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Earwig throws up some close paraphrasing. Some of it is unavoidable, but some seems to be straight prose similarities. Eg "been present while crimes were committed and was undoubtedly aware that crimes of extreme physical and mental violence were routinely inflicted on the detaineesHe was present while crimes were committed and was undoubtedly aware that crimes of extreme physical and mental violence were routinely inflicted", "were separated from the women, children and elderly" or "on 5 March 2000. The trial resumed on 2 May 2000 after the" among others. Is there any chance of tweaking some of the language?
Hi Gog, this series on the Omarska offenders are the first articles I've done where I'm providing detail from court cases, so I'm learning as I go. Especially as they are BLPs, I don't want paraphrase something and change its meaning in any way, as that might create a BLP issue saying something not intended by the court. So, I've tried to render the wording of the findings within the judgements as they are given. Obviously there is no copyright issue with UN court documents, as they are PD because they are issued under the UN symbol and are not offered for sale (like the photo of the offender), but I acknowledge the plagiarism of the wording of the findings within the judgements is something that must be addressed regardless of copyright. Per WP:PLAGIARISM, I'm wondering if a two-fold approach would be sufficient: per WP:FREECOPY - using the source-attribution template after each of the various court document sources used in this way, and also in-text attributing the relevant parts, ie "According to the trial judgement, ..." "The judgement went on to state, ..." etc. Thoughts? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:00, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That would certainly work in many cases. But, IMO, mostly (only?) in those cases I was thinking of when I wrote "Some of it is unavoidable". While I am wholly sympathetic to your BLP issues, some cases seem readily "tweakable". Eg the three examples I give above could be altered to:
been present while crimes were committed and was undoubtedly aware that crimes of extreme physical and mental violence were routinely inflicted on the detainees → been present when criminal acts were carried out and beyond any doubt knew that severely violent mental as well as physical activities were routinely carried out on detainees
Men aged between 15 and 65 were separated from the women, children and elderly → Older men, and women and children were separated from men aged between 15 and 65
SFOR in Bosnia on 5 March 2000. The trial resumed on 2 May 2000 after the prosecution of Prcać had been joined to the case. → SFOR in Bosnia the previous day. Prcac's prosecution was added to the case and proceedings resumed on 2 May.
IMO none of these run any risk of altering in any meaningful way the import of the source. YMMD. Minimal changes yes, but at least they show willing re overclose paraphrasing. Do this where you can, directly attribute as you suggest elsewhere and I suspect that things will look much better. What do you think? Gog the Mild (talk) 16:31, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
