User:Sumsum2010/Adoption/Alex146

Alex146 (talk · contribs)

Hi Alex146, and welcome to your adoption center. This is your own official page. Below is your first lesson, even though you probably know much of it already. When you finish the lesson I will add the quiz for you to take. The quiz might include a couple of extra unique questions if I see an area that you might need a little extra development - don't take it as a negative, it should help. Also we now have a talk area for us to use, away from the more public areas - if you would like to use it - it's at User talk:Sumsum2010/Adoption/Alex146. Sumsum2010·T·C 22:58, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Lesson 1 - Five Pillars - Complete

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

User:Jimbo Wales

The Five Pillars

One of the most important essays in Wikipedia is WP:FIVEPILLARS which is designed to eloquently sum up what we're here for.

Pillar one defines Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. It suggests some things that we are not. Thoughts about what we are not are covered in the deletion lesson.
Pillar two talks about neutrality, a concept that this lesson will be concentrating on.
Pillar three talks about free content. The Copyright lesson will go into this in more detail.
Pillar four talks about civility. Wikipedia is a collaborative working environment and nothing would ever get done if it wasn't. I'll go into civility more during the dispute resolution module.
Pillar five explains that Wikipedia does not have firm rules. This is a difficult concept and will be covered in the Policy and consensus lesson.

Once you get your head around these five pillars, you will be a Wikipedian and a good one at that. All 5 are covered in my adoption school, though at different lengths. Be aware that I don't know everything and I would doubt anyone who said they did.

How articles should be written

The articles in Wikipedia are designed to represent the sum of human knowledge. Each article should be written from a neutral point of view - personal opinions such as right and wrong should never appear, nor should an editors experience. Neutrality also means giving due weight to the different points of view. If the broad scientific community has one set of opinions - then the minority opinion should not be shown. An example is in medicine - if there was an article on say treatment of a broken leg, a neutral article would not include anything on Homeopathy.

To ensure that the information in an article is correct, Wikipedia has adopted a policy of verifiability. Anything written in Wikipedia should be available to confirm by looking at the associated reliable source. Wikipedia should not include anything not verifiable by seeing it is published elsewhere, in other words it should not contain anything original.

Reliable sources

So what is a source? Wikipedia uses the word source for three interchangeable ideas - a piece of work, the work's creator or the work's publisher. In general, you would expect a reliable source to be published materials with a reliable publication process, authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both. This doesn't mean that a source that is reliable on one topic is reliable on every topic, it must be regarded as authoritative in that topic - so whilst "Airfix monthly" may be a good source on the first model aeroplane, I would not expect it to be authoritative on their full size equivalent.

A source that is self-published is in general considered unreliable, unless it is published by a recognized expert in the field. This is a very rare exception - so self publishing is generally considered a no-no. This means that anything in a forum or a blog and even most websites are considered unreliable by default. One interesting sidepoint is on self-published sources talking about themselves. Obviously, a source talking about itself is going to be authoritative, but be careful that the source is not too self-serving - the article really should not be totally based on a direct source like that.

Mainstream news sources are generally considered notable... but any single article should be assessed on a case by case basis. Some news organizations have been known to check their information on Wikipedia - so be careful not to get into a cyclic sourcing issue!

There's a lot more about what makes a source reliable here

Questions?

Any questions or are you ready to take the quiz?

No questions so far. I can take the quiz. And to respond to your comment about "negativity", I will perceive none because the reason I am here is to understand how things work. You will find that civility, honor, and respect are fundamental to my core.

Ok, here's the quiz:

Five Pillars

This test is going to be based on questions. Some questions will have right or wrong answers, whereas others are just designed to see if you are thinking in the right way. There's not time limit - answer in your own words and we'll talk about your answers.

1) Q - You have just discovered from a friend that the new Ford Escort is only going to be available in blue. Can you add this to the Ford Escort article and why?

A - Yes, because this might be of interest to people wanting to buy the Ford Escort. You would want, however, to verify the friend's claim and provide a reference to the article, or to Ford's own site, that confirm's it.

Good answer! You would always want to have a reliable reference before dding the information.

2) Q - You find an article that shows that people in the state of Ohio eat more butternut squashes than anywhere in the world and ranks each of the United States by squashes per head. Interestingly you find another article that ranks baldness in the United States and they are almost identical! Can you include this information anywhere on Wikipedia? Perhaps the baldness article or the butternut squash article?

