Archive 1

←

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Archive 10

Usually, a big, unwikied article under an implausible title tends to raise red flags to me. If you think it isn't a copyvio, I can put it back. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 21:02, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I tend to have the same suspicions, but we just got an OTRS ticket asserting permission and I wanted to see if it matched up with the source. If we have no identified source then we can just take their OTRS declaration on good faith and I'll go ahead and restore the article unless further evidence arises. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Every single report I've filed and confirmed on this user have all been Miami Heat related content.. So just going by his track record, I wholeheartedly believe that it's a copyright violation. -- ĴoeĴohnson|2 21:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for getting back to me. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:39, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I have seen that you have restored that article. Could it be possible to restore the Discussion page which has been deleted as well. Thanks and nice vacations. Hektor (talk) 19:15, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done I hadn't even thought of that, so thanks for the reminder. The text is still just in history so you'll have to unarchive the conversations by hand if you want them, but they're there. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:20, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

	The Mistagged BLP Cleanup Barnstar
	This barnstar does not cite any references or sources.[1][2][3] For your work with mistagged BLPs, thank you! The list is now empty with your help. Gigs (talk) 05:43, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm sorry I lost track of it and didn't help out more. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:20, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I hereby affirm that Michael Bach the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive copyright of http://www.otherminds.org/shtml/Bach.shtml

I agree to publish that work under the free license "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0" (unported) and GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).

I acknowledge that by doing so I grant anyone the right to use the work in a commercial product or otherwise, and to modify it according to their needs, provided that they abide by the terms of the license and any other applicable laws.

I am aware that I always retain copyright of my work, and retain the right to be attributed in accordance with the license chosen. Modifications others make to the work will not be attributed to me.

I acknowledge that I cannot withdraw this agreement, and that the content may or may not be kept permanently on a Wikimedia project.

Michael Bach Dec. 22, 2010 <email redacted for privacy> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pierre201012 (talk • contribs) 15:08, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid that since we have no way of verifying your identity via your Wikipedia account you need to send this release to permissions-enwikimedia.org. Your patience is appreciated. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:13, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

OK

It is already sent by Michael Bach.

Pierre — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pierre201012 (talk • contribs) 15:59, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I saw you checked this one and cleared it. It has been bugging me. When I decide to start a short biography, I naturally check to see if there is already a short biography of the subject somewhere - an obituary, encyclopedia entry or other article on the subject - and if so use the facts in it for the outline. If there is no such outline, the subject may not be noteworthy. If there is, it will give the standard basic information: date/place of birth, parents, education, positions held, achievements, spouse and children, death: the framework. These are, to me, mere facts and not subject to copyright. Then I dig around for other sources to add detail and color. I try to think about what I have read and state it in my own words, but it can sometimes be difficult to avoid close similarity to the original:

• "In 1946 she became Chair of the Education Advisory Committee of the Workers Educational Associations", or
• "In 1946 she became Chair of the Workers Educational Associations' Education Advisory Committee" (awkward), or
• "She became chair of the Education Advisory Committee of the Workers Educational Associations in 1946", or
• "Joining the Education Advisory Committee of the Workers Educational Associations, in 1946 she became the committee's Chair".

These variants are all bound to be very similar to the original, but to me they just express a fact, which cannot be subject to copyright. If I am doing a short "who's who" type of bio, it is hard to avoid considerable similarity to other short "who's who" bios of the same subject. I can see copyright violations if the article repeats unusual phrases or opinions from the source, but if it just restates the facts, I can't see the problem. I have read the standard WP essays on the subject, but it is still not clear to me how to avoid considerable similarity to the sources on short, factual bios. Thoughts? Aymatth2 (talk) 02:07, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

You're right that facts aren't subject to copyright. You're also right that there's not really a problem with a single sentence, particularly when it's short and factual as your examples above. What can be an issue is when the same facts are presented in the same order for any decent length. This can especially be an issue when working from one source, since the order and even the choice of which facts to present can be creative.

When I was reviewing your article the bits that bothered me enough to leave a comment at SCV about it beyond the usual "false positive" were 1) the sentence "In 1911, Shena Potter became secretary of a committee for safeguarding women's rights under Lloyd George's insurance bill" and 2) the first paragraph of the Career section, both sourced to AIM25. Those were the parts that I felt could have been rewritten further (in the first case) or spread out among the rest of the article (in the second case) to further separate it from the source. I don't think that anything needs to be done, or I would've tagged the article, I'm just saying that I see a resemblance (and I tend to go through articles at SCV expecting to find similarities, so I probably see more than most).

The only essay I know of which addresses this part of copyright is WP:PARAPHRASE, and it's more of a what-not-to-do than constructive how-to advice. Anyways, it's late and I think I'm rambling so if I've lost you anywhere or didn't actually answer your question please let me know and I'll try again when I get a chance. VernoWhitney (talk) 04:31, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. When I got the bot warning, I at once did a careful comparison between the base source and the article as it was then, and the two parts you saw were the ones I also thought were possibly dubious, although I could not see how to rephrase significantly. Maybe there is no easy solution. Biographies tend to follow a natural chronological sequence from birth to death, except that "spouse and children" may go before or after "career/achievements", which may be grouped by topic (in this case perhaps housing, education, women's rights) rather than strict chronology. For some reason I find these bot warnings quite disturbing, but expect I will continue to get one every so often mainly because I like doing relatively short and factual encyclopedia entries on minor topics. Adding original opinions and flowery language would avoid the warnings, but I will not do that. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:17, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

File:Wikisanta-no motto.png

Merry Christmas At this festive time, I would like to say a very special thank you to my fellow editors, and take the time to wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. And, in case you can't wait until the big day, I've left you each three special presents, click to unwrap :) Acather96 (talk) 10:10, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

File:Green and Yellow Present.gif

File:Yellow and Red present.gif

File:Blue and Red Present.gif

Australia - Victoria - Final Tables 1946-1986

and http://football.sport.ua/news/87878 Чемпіонат штату Вікторія: 1956 року в 4-му дивізіоні штату (чемпіонат міста Мельбурн) з'явився УСК (Український спортивний клуб) «Леви» (Мельбурн). 1959-го, після реорганізації, УСК «Леви» брав участь у 2-му дивізіоні, тоді як у 4-му дивізіоні з'явилася інша команда нашої діаспори — УСК «Тризуб». У 1961 — 1965 роках УСК «Тризуб» змагався в 3-му дивізіоні, а УСК «Леви» став переможцем 2-го. У 1962— 1971,1977 роках УСК «Леви» брав участь у 1-му дивізіоні штату Вікторія, але в призерах не був, найвище 5-е місце посів 1968-го. 1978 року УСК «Леви» розпався. Bogic (talk) 20:12, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I blanked this article as copyvio since GFDL has not been a compatible license for importing text since 1 November 2008. You can read the gory details atWikipedia:Licensing update if you'd like. The article will remain blanked for at least a week, after which time will be deleted unless it is rewritten on the temp page linked to by the blanking template. If you've imported any other articles from wikicars it would be greatly appreciated if you could rewrite them and/or let me know about them so we can get them cleaned up since we can't use their content. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:46, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello, I was unaware of the incompatibility between licenses. To clarify, I have not imported anything else from Wikicars. Traditionally I wouldn't import anything from anywhere, EXCEPT I do think this guy deserves a Wikipedia article and I don't have much time to write a full article. I suppose I should have written a stub and let it grow. Alternately, it may be nice to have a GM Designers page to give an overall overview of various chief designers for GM, because while current designer Ed Welborn is notable, as is Harley Earl, there were a couple guys in the list who are not. -- Guroadrunner (talk) 05:37, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, it's easy to miss that different free licenses don't always play well together, so no worries there. If you would like to write up a quick stub for him feel free to use and I can go ahead and move it over the blanked article, so there will at least be something for others to build on. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 14:02, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to follow up, I've started work on a fresh article, no copyvios. If you can help, feel free. -- Guroadrunner (talk) 13:55, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I leave message for you here. --Ppiminov (talk) 20:06, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Peoplestown: Created temporary subpage with new text, doing my best to avoid copyright infringement. The new article contains and summarizes facts from three named sources. Keizers (talk) 16:51, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

A tag has been placed on Pious fiction, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing no content to the reader. Please note that external links, "See also" section, book reference, category tag, template tag, interwiki link, rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article don't count as content. Moreover, please add more verifiable sources, not only 3rd party sources. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content. You may wish to consider using a Wizard to help you create articles - see the Article Wizard.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you plan to expand the article, you can request that administrators wait a while for you to add contextual material. To do this, affix the template {{hangon}} to the page and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. H66666666 (talk) 18:50, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Re: Fair Use or Public Domain Question

Hi- I just wanted to enquire about the concept of a Mission Statement for a Corporation being copyrighted. It would seem that the mission statement of a corporation would be a non-creative work and therefore not covered under copyright (or in the public domain). I guess this gets to be a question if a lot of creativity is put into a mission statement by a corporation when they are filling out the IRS paperwork, but it seems that the act of copying that statement from the form to another webpage to a Wiki page to a Non-profit watchdog website, etc., etc., would be fair use, if a use at all. Your San Buenaventura Conservancy edit brings this up. Being the current Conservancy Board president I can't imagine an instance where I would be able to enforce a use of our non-profit corps. mission statment. I don't find it inherently creative, and it exists in many places and is copied at will every time the government updates our paperwork. I looked on the various Wikipedia pages on Fair Use and Public Domain and Copyright, but this seems to begin at the definition of what can and is copyrightable, and frankly the Wikipedia pages don't go into a lot of detail on that aspect of "creative works".

Corensearchbot correctly assessed that the text was verbatim from the Conservancy website, but it must be verbatim to be correct. But I don't think it's existance in the Conservancy website automatically copyrights its existance on the WWW just because the creative parts of the Conservancy website are copyrighted.

