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West Bengal Civil Service

Hello Moonriddengirl,
If you have some time, could you please check copyvio of this article West Bengali Civil Service? I have a strong hunch that a good part of the site is affected with copyright violation issue! --Tito Dutta (contact) 09:52, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I have a hunch you're right. I'm always a little amazed that other editors don't just revert such changes. :) Not only were they obviously copy-pasted, but they weren't remotely encyclopedic. I've rev deleted the heaviest pasting - I easily found web duplicates that predated it - but not the first influx, which was briefer. I restored the last encyclopedic version that existed before people began overwriting it with the syllabus and scheme. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:43, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

CCI update

--Wizardman 17:05, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Woohoo! :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:02, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Quick question

Do you see a copyvio issue with using a line from a poem here. Thanks! GabeMc (talk|contribs) 00:01, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, I don't think it's a copyvio issue (I suspect it would clear fair use), but I suspect it may be an issue under WP:NFC. It seems to be being used decoratively, pretty much - not for any critical purpose whatsoever. I myself would not do it, unless it's the subject of sourced commentary. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:08, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the speedy reply. Do you think the adjacent paragraph pertaining to Burdon's finding the poem and assuming it was a suicide note qualifies as sourced commentary? GabeMc (talk|contribs) 00:22, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh! Yes, I do. Sorry; I don't know how I missed that. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:27, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
No worries! Thanks for your much respected input! GabeMc (talk|contribs) 01:14, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Patricia Crone

I am writing to you as a person who can be a moderator or help resolve the issues I have with GorgeCustersSabre who seems to be undoing my edits and also that of others who make any criticism of Patricia Crone in the article of this academic and author even when the material is sourced from a 60+ page critique of her book and work by scholar I mention in my edits and provided in the references given. Mhakcm (talk) 00:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I'm traveling and would not have time to assist here even if it were an area in which I regularly work. As you know from our earlier discussion, I generally work with copyright question. I would really encourage you to seek one of the methods recommended at dispute resolution for resolving such conflicts.
That said, I have to agree with the removal of the section at least as it was written. It isn't neutral and doesn't conform to WP:BLP for us to say stuff like, "Crone, has been criticised for her writings as she raises clever questions, but answers them in a misleading manner. Most of the time she uses documented and pseudo-logic in order to prove the opposite of what has already been proven to be correct. Utilising a technique to pass an illogical issue and to make readers swallow it by beginning with an assumption which looks logical and persuasive, but is in fact essentially void." It implies that the criticism has a factual rather than subjective basis. Criticism must be presented as it is - as the opinion of the individual who is issuing it. So, one might say, "Amaal Muhammad Al-Roubi has criticized Crone for what he characterizes as.....". That assumes, of course, that Al-Roubi is a reliable source and that including his criticism is not undue weight to one view. I'm not familiar with him or really with the subject of the article. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:45, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Content copied from Wikia

Moonriddengirl, I just had the following conversation with Sarek of Vulcan regarding the article List of Person of Interest characters, which is substantively copied from the Wikia site Pedia of Interest, and he referred me to you for a second opinion. As I noted, in addition to wholesale cut-and-past of significant quantities of content, the lack of oversight such as required here renders much of what's being copied potentially problematic; the format for sourcing to individual episodes also needs major work. I'm not sure whether listing the Wikia as Sarek suggests is sufficient to solve whatever copyright problems exist, as can be done Wikipedia-to-Wikia, or what, if anything, might be the appropriate course of action. As I noted, the editor creating the article seems young and lacks understanding of some very basic Wikipedia practices, despite having 11K edits since 2006, so I want to proceed with care given I lack anything like the necessary depth of understanding of how CC-BY-SA copyright works. Any insight you can offer will be appreciated, lest I blunder in and create a major incident. Hope you enjoyed your time away! --Drmargi (talk) 13:51, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) Listing the Wikia is sufficient for the copyright concerns, so long as it's done properly. Since the site is CC-By-SA compatible but not GFDL, it is absolutely imperative that we make note of this to avoid our reusers inadvertently infringing. Our policies promise co-license, unless we note otherwise. The template to use is {{CCBYSASource}}. It's a clunky template, unfortunately. :/ Please make sure the user is aware that this kind of attribution is required. You can point him to Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Sources under copyleft. In terms of quality, that's a different matter...but honestly unlikely to vary too much from the quality of what we get here. :/ My biggest concern would be making sure that the content placed on Wikia was not itself copied from somewhere else, because copyright violations run rampant in television related articles. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:51, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, Moonriddengirl! I'll direct the editor, and read up myself. I'm unsure where to place the template, but I'm sure a good read will solve that. That's a valid concern regarding copying of character information to the Wikia from external sources; CBS doesn't have much, but I'll check it and TV.com at least, since they seem to be the favored first ports of call along with the IMDB for most folks. Most of what's there, as I'm sure you saw, is just not cohesive, because it's been added episode-by-episode, and is ridden with interpretation/speculation, but at least it's sourced to the episode. I wanted to be sure we're on solid footing with the copyright issues before investing any time in revisions. At least the articles on the two lead characters are clean; I wrote those. Thank you! --Drmargi (talk) 15:47, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Zinga Goshty

Hi! I was searching for this article and saw that you deleted the page on January 14, 2013 because of some copyvio! I want to recreate the article but can't find enough reliable sources! I think the deleted page had some sources! Can you please put that article on the my userdraft User:Kmzayeem/Zinga Goshty?? --Zayeem (talk) 15:29, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I'm afraid I cannot; we are not allowed to restore copyright violations even in user spaces. However, I've checked, and the only source offered for the article was the official site - not a reliable source in use. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:12, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Alright, thanks for your assistance! --Zayeem (talk) 16:25, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Question about an AfC

Looking at [1] it says "Published on February 01, 2013 07:23 • 2 views" but some of the text appears at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Emily Hunter which was created 4 days later. Have I missed something? (There's some clear COI here but as it's an AfC I evidently can't tag it). Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 15:33, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

It's probably the same person. Since we can't use it without verifying that, I've removed the content and left a note of explanation to the contributor. I also cautioned her about COI guidelines. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:11, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm not sure if it's the same person - on the other hand, the other editor, Ecohuntress (talk · contribs) - every edit of hers seems COI. Dougweller (talk) 16:44, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 March 2013

Proposed decision for Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )

Hi Moonriddengirl! You are probably aware about the proposed decision for this, but as it might interest you, I noticed that one of the proposals at ArbCom relates to CCI. I glanced that way and was a bit concerned about the idea of defining how large a quote constitutes fair use, but then realised that there's also an additional request for community discussion about how CCIs can be more effectively handled. Anyway, I thought that it might be worth mentioning, in case it was relevant. - Bilby (talk) 00:59, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

!? It is absolutely impossible to define how large a quotation constitutes a copyright issue. This is why the US Copyright office says, in no uncertain terms, "There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission." Risker's note there is a relief. :) It would be great to have a more efficient replacement for CCI, but so far as I can see the one thing we lack is manpower. :/ Well, unless the community wants to start invoking that "If contributors have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation, it may be assumed without further evidence that all of their major contributions are copyright violations, and they may be removed indiscriminately" clause in WP:CV. I've seldom been comfortable going there. :( --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:59, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm stymied, and looking for suggestions from MRG and TPS

I'm looking at Trap shooting. Sure enough, there are words in the marked section exactly matching this site. However, the addition was made to Wikipedia in 2006.

The editor has only ten edits, the last of which is in 2006 so not going to bother contacting the editor.

With a date of 2006, I have to consider reverse copying. I tried Wayback, but that page has only one capture, in 2012.

I thought I would be clever and check Whois, thinking that if the site was established after 2006, we are done, and it is a reverse copy. However, the site was registered in 2004.

I'm now exploring Wayback for the main site, and see that the site had content in, say 2008, and I don't see a link to the "trap" page, but that doesn't feel definitive.

I'm leaning toward think it is a reverse copy, although I'm concerned about a brand-new editor writing that material, and wonder if there is another, original source. I thought this looked promising, but that borrowed from Wikipedia.

Any thoughts on what to do next?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:34, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Sphilbrick. :) I think you have good instincts. What I do at this stage is go edit by edit and look for changes to the content. If those changes make our article more like the external site, than the odds that we have a backwards copy rises. Here are some of the significant edits I find: addition of the word "behind" makes copy-paste unlikely; so does typo correction here. While it's nice to have really dramatic changes as proof, those two are enough for me to feel like we can eliminate the straight copy-paste. I would recommend putting the {{backwardscopy}} template on the page with an explanation for why it seems likely. I'd be happy to do it, if you would prefer. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:52, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Ah, I've seen you make that point before, but I hadn't mentally added it to my list of tools. I hope I now have. I added the template, and the entry at CP --SPhilbrick(Talk) 14:08, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Copvio tag deleted by an IP user

Good afternoon! Thank your for taking care of the copyright violations of two Brunei articles! However, it seems, that an IP user bluntly deleted the appropriate copvio tag of Brunei-Muara District. It was also notified on the the users homepage. Could you be so kind and look into that too as the copyright violations is still there? Cheers, --Cccefalon (talk • contribs) 12:21, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, you're right! I thought he had removed the content, since the section header was gone. I've removed it; when it's a small section, like that, you're welcome to remove it, too. :) While admins have to delete pages and I typically will revdelete extensive issues, it's not necessary for a paragraph or two. Thanks for finding that issue, by the way, and checking the other edits of the contributor! He obviously had a problem with that. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:31, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, after I detected the first copvio, I crosschecked the user and - Hélas! - it turned out, that a big part of his contributions relied on copy and paste. Unfortunately as a normal user, I cannot permanently hide copyright infringements, this is why I prefer to make an annotation for admin users. Thanks again, cheers, --Cccefalon (talk • contribs) 15:04, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 March 2013

Article notability notification

Hello. This message is to inform you that an article that you wrote recently, The Atlantis Revelation, has been tagged with a notability notice. This means that it may not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Please note that articles which do not meet these criteria may be merged, redirected, or deleted. Please consider adding reliable, secondary sources to the article in order to establish the topic's notability. You may find the following links useful when searching for sources: "The Atlantis Revelation" – news · books · scholar · JSTOR · free images. Thank you for editing Wikipedia! VoxelBot 23:26, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

CCI question - prompted by recent Arb case

AGK made a comment at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Richard_Arthur_Norton_(1958-_)/Proposed_decision#Richard_Arthur_Norton_.281958-_.29.27s_copyright_historyRAN Arbcom that didn't match my, possibly incorrect, understanding.

I do not think the comment is crucial to the decision, so there is no urgency, but I want to make sure whether my understanding is correct.

The comment: On the face of it, CCI is less a dispute resolution process and more a method of building evidence for suspicions of widespread copyright abuse.

While accurate, I think it is incomplete, and may have led to some initial confusion about why some CCIs are open so long.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that we use the term CCI to cover two (overlapping) processes:

  1. Investigation to determine whether an editor has widespread copyright issues, the result of which is a decision to either review selected contributions, or all (non-trivial)contributions
  2. Cleanup phase (of either identified contributions, or all contributions)

The time it take for the investigation is relatively short, days or weeks, while the cleanup phase, unfortunately is much longer, covering months and years.

I do not propose making any changes to process, but if we were to start over, we might have delineated a CCI (investigation) and CCC(Copyright contributor cleanup, a term I just made up), and closed the CCI when the investigation phase is completed, then open the CCC for the cleanup process. Again, I do not propose this bureaucracy at this time, but at least one arb seemed to infer that because the investigation was still open after all this time, it meant something. In fact, it simply meant that we use the same three letters for both aspects.

I also see some discussion about whether RAN should be required to assist in the cleanup.

While I strongly feel that it would be nice if any such editor asked how they could help, and pitched in enthusiastically, I am very uncomfortable telling any volunteer they MUST affirmatively do anything. I have no problem telling them in no uncertain terms that they are not allowed to do some thing, but forcing volunteers to do anything eviscerates the meaning of the word.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I think AGK is fundamentally misunderstanding CCI. The way we envisioned CCI when we started writing it up, after hosting manual lists at WP:CCP, was simply as a method to determine, first, whether a user had enough issues that a comprehensive investigation of all of his contributions was needed, and if yes, to provide the systematic list of the contributions to check. Dispute resolution is not part of CCI. Your analysis of the two processes we use is spot on, but frankly, separating them into two distinct entities serves no practical purpose but has a high potential to fuel additional, and unnecessary drama.
The part about method to build evidence of suspicions (WTF does that even mean) seems like the short-sighted perspective you get from those arbitrators who essentially only use bans as remedies - after all, someone will eventually clean up, so why bother thinking about it? And if nobody does, it will make a full site ban much easier next time the same contributor ends up at arbitration. "Arbcom does not rule on content" to the letter. I'm glad some of the committee seem cut from a different cloth.
I think that unless we enforce policy to the strictest letter of the rule and simply indef anyone who was found to be cause of opening a formal investigation (then go for nuclear G5 / G12 / rollback cleanup), the way it is being run, while far from perfect, offers the best chance to involve the people who may know best where to look for their copy / pastes because they put it in there in the first place. When the preliminary check to decide whether to investigate all contribs gets separated out, it becomes too easy to go for full-blown outrage on the drama board, which will scare the contributor away. Flying Toaster or Rlevse are good examples of that. Had the factual check been carried out without turning the dial to 11, they might have stuck around and helped with most of the cleanup. To wit, the latter eventually did, a good year or more after the CCI was opened. What a waste of time.
A separate investigation becomes too much of a name and shame thing. And this concludes my monthly rant at something, anything, on wikipedia. MLauba (Talk) 22:41, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
LOL! (at the monthly rant comment :))
Of course, MLauba is absolutely correct about the history of CCI, and I really have to agree with him about the imperative to keep drama down. It's painful for people to go through this process, in my observation, and most people who go through it weren't doing anything intentionally wrong. They simply didn't understand the way things are done (and this is true, in most cases, whether the issue is a potentially borderline one of close paraphrasing or the clearcut copy-paste...a look at the history of CCI shows that we get many cases of people from cultures that do not emphasize copyright). The last thing I ever wanted was to shame those people who were simply doing what they thought was right...the goal is simply to correct the habits and clean up any issues that may have been inadvertently caused. (I'm not motivated by a desire to shame the ones who were simply doing what they wanted even though they knew better...but my motivation to gentle the process is not such a driving factor there. :/ Generally, those people are gone by the time they get to CCI.)
The problem, of course, is that when people feel pain, they have an instinctive response to react defensively. And when people see their friends go through pain, they have an instinctive response to protect. Plenty of people don't go that route, of course, but when people do, the drama quotient soars. A simple, "Oh, this is wrong; we need to fix this" becomes a tug-of-war between "fault/no fault" as participants become increasingly hyperbolic in efforts to defend the contributor or to defend themselves as accusers by proving that the problem is serious. If we can keep everybody focused away from questions of blame and on the matter of corrective procedures, we seem to avoid that. That's why CCI was never envisioned to be a disciplinary process. Most people of good faith can and will learn to meet community standards re: copyright, and I think they're far more likely to do so if they are not torn apart in the process.
I am a bit worried that separating out CCI into a separate process for evaluation would encourage more drama. Right now, CCI is populated by a small, dedicated group of people who cleanup. Last time I looked, many of the evaluations were done by the incomparable User:MER-C, who I have always found to have a laser precision on the core issue - is cleanup needed or not? If the "evaluation of need" process were separated out, I think we'd have to do it very carefully...more like WP:RPP or WP:3RR (as I imagine it works) than WP:ANI. Because I agree whole-heartedly that incidents like with Rlevse must be avoided. Insofar as humanly possible, we need to do all we can to avoid these things turning into battles over the value of the contributor. Except where problems are persistent after clear explanation, the value of the contributor should always be fundamentally assumed. (I'm just getting rambly here, so I think I'll shut up now. What I'm inarticulately trying to get at is that these things go pear-shaped when people get hostile, supporters or detractors. The only way I've ever seen us achieve the best possible outcome - keep a contributor, fix the problem - is if we're all supportive of each other and the work.)
I agree with you, of course, SPhilbrick, on enforced participation. Most of those cases were the contributor has assisted have gone well, but anybody who has done significant time at WP:CP will probably have realized that salvaging a copyright problem is a whole lot harder than avoiding creating one to begin with. I've seen many a derivative work offered up as a rewrite, even from different editors who try to do a line-by-line salvage rather than a major restructuring. Some contributors seem to do better simply by starting from scratch, with new content. (And I have seen contributors do well that way...without naming names, one of my earliest serial issue experiences was with a guy who put a ton of time into learning how to properly paraphrase. Proud of him.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:23, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
If both MLauba and MRG both thought I was proposing a separation, I can only conclude that I chose my words carelessly.
I had observed an arb making a comment, which I won't bother to track down, but the sense of it was surprise that an Investigation phase was taking so long. I confess I have thought of the CCI as the dispositive aspect, not the investigation phase, so I started to write that they had it all wrong. Luckily, I actually read CCI, and see that it does encompass both aspects. I don't mean to suggest that we should do a clean separation, I just wanted to make sure my understanding is correct that it does include both aspects, so it can take years to settle, but that doesn't mean it took years to conclude that there was a problem. As I was thinking it through, it may well have occurred to me that one should consider a separation, and maybe that guided my wording, but I agree separating the two aspects will led to more problems that it is worth.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
No, you chose your words carefully - I probably should have made clearer that I was trying to shed light on how the process ended up the way it was and my own reasoning why I consider it sounder than separate processes. And beyond the speculative thoughts, I think you raise a good issue - is the first sentence (and the whole lede) of WP:CCI clear enough to describe the purpose of the page and the process?
Obviously as a distant co-drafter of the whole thing, it is to my mind, but I remember some exchanges with MRG when we were working on it where the concepts we had formed in our own minds weren't exactly identical.
So questioning how it reads to others is always sound.
Of course, there's always the possibility that some would simply talk of it without ever having read anything about it (and I cannot rule out this possibility for the comment that sparked this present discussion). For these, the question becomes whether the name of the process, Contributor Copyright Investigation, adequately conveys what it is. I believe based on this discussion that it may be time to think about renaming it in a manner that makes clear that the real effort is on investigation of the contributions (rather than contributors) and subsequent cleanup. Perhaps simply renaming it to Contribution Copyright Investigation could do the trick. Otherwise, perhaps sprinkling in "large-scale" or "multiple" or something similar would do the trick better. Thoughts? MLauba (Talk) 21:48, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
I myself wasn't reacting to a suggestion from you that we divide but to the ideas in the notes. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:10, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

personal

Hello, the random nature of the universe has caused me to contact you. Hope you don't mind. I am seeking complex geometry for geodesic domes of high granularity and meandered into this space, discovering the complexity of wiki world for the first time. Why you? I liked your username and your self-description that "I have what some describe as a high tolerance for pointless activity." Good luck with your migraines. Hope to hear back, Ciao. 99.253.157.99 (talk) 10:39, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. :) The migraines are going rather well, courtesy of a medication regime that (knock wood) is working at the moment. Good luck with your quest! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:13, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Book reviews

Is this [2] copyrighted? If so the article on the book The Zookeeper's Wife is a copy paste.Volunteer Marek 17:43, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Yes, it's copyright, and basically copied by that website from the publisher's blurb, also copyright. I've removed the material, re-written as a viable stub, and added a reference. I'm off now to add {{Cclean}} to the talk page. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 19:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
PS Checked the history, the copyvio wasn't by the creator of the article. It was added later by an IP [3]. Voceditenore (talk) 06:31, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Thank you, Marek and Voceditenore. :) Plot descriptions are a constant problem, I'm afraid. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:12, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka

Hello, hows it going? Could you have a look at Ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. This article has a lot of problems with it, as well as it being a sensitive issue. Not much of it makes sense nor is there a proper structure to the article. I don't recommend deleting it right away as it is an important topic but can you clean it up as much as possible? Thanks--Blackknight12 (talk) 01:05, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I really don't have time. :/ Most of my volunteer time these days is dedicated to cleaning up copyright. There are a ton of articles I'd love to be writing myself, but that works feels too important and too neglected for me to really feel comfortable focusing on anything else right now. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:09, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Yeah I understand you, my days here lately have been taken up by cleaning up wikipedia as well. Is there someone you could recommend just out of curiosity?--Blackknight12 (talk) 09:47, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Hmm. I'm afraid I'm not coming up with anybody who really focuses in that area. :/ Is there anyone else at Wikipedia:WikiProject Sri Lanka who might be good with it? You might try handing out barnstars to people who will help at the Wikipedia:Reward board - I'm not sure how well that board actually functions, but it might appeal to people who like a challenge. Otherwise, I might recommend picking somebody who is active at WP:GA or who has a bunch good articles and appealing to them directly, to see if they have time and interest. Some of them, of course, are focused in certain areas, but I bet there are some out there who just like producing quality content. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:17, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

POI characters thanks, and a cupcake for you!