A- Again, the issue is verifibility and interest. Rankings of squash eating and baldness seem to meet the interest test, and if you have articles that verify those claims, you could create articles on squash eating and baldness. Tying them together, however, and claiming that eating squash causes baldness, would constitute original research and could not be claimed, unless you find another article that made that claim and could back it up.

Interest is not as big of a deal as referencing the fact and correctly including it.

3) Q - Would you consider BBC news a reliable source on The Troubles? What about on ITV?

A - I would consider the BBC news to be a reliable source on The Troubles. However, ITV is a competitor of BBC news and one would want to be careful about the objectivity of BBC news in regard to ITV. Certainly, one would expect objectivity and neutrality from a major news organization such as BBC news, however, there appears to be a great deal of controversy and criticism of BBC news in general. Since I don't know yet if this level of negative attention is endemic with and consistent with other major news organizations such as ABC or The New York Times, I would be wary of characterizing BBC news as unreliable. My position would be to make sure that my research is intact and indepth.

Good, BBC would be a reliable source.

4) Q - Would you consider Ben and Jerry's official Facebook page a reliable source?

A- Yes and No. This seems to be a non neutral point of view, as it would come across as "ringing one's own bell" but, on the other hand, it is no different than Ford publishing details that the Ford Escort is only available in blue.

It would not be, all social networking sites cannot be considered reliable sources.

5) Q - A "forum official" from the Daily Telegraph community forums comments on Daily Telegraph's stance on world hunger. Would this be a reliable source?

A- No. Not unless it could be confirmed that the "forum official" was actually an employee and representative of the Daily Telegraph.

Even if they were an employee it would be the same as the Facebook one.

6) Q - Would you have any problem with http://www.hopsandpips.com being used in a beer related article?

A - Again, Yes and No. It might be a non neutral point of view, but it does seem to give some information about making beer. If it were to be used as a reference, I would try to include other sites as references as well, so as to maintain a representative sampling of opinion and information.

Good answer!

7) Q - Would you have any issue with using the About Us page on Xerox as a source for the history section of the Xerox article.

A - Yes and no. The About Us page on www.xerox.com, a subpage of About Xerox, does not seem to have a neutral point of view, and it talks about Xerox today, not Xerox yesterday. There are, however, subpages from there, Xerox Interactive Timeline, and Historical Highlights & Awards, that might be usable.

Generally, you would not want to use the page as a reference, but it could be used as an external link.

8) Q - Everybody knows that the sky is blue right? An editor doesn't agree - he says it is bronze, do you need a source?

A - Absolutely. And not just for the claim to bronze, but also for the claim to blue.

Great answer!

Also, you may wish to place this page on your watchlist, so you will know when there are changes to the page, indicating there is something new for you. Sumsum2010·T·C 17:39, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this page is on my watchlist. Thank you for your review. I will assimilate your responses. Next item, please. -- Alex146 (talk) 23:47, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Quicky question - I already have eMail notification for changes to my talk page turned on. Is there any way to get eMail notifications for changes to this page? (Something tells me not, so I'm OK which periodically checking.) Thanks. -- Alex146 (talk) 23:51, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there is a way. But if you can check back approximately 12-15 hours after you edit the page, there will be a reply almost every . The next lesson is below. Sumsum2010·T·C 00:12, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Lesson 2 - Wikiquette - Complete

Lesson 2 - Wikiquette

WP:Wikiquette - or the etiquette of Wikipedia is something that you may already be familiar with, depending how much reading around the different wikipedia pages you've made.

I'm just going to highlight some of the important Wikiquette items that you should try and remember. It may help you out.

Assume good faith - This is fundamental and I'll be going over it again in dispute resolution. Editors here are trying to improve the encyclopedia. Every single member of the community. EVERY ONE. If you read a comment or look at an edit and it seems wrong in some way, don't just jump straight in. Try and see it from the other editors point of view, remembering that they are trying to improve the encyclopedia.
Sign your talk posts with four tildas ~~~~. The software will stick your signature and timestamp in, allowing the correct attribution to your comment. I have a script that reminds you to do this if you think you'll forget.
Try and keep to threading, replying to comments by adding an additional indentation, represented by a colon, :. I cover more about this in my basics of markup language lesson - let me know if you'd like to take it. Talk pages should something like this - Have a read of WP:THREAD to see how this works.

