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Precious

reviewing eyes

Your name was mentioned in relation to PumpkinSky ("... someone whose conversant in the copyvio area should be added to his list of mentors, someone like Moonridden girl."). I would appreciate highly if you reviewed just one article in his CCI (of 11 left of 729) and join the distinguished list of reviewers. I have been labelled an "absolute supporter of the copyright violator" and would live happier without that. Absolute supporter of a person, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:48, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I would not be able to help as his mentor, I'm afraid, as I've got quite a lot more than I can currently handle with WP:CP. :) I did, however, review an article. I wish I could do more, but it took me an hour to review that one, and I'm afraid I really can't. I found a few small areas that needed rewriting, but nothing of substance. There were, however, several issues with incorrect facts--for instance, in her cause of death, in the timeline of the building of her new cabin, in which of her friends declared hers a marriage of convenience. I wonder if these are perhaps both due to the same cause? If you wind up mentoring him, maybe the issue is that he needs to slow down?

In any event, it's nice to see this one proceeding so quickly. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:37, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:17, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Would you mind collapsing the section, I think you finished 21 to 40. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:22, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I would have, but I'm afraid it's not complete. :) Nelson Story remains to be reviewed. --User:Moonriddengirl 14:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Wizardman did it and collapsed, thanks, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

It's over, thanks also to you! 719 of 729 articles were found with no problems. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:46, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Um, that's not actually what the report says. :/ See AN. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:50, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I would have liked someone competent to write a report, but just saw a blanked page. Thanks for precision. Wherever I mentioned the completion I linked my summary WITH A LINK to the unblanked page, for everybody to see the facts. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:00, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Courtesy blanking is the standard operating procedure for CCIs. We don't write reports; CCI is about clean up, not documenting misdeeds. Most editors who go through CCI continue as productive contributors. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:03, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I am new to this whole precedure. Blanking looked to me as if something needed to be hidden. I never calculated a percentage. To be labelled "the copyright violator" sounds like misdeeds to me, but I still have language difficulties. I would like to see this editor continue as a productive contributor, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:16, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

We blank for the same reason that, when an individual is editing under his own name, we use the date instead of his username to identify him: this isn't meant to be a monument of shame. They're "no-indexed" for the same reason, to minimize the chance that this will show up on a search engine somewhere. It's entirely a clean-up process and has been blessedly low drama. You know, I'm aware, that the issues here predate this account, and I'm sorry to say that they have been substantial. That doesn't mean that the user in question isn't a good contributor and doesn't have a lot to bring to the project, but it seems that he needs to bring additional care to some of his writing than he has done. It's happened before (by which I mean I've seen others get through this successfully), and I have no reason to doubt that he can do it. I have no beef whatsoever with him. :) It's far more important to me that we acknowledge where practices could be improved in writing and work to overcome them so that we don't have to go through this anymore. The tendency of people to get emotional when discussing the issue is a problem, I think. It shouldn't be about shaming; it should be about working together to reach a shared standard. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:21, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Can we agree that the standard of PumpkinSky was rather consistently rather high? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:00, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, no, because I don't think we should be seeing copied content. :) BUT I can agree that PumpkinSky is much, much improved, in spite of the few issues uncovered, and I think paraphrasing issues in this case should be a goal for improvement, not a barrier to contribution. I know that there are other issues, but in this area, I think he just needs to exercise a bit more care. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:12, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Back from RL, I would like to ask two concrete questions, related to the Great Dismal Swamp maroons, to make me understand better. 1) A source says "possibly thousands of people lived in the swamp between the 1600s and 1860". This is in the article in quotation marks. In the lead it appeared without them and verb "settled". Copy-editor knows better and makes it "about 1700". Now that is unsourced. 2) Copy-editor changed "settled" to "made the swamp their home". I changed it back to settled, saying the other is too cozy, and get ""made their home" was trying to avoid the source wording, but as you prefer". - They didn't make the swamp their home! It's a euphemism I am in danger to get emotional over. If a source says something the one and only way it can be said, what then?? My favourite quote: "These groups are very inspirational. As details unfold, we are increasingly able to show how people have the ability, as individuals and communities, to take control of their lives, even under oppressive conditions." --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:44, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Apologies for butting in MRG, but Gerda I don't know why you should be in danger of getting emotional over it since I accepted your argument over the phrasing and changed it to be closer to the source (the only synonym I could think of that fits is "inhabited" which sounds rather anthropological). The problems with the text as it originally stood: "Research suggests that thousands of maroons settled in the swamp between the 1600s and 1865" are 1) the source says "people" not "maroons" (referring to the indigenous peoples who settled there before the slaves were even in the country) 2)the source says "lived" not "settled"; the "settling" seems to have tailed off some years before the end point 3) once the generic "people" is changed to the specific "maroons" the dates are wrong; the correction to "about 1700" which you say is unsourced comes from the paragraph following the one quoted from this source, whereas the 1865 end date was unsourced and was changed to reflect the source. That said, I've no wish to upset you, so I'll not go near it again. Yomangani^talk 22:59, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment, you misunderstood me, I didn't get emotional about your improvements but about the idea of home-making in the context of these people in oppressive circumstances. I understand the dating better now, "people" vs "maroons". Source 1 says they left "after the war", that's where 1865 came from. Sorry if I wasn't clear, my English is limited, see below. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:15, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Re-reading your comment I see what you meant (which I suppose lets me off the hook to a small extent). The 1865 end date is plausible if you decide that "after the war" equals 1865 and not some unspecified time after the war, but it isn't actually in the sources. Anyway, good luck with it.Yomangani^talk 23:31, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the wishes! Right after the war they had no more reason to stay in the miserable conditions, but you are right, it's not in the source, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:37, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, hardly ever does a source say something in the only way that it can be said. :) We have a pretty word-rich language. But the degree to which paraphrase is okay, from a plagiarism standpoint, is based at times on the degree of attribution. In very small amounts, one can get closer without issues if one uses in-text attribution. You could say, "Between the 1600s and 1860, according to Sayers, the swamp may have been occupied by thousands of people." You could blend two facts into one expanded statement: "The number of people who lived in the swamp is not certainly known, but experts agree that there may have been several thousand." (Actually, the statement there could already be blending expert opinion, given that the second expert posts several thousand by 1800.) I'd probably take the latter approach, and all the better if more sourcing can be found to explore the issue. If a source does say something the only way that it can be said - unless that's because there is absolutely no creativity in what they said - direct quotation is usually the best answer. :) Interesting article, by the way. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:12, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

