Wikiquote talk:Copyright Cleanup Project

semiprotect those cleaned up
How do you guys think to semiprotect those cleaned up articles? Some articles after this cleanup, seem to suggest semiprotection is necessary (e.g. Steven Wright and its history). --Aphaia 13:08, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It depends on what we decide to do about violations of limits in general per Village pump (#2: Maintenance of limits). Semiprotection of trimmed articles would certainly make things much easier, but only if we decide that an article once trimmed wouldn't benefit from further IP edits.  I would prefer to semiprotect articles in the way that Wikipedia temporarily protects pages that have been frequently and consistently vandalized.  Likewise, if we find that keeping pages trimmed requires more staff than we have, then a policy of no longer accepting IP edits on certain articles might become a practical necessity. Right now, I would say, the new policy should produce more results before we resort to semiprotection. While working on the Copyright Cleanup Project, I've sometimes felt self-conscious about working on subjects of which I know little or nothing.  It could be that the IP editors, if they respect the new guidelines, would have a better sense of what quotes should be added or deleted. - 20:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * k'. I prefer too to use semiprotection as less as possible. If we have not to s'protect pages with anons who respect guidelines, it will sure be better. --Aphaia 23:16, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think semi-protecting all trimmed pages would be a better idea. Certain people often come here, rebloat the article, and try to justify their nonsense by flaming people who trimmed it. You can't trust an anon to respect guidelines all the time and you can't spoonfeed them policy if they don't want to follow. --Eaglestorm (talk) 07:21, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Cleaning a page
I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I fell into the role of paring down Carmen Sandiego. I'm ready to start editing the page, but I still need for someone to take the protection down. How do I go about getting that done? Or is that something that an actual editor would do? Thanks in advance for the help. KyrieEleison 01:59, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The protection has now been changed to allow for registered users to make edits. Thanks for volunteering to trim the page. There is a two-quote maximum for each half-hour episode. - InvisibleSun 21:52, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought the max was five quotes for a half-hour, but it's not really an issue. Thanks for the help! KyrieEleison 07:02, 28 October 2008 (UTC) Edited to add: Ah. I misread the guidelines. No matter. I've finished; do I need to have it checked or anything? KyrieEleison 08:54, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The article looks so much better now. Thanks for your contribution. - InvisibleSun 17:56, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Pardon me for being a mite protective of my work, but what the heck happened to Carmen Sandiego? The protection came down, and now the page is nowhere near Wiki guidelines. I'm willing to pare down the quotes again, in order to keep from violating copyright, but all the quote descriptions and such are gone. I know I'm flipping out a little too much, but the site sort of became my baby... what's the proper next step? KyrieEleison 06:23, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * From my perspective, it looks better with fewer and shorter descriptions. Quotes by their very nature are taken out of context. Good quotes speak for themselves, without a lot of explanation. ~ Ningauble 14:43, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * So you're for a two-word description instead of the full English sentence? I know I'm new at this, but I thought that was how it was supposed to be. KyrieEleison 19:28, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Trimmed length
I have undertaken to trim the page for the TV show Futurama (just the episodes, not the movies). I have completed clean-up, but people continue to add new quotes. I left the check copyright tag on the discussion page and have added another note about the clean-up and proper length of the article, and continue to delete quotes until the article is back to the trimmed length, but most of the additions are done by unregistered users so I doubt they look there (I didn't notice the existance of the discussion pages until I registered). Anyway, my question is: what is the proper length for a quotes page? The official Wikiquote policy says "not too many" and there is no advice on the WikiProject page. Before I joined in on the project I checked examples of others' work to get a general idea, and one editor mentioned "not more than 2 medium-sized quotes per half-hour episode" on their contribution summary for another page (which is the standard I used for Futurama), and elsewhere mentioned the length in minutes of a movie or program to determine how many quotes are acceptable. Is this an official formula for determining proper length? I want to make sure I am not being unneccessarily strict with removing newly-added Futurama quotes, and I hesitate to clean up any more pages until I know better how much I should take out of them. I'd appreciate any help with this. Thanks! -Sketchmoose 15:29, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * See formulation of policy at the Village Pump here, which is finalizing proposals discussed here. Bear in mind that these are upper limits, poor quality material should be removed even if there is room for it. ~ Ningauble 17:46, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Great, thank you so much! -Sketchmoose 18:19, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Scalability problems