How's the soup? --[[User:John]]
:It's great!! --[[User:Jane]]
::I made it myself! --[[User:John]]
Let's move the discussion to [[Talk:Soup]]. --[[User:Jane]]
:I tend to disagree. --[[User:George]]

How's the soup? --John

It's great!! --Jane

I made it myself! --John

Let's move the discussion to Talk:Soup. --Jane

I tend to disagree. --George

Don't forget to assume good faith
There are a lot of policies and guidelines, which Wikipedians helpfully point you to with wikilinks. Their comments may seem brusque at first, but the linked document will explain their point much better than they may be able to.
Be polite, and treat others as you would want to be treated. For example, if someone nominated one of the articles you created for deletion, I'm sure you'd want to know about it, so if you are doing the nominating make sure you leave the article creator a notification.
Watch out for common mistakes.
Did I mention that you should assume good faith?
Comment on the edits. Not the editor. I'll cover this more in dispute resolution.

Questions

Any questions?

No. Looks fine so far. Ready for second quiz.

Here it is:

Quiz

Have a look at the conversation below:

What's the best car in the world? -- Rod

Probably something German or Japanese. -- Freddie

Like what -- Rod's Mate

I dunno, something like Volkswagon? -- Freddie

Volkswagon Passat --Passat Lover <-Postion:A

What do you want it for? -- Jane

Volkswagon Passat --Passat Lover <-Position:B

Well, the Passat lover clearly loves his Volkswagen Passat, but who is he replying to? In

1) Position A?

A- Rod's Mate

2) Position B?

A- Rod

3) An editor who has a low edit count seems awfully competent with templates. Should he be reported as a possible WP:SOCK?

A- No, not initially. He may simply know how to use templates. Initially, I would assume good faith, and let the truth come out on its own.

All great answers! On the last one, a common reason could be that they looked at the help pages very closely before editing, or were a long time IP editor who just recently registered.

Here's lesson 3, it is probably the hardest lesson you'll get, but I'm sure you'll be fine!:

Lesson 3 - Copyright on a free Wiki

This is probably the most important lesson I'll give, because this is the only one where failure to adhere exactly according to policy can and usually will result in a block. Pay attention.

Wikipedia is as the slogan says, "The Free Encyclopedia". Unfortunately, this causes some problems when we use other materials that aren't so free, and other problems when we'd like to do something but really can't.

Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, or GFDL. This is a copyleft license that allows for the free distribution of content under certain conditions. The main terms of this license are as follows:

Anything licensed under the GFDL must display a copy of the license (Wikipedia's is at the link I just gave you).
Any "derivative works", or works based on something licensed under the GFDL, must be licensed under GFDL.
Content licensed under the GFDL may be modified, but must include a history of all changes and who made them when.
All content licensed under the GFDL must be freely available or available under "fair use".

There are other terms to the license, but those are the most important for what is done on Wikipedia. Wikipedia displays a copy of the license, which is fully protected under the authority of the Wikimedia office. Whenever we make an edit, that edit is logged in the page's edit history, as well as your contributions. When a page is deleted, contributions to that page are hidden, but are still visible to administrators or "sysops". Certain page revisions may also be hidden from public view in the event of extreme circumstances, but are still visible to those with the authority to remove them for GFDL compliance.

Unfortunately, the GFDL does have some limit on what we can do. When merging pages, we cannot delete the page that is now empty, even if it serves little useful purpose even as a redirect. The contributions to that page, which provided the information that was merged out, must be kept logged so that people know where it came from and what changes were made when.

Creative Commons logo

Public domain logo

The Mediawiki software is designed to be GFDL compatible. (As a side note, the software itself is available under a similar license, the GPL.) The most common issue, and the one that most frequently results in blocks, is copyright. Any registered user can upload an image or media file. If they created the image, they can license it under a free license such as the GFDL or a Creative Commons license, or release it into the public domain (Although if you use any of those options, it's recommended to upload the image to the Wikimedia Commons instead so any language Wiki can use it.)

