User talk:Arebelo

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Your submission at Articles for creation: Tokai Park (December 19)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by ProgrammingGeek was:

This submission reads more like an essay than an encyclopedia article. Submissions should summarise information in secondary, reliable sources and not contain opinions or original research. Please write about the topic from a neutral point of view in an encyclopedic manner.

Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.

If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Tokai Park and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
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ProgrammingGeek (Page! • Talk! • Contribs!) 16:31, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Arebelo, I noticed your article was declined at Articles for Creation, and that can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! ProgrammingGeek (Page! • Talk! • Contribs!) 16:31, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

AfC notification: Draft:Tokai Park has a new comment

I've left a comment on your Articles for Creation submission, which can be viewed at Draft:Tokai Park. Thanks! NewYorkActuary (talk) 20:18, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I responded on your talk page. Hope that was right... --Arebelo (talk) 21:19, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

AfC notification: Draft:Tokai Park has a new comment

I've left a comment on your Articles for Creation submission, which can be viewed at Draft:Tokai Park. Thanks! SwisterTwister talk 18:17, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Tokai Park has been accepted

Tokai Park, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.

You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. Note that because you are a logged-in user, you can create articles yourself, and don't have to post a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer.

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Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia!

Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:23, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Tokai Arboretum

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A tag has been placed on Tokai Arboretum requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be an unambiguous copyright infringement. This page appears to be a direct copy from https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/tokai-arboretum/journal. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images taken from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites or other printed material as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If the external website or image belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text or image — which means allowing other people to use it for any reason — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. The same holds if you are not the owner but have their permission. If you are not the owner and do not have permission, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission for how you may obtain it. You might want to look at Wikipedia's copyright policy for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. SamHolt6 (talk) 18:05, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dear :@SamHolt6: , We have tried to follow wikipedia's instructions for copyright, and have made our content available for use following cc-by-sa 4.0 rules. Could we please request to have the Tokai Park and Tokai Arboretum pages reinstated? If there are any parts of the text that wikipedia has an issue with, could you please just flag these, and we can rewrite them if need be. But I cannot do a thing with this page being marked for deletion. If there is something I still need to do, but have missed, could you please let me know? Kind regards, Arebelo (talk) 11:09, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Editing with a conflict of interest

Recent copyright issues notwithstanding, I will generate our COI informational template for you, regardless if you have a conflict of interest or not. Best, --SamHolt6 (talk) 23:38, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Arebelo. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, company, organization or competitors;
propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
disclose your COI when discussing affected articles (see WP:DISCLOSE);
avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you.--SamHolt6 (talk) 23:38, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dear :@SamHolt6: , I have no relationship with Tokai Park, besides the relationship that anyone would have with anything they decide should be on this online encyclopedia. It is simply a nature reserve with biodiversity importance, and should be documented. Tokai Aboretum is apparently a historical site and therefore probably should also have a page. I'm no expert on the history of this site, nor do I have any vested interest in the area, beyond the interest of any scientist in just seeing things properly documented. If Wikipedia seriously thinks that contributors are not going to have any normal interest in the sites/items they are documenting, then this is just a very wild and very wrong assumption. All of the people that are putting information on wikipedia about plants, have a normal interest in those plants. The same as historians with historical sites. If this wasn't the case, you wouldn't be able to run wikipedia at all. It relies on interested people, writing about sites/things/people of interest. I have read all the above, and I fail to see what more I should do. Could you please be more explicit if there is anything that I need to do besides read a bunch of documents? Kind regards, Arebelo (talk) 11:09, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This help request has been answered. If you need more help, you can ask another question on your talk page, contact the responding user(s) directly on their user talk page, or consider visiting the Teahouse.

