Talk:William Dana Ewart

I believe that this article has been sufficiently modified from the original references. Attached are three of the website articles that have been used as reference. Much of the information is in the context of public historical information on the Link-Belt companies.

Public historical information is not the same as public domain information which may be reproduced (with attribution) freely on Wikipedia. Regardless of the number of additional sources you used, most of the article still very closely follows the primary source I noted when I blanked the article. For example, your rewrite says:

In the early 1890's, his companies developed the first wide-gauge, steam-powered, coal-handling clamshell crane, which is the forerunner of today's Link-Belt crane and excavation equipment.

Where the source says:

Ten years later, his companies developed the first wide-gauge, steam-powered, coal-handling clamshell crane, the ancestor of today's Link-Belt construction equipment.

I have bolded the identical words from your copy to emphasize the overlap. Your article needs to be rewritten from scratch in entirely your own words. While facts are not copyrightable, creative elements of presentation - including both structure and language - are. The less creative the expression, the looser copyright applies, but even so close paraphrasing becomes a great concern when there are long passages that include fragments of the original and the structure of the original is retained.

The essay Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing contains some suggestions for rewriting that may help avoid these issues. The article Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches, while about plagiarism rather than copyright concerns, also contains some suggestions for reusing material from sources that may be helpful, beginning under "Avoiding plagiarism". VernoWhitney (talk) 16:52, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Will look into the rewriting, but respectfully, the term "wide-gauge, steam-powered, coal-handling clamshell crane" appears to be to be a technical term, and is specific to the industry here. I would think that this is similar to "Steam-powered Locomotive" or "broad-gauge steam locomotive", etc., which is accurately describing the specific item or machine. The term is listed exactly the same on http://www.lbxco.com/company-history.asp and http://www.linkbelt.com/masters/home_about.htm, and is exactly copied by http://www.ewart.org/People/Dana.htm Rreu (talk) 18:42, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can see how that may be a technical term, but it's likely that all of those sources got it from one original place, and even if that particular phrase is immutable the rest of the sentence (and article) follows the non-technical and thus changeable prose too closely. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:59, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]