You have a word-rich language, mine is German - in many discussions here I just feel lost. - Direct quotation is what I used, but not in the lead. The two should match in meaning, right? - I won't say "made the swamp their home", only to avoid closeness to the source. - I passed "interesting article" to the author :) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:04, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

New license tag needed?

For non-free smart phone apps? Was doing non free rationales and came to an iPhone screenshot. Went through the list and realized none of the licenses we have for screenshots seem to fit for smart phones. We hope (talk) 05:00, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Might be a good topic to raise at WT:NFC, whether they should be changed to accommodate smart phone apps or if a new tag is needed. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:15, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Put my three cents [inflation :)] in over there so we'll see what others think. We hope (talk) 17:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Image double check

Hi MRG, could you double check to see if you agree with Fastily's deletion of File:HIM Damsyik.jpg under criterion F4? I remember putting a source and credit to the copyright holder (the website), but since the template I use is often not read by bots it was autotagged. Considering recent stuff on ANI with Fastily, I'd appreciate it if a third party took a look. As you are the copyright guru, your feedback would be much appreciated. (And the request is quite simple this time! :-D) Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:43, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, images are not my major area, but you seem to have specified a source. You have both a FUR, with source & description, and a copyright tag. This is what you wrote:

Extended content

(Once you've seen that, let's delete it. :) You can, or I will.) If I were you, I'd probably ask Fastily if the image was deleted in error or if there is information missing. He does a lot more with images than I do, but I think you have what's required. (FWIW, though, the website claims they own the copyright. If it's restored, you might specify that.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:08, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

• Alright... I'll try him then. I was dreading one of his one-word replies. As a side note, it appears that some editors are unclear on what "published with no copyright notice" means. Argh! Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:55, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Copyright question

Can you weigh in on the copyright status for the photo in Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/NYPD Ford Crown Victoria? Multiple views have been expressed so I'm requesting comments from multiple people in an attempt to get a consensus. Thanks. Pine^talk 10:51, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi. If I were you, I would ask at WP:MCQ. :) I'm afraid that images are not my area, and I generally do not speak to complex cases there unless they happen to involve principles I feel very confident in. The degree of graphic arrangement and when it crosses the line into creativity is not as comfortable for me to assess as literary arrangement. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:52, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Strong stomach required

An editor (and I note some of the edits by this editor have been oversighted, probably because of personal information such as at [1]) has added [2] to Butt plug. It's partially OR, but the inclined plane bit at least seems to come from [3]. The wayback machine doesn't have this page archived so it may be possible that it was taken from our article. Dougweller (talk) 20:52, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Any comments? Dougweller (talk) 12:03, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Belatedly, sorry. :) The link to your source is the Wikipedia article. I've done a google spot-check but only hit on mirrors: [4]. The second one to use the content carries over our [citation needed] tag, apparently. The page itself is a mess! If you found a different source, can you link to it? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:20, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Oops, it's [5]. I also need a tutorial on revdel for copyvio when it's a number of edits back. Dougweller (talk) 12:24, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's a backwards copy. :) You'll note in the mess at the bottom of the page it has buried "Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Butt_plug&oldid=479254541"" Not very professionally done. :/ Look at the cats and toolbox material they've copied. Really, a mess.

