a source. All I said was even when you rewrite something, it still needs sourced even if you don't "like" that source.

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It is ideas that must be cited, not just words.  I once heard a person say that their concepts were their "corn and oats." Thus "rewriting" without referencing the original work is theft of an idea.

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Good reminder, Virginia.

Answer 3

"Instead, add links to such a web site"

Using Internet since 1995 this looks like asking for troubles. 

I always try to 

1. Have a citation of the source
2. Transcribe the source 
3. Have a link to the source
4. and in best case also a date when I accessed it

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Regarding Find a grave 

I feel its just a secondary source that you always need to complement with primary sources. A gravestone is a primary source but contains not to much information...

You never know when an internet site goes away.... or change URL

 

Comments

I'm not commenting to anyone who has already spoken, but to those newly navigating the question. No one has mentioned, probably because of familiarity, to grade sources on a curve. Some sources are indexed with a name and date only. I don't like using those, if I have options, even if everything seems to match. I've seen to many cases of wrongly indexed sources.

Some FAG sources have photos of the gravestone and include links to known family members nearby, also with photos. It's the same with census or other microfiche, I like to see it myself. My confidence in the accuracy of any source increases, depending on what is presented.

Census takers and other recorders could also make mistakes. I have found those records accidentally by looking at microfiche and noticing the very mis-spelled family name on the same page, with all given names and ages matching. If I hadn't been viewing the fiche, I never would have found that record.

I recently found an online archive of  parrish records dating back to the 1600's. When I clicked the link to look at the original, it was a typed index in book form. Because some names and dates were not aligning, I suggested contacting the parrish to get a review the original.

I really love finding lost puzzle pieces. Sometimes it takes a spotlight the size of a retina-wrecker to get at the dark corners and find them all. :)

Question everything. It's like building a house. Consider if that brick wall could have been one built accidentally.

uugghh... sorry for the "edits" I'm trying to get fonts big enough for me to see.

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Maybe we should have a template to mark that we grade a source so also people not familiar with the source understand if we trust it or not....

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I understand your meaning Magnus, but don't know if that would be possible. A significant part of my family live in a county where a fire in the the county courthouse destroyed records. The community however, formed a genealogical society, gathered church records, documented their cemeteries and reconstructed most of the lost history. Without FAG that community society wouldn't have the funds to publish all their findings online. How would most people know this bit of information about this small county?

But I don't disagree with the general discussion here. I am concerned of applying rules to strictly on certain groups of people. But that is another discussion. 

It's funny, but just as important as the history found in the source, is the history of how the history became as source. Do you agree?

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I'm concerned about just putting links to the websites as the source. I don't have a find a grave profile and I'm not able to pay for it so if I come across a find a grave as a source, when I'm merging or adopting a profile, I'm not able to check is as another source. I have been downloading the file I want to source and attach it to the profile. Is that ok?

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Sherry, Find A Grave is a free site. You should always be able to check o see if the Find A Grave Memorial # is for the correct person. Please remember that the information on Find A Grave can be wrong. What is it that you're attaching to a profile? Can you tell us a profile where you did that so someone can check if what you're doing is okay?

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I thought I had clicked on it a couple of times before and it asked me to pay. My mistake. My grandfather's profile (Wells-11363), I have 2 census and one draft card. I had everything entered into ancestry and had downloaded a lot of the info on my computer. When I put my family tree on here, the attachments didn't come but I had them on the computer so I just attached them. I can't remember where I got them otherwise I could put the source on there instead. I've been working on my family tree for over 10 years.

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Sherry, You could try and find census records and draft registrations on familydearch.org  . That site is free for all to search as well as Find a Grave.

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So true, so true. I do research on a private Randolph site. Often times the cited URL is no longer; puff vanished. Granted some of the data is 20 years old.

But the same is true even for 3- or 5-years old sites. Such was the case this morning when I went to share a link from my Ancestry tree.