McCain speech on Georgia crisis may have been plagiarized from Wikipedia

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

That's plagarism? Uh...

Plagiarism generally carries a very loose definition.  If you plagiarize something and then shift the words around and rearrange them, it's still plagiarism.

You can't plagiarize facts, but you can plagiarize the way facts are presented.

McCain could actually generate a positive stream of coverage by citing Wikipedia, unlike Obama.  It would be an interesting tactic for him, supposing his advisers actually tell him what Wikipedia is and the rationality behind its legitimacy as a news source.

He'd have been ridiculed, and rightly so.  Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source, at least by us in the publishing world.  (For my work, I'm allowed to use Wikipedia as a reference, but any "fact" pulled from there needs to be verified elsewhere, preferably in a non-web-based media.)

[Stranger in a strange land]

Aw, McCain finally learned how to use the internet! Yay! Now he can act like a lazy high school student and write all his speeches by rewording Wikipedia articles.

now now now, before we get all excited about this, it's equally likely a teenage intern printed the wikipedia article, and one of his aides put it into his briefing, and he then gave it as his stump speech.

[HappyWarrior]

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Bingo. If people are so clueless that they can't understand that Wikipedia is infested with far-left ideologues who control every aspect of the "information" that is published to the articles, then we are worse off than I thought.

This is nothing more than a bunch of Wikitards trying to claim that the information must have come from Wikipedia. (After all, wes alls knows that Wikipedia is da source of all true informationz on da internetz!!11!!!!)

Wtf. So now left wing ideologues control the internets? Oh noes run for your lives!

Did'nt you hear? Al Gore invented the internet

[JSojourner]

That's plagarism? Uh...

I agree.

Nothing to see here.  Move along...

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

After actually comparing the McCain speech and the Wiki page, yeah, this does not meet my definition of plagiarism.

While I know we are all used to the Bush administration using their creativity to make up facts on their own, it is generally standard practice to "plagiarize" facts from the truth as McCain has done here.

[MODU]

That's plagarism? Uh...

I agree.

Nothing to see here.  Move along...

I agree.  Other than the first example (which isn't a complete sentence), there's not enough there to imply plagiarism.  However, if that is McCain's intent, Biden can give him some pointers.

[Lunar]

I guess Obama can go for a below-the-belt attack on this statement, accusing McCain, the great foreign policy expert, of having to plagariaze from a bunch of teenagers on wikipedia.  I don't know, Democrats don't do very well at going after their opponents' strengths.

[TomC]

You can't plagiarize facts, but you can plagiarize the way facts are presented.

You most certainly can. If you take facts from somewhere and do not give credit to the publication that you got the facts from, that is plagarism. If it's common knowledge, then it's not plagarism. If you didn't know it until you read it, you must give credit. If you write an essay about Presidential election returns, and you got those figures from Dave Leip's website, you have to give Leip or the site credit. If it's something like "California usually goes to the Democrats," that's common knowledge, so you don't need to.

[The Duke]

McCain: I have to give a speech on Georgia.  Go write one for me.

Staffer: Should we start the speech by saying, "How 'bout them Bulldogs?"

McCain: No, the other Georgia.  *Sigh*  I guess you better include a primer on Georgia for people who don't know much about the Caucasus.

Staffer: The cauca-whatnow?

McCain: Just look it up, please.

Staffer: I'll use wikipedia.

McCain: Wiki-whatnow?

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

You can't plagiarize facts, but you can plagiarize the way facts are presented.

You most certainly can. If you take facts from somewhere and do not give credit to the publication that you got the facts from, that is plagarism. If it's common knowledge, then it's not plagarism. If you didn't know it until you read it, you must give credit. If you write an essay about Presidential election returns, and you got those figures from Dave Leip's website, you have to give Leip or the site credit. If it's something like "California usually goes to the Democrats," that's common knowledge, so you don't need to.

Not to mince words, but yeah, you do have to give credit for data.

The stuff in McCain's speech kinda fits into the "common knowledge" category.  At least, common enough.