I am a newbie here and a complete blank to Wikipedia. I want to create a page that my boss wants me to put up for our Museum. I understand the COI, and I have put up a notice in my user page already as per instructions. Hopefully, what I did was right. Florante Apellido Cruz (talk) 22:45, 13 May 2020 (UTC)Dianaa, I was still working on the draft and as guidelines, it was automatically deleted. Of course I copy pasted some info but I was still going to edit it and put it into my own words with references within the day and I thought since I was not yet submitting it for review, then it means that it has yet to appear as a new page.[reply]
Anyway, my question is, does this mean I have to do my drafts first in the Sandbox so I can have more time in editing and fine-tuning everything?
Well the issue is copyright. You can work on things in draft all you want, no need to sandbox it first. But you can never upload copyrighted material. You need to paraphrase and present it in your own words from the get go, because otherwise we are hosting copyrighted material, and we don't want to be liable for that. Hope that helps! If not, leave a note on my talk page or re-add the "help me" template. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓23:59, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Florante Apellido Cruz, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of the pages you created, such as Draft:UPLB Museum of Natural History, may not conform to some of Wikipedia's guidelines, and may not be retained.
There's a page about creating articles you may want to read called Your first article. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the Teahouse, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{help me}} on this page, followed by your question, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few other good links for newcomers:
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.
I notice that you added the template{{good article}} to the article UPLB Museum of Natural History for about one hour. I see no evidence that it was a good article (given how recently the article was created, I doubt it could have passed a good article nomination anyway). It appears that you were just testing the template.
@Brianjd I am sorry for testing the Good Article template on the UPLB Museum of Natural History article. I was researching on how an article becomes nominated and put the template on the article for just a few minutes before deleting it. Anyway, you say that the current version of the article won't pass the review? Can I have your specific thoughts? Many thanks! Florante Apellido Cruz (talk) 21:22, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am not familiar with this article, so I have no opinion about its quality. Perhaps it is good enough for Good Article nomination.
The reason for my comment is that reviews like this normally take time, as we need to make sure everyone has a chance to discuss them thoroughly. And this article is very recent. So I think there has not been enough time for the community to review it. Brianjd (talk) 02:29, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt that it would pass a Good Article nomination in its current state, because overall it appears to be too biased in favour of the museum. There are other potential issues, like the excessive number of images. I like the long list of citations (perhaps too long), which appears to include both journal articles and other news sources. However, all of this is just my opinion; we need more editors to look at the article before we can really judge its quality.
This is not a criticism of what you have done so far. It’s just that Good Articles need to meet high standards, and it takes time and a community effort to get there.
I’ll see what I can improve in your article, but remember that I am just returning from a long break myself, and there are places you can ask for help from more experienced editors. Brianjd (talk) 03:08, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have just started a discussion on the article’s talk page. Hopefully it is the first of many. Please monitor that page and respond to questions there. Brianjd (talk) 03:20, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I note that material apparently copied from the museum’s website has been deleted for copyright reasons. You were told that you would have to paraphrase this material before adding it to Wikipedia.
To clarify, this does not apply if the material has been released under a suitable licence. Because you apparently represent the museum, perhaps you could arrange for material on the museum’s website to be released under an suitable licence. Then you would be allowed to copy it to Wikipedia without rewording it, provided that it complies with other Wikipedia policies. Brianjd (talk) 13:39, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Brianjd Thank you for this information. Actually, I am the webmaster of the Museum website and most of the content there were original articles of mine, that is why I thought of at first copying some of the texts in initially making the Wikipedia article as I moved on to learn more how to use the system (It is a steep learning curve, I admit. I will look into your suggestion of having the information released in our official website have that suitable license so there would be no conflict with Wikipedia. I am grateful for your insights Florante Apellido Cruz (talk) 21:30, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Great! With regards to copyright, make sure you carefully read the page I linked to above. With regards to other Wikipedia policies, and any other issues that might arise, make sure you discuss this on the article’s talk page. You can discuss copyright issues there too. This is especially important given your conflict of interest. Brianjd (talk) 02:55, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't add copyright text from any source to Wikipedia. It's a violation of our copyright policy to do so.— Diannaa (talk) 13:34, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If your comment is to be read literally: I linked to a policy above, and that policy doesn’t seem to support your comment. Indeed, your comment seems to contradict the notice that you yourself left for this user above.
I did some backtracking and I saw that Diannaa recently did some deletions to the UPLB Museum of Natural History article because of copyright reasons. Is that what is being referred to? May I explain? In scientific writing, I was trained that it is okay to copy some text from a source but with citations. That was the process I think I did there. I have copied in a phrase or so, highlighted it, clicked on the citation tool, and put in the necessary details. If the Wikipedia policy does not allow that, then I will go over the text of the article again and again and put revisions. Thank you for the comments.--Florante Apellido Cruz (talk) 21:23, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia has a very strict copyright policy, stricter in some ways than copyright law itself, because our fair use policy does not allow us to copy material from copyright sources when there's a freely licensed alternative available. In this case the freely licensed material is prose that we write ourselves. Alternatively, if the copyright holder wishes to release the material under a compatible license, please see WP:Donating copyrighted materials for an explanation of how to do it. There's a sample permission email at WP:Consent.— Diannaa (talk) 22:26, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Now you’ve seen the history page, you would have seen how my edits got struck out as well. This is obviously very disappointing. I won’t be doing any more major edits until this is resolved. I’m afraid that this might require the whole article to be rewritten. Brianjd (talk) 00:20, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Brianjd I hope this is an issue only with the text. The images I have uploaded to Commons are (1) all owned by the Museum and its staff (researchers, extension personnel, administrative staff and volunteers) or (2) provided by museum researchers which published them in open-access journals which provide appropriate commons license. Florante Apellido Cruz (talk) 01:00, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Brianjd: I am that user. This is too all complicated for me. I would rather request that my simple intention to publish photos which I and my colleagues took as people of the museum be negated. I would be amenable for the editors to all delete all my contributions both in Wikipedia and Wikimedia. If my intended contribution also to Wikipedia will become a waste of everybody's time, I am also amenable to a deletion of that entry Florante Apellido Cruz (talk) 12:36, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