I'm a commecial photographer and grant usage for my photos and use public domain historic photos on a regular basis so I'm conceptually familiar with copyright, though I'm no expert. I'm always curious about copyrights and this seemed like an interesting topic. -Schafphoto Schafphoto (talk) 18:55, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi! The bar set by for copyright in the US requires very little creativity. Page 3 of http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf gives some examples of what's not eligible for copyright, and while it's debatable I feel the two sentences qualify which is why I removed them. You are certainly correct that the use of the mission statement in almost any context falls under fair use, the catch (isn't there always a catch?) is that Wikipedia's non-free content policy and guideline and other related rules are explicitly and intentionally stricter than required by fair use. If there is non-free text included on a page then it needs to be clearly marked (e.g., by using quotation marks) and "used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea". If there was commentary in the article about the organization's goals then that would be fine, but as is there's talk about their actions but doesn't appear to be anything about their motivations or POV or the like.

All that said, if you feel differently I won't object to you restoring the mission statement since it isn't a clear cut case. You could also (assuming you have authority over the website's copyright) follow the steps at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials and verifiably freely license/release into the public domain the mission statement and/or any other part of the website that you'd like to see incorporated in Wikipedia. If you have any further questions or comments, please feel free to stop by any time. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 19:44, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, I was contemplating the concept of a M.S. being copyrighted and that opened up the question of all the other rules that go with copyright. So if General Electric's M.S. is copyrighted when it was written it would be in the Public Domain someday? This seems even weirder than the concept that a M.S. is creative. If a M.S. is short and uncreative is it automatically public domain, and when they get wordy and include bullets and dreams do they then cross some line into copyrighted? I digress...

I feel that it would imply that the M.S. statement is copyrighted if I officially put it into the Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials release process, since it isn't a clear cut case, and we wouldn't want to release the entire website for obvious reasons. The Conservancy website does include the M.S. in its entirety and the website's design and original content are protected under copyright, but like an included public domain photograph being used in many places, the duplication of a fair-use or public-domain or, I'd say, not-qualifying-for copyright-protections text, should be OK across any media.

So thanks for the conversation, I'm going to restore the M.S. I feel including verbatim Mission Statements on every non-profit and for-profit corporation from their incorporation papers should be mandatory on Wikipedia because it gives the public an insight into the intent of the founders. "If there was commentary in the article about the organization's goal" In the instance of commentary there is the ability to insert spin in between the original intent of the Mission Statement and the actual text so I'd like to use it verbatim.

—Here's an example that informs the public – in my eyes – and that should not be considered copyrighted material:

"Philip Morris Companies Inc." (4/1992 Mission Statement)

"Our (PMC's) Mission is to be the most successful consumer packaged goods company in the world, as demonstrated by our: • Outstanding overall quality of people, products, and business plans and execution • Superior understanding and service of customer and consumer wants and needs • Excellent, growth-driven financial performance • Honesty, integrity, and responsibility in all aspects of operations The pursuit of this Mission is intended to benefit our shareholders, our customers and consumers, our employees, and the communities in which we operate."

"Altria", (Parent Company of Philip Morris USA – 2010 Mission Statement)

"Our (Altria's) Mission is to own and develop financially disciplined businesses that are leaders in responsibly providing adult tobacco and wine consumers with superior branded products. Guided by Altria's Mission and Values, PM USA's role is to responsibly manufacture and market PM USA brands to adult tobacco consumers in a financially disciplined way."

The verbatim text is unbiased and informational, and through a comparison of the two missions, I can begin to understand many changes that would not be as clear in a commentary. Makes me think I'd love to see this on The PM/Altria page with a comparison of their older Mission Statements from the heyday of PM in the 50s and 60s... or their original incorporation papers...

I'll put our M.S. back in quotation marks, I think that implies that it is straight from the horses mouth, so to speak. Thanks again, Schafphoto (talk) 18:33, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

You questioned the article on Suzy Spencer. There are facts which are cited from her www.suzyspencer.com web site as well as other sources. The copy has been re-written as best as possible; however, there are oy so many ways to list basic facts. Please recheck your findings. Most of the information has been published in multiple sources, and is probably all public domain or from publishers who would benefit from the publicity garnered by an artcile about one of their authors. Thank you.Reginaldduckworth (talk) 00:57, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/VWBot 9 as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 04:18, 2 January 2011 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place {{bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded}} anywhere on this page.

Yobot messed up the page numbers on some of the citations i did, he turned "page" into "pages", so when you check for copyvio, remember to use the original diffs because some of the current versions have messed up page numbers due to the bot. the bot did it over here too, and im pretty sure hes screwed it up on all the articles i did.Дунгане (talk) 02:53, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:45, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Does the permission for the file have to explicitly include a reference to a particular licence by the photographer Cathy Gregory?? In other words, is the phrasing in her forwarded e-mail incomplete?

The picture was never previously published and was originally simply given to Van Harvey from whose personal collection the picture was origianally taken?--WickerGuy (talk) 01:50, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we need an explicit reference to a particular license. VernoWhitney (talk) 02:01, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Got the more detailed e-mail sent earlier. It went originally to spam, so didn't see it. All clear.--WickerGuy (talk) 03:31, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I left this intact because it seems to have a good amount of discussion and track record of what has been done to solve the problem. I don't always delete orphan talk pages if they contain such information. Just sayin. :) --Andy Walsh (talk) 04:11, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I suppose I should've asked about it but I generally just look for {{G8-exempt}} or the like to tell if it's being kept around for a purpose. Feel free to restore, obviously. VernoWhitney (talk) 04:22, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

There's a template for everything these days, I tells ya. --Andy Walsh (talk) 04:25, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

You can check the article now, it has many references and it is not copied from any website/source..Please inform me before deleting my articles so i can change them or add more references..Thankz HunterZone (talk) 14:18, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I will not leave a blatant copyright violation in place just to give you time to rewrite it. It is your responsibility to ensure that the content you add is not a copyright violation. See the notice which displays at the bottom of every edit window: "Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted." VernoWhitney (talk) 14:57, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

So how can i make Red Suffusion Lovebird article..if there is only one link that gives information about it,, Thankz in advance..HunterZone (talk) 15:14, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

As far as copyright goes, the only option is to rewrite it entirely from scratch, without copying any sentences and without just tweaking words here and there (since this would result in a close paraphrase derivative work and still be a problem). The other thing to keep in mind is that multiple sources are generally expected to establish notability for articles. If you can find additional sources it's also much easier to come up with your own way to word things that doesn't follow any of the sources too closely. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:36, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Bob Van Ronkel with Hilary Swank.JPG, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. SchuminWeb (Talk) 15:01, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Bob Van Ronkel and Sylvester Stallone.JPG, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. SchuminWeb (Talk) 15:02, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I was reading the MAPP Gas article, which referred to 'exothermic cutting' at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Exothermic_cutting&action=edit&redlink=1

However, I see you have deleted that article, due to copyright infringement. And though I only just now learned of the topic, I'd like to see SOMETHING about it on Wikipedia. So, is it possible to see the deleted text, so that I may salvage non-infringing text, and build upon that?

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markj99 (talk • contribs) 10:08, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi! I'm afraid that there was no non-infringing text. It was all copied straight from http://www.oxylance.com/product_catalog/exothermic_cutting_systems so any new article will need to be written from scratch. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:24, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

U can check it..Thankz HunterZone (talk) 11:49, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for rewriting it; it looks much better now. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Please see the discussion at User talk:Mkativerata#Question. Essentially, I would like to contribute to the cleanup process with regards the Epeefleche CCI, however I am wary that should I start editing articles on mass it will be taken the wrong way by the subject, and I have no desire for further drama. As such I have created a subpage in my userspace (here) where I have listed articles that I have found problems with. Articles with no issues, I shall check of the CCI list myself. If this does not help you with the cleanup process please let me know. Thanks, _wjemather^bigissue 10:53, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) I've opened Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Cretanforever but am delaying listing it until we can get a list of images. Are you able to help with that? I don't know what magic you might have, but it would be wonderful to divide the list out so that non-free images are not included. I don't see any reason for concern with those. Of course, I don't actually know how many images are involved; I'm taking it there must be a ton, if Mer-C can't do whatever it is he usually does. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:47, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I can list all of the images whenever I get home tonight (my program should handle any amount). It currently doesn't sort out the free ones, but depending on how much time I have (and if you're willing to wait for the list if this would help a lot) I should be able to rig that up. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:58, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Whether it would help a lot depends on how many images there are. :D I'll leave that to your judgment. Thanks! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, I believe I updated the code correctly, so the CCI's now populated and unless I messed up there shouldn't be any non-free files included. I don't think it made much difference here, but it's something for next time. VernoWhitney (talk) 05:16, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. This one could get nasty. :/ Take File:BelenKahvesi1.jpg. Do you see any reference to it in this OTRS ticket (which in itself completely fails to name a license?) What do you suppose ought to be done with that kind of thing? NPD tag? Files for deletion? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:36, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I haven't gone through the OTRS tickets enough other than to form the opinion that some of them are being applied to incorrect images and I don't remember seeing any that should be usable...but that's just my impression based on looking at it a few days ago and I don't have time to go through and look at all of their tickets right now (and whenever I do have time once I finish up OTRS tickets I started a while ago I still have the SCV backlog to whittle down). If there's no indication that the ticket could possibly refer to the image I'd just remove the tag and list it as no permission. If it may refer to the image but isn't clear I'd change it to {{OTRS received}} and still tag it as no permission with a note that we need a clear release. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:42, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