You deserve a treat for your always available helping hand! Drmargi (talk) 19:23, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Moonriddengirl, just a word of thanks for the help on List of Person of Interest characters. You're right about the template being clunky, but I managed to get the article tagged and the editor notified once I had sufficient time to fiddle with it all. I've directed the offending editor to the appropriate document, as you suggested, but I'm almost as big a neophyte as he in dealing with it all, so I may holler for help again. Meanwhile, a small token of thanks! --Drmargi (talk) 19:24, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:11, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

USY Summer Programs

Hi, My name is Max Retik and I am an International General Board Member of the United Synogague Youth (USY). I'm a communications and publicity chair on the board here. (Proof of my position) I see that recently you deleted a large section on the 'USY' wikipedia page about 'Summer Programs.' In fact, after your edit, the entire article, including all links and bullet points, is gone. The wikipedia article under question relays a great deal of information about the programs to people who are wondering, and the fact that it is all now gone cannot be good in terms of: 1) People interested in learning more about the programs and 2) People looking to learn more about the organization, as the summer programs are very important to us.

You stated that the information was 'obviously not understood' because it was copied and pasted from the website. Well, not exactly true, you see. We just found that the best way to express the information was how it was worded on the site, and therefore suitable for the wikiperia entry as well.

In addition, I work on videos for the organization, which we're all very proud of (not to toot my own horn.) The links to my videos were also taken down off the entire page. I give full permission for these to be published and we wish for them to be restored as well as the other content.

I'd be more than happy to provide proof for anything that you thought was unfit for the page.

Otherwise, I'd really like to discuss the speedy restoration of the page to it's state on March 14th, 2013.

On behalf of the United Synogague Youth 2013 International General Board, I thank you, and look forward to your fast reply so that we can get this fixed. Thanks! -Publicity and Communications

96.242.50.9 (talk) 21:01, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

EDIT: The organization does grant permission to use all copied text from the website for use on the wikipedia page, to forward and advance the public's understanding of USY and all programs thereof.

96.242.50.9 (talk) 21:13, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Max Retik (talk) 21:20, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

It is often not the case that text developed for website, especially one that is written by people close to the organization, is suitable for an encyclopedia article, where the goal is neutrality and the avoidance of promotional language. However, if that is the case, the text must be licensed for use, as copying or even close paraphrasing without permission is a copyright issue.
If that is the goal, a permission statement needs to be filed with OTRS. See
Donating copyrighted materials
for more details.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:32, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll look into that. I assure you, the material is completely neutral. We just want the information about the programs to be available to people who are curious about them. We're not trying to advertise here. Max Retik (talk) 21:58, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Sphilbrick, and Max, I'm sure that some of the content will be very helpful in updating the article once license is verified. However, some of it is not appropriate for Wikipedia - for instance, claims such as "Whether touring across North America on USY on Wheels or exploring Israel and/or parts of Europe on our various Israel Pilgrimage programs USY has something for everyone!", "Experience the beauty of Shabbat, learn about the power of Tzedakah, and gain inspiration through creative prayer and engaging interactive Jewish learning programs" and "This unusual melding of Jewish education and observance, the personal experience of meeting both Jews and non-Jews while traveling across the country, and the thrill of seeing the historical and exciting sights of North America, adds up to a growing and learning experience which has been unique to USY since 1960." are not really neutral - they are assessing the quality of the programs of USY and essentially promising a certain experience. They may be assessing it accurately, but that's beside the point - our core policy is that critical commentary on our subjects must come from neutral outside observers, and not from the subjects themselves. :) See WP:NPOV and WP:V. Wikipedia exists to neutrally summarize what reliable sources say about subjects. We are not a business resource - people can visit your website for that. The bulk of content in any article should be sourced to something other than its official site - that's why the article carries the tag it has now, asking for secondary and tertiary sources. With the pasted content, I'm afraid that issue is even more extreme. :/ Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources may help. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:51, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Date

They must be misreading the date, although I'm beginning to suspect vandalism...well, if it keeps up. If it does keep up, I'll get it semi-protected. Kinda sad ending for her too.... Dreadstar ☥ 21:02, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. :/ If people had understood her psychosis in the first place, I can't help but wonder if something might have been done to stop it and to make her and his story come out differently. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:41, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Invitation

Hello Moonriddengirl/Archive 51, you are cordially invited to join the initiative Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians. We're a group of editors working to maintain and improve database of those editors who are no longer with us. All of these deceased Wikipedians have changed Wikipedia for the better in some way. Now, it is our turn to pay them tribute and obituaries.

If you know any Wikipedia editor, who is no longer with us, but their name is not included in our list still, please let us know. Visit the project page for more information. Thanks! Tito Dutta (contact) 04:29, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Note: There might be typos or other errors in this invitation. Most probably you are the second editor who is receiving this "template-invitation". --Tito Dutta (contact) 04:29, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I just wanted to respond belatedly to say that I checked the list and that all of my friends who have passed on are listed on it. I am still grieving for one of them, and it is hard for me to visit the page for that reason, but I think it's a nice thing to do. :( --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:45, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Sockpuppet defense via technology

Hi, FYI: this, then this and now here. I think you are the only one who can make it happen... History2007 (talk) 14:19, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, History. :) I think you probably mean the "work" me and not the volunteer me. But I do have to say that I think you have the wrong impression of working at the WMF. Our engineers have long hours and they do have deadlines, and they work really hard to meet the goals that are set for them by the Board of Trustees, which is at least in part elected by the community. I also know a number of them who go well above and beyond. But if they turn their focus from what they've been tasked to do (like, say, mobile expansion), then they certainly would and should be fired. :) (In the nearly two years I've been at WMF, I've seen a number of people fired...but like most responsible companies, the WMF respects the dignity and privacy of these people and certainly doesn't publicly trounce them.)
I see that since you left this note, Oliver Keyes has followed up with you on your talk page and that there is some discussion about challenges to a bot approach and how they might be overcome. I strongly suspect that the best way to proceed with your ideas is to iron them out with community members and especially checkusers and see if you can come up with an approach that has strong consensus. With a clear and heavy consensus on a good approach, it's a lot easier to present an engineering request to the attention of the WMF and the Board for consideration. There's an alternative path, too, to tasking the WMF to do this directly - you mention giving money to the Cluebot creator. There's multiple forms of grants that might be appropriate. Community review is required, so, again, it would be really helpful to develop and demonstrate strong community consensus for an approach. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:05, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I did get a few responses. But really I can no longer be bothered. I only typed that message on Doug's page because the sock puppet was laughing at everyone and viewing them as Elmer Fudd. And I do feel like Elmer when chasing sock puppets on what I call "snail puppet investigations". They are slow, frustrating and a waste of life with the tools available. Conclusion: Time to give up on them... As on my user page, I have now achieved liberation and no longer slave away 12 hours a day here... So going back on WP:V and talking for ever again will get as much result as when Jorge Stolfi went there a month or two ago. What did he get: zero. What have I ever got on WP:V? zero. As the Pending changes quagmires showed, in the current format for this crowd sourced web site, major decisions are next to impossible because there are so many differing opinions. So, at some point enough is enough... I am not going to push the issue, bu may type more ideas on my own talk page for those who may want to read them. But I will not embark on a long journey to nowhere to change the culture at WMF. If you really want to know, my real frustration started with trying to help the WMF people with the user feed back tool, and dealing with them was just too slow on what I saw as a simple project. I just left it for them to do. And it seems that they are still working on it... But anyway, I am not going to spend more effort on this issue... Let those who like these current tools chase puppets with them... If the tools are antique, users can not be expected to use them. I will just note that I personally find the tools too hard to use to chase all these "Sock Wabbits"... History2007 (talk) 12:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
I can sympathize. I've played whack-a-mole more than once with socks, particularly of serial copyright infringers. :/
Obviously, you point out some significant issues. It is difficult to get change in place with such a large group. This is why I fear RFA reform may never happen. :/ Unfortunately, it still seems to be a reality of our work here...if a frustrating one. I'm not sure the solution to that. I also can understand that the process of working with WMF can seem slow for Wikipedians. It was a hard cultural adjustment for me when I started working with them, after years of living in Wiki time where things can move with lightning speed. I think sometimes it's still a challenge, but it does help keep me humble to know that I occasionally have let things slip myself due to focusing on other tasks. Not that I'm trying to say anything about the specific frustration you encountered, since I don't know the details, but simply to agree that I think it can be frustrating for Wikipedians used to dealing with Wikipedia time to suddenly run against organizational time. (It took me a long time as staff to allow myself not to answer email on Sunday, and sometimes I still do. :D) I think honestly that one of the strengths of crowd-sourcing is always going to be the potential for greater speed. There's less bureaucracy and - when it works well - manpower 24/7. I do believe WMF is better than most organizations at this, and it dos help that we have an international workforce, but there is still organizational...bulk (for lack of a better term) that sometimes gets in the way. Anyway, I'm sorry to hear about your frustrations and hope you can find some area of work that brings back the joy. :) I had sort of hoped to move away from so much focus on copyright so I could get back to at least some article writing, but, alas, the backlog there makes me feel bad. :P --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:59, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
But you know, stepping back a little, maybe this is the nature of crowd sourced environments. After a while there are so many people all trying to point to the "right direction" and all pointing in different directions that decision making on major issues just stops. I became aware of that when I saw the Pending Changes debates... In these cases either some central entity shows leadership, or decision making just grinds to a halt. Time will tell what will happen with this project... Only time will tell, given that it was an experiment that succeeded pretty well for several years (in fact beyond reasonable expectations). My hope would be for leadership from somewhere... So anyway, C'est la vie, but life goes on, of course.
One other item that relates to this, and I should probably mention to you (I said it on WP:V but of course quagmire triumphed) is that compared to 2007, the chance that an article is being watched by a "regular user" has dropped by 75%. Yes, in Jan 2007 articles were 75% more likely to be watched than in Jan 2013. I have the numbers. That is why I think either an "intelligent bot driven future" is accepted at WMF, or quality plummets. There are just not enough people to chase the Wabbits... History2007 (talk) 15:47, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
Anyway, I left my final thoughts on my talk page about a WMF project to investigate "smart bots". But I will end that now and never talk about it again. It is the beginning of spring now, and reminds me of a year ago this time when I suggested to another user to to take it easy on Wikipedia and enjoy the spring. Alas he never got to see the first day of spring. C'est la vie. I think I should stop talking about this before I die myself. So I will leave it in your hands. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 16:54, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that statistic; that's concerning. :/ I don't think the issue is that WMF accepts or does not accept that bots will be increasingly important - I think probably the issue is that a push like this would simply have to be community driven. The WMF is currently committed to other tasks, but is responsive in the long term to community input.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the way the WMF is structured, so apologies if I tell you things you already know, but I know that I was not aware of this at all before I started working there. Please note that this is all off the top of my head, based on my observations and understandings. I take full responsibility for any errors. :)

The engineering team at WMF has long-term goals that are set by the Board, often following some period of public discussion. See meta:Strategy. For several years now, those goals have been defined largely by the five year plan derived through the strategic planning push of 2009 which was Board approved in October 2010. You can read the plan here. Being flexible, Sue stopped to look at the plan and our implementation and began public speculation about a perceived need for a narrowing of focus (here) in October of last year. Notably, she mentioned in that document that engineering is one of our most overburdened departments. There's a billion things that they need to be doing, and not a billion of them to do it. The Board voted to approve that narrowed focus. Under it, engineering is mandated to focus on three things to advance the long-term goals set by the strategy document: (1) visual editor, (2) new editor engagement, and (3) mobile outreach. I believe it's not that Sue and the Board don't think other efforts (like important maintenance tasks) don't matter - I think they are trusting that our smart community (which includes developers such as User:Cobi, who created ClueBot because it was needed and he could) will continue working on these issues and finding and implementing solutions while they are focused on these other goals. Sue's perspective in that document seems to be that WMF doesn't have the resources to do everything and that they can't make significant grounds on the goals that have been prioritized for them if they don't focus the resources they have on meeting those goals.

I understand and respect what you say about leaving this. As I said above, I have been struggling with the responsibility of WP:CP myself (and very grateful for the others who work there, too!). So I'm not coming at this with a "you fix it" message in mind. :) I just hope to help clarify for you or anybody else who doesn't know why engineering is focused on what they are and why it takes community consensus to change that. You could take this to an engineer and convince her that this is the most important thing she should be doing, but she can't stop doing what she's being paid to do to work on it. That directive has to come from higher up, and it is more likely to come from higher up if there is a strong showing that this is a problem that the community can't solve and that it is worth shoving aside some of the other work they're doing and delaying meeting those goals. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:20, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

As I said on my talk spring is here and I will not be spending time debating this. But if you had not see that stat then it is likely most people have not. I will just give you the numbers and leave it at that:
Date (A) Article count (B) All users (C) editors (D) frequent editors
01/01/2002 19,700 333 158 24
01/01/2003 96,500 1,170 504 117
01/01/2004 188,800 4,144 1,500 297
01/01/2005 438,500 16,509 5,906 878
01/01/2006 895,000 58,244 25,317 3,332
01/01/2007 1,560,000 181,420 48,568 4,732
01/01/2008 2,153,000 316,811 44,901 4,543
01/01/2009 2,679,000 432,451 42,637 4,347
01/01/2010 3,144,000 538,830 39,907 4,060
01/01/2011 3,518,000 633,576 37,564 3,802
01/01/2012 3,835,000 725,452 34,940 3,560
01/01/2013 4,133,445 803,358 33,469 3,414
The calculation is simple:
  • In 2007: 48568/1560k = 31.1 editors for every 1,000 articles for midlevel editors
  • In 2013: 33469/4133445= 8.09 editors for every 1,000 articles for midlevel editors
Hence:
  • The Jan 2007/2013 ratio is: 31.1 / 8.09 = 3.84 more midlevel editors/page
  • The March 2007/ Jan 2013 ratio is: 32.1 / 8.09 = 3.96 more midlevel editors/page
So in March 2007 there were approx 4 times more people watching pages than in Jan 2013. You can try the March 2013 numbers yourself next month. That is because the number of midlevel users is now 68% of what it used to be (33469 / 48568 = 68%) and a few million new articles have come in. So there are far less people watching now per article. And as tens of thousands of new articles get added every month, as I joked on my talk page the only solution may be this. And who knows, maybe that one will work now... It may be worth a try.
Anyway, I am going to stop now. But you could verify the numbers and show it to the board. But please be sure they are sitting down when they see it. And thanks for your well thought out answers as usual. History2007 (talk) 16:15, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

text Atelier Van Lieshout

Dear Moonriddengirl,

In response to your message: I am the actual writer of the text, which might circulate on a number of websites. However, if these website's claim to be copyright holders of this text, they are incorrect - I have simply provided them with this text to use, not to claim copyrights on it. I am not in the power, however, to force third parties to place a licence release on their websites.

I hope this resolves the matter.

Best regards,

Milou from RotterdamMiloufromrotterdam (talk) 21:04, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. I've responded at your talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:38, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Dear Moonriddengirl,

Thank you for your feedback, and the advice. I am indeed affiliated with Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL), since I work there as head of PR and PA to the founder. I am fully aware that this is not the ideal background in writing a Wikipedia article, and I would have been more than happy if others had started an article on AVL. However, this was not the case. Considering the fact that AVL is one of the Netherlands most well-known artists, and that we frequently got complaints about the fact that there was no entry on us on Wikipedia, I felt it was necessary to create one ourselves - which could then hopefully be extended by others.

I have no intention for it to be to overtly 'promotional' or positive'. I already looked at the text with the idea to make it more 'neutral', so the extra advice on that is very welcome. I will definitely take them into account.

