A great Caroline County achievement: The Caroline Progress plagiarizes Wikipedia.

At least we know they have Internet access there.

From a story in this week’s edition of The Caroline Progress about an Arby’s opening in Carmel Church:

There are now close to 3,000 Arby’s in the U.S. and Canada. In 1964, Arby’s was founded in Ohio by Forrest and Leroy Raffel who intended to create a fast food franchise based on a food other than hamburgers. The Arby’s name is derived from “Raffel Brothers” or “RB.” By coincidence, the initials can also stand for “roast beef.”

Arby’s, oriented more towards adults than other fast food restaurants, is known not only for roast beef sandwiches but also for chicken sandwiches, curly fries, and popcorn chicken. Included on the menu are appetizers, salads, Market Fresh (deli-style) sandwiches, wraps, and submarine sandwiches.

And from the Arby’s page on Wikipedia:

Arby’s is a fast food restaurant chain in the United States and Canada that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wendy’s/Arby’s Group, Inc. It is primarily known for selling roast beef sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, curly fries, and popcorn chicken. The company’s target market attempts to be more adult-oriented than other fast food restaurants. The Arby’s menu also includes appetizers, salads, Market Fresh (deli-style) sandwiches, wraps, and submarine sandwiches.

[…]

Arby’s was founded by Forrest and Leroy Raffel in Ohio in 1964, who were determined to own a fast food franchise based on a food other than hamburgers. The brothers wanted to use the preferred name of “Big Tex”, but that name was already being used by an Akron businessman. They eventually decided on the Arby’s moniker, based on R.B., the initials of Raffel Brothers,[5] thus Arby’s, LLC, was born. By coincidence, R.B. can also be short for roast beef, the company’s main product, a point which was used when the backronym “America’s Roast Beef, Yes Sir” was used as an advertising campaign in the 1980s.

And if you were wondering about Wikipedia’s copyright requirements:

If you want to use Wikipedia materials in your own books/articles/websites or other publications, you can do so — but only in compliance with the GFDL. If you are simply duplicating the Wikipedia article, you must follow section two of the GFDL on verbatim copying, as discussed at Wikipedia:Verbatim copying.

If you create a derivative version by changing or adding content, this entails the following:

  • your materials in turn have to be licensed under GFDL,
  • you must acknowledge the authorship of the article (section 4B), and
  • you must provide access to the “transparent copy” of the material (section 4J). (The “transparent copy” of a Wikipedia article is any of a number of formats available from us, including the wiki text, the html web pages, xml feed, etc.)

And, of course, this isn’t the first time that The Caroline Progress has been caught plagiarizing someone. The last time it was The Free Lance–Star.

2 thoughts on “A great Caroline County achievement: The Caroline Progress plagiarizes Wikipedia.”

  1. Editor is wife of a a Marine Officer no less. Integrity and Character.

    Must be the water in Caroline that causes these lapses in both?

Leave a Reply to Tom James Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *