Watch What You Wiki

It’s tempting to lift stuff straight from the web and claim it as your own but apart from being incredibly lazy, you can be sure your sins will find your out. A book called ‘Black Gold, The New Frontier’ by George Orwel (no, not that one) was discovered to contain several paragraphs pinched almost word for word from Wikipedia, according to a report in CNet News. The Wikipedia article’s author discovered it; the book publisher’s response was that the passages were added to the book by accident and they’ve undertaken to provide correction and attributions in future reprints. Wikipedia, to its credit is not getting heavy handed and is actually quite happy to be used as a reference but it would prefer to be given proper credit, and it would be obliged if you copy the licence statement as well, so just remember that when you’re doing that next piece of coursework….