This is an excellent start to a sorely needed maintenance effort, and I applaud everyone who has been contributing to this usually thankless task. However (you knew a "however" was coming!), I foresee two significant scalability problems with the current format of the project page: As we work on these (and I use the word "we" loosely, as I've only done a little bit myself so far), we should think about how we can make it easier to announce and manage repeat cleanups of a large number of articles. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:20, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) We've got 16,000+ articles, so listing the ones worked on could be problematic in the long run.
 * 2) There's no accounting for how recently any article was cleaned up. Most of our worst offending articles need regular cleaning.
 * I've been thinking this over for a while but haven't come up with any particularly satisfactory solution. We could list the articles in alphabetical order, followed by notations of when an article has been trimmed and the name of the editor who did the work. To make the project page manageable over time, we could also create a series of pages divided alphabetically as we did with the List of people by name. To note when an article has last been trimmed could get rather complicated.  Has an article been trimmed again, for example, when an edit which would have violated copyright has been reverted? When I created this project page, it was with the aim of us working on the approximately 125 articles which had been marked for copyright checking at the time.  This developed quite naturally, however, into an opportunity to add further articles to be worked on and marked when completed. As of this posting, we have trimmed 140 pages and have another 193 to work on. We've been doing this work since the second week of September and have already seen many attempts at undoing the cleanups. Once our new guidelines become generally applied, there will be few pages on Recent Changes which wouldn't need reviewing for more reasons than ever: removing unsourced quotes, trimming for copyvio, nominating for VfD or PROD, sending messages to editors about guidelines, etc. If someone could think of a better way to organize the ever-growing Copyright Cleanup Project, it would perhaps help to keep things a little more manageable. - InvisibleSun 02:57, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Blue touchpaper lit at The Order of the Stick
I've just made the following diff The file was so huge that going through each included quote would be ridiculously time-consuming. It was also so huge, that it was a blatant breach of copyright. I've reduced it to the last quote which does actually have merit as a memorabelle quote and am going to post to the talk page saying that anything else included has to be of that quality. However, I suspect I am going to get reverted. Anyone want to watch the page and help keep appropriately sized?--Peter cohen 19:58, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * An extreme edit, to be sure, but we've got extreme amounts of quotes that need to be cut. Good edit, Peter. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 20:09, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I flagged the page a month and a half ago and, as nothing had happened in the mean time, decided it was time to act. I've noticed the amount of other nerd-media with similarly sized files (OOTS was 132K). You guys have your work cut out if you're going to salvage Wikiquote as a viable project that doesn't collapse under the weight of copytight breaches. SO I thought I would at least deal with the oen I flagged. I've also PMed the comic creator in case he wants to put a warning announcement on his pages.--Peter cohen 20:45, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * You're absolutely right that we've got an astoundingly large body of work to churn thru, but every little bit helps. :) EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 20:58, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Newbie here. I agree entirely with what you're saying. However, I think it's a step in the wrong direction to obliterate the entire page. Yes, I reverted it. However, I also pared it down quite a bit from its original form (it now clocks in at 25K). If you feel it needs to be pared down a bit further, feel free, but reducing the page to no more than 2 quotes for 600+ strips worth of material (which has many quotable moments) is nothing short of overkill. --216.234.100.151 06:41, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Message on Talk Page
Just a suggestion for those of us that are working on this project, but I have been replacing the copyright tag with a note about the trimming effort, making it specific for the page, that identifies the cleanup project. My hope is that this will at least let people know that the page has been trimmed. While I have no illusions about people actually reading the Talk page before adding quotes to an already trimmed page, it still seems better than just deleting the Talk page after removing the copyright tag. For an example of what I have been adding, see Talk:The Omen. ~ UDScott 21:27, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