Rev deletion on copyvio a number of edits is back is pretty easy. If you think there's a chance of inadvertent restoration, all you have to do is load the page history, check the boxes of the edits containing the content and follow through with the rev deletion process. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:52, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I obvioulsy didn't scroll down to the bottom. :-) So you might have to check a large number of edits, right? Everything from its addition to its removal? Dougweller (talk) 13:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes. If you try to do too many, the software will stop you. But too many is a pretty large number. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:09, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

RevDel request for copyvio

Hi Moonriddengirl, can you RevDel B. Jayant Baliga revision 479147650 on Feb 27 by user 122.177.237.89? This is a copyvio from here. Thanks, SchreyP ^(messages) 21:14, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Done. Dougweller (talk) 21:34, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey Thanks Dougweller! SchreyP ^(messages) 22:09, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

What is your (WMF) name?

Hi,

I've forgotten your other name. It's not listed above that I can see. What is your other identity, the (WMF) one? Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 01:36, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

nevermind. I think I ran across it by hunting around. It's User:Mdennis (WMF) right? Are you aware that Talk:Douglas W. Owsley/GA1 established that the editor in question was close paraphrasing/plagiarizing? I've been trying to find out how these people get appointed to their supervising on line positions for educational programs for the US and Canada. Could you point me to a source of informations? What are the standards? (If I've already asked you this, please forgive, as I get mixed up about which one of your identities can actually provide useful information. Is it the other one?) Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 02:34, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Mathew. I'm glad you managed to figure it out. :) For future reference, should you forget again and need me, it's at the top of my user page. Like many users, I put information about myself there. If you forget who you've been talking to again and need to find them in future, you can also check your own edit history. If you narrow it down to talk pages where you've left a message, it should pop out pretty quickly (for instance [6]).

As to which of my accounts can provide useful information, it depends entirely on what kind of information you want. If you want information about the Wikimedia Foundation, it's the other one. If you want information about copyright, it's this one.

Information about the Wikipedia Education Program is available at Outreach:Wikipedia Education Program. You can read more about participants at Outreach:Wikipedia Education Program/Get Involved and Outreach:Wikipedia Ambassador Program, while you can read more about the Regional Ambassadors at Outreach:Regional Ambassadors/About. You can read more about the volunteer Steering Committee at Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee.

In the United States, Ambassadors are chosen by this process: Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee/Campus Ambassador selection process. Regional ambassadors submit an application and a resume and participate in a brief interview with User:JMathewson (WMF).

The recall process is here: Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee/Ambassador Recall Process. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:32, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! Unfortunately, it says in order to initiate a recall first contact the Regional Ambassador (who is that?), then if needed contact the Steering Committee. However this editor is a member of the Steering Committee. So how does that work? What I would really like is some acknowledgment from User:Cindamuse that she was wrong per Talk:Douglas W. Owsley/GA1 instead of repeated attacks on me, claiming I was wrong. She defended herself so strongly that I fear she learned nothing from the incident. Ambassadors should be aware or another onslaught of copyvio/plagiarism etc. is on tap when the spring semester gets going. Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 23:19, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

The regional ambassador would be the one about whom you're talking. It seems that the steering committee is selected by volunteer election: Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee/Elections/Candidates/October 2011. If you don't think that there is any resolution talking to her (in this case), you might want to get in touch with the contact person Cindy herself suggested: User talk:JMathewson (WMF), who is the U.S. Education Program Associate. Everyone with (WMF) behind their user account is either staff of the WMF or contracting for them.

There's one thing, though, Mathew, that I think you're still maybe not clear on, if I may. Meta is not the WMF website. Meta is entirely volunteer run. WMF comes to Meta to coordinate with the communities because it is a central point open to all volunteers. The WMF's website is here.

You also seem confused, still, about what chapters are. Chapters do not govern the Wikimedia Foundation, beyond the fact that they are able to elect two members of the Board. (Editors elect three.) They do have some financial control in those areas where they do fundraising or payment processing, but they don't decide the WMF's activities. WMF is guided by its Executive Director, Sue Gardner. She is, in turn, guided by the Board of Trustees. The chapters are independent entities, generally affiliated with specific geographies. Many of them are volunteer initiatives and do not have professional staff. They are Wikimedia chapters, but not WMF chapters, which would imply that they in some way belong to the WMF...or vice versa. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:43, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

• Did you read my article in the Signpost? I spend like a week reading various WMF (or whatever) they are pages about chapters etc. I ended up convinced by Executive Director's Sue Garnder's proposed draft, to be delivered to the WMF Board on March 9. I believe what I wrote in the Signpost accurately reflects what Sue Gardner thinks of the matter regarding chapters.