All righty. That sounds like a good plan. :) I'm thinking about soliciting help from the OTRS mailing list, but I'll wait until I'm more fully awake. I had a migraine yesterday, not a bad one, but I'm still a bit hungover from the meds. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:55, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and I haven't listed the CCI anywhere yet. I was thinking that maybe the actual status of the known OTRS tickets needs to be established before opening it up to the public. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:15, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. Meanwhile, I'm poking at SCV's backlog. Now that I've got assistance at CP, I've been working on CCI, but SCV is more urgent. Is this a lingering holiday backlog, or are we suffering in the volunteer department? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:28, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Lingering holiday backlog - I've been more or less keeping it from growing since I got back but I haven't had time to actually reduce it. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:30, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Of course that page had to be redirected to Camp Half-Blood characters page. Where else were we supposed to put the bios of any creature, mythological character, and supporting characters in The Heroes of Olympus series. Rtkat3 (User talk:Rtkat3) 10:35, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the moving of the page; the problem was that you simply cut all of the material out of one page and pasted it into the other instead of using the actual move function. As indicated in the template I left for you this removes the attribution to the original authors of the material which is required under the terms of the CC-BY-SA license which we use. Cut/paste moves have to be fixed (as I did) in order to avoid violating the copyrights of other editors. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:39, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Watch those public domain works — VWBot tagged a copyright "violation" of an 1877 poem! You might want to whitelist http://www.bartleby.com. Feezo (Talk) 10:32, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

It tagged copied material, which was in fact copied. Since it was quoted it probably wasn't an issue although since it didn't actually give the author it could be a problem under WP:PLAGIARISM. Anyways, enough of that short tangent and back to copyright concerns: Is everything at bartleby.com public domain? VernoWhitney (talk) 13:28, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Good point. Still, it might not have been copied "from" the website, since the poem isn't originally from there either. I don't know if everything there is public domain or not — Bartleby claims that everything is in fact protected by copyright and may not be republished. I guess the preferred course of action depends on the purpose of the bot — is it intended to flag all potential copyright violations, or minimize false positives? Feezo (Talk) 01:49, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Heh, preferably both. The bot does look for some common attribution templates before tagging an article as a problem, so it's not just ignoring the possibility of PD or freely-licensed material, although it can't catch quotes or hand-written attributions or the like. And yeah, it looks like Bartleby just republishes works, but even if it's not copied from there it's copied from somewhere. I looked through it quickly yesterday, and much of the material is clearly PD, regardless of their claims to the contrary, but I want to spend a little more time looking through all of their material before whitelisting it. If it's all PD then it can be ignored. While it could still be a plagiarism problem, the bot's really focused on possible copyvio. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:11, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

This page reads like an advert with references from his own web site and he claims world records without evidence and references. Is this right? 109.154.227.146 (talk) 09:35, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Allow me to introduce to you Special:Contributions/Dromeaz who is a Sockpuppet of Special:Contributions/TheLongestRoadToIndiaGate who is a Single Purpose Account to pomote Robert Garside and put down Jesper Olsen (runner). This user has access to more IP addresses than I have socks & shoes. The user Dromeaz is blocked at the moment and instead of addressing the block is doing this. Here and here for examples. I have been told that there have been ten complaints (probably exaggerated) against me in OTRS by him. The Jesper Olsen page does in fact need work. Ultrarunners are a tough breed to create biographies as there are no international bodies for ultras weren't any international bodies, they just starting now. CanadianLinuxUser (talk) 10:58, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I'm passingly familiar with the issue from watching Moonriddengirl's page. I really have no interest in getting involved in the dispute, but I will if you insist: I must tell you though that I am strongly inclined to start by blocking any and all new accounts or IPs which are being used by blocked accounts. I have not so far only in deference to MRG's willingness to talk. I understand that there are some sensitive issues involved here, but evading blocks and circumventing the regular processes for discussion and requesting an unblock are not the way to get me to listen to you. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi again! The page Mantecadas de Astorga should be moved to Mantecadas, for I have edited the page and made it less specific. Thank you for your help.Xufanc (talk) 17:08, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done VernoWhitney (talk) 19:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi VernoWhitney,

I didn't see your original message telling me that if I would like to begin working on a new version of the article I may do so at the temporary page, until a wile ago. I realize now that I made a mistake and you were in fact looking for a solution, not trying to sabotage the page, as I had incorrectly inferred after someone (not you) had jumped on it and applied all kinds of unfavorable tags. My most sincere apologies for having doubted of your good intentions.

A new draft of the article can now be viewed at the temporary page: Talk:Monroe_Commission/Temp Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by RafaelMinuesa (talk • contribs) 18:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll take a look at it as soon as I can. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:47, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

--Perseus, Son of Zeus 19:02, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I want to thank you for restoring my article about the History of the Jews in Brody. Its based on my paper that I have written in 2004. May New Year will be a blessing to you and your family! --Roman Zacharij (talk) 00:21, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Please see my comment at Talk:KFIL about potentially aberrant behavior in vwbot. - Dravecky (talk) 16:19, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

That is an odd one. Known fast mirror sites are generally whitelisted to avoid false positives like that, but slower ones (which I thought Plumbot was, but it's been a while since I can recall seeing another match to it) are generally left in because they catch cases of unattributed intrawiki copying. I'll play around with that site when I get a chance and whitelist it if it is all instantly mirroring content. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello, I noticed you amended a couple of my entries at Wikipedia:Suspected_copyright_violations/2011-01-16. Is there something I could do to avoid you having to do that in future? I realise that some of the symbols I used didn't quite fit, sometimes there doesn't seem to be an appropriate one at Template:SCV. Would it be more helpful if I just write a sentence or two to explain in future like you did? For example, I know that the final entry, Royal Warrant (United Kingdom) wasn't a "false positive" as such. Is there a better symbol I could have used? Or should I write better explanations?--BelovedFreak 16:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, the one you tagged for speedy deletion obviously needed some kind of additional note since it was deleted the once and didn't need deleting again (sadly I've seen articles go through 2 or 3 G12s before finally being cleaned, so it usually needs a follow-up if it gets recreated). With regards to the other one, the tag I used was {{subst:SCV|n|Comment.}}. Whenever an entry doesn't quite fit one of the tags or the problem/resolution isn't immediately obvious I try to leave a comment; I especially try to do this when material is copied but acceptably so (usually just a blurb like "Tracklist." or "PD-USGov." or "Single author."). I hope I didn't give you the impression that you were doing something wrong, since you did mark it correctly as having no copyright problems, I'm just being extra nitpicky this morning (I blame my day job). I hope that explains things somewhat. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:39, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

No, not at all, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't making work for people (or if I was work out how to avoid it!) That's helpful though, thanks. I'll start using the comment parameter for anything less than straightforward.--BelovedFreak 16:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Can you pop in at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems#Use of message boxes? I'm worried that this may be beyond me, although I can probably muddle through if needed. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll take a look when I get some time to sit down with it, which won't be until tonight. Silly real world keeping me busy. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:33, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Understood. :) With User:Bsherr's helps, we've got some colored blocks in place, but it could do with an eye to see if it's all good. With those colored blocks, its by no means urgent, so if you've got other stuff to catch up on, I wouldn't prioritize it by any means. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Whitney,

Thanks for the tip. I'll try to remember to do so in the future.

Happy editing,

Neelix (talk) 15:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

File:Dirk Fischer Caricature.jpg has an OTRS ticket number quoted by the uploader but the image has been OTRS pending since November 2009 and it has no licence quoted. Any chance of checking the ticket please, thanks. MilborneOne (talk) 17:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Since Verno's been busy with that "real life" nonsense lately, I took it upon myself to look. :) There's been no clarification of the status, but I'm not sure that our correspondent understood the response he received. I've written the artist directly to request clarification of license. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:44, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that - just trying to tidy up the OTRS pending cat. MilborneOne (talk) 19:31, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks MRG. I'll try to keep an eye on it too, and will probably tag it for deletion to set some sort of deadline unless usable permission comes back relatively soon. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

--HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Replied. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Cheers. I've forwaded that email to OTRS. Would be much appreciated if you could pick it up. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:04, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I've restored the text and added OTRS tags; I'm afraid I'll be leaving any cleanup/content dispute fun for someone else to wrangle. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:21, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Likewise. The text is usable. Whether it's useful is someone else's problem. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:51, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I wanted to let you know a page you have deleted recently should not have been deleted as the site listed as a copyright infringement is also a wiki and gives permission to be used as a source and at some times copied outright. If you need further information please let me know. The licence info as linked on the page can be found here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ I would say the copied work falls under the guidelines of: "to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work to Remix — to adapt the work" thanks for relooking for me. Aldldl (talk) 05:16, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid that article was indeed a copyright violation. The first (fixable) problem was that it did not attribute the source as required by that license. The second and insurmountable problem was that any material imported must be compatible with the CC-BY-SA license used by Wikipedia, which is not the same as CC-BY-NC which disallows commercial reuse. There's a nice table at Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Can I add something to Wikipedia that I got from somewhere else? which shows which Creative Commons licenses are compatible with Wikipedia. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:35, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi. back in September you PRODded this, and it was deleted. Undeletion has now been requested at WP:REFUND, so per WP:DEL#Proposed deletion I have restored it, and now notify you in case you wish to consider taking it to AfD. I have pointed the (new) requester to your copyright warning on the talk page, and told her that it needs independent references to establish notability. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 22:30, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:12, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Verno, did you get my mail about this pic? - Off2riorob (talk) 23:25, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Replied. Sorry about the delay. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:09, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. Would you please move it to commons? Off2riorob (talk) 20:54, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know that I've ever actually moved anything to commons, but I'll try to get around to it once I look up the process. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:37, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Its quite simple Verno and quite satisfying in a simple way, and as you verified it, it will be beneficial to many projects at commons. You need a TUSC key, just a kind of identity they recognize you as http://toolserver.org/~magnus/tusc.php - just follow the simple instructions and then when you get your key detail you can use this tool to move pics from here to commons - this tool also is working well, http://toolserver.org/~magnus/commonshelper.php - its easy, give it a try and see. Off2riorob (talk) 21:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Good catch! I was staring at that one trying to figure out where it came from (since the formatting made it obvious it was pasted from another page) when you deleted it. Didn't occur to me that it might be a hoax with a substituted name. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, once I realized it was copied from another article a quick Google turned it up. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:37, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I saw you've been processing the OTRS contact with Omarlegend (talk · contribs) re. otrs:2011012810010904. FYI, please note that this user appears to be using his flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/56619396@N07/ for "flickr washing". Among the photographs hosted there, at least this is from [1], this is from [2], and this (WP upload) is from [3], i.e. Getty Images. Seems quite untrustworthy to me. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Added another. I guess I'll indef him now, if you don't mind. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:37, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Go for it. I had guessed flickrwashing after seeing their talk page, but didn't find a match on a quick search for the one image they mentioned in the OTRS ticket. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:47, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Thank you for recently correcting me about my mistaken copy/paste vio. I appreciate the advice.
Anyway, I've just been fixing reflists and came across a bit of a muddle here and here. I'm not sure what exactly is going on but it appears to be a mixture of a partial page move, with a touch of attempted reversion via copy-paste. Consequently, I don't know how to proceed with it. Hence, I thought I'd pass it on to you as I know (to my experience) that you know a bit about these sorts of things.
Thank you LordVetinari (talk) 11:28, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'll look into it later today. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:58, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, that situation was a rather muddled copy/paste move/unmove, and normally would have to be fixed, but in this case there was only a single author of the creative content, so they already are credited and we don't need to mess around with merging the histories. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:47, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Could you please provide more information about the reasons of Deleting the Woosh Wireless page? So I can improve it to avoid future deletions? > Thanks a lot! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lbarrague (talk • contribs) 20:58, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I deleted it because it was copied and pasted from copyrighted sources http://www.woosh.com/ContentClient/WhyWoosh/WhyWooshCompany.aspx and http://www.nzherald.co.nz/telecommunications/news/article.cfm?c_id=93&objectid=10572902. As indicated at your talk page, you cannot do this unless/until you have permission from the copyright holder(s) and follow the steps at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I've contacted the copyright holder, and since the permission I received from him doesn't seem sufficient, I've asked the copyright holder to remove any copyright conditions via flikr.com. I'm sure that he will do so in a short amount of time. Thanks.Joel amos (talk) 23:39, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