Please could someone assist with reinstating Tokai Park and Tokai Arboretum wiki articles? I am new to this, and seem to have made some mistakes, but people are just throwing the rule book at me and enjoyed watching me drown. I really could use assistance with sorting out the issues on these articles and having them up and running as soon as possible. Thanks in advance for your assistance, I really appreciate your time. Arebelo (talk) 11:20, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Both pages apparently incorporated significant amounts of text copy-pasted or closely paraphrased from elsewhere in violation of copyright. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously; copyright infringements are deleted on sight and cannot be restored. Even if they were modified after restoring them, the result would just be a derivative work of the copyrighted original and would still infringe copyright. You'll have to start over from scratch and rewrite the pages entirely in your own words, summarizing facts from independent sources but not basing the text itself on the sources. Huon (talk) 13:57, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dear :@Huon: Yes. The operative word here is "apparently". Could you please show evidence? This is simply not the case. For the Tokai Park page I only made one change, and this was to change an old link from iSPOT to iNaturalist as the site has moved. So how could this suddenly infringe on copyright? You can check the truth of this by looking at the history of the page. For the Tokai Arboretum page, yes, I did literally use our own work, and put it into the wiki article. It is available elsewhere on the iNaturalist website, but since we are the authors, and since the source has been updated to reflect the correct copyright status, this is not an infringement of copy right. Nor has the page itself been deleted -that I can see. Why do I get the feeling that no-one is really interested in helping, just rushing around and answering comments? Please can you read what I have written and actually please try to help me resolve this issue. Arebelo (talk) 14:57, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The copyright infringement wasn't "sudden", though it was noticed only recently. I checked revisions of the Tokai Park article dating back to 2016, and the infringing content was already present. Example from the "A brief history of Tokai Park" section: You wrote here: "Pine and Gum plantations were first planted on the state land at Tokai in the 1890s [...] In 1998 the conservation significance of Tokai Park was realized. However it was only in 1999 (in a Botanical Society Report) that it was recognized to be one of the top 20 conservation priorities of Cape Town." Source: "The Pine and Gum plantations were planted on state land starting in the 1890s [...] It was only in 1998 that the conservation significance of Tokai Forest was realized, but only in the Botanical Society Report of 1999 was it realized to be one of the top 20 conservation priorities within Cape Town." That's close paraphrasing.

Justlettersandnumbers, apparently a "cc-by-sa 4.0" tag has been added to the source for the Tokai Arboretum article here. Would you consider that sufficient to undelete the old revisions of that page? To my knowledge there are some compatibility issues with CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC BY-SA 3.0 (which Wikipedia uses).

That said, Arebelo, can you explain how your "no conflict of interest, no vested interest" comments above agree with "I did use our own work" and "we are the authors"? To me that sounds very much like a conflict of interest. Huon (talk) 17:33, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for commenting here, Huon. You are right, CC BY-SA 4.0 is not a compatible licence here; either CC BY-SA 3.0 or CC BY 4.0 would, however, be compatible. Unlike almost all COI text from external sources, the content of Tokai Park appears to be not too far from encyclopaedic in tone; it's unfortunately almost devoid of any independent reliable source.

Arebelo, there are two principal routes to making the content available for use in Wikipedia: changing the licence on your various websites to one that is compatible; and emailing OTRS (instructions here). The former path is much simpler and more direct. In either case, the content is released for anyone, anywhere, to use as they wish, including commercial publication; and in either case, there is no guarantee that all, or indeed any part, of the content so released will be used in any Wikimedia project. Material released in this way is subject to exactly the same general requirements for Wikipedia content as any other contribution – neutrality and verifiability first and foremost. Please let me know how you'd like to move this ahead; meanwhile, it might be helpful if you would declare the nature of your relationship to these places, perhaps on you user page, User:Arebelo. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:04, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dear :@Huon: I'm sorry, but the way you are speaking to me does not sound at all like what is enshrined in the Wikipedia welcome guidelines. They say that newcomers should be treated well, and that we should always try to think the best of people, not the worst. Firstly, I would like to thank you for your help. Finally not throwing the rule book at me -a very overwhelmed newcomer- and actually just explaining in simple English what the issue is. Great. Now we can solve the issue, which is in fact very small and could easily be rewritten -if you had just explained the issue from the start. Secondly, have you even checked the page that you are accusing me of copying? You should be neutral, or believe the best of me -according to wikipedia. Well, in fact in this case, the Yellow pages has copied the wikipedia text! And now you are accusing me of copying them? Unbelievable. If this is the only issue, can you please clear it right away? Arebelo (talk) 05:58, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dear :@Justlettersandnumbers:. Thank you very much for your help. Regarding the the different licences, can you please explain the difference between CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC BY 4.0? We followed wikipedia's licencing instructions (https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Creative_Commons_license) and that is how we settled on CC BY-SA 4.0. Are you telling me that this is now wrong (I read the page on compatibility)? If so, please explicitly tell me what I should change it to. CC BY-SA 3.0? Regarding independent reliable source, I have always had an issue with this, because I could never understand what exactly was wanted. We are scientists. So we typically cite published research. However wikipedia says "no original research". This leaves us totally confused. What then is left? Could you perhaps please explain this to us in simple terms, and we will do our best to provide good independent reliable sources. Regarding the route going forward. We have only one website, and this is iNaturalist. We have already changed the licence there, but will update it when we get your instructions (see my first point). Regarding declaring the nature of our "relationship", can you please give an example of someone doing this? I have read the COI page (https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Conflict_of_interest) and we have no conflict of interest according to these guidelines. We are South African scientists, working on a number of sites of interest, and we saw that Tokai Park was a stub under the Cape Flats Sand Fynbos wikipedia page (Cape Flats Sand Fynbos is a vegetation type we work on). Therefore we decided to help set up the wiki page for these notable sites (Tokai Park and Tokai Arboretum). We hope that with time, others may add it it. We may work on other sites in the future, but to be honest we've had such a bad experience that once these page are finished I think I may never come back to wikipedia. Its just so exhausting and I feel like I've been treated like a criminal. Its thanks to people like you that we are actually making any progress. Kind people who are willing to help, and not just trying to stall progress. Anyway, if you could please advise me based on the "relationship" that I have spelled out, what exactly I should put on my user page, I would be much obliged. Arebelo (talk) 06:17, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Arabelo, the licence thing is just a minefield: the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence is accepted and – I think – preferred on Wikimedia Commons, so for any photographs that you want to release it may be the best choice; it is also accepted here for images (only). Our licence for text in Wikipedia is CC BY-SA 3.0, but CC BY 4.0 is also acceptable; you can choose either of those, or any compatible licence from the page that I linked to.