<snip>

• If you disagree with Executive Director's Sue Gardner's evaluation of the situation regarding councils, you should register your views at the proper place on Meta. As far as Meta being a volunteer site, I'm aware that everything is theoretically "volunteer", except all those people that WMF is encouraging chapters to hire. I don't know whether you are paid or if the Online Ambassador Cindy.muse is paid. But I know that WMF is encouraging chapters to lay out money to pay people. Meta, from what I've seen this week, is quite a nasty place in terms of editorial atmosphere, and I wouldn't ever post there for fear of stepping into an editorial hot spot. Best wishes, MathewTownsend (talk) 01:12, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Mathew, I'm fine with your leaving a link, but would really prefer not to have the article reproduced on my talk page, as it gets quite long enough already. :D I've removed it. I did read your piece. I'm very familiar with Sue's opinion as well as the hundreds of bytes of community conversations that have followed (see meta:Talk:Fundraising_and_Funds_Dissemination/Recommendations/Archives/2012-01 and meta:Talk:Fundraising and Funds Dissemination/Recommendations/Archives/2012-02). Since you mentioned me by name in your piece, I know that you're aware at least of one post I made there on Sue's behest. I'm happy to have been able to work to facilitate her discussion on fundraising and fund dissemination on Meta. :) Which is a volunteer website. The chapters have their own websites; see for example Wikimedia UK.

You say "WMF is encouraging chapters to lay out money to pay people"-do you understand that WMF has done so with Sue's approval? See wmf:Staff_and_contractors. She's right there on top. :) She runs the Wikimedia Foundation, at the direction of the Board of Trustees. (And I, Maggie, am down there under wmf:Staff and contractors#Legal and Community Advocacy, although not yet pictured. Yes, I am paid by the Wikimedia Foundation.) She's talking about the way things have been done, which she is planning at this point to recommend to the Board should be changed.

I've found Meta no more or less hostile than En Wikipedia. You run into opinionated editors everywhere. But there are friendly, thoughtful and helpful ones as well. And some of them are the same ones. There are plenty of editors that move comfortably between both. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

well, if Sue Gardner is encouraging the hiring by chapters of more paid staffers, then you know if you read my piece, that she thinks this is the wrong approach so she is doing so at the direction of the WMF board and not through her own judgment that it is the right thing to do.

Yes, I found Wikimedia UK when poking around over there (found it accidentally as it's buried under "chapters" and who would think that the US has no US "chapter" (that was edited out of my article) - just one for Washington DC and one for New York City. So I can't belong to a chapter, just as most people in the US can't. Nice that the UK, Australia, France etc. have chapters. MathewTownsend (talk) 18:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 February 2012

• News and notes: Finance meeting fallout, Gardner recommendations forthcoming

• Recent research: Gender gap and conflict aversion; collaboration on breaking news; effects of leadership on participation; legacy of Public Policy Initiative

• Discussion report: Focus on admin conduct and editor retention

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 01:46, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Clover

hello,

just want to say hi and inform you that I am currently working on an article, -> draft. Please let me know if you have interest in this subject. Regards.--♫GoP♫_T^C_N 15:32, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Good luck with your article. :) But please don't forget when you copy an article that you have to put in edit summary that you've done see. I'll fix it this time. See Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia for next time. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Normative study

My question about copyvios wasn't motivated by the case on the board, so I probably shouldn't have posted it there. And, I've never done much with copyvios beyond removing them when I happen to see them. Reading quickly, I saw something about 729 articles, but maybe it's not reasonable to expect anyone to run the process with a bunch at random to see what is the background level of copyvios - or maybe we don't really want to know, if there isn't much we can do about it. It seems like there would have been a normative study when the process was set up, so we would know it works. We wouldn't need more than one, or maybe one every so many months for comparison. But, you don't see me jumping in to do the work you've done on this one. It can't be very stimulating to comb through a bunch of material you aren't necessarily interested in. So I didn't intend my question to imply any criticism. Thanks, Tom Harrison ^Talk 15:53, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Tom. I promise, I don't feel criticized at all. :) Overwhelmed, yes, but that's because there's too much work to be done. :/ I think a study of that sort would be interesting. I really would love to see somebody do a study of the scale of the problem on Wikipedia (except it would break my heart if we found out it was rampant! I'm optimistically hoping we clean up quite a bit). The CCI process was created only, though, to facilitate cleanup. It's not in any way meant to be punitive or shaming; we just fix any issues that exist and then courtesy blank them and move on. Most editors who undergo a CCI are not blocked.