The copyright status has been changed. Here's a link to the page of the picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/radargeek/2598112871/. Click on "Some rights reserved" for extra copyright information. This picture can now be used on Wikipedia.--Joel amos (talk) 23:45, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

That works great, thank you! VernoWhitney (talk) 01:54, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Good Day.

While I understand the concern for copyright infringement, I belive that the total deletion of the Touki Bouki article was a bit harsh. Removal of the "offensive" sections maybe, but not total deletion as most of the info; actors, release date, external links are not copyrighted. I used info from the article about the director to build the subsequent articles does that mean that main article has to be deleted as well?

You assistance is greatly appreciated. Invisec (talk) 22:41, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

As far as I've been able to tell there aren't any copyright problems in Djibril Diop Mambéty, so information from there can be used in the articles about his films so long as it is attributed appropriately per Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. I don't have time right now to check all of the prose for copyright issues again, but I'll go ahead and restore the noncreative material that you mentioned above. You'll have to add back any creative content that you wrote yourself later (or copy it over from the director's article if you attribute properly, as I mentioned above). VernoWhitney (talk) 01:59, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but I am not sure if I am reading things correctly or if I am not just understanding them correctly, but according to Wikipedia:Copyrights Attribution section it says you can use text from other sites once you give proper credit to whatever site you get them from. I always include the relevant URLs, titles (and publishers if possible) in the Reference section of the articles. Is it that I misunderstood? Invisec (talk) 03:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

That section is talking about the opposite situation - taking material from Wikipedia and reusing it somewhere else. What you should be looking at for taking text from somewhere else and using it on Wikipedia is earlier on the page at Wikipedia:Copyrights#Using copyrighted work from others. That kind of copying can get much more complicated, but one simple guideline is "don't": if you write everything for Wikipedia entirely from scratch then there aren't any copyright issues to worry about. VernoWhitney (talk) 03:45, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I've managed to obtain permission to use material from two (2) sites so far, can you advise what the next step is? Invisec (talk) 05:13, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

It needs to be an explicit release under a free license, so the next step would be to ask them to follow the steps at WP:CONSENT so that we have unambiguous and verifiable permission, and once an email volunteer team member confirms it then the material can be restored (or added if it's new content). VernoWhitney (talk) 12:52, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

There seems to be extensive copy-pasting at Inland Feeder. See talk for info. It enters first here, with content taken from [4]. The question is...well, I've laid it out above. :) California's public records are generally public domain ([5]). I am leaning towards believing what's needed here is to acknowledge the copying per Wikipedia:Plagiarism, but wanted a second opinion. You think? Or should I ask somebody else? :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:40, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm inclined to believe it's PD, since there's no assertion or other indication that the material was authored by anyone outside of the government agency. The agency's employee manual states "While most of Metropolitan’s work product is in the public domain, work processes, including how decisions are reached, may be protected or confidential." so that's another point towards it being PD. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:14, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll mark it and close out the day. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:14, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for watching this. This is my first article so I am kinda clumsy. Although I do own the page and text which the duplicate text was indiv=cated, I went ahead and edited the wiki page so as not to trigger the vio message again. I am also having some trouble with the links and such as far as the code, i beg your patience, any help is appreciated. thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Damnsell (talk • contribs) 08:49, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for watching this. This is my first article so I am kinda clumsy. Although I do own the page and text which the duplicate text was indiv=cated, I went ahead and edited the wiki page so as not to trigger the vio message again. I am also having some trouble with the links and such as far as the code, i beg your patience, any help is appreciated. Damnsell (talk) 08:49, 6 February 2011 (UTC) thanks Damnsell (talk) 08:50, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and edited the wiki page elimimating any resemblance to the similar text so as not to trigger the copy vio message again. Thanks.

Damnsell (talk) 09:40, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

The Sodom Schoolhouse article is not even close to being a copyvio of the website claimed - for one thing the article here is about 5 times bigger than the article it was supposedly copied from, Please be nice and fix your bot. Smallbones (talk) 07:23, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about the false positive. We try and keep them to a minimum. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:22, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

And I'm sorry for snapping at you. BTW thanks for the correction (1 => 7). I'm trying to think how the bot decides an article is a potential copyvio. If it just looked for the words Sodom, octagonal, schoolhouse and Metandon, of course it would flag the article here, but it would be impossible to write the article without using these words. Obviously it's a difficult technical problem. I do hope you realize that after spending an hour or so, digging up 4 sources, and writing an original article, that many folks would react the way I did, after seeing your bot label the article a copyvio within 1 minute of them saving the article. All the best. Smallbones (talk) 06:05, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It's okay, I completely understand why you were upset, and I really am sorry about false positives. It looks for a match of a certain percentage of words on the article and the webpage, so it gets more false positives when dealing with either short articles or, as in this case, short webpages. A certain level of false positives are unavoidable, even ignoring public domain sources are the like, but I'm afraid improving the accuracy without increasing the number of false negatives (likely dramatically) is beyond my capabilities at the moment. I didn't write the code originally, it's just being run as a backup for CorenSearchBot (talk · contribs) (which has intermittent connection issues with) some minor tweaks, and I'd probably have to rewrite it in a different language to really tinker with it well. I'm also in the middle of trying to rewrite a different function for the bot which is in trial, so I don't have time just now to try and overhaul the matching algorithm for this task, although that is on my todo list for one of these days. If you have any other questions/comments about the bot, feel free to drop by any time. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:04, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I was having a look to see if any CCIs could be finished off and I saw your various troubles with IPs that keep on restoring copyvios found as part of this users CCI. A quick look at Marcelline Jayakody shows that an IP in the same range as the others has (re)added quite a bit of content. Now I can't see the revdel edits to see if they are the same as before and there does seem to be some attempt to not copy directly from the sources so I haven't reverted straight away but I suppose the point is that he is evading his block. Most of these edits seems to be from 112.135.* so I don't know if there is some scope for a rangeblock at all?
My trawl also highlighted a registered user Butterflylk (talk · contribs) who seems to share exactly the same interests and has already had at least one article (Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri) sent to WP:CP and had another edit (here) revdeleted. SPI? Boissière (talk) 11:34, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice - it is nearly the same as the text which has been repeatedly removed before so I've reverted, revdeleted and temporarily protected it. That CCI is messier than most because it's not straight copying/pasting and the sources are interspersed, but it continues to use the same creative descriptions and so the close paraphrases remain unusable. I think they were honestly trying to rewrite the text, but just couldn't manage to write it from scratch.

I don't know about a rangeblock - first, I've never done one, but more importantly and as far as I can tell it's really just those two articles which are a problem (at least that I've noticed so far), so I think unless that changes or I've been missing something protection should solve the problem with less collateral damage.

I also had some concerns about Butterflylk (I'm the one that tagged/revdeleted those 2 copyvios), but after the copyright problems were pointed out I haven't noticed any repeat issues, so I didn't pursue it. Obviously I have no issues if you feel an SPI is called for. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:54, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, This is a request to "undelete" the Geomajas wikipedia entry. Last year, Geomajas was removed (wikibin) b/c it was a relatively unknown and new open source project (with few external references). Since then we believe that Geomajas has proven to be a serious open source project: (a) it graduated as an Open Source Geospatial Foundation project in November 2011, (b) Geomajas has independent references and (c) Geomajas is being referenced from at least two other wikipedia pages. When posting Geomajas in wikipedia, we first tried to work through the wikipedia admin that previously deleted the project (JForget), but the page indicated he/she is no longer active as admin. We then adapted/updated last year's original and posted it again. As a result, Corenbot indicated a similarity with a previously deleted wikipage of the Geomajas Opens Source Project. So we would like to propose it again as a wikipedia entry. Where do we start best? Thanks for your help! (Frankenmaes (talk) 10:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC))

Hi. Before I deleted it I did look at it to see how much the article had changed from the version that had been deleted . In particular, it was deleted previously for a lack of reliable sources so I checked to see if any had been added. The additional links I see are http://www.ohloh.net/p/geomajas, the three Foss4G articles, and Planet Geospatial - none of them used as sources. Ohloh lets you "Promote yourself directly through [their] metric-backed developer profile", so that's not anywhere near a reliable source. The three Foss4G articles appear to be by people involved in the project, and Planet Geospatial is simply a repeat of a press release. If I'm mistaken and those are somehow independent of the project, please let me know.

