Forum:CT Archive/Originality Rule

So, thanks to the GFDL, we're allowed to copy pages from Wikipedia. We did that on occasion in the first few months of the wiki, but don't do it much anymore. (This page lists many examples.) Now, usually we don't want to do this, because their pages generally aren't as good as ours. One major exception is articles for real-world individuals, where we are often lacking. So, when I saw Frank Klepacki on the main page of Wikipedia, I copied the article over and wookieefied it. I told a few people, and nobody objected.

Now, we already agreed that biographical articles can be featured. Frank Klepacki is probably good enough to be featured. But many people have said that articles that are mostly copied over from Wikipedia should not be featured. As jSarek says, "Featured Articles should reflect *our* hard work, not hard work that was done by others elsewhere and handily imported here." That makes a lot of sense. Now, the downside of that in my mind is that it prevents articles like Frank Klepacki from ever being featured. Re-creating or substantially modifying the article when it's already extremely good would just be a waste of time. And there's a fair chance that this will affect more notable people: Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel Jackson, and Keira Knightley are all Good Articles on Wikipedia. Ours are not. Now, most Star Wars actor articles over there are still terrible, but I doubt we'll get FA quality articles for a lot of people before Wikipedia does. If their articles are much better, I won't hesitate to integrate their content into ours.

So, the question is, should we make a rule saying unoriginal articles can't be featured, and how would we define such articles? -LtNOWIS 20:49, 25 July 2007 (UTC)