I had an opportunity today to catch up and chat with Loyal Olson today about what else....mineral surveys. He mentioned during the conversation that I had been really busy lately posting on Wikipedia. I told him that I have never posted anything on Wiki.
He said that apparently someone else posted my research and CFedS course materials from a 2020 live presentation (all live-presentation continuing education courses were discontinued when CFedS 2.0 was implemented) were splattered all over a Wiki article on "Binger Hermann."
Steve Parrish and I freely shared these materials with other surveyors, but we retained the copyrights to our research and writings. Two Wiki contributors posted several plats and GLO Departmental Letters without attribution other than a link to the CFedS home page. I made those scans at the Denver Regional National Archives in my "spare" time.
I'm not sure how to protest and get the copyrighted materials removed from Wikipedia. I didn't get much help from my initial search of Wikipedia. From the "View History" tab, Wiki lists the two contributors, er....I mean intellectual property thieves as Pazzo00 and Wandhlder9. I hope neither is a CFedS
If anyone has suggestions on how I should proceed to get my intellectual property permanently removed from Wikipedia and find out the thieves real names, I'd be appreciative.
I talked to Loyal just after a great conversation with Wendell this afternoon about starting an RPLS.com Spaces as a place to host my mineral survey research. Talk about having spidey senses about the need to collaborate with Wendell.
Wendell and I also talked about the future possibility of offering CE courses on RPLS.com. Thank you Wendell. As a start, I'd like to offer a mineral survey course without compensation to myself. The cost of the course will be an appropriate donation(s) to RPLS.com.
[/rant]
You can find out more about how to contact Wikipedia directly about copyright violations here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Licensing
Thanks for the link, Wendell. I did find that web page, but the selections at the top only listed "unlicensed usage." Since I have never signed up or posted on Wiki, this is not "unlicensed usage." I went back and scrolled down to the bottom of the page and found an email address for reporting copyright infringement.
The two "contributors" cannot assert fair usage as Wiki requires quotes and attribution to avoid plagiarism. These nitwits cold spiked my writings without quotes or attribution.
I'll be asking Wiki to immediately remove my copyrighted materials and to provide me with contact info of the two nitwits. I spent the last 24 years researching and writing about this topic and I guarantee that I will eventually find the plagiarists/thieves and publicly expose them should Wiki refuse to provide their contact info. I prefer that they privately admit their "errors" to me, but I have no problem publicly exposing them if they fail to remedy their theft.
I decided not to post a link to the Wiki article as I didn't want to generate any traffic to the article. 🙂
Well, now I'm really depressed after conducting some quick searches.
From December 30, 2021 to January 3, 2022 I posted on SurveyorConnect the course materials for the CFedS continuing education course on advanced mineral survey topics and case histories. The course was presented by Steve Parrish and myself on February 28, 2020 at the PLSC's Rocky Mountain Surveyors Summit.
Within one week of my hosting the course materials here, the two plagiarists downloaded the course materials and then copied many excerpts of Steve's and my work into the Wikipedia article. They cited the CFedS home page to satiate the Wiki folks. However, the CFedS website had been shut down since October 29, 2021. They also cold-spiked several cites I had included in the course materials to further support their alleged research. My brief searches indicates that Wandhlder9 is an Arizona resident.
If these two are surveyors (I pray they are not) and anyone here recognizes their nom de plumes of Pazzo00 and Wandhlder9, please ask them to contact me privately via PM so that this matter can be addressed privately. If either of you read here, we need to have a private talk!
An aside to Wendell. We had a couple of chats about hosting the materials here since the CFedS website was offline. You kindly allowed me to host the full-resolution version of the materials so that the full resolution of the scanned images were preserved. When the course materials were hosted on the CFedS website the site administrator compressed the PDFs. The images posted in the Wiki article are definitely the full-resolution images and that means the source of their extensive "research" is a flyby of SurveyorConnect....SIGH!!
They actually took your personal writings and conclusions and posted them?
That's not good.
I can't imagine there's any copyright protection for available public content such as GLO Plats and letters, but for your personal writings and non-public material, whole different story.
Well, that didn't take long. Found out that the two Wiki contributors are the same person. Wiki confronted the person with this query:
September 2022
Hello, Wandhlder9, welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your contributions. Your editing pattern indicates that you may be using multiple accounts or coordinating editing with people outside Wikipedia. Our policy on multiple accounts usually does not allow this, and users who misuse multiple accounts may be blocked from editing. If you operate multiple accounts directly or with the help of another person, please disclose these connections.
With that indicator, I looked at their combined contributions and noted that one would contribute to a Wiki article with a big dump of info and a few days later the "second" contributor would do a flyby and would laud the other's research, add a correction or two and one or two more tidbits to validate themselves.
A couple of quick Google searches found that they had also posted my course materials on their private GoDaddy website and even had the gall to state that my materials were protected by their asserting on the webpage it is their copyrighted material.
It is private, so GoDaddy won't share the domain holder with anyone. However, they also posted about several mineral surveys in a particular area so I had an idea of where they are located. A friend used to live and work in that area so I sent him the web address. He replied with this.
I think I know who this asshole is. Need to look back in my records for
his name and email address. He tried to hire me for a retracement of
MSxxx near [somewhere]. He’s a realtor, not a PLS, but thinks he knows
more than we do. Will let you know when I find his data.
Lord, oh lord, this is priceless. The plagiarizing prick is a realtor who is of the Pecksniffian variety.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Pecksniffian, never heard that. Had to look it up. Never quit learning.
I hope you get some satisfaction from this guy.
I hadn't heard that expression either, Scott. I ran across the term when I was reading a scathing rebuke of a GLO policy in the mining trade journal, The Mining Reporter, which was published weekly in Denver. The author of the article aimed his scorn and disdain of the Binger Hermann Policy by denouncing the Land Office men as being of the Pecksniffian variety.