Before the article is undeleted or recreated there need to be independent, reliable sources (no press releases or regurgitation therof, not by people involved with the project in any way) which contain significant coverage of the software. If you yourself are involved with the project, you should probably not be writing about it anyways, due to a conflict of interest. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the info on how to properly handle situations when permissions have been claimed to have been sent. I had a couple this week. I'll try to remember next time.--SPhilbrickT 15:38, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

No worries - it's easy to forget the details stuck in the middle of Wikipedia:Copyright violations unless you deal with copyvio permissions frequently. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:42, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I am now proud owner of a TUSC account! —Preceding undated comment added 21:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC).

Hi there, Can you please restore this file, I guarantee that this is not copyright violation, I recently bought new camara ie Nikon Coolpix L110, I have uploaded few pics lie File:Nikon 110 box.JPG, File:Nikon Coolpix L110 Charger.JPG, File:Chifferi Rigati Pasta.JPG , File:DLF Center New Delhi.jpg, File:Penne Rigate Pasta.JPG , File:BSNL_Headquarters.jpg n many more from same camera, u can check pictures metadata, so please restore it, thanks KuwarOnline ^Talk 08:40, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't doubt that you took the picture, but the copyright of the package design which makes up the entire photo belongs to Everest Spices. I'm afraid that photographing a copyrighted image doesn't let you release it under a free license. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:32, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Since you do a lot of work with copyright issues, I was wondering if you could RevDel these revisions under RD1 (see the next edit summary for the source). Thanks. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:35, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

 Done Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 14:12, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:22, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Verno. :) Although I really don't have time, I'm drawing together an essay about copyright in lists: User:Moonriddengirl/Copyright in lists. It needs more work before I drop it on the wiki world. If you have time and inclination, would you mind reading through? I'm hoping to provide some clear and useful guidance on a subject that is often discussed, but not widely understood. You are welcome to edit it directly or to leave comments at the talk page. I think it particularly could use some work at the last section ("What copyrighted selection/arrangement mean for Wikipedia"), but I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to say or how to approach it.

And I'm not dumping this only on you, so if you don't have time or inclination, you should not feel bad. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:08, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to look at it. I can't make any promises about when I'll get around to it (today my bits of free time included blocking 5 new OSUHEY socks), but I'll try soon. VernoWhitney (talk) 06:13, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Five? What is wrong with that fellow? Is it so very hard to compose original content? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:22, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

And those were just from yesterday. I blocked two the day before and one of their IPs a few days before that. To be fair, I haven't found any copyvio from them recently, but then I haven't had time to expand the reopened CCI either so the last of their content that's been systematically reviewed is from November. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:36, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

You need checkuser status. Not that you don't have enough to do. :) (P.S. Speaking of enough to do, whatever can we do about the loss of our copyright regulars? So many of them are on break of reduced time that I not only despair of catching up, but of keeping up. I've been considering posting a plea at AN again, but that generally doesn't net me much. :/ I wonder if the Signpost would allow us a personal appeal? Would it help?) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:41, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, most of them are pretty obvious, and there seem to be enough CUs active recently that it hasn't been an issue for the more borderline cases. And yeah, if I do get more time there's always plenty of copyclean work to go around. Not that you would know anything about that... ^_^

As far as the loss of the regulars, I don't know. I'll give it some thought. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I must have missed the move button. Thank you for noticing the problem I inadvertently created, and for fixing it.--Subman758 (talk) 19:48, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

No worries. A lot of what I do is following around CorenSearchBot (talk · contribs) and cut/paste moves are much nicer to fix than the blatant copyright violations it hits on most of the time. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 19:52, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for alerting me to this issue. I do need educating on these matters though. I have copied images from one Wikipedia article to another on several occasions, including in the article mentioned - is there a formal procedure for attributing where they came from that I need to follow when doing this as I thought it was all automatically recorded internally? I cannot see where you have made the change you mentioned for this article - where is it and what is it? Also I have copied the same piece of text (which I put together myself) for each of the gardener-botanists mentioned inthis article to each gardener-botanist article - obviously changing one entry each time: this section seemed to be worthwhile for readers and worth replicating in each article. Do I need to note this somewhere? I read the link you mentioned but it is not very clear as to precisely what I need to do in these cases. Do know of any simple instructions I can follow anywhere. Thanks for your patience.Granitethighs 22:52, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid my answers to your questions will be rather out of order, so please bear with me.

If you were the editor who originally wrote all of the text you're copying then there's no need to do anything else - your edit already attributes you and there's nobody else to credit. I apologize for having overlooked that fact earlier, and if that's all you ever do then you can ignore the rest of my answers here. Placing images on articles doesn't need attribution, only creative text.

In this case what I did to add attribution (since I didn't realize you had written the text on the first article) was to place the {{copied}} template to both articles talk pages. You could also link to the corresponding article in the edit summary - saying something like "splitting page from Foo" or "moving material to/from Bar" or something along those lines. Using the template and/or edit summaries are the easiest way to provide the needed attribution and should be sufficient in most cases.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to let me know. VernoWhitney (talk) 23:05, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Very informative: a pleasure to deal with you.Granitethighs 01:21, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I was hoping that was what it was, and that we hadn't had a copyvio sitting there for 5 years. :O Syrthiss (talk) 19:44, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time that's happened, and even in cases like this the copyright holders of older articles aren't usually quite so prompt about contacting OTRS. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:47, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Dear Admin,

I would like to make a request to undelete Copal Partners page. I understand that this page seems like advertising and I will follow Wikipedia's guidelines when I create this page again.

Best Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by An2013 (talk • contribs) 05:37, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

If you can write a userspace draft first (e.g., at User:An2013/Copal Partners) so that it can be checked to ensure it complies with all relevant policies and guidelines I would then be willing to move it back into a main article. You can use Wikipedia:Article wizard to help you out. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:10, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Dear Admin,

I have created the page at the location mentioned, kindly review. Please let me know if this is fine or if I need to make any changes to match Wikipedia guidelines.

Thanks for your help.

An2013 (talk) 05:38, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Since that version is almost identical to the one you created at Copal Partners and was speedily deleted by myself and another admin, you should already be aware that it is not acceptable. To begin with, it needs to use reliable sources. Press releases are not reliable sources. The companies own website is not a reliable source. Next, the article needs to be written from a neutral point of view. This means finding all significant sources which talk about Copal and incorporating all of their viewpoints into the article, whether it is positive or negative attention. The key point to remember is that Wikipedia is not a place to write a company description like on the official webpage or a linkedin profile, it is a place to write an encyclopedia article. If you have any conflict of interest, you should not be writing the article at all. The lengthy lists of the types of clients and jargon used to describe the services provided don't appear to serve any purpose other than to promote the company. I would recommend that you clean it up as much as you can and then go to Wikipedia:Requests for feedback and see if you can get a different editor's take on it. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:26, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Dear Admin,

I have recreated the article and have placed a request for its review.

Thanks, An2013 (talk) 05:34, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Dear Admin,

I have not received any feedback from other editors on this. Can you please check.

Thanks for all your help.

An2013 (talk) 09:18, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

While I still think the article needs some improvement I no longer feel that it is speedily deletable, so I have cleaned it up some and moved it back into the main article space. I have tagged it for improvement, and someone should eventually get around to looking at your request for feedback and be able to help improve the article and/or give you some further advice about it. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:13, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I will try to improve.

59.144.118.2 (talk) 06:08, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the firendly tap on the shoulder and guidance. I obviously didn't realize that what I did had further implications. I posted that "please merge" tag on the new page (943rd Rescue Group) that I pasted after cutting from the old page (943d Rescue Group) per the "Help" page that you linked for me. To answer your other question, this is the first, and only, time that I've performed this maneuver.Ckruschke (talk) 15:03, 17 February 2011 (UTC)Ckruschke

No worries, you are far from the only editor to not know that, and it's usually a pretty easy fix once the situation is noticed. I apparently forgot to mention in my message that I had already merged the history for that article (sorry!), so I removed the tag you placed. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 15:45, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Another one for you - similar but different. There is a main page 563d Rescue Group with a redirect page 563rd Rescue Group. In reality, the term "563d" is an incorrect/shorthand abbreviation and the "563rd" page should be the parent one, not the other way around. Can these be flip-flopped or am I being way too anal? Ckruschke (talk) 19:59, 17 February 2011 (UTC)Ckruschke

That kind of situation is the same thing that can be fixed with the "move" tab, and I've gone ahead and done it in this case. For the most part if you come across any other articles like this you should be able to move them yourself; if there's a problem (e.g. because of a cut/paste move or vandalism or whatnot) then you can always ask me or any other administrator to do it for you. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Hello Verno, good evening...

I'm sending this message regarding the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishlord page. It was once again removed, this time justifiyed by relevance. Since you were the one who helped us to retrieve the page, maybe you can help us again. What should we do to maintain the description of Wishlord on wikipedia? It's important to explain for those who don't know what's the site purpose, to have a reliable source like wikipedia. Can you help us?

Thanks again, best regards,

Fabio Tabah

It was deleted under speedy deletion criteria A7, which means in the opinion of the deleting administrator it did not indicate why it was important or significant.

If you believe after reading the deletion policy that your article was unfairly deleted, you can ask the administrator who deleted the article (Lifebaka (talk · contribs))for a fuller explanation. If after an explanation you still believe the deletion was unfair, you can bring up the article at Deletion Review (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review) where the community can take another look to see if the article was deleted in error.