A movie with nothing quotable?
I don't know if anyone has this talk on their watchlist, but I've come across a movie in the process of cleaning up, "2 Fast 2 Furious," which contains nothing quotable or worth keeping. What would be the best course of action? Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 00:38, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Our current practice is to give the article a tag per Proposed deletion.  If an editor tries to override the Prod, e.g., by removing the tag before its expiration date, it would then be nominated at Votes for deletion. - InvisibleSun 02:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * That is not the only such film (don't get me started), but it is more an issue for the quotability discussion than for this one. (That discussion got stalled when the community focused its cleanup efforts on copyright concerns last year due to pressures from Meta-wiki.) Proposed deletion is for clear-cut cases. I think this one is pretty clear, but if you are ever unsure where the community draws the line, use Votes for deletion to solicit discussion. ~ Ningauble 02:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I've 'd the page, we'll let it go from here.  I've read through W:Q, and I definitely think it needs to be pushed through; it ought to be implemented as official policy as soon as possible (with some finishing touches, of course!), especially considering the majority of cleanup edits I'm making are based on it!  Too bad the development of it got stalled. Another extremely good resource which I discovered (still a draft) that has some good guidelines is JeffQ's Exemption Doctrine Policy, especially the section Implementation of Limitations.  Knowing that this EDP is designed for quite a different purpose than W:Q, it nevertheless does an extremely good job concisely explaining Wikiquote standards for quotability and copyrights.  Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 03:15, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments on diffs
I'd just like some other editors to see these diffs in The Matrix article:
 * The last edit after I cleaned it up...
 * The page now, after being the victim of insidious "copyright creep"

I'm not sure how Wikiquote's going to deal with this issue, which I think will become more common. I initially applied "copyright" rules (the application of with which I was slightly liberal—but justifiably so—in applying during my first cleanup; for example, not counting lines which were nearly verbatim allusions to other pieces of literature, etc.).
 * I tried to follow "quotability" as close to the letter as I could, only keeping things which were either inherently quotable (eg., Agent Smith's cancer speech) or exherently so (i.e., Agent Smith's "Mr. Anderson," while not quotable, became so in the social lexicon with respect to the movie).
 * Now, interestingly enough, when I cleaned up the article it was slightly above limits for the number of quotes (as, like I said, I was charitable in my applications; attributions of taglines weren't counted, as they're for marketing purposes; verbatim allusions to other pieces of "art" weren't counted). The section of quotes and dialogue after my cleanup was just over 700 words.  Now an insidious little thing which I'll call "copyright creep" hits it, and it's now over 1600 words, with 7 less quotes than when I cleaned it up!
 * I have more to say, but I'll just keep quiet for now,
 * Any comments? Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 04:01, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

[unindent] So... what's the problem? Some of the quotes you picked (such as Smith's "Mr. Anderson") simply aren't that memorable outside of their context, and are incredibly short; it was instead replaced with something a lot more substantial (both Smith's bits about Neo's life and the Matrix's history are longer and more relevant to the subject). This is why we don't put limits on characters or the size of the article, but instead on the number of quotes. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 15:53, 7 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah nevermind; I'm clearly looking at this in a way wholly incommensurate with the established consensus.
 * Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 07:19, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008 TV series)
To all Sysops and Admins, I think you all might want to add Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008 TV series) to the list due to new episodes are being added to that page.(StarWarsFanBoy 02:36, 29 November 2009 (UTC))
 * So what is the problem with this page? It has only two quotes per episode, which is appropriate and within limits. ~ UDScott 18:32, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that new episodes are coming out and they might make a season three and four so that resulted in having more quotes added to that page.(StarWarsFanBoy 20:46, 29 November 2009 (UTC))
 * Again, what is the problem with that? It does not matter how many seasons the show has - the point is to limit the number of quotes per episode. Even if seasons continue to be added, as long as the per episode limit is kept, there isn't a problem with the page. ~ UDScott 01:49, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that we need to protect it in case of spammy quotes arrived on that page.(StarWarsFanBoy 06:00, 30 November 2009 (UTC))

