User talk:Lynnbwilsoniii

Welcome, Lynnbwilsoniii!

Hello, Lynnbwilsoniii, and welcome to Wikipedia! I'm Mr. Stradivarius, one of the thousands of editors here at Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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— Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 23:57, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly unfree File:Wind publication list 1996.pdf

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Wind publication list 1996.pdf, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Eeekster (talk) 23:55, 3 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Lynnbwilsoniii, I saw your post on the dispute resolution noticeboard and thought I should comment here. I'm sorry that your files got deleted, and I can understand your frustration. The system here at Wikipedia can be a bit bureaucratic sometimes, and it looks like you have got caught in the bureaucracy trap! Your biggest problem here is that you appear to have said that you were the creator of the works that you uploaded, but that in fact the works were made by someone else. This made the big Wikipedia machine crank into action, with the result that your files were tagged for deletion for having the wrong license. The solution here is to go through all the files and add the correct copyright information, and then all should be ok. Let me know if you have any questions. — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 00:04, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. You can find the details of what you have to do at Wikipedia:File copyright tags and Wikipedia:Image use policy. Also, you might want to consider uploading your files at Wikimedia Commons, where they can be used by any Wikimedia wiki. Finally, if your files are simply pdfs of text, you might want to consider simply adding them to the relevant articles as text, assuming that the addition complies with Wikipedia's content policies. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 01:42, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Now I am confused. I created those PDF files, not someone else. I compiled a list of bibliographic information that is open source and free to anyone with internet. So how were these files created by someone else?

P.S. The files are 5-20 pages long which would make the wikipedia entry unneccessarily long an obscure the purpose of the page. So I chose to use PDF files for anyone interested in looking up any relevant publications. Any thoughts? --Lynnbwilsoniii (talk) 13:15, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've taken a long look at this and think that I can offer a solution. The real answer comes in this discussion between you and Eeekster. These documents are copies of US government documents which have been published on a US government (NASA) website here. Pursuant to this Wikipedia policy those documents are considered to be in the public domain and not copyrighted, a conclusion supported by the NASA website copyright page. The error that you made is that you claimed them to be your own work, which is harder to prove for Wikipedia purposes, rather than claiming them to be US Government documents. (It's also not legally correct. By claiming that they're your work, you are in effect claiming that you hold the copyright on them, when in fact there is no copyright on them because you created them as part of your duties as a US Government employee which, under Federal law causes them to be part of the public domain.) You should go back and correct the licensing on the file pages by replacing the {{self|cc-zero}} tag with a {{PD-USGov}} tag and a link to http://wind.nasa.gov/bibliographies.php to prevent this from happening in the future to those files, since they can be re-reviewed for copyright at any time in the future. (I've already done File:Wind_publication_list_1997.pdf for you so you can see one way to do it.) You can also repost the 1996 list with this clarified licensing and there shouldn't be a problem. I hope this helps. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) | DR goes to Wikimania! 18:28, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, that makes sense now. I apologize for my confusion and will update the file copyrights accordingly. Thank you for the clarification. --Lynnbwilsoniii (talk) 19:15, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing; just because their copyright status allows them to be included does not mean that they should be and I've never seen it done the way you are doing it. I think it would be more common and less objectionable simply to link to the NASA page that lists them all. While neither Wikipedia:Do not include the full text of lengthy primary sources nor WP:NOTREPOSITORY quite prohibits doing it the way you are, both of them come close. Don't be surprised if someone comes along and objects or removes them or converts them to one or more exterior links. Just so you know... Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) | DR goes to Wikimania! 19:29, 23 March 2012 (UTC) PS: By "included" I mean included in the WIND (spacecraft) article; sorry I didn't make that clear. — TM 19:52, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]