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On Vikidia, copies of Wikipedia articles are not accepted, except:
- if the copied part is only a small portion of an article: a table, an image caption, or parts of sentences or phrases from Wikipedia (but not entire paragraphs);
- or if the contributor adapts the copied and pasted text on the same day (simplifying the explanations, vocabulary, and following the conditions above);
- or if it is a template or a Wikipedia meta page that also seems useful here, preferably with adaptations.
In all these cases of copying, you must announce as soon as possible that it is a portion copied from Wikipedia, then use the correct form (templates) to comply with the Wikipedia content license.
This rule was originally adopted on the French wiki on May 30, 2012, during this decision.
In cases where Wikipedia content may be reused, the {{Source Wikipedia}} banner must be placed at the bottom of the article, supplemented with the title of the source page (which was copied) and the date of the copy, resulting in {{Source Wikipedia|title|date=<date>}}. This would be too many to list for larger articles that hundreds of people have edited on, so unfortunately we will have to use to write those from the ground-up or translate from a Vikidia wiki in a different language.
That being said, it is recommended you do not copy from Wikipedia at all if there is an existing page on the main French wiki, since our priority is to translate those for an English-speaking audience, or any comprehensive article from a Vikidia wiki in a different language.
Copying and licenses[change | change source]
Wikipedia content (like that of Vikidia) is subject to a usage license that allows reuse and modification without special permission, but with attribution to the authors. This is the Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA 3.0).
Both Vikidia and Wikipedia content are dual-licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. However, it is important to note that some Wikipedia text reuses from sources utilizing only the Creative Commons Share-Alike license, so if such text is mixed into the dual-licensed Wikipedia text, it cannot be legally reused here.
From a copyright perspective, it is therefore permitted to reuse Wikipedia content and Vikidia content in the same way.
Arguments and reasons for the rule[change | change source]
Although from a copyright perspective, it is possible to copy Wikipedia content onto Vikidia, this rule, which prohibits it in most cases, has been adopted for several reasons:
- Vikidia's goal is to create articles that are different from those on Wikipedia and suitable for 8-13 year-olds;
- Copying and pasting a Wikipedia article is often not the right way to start a Vikidia article, even if the intention was to simplify it later;
- When the person who copied the article doesn't bother to rework and simplify it, it imposes a significant amount of work on regular contributors if they do;
- A long and somewhat difficult Wikipedia article prevents someone from starting to write a more suitable article, compared to the situation where there is no article, since one might not dare to completely redo an existing article.
- Wikipedia uses a lot of templates in the body of its articles that don't work here. Copying and pasting may therefore not work and make the new article difficult to read.
The Wikipedia article may simply provide good guidelines for preparing the Vikidia article! In this case, in the sources of your article, you can indicate the Wikipedia article you consulted.
What to do in case of copying?[change | change source]
If you copy an article or entire paragraphs from Wikipedia to Vikidia, you must:
- notify the contributor using the {{warning-wp}} banner on their talk page, possibly with a personalized message to the contributor;
- delete the article or request its deletion using the {{SD}} banner on the article, or wait 24 hours to do so if you believe the contributor may modify and adapt their article, particularly if it is not a straightforward copy and paste (if they have shortened the copied article, adapted a table, etc.).
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