Copyright work can be pretty dull. But, on the other hand, I've learned quite a lot about a broad variety of subjects, and I've wound up interacting with quite a few nice people. Most of the people I encounter in the work are genuinely willing to do what it takes to contribute successfully, and we usually don't have any problem. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:06, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I may comment further on this elsewhere, but a "normative study" to understand the "background level of copyvios" suggests an objectivity that analysis is unlikely to achieve: the conclusions will likely depend substantially on the preconceptions which inform the methodology. For example, what is a random article? If you haven't clicked on "random article" recently, I recommend doing so a couple of dozen times to get a feeling for what most Wikipedia articles look like: they are pretty poor for reasons far more obvious than potential close paraphrasing.

As a second issue, consider how many articles might have been affected by cut-and-paste from the internet in the first five years or so of Wikipedia (2001-2006). In my experience at GA (i.e., looking at articles which at least some editors think are good!) assumptions of good faith have frequently resulted in the preservation of such cut-and-paste material. As quality control in the early years was primarily through "wisdom of the masses" philosophy, plagiarism may well have been rampant then, with a legacy that we will not even fully appreciate, let alone address, for many years. However, that isn't relevant in determining the background level of ongoing plagiarism. Geometry guy 20:17, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

PS. Moonriddengirl, I commented on your behalf at User talk:Wehwalt - letting you know as a courtesy, in case I misrepresented you in any way.

Those are good points all, Geometry guy, and you have not misrepresented me in that discussion in any way. :) I agree that assumptions of good faith can get in the way of finding and addressing issues, in all kinds of ways. You don't think to look for people you believe will know better, and when you do find an issue, it's always tempting to assume it's an anomaly. Not to mention how difficult it is to raise these issues with experienced contributors! Most people have been really open to discussion with me (sometimes after a preliminary shock, which I completely understand), but I still brace sometimes when approaching people. I can well understand how somebody who doesn't do this work that often - and especially somebody who isn't quite sure if the paraphrase is too bad - might hesitate to undertake it. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:55, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

That is not the kind of study we were suggesting - but looking at a similar number of the most recent articles from a single random eidotr (e.g. me) and see how many of their edits are potentially problematic. And yes this will obviously depend no the eye that sees. But this does not invalidate the need fr a control because the study to which it would be compared is presumably just as subjective. We were talking about as little as 15 of this editors edits that were problematic correcting for subjective bias that number seems very unluikely to be statistically significant o me and i will bet that if Gerda Arendt looks at 10 random content creating editors at least half of them will have 1% problematic edits in their last 700 edited articles. What I object to is doing a subjective(!) statistical study on a population of 1, finding a figure of 1% and using that number as if it has any meaning.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:56, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Late comment, seeing my name mentioned: forgive that I can't read all this. I will not look at 10 editors, I would eventually like to do content again. I looked at one CCI and didn't calculate anything in percent. I simply looked at red and green ticks, 719 vs 10. If we look at "problematic edits", we can't compare single paragraphs to articles, nor single sentences to articles, if you ask me. So we would not get to 1%, but 2 unparaphrased paragraphs on ??? how many total paragraphs, - a much lower figure. Let's keep it simple. - It may have happened to me that I copied something from a source and then overlooked to rephrase it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:24, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

What is a "random editor" and how do you propose to make such a selection? (Don't be modest, you are not at all a random editor.) What is your control? Who is "we" and how will you assess the results? Do you seriously believe that useful information can be obtained from the contributions of a "single random editor"? If not, what do you believe or propose? Geometry guy 00:36, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

You are not following me, I am saying that meaningless numbers were being bandied around as if they had meaning. Any kind of control would make that more useful - obviously for maximal validity you'd use sampling and a significant population (although adding one editor would double the sample size). At the very least if we were to find that another random editor who has never been accused of close paraphrasing had a similar percentages of problematic edits that would mean that we'd have no reason to consider Pumpkin Sky's editing patterns abnormal untill further data had been acquired.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:03, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Maunus. I've moved your comment in accordance with standard indentation. :) As per Help:Using talk pages#Indentation, "If you wish to reply to a comment that has already been replied to, place your response below the last response, while still only adding one colon to the number of colons preceding the statement you're replying to." I prefer my talk page to be organized in this fashion, as I find it much easier to quickly see when there are outstanding issues.

As I said at AN, I'd be interested in seeing what you came up with. I'm not 100% sure of your methodology (there are some editors who are prone to copyright problems, and they will skew your results one day, while other editors are probably averse to them and will skew it another), but you might run it by WP:VPP or something and see if others have other ideas. Making things easier on you, though, as I pointed out at AN, you don't need to look at 700 edited articles; the only edits that matter are those that are substantive, which is why the CCI tool is adjusted to major contributions. One word of warning: people who have a lot of edits and people who have been editing for too many years can be difficult for the CCI tool to read. You'd probably want to look at people who have moderately high contributions, relatively recently.