Oops! What I meant to say is someone needs to keep an eye on the Star Wars Pages.(StarWarsFanBoy 06:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC))

South Park
Okay someone needs to place all South Park related pages onto this list because most of the South Park Seasons have episodes that contain to many quotes.(StarWarsFanBoy 00:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC))
 * Please participate in the cleanup by reading WQ:LOQ and prune down the articles instead of calling for this and that to be trimmed. thank you. --Eaglestorm 02:36, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay. Okay. I will follow the Wikiquote policies and I will read WQ:LOQ but I can't trim the articles alone and I might need help from other Sysops and Admins to help me trim the South Park pages.(StarWarsFanBoy 05:57, 30 November 2009 (UTC))

Doctor Who
I note that the pages for classic Doctor Who have been trimmed to two quotes per story, as it had 25 minute episodes. However, each story consisted of from three to fourteen episodes of that length, with the average length being four episodes (around 100 minutes). So couldn't there be more, or are you going to impose arbitrary, senseless guidelines on it? --Silurian King 16:33, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Works of Søren Kierkegaard
In the past few years the representation of the 19th century work of Søren Kierkegaard has been significantly improved with the contributions of User:11614soup, unfortunately without considering the Limits on quotations. Since most of the translations of his works has been made in the 20th century, these limitations still apply.

In May 2014 User:11614soup has been informed here, and responded once [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard#Thanks_for_all_your_help_with_these_quotations_Mdd_-_I_was_wondering_how_much_I_could_put_on_here. here], and some action has been taken: After this no further action was taken, until today I stumbled upon the The Concept of Anxiety, which ís checked and trimmed down. The event of today made me realize, that more or all work of User:11614soup on Wikiquote should be checked...!? Feedback and assistance would be very much appreciated here. -- Mdd (talk) 12:48, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Søren Kierkegaard was split and further trimmed down (from 400k to 100k)
 * Some of the content was moved into the Upbuilding Discourses series (1843-44):
 * Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
 * Three Upbuilding Discourses‎, 1843
 * Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
 * Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1844
 * Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1844
 * Some parts was moved to User:11614soup/Quotations about Kierkegaard
 * Either/Or was better sourced (because it was based on 2 different translations) and trimmed down (from 65k to 45k)
 * Subsequently another contribution of 35k to the Either/Or, see here has been undone right away.
 * More specific discussion was at Talk:Either/Or
 * And a request for administrators feedback was added here

list of pages that may be marked for likely copyright problems
The works which should be double-checked are


 * (*) size according to the limit of quotations, "five lines of prose for every ten pages"
 * (**) in the discussion here, I argued that, according to the limits of quotation, the maximum size of the article with 650 pages is approximately about 19 k (325/99 * 53,6 bytes = 19,3 bytes = 19k)
 * (***) approximation