As for a conflict-of-interest statement, I can't tell you what to write, mostly because we have very strict rules against linking an anonymous user account with a real-world person. You would need to explain your connection to Tokai Park, if any. I note that the author of this page heads a pressure group which has been doing contentious work in the park.

There is nothing in what Huon has written here for you to take exception to. You're not being treated as a criminal but as a person who has arrived in a new place and does yet know its rules and social norms, and has inadvertently crossed some lines. You have over 60 edits to Tokai Park, not just one. I'm sorry that it's taken a couple of years for these problems to come to light; this is a very large project with not many people checking for copyright infringement, of which we still have a regrettably large amount, some of it going right back to the early days of the encyclopaedia – much longer than this one. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:55, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Justlettersandnumbers, the source text now says "Tony Rebelo cc by-sa 3.0"; I've reverted the revision deletion at Tokai Arboretum. I haven't reverted the redirect; in my opinion that would need some checking of the text and its sources. Huon (talk) 12:44, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Huon – I was going to do that, but seem to have got side-tracked. And yes, agree on not undoing the redirect for now. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:58, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you::Justlettersandnumbers, (1) Huon accused us of copying work from here (https://yellow.place/en/friends-of-tokai-park-cape-town-southafrica ), and it is the other way around. I'm sorry but I do take exception to this. Could you please acknowledge this and remove the copyright charge against us for the Tokai Park page? (2) Yes, there are over 60 edits to Tokai Park, all before 2017 (if you check the dates). The only change I made this year was to update a link, and then everyone jumped on me. This was after extensive checks by editors and admins. I went through hell to get the page approved a few years back. I appreciate that it takes time to get these things corrected and to get all the editors on board, however I think the way people go about it is horrid. If the admins/editors would just SPEAK to new people in simple English, and help them get things sorted everything would be so much quicker. Its taken me weeks to understand this licence agreement thing for example, and if someone had just written to me to say "paste CC BY-SA 3.0 on your website", it would have been fixed in 20 seconds, and I would never have bothered any of you! (3) I still don't understand what you want me to do re: COI. First you say "we have very strict rules against linking an anonymous user account with a real-world person", and then you say I must "disclose my relationship"? This is completely contradictory. So if I do not write anything, it is not because I'm trying to be rebellious, but because I genuinely don't know what to do. Its easy for people to slap "COI" labels on me, but not a single person has been able to tell me what to do to fix it. (4) Your example of COI is an interesting one. I suppose I cannot blame you for not being local and knowing the person in question. That particular author is well known and well cited on just about every topic to do with nature in South Africa. He is one of South Africa's leading naturalists, and hence his involvement with iNaturalist.com. Yes there are many who have their own interests and therefore make statements (on their own websites), but I think that has nothing to do with wikipedia. The text must be objective and unbiased and speaks for itself. Anyone can add and update it as well. It either presents facts or it doesn't. (5) I see you talking about "I have reverted the revision deletion at Tokai Arboretum". What does this mean? It sounds positive though, so thank you Huon. I cannot see the page again yet, but I presume this takes time? (7) What do you mean by "not undoing the redirect for now"? Is this the awful 'copyright violation' text on the Tokai Park page? If so, could you please explain what I need to do to fix this? Thank you again both for your time. Arebelo (talk) 15:54, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Huon and Justlettersandnumbers, would you please be able to help me with this?