Regarding the copyright business: the official website for AVL is: www.ateliervanlieshout.com, but it doesn't feature a list of employees, so that won't link me to the company, I'm afraid. Do you have any other suggestions? On wikipedia, I'm wrinting under a pen name, to make matters more complicated. Any suggestions?

best

Milou from Rotterdam Miloufromrotterdam (talk) 16:56, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I was just wondering: might it not be beter to rewrite the text - again? That way, I could address both the copyright issues as well as the neutrality issues. However, before starting out with this, it would be useful for me to know how much the text has to differ from the original text? I've already rewritten it once, and apparently this was not enough to address the copyright issues. So how big would the changes need to be?

Please let me know,

Best regards

Miloufromrotterdam Miloufromrotterdam (talk) 12:59, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Aircraft

There is a deletion discussion for File:Redacted hot air balloon festival.jpg. I don't know if the answer is cut and dried and you or WMF legal may wish to weigh in on whether they are sculptures, derivatives of 2D copyright, utilitarian, de min, etc. We may need help in Spanish with the Mexican FOP law as well. File:Metlife snoopy two blimp.jpg is another example. Talk page stalkers are welcome too.--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:07, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. The Wikimedia Foundation legal team cannot advise on specific images, although they do sometimes provide general information on copyright issues. Their most recent input regarding the copyright status of costumes is found here. I note from your comments there that you may not be fully informed of who people are and what they do at WMF. :) User:Philippe is not a "legal type" at Wikipedia - he is Director of Community Advocacy and is not an attorney. He works closely with the attorney, is wicked smart and undoubtedly has a fair bit of experience with copyright matters at this point, but this is not his specialty. User:Hahnw is a legal intern who is no longer with us. You can see the full list of staff at a given time at wmf:Staff and contractors, including what everyone does. At this moment, indefinitely employed attorneys include Geoff Brigham, Luis Villa, Michelle Paulson, and Stephen LaPorte. We have several contract attorneys and several legal interns (who generally do the research on these questions) and a gorgeous mascot. :) If you have a general question related to copyright that you think is of sufficient impact to necessitate consultation with the legal team, I'm happy to carry that to them - that's part of my job - however, it may not come back before the closure of a deletion debate. Just let me know. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:50, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Resolved

. I will contact Philippe with links to an image or two and see if the legal team wants to comment on them.--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:15, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Moved to

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Copyright_rules_by_subject_matter#Balloons.2C_Batmobile.2C_2nd_Life to centralize the discussion.--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:41, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay. Since this conversation really falls more into my work area, I won't take part in that discussion personally. Let me know if you have any general questions for the legal team, again keeping in mind that they cannot give legal advice and may not weigh in on specific examples. I'm happy to ask if they can assign an intern to look into it. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
I brought up a few points in the link above. Do unique hot air balloons qualify as copyrighed 3D sculptures and need FOP to upload images? Does the court decision making the batmobile design coyrightable affect or images of it? And images taken in Second Life that are 3D creations of real life copyrighted works. We may need new sections in the project page to clarify these issues.--Canoe1967 (talk) 15:12, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

David R. Craig

You handled a copyvio on this article before, could you do so again? It appears the copyvio text has moved to David Craig Biography.Naraht (talk) 18:22, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Wow. done. Thanks for catching that it was back. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:21, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanx.Naraht (talk) 10:23, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 March 2013

Hey MRG. Do you happen to remember this conversation? Would you still have any interest in doing that? :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 10:32, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Since you're the expert, please see here. Is it true that all paid editors count under a "work for hire copyright", where their work is copyrighted to the company or individual they're working for, rather than to the editor themselves, meaning that any material they submit needs to be copyright released by the company or individual directly? If yes, this seems like something that should have been pointed out years ago. SilverserenC 04:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) IANAL, but I believe that current practice would indeed be that paid writing done on behalf of a customer is work for hire unless there's a contract that specifies otherwise. And OTRS agents typically know that (or at least used to when I was one of them). MLauba (Talk) 04:37, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Is there any real copyright issue though in relation to editing Wikipedia? SilverserenC 04:50, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, assuming the content is written from scratch rather than copy /pasted from existing material, I'd say no quite emphatically. The moment he hits save, he licenses it under CC-BY-SA and the GFDL. Now it is possible that the employer would not be aware of this, but I'd posit that is none of our concern - however, if we start getting repeated takedown requests where some companies claim they're repudiating their deal with a paid editor because they weren't made aware of the licensing issues, paid editing will probably become much more difficult for everyone.
If it's copy / pasted from existing company material, WP:PERM applies as per usual. MLauba (Talk) 06:02, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
That's what I thought. Though, a further question. The main reason it's being brought up appears to be because Arturo was asking subject matter experts (essentially, people more informed about the company's history than him) to look over his work and point out changes that needed to be made. Which, presumably, he then looked up sources for, since everything is properly sourced.
So, the question is, does Arturo have the right to release material himself that was contributed to by other people or do you have to get their permission too? And how does this all work when he's a paid editor and those experts are also paid people working for the company?
It seems to me that this shouldn't be that much of an issue, as we have a number of editors that get the input of subject matter experts all the time, like in writing featured articles. I suppose, like you noted, the only problem will be if any of those people who contributed ever show up and demand their contribution is removed. But I suppose that isn't an actual concern unless it actually happens, which isn't likely. SilverserenC 06:44, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Fortunately, ideas and concepts cannot be copyrighted - what counts is the expression of these. If the feedback is given by the SME to the editor internally, I don't think it's Wikipedia's place to worry about how that translates into on-wiki text. If the SMEs interact directly on the talk pages, the same thing as above applies.
What I mean to say is that any salaried editors who creates text on his employer's behalf is basically acting as an authorized agent, regardless of how many other corporate sources he consults when he composes his text. Now for the avoidance of any doubt, if your CREWE (hope I got that right) initiative still exists and you document recommendations, you may probably want to clarify and make sure that both paid editors and their employers are aware that the text they post to Wikipedia is irrevocably licensed under two free licenses and the company will have no recourse to come back 6 months down the line and repudiate what their agent wrote. Just for the avoidance of any doubt. MLauba (Talk) 07:03, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
IMHO, excellent feedback here, MLauba. :) Because I'm found of sources, where I can get them, I'll refer you, Silver, to US Circular 09, Works for Hire. Like MLauba, I am of the opinion that unless content is previously published, we have no need to verify that the editor has permission of the company to post here. If content is previously published, that's a different matter. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:40, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Sorry I did not notice this and actually posted it to Risker Talk page.

In this Elance Ad someone wants a Wikipedia page to be created do not think it has been created.But a line states in the Ad When placing a bid, please advise of your experience in Wikipedia and web2.0.All content will remain copyright of myself. Integrity is a key focus on this job as well. If you successful undertaken this role, there are more pages to upload after this one.One may need to sign into Elance to view the last 2 lines Job ID: 39154940. If you can Send the ad by email. Elance Service Agreement and as per Works for Hire this It states Owner of the Copyright in a Work Made for Hire .If a work is made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is the initial owner of the copyright unless both parties involved have signed a written agreement to the contrary. Most Elance ads ask for wiki pages to be created and the paid editors will be clicking the Save button and not the copyright owner and thus have not agreed to licensing under CC-BY-SA and the GFDL.Can there not be legal dispute over this in the future that they only asked to post in Wikipedia and the paid editor had no authority to release by CC-BY-SA and the GFDL .He is not copyright owner and ahs not clicked the save button or released under WP:ORTS.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 11:00, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

What MLauba was explaining above is that if they are hired to write Wikipedia articles, then they are acting in the scope of their employment - as an agent of the company - when they hit save. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:03, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I almost missed the legal dispute part of the question - I think not really, at least not as concerns us. Legally, WMF is protected by OCILLA. What would happen is that the company would contact the WMF and issue a takedown for the content. WMF would comply, and the material would be taken down. Reusers may be inconvenienced by the need to withdraw publication but are unlikely (imho and ianal) to face suit as they will have acted in good faith in using the content. The person who might be in legal jeopardy is the contributor, although I think it's highly doubtful. The Elance advertiser seems to be a bit...clueless, to be kind. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:08, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I notice that the sentence "All content will remain copyright of myself" doesn't appear in the ELANCE ad (at least in the part I could view). But what the prospective client is explicitly proposing is basically sockpuppetry and involves him disclosing his password to the editor he hires, who then disguises himself as the client when posting the article on Wikipedia:

I'd like a provider to use my existing account on Wikipedia (details will be provided to the successful applicant) to submit a page titled "The Arthritis Solution."

That strikes me as a huge no-no. Voceditenore (talk) 11:50, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, yes. As I understand it, that's reason for block in itself. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Woah. Moonriddengirl, you wrote "What would happen is that the company would contact the WMF and issue a takedown for the content. WMF would comply, and the material would be taken down." This seems quite odd, and I have some questions about this.

  1. Are you saying we would take down the material as a practical matter, to avoid hassle, or that we'd be legally required to?
  2. I assume that this would apply to anyone, not just corporations. Thus I can sign a contract with my brother specifying that he will pay me $1 and all my contribution are work for hire and the copyright devolves to him. Then if I leave the Wikipedia in a huff he can demand that all my 25,000 edits be removed? What am I missing here?
  3. Also, what about if the copyrighted material has become intertwined with other editor's contributions over the years?
  4. Also, you write "Reusers may be inconvenienced by the need to withdraw publication but are unlikely (imho and ianal) to face suit as they will have acted in good faith in using the content". This seems to imply that it is at least possible that Wikipedia material cannot actually be re-used by other entities (unless they have established that none of the material is held under a copyright superseding ours, which would be extremely difficult in practice). This seems a Very Big Deal indeed.

I've always assumed that clicking "Save Page" donates the material, superseding any prior agreements or contracts. If not, this is a huge problem and a potential existential crisis. Herostratus (talk) 04:21, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) I want to be clear that I'm speaking as Moonriddengirl here; I'm not saying anything I wouldn't have said two years ago, before I started working for the WMF. (Well, except for the bit about stuff that happened within the last two years. And all of that is public and still my opinion.) I believe that I am right, but if you want an official statement of any kind, I would need to put on my other hat and be conduit and not font of answer. :D
The Wikimedia Foundation is an online service provider and not a publisher. This is a good thing for us, because if WMF were a publisher then WMF would be responsible for what appears on Wikipedia - it would not be able to permit people to post instantly because it could be sued for libel or copyright infringements that are published on the site. Our functioning depends upon WMF being and remaining an OSP, because OSPs are protected by things like OCILLA. But one of the provisions of OCILLA is the Notice and take down. If an OSP chooses not to comply with a notice and take down, then they lose their protection as an OSP. I'm not going to say that the WMF never gives pushback, because that is demonstrably and publicly untrue. One of my favorite examples is the Tonga DMCA, which is one where the alleged copyright holder withdrew the DMCA takedown after certain facts were pointed out to them. It's one of my favorites, because I investigated that article and discovered those facts and because as long as I've been doing copyright work my favorite moments are those where I am able to keep the content because it's not a problem. :) (I often abbreviate "DMCA takedown request" as DMCA but am trying to avoid that here to prevent confusion. If I slip up, please keep that in mind. :)) When I said "WMF would comply", I was speaking very generally to the question of our legal jeopardy. Compliance is required by law unless the WMF chooses to take legal responsibility, but it is reasoned and not automatic. For a few other DMCAs takedown requests to consider, there's this one, which was filed by the uploader of the material and with which WMF complied, and this one, which was also withdrawn after certain facts were pointed out to the filer. (Even a DMCA request with which the WMF complies does not necessarily verify that copyright infringement has occurred, mind. At that point, people are still able to file counternotice and have the content restored, but they themselves take on legal liability. See one such. The only option the filer has at that point to prevent publication is to sue the individual who filed counternotice. Whenever content is removed under DMCA, the uploader is advised of this option; see, for instance, [4], which not only contains information on counternotice but more general information on the handling of DMCA takedowns. Also worth looking at: the 2012 list of DMCA takedown notices processed and the section on DMCA in our Terms of Use.)
Beyond the generalities of OSPs, I'll note that I do agree with MLauba above, that in this case the uploader is acting as an agent of the individual and is authorized to place the content. But there has been at least one case (one that I know of) where content was placed on Wikipedia without authorization of the publisher. It was placed by the author, but you cannot escape a prior contract with somebody else by entering into a new one, and as the publisher refused to join the license the material had to be removed. Pressing "save page" doesn't donate the material if you are not legally entitled to donate it. It must be yours, legally, to license or it is no different than if you are copying it from somebody else's website. For beans reasons, I prefer not to speculate on how contributors might try to abuse this legal fact, but I'll note that DMCA takedowns are filed under penalty of perjury. It is one of their required elements. I'll also note that anyone can file a counternotice (for more on these, see this decent overview), whereupon the legal and financial burden of enforcing your copyright claim is on you.
In terms of your other questions, these are ones I have commonly encountered in volunteer mode over the years - when copyrighted content is entered without license on Wikipedia and becomes enmeshed with subsequent edits of others, we unfortunately wind up with a derivative work, and the modifications to that content (never having been authorized) are lost along with the original. Generally, Wikipedians investigating copyright issues will remove or rewrite the material unless it has been modified to the point that the original is completely unrecognizable. This may or may not satisfy the courts, but I believe it's a good faith practice, and as a volunteer I'm content to let the copyright holder take it up with a higher authority than me at that point. If they want the content taken down, they have recourse to OCILLA.
It is a sad fact that copyright infringements placed on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Commons projects are not legally released for reuse just because the uploader says so, anymore than if (say) you have legitimate possession of a car you buy from somebody who stole it. You may have no criminal intent, but you still don't get to keep the car. IMHO, our reuse policy needs to be clearer on this point - the closest it comes to making it is to say, "We try hard to identify the sources and licenses of all media such as text, images or sounds used in our encyclopedia articles. Still, we cannot guarantee that all media are used or marked correctly: if an image description page states that an image was in the public domain, you should still check yourself whether that claim appears correct and decide for yourself whether your use of the image would be fine under the laws applicable to you." The example is more limiting than the text it is illustrating, but at least the possibility of misidentification is mentioned. Commons:Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia does a better job here, I think: "While the copyright and licensing information supplied for each image is believed to be accurate, the Wikimedia Foundation does not provide any warranty regarding the copyright status or correctness of licensing terms. If you decide to reuse files from Commons, you should verify the copyright status of each image just as you would when obtaining images from other sources."
This is a very big deal, and this is one of the reasons that I believe that volunteer copyright work is so important (it was hard for me to trim the editorial I wrote on the issue to this brief coverage). When I put time into copyright cleanup, I am trying to protect the project, our editors and our reusers, as well as the copyright holders. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
In that case, it's clear any account making work-for-hire edits -- even talk page edits, which I believe are subject to the same licensing as article edits -- is not fully under the control of the person doing the actual typing. And this is expressly forbidden. "Wikipedia's policy is that usernames should not be shared between more than one individual". These accounts should thus be blocked on sight, and we need to start informing admins of this, I think. And if we don't do this, we need to change our advice to add something along the lines of "The Wikipedia accepts work-for-hire, and as result any given block of text might belong to someone else. And its often extremely difficult to figure out if this applies to given block of text or not. So if you reuse our material, You could be in for a quite unpleasant surprise somewhere down the line -- probably not, but you never know" (rendered into proper pseudo-legalese of course). Right? Herostratus (talk) 02:37, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Frankly, I think "work for hire" is a far lower risk than the standard copyvios that we process every day and that are littered throughout our website. People who are in a "work for hire" situation are, as noted above, acting as agents of their employers...there is no more or less reason to accept their content in good faith than there is anybody else's. If the content is previously published, we require a stronger licensing statement via OTRS or release on the website. And we accept emails from people acting as agents of their employers via OTRS every day granting permission for text. (And on a personal note: all those comments by that Maggie Dennis person in the section below? Work for hire. :)) People who reuse our material should be aware that there may be risks in doing so...as Commons does advise them and as we rather more vaguely hint. But, really, the only way to sew up our site so that there is no risk is to stop letting people post here who aren't vetted. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:20, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
So you're going to try to get MRG's Maggie Dennis account blocked since it's a work for hire account? And all of the other WMF staffer accounts? Please do try, it would be hilarious. SilverserenC 17:06, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't think it's that hilarious Silver. I don't consider the integrity of the Wikipedia a funny joke. I understand your point that this would be politically difficult since you guys have the upper hand at this time, politically. Fair enough. Doesn't make you right, though. As to Maggie Dennis et al,
  • Yes one can always find extreme outliers or minority cases for polemical purposes.
  • No one has problem with Maggie Dennis. If you'll note at WP:PAIDWATCH it says the professors, GLAM participants, etc. are not considered problem (I added WMF employees just now).
  • But if Maggie Dennis's account is problem, then it is and you can't handwave that away. One way to fix the problem would be to block Maggie Dennis, which would be stupid. Another way would be carve out an exemption for WMF employees and other special cases, which would be smart.
But I hadn't thought of WMF employees specifically, so thank you for bringing it up so that it can be (easily) handled. This is good collaboration and we can continue to move forward.
Moonriddengirl, I understand your points but can't generally agree. A big difference between work-for-hire and regular copyvios is that we explicitly allow and even encourage the former. I think if we had editors actively saying "bring me your copyvio material, and I'll find a way to sneak it into articles" and we knew that this was happening and deliberately did nothing, we'd be on pretty shaky ground, I think. Yes, it's a much lower risk as a practical matter so far because there's less of it and because the copyright owners are unlikely to object. (That could change if, let's say, an investigative reporter wrote a piece that included lengthy passages by, or directly copied from, an editor working for hire.) However, from a legal standpoint it's much worse since we're doing it on purpose, so why not sew up this loophole since it can be very easily done?
I really don't know what to say about "accept their content in good faith". I just... I guess we live in different worlds. Assuming good faith is fine up to point. Like all good things it can be taken too far. When I read the newspaper I differentiate between information in the stories and information in the ads. That doesn't mean the people writing the ads are bad people. It just means I understand they have a different reason than the reporters for writing.
I know we can't "sew up our site so that there is no risk", but that doesn't mean we should never do anything to improve the situation. One way would be a much stronger warning to readers that they would be foolish to re-use our material. Another way would be to close the loophole, which could be easily done and which our current policies actually require, arguably. Maybe there are other ways -- we could have little message above each affected paragraph that says "The following paragraph is work-for-hire. It is not to free to reuse and may express the views of [entity] rather than a neutral point of view" or something. If we think this through we can probably come up with a good solution. Shrugging it off it probably not the answer. Herostratus (talk) 18:11, 21 March 2013 (UTC)