In terms of your statement that "What I object to is doing a subjective(!) statistical study on a population of 1, finding a figure of 1% and using that number as if it has any meaning", I have no idea why the numbers from Pumpkin Sky's CCI were reported at AN. CCIs aren't a "statistical study" of anything; they're a cleanup process. Generally, they are conducted with low drama, any cleanup necessary is concluded, they are courtesy-blanked and then indexed, where there are no archives. I'm quite sure that it was listed with no ill intent against Pumpkin Sky, but I'm not at all sure it does him any favors to spin up the drama again. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:25, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

That is just a question of sample size. But what I am suggesting is not necessarily a large scale inquiry, but rather to refrain from using meaningless numbers as if they were arguments. I agree with Geometry guy that such studies are probably not very useful, since the very question of what is close paraphrasing is subjective. This only further strengthen's my point that we shouldn't treat CCI's as a user conduct issue (unless we have reason to believe its done with malice), but as necessary maintenance of the encyclopedia. Close paraphrasing is bound to happen - what we can do is 1. look for it and remove it and 2. raise awareness about the importance of trying to avoid it. I do appreciate your hard work with this I should interject at this point, and I definitely don't think that you have been causing any drama about this at all. I do think that the whole Rlevse affair could have been avoided if we had thought about close paraphrasing like this back when the initial incident happened. So that's where I'm coming from. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:03, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry if stepping in here is a problem, but I was interested in this discussion both here and on WP:AN, as I'm curious about a methodology to investigate the scale of copyright problems across WP. (I'm inclined towards a quantitative methodology where we do a restricted but consistent examination of a large sample size, over a more in depth examination of a smaller sample with inconsistent testing processes). However, a statement above caught my eye. I'm staying out of the PumpkinSky debate, but "if we were to find that another random editor who has never been accused of close paraphrasing had a similar percentages of problematic edits that would mean that we'd have no reason to consider PumpkinSky's editing patterns abnormal" was curious. The issue to me is not were the edits abnormal, but were they a problem. If you find a second editor with the same percentage of copyvio, then what you would find is another problem. If, indeed, all the editors on WP had 1% copyvio, then it would be an extensive and systemic problem, but it wouldn't invalidate concerns about PumpkinSky's edits.

Otherwise, from a maintenance perspective, educating users as a group so that they don't add overly close paraphrasing and copyvio is always preferred, but that also doesn't invalidate the importance of trying to limit the problem by identifying and discussing the issues with individual users. It is a maintenance problem, but it is a problem caused by user conduct (although generally very well meant, and often accidental, user conduct). Speaking from a university perspective, I am sorry when I need to fail a student for plagiarism, and I always have to look to how we discuss the issue at the start of the semester to reduce the incidences, but in the end we have to respond to the individuals.- Bilby (talk) 03:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I disagree - if content creating editors on average have 1% close paraphrasing problem (which I believe is more than likely) then that does mean that the problem is cultural and systemic and that it is not going to be solved by cracking down on individual editors. Speaking from a university perspective I wouldn't fail a student who had one sentence where she paraphrased too closely (with citation) in one hundred. I would tell them that this can be problematic too and that in an academic context it could be construed as plagiarism (unless I had a reason to suspect ill intentions) - but honestly I don't even think an academic review board would react if a scientist had 1 instance of close paraphrasing (which I maintain is not the same as plagiarism) in a hundred (As far as I can gather review boards tend to be very lenient and frequently let researchers off with a slap on the wrist for fullfledged plagiarism or even fabrication of results) - professors are of course less lenient with students exactly because they have a responsibility for teaching the best practice. What happens when we turn individual cases in to problem editors is that we loose content editors who were doing their best (and perhaps just as good as everyone else) and are not going to stand up to attention for having dared to volunteer their time while not being completely confident with academic standards for referencing.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:33, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I wouldn't fail a student for a tiny amount of plagiarism, either. I would talk to them, but they need to do something more serious before I fail them (and, of course, some do). I'm not convinced that PumpkinSky's violations were particularly serious. (Although one colleague did loose his job over what would have amounted to 1%, so it can be, but I've stayed out of the political side of this). But I'll have to disagree regards the system vs individual problem - a widespread systemic problem still comes down to individuals. If everyone adds copyvio, just a little bit, then it would represent a core problem with WP. But in my eyes, it would also represent a core problem with the editors.