"The previous content of this page or section has been identified as posing a potential copyright issue, as a copy or modification of the text from the source(s) below, and is now listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems (listing): https://yellow.place/en/friends-of-tokai-park-cape-town-southafrica https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/cape-argus/20161128/281745563993432 (Duplication Detector report · Copyvios report) Unless the copyright status of the text on this page is clarified, the problematic text or the entire page may be deleted one week after the time of its listing. Temporarily, the original posting is still accessible for viewing in the page history."

I thought this was the same issue, but it is a different one. So firstly, as I said, the yellow pages article is copied from Wikipedia. So can this accusation be lifted? Secondly the other article was written by me for a newspaper. I simply used some of the facts from this work, for the wiki page. Could you please alert me to the problem text so that I can rewrite it? I don't know how to find the problem text quickly. Thanks in advance

Arebelo (talk) 15:59, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Arebelo, if the article at pressreader.com is by you, you can try sending a release of permission to OTRS, following the instructions here. However, I'm not sure how we will confirm that you still own the copyright – i.e., that you did not transfer it to the Cape Argus when you published the piece. Now that you have disclosed your identity (which you were under no obligation to do), there is little doubt about your conflict of interest: according to this article, you belong to the same activist/pressure group as Tony Rebelo, who (apparently) originally created the article by copying the content of this Open University page. We won't need permission from him, as it seems that that content has already been removed. Please remember that Wikipedia is not a soapbox – however important you think your campaign is, this is not the place to publicise it. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:07, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Justlettersandnumbers, No, that's a waste of time. Even though I wrote it I'm pretty sure that the newspaper owns the copyright now. I asked you which part was the issue. Can you please show me? Its only a small part of the article. I will just change this part. It's no big deal. Will you stop it with the COI? Its really ridiculous. We have no activist group, we are part of a Friends group. But we are part of many other groups and have many other interests. As I mentioned, the Tokai Park article was a stub and we decided to fill the gap. Just read the text of the article and decide for yourself whether it pushes any agenda. It doesn't. Its just facts about Tokai Park. Arebelo (talk) 18:58, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Some comments. First of all, I'm sorry for incorrectly stating that it was you who wrote the problematic content when it actually was User:Tony rebelo. In my defense, my point wasn't to assign blame but to explain that the article had problematic content from far, far back. Secondly, I disagree with Justlettersandnumbers on permission for the content which is archived here. That was originally published in 2014, years before the Wikipedia article existed. It's likely that "User:Tony rebelo" on Wikipedia is the same Tony Rebelo who wrote that piece, but not guaranteed - after all, anybody could have created a Wikipedia account and chosen that username. Confirming identity, for example for copyright purposes, is what WP:OTRS is for. And that the page has since been removed has no effect on the original author's copyright or on whether we need confirmation that it has indeed been released under a free license. The content wasn't removed from our article (until the blanking); rather, the parts attributed to the Yellow.Places page seem to actually come from that piece by Tony Rebelo. Thirdly, you may want to check this. It's a comparison of the last version of the article before the blanking and one of the sources. To me it seems various sources got meshed together to create the article. That makes the article a derivative work of all the sources that got incorporated into the article, in whole or in part. Huon (talk) 19:57, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Huon, the content from here was indeed removed from the article, with these edits on 19 December 2016; however, it was later added back by Arebelo, here. Everything else you say is spot-on. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:14, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So we could revert to a version of the article between removal and re-addition if all other copyright problems were resolved. And Arebelo after all did add something to the article that was based on content previously published elsewhere without providing evidence of permission. OK. Huon (talk) 20:28, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Huon (1) Apology accepted. However I think you are misunderstanding. No user copied content. The yellowpages link copied us. This is what I seek an apology for. You are blaming us of copying that text, but it is the other way around. (2) Regarding this, yes of course it is the same user. How many times do I have to tell you? iSPOT migrated to iNat. Therefore the text that was once at iSPOT was removed, and moved to iNat. Tony Rebelo is the author, and he gave over his copyright on iNat via CC for SA 3.0 or whatever. So WHAT is the issue here? I really feel like you are making issues out of nothing. Please somebody help me!!!! (3) Yes, I checked your link and look at what it says!!! "Violation Unlikely, 28.1% confidence". The only words highlighted are a few names!!! So you see? Even your own evidence is more in support of my argument than yours. (4) "To me it seems various sources got meshed together to create the article." Uhmmmm... Shall we apply Ockhams razor here? Yes, I went through all the effort to copy past extracts of mulitple sources, OR I AM THE AUTHOR and have this info to hand, and simply wrote the article. This is why there is some overlap, though nothing that shows any violation of copy right or even of closely paraphrasing!Arebelo (talk) 11:57, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Justlettersandnumber Can you please explain what you mean? In December 2016 the article was finally approved and all was fine. I went on a few weeks ago to make the Tokai Arboretum and had noticed that there was a link on the Tokai Park site which was old. It was this. So I changed it to the new iNat one. Why is this a problem? And why would you want to revert to an old link that is no longer supported and that no longer owns Tony Rebelo's data? Arebelo (talk) 12:01, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tokai Park & Tokai Arboretum reinstated