Shrugging it off is not the answer, but yelling that the sky is falling isn't either.
First and foremost, for the reusers, just like for anything else that includes intellectual property from third parties, it remains their own duty to do their own due diligence. You know that stock sentence we keep telling people with copyvio issues who think if it's available on the internet it must be public domain? "Assume anything is copyrighted unless explicitly demonstrated otherwise". It's valid for us, it's the same for the reuser. For every piece of content we provide. Work for hire or not.
The key point is, assuming a corporation were to repudiate original text contributed by a contractor under work-for-hire, and that text was indeed not published elsewhere prior, taking it down would be a matter of courtesy, not a legal obligation. That makes that text no different than anything else on wikipedia.
Again, once an editor presses save, his contributions are licensed perpetually to Wikipedia. If there's no evidence of prior publication, whatever happens internal to a third party company is, quite frankly, none of our business.
What we can do, however, is to improve the guidance in WP:COI to point out in unambiguous language what editing here entails in terms of licensing. This is also something, I suspect, which will be mostly to the benefit of the drive-by freelance editor making sponsored edits than corporate employees. And that is easily fixed.
But the sky isn't falling, nor is there any new or earth-shattering discovery that comes off this discussion we're having here. I have previously warned several COI editors who were introducing copyvios and looking for giving permissions that once permission was granted, their employer would have no recourse to try and revoke it if in later edits, critical coverage was included in an article about them. It's pretty standard stuff, really.
And for any lurkers who may have thought that copyright and licensing was going to be the silver bullet to put an end to paid editing, I'm really sorry to disappoint, but they'll have to look elsewhere. It just isn't a BIG DEAL in terms of licensing management. In particular not when put in perspective of, say, fanboys who copy / paste detailed synopsis of their favourite TV series from other websites without permission. MLauba (Talk) 02:41, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, but this contradicts what Moonriddengirl said. According to her, "once an editor presses save, his contributions are licensed perpetually to Wikipedia" is not true, and "whatever happens internal to a third party company is, quite frankly, none of our business" is not true. Specifically, what happens internal to a third party company is of great interest to the law. Pressing save does not override the typist's prior agreement that all his work belongs to his employer. "taking it down would be a matter of courtesy, not a legal obligation" is not true. The text belongs to the company that paid for it. They're as legally entitled to have it taken down as they are to have text copied from their website taken down.
I agree that as a practical matter, it's not likely to often be a problem, but it's still a big deal and we should get it right. And it could have practical implications. For instance, this HuffPost article doesn't reproduce and of Arturo at BP's Wikipedia writings. But even if they wanted to, they couldn't, beyond fair-use snippets. Because it belongs to BP. And if they did, BP could go after them with a takedown order, with which HuffPost would have to comply.
Most of our overtly allowed non-free material is fair-use images. For those it's reasonably easy to click over to see the license. For text it's not. This is distinctly unfriendly toward HuffPost or any other potential reuser of our material. Herostratus (talk) 03:50, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Herostratus, your entire argument is based on a confusion between ownership (copyright) and usage right (licensing). We don't care about whether the material is owned by an editor or a corporation. We only care about whether it is being properly licensed to us when inserted. And in the example you cite about Huffpost citing an editor's talk page, your analysis is wrong. Arturo at BP's words ARE licensed CC-BY-SA and can be quoted in full provided they're attributed. If BP went after Huffpost on copyright grounds for quoting the editor's words verbatim, that would become a good reason to consider a wholesale revert of everything Arturo ever posted to Wikipedia. But until this happens, this remains a purely hypothetical mind game that serves no practical purpose but imaginary point-scoring in a debate about paid editing that, quite frankly, doesn't interest me in the least.
Mostly because the shrillness of every side. And the endless grasping at straws in order to one-up each other. MLauba (Talk) 04:10, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh, is that where the tension enters this conversation? Herostratus, you might have missed the link I gave you above where a contributor to Commons issued a takedown for content he had uploaded and the WMF complied. There was no work for hire situation going on here. There are multiple legal complexities that may mean "'once an editor presses save, his contributions are licensed perpetually to Wikipedia' is not true". And I have no interest in publicly discussing what some of those are, because WP:BEANS. What has been pointed out above, though, and what you don't seem to be picking up is that hired editors are licensing their content as an agent of the company (under the same agency agreement by which their content is copyrighted to their company). One of the few circumstances that I can imagine where we might run into a situation wherein a company argues that a work for hire editor licensed the material illegally is if they were not hired to place the material on Wikipedia but stole it from internal documents to put it here. Anyone hired to manage a Wikipedia profile isn't going to fall into that situation. And I'm not even worried about mentioning this per WP:BEANS, because the odds of this happening seem incredibly slim. Should we make it more clear in our reuse policies that content may not be legally licensed? Sure. Commons does that better than we do, as I said above. But the big problem here is the garden variety copy-paste, not the small risk of an organization's agent stepping outside the scope of his agency. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:42, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not feeling any tension. I just want to try to figure out the answer to these questions. I don't think I'm being shrill and grasping at straws, but who really knows himself. Anyway, it's OK if you have no interest in publicly discussing some of this, but I do. "Not publicly discussing" doesn't seem like the right approach for questions with broad policy implications, to me. I also am not sure that the hired editors are licensing the content as an agent of the company. They don't have the right to license anything, it looks like to me. Yes I fully understand your point about this being basically theoretical and not of practical moment, and I basically agree, but... there are many cases where a person pastes in copyvio material and says "I'm sure the person wouldn't mind, it's free publicity" and he's probably right, but we still don't allow it. If there's a photo of a person and in the background is part of a computer screen with a copyrighted program running, some people will get upset about that, even. I wouldn't. But we editors have been lectured and hectored for not dotting our I's and crossing our T's when it comes to copyright issues, so it's kind of ingrained now. Anyway, I've initiated an RfC (here) and maybe somebody else will have some other useful angles on these questions. Herostratus (talk) 06:06, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

You say, "They don't have the right to license anything, it looks like to me." Based on what do you conclude that? (I'm confused that you seem to wholesale be discounting the law of agency. :/) You realize that almost every permission letter we have from an organization in OTRS was issued by an agent of that organization ? Does that alarm you, too?) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:13, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Manifestations of Postmodernism

Hi, Moonriddengirl, please take a look. I placed template suspected copyright violation at the Manifestations of Postmodernism, but I'm afraid, this might not be fully adequate. The article was created on 30 July 2006 by Emomisfitkid (talk · contribs) – a single purpose account – with 22,285 bytes of instant copy. Interestingly enough, the article survived almost 7-years-worth of revisions without detection. Thanks, Poeticbent talk 17:53, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) The article was created by cutting the material already in Postmodernism and pasting it into Manifestations of Postmodernism See [5]. So if there is copyvio it's in the histories of both articles. :( Voceditenore (talk) 18:28, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Whoa! The article that was supposedly "copied" (International Journal of Arts) was published in 2012. If anything, this is a case of backwards copyvio. Take a look, comparing the 2006 WP article and the 2012 International Journal of Arts article. [6]. Quite blatant. Voceditenore (talk) 18:37, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Good catch! Copyright © 2012 Scientific & Academic Publishing, supposedly written by Mohammad Khosravishakib of Lorestan University. I looked around. There was no earlier draft on record. Poeticbent talk 19:01, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Good catch. I've added the backwardscopy template to the article. I'll warrant we'll see plenty more of that from them. :/ I've received a ton of spam from that quote publisher unpublisher trying to solicit articles. Cf. [7]. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:26, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
I've left a note about this at Wikipedia:CC-BY-SA Compliance and also a note re the reliability of the "journals" from this publisher at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Many of their so-called articles use Wikipedia articles as references. See [8]. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 14:39, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

User talk:Wiki.Gunjan

I have tagged two of his articles as copyvio and nominated a bunch of images for deletion at Commons. I think, he has misunderstood India's Right to Information Act! Could you check please? --Tito Dutta (contact) 15:25, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you as always for your care with these issues. :) I think you're quite right and have left him a note here. I'm watchlisting his talk page, but if you happen to see the issue continuing can you please let me know? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:06, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I will inform you as soon as the new license was provided

Dear Moonriddengirl, As I mentioned before, we are in Nowruz [[9]] holidays and I think I can provide that license on April 07. I will inform you again. would you please guide me where this license can be inserted at the university website from where we send the link for you? Is it possible to send just the scanned photo of the license to you? or inserting the license at university website for referencing is obligatory? I would appreciate if you help me in this matter. Mehrnazar (talk) 07:55, 23 March 2013 (UTC)mehrnazar

Replied at your talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:45, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

More extensive quotations from Doncram

I mentioned this to you a while back, but what do you think of the quote in Sandy Co-Op Block? I am in the 90% certainty range that including such a quote is completely unacceptable. I've periodically checked some articles of his that have been passed through AfC (primarily by FoCuSandLeArN, another editor who I have requested an autopatrolled removal) and I've found a decent number that do this. If you think the amount of quoting there is problematic, I can go and find a number more, but I think A) a CCI would probably be necessary and B) FoCuSandLeArn should not be allowed to accept Doncram's articles through AfC. I'll note that Doncram is under general editor probation. I don't think anything there would allow FoCuSandLeArn to be explicitly denied the ability to review Doncram's articles, but if he refuses to take advice to that affect, I could open an amendment proposal. Sorry for piling this on you, and if you think AN or some other venue would be more appropriate I can take it there. Ryan Vesey 22:35, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Ryan. :) I think that one is a little bit borderline. The first sentence is absolutely okay - it's presented as attributing a point of view, who says its important and why. The second sentence should be paraphrased instead of quoted, but it isn't extensive enough for me to view it as a clear problem. It does suggest the same pattern of snagging the text rather than explaining it in his own words, but I wouldn't open a CCI on that since only the second sentence is problematic. In terms of FoCuSandLeArN, it might be a good idea just to ask him to keep an eye in general on non-transformative quotation. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:50, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Ratan Jindal

OK, I'm stumped again.

On the surface, this is simple. Ratan Jindal has a paragraph which matches, word-for-work, the cited source

One presumes that Bloomberg Business Week isn't in the habit of borrowing from Wikipedia, so it seems obvious.

But not so fast.

The entry was added to Wikipedia in 2009

Wayback finds the Bloomberg site, but only an entry in 2012. That isn't definitive proof, but I need a little more to figure out which came first.

I note that the Wikipedia entry was added by Jindalstainless, either the subject or someone closely associated, so maybe it was written by the subject, and later sent to Bloomberg? If written by the subject, we might have a problem, but not necessarily a copyright problem.

I noticed that the Bloomberg link isn't a direct link, but a search string. I thought that if I could find a more direct link, I might find an older one in Wayback.

However, when I do a Google advanced search of the site, I can get a couple hits, but not that entry. I can't seem to find the entry on Businessweek's page.

So I've got evidence that it existed in 2012, but it was on Wikipedia in 2009. I don't think I can delete it for copyvio reasons with what I've found so far, but I am quite uncomfortable having an entry in Wikipedia, sourced to a 2012 item, but relating to a 2009 edit. Doesn't feel right.

I guess I can throw some possible COI tags at it, but I'd like to resolve the copyright question. Any other tricks up your sleeve?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 23:14, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Here's my thought. Line for line, we check to see how content evolves, and we find in April 2009 this. That source was added to the article on the same day that the content was - within half an hour. Hence, even though Wayback doesn't have it archived (which does happen), the content was quite probably there on that day. Supporting this, later that same day another editor came in and removed everything that was unsourced or that was not supported by the source. I believe in this case we invoke the "when in doubt" clause of WP:C. The content is the same as the source; the source was sited the day the material was added. We have pretty good reason to expect that the material was published there first. In this case, I'd probably handle by extracting a few of the most important facts and keeping the citation. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:56, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, I almost mentioned that my new tool review the evolution' didn't help, as the paragraph in question was added in one edit, but good catch that the reference was added about the same time. I've rewritten it.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 19:10, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Amazing gift!

I'll not write any introduction so that you can discover the funny part yourself! --Tito Dutta (contact) 18:42, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

People. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:02, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Patricia Crone

I wrote to you previously concerning this particular article in Wikipedia where my entry had been undone by a particular person at that time I felt in a way that the reason was valid and therefore I supported the article edit with supporting citation however this again was undone couple of times and I got back in touch with you as you had previously advised in relation to Muhammad Hamidullah article (which hopefully is no longer a problem - perhaps you can do CopyVio check on it). I then found other citations to prove my point on Patricia Crone. In fact the discussion talk page on this article has other views dating back over two years where people have pointed out the general criticism she receives amongst the academic community for her views, that are in many case unsupported or falsely backed with dubious proof which majority of people in this field know is a distortion, however it seems to be a desire by couple of individuals to undo my work which is actually minute contribution. It is not only valid as a criticism of this author but is actually supported by other articles such as http://islamclass.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/reviews-of-hagarism-by-patricia-crone-and-michael-cook/ or http://www.scribd.com/doc/23305731/Review-of-Patricia-Crone-s-Book or the most extensive http://www.sultan.org/books/Patricia_crone_english_reply.pdf the most comprehensive Thing which bothers me most is that the article is one direction without leaving a balance because those people wish to maintain it are pro Crone. What can be done in this situation because what I do not want to do is keep undoing as it becomes a childish fight, however I am willing to bow to the other viewpoint if it was 100% correct, but this does not seem to be reciprocated when I have provided support and in fact apart from the above references there are various others and in fact in one of my edits I also mention another author who was an English academic. The ones undoing my edits seem to be totally ignoring this. If you can not assist in this manner who can? Mhakcm (talk) 21:24, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry for your difficulties with the article. I understand that Crone is a very controversial figure. However, you shouldn't assume that the people involved are "pro Crone" until you have discussed all issues with them and are quite sure they have no legitimate objection to your edit. That's policy. :)
When an article reaches a state of dispute like this, the only thing to do is to pursue dispute resolution. There is not any discussion on the talk page of the article about this content, until an editor yesterday wrote that the source being used is not reliable. Resolving such disputes always begins with calmly and politely discussing the problem with other editors at the talk page and then - if you cannot come to agreement with them - neutrally inviting uninvolved editors to become involved. If you add something to an article and somebody takes it out, your next step is always to put a note on the talk page about it and see if you can agree.
The first thing you need to do, then, is to go to the talk page to explain your concerns and why you think that the objections to those sources as not being reliable is mistaken. (Reviewing WP:IRS first would be a good idea.) After other editors have discussed the matter with you - if you do not agree with them and they do not agree with you - you decide what the core dispute is. Is it neutrality? Is it sourcing? And you seek outside editors at the appropriate noticeboard or through the more general mechanism of request for comment to weigh in. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:48, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Please suggest here!

You deal with copyvios, so, you must have got many similar threats. How do you deal with those? Please suggest at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Threat_directly_to_email.21 --Tito Dutta (contact) 03:57, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I'd say don't worry about it, but at the same time, don't ignore it. Forward the message to emergency@wikimedia.org. Ryan Vesey 04:00, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm so sorry, Titodutta. :( I've received a threat or two in my time, yes. Honestly, I've never reported them because until I started working for the WMF nobody knew where I was. I was very careful not to reveal anything personal about myself. I did not feel personally threatened. The issue with WMF assistance there is not simply that it wasn't sent on Wikimedia servers but that they have no way to determine where it came from. If you feel unsafe in any way, I would recommend that you contact local authorities and let them know about the threat you've received. If they have a cybercrimes division, they may be able to advise and assist. In my experience, it is easy for people on the internet to issue threats and insults even when they have nothing to back it, but the most important thing is that you feel and be safe. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)


File:Rangamma.jpg

Hi Moonriddengirl,

The photograph of Rangamma's painting by Mrs.Visakha Wijeyeratne was deleted by you. Today his son Mr. Ravana Wijeyeratne who is the present owner of the photograph, informed me that he had written to the Wikimedia.org. granting the copy rights to me to publish the photograph on wikipedia.

Pl. be good enough to check with the Wikimedia & get it published.

Kind regards,

Anuradha

අනුරාධ (talk) 16:12, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for you attention and guidelines on Khorasgan Azad University

Dear Moonriddengirl,

Thanks for you attention and guidelines. Do you mean I should ask the university to change the words in copyright license and then publish it on its site for referencing? If yes I would do so. I am from Iran and now we are in New Year (Nowruz) holidays. The university will be opened about 10-04-2013. Any how later I had talked one of Wikipedia Admins in chat room and he had guided me much and I set the passage regarding to his recommendations. Of course I know that I have many problems and I will try to solve them by doing your advises. I will do for copyright as you mentioned. I wish my article remain on Wikipedia for ever. Regards, Mehrnazar (talk) 20:12, 21 March 2013 (UTC)Mehrnazar

Replied at your talk page. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:12, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Hey Moonriddengirl,I'm a little low on barnstars,could you please add one?And how do I become a Wikipedia Investigator? Sunjerbob (talk) 16:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Earlier today, I participated in a deletion discussion which revolves around the question of whether a list article constitutes a copyright violation. My initial response was that it's not copyrightable, or at least constitutes fair use...but after a subsequent contributor brought up WP:Copyright in lists and some examples of previous AfDs, I'm not quite so certain. Given your experience with these issues, your input in that AfD would be helpful if you have the time to participate. Thanks. --Mike Agricola (talk) 22:15, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Argh! List articles! Hate. :) I'll head right over and see if I can provide an opinion. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:51, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
Okay. I've looked. I hate having to evaluate copyright in list articles. Nothing makes me want to run away from Wikipedia faster than one of these. :/ Clearly, the selection is subjective. The star rating of a restaurant is not an innate value on which everyone would agree, but something that requires human opinion. It is a fact that they have bestowed these stars, certainly, but it's a fact that Rolling Stone named 500 greatest songs of all time, too, and we still can't list them beyond the allowances of fair use. Excerpting them is tricky, because they are not all of equal value - as our attorney pointed out, the top 5 of a list is what people are most interested in. That seems applicable here as well. If somebody put a gun to my head (which, rather not) and said, "Maggie, you have to make this choice," I'd have to fall on the side of conservative here. This seems like a derivative excerpt of creative content. It is not being used transformatively - that is, we aren't offering a critique of their selection or anything. The sole reason for publication that I can see is to supersede the use of the original work - so people who want to know which restaurants in the area Michelin thinks are best can easily find them here without having to go there. :/ If you want to share or link my thoughts there, you are very welcome to them. I don't have time to debate and defend them, though. It's just a "Here's what I think" kind of thing. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:20, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
Never mind; I'll do the responsible thing and post my thoughts there myself. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:26, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

My bad, but I fail to understand you! Allowed or not allowed? The Michelin Guide contains far more information that starred restaurants. They also list hotels, Bib Gourmand-restaurants and "non-award" restaurants. The Banner talk 22:47, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Andy Mineo edit

I have replied to your post on the Andy Mineo talk page. Thanks, --¿3family6 contribs 20:30, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Water and Power Development Authority

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A tag has been placed on Water and Power Development Authority requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about an organization or company, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please read more about what is generally accepted as notable.

