Wikipedia:Sandbox thief

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

A sandbox thief takes content from other people's sandboxes and copies it as their own into articles, robbing the author of their own content. This behaviour is copyright infringing, violates Wikipedia's terms of use, provides bad precedent for outside use of Wikipedia content, and is very bad scholarly practice. As such, sandbox thieving is a form of disruptive editing.

Offenders should be warned that copying without attribution is not OK. Refer them to Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia with regard to providing attribution as required. You may point out that users who repeatedly infringe on our policies may have to be blocked from further editing. Copyright infringing edits should be reverted on sight. Revision deletion is available for severe cases.

Moving another's draft article to main-space, however is merely viewed as uncivil or a newbie style mistake, and is generally reverted with a polite word of advice to the mover.