eHow.com
explicitly disallow online republishing of their articles:
http://help.ehow.com/entries/486167-can-i-republish-ehow-content
With this in mind, and after discussion with Jack, it has been decided that all articles flagged by the CopyvioCheckBot as being eHow.com
content will be speedily deleted. Any admin can take this action and our author can be notified on their talk page by using {{copyviorehow}}.
http://www.wikihow.com/Template:Copyviorehow
system
2
To my understanding; since I’ve been on wikiHow, eHow has never allowed republishing, so I totally support this. Ran into the template in RC and looks great.
They’ve had a little flexibility in the past with allowing their editors to republish their own content but this is nigh on impossible now. An editor there, while retaining copyright, has to apply to remove an article if they wish to take it back for re-use. I recall just the one instance of republishing in the last five years.
Thanks, it’s a bit blunt, but says it all. If anybody wants to humanise it I won’t mind.
May this featured article knock dead this forum discussion; somethings the admins here developed last year: http://m.wikihow.com/Use-eHow-for-wikiHow-Articles
Although I support the people who saying copying one verbatim is wrong, I definately oppose the placing of the new tag on people’s articles, where the wording has changed, steps have been combined, and s and have changed the wording has plain, been changed since the source page viewing and based their articles on the newly added article here!
It looks ok to me. “Browse eHow for ideas. Don’t cut and paste.”
system
7
“Browse eHow for ideas” - which is the entire point of the article. As long as you place the wikiHow article in your own words at its entirety, it’s all fine.
Ok. All mine are still good. Thank you for clarifying.
That’s why I do the human check after the bot has flagged an article, looking for this sort of thing. But, we are talking here about copy/paste and no subsequent edits.
Aha! Ok. That’s what I figured was up.
Dave thanks for kicking off this change. I think this makes perfect sense for us. Even if we got copyright permissions from eHow, our quality goals are just higher than most other how-to sites, so we are probably better off building our own content rather than using lower quality content when we can avoid it.
UPDATE: This is just a reminder that this policy exists. We have had to leave the {{copyviorehow}} message 72 times to today.
system
15
I have been deleting ehow copyvios if the percentage was significant, but is there a cut-off point> I seen copyviobot templates at .30, which apparently is 30%? and there are some at .90, again, assuming it means 90%, so if this assumption is correct, at what level are they speedy deleted, or all of them automatically assumed to be copyright violation? Pardon me, also, I know this has been discussed before, but I don’t know if a conclusion/consensus was established.
I don’t know what that number is, it could be percentages, but I’ve never seen a false positive from an apparent eHow copy. I’m happy with Speedy for all, but you could compare the two before deletion to be sure.
It’s eHow’s rules that give us no choice but to delete. They do not allow copies of their content to be reproduced elsewhere. Their authors do retain copyright, but if they wish to take their content elsewhere it has to be with prior permission and the eHow copy will be removed.
Maniac
17
I believe that the percentage numbers indicate how accurate the bot thinks the results are…the higher the number, the higher the percentage that the article is, indeed, a copyvio.
It’s most likely a percentage of matching words, yes. But, the eHows’ show the problem with giving any benefit of the doubt to a low number. All eHow copyvios have been seen to be actual copies regardless of .30 or .90. Having had a ponder I see why; when the article is small (3 or 4 steps) it is a smaller percentage of total page text there, and when their article is huge (insert a guesstimated large number of steps here) it is the greater percentage of total page text. Our infringers are only taking the text from their steps not the whole page.
Thank you. If I see a copyvio concerning eHow while doing NAB I will put a speedy tag on the article pronto. As to the rest: You can source an article but you can not use the exact copy.