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 "Click here to 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 removed 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. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, you can place a request here. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 02:53, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Glitch? :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:06, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

File:Heiyantuduwa Raja.jpg ( ticket 2013012510002559 )

Hi Moonriddengirl,

1/ File:Rangamma.jpg

Noted your kind advice on the above file & Thank you for it.

2/ The photograph of Heiyantuduwa Raja ( File:Heiyantuduwa Raja.jpg ) by Mr.Indhika Gunasekara. Yesterday Mr.Gunasekara informed me that he had written to the Wikimedia.org. granting the copy rights to me to publish the photograph. Pl. check on it.

Kind regards,

Anuradha

අනුරාධ (talk) 05:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I have written him in response to request a bit of clarification. Once that is received, we should be able to proceed with that image. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:05, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

BANNED editor allowed to upload images?

Hi, Dave. :) The only real advice that I could give is to just nominate it for deletion debate and explain what you think is a problem about it and see what other people say. Commons makes that very easy to do - the bottom link in the toolbox does all the work for you: "nominate for deletion". All you have to do is type in your rationale. :) I'm not sure myself - I have considerably less experience with images than I do with text, and it can be difficult for me to assess how much change is sufficient to avoid being derivative. If you want to get opinions first, you might ask at their Commons:Commons:Village pump/Copyright. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:51, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 March 2013

COI, OTRS, Disclosure

Hello! I heard you might be interested in this discussion. I'd love to hear your thoughts about how we as individual community volunteers could best handle this.

They involve what happens when a COI editor or representative is led to a talk page and advised to engage there. Since this sometimes happens through OTRS with sensitive or controversial subjects; I'm trying to clarify guidance on how to make it clear that COI editors even when assisted through OTRS get no special privileges and other editors have no particular obligations to do what is requested or suggested. I've also emailed the OTRS list to ask a similar question about clarifying our position in these situations. Cheers :) Ocaasi t | c 20:12, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I responded on the talk page. I'm not yet convinced this is needed. If needed, I'm not yet convinced this is the way to respond. --SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:32, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
I've put some thoughts on the talk page, too. I'm a bit confused by the first two sections, I have to say. I think I lack the background to understand what's going on there. At my work talk page, you suggested that you were looking for "how best to make it abundantly clear that COI editors even when assisted through OTRS get no special privileges and other editors have no particular obligations to do what is requested or suggested". I guess my main question would be to whom? If you want to make it most clear to the COI editors, I would mention it briefly at every point where they are directed to OTRS, such as Wikipedia:Contact us - Subjects. Are you planning to propose edits to the COI page or a separate page? Either way, perhaps a clear "What you should/should not expect" section like the one here would be useful.
If you want to make it clear to other editors, I'm afraid there may be different issues - they should already know WP:Consensus and should certainly WP:AGF. Why should the motives of OTRS agents be suspect? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:16, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Good points MRG. At the moment this guidance is incorporated into WP:PSCOI. I'll take a look at the Contact us page and see if there's a good place for a note. I think it already covers the community process priority, but I'll check. I don't think that OTRS motives should be suspect by default (I'm an OTRS'er myself), but I learned last week that some people interpreted OTRS requests brought to talk pages as coming from 'on high' as if they were blessed with special power. I was responding to that in drafting the text. I agree that AGF would help, but AGF and COI sometimes get fuzzy at the intersection. Ocaasi t | c 17:37, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Where to list copyright problem - text from obit copied into article space

Hi there Moonriddengirl, I hope you're doing well.

I have a concern about text from an obituary copied into main article space, for the article about deceased journalist, Anthony Lewis.

It's technically not yet a copyvio because the user that did this also in the same edit commented-out that material for some reason.

I've raised this issue on the user's talk page at User_talk:Bmclaughlin9#Copying_New_York_Times_content_directly_into_article_space.

  • I also asked the user if they have ever done this practice previously of copying text directly into article space and then making it commented-out.

Perhaps you can help in the proper way to list this at Wikipedia:Copyright problems, as I'm not sure precisely where it goes there?

The article itself is notable and obviously shouldn't be deleted, and the edit is recent, and there appears to be some good sourced info added elsewhere in that edit, but certainly at least that part of that edit is problematic.

Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 01:28, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

It looks like the original material in question has since been removed from the article by the editor that added it, but this issue could still use some looking into. — Cirt (talk) 17:40, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
Update: user removed that section I'd referred to above from his talk page. — Cirt (talk) 20:24, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi. I think that would be a copyright issue - even commented out, the content is still published on Wikipedia. The best way to handle it is an interesting question. CP is generally for where the content can't be easily excised or where removal is controversial, with something like, removal is pretty easy. But this practice is concerning and does lead to close paraphrasing issues in articles. For instance, I see he placed text here that included the following:
Source Article
In 1991, Mr. Lewis published “Make No Law,” an account of New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 Supreme Court decision that revolutionized American libel law. The Sullivan case, applying First Amendment principles to state libel law for the first time, ruled that public officials suing critics of their official conduct had to prove that the contested statements were made with “actual malice,” meaning with knowledge of their falsity or with serious subjective doubts about their truth. In 1991, Mr. Lewis published Make No Law, an account of New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 Supreme Court decision that revolutionized American libel law. In Sullivan, teh court held that public officials suing critics of their official conduct needd to prove that the contested statements were made with "actual malice", that is, with knowledge of their falsity or with serious subjective doubts about their truth.
The first sentence is still copied exactly from the source - the second follows lockstep on its structure and includes significant runs of language.
I'm not sure how widespread an issue this may be in his writing. :/ It's generally pretty time consuming to even evaluate that. I see that the editor explained that he was interrupted when working on the material, and you've advised him that it isn't best practice - with which I absolutely concur. Hopefully, he won't continue to work in this way, but the question still remains of what may linger from the past. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:25, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree with you. :) You're more of an expert in this arena than I, what's the next prudent step? — Cirt (talk) 13:44, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
The next prudent step is to run him through the CCI program and evaluate his major text contributions to see if a WP:CCI is needed. :/ After I do a survey, I spot check generally 10 to 15 articles, depending on what I'm finding as I go. If I check five articles and find no problems, I may assume that it was a one-off, not a pattern. If I find concerning traces, but am unsure the level it reaches, I may continue to look more indepth. I'll do that this weekend. (Note to me: do it!) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:52, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
Okay, thank you very much. — Cirt (talk) 13:54, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Keep me posted with what you find out? — Cirt (talk) 13:55, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

While I've checked a number of articles that seem fine (and a few where the source is tucked behind a paywall), this is the first problem I've found:
Source Article
In 1899 he was asked to head the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey’s Office of Weights and Measures, where he developed the plan for the establishment of a bureau of standards. IIn 1899 he was asked to head the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey's Office of Weights and Measures, where he developed the plan for the establishment of a bureau of standards.

Update

Okay, I've spot-checked a number of articles, with some notes above. I see plenty of evidence of thorough rewriting in many articles, but I think there is a pattern of suboptimal composition practice, with using non-free content as the basis for writing that may then lead to inadequate paraphrase. I've popped a worksheet into my userspace: User:Moonriddengirl/20130330 and would be ever-so-grateful for another opinion or two. I am loathe to recommend opening a CCI if problems are minimal, but also hate to say, "Oh, I think corrective practices going forward is good enough" if there are more extensive issues than I've found and could see. People who can see the NYT especially welcome! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:52, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing?/Remove autopatrolled status?

I haven't contacted the author because I wanted to see what you had to say first. Minea (given name) states "Minea is a feminine given name created by Finnish author Mika Waltari for a character in his 1945 novel "The Egyptian." He may have based the name on the Swedish phrase "min egna," meaning "my own."" While the source says "Created by the Finnish writer Mika Waltari for a character in his novel 'The Egyptian' (1945). Waltari may have based the name on the Swedish phrase min egna meaning "my own"." These statements are similar to the extent that I can't imagine that it is acceptable. There's also an issue that reference two seems to either not support the statement or to be original research (it comes from some PDF's that I can't read). Finally, the references are bare urls. I haven't done my due diligence and checked other articles yet, but a really concerning thing here is that the editor has been autopatrolled since 2010. I don't know if that means a huge copyright problem might exist but I think it might be a case where autopatrolled status should be removed. Ryan Vesey 22:04, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I couldn't not finish my research so I checked some more:
  • Farah (given name), uses bare URL, "mirth" not supported by source, Pronunciation isn't IPA so is useless.
  • Marwa (given name), uses bare URL
  • Suha (given name), uses bare URL, i'm nitpicky here, but it should probably mention that Al-Suha is the Arabic name of the star, is the link to the special page Kosher?
  • Farida (given name), information not supported by source, bare URL (I didn't think to check these things for the earlier ones, but the article was only improved with a list of names by another editor after it was created link at creation
  • Reem (given name), contradicts the source
  • Khalid (given name), includes information not supported by the source
Problems with the linkrot/dead URLs can be seen at Ruth Herbert where 2 of the four links no longer work. In any case, after expanding into the articles, I think autopatrolled should be removed but don't think there's a consistent copyright problem. Ryan Vesey 22:20, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi again, Ryan. :) I'd agree with you that the first instance is too close to the source. I'm glad that isn't a pattern! I really don't have much to do with user rights so I'm really not sure when that should be removed or when it is better to simply talk to the editor and explain the concerns. Looking at the contributor in question, he seems quite experienced - he lists at least a number of good articles and DYKs. Maybe the best thing to do is explain to him why bare links are an issue. In terms of adding content not supported by sources, I have to say that I am not encouraged by this, which was pure speculation that gradually improved when he (or she) found a source that at least mentioned Locklear and Sambora (but didn't support that their use of the name added to popularity). If that's an ongoing issue and he (or she) isn't open to discussion about it, that might be a dispute resolution situation. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:36, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
I've pointed this discussion out to the contributor so we cna see what he says. Ryan Vesey 19:19, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
I haven't paid much attention to "auto patrolled status" or the administrative aspects of Wikipedia so no, I don't care if you remove it. In recent years I've focused mainly on the names article and have tried to create short articles defining the meaning/usage of the names based on sources I find online. If you think there's a problem with the articles, by all means fix them. --Bookworm857158367 (talk) 01:30, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
I'll add that I looked back at the various articles you referenced and I don't think I am entirely to blame for some of the issues you mentioned. Some of the information in these stub articles appeared to have been added after I created them. I meant them to be stubs that could give a quick definition and language of origin when people clicked on the List of most popular given names links. Yes, I did use Behind the name.com or other name sites online. I probably used the bare links, which I agree aren't ideal, because it was quick and I was writing them quickly. Regarding the dispute over the Ava name, the name did in fact begin increasing in popularity the year the two celebrity children were born and one of the books I had (but one that wasn't immediately at hand when I was discussing it) referenced that fact. That conversation obviously wasn't my finest hour as an editor. I'm not proud of it and hope it isn't a habit. And yes, I am a woman, not a man. --Bookworm857158367 (talk) 01:58, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Open Access?

While perusing CP, I ran across Nasopharyngeal carcinoma, which has some copy pastes from a journal article. The journal calls itself Open Access, a term I have not seen before. Their terms are here. I am worried that the final sentence may not be acceptable to us, but as it is so close, I wanted your opinion. The source is not attributed at all, so I've left a request that attribution be added as a minimum, but we need to decide if excision or major rewrite is required.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 00:50, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

I do not believe this is usable. :/ "provided that no substantive errors are introduced in the process" - who determines what's a substantive error? It does not explicitly permit modification, and that line suggests that if they don't approve of any modifications the license is void. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:06, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, that pretty much matches my concern. Thanks.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 00:16, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Julie Dash article

I am writing you to request semi-protection on the Julie Dash article due to long-term persistent vandalism and harassment from anon proxy IPs by WP user whose identity is known. Will provide name privately upon request. Thank you. Best Wishes Coronerreport (talk) 03:22, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I've looked through the history of the article since the start of the year, and I see one negative edit by an IP: http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Julie_Dash&diff=next&oldid=531860376. There are several positive edits, and a couple of weird requests for source clarification that may be valid, given that I cannot myself find any mention of "Making Angels" in the blog post linked to support it, and it is a blog post. (Could be a reliable source, though.) I'm afraid I just don't see enough to justify page protection under policy. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:02, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Web archives

ping. 88.104.28.176 (talk) 20:12, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I have responded there and to the edit request at WP:C. As I recommend in both places, you should consider a WP:VPP proposal or an RFC if you wish to propose a change that substantial to policy. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:47, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
"it isn't a unilateral decision" - it seemed to be just that when it was added. But, yeah... that's the way of Wikipedia now, sadly. Can't change anything without 1000 pages of pointless discussions. 88.104.28.176 (talk) 21:16, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
I understand that it can seem unnecessary, but it's a really important part of procedure. :) Please excuse me if I overexplain. It's hard to assess how familiar you may be. Policy basically takes two forms - prescriptive and descriptive. The change you want to impose is the former; the change that was added in 2007 was the latter. Descriptive changes are far less likely to be controversial. They simply describe the way things are already being done. You can see Template:Wayback, for instance. It's been around since 2005. It alone is transcluded to over 3500 articles, not including all the uses of Wayback that are embedded in other templates or plain links to Wayback. You get an idea of the scope of usage by looking at this. So, the original change described the way Wikipedia was already working - "It is currently acceptable to link to internet archives such as the Wayback Machine, which host unmodified archived copies of webpages taken at various points in time." It was, and it has remained so. What you propose would actively change that common practice, which is a big enough deal to require more widespread discussion. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:21, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I understand; I just think it's a sad reflection on the state-of-the-wiki.

In those Halcyon days, it was quite possible for a mere mortal to make a sensible change with little fuss; now, it's impossible.

I had a related discussion just yesterday - WMF are insisting that, to see deleted revisions, people must go through RFA (or an "RFA-identical process") - despite the fact that there are hundreds of admins who passed RFA on a nod, many years ago, and have never been through any such thing.

Maybe WP:NOTBUREAU should be deprecated... if there are still enough people around to care.

Regarding this specific issue - it seems frankly obvious to me that there should be no special dispensation for websites that happen to declare that they're "just archives", and somehow special... but IDK if I'll bother seeing it through, because it's simply too much effort to bother arguing. 88.104.28.176 (talk) 21:33, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

BTW re "hard to assess how familiar you may be" - >100k edits, major contribs FA's, 'retired' due to things just like this.
So you can assume as much as you wish. 88.104.28.176 (talk) 21:40, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

copy vio question

Moonriddengirl, this article Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition appears to be largely from a law review article that is not cited. I'm not sure if it's a blend of law review articles, but I thought you might want to check. I haven't had time to search out the review articles and check. If there's a problem we can still keep the article at a stub and I'd be happy to rewrite the lead so something is still there. Malke 2010 (talk) 01:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Malke. I can see why the article would concern you! It would probably have been multiple sources, if anything, based on the history of the article. Usually when it's copied from one source, we see a big lump of text at once, whereas here we have serial lumps. I did a spot-check of text matches and only found obvious copies of us (including some book that is making us part of the essential law exam review!) It may be that the editor, User:Axios023, was simply summarizing for himself. He is a lawyer who worked on many law articles before leaving in 2009, and the expectations of sourcing have changed a lot since 2006, when he added the content. :/ Anyway, if you find a source that predates 2006, please let me know. :) I appreciate your being conscious of the potential issue. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:04, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi MRG, okay, I'll just rewrite the article. I'll put it on my list. I'm working on Miller v. California right now. It had multiple issues that a previous editor noted and tagged. Thank goodness for tags. The funniest copy vio I found was actually on an article about a copyright case law article! I fixed it. I'll let you know if I come across anything earlier than 2006. Malke 2010 (talk) 15:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 April 2013

Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary

Hey, there, long time no questions. :-) What do you think of the article and this site? Is the site copying Wikipedia or Wikipedia copying the site? I tend to think the website came first, but I thought I'd ask an expert (blatant buttering up). BTW, the article is a mess, and it has some recent back story that I don't understand involving Drmies.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:26, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

LOL! I'm looking. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:41, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Gut instinct says that's copied from somewhere: "The surroundings abound in alpine flora, ferns, hanging moss and species of wild flowers. The chief attraction of Binsar is the majestic view of the Himalayas..." Pure travel guide rhapsody. Let's see. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Not sure whether the external site copied from us, but we copied from [15]. I've removed content added in July by User:Abdaga, who according to his talk page had a history of this. I think he got the idea after the warning there, because this looks like he probably wrote it himself. Leaving that. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:01, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks much. I'll remove some of the puffery, although I'm not sure what to do about how unsourced it is. Most of the "sources" I see about the sanctuary are travel sources, which hardly qualify as reliable sources. Of course, the article itself is like a travel brochure, so maybe it would be fitting. :-) --Bbb23 (talk) 16:26, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I sent the Islamic Azad University Khorasgan Branch (Isfahan) license permission by Email

Dear Moonriddengirl, (I wish I would known your Real name),

I sent the "Islamic Azad University Khorasgan Branch (Isfahan)" license permission by Email to "permissions-en@wikimedia.org".

Regards, Mehrnazar (talk) 08:09, 7 April 2013 (UTC)Mehrnazar

Replying at your talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:18, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Happy Wikibirthday

Six years. Most people don`t last six months.

I`ve been mostly away, you know, semi-retired; beesides i married February 1st and, well priorities change.

Even away i check myy watchlist and keep tabs on your talk page, you are busy as always, you are the best really.

