plagiarizing the First Canadian Army (80 = 78)

One of wikipedia's on-going problems is copy-right violation -- well-meaning editors often copy and paste whole articles from elsewhere, thereby undermining the quality of the encyclopedia and, at least theoretically, exposing it to legal action. Wikipedia's policy on this can be seen here, and as you can see there (and here), copy-right violations are immediately deleted.

A Roger's editor breeched that policy in January 2004, copy-and-pasting eight paragraphs from Legion Magazine, as was pointed out when the page was deleted in November of that year.

In the meantime, there had been these 17 edits to the page (which wikipedia administrators can see here):

• 20:02, 29 November 2004 . . Indefatigable (Talk | contribs | block) (Copyright violation)
  
• 18:08, 19 November 2004 . . GJeffery (Talk | contribs | block) (fixed link)
  
• 15:49, 4 September 2004 . . Bryan Derksen (Talk | contribs | block) (Category:World War II military units)
  
• 03:53, 22 August 2004 . . 69.196.224.243 (Talk | block)
  
• 01:53, 21 August 2004 . . 69.196.224.243 (Talk | block)
  
• 20:55, 19 August 2004 . . Indefatigable (Talk | contribs | block) (Category:Canadian military formations)
  
• 13:00, 2 June 2004 . . Topbanana (Talk | contribs | block) (Fix some broken links)
  
• 00:58, 27 May 2004 . . Adam Bishop (Talk | contribs | block) (fixing links)
  
• 05:15, 5 March 2004 . . Anthony (Talk | contribs | block)
  
• 23:04, 11 February 2004 . . David Newton (Talk | contribs | block)
  
• 02:59, 28 January 2004 . . Gsl (Talk | contribs | block) (copyedit, links)
  
• 01:36, 15 January 2004 . . 66.185.84.78 (Talk | block)
  
• 01:08, 15 January 2004 . . 66.185.84.78 (Talk | block)
  
• 00:59, 15 January 2004 . . 66.185.84.78 (Talk | block)
  
• 23:23, 14 January 2004 . . 66.185.84.78 (Talk | block)
  
• 23:19, 14 January 2004 . . 66.185.84.78 (Talk | block)
  
• 21:55, 14 January 2004 . . 66.185.84.80 (Talk | block)

The bottom half-dozen edits are interesting.  The article was created at 21:55 with a rule-breaking copy-and-paste (as I mentioned) by x.x.x.80.  Then, over the next few hours, the editor returns as x.x.x.78 and fixes some formatting issues that first cut-and-paste had created.

Clearly x.x.x.80 and x.x.x.78 are the same editor, whose IP was changed by Rogers in mid-stream: the article is less than two hours old when x.x.x.78 returns, and he clearly is picking up where he had left off as x.x.x.80.

Again, the fluidity of Rogers IPs is seen.

Addendum.  The same relation between IPs is probably demontrated by this edit in Nov. '03, where x.x.x.78 clears the messages off the talk-page of x.x.x.80.  When one goes to edit a wikipedia page, you receive a notice of new messages on your talk page.  Here it seems the wikimedia software detected this user's IP as x.x.x.80, but by the time he edited his talk-page, his IP had shifted to x.x.x.78.