Talk:Community Wishlist/W243

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thanks

Hey @Matěj Suchánek - thanks for the wish. At first glance, it might be hard to tell if copy/pasted content is coming from an external source. For example, someone may copy and paste from within an article or from one wiki to another. Still, I think the intent of this wish is quite compelling as a means of checking and reinforcing the veracity and independence of an edit. JWheeler-WMF (talk) 21:02, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Hey, that's a good point, and indeed a sign of possibly innoxious behavior. I can think of some options here:

• Attach a "canary" (cf. sentinel species, canary value, canary trap) when copying from Wikimedia wikis. If the canary is found on pasting, the content likely comes from a wiki. However, I guess there are some legal (privacy) implications (paste somewhere else from wiki).
• Simply search the wiki for the pasted content.
• Do not warn when the pasted content is already formatted (wikilinks, templates, etc.). This indicates it's likely from a wiki page.

Note that copy-pasting from wiki to wiki can also be problematic. Users sometimes copy-paste articles in order to change its name, instead of moving it. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 16:09, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

For those interested in this wish, the Editing Team is actively working on this and seeking feedback about, what we are calling, Paste Check. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

Work is underway

As people interested in this wish, the Editing Team thought you all would value knowing work on it is underway as part of the Edit Check project.

In fact, we are actively seeking feedback about the user experience. Specifically, we're needing help thinking through what defaults might be sensible to set.

In terms of timing, before the end of this calendar year, you can expect a proof of concept to be ready for you all to try. And within the first three months of 2025, we expect - what we're calling – Paste Check to be available at an initial set of wikis. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

@Matěj Suchánek

Thank you for your patience, while we identify whether there are blockers for the team to implement this. We will keep you updated about it. MikeZ-WMF (talk) 12:14, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

@MikeZ-WMF you pinging this thread was the reminder I needed to share an update...

@Matěj Suchánek: we deployed an initial version of Paste Check through an A/B experiment to evaluate its impact.

The first place we'll post results will be here: T399669. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is well thought through

I don't know about others, but my work methods, especially on Wikimedia Commons, often involve copy-pasting fairly large pieces of text. It would be inconvenient for me to be warned every time I do this, and I think utterly inappropriate for anyone else to be warned every time I do this. My usual method of uploading a photo is (a) I use Commons:Special:Upload and (b) I copy-paste from the most similar existing file I'm aware of (or sometimes from a quasi template I've created in Notepad) and then edit to match the facts of the particular file I am uploading. For example, to upload commons:File:Freeport, NY - Ottos from the canal 02.jpg, I started by copy pasting from the page commons:File:Freeport, NY - Agua on the Mile 01.jpg. There is nothing problematic about this workflow, and it certainly should not be flagged as an issue.

Also: if I'm translating in Wikipedia from (say) Romanian to English, I am quite likely to copy-paste all or part of the Romanian source into the editor as the basis to start translating, then save when I'm done. I believe there is nothing problematic about doing this, as long as my edit summary acknowledges that I'm taking to content from the corresponding article in ro-wiki.

I could give several other examples, but I hope those are enough to make my point.

If you are responding to this, please ping me, because I do not maintain a watchlist on meta. - Jmabel (talk) 05:54, 5 December 2025 (UTC)