I should add, I guess, that I never saw a CCI as about punishment, but about fixing problems, and my understanding of Moonriddengirl's actions were that her approach was always to educate and address the issues (sometimes through a CCI), rather than punish. (I hope I'm representing her fairly here - but I've always admired what I saw of her approach). Other people may be using it as a bludgeon, but that was never my understanding of the role of a CCI. I hope that I'm not too far off on that. We want good contributors, so the first choice when a problem is identified should always be to fix the problem and educate, rather than block. But we still have to acknowledge that a problem was identified with the individual's contributions in order to do that. - Bilby (talk) 03:45, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

The issue I have is that given the nature of wikipedia we cannot expect editors to be problem-free - we can in fact expect them to be problematic from an academic viewpoint. WP is based on attracting editors whoe are volunteers, many of whom do not have academic training and cannot be expected to be familiar with academic standards. This means that the responsibility for maintaining (or striving for) and academic standard are those who are able to, not those who aren't. It is our responsibility to gently educate editors about what is desirable, and correct those instances that are less than desirable. We do that by finding problems with individual contribuitions, but we need not assume that those contributions come from an editor who is more in need of education than any other editor.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. It's just that when I see an series of problematic contributions from one editor, I don't assume that the editor is more in need of education, just that the editor is in need of education. And I hope that I (or someone better at it) is able to address the problem. Be that as it may, I think I've wasted enough fo Moonriddengirl's bytes, so I'll wander off. But I'm thinking of the issue you raised about a study of copyvio on WP, and I'd like to come up with some ideas of possible methodologies - it is related to my field, so it is a fun topic. It would be good for Wikimania, if nothing else. - Bilby (talk) 04:33, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Maunus, what you seem to be missing is that while other contributors may cause the same statistical amount of issues, what made the whole matter a problem is how Rlevse dealt with it. While he was a sitting arb, some of his peers came under scrutiny for the exact same reason. They dealt with it maturely, and participated in the effort to clean up their own mess. An "Oh shoot, I didn't realize what I was doing. How can we fix that?" was all it would have taken immediately after the Grace Sherwood incident came to light, instead of the RTV followed by the subsequent charade. Or, as PumpkinSky, to participate in the CCI and make damn sure that going forward he would get another pair of eyes on his edits to make sure no second CCI would be required.

So no, this isn't about the proportion of his edits that were problematic or borderline the second time. It's all about how he decided to deal with the issue. MLauba ^(Talk) 08:12, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Bilby, I would attend that session, if I could. :D And I agree with you about CCI. Sometimes there are people who need to be blocked because they will not stop creating problems - either because they don't care enough to or they are not able. That's sad. But blocking should seldom be a first recourse. We should do what we can to educate people. We do still have a duty of care to address issues when we know they exist - we owe this to our reusers and to other editors. The sooner a copyright problem is eradicated, the sooner we stop potentially wasting editor time in polishing an article that is unusable at base. Sometimes CCIs may be necessary evidence in block discussions, but I do not like to see them used politically. It is purely a mopping task. And, unfortunately, I have to agree with MLauba, particularly as I worked with the other seated arb about who concerns were raised. He handled the matter with grace. Rlevse may have had good reasons for withdrawing (I understand he may have had personal reasons unrelated to the copying concerns), but they didn't help the situation. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:09, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Patton

hello,

could you comment here. Regards.--♫GoP♫_T^C_N 15:55, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't have anything, really, to add there, but i'm afraid he's right. If an image is de minimis in a larger arrangement, it can be a copyright infringement to crop down to that image itself. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:08, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

A CCI that has me stumped

I'm slowly working through a CCI list, and ran into one where I could use some advice from you or a TPS with useful ideas.

The edit in question is here

For me the red flags are:

1. Addition of non-trivial sentences not accompanied by a reference
2. Turns of phrase "prospered thanks to a booming trade", "can still be appreciated today", "even the Cathedral" which aren't quite right for an encyclopedia, and sound like the work of a PR writer, hence may not be original to WP.

The initial general Google-search generates many hits, not surprisingly, as the edit occurred in 2008, and the material is oft-quoted in travel sites known to be copying and forking WP material.

As an aside, I know we have a List of mirrors, and I know it is possible to do an advanced search excluding sites, but I'm not about to type them all in—has anyone considered whether it would be possible to generate a Google query excluding all the known sites? This might require coordination with Google, given the large and changing number of such sites. (Or maybe already possible, and I simply don;t know about it?)

I can skip over sites that look like they might be mirrors but with so many hits, this is difficult. If this is a copyvio of an online site, there is probably only one real positive, and with so many false positives, it is almost literally looking for a needle in a haystack.

If there were only a couple hits, I could use the Wayback to determine which came first, but there are far too many to try that in this case.