Oh... almost forgot...

Happy Birthday MoonRiddenGirl

Happy Birthday you who are dress in rags and opals. Zidane tribal (talk) 02:09, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! You remain incredibly kind. And congratulations on your marriage! I'm very happy for you. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:09, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

question

Any of Moonriddengirl's helpers are free to answer this question, it's about article titles. I noticed some article titles are italicized. Is there a way to revert that? And to MRG, Happy Wikibirthday, many happy returns. Malke 2010 (talk) 00:39, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Some infoboxes, such as {{Infobox book}} and {{Infobox album}} automatically italicize the titles of articles in which they're used. I think for most of those (certainly for the two I've named), you can add a parameter "|italic title=no" to the infobox to make the title roman. Other articles may have the {{italic title}} template in them somewhere, which you can remove. Deor (talk) 01:40, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Are you able to point to any specific articles in question? Ryan Vesey 01:45, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for getting back to me. I've seen it on a legal subject articles and couldn't figure out why. Also, it's on some medical subject articles. 1976 Philadelphia Legionnaires' disease outbreak is one that comes to mind. I'd have to go back and look at the legal articles. Malke 2010 (talk) 02:08, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Okay, I saw the italic title box and removed it from that article. I'll do that on the legal articles. Don't see any reason for italics there either. Thanks Deor and Ryan. Malke 2010 (talk) 02:11, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Miller v. California is another article. I'll try adding the 'italic title=no.' Malke 2010 (talk) 02:15, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Supreme Court cases should be italicized actually. Ryan Vesey 02:30, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Okay. Thanks. Malke 2010 (talk) 03:28, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Malke. :) And thanks, Deor and Ryan! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I resent the Email titled:"Islamic Azad University Khorasgan Branch (Isfahan) License permission"

Dear Maggie,

I resent the Email titled:"Islamic Azad University Khorasgan Branch (Isfahan) License permission" to "permissions-en@wikimedia.org". Please check the Spam section too. if you didnot receive it please inform me to check the reason. Thank you again for your attention and patience. Mehrnazar (talk) 05:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)Mehrnazar

Jean Lau Chin page

Hello,

I'm new to Wikipedia, and am beginning to work on creating a page on the biography of Jean Lau Chin for my Psychology of History and Systems class. Is there anything I need to know about your deleted article, named "Jean Lau Chin", that I should be aware of? I'm actually somewhat confused as to why I need to contact you about this besides anti-plagiarism purposes, even though you have deleted your article. Could you help a rookie out?

-Logan

Lestafford (talk) 21:19, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Lestafford, and welcome to Wikipedia :) I will put my answer on your talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:27, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Dear Maggie, Hello, Thanks a lot for your help. As you know my mother tongue is Persian (farsi) and for this reason may be I am slow in creating English contents . At any rate, I do my best to solve the article problems and add required contents and links. If sometimes you decided to travel around the world, Iran is a good choice. People are very hospitable. I am from Isfahan city, a very beautiful historical city with many historical monuments and bridges. I invite you and your family. Please discard any bad propaganda against Iran. Reality is something else which can be asked form whom traveled to Iran. You know that Policy = lie and we as common people are its sacrificed. Sorry for above words. I really as many people around the world, like peace and mutual respect. Please let me to be in contact to ask any questions about editing the University content. Best Regards, Alireza Mehrnazar (talk) 07:06, 10 April 2013 (UTC)Mehrnazar

The Signpost: 08 April 2013

Deletion of David Weinstein Page

Hi,

I'm David E Weinstein at Columbia, and I noticed that my page was deleted from wikipedia. I hadn't noticed anything problematic in the earlier version (although I had not authored it). Would it be possible to restore it?

David Weinstein69.201.151.18 (talk) 14:11, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Hello. :) We can restore it if the page on the university's website is released under a compatible license. We are only able to use content from external sites that are under a license compatible with our own. If the site from which it copied content ([16]) is altered to include a specific licensing release or an email is sent from Columbia verifying license, we can bring it back. Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials offers information on both. If you think the page can be released and need help or clarification, please let me know. If the recommended licensing statement is placed on the page and you tell me, I'll be happy to bring it back and do the necessary modifications to show the legal status of the source. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:54, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of Mohammad Ibraheem Khwakhuzhi

I have just noticed that my page (Mohammad Ibraheem Khwakhuzhi) has been deleted due to not responding to the email sent from Wikipedia for confirmation of the Rights to the data. I am sorry for that as I got busy with other stuffs in life, but now have replied to the email and have declared that I hold the rights and willingly offer rights to Wikipedia to use the content from the website. Hopefully it will be of help in restoration of the page.

Regards, Gharanai Khwakhuzhi (talk) 19:06, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Kosovo: Can You Imagine?

Hey, me again, lucky you. :-) Could you take a look at the YouTube link one editor wants to add to the article? I've locked the article based on the report at WP:ANEW, but the link is of some concern. My belief is it's kosher. It appears to be the channel of the film's director. The film is a student documentary, and, according to IMDb, the production company belongs to the director. So, unless he assigned the copyright to someone else, I would think it's his. Still, having a link to the entire film (it's a short documentary, 30 minutes) feels weird to me, to the extent my feelings have anything to do with it. If you have a moment, please let me know what you think. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:20, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) It seems to be very kosher; the youtube channel is acknowledged on the official site. :) I've left my note there, but will reiterate here that i really don't think this is a linkvio situation. There may be other reasons to exclude it, but if the copyright holder makes it publicly available.... --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Deus ex machina - thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:08, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

wanted you to know

Moonriddengirl, I got this Barnstar [17] because of what I learned from you. Thank you! Malke 2010 (talk) 17:12, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations, Malke. Thanks for letting me know; it's very kind of you to say that. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks a lot for your assistance with my page Mohammad Ibraheem Khwakhuzhi, it's very much appreciated. --Gharanai Khwakhuzhi (talk) 19:03, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

OTRS

Hi! Could you please check your otrswiki talk page? Thanks! --Rschen7754 08:17, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Your request for help on Chinese Wikipedia

Hi Maggie,

I randomly came across a message you left on Chinese Wikipedia via Whhalbert's talk page requesting help for a Wikimedia Foundation related project. I am not sure if you have gotten help from him or other people already but I think I can be of assistance on this matter. I have been an administrator for Chinese Wikipedia since 2006 and I translated a large number of articles from English Wikipedia to Chinese in the early years of my activity. Although I haven't been very active in the past few years, I have kept track of what's going on in the Chinese Wikipedia community and I can probably share some useful information and insights with you. If you need any help, just leave a message on my Chinese Wikipedia talk page. Cheers! Lectert (talk) 16:12, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

You are welcome to leave message on my Chinese Wikipedia talk page, I will answer questions to the best of my knowledge. Unfortunately it is quite inconvenient for me to edit English Wikipedia at this point as I have to use an open proxy (most of my current ISP provider's dynamic IPs have been blocked due to the actions of a long term vandal). Lectert (talk) 17:34, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Invitation to join the Darius Dhlomo Drive

Hello. You are invited to join Darius Dhlomo Drive, a project which aims to cleanup and resolve one of the oldest copyright investigations on the sire. We hope that you will join and help to clean what's left of the copyright violations. You are getting this invitation because you have helped out previously, and I am inviting you back to hopefully wrap this up. Wizardman 01:35, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Great idea. :) My eyes are blurring a bit right now, and I'm trying to close out just -one- -more- -day- at CP, but I will see what I can do tomorrow. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:36, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree to license templates

Do templates like {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} mean anything when considering "By clicking the "Save page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL."? Ryan Vesey 20:16, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Not anymore. :) They were meaningful when created, when we were a GFDL site and these contributors were licensing their contents more broadly. See also Template_talk:DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual#Historical. I believe this template is actively misleading now. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:29, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
I nominated it for deletion, see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 April 16#Template:DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual. The template is full protected, can you add the deletion discussion notice to the template page? Ryan Vesey 01:11, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Problems with same harasser

Hello,

More problems from the same harasser. See [18], [19], [20] and [21]. Thank you very much WhateverML (talk) 01:47, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I've deleted a few of these talk pages. This is not normally something that we'd do, but given that they're just filled with useless content (old stale warnings, sockpuppet tags that nobody cares about), keeping them around for informational purposes is more trouble than it's worth if people are edit warring over their content. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 13:55, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Thank you both very much! P.S. Love the upside-down name ;-) WhateverML (talk) 18:09, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi

Hi, you removed the tag here: [22]. The journal articles I checked had bits copied into the article. I didn't rigorously check them all though, so I suspect there is more, and more in the original article (this article was forked). IRWolfie- (talk) 23:23, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) I presumed from your note on the talk page (And the heavy editing on the article) that you had resolved the problem - I'm sorry to hear that is not so. :/ The tag lists the article at WP:CP for administrator closure, but it's really hard to close such listings when there isn't an indication of what areas may be problematic. As heavily as you have been editing the article, do you have any idea what sections may need continued scrutiny? Or a lead on which editor might have added the problems and when? If you believe the article is still an issue, it's perfectly fine to put the tag back, but this kind of information would really go a long way to helping resolve the issue. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Basically it's whoever added the material I removed here: [23] is your culprit. The content was split off TM-Sidhi program on the 24th September 2012; I'll try later to have a dig around to see if I can locate when the infringement occurred. I didn't have the chance to go through everything, I just got rid of the copyvio I could spot easily (I chanced upon it while verifying sources). IRWolfie- (talk) 13:09, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) I just happened to have WikiBlame open... the content was added in this edit from 23:02, 21 September 2009 by Keithbob (talk · contribs). Zad68 13:42, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Adding: The text also appears almost identically in this book Total Heart Health: How to Prevent And Reverse Heart Disease With Maharishi Vedic Approach To Health which states a copyright status of "Text copyright (c) 2006 by Robert H. Schneider ... and Jeremy Z. Fields ... All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced ... without the prior written consent of the copyright owner." It also appears verbatim on dozens of websites. Zad68 14:01, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! That's really helpful. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:25, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

The changes that i made in article abt Sami Yusuf "Siamak Radmanesh"

Hi, I am Ellie. I am writing to you re. the changes that I made in article abt Sami Yusuf. I try to find an English reference for that but I was not successful. All the references are in Persian as "Sami Yusuf" or to be exact "Siamak Radmanesh" is the son of famous Iranian composer, lyricist, poet, teacher and singer "Babak Radmanesh". http://www.babakradmanesh.com/english/bio.php Siamak recent work "Dryer Land" is actually a duel work with his father, Master Babak Radmanesh.

Hope that helps. 65.92.20.68 (talk) 02:08, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Country of origin

FOP for statues has come up in discussions here and commons. List of Academy Award trophies on public display has 3D statues on permanent display in countries with FOP and statue country of origin is the USA. Our policies and guidelines do not mention country of origin on two pages that I found. commons:Commons:Freedom of panorama and commons:Commons:Copyright rules by subject matter. If country of origin is mentioned in this case on other pages then I haven't found it yet. I feel this should be clarified on these two pages if it is codified somewhere. Btw the UK GLAM project is also seeking USA legal advice to conform to USA law where the servers are. http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Water_cooler#Copyright_law_support_for_UK_GLAMs_.3F --Canoe1967 (talk) 22:13, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Canoe1967. :) I'm not entirely sure what it is that I can do for you here. Are you advising me of this as Moonriddengirl, a long-term volunteer who has an interest in copyright? Or are you seeking assistance from the Wikimedia Foundation? If the latter, it would really be better if you communicated with me at User:Mdennis (WMF) just for clarity, but I can process a request or question here. However, there has to be a request or question. :D The WMF doesn't set local site policies - they trust that the communities will create policies that conform to the WMF:Terms of Use. However, they have sometimes provided research on legal issues when asked. Just let me know which part of me you are talking to here and how I can help. I cannot interact with the same issue in both roles. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:28, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 April 2013

Small problem

Hi :). I have been editing Ra.One for some time again, and I noticed that adding ₹ templates to the wikilink titles is now showing a CS1 error. I don't want to replace the symbol with the old Rs. format because that's been discontinued. Can you suggest a way to work around this problem? ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 17:12, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid not. :/ If I needed help with that, I might ask at WP:VPT. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:48, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Chaim Soutine

Hi there, MRG! I'm really sorry, here I am again, still uncertain whether or not to tag something as a copyvio. The paragraph that was added to Chaim Soutine with this edit on 2 August 2009 appears to me almost identical to this article, which is apparently dated 22 May 2009 and thus could not reasonably have been copied from here. But I've been wrong about these things so often in the past that I am reluctant to blank that section without some expert advice. Could I ask you take a quick look at it? Thank you, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:38, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Good find. :) If it's been published elsewhere first and you can't find a compatible license, removal is definitely the right thing to do! I went ahead and took it out and put a note on the talk page of the article and the talk page of the contributor. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:47, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I was told by Huon to contact you about a map that I'm interested in adding. The map can be found here, and the original site is here. The issue we're having is that the site is copyrighted by RaceWorks. Indeed, most of the content on the site is RaceWorks' work. However, the map is either handed out or available at all events. What would be the best way to go about getting this image added? Would it need to be uploaded to Wikipedia directly, or can it be added to commons?  RogueSly  Talk 01:12, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

A related question was whether that map (excluding the logo) is copyrightable at all, or whether it's just a collection of geometric shapes that cannot be copyrighted. It would be easiest to just blank the logo and use the map without further ado, but I'm skeptical. Huon (talk) 01:17, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) Ideally the map should be recreated as vector-art, anyway: I imagine the non-textual elements could be made just as easily from satellite imagery, as an original work. I would be happy to take this on … but only if you’re not in a hurry—I have a bit of a drawing backlog.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 02:05, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. I'm not in a huge rush for it, since the page does exist already and is linked to the speedway portion of the track. I'll just remove the redirect and add the map image once the vector is done. Just send me a message on my talk page once you've got it completed and I'll work on getting the article up for it.  RogueSly  Talk 02:53, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, Odysseus. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:42, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Czech Republic–Iceland relations

Hi, I see you removed quite a bit of content from Czech Republic–Iceland relations, I have restored some of it as I don't see how it could be a copyvio; however since you originally challenged the information this is just a courtesy notification. Thanks, C679 16:13, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Replied at your talk page with a more complete explanation, and removed content again. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:36, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply, it was much easier to address the concern once you had highlighted the "offending" url. I believe the version I have since added is free of copyright concerns and is a fair description of the sources. Of course the lead needs working on but the "state visits" seem, to me at least, to be ok. Thanks, C679 19:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

User:Billy Hathorn

Not sure if you still deal with this anymore, but I think there might be another IP sock of User:Billy Hathorn at James D. Martin: 107.28.253.154. You would probably know better than me, so I thought I'd bring it to your attention. Canadian Paul 21:45, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) Almost certainly, I think. User:Amalthea and I were talking about Billy a few days ago, here. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what the best approach is to him. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Don't know either, but I've left you another reply on my talk page earlier today. :) Amalthea 21:41, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

J. Ralph Page

Dear moongirlxxxx

I wrote the wikipedia page and the IMDB page about J. Ralph so there is no copyright issue. I authorize it to be used here on wikipedia. The whole bio is neutral and contains only facts. If you object to the line "Considered by many to have had a profound impact ...", which was taken from a famous quote, I will remove it. The wikipedia page in its current reverted form contains factual errors (eg. J. Ralph does not play the oboe) and is missing the bulk of his significant career developments (eg. oscar nomination). Please reinstate my account and the J. Ralph wikipedia page.

Sincere thanks, Charles Riggens 

Eldorado74 (talk) 21:20, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

about the speedy deletion of Osho Tapoban

hello, I am medha. I wrote the wiki article Osho Tapoban as an assignment for my english class. I request you to please clarify to me why my article is only an advertisement. If so please guide me make the article unbiased.

Sincerely, Medha — Preceding unsigned comment added by Medha0110 (talk • contribs) 13:30, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

On William H. Gass

Well, OK, thank you. I had found (as stated in my earlier Talk:William H. Gass comment) that one editor struck me as responsible for all the matching items, but I did not probe in detail. Note also that there had been earlier copyvio issues pre-2010, as mentioned on the Talk page: I have absolutely no idea what that involved. Choor monster (talk) 13:59, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm happy to evaluate such matters. :) It's always good news for me when it turns out that the other guy is copying from us! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:19, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Signed by Sinebot

Just letting you know that your talk page got signed by Sinebot. Seqqis (talk) 14:59, 23 April 2013 (UTC){{User:Anonymouse321/Userboxes/Signed by SineBot}}

Thanks. I'm not entirely sure why this is useful information, though. I'm sure it's been signed by Sinebot many times. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
Hello and thankyou Oh Moonridden One! Hope you are well! ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 16:25, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Thank you! Unexpected kindness is always a day-brightener, and today I could use one! :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:58, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Moonriddengirl, calling on your expertise in these matters: Kintong (talk · contribs) created several articles that appear to rely on copied content--Peter Rogan, Roman Catholic Diocese of Kumbo, Cornelius Fontem Esua. My question is whether the articles began, and continue to be, copyright violations totally or in large part, and would be candidates for speedy deletion, or if they constitute a more complex issue, perhaps involving close paraphrasing as well. Thank you in advance, and cheers. 99.0.83.243 (talk) 11:49, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

First one I've looked at (Roman Catholic Diocese of Kumbo) it is way over the line. :/ I've blanked it. I'll take a look at the others. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:57, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Peter Rogan is now blanked, too. I did an immediate purge of Cornelius Fontem Esua, but didn't find any copying in the two sections remaining. If you do, please yank them or let me know. :) Honestly, they might have come close to WP:CSD#G12 and another admin might have just gone there. With the backlog at WP:CP being what it is, I'm more inclined to go there myself. :/ But I tend to reserve that still for the kind of text dump & run that shows no effort at all, or for repeat issues (where they've been warned and continued). Thanks for finding the problem! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Well done--I know that's your bailiwick, and you can diagnose, parse, and handle those situations much more quickly than I can. There's a type of novice editor who introduces articles that satisfy notability guidelines, yet compromises them through copyvio. Very best, 99.0.83.243 (talk) 12:55, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Şerban Nichifor and Liana Alexandra

Hi MRG! Per your messege, I sorted them out and left notes on the talk pages. Neither was a clear case of copyvio, but to be on the safe side, I did considerable re-writing. The whole thing was quite a pointy and acrimonious mess, to put it mildly, and I suspect at least six of the protagonists are probably sockpuppets of the same...er... interested party. Anyhow, I just discovered the existence of Talk:Liana Alexandra/Temp and Talk:Şerban Nichifor/Temp. These need to be deleted. I don't suggest history merging as they appear to be prior disputed versions of the original articles simply pasted onto the temp pages. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 16:31, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

J. Ralph Update

Dear Moonriddengirl, I am waiting for the creative commons license to publish on the IMDB page that I wrote, but can you please confirm that this is okay to post in the time being because the J. Ralph Wikipedia page in its current form doesn't reflect his accomplishments accurately, factually or in totality.