Alternatively, the easiest way to demonstrate that Wishlord should be included would be to find multiple independent, reliable sources which discuss it in detail, so that you can demonstrate that it meets the standards laid out at Wikipedia:Notability (web). If you can do that then there should be no issues with getting the sources added and the article restored.

Please let me know if that doesn't answer your questions. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:06, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I have sent you a message for your consideration: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:VernoWhitney#Vels_University_Images

Regards.RajendranVels (talk) 01:50, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Replied there. VernoWhitney (talk) 02:13, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I Did Nothing Your Bot Is Wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr ArticleEditor (talk • contribs) 17:19, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Could you perhaps explain why the article you created was a copy of User:Aakheperure/Tarek Naga draft then? VernoWhitney (talk) 17:40, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I just spoke with User:Aakheperure on IRC. He claims that this user 'hijacked' his draft article before he could finish it. I explained that it's the nature of Wikipedia that anyone can edit any page at anytime, but what's strange was he said that it was the second time this has happened to him. He seemed very upset over this so I moved the article back into his userspace so he could finish it. I'd also like to ask Mr ArticleEditor why he is creating userpages for other users? -- œ^™ 11:00, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for stepping in - I had intended to ask them about it yesterday after I did the histmerge then got distracted and completely forgot. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:47, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Enciso needs to be renamed Enciso, Colombia, because the plain Enciso is needed for a disambiguation. Please just make the renaming, I shall make the disambiguation page myself. Thank you for your assistance. Xufanc (talk) 12:31, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

 Done VernoWhitney (talk) 14:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) Can you help out with United States Army Basic Training? With the source 404ing, I'm at a bit of a loss. :/ I don't know if you have some magic way around that. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:38, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

For what its worth this site was a government site run by a contract of the army but the contract was cancelled and the information pulled into Army Knowledge online (AKO). Although it is bad writing I do not believe there is any copyright issues here especially since the site no longer exists. --Kumioko (talk) 22:39, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, from my end it appears to be 404'd because it was "HackeD By s-man" (according to the homepage), but the google cache still works. The [cached] site specifically says "© Copyright 2010 USArmyBasic.com" and the disclaimer says "USArmyBasic.com is not an official U.S. Army Site, nor is it endorsed by the U.S. Government or U.S. Military in any way." Given that I don't think we can assume that it's PD-USGov material unless you (Kumioko) have enough information about the terms of the contract for us to establish that copyright for the work is in fact handed over. I haven't looked at the text or for evolution or that part yet, but that's my initial input. VernoWhitney (talk) 02:15, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

And now that I've looked through it it looks to be reverse copyvio. The structure of the intro has remained largely the same for years, but in this diff, there's some evidence of evolution:

Basic Training is designed to be extremely intense, and individuals who have experienced it generally consider it to have been the most challenging experience of their lives.

becomes

Basic Training is designed to be highly intense and challenging.

and

This is where individuals learn about the fundamentals of being a soldier, from the proper way to respect a superior officer to the correct way to fire weapons

becomes

This is where individuals learn about the fundamentals of being a soldier, from combat techniques to the proper way to address a superior.

Since both of these changes are reflected in the external site and the site has only been registered since 2010 I'm fairly confident that they took it from us and not the other way around unless there's something I'm missing. VernoWhitney (talk) 02:45, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks so much! Just to clarify, Kumioko, even if a site no longer exists, copyright concerns persist. US copyright law does not require that material remain in publication to retain protection. The copyright holder retains the exclusive choice whether to continue publication or to republish elsewhere at another point. We really need to nail down copyright holder in such cases just as firmly as we must when they are still up. (Hacked by s-man? Weird!) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:36, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

On Category:Copied and pasted articles and sections it was resulting in too high numbers for "undated" and "total", essentially this is because these numbers are worked out by subtracting the number of items in the dated categories from total number of items in Category:Copied and pasted articles and sections and so when it was reporting two undated these were Category:Copied and pasted articles and sections and Category:All copied and pasted articles and sections. I then found out that you could also edit the factor parameter in Template:Copied and pasted articles and sections progress so I'm happy to restore things to the way there were and increased factor to two if you'd prefer this. Dpmuk (talk) 13:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I see what you're saying. If it can be replaced as a subcat without screwing up the numbers I would like that. On occasion I navigate through Category:Possible copyright violations to see how the problem areas are doing, and I think it would be easy to overlook it when it's just a link. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:03, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. They would have still been listed in the relvant dated sub-category I believe but as there is another way of solving the count problem there's no harm done putting things back the way they were. Dpmuk (talk) 18:35, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! VernoWhitney (talk) 19:08, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for renaming Enciso, similarly La Calle needs to be renamed La Calle (song), because the plain La Calle is needed for a disambiguation. Please just make the renaming, I shall make the disambiguation page myself. Thank you again for your assistance. Xufanc (talk) 18:09, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

 Done VernoWhitney (talk) 18:13, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

When you have a minute, I have an image to upload to Commons but need to verify the permission via OTRS. Any chance you could grab the email when I send it? There's no rush. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:40, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure - I'll go ahead and keep an eye out for it. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:11, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It'll be on its way in a minute. Thanks! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:04, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It's sent. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:19, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I had a feeling that might not be good enough. I've asked for a more precise declaration. Thanks anyway. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:55, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it's one of the annoying parts that goes along with trying to make the content reusable by others instead of just free for use locally. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:11, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

File:Be-Nice-or-Leave-Poster.jpg - Good editnotice!

Hi. Nobody has ever tagged a page I've written as a copyvio, so please make allowances for my inexperience and confusion.

I was under the impression that facts could not be copyright; e.g. Just because somebody had published "Fred was born in 1943" does not make it copyright. So I was rather confused as to why you had tagged this page. Then in the very verbose template I noticed: "the new article cannot incorporate phrases and sentences that were placed in the original article". So I re-read what I had written, and noticed that the simplest and best sounding way to express some things was identical to the way the original author had expressed them. (Hardly surprising, but never-the-less, a problem.)

I have reviewed the article and removed all such phrasing that is not basic english (e.g. I don't think there is any other sensible way to say "Fred was born in 1943")

Could I bother you to cast your eye over the following and provide feedback? Thanks in advance. Pdfpdf (talk) 10:28, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

P.S. I can't find anything relevant at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 February 23. Help! (please) Pdfpdf (talk) 11:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

<snipped article at Talk:Andrew Tennant (politician)/Temp>

I'll take a look at it later today. It's listed at Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations/2011-02-13 because it was originally tagged by a bot. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:59, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

"I'll take a look at it later today." - Thanks - appreciated.

"It's listed at ... 2011-02-13"

a) Errr. Not really. The article tagged on 2011-02-13 bears almost NO relationship to the ones on 2011-02-22 or 2011-02-23. The only thing in common is the name and the basic facts.

b) The template says 2011 February 23, yet there doesn't seem to be anything there. I'm confused. Can you enlighten me? How am I expected to know what's going on? What am I expected to be responding to? As you can no doubt deduce, I don't know how to work out what's going on.

(BTW: Thanks for your reply.) Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 13:16, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The article being listed just means that there's a link to the article from that daily page. When admins work through the daily pages they look at the current version of the article (in this case on the temp page), not just the older versions. The blanking template always links to today's page since it's set up for people who have just happened to stumble across an article and need to list it for an admin to check on later - in this case I was following the work of the bot (obviously with somewhat of a backlog), so it's already in the queue. Normally feedback would be left for you on your talk page or the article's talk page - since we're already having a conversation though, I'll just leave any feedback here if you don't mind. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:28, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

"I'll just leave any feedback here if you don't mind." - No! Not at all!! You have a pleasant and relaxing calm tone to your replies. (Perhaps you should also put a picture of the cover of the hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy in your edit notice? - a) Left side b)Bother! It's copyright.) Pdfpdf (talk) 13:41, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Hrmmm... File:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, english.svg could work... ^_^ VernoWhitney (talk) 13:46, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps ... ;-) Pdfpdf (talk) 14:02, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so it took me longer to get to it than I expected (sorry), but I have looked at it now. The reason I blanked it was because the language still closely followed the source, and I still see some examples of that in your rewrite. Obviously it's not a word-for-word copy, but presenting the same facts in the same order can be a problem. What you get by taking copyrighted material (i.e., here, which I would've G12'd if I had seen it in that state) and rewriting it is a derivative work, which is still subject to the original author(s)'s copyright protection,

For an example of the issue, in your rewrite you say:

In 1853, Andrew took cattle west from Port Lincoln and settled at Salt Creek. Despite the hostility of the Aboriginals, he successfully managed his sheep and cattle station for seven years. After this period, he owned stations successively at Mount Wedge, Coffin Bay, and Streaky Bay.

where the source says:

Aged 18, he took cattle west to the shores of Lake Newland near Elliston, and settled at Salt Creek. The holding had been abandoned because of the Aboriginals' hostility, but Tennant was unafraid and for seven years he controlled the natives while successfully managing his sheep and cattle station. Later Tennant owned stations at Mount Wedge, Coffin's Bay and Streaky Bay.

There are other passages that similarly follow too closely in my opinion.

While facts are not copyrightable, creative elements of presentation - including both structure and language - are. While short phrases which are similar to the source are generally acceptable, in this case the entire article can be largely matched up section for section with the sources. The essay Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing contains some suggestions for rewriting that may help avoid these issues. The article Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches, while about plagiarism rather than copyright concerns, also contains some suggestions for reusing material from sources that may be helpful, beginning under "Avoiding plagiarism". VernoWhitney (talk) 12:13, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I came upon this at WP:CP, and I was just stopping by to note that I agree. We always need to be careful with writing from scratch, but this is particularly the case when revising content that crosses a line to begin with. One of the things courts look for in investigating copyright complaints is evidence of copying, and when they have that in history they may be more likely to find content derivative. That's one of the reasons why the template on the article's face recommends rewriting from scratch; it makes sure of clear separation. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:23, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Woosh Wireless (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Hi,

I was wondering if I can request the protection to be removed from the Woosh Wireless page (or the options available for creating a protected page). Alternatively, is there a way I can submit a page for consideration in the mean time, having not written the one that was removed and protected?

