User talk:Sbp2014

Wikipedia and copyright

Hello Sbp2014, and welcome to Wikipedia. All or some of your addition(s) to Spring break has had to be removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.

You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and a cited source. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. However, there are steps that must be taken to verify that license before you do. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Wikipedia project or article, you can, but please follow the steps in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Apparition¹¹ ^Complaints/Mistakes 04:22, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but Wikipedia cannot accept content that is not released under a compatible license. While sourcing is extremely important in Wikipedia, providing the source does not give us the right to copy and paste the content. Instead, we must summarize it and put it in our own words. Apparition¹¹ ^Complaints/Mistakes 05:24, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding your email, if you wish to release your work under a compatible license, you should be sure to read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. Specifically, When you contribute material to Wikipedia, you are not giving us exclusive use of it. You still retain any rights you previously held, but you are giving non-exclusive license under Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Note that there is no way to say "you can use this in Wikipedia, but not anywhere else or in derivative works." Also, because some derivative works may be commercial, we cannot accept materials that are licensed only for educational use or even for general non-commercial use. If you still wish to do so, you can follow the instructions at WP:DONATETEXT to make it usable, but, until then, the text specifically says that it is under copyright, which means that it cannot be used. Apparition¹¹ ^Complaints/Mistakes 05:32, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

February 2016

Your addition to Spring break has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Apparition¹¹ ^Complaints/Mistakes 06:22, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ANI

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Apparition¹¹ ^Complaints/Mistakes 06:55, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warring and other matters

Your recent editing history shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Ian.thomson (talk) 07:08, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You're waaayyy past three reverts, but you haven't been given an actual warning yet. Also, it does not matter if you really are the author (not that we have any way of confirming that). You adding the material really only forces us to violate your copyright. You might be able to donate your copyrighted material to us, but we cannot use as-is. Ian.thomson (talk) 07:08, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and if you really are the author, see WP:SELFCITE and WP:REFSPAM. Replacing a whole article with your dissertation probably is not going to go over well ("is not excessive"). Using a donated dissertation as the base for an article or rewrite of an article might be possible in some cases, but not wholesale replacement. Ian.thomson (talk) 07:13, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ian. I'm not sure that Apparition11 is fully reading what I have written before using the revert option. Much of the introductory material is common knowledge (i.e. spring break occurs from the beginning of March until mid-April) and should not need to be put "in my own words." Additionally, I have used short citations - which Wikipedia repeatedly suggests - (1 sentence) from multiple authors to support what I have written. While my first edits were taken word-for-word from my dissertation, the most recent edits were re-written by me - in my own words (which itself is odd because I am re-writing myself) - in order to comply with Wikipedia's requirements. These re-writes were two, small sections (intro and history and timing). Apparition11 appeared to be assuming I was just copying and pasting word-for-word, what I had written earlier in the day. If you take a look, you'll see the wording is different, with the exception of the cited sentences, for obvious reasons. Also, one final note - I don't have any real desire to replace a whole article with my dissertation. At 189 pages, that would be impossible. Thanks, John Laurie

I searched each time before I reverted to ensure that I was in compliance with WP:3RR and even left in the small parts that were not copied verbatim of the source. Apparition¹¹ ^Complaints/Mistakes 07:36, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Apparition11 - if you check, you'll see that the only parts of what I have written that are verbatim from the source material have been cited. A few sentences need not be rewritten - both because they are common knowledge. All other sentences in the most recent revisions were modified, summarized and otherwise rewritten "in my own words" (not identical to the dissertation).

Again, being cited does not make it OK to copy verbatim, neither does being common knowledge. Content that is protected under copyright must only be used in certain instances, none of which were here. If there is a Wikipedia policy that contradicts me here, I am open to reading it, but in my years of experience here and countless policy pages and discussions read, this is how Wikipedia should and does work. Apparition¹¹ ^Complaints/Mistakes 07:54, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia's guidelines for quotes/using words verbatim: "Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. In all cases, an inline citation following the quote or the sentence where it is used is required. Copyrighted text that is used verbatim must be attributed with quotation marks or other standard notation, such as block quotes." This would seem to contradict you. Again, I used this in specific instances and complied with Wikipedia's requirements.

That does not contradict me at all. In fact, I linked you to that exact section. Please also read the sentence above that section. If you do, I would be interested in hearing why there is no free equivalent when a thorough rewording would suffice. On top of that, just using the part of the policy that you quoted, you did not attribute it with quotation marks or other standard notation, such as block quotes. This section is not at all about what you seem to believe it is. You were copying the content and posting in the body of the article, not using it as a quotation. What you were doing was a WP:COPYVIO. Until you get a good grasp about Wikipedia's copyright policies which are intentionally stricter than the law, you should refrain from copying and pasting anything onto Wikipedia. Apparition¹¹ ^Complaints/Mistakes 08:21, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Apparition11 - It certainly does contradict you. If you had read what I had written in my entries, it's obvious where I had used quotations and included a citation. All other writing that was not quoted was not copied and pasted in the body of the article. I took what I had written in my dissertation and re-wrote it to comply with Wikipedia's guidelines. Again, I'm not sure you actually read the more recent entries as opposed to the major changes I had made earlier in the day. They are different. Go back, re-read what I have written.