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User:Eldorado74/sandbox

Thank you, Charles Riggens Eldorado74 (talk) 21:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I've replied at your talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:11, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 April 2013

Second opinion on copyvio

Hi Moonriddengirl, I wondered if you could take a look at an article I'm currently looking into for copyright concerns. I'd appreciate a second opinion. The article is State Board of Technical Education and Training and the copyvio URL is http://sbtetap.gov.in/view/History.aspx?Band=L&LinkId=History. In its present form the article only matches the source in paraphrasing (the article was copyedited from its original form), but if you look at the article in its original state [24] it was a blatant violation. I have two questions: 1) Do you feel the current version is sufficiently distinct to say no violation or attributable legal issue exists? 2)Do you think there is any revdel action that can, or should, be taken here? Pol430 talk to me 20:29, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Wow! Well, in my opinion the major rewrite undertaken by Myrtlegroggins save this. But, yes, I've revdeleted the history. I also ran the CCI software and am greatly relieved to see that this user hasn't added much text, and that you've already cleaned up. Thank you so much for finding this and following up on it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:21, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
You're welcome! Thanks for your assistance and thank you very much for the barnstar :) Pol430 talk to me 18:08, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Categories

"Categories as currently implemented are a worthless pain in the ass".[25] You got that right. Malleus Fatuorum 22:01, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

LOL. Hi. :) The header isn't actually mine - I think categories as currently implemented are sometimes worthwhile, and sometimes a pain in the ass. :) They're just not reliable enough for in-depth research, but if they were evenly applied, maybe. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:06, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
Ah, sorry to misattribute you. Let me just say then that I think that categories as currently implemented are a worthless pain in the ass, and that any reasonably intelligent 14-year-old could quite easily come up with something more fit for purpose. Assuming everyone could agree on what that purpose actually is of course. Malleus Fatuorum 22:12, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
I use them a lot on Commons, anyway. :) They may be incomplete, but at least they generally have some stuff I'm looking for. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:14, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
I only use them to avoid the annoying uncategorised tagging. The problem with categories is that they're a hierarchy unrelated to what most people are searching for, and they ought not to be a hierarchy at all. Try typing "19th century american female novelists" into the search box and see if the results make any sense to you. Readers don't make use of categories, and neither do I. But it would be quite easy to develop a rational solution if only there were any rational developers around. Malleus Fatuorum 22:25, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

J. Ralph Update

Dear Moonriddengirl,

I have made changes per your notes. I am eager to get this up as the current J. Ralph site is woefully lacking. I would like to add more, but this is a good starting point that can be built upon. Please get this approved and let me update the page soon.

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User:Eldorado74/sandbox

Thank you,

Charles Riggens Eldorado74 (talk) 00:27, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Apology for KP page

Dear Moonriddengirl,

I just wanted to leave a comment and apology for the way things were handled on the KP Yohannan talk page.

I wasn't part of the group, but I did get the email that asked people to comment on the page.

It wasn't a malicious attempt to abuse wikipedia, but a misguided attempt to help get the controversies section removed.

That wasn't the right way to do things, and we're sorry it happened that way.

Also, I request that you please look at LoveYourNeighbor1's account.

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User_talk:LoveYourNeighbor1

He was not associated with the group, has a history with wikipedia, and was making constructive progress on this:

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:BLPN#K._P._Yohannan

His account was blocked, and his unblock request declined, but I believe that to be an error. We'd be sad if a legitimate user took the rap for this.

Thank you. We appreciate the work you are doing on this.

If I can do anything to help, please let me know.

HappyPmachine (talk) 01:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I can understand that things can grow heated in the moment. I'm very sorry if User:LoveYourNeighbor1 was mistakenly identified in the cleanup of the issue in that page. From where I'm sitting, though, it's hard to imagine that LoverYourNeighbor1 was not involved in some way, since at the time the "request for comment" was opened there were only two people really involved in the conversation. Somebody had to initiate that email. :/ What I would recommend is that User:LoveYourNeighbor1 wait a couple of days and request unblocking again, explaining that she or he is familiar with WP:Consensus and WP:SOCK (two important policies) and will abide by them. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:48, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Please leave well alone. The other website had copied from Wiki - not the other way around. So called super editors like you are a pain in the proverbal. If you wish then contribute to the Wiki but do not go around deleting things. OK.

For goodness sake. Ned Hanlan. The race listings were all verified and referenced. How about being useful and leaving things alone that you don't know any thing about. Is it any wonder that contributors loke me get pissed of with people loke you and want to give up on contributing anything to Wiki when it justs get cut by people who think they know more than the author. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flags33 (talk • contribs) 26 April 2013

If you believe you've been unfairly accused of copyright issues, the thing to do is explain that - not remove the template.
In this case, you would have had to do quite some convincing to make your case. It is highly unlikely that the Dictionary of Canadian Biography copied from you first because they are the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and second because they have been used as a reference in that article since 2007, several years before your edit. Beyond that, you carried over their indentation scheme, which breaks on Wikipedia and which you had to immediately fix because copy-pasting here does not always work well. You then set about making changes to the text that immediately transformed it away from that source.
If you want content to remain, don't copy-paste from your sources without following WP:C. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:23, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Cover art deletion

I just nominated File:FrederickForsyth TheDayOfTheJackal.jpg for deletion. I rarely do this because I find the procedures on deleting files at Wikipedia to be difficult to follow (Commons is easy). So, my questions are: (1) did I do it right? (2) could I have done it differently? and (3) could I have done it better? Thanks, as always.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:12, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure wherever you are you're having more fun than I am. If you read the deletion "discussion", you'll see that I am the devil incarnate. I'd really forgotten how joyless deletion discussions are. If I were to guess, I think the image will be kept, not because it complies with policy but because policy and practice don't match. Cheers.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:48, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi. Sorry. :/ (I was not much on this weekend, as I was helping my nephew move. Strangely, when I was online, I was on Commons!) You did everything right. :) As to whether you could have done it differently, possibly. Until April 6, that article used the first edition cover. On April 18, User:Centpacrr overwrote the first edition with the anniversary edition, for some reason. Several days earlier, he had uploaded the first US cover. Wikipedia:WikiProject Books says "If using an image of the book cover art, try to select the cover of the book's first edition." Wikipedia:WikiProject Books/Images says, "First edition covers are preferred." Alternatively, you might have restored the first edition for the infobox (as per established guideline consensus) and nominated the US version Centpacrr uploaded for review at WP:NFCR. NFCR is a very slow forum, but it is visited by those who are familiar with NFC and discussion there tends to gravitate less towards "I like it" and more towards "Is this appropriate?" Matters may not be resolved for months, however. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:26, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
  • (talk page stalker) For what its worth you could have fleshed out the nomination rationale a bit for those who don't get the shorthand and can't click links. Mentioning that it wasn't in an infobox as identification in your rationale would have helped too; I honestly doubt some of these commentors are checking the article itself. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:34, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

First, thanks to both of you for your comments here and particularly for your comments at the deletion discussion. Unless there's something compelling, I don't intend to comment any more at the deletion page. The two of you are handling things admirably. That said, I would like to clear up a few points because I want to understand better about how this works for the future. So, as usual, I have questions:

  • Does having a non-free book cover image in a book article infobox (let's assume no other images anywhere else in the article) comply with policy? I haven't done much work on book articles, so I've never paid attention, but I have seen a lot of theatrical posters in film articles in infoboxes (just about all of them), and I don't see why they comply with policy. If it's just a matter of convention/practice, I can live with that, but it seems to me there should be a change to the policy to conform to the practice. I saw Moonriddengirl's salient comment about Virgin Killer. Now, there's something I could live with because the commentary is truly about the image itself, and the image assists in understanding the commentary. But my assumption is, just like film posters, there's generally no discussion about the book cover.
  • Before Centpacrr's changes to the article, there was only one image, and it was in the infobox. In my view, it did not comply with policy. Then, he added the other image to the body along with the commentary. I objected to that, as you know, but, frankly, I would have objected to the one in the infobox, Crisco, but, as is often the case, there's a back story. Centpacrr added the image and the commentary to the Forsythe article first, and I reverted, partly because I thought the whole discussion about the book was undue in that article and because of the image. Then, he threw a hissy fit and added it to the book article, so I followed him there. As the book article now stands, at a minimum, shouldn't the image in the body be removed?

Anyway, some of this is more commentary than questions, but, as I said, what I'm after here is not to resolve this particular case but to understand better how all of this fits together so I handle this "better" next time, if I'm ever foolish enough to handle it at all. Thanks again for all your help.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:05, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Two for the price of one.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:03, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
Butting in because I have this on my watch and was concerned to see a big chunk of text removed. First, MRG, wow, are you speedy! The article had one image when I opened the edit window and another (I confess to say the one I prefer) when I saved! To Bbb23 - yes, book articles show the cover art in the infobox and unless published earlier than 1923 needs a FUR. As for adding book covers to the text - and sometimes the art is important or the artist - again, unless the book was published before 1923, then no, we can't. I removed the images of the book cover from the text of a number of articles for this reason. If you have questions MRG Is the expert, but I too do a lot of work with book articles. Anyway, my thoughts. Truthkeeper (talk) 19:31, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Role account

Hi again. I've just noticed that a new account has been set up as User:PlumMarketing. This account has edited Birds of a Feather today as a first contribution. The user name could have COI as it seems to be associated with the company that is marketing Birds of a Feather - see here. Nothing too outrageous has been added but the connection looks a bit cheesy and like a role account. Thanks. Acabashi (talk) 11:45, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Here's another one that you might like to look at : [Theaxholmeinformer] who seems to add its own web site to articles. Acabashi (talk) 13:58, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
I've blocked both with instruction to make new account. Theaxholmeinformer hasn't been around for over half a year. PlumMarketing may return, but edits don't seem to have been promotional. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:41, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Heya MRG - I hope you don't mind my asking you this, as you're very knowledgeable about copyright. I posted on a media help talk page, but didn't get any responses.

Can anyone help me figure out whether a sound recording is in the public domain? I'd really like to include a vocal recording at Barcarolle (Offenbach) rather than the synthesized version currently included, but am having trouble figuring out whether this recording, for instance, is in the public domain due to its age. The piece itself is of course public domain.

Thanks! –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:07, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The bad news is that no sound recording will have fallen into the US public domain because of its age until 2067. Sound recordings made before 1972 are not protected by federal copyright, but for those recordings federal law explicitly does not pre-empt state and local protections. If you can find a Barcarolle recording on the Edison label, that would be okay as the products of Edison Records are considered to be PD because of Edison's donations to the US Government. Good luck, and here's hoping that one day we have a bit of sanity in US sound recordings copyright. ReverendWayne (talk) 20:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
It looks like that one is Victor; I guess that isn't PD? :( (There are Edison recordings of the Barcarolle out there - but none that I can find are S/A, which is what I'm looking for, since if I can't find that I may as well leave the synth instrumental version that's currently present in the article.) –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:19, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
Boy, User:ReverendWayne, I'm glad you were here. :) I've had very little dealing with sound files. I'm sorry, User:Roscelese, that I wouldn't have been really able to answer your question without research. I'm glad somebody else happened along. I wonder if we have any musicians on Wikipedia? Surely we can do better than that. :P --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:28, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
Ha! I know both parts, so maybe I should team up with someone and/or record both to a PD orchestral file! –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:21, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Another option to consider, if it's acceptable for a Wikipedia article, is linking to the National Jukebox at the Library of Congress. LOC has an arrangement with Sony to offer streaming of old recordings in their catalogues. They offer mostly Victors to start with, but they'll be adding more Columbias in future. Here is the recording by Gluck and Homer, or you could go for this one by Lucy Isabelle Marsh and Marguerite Dunlap on Victor's cheaper purple label, sung in English but a bit better in sound quality. ReverendWayne (talk) 06:21, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! A link is nice even if an on-wiki recording would be better. Perhaps I really should record it :P –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:11, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
It's probably a rookie point (and I'm happy to be stepped by anyone who knows anything about copyright), but what about these two. I thought archive only kept free media? - SchroCat (talk) 06:36, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
I've been looking around at Internet Archive but I haven't found, in their FAQs or forums, any explicit rules on what's acceptable to be uploaded there. Maybe it's something like YouTube, where they'll take it down if requested by someone who claims the rights? It's free (as in free beer) because no one objects, but it's not free from copyright. (This pertains to the old records and old time radio files at Internet Archive; they have other sound files that have been donated to the public domain, or released under a Creative Commons license.) Here's a good reference on how sound recordings copyright works in the US, and how maybe we could make it work better. ReverendWayne (talk) 14:06, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
From the [Terms of Use]: “Some of the content available through the Archive may be governed by local, national, and/or international laws and regulations, and your use of such content is solely at your own risk. You agree to abide by all applicable laws and regulations, including intellectual property laws, in connection with your use of the Archive. In particular, you certify that your use of any part of the Archive's Collections will be noncommercial and will be limited to noninfringing or fair use under copyright law.…” This apparently places on users the onus of respecting any copyright applicable to its materials—but regardless, no non-commercial licence is compatible with Wikipedia’s, as we can‘t Share Alike under such terms.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 07:08, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I knew it would be a rookie point! Thanks to both for your clarifications. - SchroCat (talk) 07:12, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Editor insisting IAR allows copyvio & continually replacing it

See User talk:Dougweller#Substantiating Political Correctness, pt. 2.. I have twice trimeed a huge quotation (see my latest diff[26] which has resulted in the post on my talk page (which also accuses me of various nefarious activities). The editor has restored the copyvio. Could someone else fix this (I think my version conveys what he is trying to convey) and make it clear that it isn't just me saying he will be blocked if he continues to add copyvio? I'm off to bed now. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 20:51, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I have used the {{copyvio}} section on the article to permit another administrator to evaluate it or to allow time for the material to be properly summarized with brief explicit quotation. Please feel free to expand on my rationale at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2013 April 27. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:23, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
After he removed the template and against restored the content, I have blocked for 24 hours. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:52, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 06:51, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Commons image question

Hi Moonriddengirl, I have a question about an image I would like to use and know that you have been involved in uploading similar images before. I have only a rudimentary grasp of copyright law (and only as it relates to the UK, not US), so any help you can give would be good. I am surrently updating the Terry-Thomas article and have come across this image, which carries details of the Baltimore Sun on the reverse (or possibly this one or this one). Are either of these OK to upload to Commons, based on what you can see from the image? If not, if there a rule of thumb about what information must be present on the reverse to be happily considered "free"? Many thanks for any help or advice - SchroCat (talk) 05:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Based on my understanding, I think that one would be okay due to lack of copyright notice, but I myself would run it past WP:MCQ first. Images have never really been my area, and those people are likely to know if there are exceptions that might raise red flags. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

That's even better! I'll have a play around with this one, which I think should also be free to upload to Commons? Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 10:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Scratched - it's a UK film, so possibly published in the UK first. I'll continue the seach! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 10:16, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Many, many thanks for all of this. - SchroCat (talk) 18:44, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
  • The Italian one seems to have a copyright notice; based on Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights it would also have been copyrighted when the URAA passed in 1996. The others seem okay, although whoever uploaded it certainly knew how to make recreation difficult. You could try looking for the same image, hosted elsewhere. For instance, the How to Murder Your Wife image is available here (at smaller resolution) as well. You'd have to upload the eBay listing (front and back) to show there is no copyright notice, then upload the smaller image over it. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Stupid of me to miss the fact that one of those is Italian! I've dropped the How to murder your wife one into commons and I think I've done it OK. I'll have a little play on the side with the Where Were You... one and see what I can do, although I may just buy the damned thing if I can't get it to work peoperly! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 08:59, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, I've started a bit with "Where were you" (about halfway done). If you want to give it a go, though, I certainly wouldn't mind. (No need to buy it! After all, we're "volunteers". Why pay when you can get it legally and free?) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:51, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Only because the original front-and-back image was saved (accidentally) as a png. When I went to reload the full version I couldn't because of Commons won't let the format change, so it was stuck with png, rather than jpeg. Basically my own idiocy and inability, rather than a conscious decision! - SchroCat (talk) 18:33, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Antoine Seilern

Hi, mrg, me yet AGAIN! Could I ask you, or someone who watches this page, to take a quick look at Antoine Seilern? I've tagged it as a close paraphrase, and advised the contributor; but I'm having doubts, and would appreciate a more expert opinion. Thanks once again, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:39, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

It may not be extensive, but I think there is some close following.
Source Article
At the height of the War, Seilern made one of his finest acquisitions, "The Entombment with Donor and the Resurrection" by the Master of Flémalle, which he purchased in 1942 as a work attributed to Adriaen Isenbrandt. It was at the height of the War that Seilern purchased one of his finest acquisitions, The Entombment with Donor and the Resurrection by the Master of Flémalle, which he bought as a work attributed to Adriaen Isenbrandt in 1942.
--Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:51, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
OK, many thanks for your answer. As all too often, I wasn't clear: I think there is a LOT of close following (I posted a longish example at User talk:Stephen Conrad); my doubt was really whether it should have been tagged as an out-and-out copyvio. Now you've seen it, and that doubt is allayed. Thanks once again, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:22, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Graham Fuller

I was reading the history for the Wikipedia page for Graham Fuller (http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Graham_Fuller), and couldn't help but notice you posted the original article back in 2009. I guess I was wondering how you got that information, if it's not too much to ask. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.238.252.236 (talk) 23:33, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, it's not too much to ask, but it's been a long time. :) My general approach to article writing at that point was to use Google search - especially Google news & Google books. Once I assemble enough sources, I would try to summarize the main points they make about a subject in presenting a general overview of it. I have access to a few more search engines now, so I can search those as well. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:42, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Re wiki/Royalties page

Hi

My observations are about http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Royalties- in general this page is not too good.