Thanks! Fixedfrequencies (talk) 22:57, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Given that every incarnation of the article has suffered from one or more problems I'm hesitant to unprotect the page, although it may not hurt for you to bump the message you left for Stephen (talk · contribs) in case they've simply overlooked your earlier request. In the meantime I would suggest that you create a draft page following the directions at Help:Userspace draft and then go to Wikipedia:Requests for feedback which should be able to get an experienced editor to review your proposed article. VernoWhitney (talk) 23:33, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! Fixedfrequencies (talk) 02:29, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/VWBot 9 as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 03:32, 24 February 2011 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place {{bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded}} anywhere on this page.

VernoWhitney, this is not the usual renaming and I need your opinion: In English Wikipedia Morella's primary meaning is a short story by 19th century American author Edgar Allan Poe. I think though that Morella, Spain deserves the primary meaning, for that city existed centuries before that, so that present "Morella" should be renamed Morella (story) and Morella, Spain should be under "Morella" in order to avoid ethnocentrism. What do you think?Xufanc (talk) 13:37, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Situations like this are covered by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which seems to be how you're saying it's currently set up. Since this would be an exception to the rule I think the best way to procede would be to start a discussion proposing the move at Talk:Morella and link to it from Talk:Morella, Spain. This way any interested parties could weigh in for or against the change in topic, or supporting the third option of making a disambiguation page and neither of them being the primary. There's not a whole lot of traffic to either page, so if there's no opposition in a week or so it could be moved. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:58, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, just another favour, Campo de Borja should be transferred to Campo de Borja (DO), for the comarca needs an article. Xufanc (talk) 17:30, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

 Done VernoWhitney (talk) 17:50, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi! I wanted to ask whether it wouldn't be better to take this up on Wikipedia regardless of its Commons status, since it is potentially confusing here and is already here for so long. Waiting for the already finished Commons discussion to finally deal with the images may make this less muddled but consensus here does not rely on what happens there anyway. Best Hekerui (talk) 21:15, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder; I'll try and sit down to write up the TfD for it in the next few days. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:20, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

13:08, 24 February 2011 VernoWhitney (talk | contribs) blocked 59.161.123.197 (talk) (anon. only, account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 12 hours ‎ (Block evasion: User:Maheshkumaryadav )

Thank you. SchmuckyTheCat (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:00, 25 February 2011 (UTC).

Hello VernoWhitney,

I'm the creator of the page 'Social Enterprise Association'. I understand that the page was recently flagged as unambiguous advertising or promotion, and duly deleted after your review. I would really like to better understand how I can maintain the page as an educative form to better elucidate on types of social enterprises and the various resources present in Singapore. Comparatively, how does corporate pages such as Charles & Keith still maintain their Wiki page when it seems even more geared towards marketing and promotion?

Looking forward to your reply, so that we can help make Wikipedia a more comprehensive knowledge treasury. Thanks!

Tilly101 (talk) 04:33, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

To answer your questions in reverse order: Charles & Keith stayed around because nobody happened to notice it or tag it for deletion before. Since you brought it to my attention and after reviewing the article I agree that it was even more geared to promotion than Social Enterprise Association was, and as such I have deleted it.

When writing an article it is important to not rely on press releases or documents/websites associated with the organization itself, but to instead collect reliable sources and write the article using only the facts that they report. This is the only way to make sure that the article presents a neutral point of view. This should keep it from being unduly promotional as well as avoiding emphasis on such details as the vision, mission, and logo of the organization unless they are discussed in independent sources. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

This is my official site www.himrights.org so i also want to create HimRights in wikipedia page so i copy article from www.himrights.org do i need to write copyright in wikipedia page — Preceding unsigned comment added by Himrights (talk • contribs) 05:57, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

This user who was asking for assistance seems to have been blocked rather unceremoniously. I get the impression of a "Wiki-innocent" who has made an innocent mistake and had a ton of bricks dumped on him/her. I have expressed disquiet to the blocker User:Alexf and mentioned that User:Himrights had been seeking advice here. (I'm afraid I'm an inveterately nosy visitor)Opbeith (talk) 22:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

He/she will not get unblocked with that name, which is the name of en entity and not allowed. Hekerui (talk) 08:15, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Not the point I was making. Opbeith (talk) 09:00, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's why I wrote it lol :) Hekerui (talk) 21:05, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

You lost me there.Opbeith (talk) 21:22, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

If you wish to include previously published material you need to follow the steps listed at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. However, there are often problems with the promotional nature of such material (which is part of the reason why HimRights was deleted) and so it is often better to simply write the article entirely from scratch. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:47, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Verno. :) Can you by any chance review the rewrite at International Weddell Sea Oceanographic Expeditions? It was rescued from copyvio status, but the revision remained a close paraphrase. Since I already assessed it and tagged it accordingly, I'd like to get another pair of eyes on the latest version. There's more info at the talk page. If you're not up for it, please let me know and I'll tag somebody else. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:40, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I can look at it sometime today. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:59, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's certainly better, but it still bothers me, so I'm trying to think of how to rewrite it without gutting the article. VernoWhitney (talk) 04:15, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I took this one. It didn't just bother me, it was simply a paraphrased close paraphrase. MLauba ^(Talk) 10:14, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. That's certainly one way to fix it. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 12:40, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. Sometimes when I tag close paraphrasing, I like to get a different view of the rewrite, since there is a level of subjectivity there. Two views are even better. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:13, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the effort of looking for the symbol. Having slept on it, I rather like the idea of using the grey version in the initial emboldened reference (as in the header of this section here), since that makes sense of the acronym, and then just leaving the capital O in the rest of the article. It's an indirect warning sign that anyone looking for further info about RAINBO/RAINB♀ needs to be aware of the typographical complications (not to mention that nearly all the activity now seems to be concentrated into AMANITARE initiatives, but I'll have to tackle that issue when I have a bit less on my plate). What do you think? Opbeith (talk) 10:58, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't have any real feedback for you, since I've never heard of the organization nor am I terribly familiar with the related news. Sorry. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:37, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, the question went back to the earlier part of the message - I was using you as a sounding (actually seeing) board, wondering what your opinion might be about using the grey symbol. Wasn't really the clearest way of putting it - my sentences do tend to have velcro characteristics. Opbeith (talk) 16:16, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, gotcha. Judging from the few google searches I've done I think it may make sense to leave RAINBO as the primary name since that's how it's actually written in most of the references, but then include an explanation of the alternate spelling immediately after it. If there are more references which refer to it as RAINB♀, then of course I'd reverse the order and use that option throughout most of the article. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:45, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that was exactly the sort of second opinion I was after. Opbeith (talk) 20:51, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Glad I could help then (finally ). VernoWhitney (talk) 14:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. --Trödel 16:27, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome; it's not one of those immediately obvious parts of copyright law (if there is such a thing). VernoWhitney (talk) 14:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) With regards to our serial licensing violator, there's a question about bots and userspace drafts at ANI. I thought perhaps you might have some valuable insight there, because I certainly don't. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:15, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Commented there. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks much, Verno. As you know, bots, tools and etc. are just so much magic pixie dust to me. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

To appropriate a template from SPI:  Technology is not magic pixie dust VernoWhitney (talk) 15:09, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

LOL!  Technology is not magic pixie dust^{[citation needed]} --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:22, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Could you speedy delete Category:Copied and pasted articles and sections from January 2010 for me as an empty clean-up category. Numbers are being reported wrongly in the template again and I suspect this empty category is the problem. If deleting it solves the problem I'll try and look into the templates and find out why. Dpmuk (talk) 12:20, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

 Done VernoWhitney (talk) 12:56, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Cheers. It would appear that was the problem. Will have to delve into lots of template code to work out why. Dpmuk (talk) 13:02, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe some of the categories just needed purging/refreshing and it was still counting the last one from that category? <shrug> At least lingering empty categories is a temporary problem - and should be even less frequent once the backlog is finally wiped out. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:05, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

True, but it was reporting a zero in that month. To be honest if it only affected this category I wouldn't be bothered because hopefully, as you say, it soon won't be a problem but as the same templates are used for all cleanup categories I'll probably take a look. Dpmuk (talk) 13:07, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Cheers for sorting this - although it was on my list of things to do I hadn't yet got round to it. Dpmuk (talk) 11:14, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi. For The 39 Clues Project You Told Me To Chim In On Something. What Exact Was That You Wanted Me To Do. Answer Soon As Possible.JabocJacobOhYeah (talk) 03:03, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid most of what I do is keeping vandalism and the worst of the rumours out of the articles. You can help with whatever you want to do. There are tags at the top of most of the articles with suggestions for things which could be improved. Into the Gauntlet, for example, could stand to have excessive detail removed from its plot, and needs reliable sources added which talk about the book (such as book reviews or newspaper articles or the like) in order to firmly establish its notability so that the article won't be deleted. VernoWhitney (talk) 00:00, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• I would ask that you please restore that image, your deletion seems quite pointy. Cheers.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 00:19, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• I'm afraid I must decline. There was no indication that either you or Dream Focus were actually going to read and follow the non-free content policy for the use of the image, or rectify the problem which left it subject to speedy deletion. And no, I'm not a bot. VernoWhitney (talk) 00:36, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Which part of Wikipedia:NFCC do you not believe I followed? I filled out all the information on the proper page. Dream Focus 00:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• • • See below so there aren't two conversations about the same thing. VernoWhitney (talk) 02:21, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 March 4. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Dream Focus 15:24, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi! I was wondering if there was any progress happening in terms of the copyright issues at Daniel Squadron. I realize that these things can't be rushed, but I do hope that it can be fixed soon, considering it looks weird not having a page at all for a prominent politician.--Yaksar (let's chat) 01:09, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, articles generally stay blanked for about a week (obviously we've been a little backlogged recently) to give time for the authors of the possibly problematic material to rewrite it or provide permission if they have it. As we have not yet received usable permission, I've gone ahead and reverted to the last version of the article before the material was copied in. Let me know if you have any other questions/concerns I can help with. VernoWhitney (talk) 02:34, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, It is important to add the fact on the creation of the term "Arquitectura Kinetica" ( Kinetic Architecture ) I created in 1989 in my former region Colombia, South America. Why?, well,it is a true fact that I have been defending for long time because pararell inventions could occur and in my case is a real fact. In 1989 there was not such worldwide Kinetic Architecture term, not even in my faculty of architecture nor even in books at libraries. I was living in Colombia in 1989 and sice 1987 I started to experimenting on moving objects applied to architecture and that is how I came with the term "Arquitectura Kinetica" "Kinetic Architecture" which I created in spanish language, being an important fact plus the cultural and geographic location I was located. I do need to state this on the wikipedia website, so people understand that "Kinetic Architecture" was created in different times, different places as a parallel invention. It is not an apparent conflict of interest as you said, instead of stopping my notes, you could give me a hand to add the information on when and where the term was created also. My blog is a true statement http://kinetic-architecture-jose-l-mejia.blogspot.com/2010/02/kinetic-architecture-of-jose-leonidas.html so, please keep it on external links also.