Removing copyright violations is one of the few exemptions from WP:3RR, so Apparition11 could have reverted you every single time and been in the clear. Apparition11 left the non-copyrighted material in the article. Wikipedia doesn't do "common knowledge," which is why our article on the Sky has multiple references for identifying its color. Your additions to the articles aren't just you writing them, the article is a community product -- this is why we cannot accept previously copyrighted material, because even if it is your copyright, you are forcing us to violate that copyright and plagiarize. As for the quote argument, you did not provide proper in-text attribution to identify it as a quote (the citation alone doesn't cut it), and there's still WP:SELFCITE issue that I mentioned earlier. WP:SELFCITE is related to our concept of due weight. Ian.thomson (talk) 08:46, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Let me address a few things here that I think are important; 1) I don't believe you have actually read what I have written. I have included "quotations" around sentences taken directly from sources (even if they are my own). Looking back through these threads both you and Apparition11 continue to insist that I haven't. 2) Other sections I have 're-written' to comply with Wikipedia's policies. It's important to point out that simply re-writing something in your own words (as has been suggested), without proper citation, is in fact the definition of plagiarism. This remains true even if editors from Wikipedia believe it does not. 3) All material has to come from some place. In other words, everything has an original author unless you are willing to admit that certain observations and statements are common knowledge or are in common usage. While an article may be considered a "community product" as you have stated, if the majority of that material comes from one source - in this case me (yes, I literally wrote the book), then the original author must be heavily cited or you must admit that certain elements are "common knowledge." Because Wikipedia does not do "common knowledge," nearly all sentences in any Wikipedia entry would therefore need to be cited. I have yet to see this happen. The alternative to this is to "re-write in your own words" (which is still plagiarism) or to re-write in a way that would make no logical or in many cases factual sense. For example, the statement "Spring Break is a U.S. phenomenon and an academic tradition which started in the United States and is observed in some other western countries. From the beginning of March until the second week of April, colleges and universities across the United States schedule a week-long vacation near the middle of the spring semester." has been deleted multiple times by Apparition11. This statement is factually correct and is a derivation of a line in my dissertation but not an exact copy. How else could it be changed? I could say that "Spring Break occurs from March 1 to April 15." but this would be inaccurate as there are no hard dates as Spring Break is loosely based on when the majority of all U.S. colleges schedule their official spring vacation. Another alternative would be to say that "Spring Break is a yearly tradition by U.S. college students that occurs sometime between January and May of every year." Now we've entered the realm of the ridiculous. 4) Decisions by editors at Wikipedia are arbitrary and capricious. Most of what I have written has been removed, however some has not, even though they all came from the same source(me) and were written in the same manner. Example - under the section titled 'History and Timing,' Apparition11 eventually left a short paragraph that begins "By 1989 Daytona Beach..." This also comes from my dissertation. Why was this left and other sections eliminated? FYI - near the end of the entries for Spring Break in section headed "Festivals">U.S. Locations>Panama City Beach, this also comes from my dissertation. I know because I wrote it a couple of years ago on this page. A few changes have been made, such as an entry about raising the drinking age. However, this would still be considered plagiarism under the standards you are using. Either remove it or restore the other entries that I have written. 5) It would be good to have accuracy, don't you think? This page as it exists, has almost nothing to do with Spring Break. It's merely a list of non-related spring vacations of different origins in different countries that are unrelated. It has no value. Either re-title the page something like "Spring Vacations Around the World" or delete the page. Cheers.

For the record, I am tired of this and am done here, but I need to correct something that was said about what I did. You said that I removed Spring Break is a U.S. phenomenon and an academic tradition which started in the United States and is observed in some other western countries. As seen in this diff, I left that part. The following sentence was copied verbatim from the source, so, yes, I did remove that sentence multiple times. I did leave the Daytona Beach part because I did not see where it was copied from; however, if that is the case, it most certainly should be removed and I will do so directly. Apparition¹¹ ^Complaints/Mistakes 02:43, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

More about copyrights

Please take a look at the entirety of this discussion, which has more detailed information for you to consider. In short, you can, as the copyright holder, put material on Wikipedia, but by doing so you license that material under the terms of our licensing agreements. Further, because the material is copyrighted, you will probably have to prove your ownership of it. As I said, see the discussion I've linked above, especially the last 3 or 4 paragraphs. Thanks. BMK (talk) 17:23, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]