-- Mdd (talk) 12:55, 15 July 2014 (UTC)/12:41, 16 July 2014 (UTC)/ Update: Mdd (talk) 15:38, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, these and many other overlong articles on books need to be trimmed. I encourage editors to consider the difference between a collection of quotations and a condensed book. The point of Wikiquote is not to cover a thesis, but to collect remarkable quotes. With too much of a good thing, and especially too many ordinary things, an article may cease to effectively highlight brilliant words and ideas, becoming a different kind of thing, a sort of literary digest – not a bad thing, but not really a Wikiquote thing. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:26, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There is the specific situation here, that User:11614soup significantly improved the Wikipedia articles on these books. In these Wikipedia articles already a large portion of quotes are being used. Here on Wikiquote he might have turned these lemma's into literary digests. What specifically bothers me is:
 * The Limits on quotations have not been taken into consideration, and possible exceedings needs to be detected
 * Information about the translator, translation, publication date etc are missing
 * The is no information about secondary sources which have quoted the work
 * Specifically well known section can be (better) highlighted
 * I think the first and second item are a must. -- Mdd (talk) 12:36, 16 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for taking a look at these great Kierkegaard quotes, I wish all of his books could be in public domain like so many others are that were written during the same time period. Goethe and Hegel etc. But copy-right is copy-right. I was on vacation for the past couple of weeks and would be interested in cutting Kierkegaard quotation pages down to acceptable legal standards. I have no wish to break copy-right rules and was just following the Wikipedia call to all editors to Be Bold! so I filled it up. I will work on getting them into Limits on quotations. I don't know who translated all his books into English. It seems Oxford and Princeton did for the most part.
 * Inappropriately lengthy quotes will be trimmed or discarded, with a maximum of 250 words per quote, absent a consensus that exceptional circumstances exist (such as Abraham Lincoln's 272 word Gettysburg Address).
 * A recommended maximum of five lines of prose or eight lines of poetry for every ten pages of a book not in the public domain. This is equal to about 1.25% of the total content of a book.
 * I'm assuming books 1-3 in the list are within copyright standards and the rest are not. If I were allowed to have my way I would clean each of the pages one by one and add new quotes that are within the law.
 * Kierkegaard doesn't use jargon or jingoism or any systematic 1,2,3 or A,B,C and he wrote long drawn out thoughts that go on for pages and pages.
 * Would anyone object to my doing those pages over completely? --11614soup (talk) 14:21, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi 11614soup, since you started expanding Wikiquote articles again, I have updated the above data some more and added your latest new page. According to my (preliminary) calculation you added about 835 lines of the original text, while the limit here for a 384 pages long book is 192 lines. -- Mdd (talk) 17:07, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * P.S. I also uploaded an illustration, which shows how I determined those 835 lines in 6 steps.


 * @11614soup, in direct response to your comment. I think your assumption, that "books 1-3 in the list are within copyright standards" is incorrect. According to my calculation all works need to be trimmed down, and from your latest work 4 of every 5 quotes need to be trimmed down. -- Mdd (talk) 18:26, 16 February 2015 (UTC)


 * to MDD - I appreciate all the copyright concern you have shown on these pages that I have selfishly used as my own quote machine as one reviewer said. I have cleaned up all the pages you have listed to my own satisfaction. If anyone wants to work on these pages the interested individual is surely able to do if she or he is willing to do that one thing. --11614soup (talk) 18:51, 2 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks 11614soup for your quick response. After your cleanup/blanking, I restored the lemmas to about the acceptable size. You are free to change the quotes selected, but all significant exceedings of the limits of quotations will most likely be removed. -- Mdd (talk) 21:31, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

This matter is resolved for now. -- Mdd (talk) 21:33, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

დამოკიდებულება
This User:დამოკიდებულება is adding massive amount of copyrighted content and non notable paragraphs as quotes. This is unacceptable. Please check his contributions and remove the violations of policies. --Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Rupert loup

 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user has again restored his copyright violations on all pages. An admin should intervene.--Pratap Pandit (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

ΞΔΞ

 * This user is the obvious older account of User:დამოკიდებულება, and has done massive amount of Copyright violations on Wikiquote. I have tagged some of the more egregious copyright violations. But there are far too many for me, and Admins will need to go through his entire contribution history to weed out the copyright violations. --Pratap Pandit (talk) 12:55, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This user is the obvious older account of User:დამოკიდებულება, and has done massive amount of Copyright violations on Wikiquote. I have tagged some of the more egregious copyright violations. But there are far too many for me, and Admins will need to go through his entire contribution history to weed out the copyright violations. --Pratap Pandit (talk) 12:55, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

How to do it?
Can anyone please tell me how to do this in simple words without pointing me to verbose long pages? I read some of the links posted on the project page, but couldn't understand what would make it a copyright violation and what would not. Thanks in advance. Lightbluerain (talk) 13:20, 4 December 2021 (UTC)