Someone mentioned that Kinetic Architecture was very wide known in the world, which is a wrong and not a sourced statement. In 1989 that term was not even known in South America nor even in whole Europe or Asia. Wikipedia is a free escenario to commmitt all of us for a decent dialogue and mutual cooperation. See how last week, still some of the users were looking for deletion of the article and if you see, I have been defending to keep it as well as others, and I improved the definition as a good part of the current one is part of one of my latest content of the definition. That is why is great to work as a team and not to just undo statements of others, we need to improve others thoughts and make it happen. Jose Leonidas Mejia A. Architect 15:41, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Best,

Jose L. Mejia Architect — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kitaro (talk • contribs) 15:41, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not going to remove your blog from the External Links section, but you should be very careful about editing subjects with which you are personally involved as outlined in Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. Especially if you are adding statements about yourself into the article they need to be supported by reliable sources, not your own blog. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:48, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Explain your actions pleased. [6] The license had been fixed. He clearly gave consent for it to be used, no doubts about that, and it was linked to in an article where it was appropriate to do so. I thought the issue had been resolved. What guideline specifically did it not meet? All points I see listed were filled out properly. Dream Focus 00:21, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not User:VernoWhitney, but maybe I can help. There's at least a major problem I see. :/ I'm afraid that "I will allow anyone who wants to to repost it anywhere on the net without having to ask permission" is not exactly CC-By-SA or GFDL compatible: first, it doesn't mention modication; second, not all of our reusers are on the internet. As per Wikipedia:Images, "Images with any license restricting commercial use or the creation of derivative works may not be used on Wikipedia." (bolding in original) Wikipedia:Image use policy says "Images that are listed as for non-commercial use only, by permission, or which restrict derivatives are unsuitable for Wikipedia and will be deleted on sight, unless they are used under an appropriate non-free use rationale." (again, bolding in original; I'm not trying to be emphatic here :)) If it were text and not an image of text, it would still be unusable until the restriction on reproduction ("on the net") was removed and confirmation was supplied that modification was permitted. I wonder if Mr. David would be willing to offer it under a license we can use? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:31, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• Well, I am sure he will not be shocked by this silliness.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 00:34, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• "unless they are used under an appropriate non-free use rationale". I filled out all the non-free use rationale, so it was appropriate. Dream Focus 00:42, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• I told you twice that you needed to specify a license that it would be/was subject to speedy deletion. As you provided no license but otherwise continued editing, I continued to act as I told you I would. Beyond that reason for deletion, you filled out a FUR but it was not used in that article and so was still an orphan. Once I actually tagged it as such Milowent placed it in an article, but did not provide a FUR so the use in that article was against policy. VernoWhitney (talk) 02:20, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• I did specify a license, and then filled out all the information for fair usage. If part of the FUR needed to be updated, then you could've just mentioned that minor detail. Since the article Milowent added it to has long had an entire section dedicated to it, it fits there perfectly. Is it just the one entry that should be updated, or was there anything else wrong with it? Kindly restore it and that minor thing can be easily fixed. Dream Focus 03:29, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• You did not specify a suitable license. All you placed on there was {{Non-free with permission}} which specifically says "This tag must be used in conjunction with another fair-use image tag." Since you apparently couldn't be bothered to act upon the tag itself or my explicit warnings from a week ago for a speedy deletion reason I have little expectation that you would fix it now. As I mentioned in the previous section, I must respectfully refuse to restore the image, although as I pointed out on your talk page, there's no reason you can't host the image elsewhere online and link to it. VernoWhitney (talk) 04:40, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• Template:Non-free with permission links to Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline which has the other templates you have to use with it. I then added in {{Non-free use rationale}} as required, filling out all the information. Thus that requirement was met. Dream Focus 04:46, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• OK, Verno, if you wanted this image to be retained on wikipedia, what steps would have you taken to keep it? What particular license justification would you have thought could be obtained? Because we will go ahead and get it done. But I want you on record before we do so to avoid further needless waste of time, we have an encyclopedia to build here. Cheers.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 13:35, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• I would email the copyright holder and ask him to explicitly release it (via the procedure at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials) into the public domain or under a usable free license. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• What is a "usable free license"? Be specific here. He said anywhere on the internet, and that includes WIkipedia, obviously. And honestly, was my Fair Usage Rational not enough to justify it remaining? Other than changing one bit when it was moved to a different article, anything else needs to be done? Dream Focus 14:37, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• A usable free license is one listed at Wikipedia:File copyright tags/Free licenses. Again, permission to use anywhere on internet is not sufficient to make it free as required by Wikipedia, we discussed that on your talk page previously. In order to remain as a non-free image it would have required a non-supplemental license listed at Wikipedia:File copyright tags/Non-free as well as a FUR which actually explained how the use of the image satisfied all 10 criteria of WP:NFCC, for example #8: i.e., how does seeing an image of the article significantly increase readers' understanding of the fact that he wrote such an article? VernoWhitney (talk) 14:51, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• In any article you have, there are pictures of something mentioned in the article. Such as this case here. And being able to click on it and read exactly what he wrote, does in fact aid significantly in the understand of it. And the article it was placed in was about the same subject he covered in his writing. Dream Focus 15:00, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree about that. In any case, it becomes moot if he's willing to actually release it under a free license. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:04, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I would also disagree that it was an appropriate FUR. If we could use FUR to include snapshots of entire print pieces, in large enough resolution to read, we could include song lyrics, librettos, pages out of novels, all kinds of fascinating bits of text that copyright policy forbids our otherwise taking. I haven't followed CBG in a long time, but I loved "But I Digress" when I did; I would think David would be open to discussing the need for a usable license. As I mentioned above, permission to use it on the internet is not sufficient, and it doesn't mention the required element of modification. Organizations have red tape; Wikipedia (I think) does a pretty good job keeping the red tape to a minimum, given its size and market dominance, but when it comes to legal issues, we sometimes have to kowtow to the needs of the organization behind us to make sure that everything is on the up and up. When handling e-mails with these kinds of permission, OTRS guidelines require that our correspondent be "crystal clear" that the content is being released under a compatible license, without which we're not supposed to confirm. (irrelevant commentary: one of my favorite columns of all time was David's roundtable discussion among the Disney princesses. I clipped that and kept it in a scrapbook for a long time. Every time I read it, it made me laugh all over again. :)) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:26, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• We have a template for that sort of thing already. Template:Non-free newspaper image. Its used in plenty of places. [7]. I specifically asked him if I could use a screenshot/scan of the article, he agreeing. So it isn't an issue. No legal worries about using it, nor would anyone try to print it out and sell it. People can release things for use on Wikipedia(and the internet) without releasing the rights to it to be used in other things. Dream Focus 20:54, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not really sure that an image 1,677×2,255 would qualify as "low resolution." :/ For instance, it's a whole lot bigger than File:Sydney Morning Herald front page 12-12-2005.jpg or File:ValeParaibano.jpg, both of which are illegible. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk)

• It asks if a lower resolution is available and practical, I mentioning in that spot that no, it wouldn't be readable at a lower resolution. Lower resolution is not an absolute requirement in all situations, they just asking for it when practical to lessen the demands on the servers. Dream Focus 03:21, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• Low resolution has nothing to do with server demand, it has to do with fair use and our non-free content policies/guidelines which are explicitly stricter than that. VernoWhitney (talk) 03:29, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• In cases where it would infringe upon the copyright holder, such as actual pictures they publish in works, then there would be a problem. Not the case here though. Dream Focus 03:31, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• The ones that are illegible should be uploaded in higher quality if the text is relevant. If they are just showing the cover of something, and it doesn't matter what the words of the article say, then it doesn't matter. There are images much larger all over Wikipedia. This one, I just came across in an article I helped to save [8] is 6 megabytes long. Dream Focus 03:31, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• Actually, they shouldn't, because it's explicitly forbidden by WP:NFC (Under "unacceptable": "An image of a newspaper article or other publication that contains long legible sections of copyrighted text. If the text is important as a source or quotation, it should be worked into the article in text form with the article cited as a source."). But since this is now at DR, I think it's inappropriate to fracture the conversation by continuing it here. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 03:48, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• If its copyrighted text you don't have the right to be using, then of course you don't reveal it. Totally different than this image, where permission has been clearly established for it to be used on Wikipedia. Dream Focus 04:06, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• We've already covered that permission for it to be used on Wikipedia is inadequate. Copyright policy and Terms of Use both require specific terms of license; I've explained to you that even via OTRS we must have a clear release of license to accept a donation of copyrighted material. The content is copyrighted; until it is compatibly licensed, it is only usable if it meets WP:NFC; this did not. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 04:10, 5 March 2011 (UTC)