I am a professional visual artist and have a particular interest in the section on Artist resale royaltys ( I have done a bit of editing on this part of the page, in the past) The entry starts with a statement that is hardly a encyclopedia style definition:

"Gone – or almost gone – is the time when the art collector was the focal point of a painting. The artist is now not satisfied with recognition by the value his/her artwork gets by increasing value but wants to receive a part of that resale of increase- known as droit de suite – whilst alive or for his heirs, thus obtaining a moral right implied by the copyright claim otherwise legal in a musical creation or in the sale of a book."

Of the many problems with this statement this one really stands out :

" a moral right implied by the copyright claim otherwise legal in a musical creation or in the sale of a book"

Moral rights are not economic rights. The statements formulation of a Moral right as a economic right to further payments on the resale of things that were sold in full - is a definition of a 'moral right' that is neither a Copyright or a Moral right.(actually ARR is more Goods and Chattels than anything else)

I did not in the past try to remove that much from the Artist resale royaltys section(thought it would simply start a 'edit' war) , so mainly I just inserted facts. Consequently the section currently has a slightly 'odd' syntax? flavor?.


I hadn't looked at wiki/Royalties for quite a while , I am a bit surprised that its obvious faults and weaknesses have not had much attention, for some time. Copyright and royaltys are fairly important subjects these days Pedestrian1957 (talk) 05:01, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

yours john r walker

Hi. :) The article is certainly in sad shape and needs some attention. Unfortunately, my only contribution to the article has been to clean up some copyright issues that it contained itself; I don't really have any insight into it. If you have an interest and have time, it would be lovely if you'd like to work on it! I'm placing a "welcome mat" on your talk page that has some very useful links in it that could help you get started. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:26, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks I will have a go at the art resale part... when I have a bit of time  :-) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pedestrian1957 (talk • contribs) 22:07, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Copying quotes

Hello! I am in a doubt regarding copyvio of quotations. On the article Huma Qureshi (actress), i have noticed that many quotations are being used. They are ditto copies and are present in quotation marks. So we are attributing them properly and not trying to present as if they are ours. They are also not taken for one certain source but are from varying various sources. But is this okay to have 1/3rd of the article full of copy-paste stuff from various copyrighted materials? One actually shouldn't be judging from the number "1/3rd" but should look into how big the article actually is. You should take a look at it and give your opinion. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 19:02, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, I think the actual question is whether the quotes are being used in accordance with WP:NFC. It looks to me like they are, as they are primarily quotes from critics expressing their viewpoints. In this case, if there was too much from any one source, I might be concerned anyway, but I think it's okay. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:08, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Okay! Thanks for the reply. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 06:59, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Buy licensing rights

I know you deal with text copyright more, but do you know if it's possible to buy the right to license a picture? Particularly, I'm curious as to whether I could pay a photographer to allow me to release an image they took of myself under a creative commons license. Ryan Vesey 22:31, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

IANAL and even if I were I could not give you legal advise, so take this for what it's worth, but sure. :) Copyright is a property, and it can be (and often is) sold. See [27] and [28] p. 6, "Transfer of Copyright." For Commons' purposes, though, we'd still need a release from them. Unless you don't want them to have any rights to it at all, you can also just pay them to license it (if you want to pay them) - this is an arrangement that plenty of people conduct regularly. For example, freelance photographers in exchange for consideration agree to license content under necessary terms for magazines that purchase their pictures. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:33, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 April 2013

BUF Songs

Can we be sure these are all out of copyright? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 15:57, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I think not without due diligence. :/ If published in the UK and not in the US (with formalities), it would only be PD in the US if it was PD in the UK as of 1 January 1996. Otherwise, it's protected for 95 years from publication. In the UK, it seems like they would been protected for 45 years from publication or for 50 years after the death of the author, whichever came last. Since "last" would have been death of author even if the author of a particular work died the minute he wrote it, this means that the author would have had to have died in or before 1945 Commons thinks (perhaps rightly) that if the works were anonymous they would have been protected for 70 years from publication - or at minimum 2002. In that case, they'd be copyrighted in the US for 95 years from publication - or at minimum 2027. Odds don't look good for them. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:59, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
As they all appear to be written by E.D. Randall, or virtually all, I guess we need to put the copyvio template on the article. Dougweller (talk) 20:50, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I'm afraid so. :/ I assume you'll handle it? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:09, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
Done, but I can't follow this up as I will be offline most of the time this month. I've done a lot of searching and all I can find is that E. D. Randall wrote these lyrics, or most of them, around 1934. Dougweller (talk) 17:22, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
That should be quite sufficient. :) They'll come up at WP:CP eventually. (Oooh. Pang of guilt. I was so wanting to keep up my work there, but things have been busy lately and I've got heavy family burdens this weekend. :P Not that I mean to call my family a burden. They're lovely. But if only I could squeeze 6 or 7 more hours into the day.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:54, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

K. P. Yohannan, Believers Church and Gospel for Asia "Controversies"

{{BLP noticeboard|section="K. P. Yohannan"}}

Hello Moonriddengirl, I was wondering whether there would be any way to open up discussion about the K. P. Yohannan page, as well as the corresponding material that has been posted up on Gospel for Asia and Believers Church. It's clear that there's something bigger going on here beyond just "random" edits, given the coordinated effort to add "Controversies" section simultaneously to each page. Looking at WP:SOAP, I was hoping that the editors could take a look and ensure the objectivity of this page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

LivingIsSimple (talk) 18:43, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Left a load of them at your talk page. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:53, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Chance of edit war on Gospel for Asia, K. P. Yohannan, Believers Church

I feel there is genuine chances of edit war on the following pages Gospel for Asia, K. P. Yohannan, Believers Church. Kindly keep an eye. Benedictdilton (talk) 21:01, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. It does seem, after what happened at Yohannan's article, quite likely that more issues will arise. While I'm keeping an eye on that article (not closely, but only for large issues) I'm afraid that I'm not the best person to keep an eye out for edit warring there, as I really am not on Wikipedia as much as I'd like to be. :) If edit wars do occur, you might want to reach out for help at requests for page protection or through one of the noticeboards. Good luck! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:40, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Frederick Antal

This is getting to be a habit. Is there somewhere else I should be posting copyright questions? Anyway, I'll ask this one here if I may. I was about to blank almost all of this article, where the bulk of the text was added from here in December 2008, but then noticed that it is all in quotes, with attribution to the source. Does that make any difference? Would you or one of the the faithful watchers be kind enough to take a look? Oh, and the previous version was copied from groveart, in case anyone is going to clean the history. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:30, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) That looks to me much more than “fair use“ can support, particularly since it comprises almost the entire content of the article. I don’t know if there’s a policy quantifying acceptable quotation, but any more than a paragraph would seem excessive to me—unless, perhaps, where it provides a unique and important clarification or illustration of a point that’s already discussed at similar length in the article body.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:02, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
(talk page stalker)I agree it should be removed. I hope I'm right, I just did something similar today, when a movie plot summary was attributed, and used quotes, but the copied words comprised 90% of the entire article. So while the absolute length is an issue, I think the proportion of the total article arising from fair use quotes is relevant.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 00:23, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
The quote is 465 words. The source is 843 words. We're talking about over 50% of the source - yeah, that's pretty substantial. It's also not being used transformatively at all - it looks pretty clearly like somebody slapped it down there so they didn't have to write their own summary of the artist. Would that pass Fair Use review? I'm not a betting woman, but if I were I'd put down money against it. It certainly doesn't pass WP:NFC - over 50% is not a "brief excerpt" in any definition. In considering whether to blank or simply fix, I look at the history - I see this was added by an IP. The article is not heavily edited. Blanking would seem to serve no purpose. I'll fix it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:36, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
A big thank you to those who answered here, but most especially to MRG. A thought: if something like this should happen again (and my guess is that it will, and pretty soon, too), it'd be enough to say "blanking not needed, go ahead and fix". I certainly wouldn't have made as good a job of it as you have, but perhaps you have better and/or more interesting things to do with your time? Thanks again, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:35, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes, you are absolutely able to fix it then and there, and I often do unless it seems likely that permission will be forthcoming or the problem is complex and the article is being actively edited by the infringer or others. In that case, the template gives them an opportunity to work on the issue. Sometimes when you fix a copyright issue, somebody will revert you. The template is useful in that case to blank the issue until an administrator takes action. My basic goals are to clean the content, educate contributors and, insofar as possible, avoid trauma. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:03, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

How to ask for free images?

Hello, first I would like to say thank you for supporting the removal of my restriction. I was wondering how can I request images from Flickr to be released under a free license? Best, jonatalk to me 16:32, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) I haven't actually done much with Flickr, but I believe that with Flickr if you have an account you can leave a note for somebody else. The best way is probably to ask them to change the licensing they have published on Flickr itself, since it's really easy to confirm license that way. Otherwise, if their contact information is visible on Flickr, you can ask them to write to the Wikimedia Foundation using the form at Wikipedia:Declaration of consent (and to that address) to verify that an image is licensed. The contact information would need to be visible on Flickr since we have to verify that it really came from them. Or they can respond to you with a licensing release in the comments. Please make sure they clearly note that they are licensing the image under an allowable license.
One thing to keep an eye out for - Flickr-washing. Not everybody who uploads an image to Flickr actually owns the right for it. It can be helpful to look at the other photographs they've uploaded to get an idea if they're really the photographer in question or if they're just using Flickr to hold stolen photos. If in doubt, I'd ask for feedback at WP:MCQ.
Good luck! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:38, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Your input requested

There's a copyvio discussion at Talk:Murder_(Canadian_law) that could benefit from your insight, if you wouldn't mind, please and thank you. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:54, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Responded. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:00, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

forbes most powerful people

thanks to you, because i accept the mistakes that i do and is the best for all the people that see wikipedia in the world. 1 millions thanks you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yolvandy vargas (talk • contribs) 20:24, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello Moonriddengirl, I'm sorry to bother you, but you're the user most knowledgeable in copright issues that I know, and I'd like a second opinion on File:Predicted CORO6 structure.jpg's copyright status. That's the predicted structure of some macromolecule, predicted by Phyre / Phyre2. According to our article the program itself is free for non-commercial use, but I doubt that makes the image PD. The screenshots in that article are all claimed to be copyrighted and released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 by the uploader who apparently was one of the program's developers; could the uploader for this image (Stillulent) do the same? Or does the image inherit the non-commercial license of the program itself? Yours, Huon (talk) 01:17, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh, dear. We can't use screenshots from proprietary software except under claim of fair use (Wikipedia:Screenshot), and according to WP:NFCI these are used to discuss the product itself. I've deleted the image and left Stillulent a note about how to verify permission if he is able. I need to ask Dr. Kelley to confirm his identify for those other images. I'll do that through OTRS. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
I've written Dr. Kelley. :) Ticket:2013050810005769. I'm not going to tag the images {{npd}} unless I don't hear back from him. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:20, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look! Huon (talk) 17:21, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

You

Are cool. I admire Wikipedians who excel at being Wikipedians.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:50, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

The BLP Barnstar
Substantial improvement to Tony Garza; good job!Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:50, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Thank you! :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:56, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi MRG! Sorry to bother you again (I'm sure you get many messages that begin with that line...)

I'm currently looking at a copyright text concern for Dunstable Priory. There is some related discussion on the talk page. The editor who inserted the text asserts it is PD and it has been attributed in the article. Looking at the website in question, I'm not sure the text is PD; their FAQ's section would suggest otherwise. However, I have been known to be stupid and I would appreciate you expert opinion. Best Pol430 talk to me 15:27, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) “All rights reserved” is pretty clear to start with, and the FAQ specifically limits quotations to “3 or 4 lines” (while providing a contact form for requesting permission to quote more). I’m no expert in these matters, but ISTM that even if the sites’s sources are demonstrably PD, they have the right to assert copyright on any editorial work they’ve done—so IMO it would be preferable to cite the original source instead (after verifying that all the text copied from the website is indeed verbatim).—Odysseus1479 (talk) 00:50, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Odysseus here. :) As WP:PD notes, work published prior to January 1, 1923, anywhere in the world is judged to be PD in the U.S., which is our bottom line. But their alterations - if creative - may have copyrights. Their FAQ suggests that they do not emend material so that their users can "rely on our site as an exact reproduction of the original" although they may ask living authors to provide corrections. They suggest that they do permit comments in the form of "annotation in-line", so any such annotations should certainly be removed. Otherwise, I think - given that line in their FAQ - that the content is probably okay. If we can verify that through the source itself, much the better. But if this came to me at WP:CP I would not remove it for that reason as long as no in-line annotations were included. (And I, too, have been sometimes known to be stupid Pol430. :) But certainly you are not here - it's a valid concern.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:34, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Odysseus and MRG for your advice, I'll drop a note on the article talk page. :) Pol430 talk to me 10:16, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Appeal for detectives

Before I began to edit the florid phrase at Babur#First battle of Panipat, I think it best to check for copyvios - that old gut instinct at work again. Much of the section predates September 2007, when That very day Babur ordered Humayun to ride to Agra (Ibrahim's former capital) and secure its national treasures and resources from looting was inserted. So far, I've not been able to find a violation using Google but my gut is turning somersaults here. Has anyone got any suggestions, short of borrowing every book on Babur from a library? I rather think that there may be violations elsewhere in the article also: the standard of phrasing is far beyond what I usually see for subjects of this nature. - Sitush (talk) 21:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)Hey Sitush, some of the content in that section seems to be copied from Gazetteer of Ulwur published 1878, here is a link to it.
Aha! I wondered whether it might be some old PD source and I should have mentioned that. The 1911 Britannica didn't have it but, hey, this stuff should have been attributed anyway. Frankly, it should have been cited: I presume that things have moved on since but I hate seeing so many articles with just a blanket {{1911}} stuck on the end of them - it makes tracking things down a complete nightmare. As for this specific article, well, I'll be dashed, it would seem I am going to have to spend some considerable time fettling Victorian prose ;) - Sitush (talk) 22:58, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
LOL! At least Victorian prose makes the copy-pasting instantly recognizable. :D Good sleuthing, Darkness Shines. Thank you. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:03, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Article that you deleted and is being re-loaded

Hi, I created a wikipedia article a while ago (in 2010) and actually today I was about to review the text and I found out it has been deleted. The text is:

20:49, 14 June 2012 Dpmuk (talk | contribs) deleted page EUCEN (G12: Unambiguous copyright infringement: Also close to a G11)

I am in the process to create the article again (reviewing the content as I do it). I cannot see why there should be a problem of copyright if I formally represent this association and I am writing an article in its behalf. All the links I include are links to our own webpages and make reference to our work.

I am just wondering if the page was deleted because of lack of visitors or lack of updating... Maybe you can tell me.

Thanks.

CarmeRoyo (talk) 13:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) The primary reason for deletion was that it infringed copyright, presumably of the association's website or similar. I think that you should review our policy on conflicts of interest and notability if you still think that you are justified in recreating the article then you should resubmit it via Articles for Creation, using your own words or after providing us with an official disclaimer of copyright via our process for that. - Sitush (talk) 13:48, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
Very good advice, Sitush. Thank you. :) CarmeRoyo, you can see the form you should send at Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries. Please do keep in mind, though, that giving permission for the text does not mean that it is necessarily appropriate. Often, external sites use language that is more promotional than we can use in accordance with our policies. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:57, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

What you tell me is surreal. I write all the content for the association since July 2000 (we are only 2 members of staff anyway and I am the most senior employee, with a Directive role). It sounds very strange that you would accept the content if I bother changing words so it sounds different. What a criteria! I only wanted to make sure that EUCEN (through its staff) creates the page for EUCEN before some idiot thinks that can create a short silly entry for us. By the way, the web site that you quote was one of our conferences' websites. I asked the webmaster of that site to remove the text about EUCEN yesterday as the conference took place in Nov 2011. I hoped thus to solve this silly problem. They did so immediately. So, if you follow the link you gave me you'll see there is nothing now about EUCEN. Do I still need to go through all this bureaucratic nonsense? Thanks. CarmeRoyo (talk) 12:08, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

It is surreal to you that Wikipedians would want evidence that some person who registered without any identification on our site actually owns rights to something already published? It makes perfect sense to me. Copyright is a matter of law; we are required to comply with it, and we need to be able to show that we've complied with it in the event of challenge. This is why external processes must be followed. I'm not sure which website you're talking about - I haven't quoted one, and I can't see that Sitush has either. Are you perhaps confusing us with some other persons? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:19, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, definitely this is surreal to me. Are you seriusly thinking that providing some online identification (that you would have to double-check, but how? so you won't check it) makes things more secure? Anyway, I suppose this is your job (I hope you get some money for doing this!). I have received the message below in parallel with yours (which I've just realise that maybe comes from someone called MadmanBot?): This is an automated message from MadmanBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of EUCEN, and it appears to include material copied directly from http://www.perform.unige.it/eucen/organizers.html. You all have very imaginative and spam-looking names. Congratulations. I give my real name, by the way. I have nothing to hide. Anyway, I cannot be bother with all this, you see. If Wikipedia really believes that my EUCEN entry is dangerous or will cause problems and has to be deleted, please whoever proceed. For me Wikipedia (for entering materials) is finished. I do not have time for more. Thanks for replying anyway. CarmeRoyo (talk) 13:59, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

This information is easily checked - for example, if you post a licensing statement on your website we can go to your website and see it. If you send an email to the volunteer response team from an email address associated with your website, we can verify your connection because of the email address you use. I understand that it may be annoying to have to follow procedures, but we do follow through with them. They exist for the legal protection of our website as well as of the copyright holders.
I realize that these procedures can be confusing to people, and I do apologize for that, but I find your confrontational attitude here very strange. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:06, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

If you knew how little time I have for this type of things, you would understand why I am annoyed. I thought I was being polite in my messages, but sorry if you do not think so. I won't do anything about copyrights because I do not have the time. If the article disappears, bad luck. As I said before, thanks for your time. I do appreciate your replies. CarmeRoyo (talk) 14:20, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I and my girlfriends

That is a name of a film.. can you hide two edits from here after verifying if those are copyvio? --Tito Dutta (contact) 09:09, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Certainly. :) And I must say that I was wondering for a moment what this section was going to be about. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:55, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 May 2013

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