Problems arise when people upload images that are not their own. Most images are under some form of copyright, even if it's not explicitly stated anywhere. This is usually the case with anything found on the internet. When these images are uploaded, Wikipedia must adhere to a very strict policy known as "fair use". What this basically is doing is giving us a reason to use an otherwise non-free image, on the basis that it is for educational purposes, using it has no measurable effect on the copyright holder's rights, and that we have no other alternative. The establishment of this reason is called the fair use rationale, part of a set of criteria that MUST accompany any fair use/copyright tag on Wikipedia. These criteria are:

A specific fair use tag (see link above) that describes what the image is.
The source of the image (this is usually a website, but could also be a book or magazine that you scanned the picture out of)
The image itself must be of low resolution. If it is high resolution, that version must be deleted and replaced with another (essentially, worse) version.
A fair use rationale explaining:

Where the image is to be used (This page MUST be in the main (article) namespace. Fair use images MUST NOT be used anywhere else)
That the image cannot be used to replace any marketing role or otherwise infringe upon the owner's commercial rights to the image
How the image is being used, in a way that fits within the fair use policy (i.e., identification purposes, etc.)
That there is no way the image can possibly be replaced with a free version

The image must have been previously published elsewhere

Only when an image meets all of these criteria may it be used. Fair use images must be used in at least one article (not "orphaned"), and articles using fair use images must use as few of them as possible. Any image that does not meet these criteria to the letter will be deleted. Any user that repeatedly uploads images not meeting these criteria to the letter will be blocked.

As a further note, I mentioned that fair use images must not be able to be replaced by a free alternative. What this basically means is, there is no way you, me, or anyone else could go out and take a picture of this same thing and release it under a free license. For example:

I could upload a publicity picture of Eddie Izzard. Now, the photographer holds the copyright to that particular picture of the hilarious man. I can claim fair use, but the claim would be invalid because you could just as easily go to a performance Izzard is giving and take a picture of him yourself. (That's what happened here) The publicity picture is considered replaceable fair use and so would be deleted.
Person X could upload a picture of the Empire State Building from a marketing kit they distributed. This image would likely be copyrighted, and so they claim fair use. But I happen to have been to New York and have a picture of the ESB. I upload that instead and release it into the public domain. The first, copyrighted picture, is also replaceable.
For the article on the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I want to upload an image of their logo (visible in no great detail here). I go to their website and upload their version. This fair use is allowable, because no matter where or how they display their logo, it'll be under the same copyright. Since the simple art of scanning or taking a picture of a piece of work is not enough to justify my ownership of the rights to the image, there is no way to obtain a free version of the logo.

For a full description of the policies and guidelines concerning fair use, you should read (and commit to memory :-P) the page at WP:FU. Rest assured that you will never forget the name of that shortcut. Got your head around all that? Well lets move away from images - but we're not done!

Plagiarism

Copyright violations do not only appear on images, they can appear in text too. Even if the source text is wholly in the public domain, you can't just copy it without falling foul of plagiarism. As I'm sure you're pretty frazzled at the moment, I'm just going to say don't copy and paste text! Write it in your own words and make sure you cite your source.

Questions?

Any questions? It's a heck of a topic, so feel free to ask "why" to anything, and I will do my best to explain. Let me know when you are ready for the quiz.

Well... This one is going to take some time on my part. I (think I) understand all of the basics already, but some of your links make it clear that compliance is critical, so let me go off and research the reference material fully before I ask questions or say that I'm ready for the quiz. I'll update this response if I have questions or I am ready for the quiz. (I have no questions about the plagarism policy, as I am already clear on that and sensitive to it in my work with WikiAnswers; it's just that I want to lock WikiPedia policy about copyrighted material in my brain.)

I do have one question, though, to start. I recently added a reference to google maps in the article Dead Man's Curve to add an example of "Other Sharp Curves" (reference #20, I-70 in Indianapolis at Mile Marker 83.1). I did not upload the image, I just referenced it. Was this OK?

Actually, I just looked at maps.google.com and their images, etc. policy. It does not look good. I added the link because others had done so, but now I'm not so sure. Further opinion?

I think the link should be alright, but really an article or free use picture would be better. This policy is mainly about copying articles from another website, or using copyrighted images without a fair use reason.

Just touching base, because I have not posted in a while, and I did not want you to think I had dropped off the face of the Earth. :-)> This lesson is still on my mind, but I have been swamped this last month, what with having a new job, and other things going on, so I'm still in it for the duration. I'm also going on vacation this week, so I probably won't post further until after August 8th. Thanks. -- Alex146 (talk) 02:38, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok, nice to know you're still around =) Have fun on vacation, we'll get to the quiz when you get back. Sumsum2010·T·C 22:59, 30 July 2011 (UTC)