This help request has been answered. If you need more help, you can ask another question on your talk page, contact the responding user(s) directly on their user talk page, or consider visiting the Teahouse.

Please can someone help me? I've been discussing these issues for days, but do not seem to be making any progress. I simply want to know how to get the blank lifted from Tokai Park. The only issue there seems to be that a page has copied text from wikipedia and that now I am being blamed of violating copyright. In addition, there are some claims that I am copying text from my own newspaper article, but when I investigate these "claims" this is the conclusion: "Violation Unlikely, 28.1% confidence". And because of this the entire Tokai Park page is blanked. Could someone please help me lift this blank? In addition, a page I created called 'Tokai Arboretum', was given "speedy delete" status because of being taken from this website: here. However we have fulfilled the requirements by writing over the copyright under "CC by SA 3.0" or something like this. What more can we do? But this blocking of Tokai Arboretum page has also not been deleted. Is this not a case of people trying to stall progress? You can see how much time I have put in trying to argue my point (above). Please can someone look into this and consider lifting the blanks on these two pages? Thanks in advance. Arebelo (talk) 12:14, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think we can summarize what happened at Tokai Park as follows:

There are two sources, iSpot and Cape Argus. Both predate our article, neither appears to have been released under a free license. There's also the Yellow.Places page which is very difficult to date; it duplicates some of the content from the iSpot article. It's unlikely but possible that Yellow.Places took it via Wikipedia; that doesn't matter since iSpot definitely had the content before Wikipedia had it, and even if Yellow.Places didn't have it first, neither did Wikipedia.
User:Tony rebelo wrote the Tokai Park article which, right from the start, contained content from the sources given in #1. No evidence of permission was provided.
The content based on iSpot was removed on copyright grounds, you re-added it a few months later and still gave no evidence of permission.

So every single revision of the article (that I checked) contains content based on Cape Argus, and most contain content based on iSpot, too. According to your comments above, we cannot get evidence that the Cape Argus piece is released under a free license. Thus every revision of the article contains non-free content from that source. Furthermore, every revision except those between December 2016 and March 2017 also contains content from iSpot for which evidence of free licensing might be obtainable but hasn't been obtained yet.

The copyvio detector which gave the 28.1% confidence is a good tool, but no more than that. Its strength is its ability to identify copy-pasted and exactly identically worded content. Identifying closely paraphrased text would be much harder for an automated process. Since the paraphrased text is spread throughout the article, we'd have to remove (and then possibly rewrite from scratch) multiple sections to get rid of it. That may indeed be the best way forward for that article.

For Tokai Arboretum the situation is different. When the copyright issues in that page were found, it was turned into a redirect to the relevant section of the Tokai Park article. The older revisions were deleted (ie the page history still showed that there were prior revisions, but not the content of those revisions). After the source was released under CC BY-SA 3.0, I undid the revision deletion, so the content is again visible in the page history. The page is still a redirect, though; Justlettersandnumbers agreed with me that some checking of content and sources should be done before the redirecting is reverted.

I hope this is a sufficient explanation of (my understanding of) what the problems are, what was done, what was undone, and what still needs to be done. Huon (talk) 19:44, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Huon, for laying this out so clearly. My understanding of the situation is the same as yours (though perhaps not quite so clear). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:20, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Huon and Justlettersandnumbers , sorry but this is totally incorrect. Can I please get someone else to assist? You keep "clearing" my call for help.

