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If Wikipedia content wasn't so full of holes and easy to steal then less might people might be doing this. One member on Webmasterworld explains how he steals Wikipedia content and uses it on his page. You'd think such behavior would eventually get you stuck in duplicate content netherland. However, the users doing this say they have never been penalized for using wikipedia in mass on their websites. They recommend recombining the content in random ways or banning the directory with robots.txt.
The thread starter was asked whether he was bothered by taking this content for his own use. He says:
Nah, it doesn't bother me at all. It's legal to use the content if I choose. I do make sure content on my site is accurate, and the bit of Wikipedia I've used in the past has been terrible I usually ignore it or rewrite it.
Wikipedia Steals Too Okay, so you can get away with stealing wikipedia content apparently. What about Wikipedia stealing YOUR content? The Wiki apparently is prone to it own spree of petty content thief from time to time according to this WMW thread. As one guy quoted to set the record straight:
wikipedia does not "steal" content.
The people that edit articles for wikipedia might.
So watch your content. For more strategies on stealing wikipedia content for your website and telling people not too. Continued discussion at Webmasterworld - Using Wikipedia Content
Comments:
Li Evans
09/13/2007 03:56 pm
this isn't so hard to do, you can actually get a feed of all of wikipedia's content, and can re-purpose it to your own site (but you are suppose to give attribution to wikipedia) under the cc license they release it with. did a little research into it, and found it is actually incredibly easy to get the wikipedia content to reuse. :)
nmajdan
09/18/2007 12:12 pm
Wikipedia releases its content under the GNU Free Documentation License, not Creative Commons. Regardless, yes, any use of Wikipedia content should be attributed.
Nihiltres
09/18/2007 03:46 pm
This is a problem for Wikipedia, and as an administrator I constantly have to deal with people who don't understand even the basics of copyright law or the idea of plagiarism. I have deleted many articles and images that blatantly ignored copyright law. Perhaps I should set this straight: If you want to use content from Wikipedia, credit us, say the content is GFDL, and link to us - that's about the least that you can do without being a real copyright problem. Wikipedia also has specific instructions for forking (copying) content which can make your use truly legally watertight, even if you use the content in a commercial sense. And by the way, Wikipedia does, via some users, issue takedown notices - saying that our content is yours is still a copyright violation. If Wikipedia uses your content, ask about it on the talk page of the article in question, or post a report at one of the administrator noticeboards, and someone can help you with the problem - we hate that people add copyrighted material to Wikipedia as much as you might, and we'll delete material if it's a problem. This article is a classic example of a misunderstanding of Wikipedia - any problems are more that we do not have enough people, enough time, and enough lawyers to fix all of the stealing in either direction that sometimes happens, not that Wikipedia turns a blind eye to the source.
John
04/29/2011 02:01 pm
can i use some code from wikipedia like their infobox designs and other html/css codes for my own site?