Template talk:Checkcopyright

Establishing a Wikiquote editorial board?
I find the following line in the current template quite troubling:
 * Please do not remove this tag from the talk page of the article until it has been checked by a user familiar with the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law and edited down if necessary.

This smacks of establishing a de facto Wikiquote editorial board that has the authority to judge whether an article violates copyright. This is completely against established Wikimedia Foundation practices. I recognize that Wikiquote has some special copyright concerns, but they must be addressed within the context of the Foundation's practices, and must accommodate the editing structure of its projects. We must either rephrase this sentence or remove it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:00, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * There is no editorial board nor does it suggest there would be one. It merely requests (politely, at that) that unless someone who knows a little bit about the law in question has seen the page, the note should not be removed. It does not imply anything outside of the ordinary -- it is just a small line to encourage users who aren't aware of the fair use provision or how it works to not play with the template. --Fastfission 00:56, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * This bit does have a rather expertist tone. It may have been appropriate when we were first grappling with the issue, but now that guidance has been developed at WQ:LOQ we can switch from a purely proscriptive message to a prescriptive one that invites participation. I propose replacing the last sentence with:
 * You can help by trimming the article according to the guidelines at Limits on quotations. In the meantime, please do not add more quotes or remove this tag until the article has been brought in line with the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law.
 * Unless anyone objects, I will change the template accordingly. ~ Ningauble 15:41, 22 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I just realized that, having taken a wikibreak after posting above, I completely forgot about it and failed to follow through. In light of the primary emphasis on quality in the Limits on quotations guideline (stated first and discussed at greatest length in the lede rationale), I no longer think the change I proposed is ideal. The template should not only eschew expertism, I think it should avoid giving the impression that copyright is the only reason to tag an article for trimming. One could create awfully huge (i.e. hugely awful) pages without much risk of being sued for copyright infringement. ~ Ningauble 17:31, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

page location
should there be some sort of guideline where it can be used (eg: only on the talk pages)? —This unsigned comment is by 121.45.255.179 (talk • contribs) 04:10, 18 August 2007.
 * I came here to ask about that, having found this template from following some link that is currently appearing at the top of every page. I see that the category has mostly talk pages but also several that are main pages, and I wonder would it be appropriate for me to move the "checkcopyright" template to the talk pages? Stratford490 20:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The tag should be placed on the page's Talk page. Quoting from Copyrights, "If you believe that a given article has too many quotes or excerpts from a copyrighted work on it, please add the text to its talk page. This will cause it to go into a queue for review and possible revision." ~ UDScott 20:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I've started moving a few that were on the wrong pages. Stratford490 21:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Original intention of this template... and the copyvio template
In 2007 User:LrdChaos explained the intention of this template, see here:


 * ... I created the copyvio template for cases of obvious copyright violation, usually those cases when a page was nothing more than a copy of a website or similar. This was in response to a series of pages being VFD-nominated as copyvio and blanked; I adapted the Wikipedia copyvio template so that we could provide a consistent message for when pages are blanked as copyvio. On the other hand, it's been my thought to use checkcopyright when a page simply has acquired so many quotes that it's a possible copyright violation, but isn't a direct copy of a source (that is, pages that quote more of a book/film/TV show/etc. than can be considered fair use, but still isn't a blatant copyright violation). I've seen the distinction as, copyvio is for obvious, blatant, copy/paste copyvio, while checkcopyright is for pages that simply are overquoting.
 * While it would certainly be possible to combine the two (and their categories), I think we'd lose an important distinction between the two classes. (I find it generally easier to trim down an "organically-developed" copyvio (which I'd have tagged with checkcopyright, and often have some level of formatting) than a copy/paste of a web page copyvio (which I'd have blanked and tagged copyvio), and are often basically raw dumps of data). —LrdChaos (talk)

-- Mdd (talk) 15:02, 23 November 2015 (UTC)