1) Regarding: "#There are two sources, iSpot and Cape Argus. Both predate our article, neither appears to have been released under a free license. There's also the Yellow.Places page which is very difficult to date; it duplicates some of the content from the iSpot article. It's unlikely but possible that Yellow.Places took it via Wikipedia; that doesn't matter since iSpot definitely had the content before Wikipedia had it, and even if Yellow.Places didn't have it first, neither did Wikipedia."

> So if it is difficult to say, why are you not giving us the benefit of the doubt? The iSPOT content belongs to Tony Rebelo and he has given it over to the public here. As I have told you several times, THE CONTENT FROM ISPOT WAS MIGRATED TO INATURALIST. It is the same, and the content has been made available to the public.

2) "#User:Tony rebelo wrote the Tokai Park article which, right from the start, contained content from the sources given in #1. No evidence of permission was provided."

> WRONG. I wrote the Tokai Park article. I have given you evidence of permission for this link and this link has no similarities except for having a few names in common!!!

3) "#The content based on iSpot was removed on copyright grounds, you re-added it a few months later and still gave no evidence of permission."

> WRONG as well. The article was approved and accepted. The only change this year was that I deleted an old iSPOT link, and changed it to iNaturalist because, as I have told you several times, the content was migrated to a new site.

4) "So every single revision of the article (that I checked) contains content based on Cape Argus, and most contain content based on iSpot, too. According to your comments above, we cannot get evidence that the Cape Argus piece is released under a free license. Thus every revision of the article contains non-free content from that source. Furthermore, every revision except those between December 2016 and March 2017 also contains content from iSpot for which evidence of free licensing might be obtainable but hasn't been obtained yet."

> There is NO evidence that you have yet shown that there is any similarity between the wiki article and the two supposed sources, except for this 28.1% confidence. You say that it is only a "good tool", but then show the evidence that there is any overlap. If there is a problem section, name it and I will rework it. You have shown no evidence yet.

Once again I ASK YOU: WHAT CAN I DO TO GET THIS UP AND RUNNING AGAIN. WILL YOU PLEASE HELP INSTEAD OF TRYING TO JUST STALL PROGRESS?

What does this mean: "...Some checking of content and sources should be done before the redirecting is reverted." (relating to the Tokai Arboretum link). What still needs to be checked? And why can you not just do it?

Arebelo (talk) 08:35, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Arebelo, Tony rebelo, Justlettersandnumbers and Huon, I think this can be fixed. What we have here is a failure to communicate. Not with any bad faith, but due to lack of understanding of how Wikipedia works. I will have to do a bit of off-wiki research first, so my request is to sit back and relax for a while. Ping me for any urgent communication, but I will also be watching this page. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:57, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Arebelo, Tony rebelo, Justlettersandnumbers and Huon, After looking into it, I am confident that this can be fixed. I will assist where I can to reduce misunderstanding, but work can only proceed once the article is unblanked. I am not well versed in the procedures of copyright investigations, so would appreciate further input from Justlettersandnumbers and Huon when things get moving again. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Arebelo, I suggest that you put a simple statement on you user page explaining your connection, if any, to the Tokai Park and Arboretum. You do not have to reveal your real life identity, and we may not ask you to, but you may if you want to. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote a lengthy reply to Arebelo's comment above but ultimately thought better of it and just put it in my personal sandbox. Arebelo, if you'd prefer to read it I'll gladly post it here; otherwise I'll leave this conversation to Peter (Southwood) and keep my comments to a minimum.

The blanking note on Tokai Park says, "Do not restore or edit the blanked content on this page until the issue is resolved by an administrator, copyright clerk or OTRS agent." The source code is still available either via the page history or by editing the page. The blanking note also says: "Otherwise, you may write a new article without copyright-infringing material. [...] Your rewrite should be placed on this page, where it will be available for an administrator or clerk to review it at the end of the listing period. Follow this link to create the temporary subpage." There are some additional instructions that should also be considered; I don't think it's worthwhile to copy-paste all of them here. Huon (talk) 23:02, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WP:COIN discussion

Hi! Given your evident dissatisfaction with the advice you've been given so far, I've started a discussion here in the hope of getting some wider input on any possible COI you may have. You are of course welcome to contribute to it. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:33, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you . I hope it will help us solve the issue. We are working on a new version of both pages now (offline). Perhaps we can put them online at some point, and get your input as to whether it satisfies you/doesn't break any wiki rules? The question is: how to do this? I can no longer access the "Tokai Arboretum" page.Arebelo (talk) 20:12, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]