I tried limiting the search to books, but that fails to prove anything. No hits, but that either means the source wasn't a book, or it was paraphrased enough to fail to generate a hit.

One option is to go back to the editor, point out that the addition is unreferenced, and ask for the reference. However, given that it was four years ago - I can't fault the editor if they cannot recall where they got the information. While we could tag it, and eventually remove it if not sourced, that doesn't really answer whether the material is a copyvio or not.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:24, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Earwig used to have a tool that would do that, but, alas, it was killed by the same thing that defeated CSB. :/ [7]. We gradually lose our tools, it seems. Fortunately, User:Dpmuk has saved us by bringing a few back to life. :D In order to do this, we'd have to pay a licensing fee to Google, and I'm not sure that the WMF would do it without clear parameters.

When it comes down to CCIs where you cannot positively identify or exclude copying, I think you have to look at the history of the editor. After working on a CCI for a while, as I know you know, you eventually get a feel for a contributor's patterns. Ultimately, Wikipedia:Copyright violations supports your removal on the basis of history, but I do understand the desire not to do that without having to. I'm never quick to reach for that option.

One of my favorite tricks, though it doesn't always work, is to find the first edit that changes the text (if I'm lucky enough to have one). In the case of this edit, we're in luck: [8]. Either he copied it from a print source or a source with a typo. :) Searching for that much reduces our "hit" pool. We've got no exact matches, and most of what we have has an explicit date. I don't think any of those were copied. Google books finds nothing. A couple of edits later, he added an external link; sometimes, this will be the source, but it seems not, in this case.

So, no matches having been found, I think you have to base it on what you've observed of his editing pattern. Does he generally write like that? How much copying are you running into? But you can also remove or rewrite the material that is an issue under WP:NPOV ("The architectural legacy from this period is abundant in Valencia and can still be appreciated today...?") and reduce the issue to one that is probably easily de minimis. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:49, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I was looking for a magic bullet. More later.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 23:04, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Sphilbrick, I so wish I had one. :( I'd wipe out the backlog at CCI. Instead, it took me all of Saturday (pretty much literally) just to do this one. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:27, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll have a discussion with the editor. Rewriting is an option, but only if the facts can be referenced. I'll check into the first edit trick—I was thinking that the edit I linked was the first one, but I now realize it is a large edit, not necessarily the first. Next couple days I'm out of town, so maybe will have to wait, but there's no rush.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 01:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

OTRS

Something has been bugging me for a few days now and knowing you're also an OTRS person you're the logical person to ask. Is there are way to verify that a person is actually a member of OTRS? This originally came about because I was thinking of future tasks for a bot (and I stress the word future) and one of them was replacing a copyvio tag when it was removed by someone other than those allowed. That got me thinking about OTRS and whether there was a way to verify someone was a member. Now Darren Bartlett has cropped up at WP:CP. There's an OTRS ticket there which I obviously can't verify (although I obviously have no reason to doubt it) and the way to verify it is to "please contact OTRS volunteers at their noticeboard." But again how do we know someone replying there is actually a member of OTRS? I know we normally assume good faith but we specifically don't when it comes to people claiming to be the copyright holder so it seems odd if we're being told to assume good faith about the person who claims to have done the verification. Dpmuk (talk) 17:47, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

You raise an interesting question. At one level, the answer is Category:Wikipedia OTRS volunteers, but if I understand your question, you'd like to know whether you can trust that list. For example, if you or I added that cat to our page, would someone monitor it and remove it, and if so, how quickly? I see that you can identify, for example who is an oversighter, by looking at this, which I presume cannot be edited by any ol' editor, and reflects only those editors where the appropriate bit has been flipped. Raising the question, why is membership in the Volunteer response team handled differently than membership in many other groups? Does it have something to do with being a Foundation group rather than an en:WP group?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:30, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Yep, that's my point. As far as I'm aware there's nothing stopping anyone adding themselves to that category. And even if someone is watching it how do we know the person verifying additions to it is indeed a member of OTRS. I note that commons has an OTRS member flag similar to oversight etc but could find no policy on how it's added, removed or indeed even what it means beyond the obvious. Dpmuk (talk) 18:35, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

There a list of volunteers on Meta, but it acknowledges it may not be complete or up-to-date. OTRS isn't exactly a Foundation group; while it has close ties to the Foundation, it's a volunteer initiative. The OTRS admins select volunteers and organize it. There is one staff member who is an OTRS admin, but he does this as a volunteer, much like I work copyright here as a volunteer. :) The list of OTRS admins, here, might be helpful. One of them might have a suggestion. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:34, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Mystichumwipe

Hi Moonriddengirl,

Mystichumwipe has restored a great deal of material to the Dachau concentration camp article, going so far as to assert that much of it was "removed without reason given". I'm sure you had good reason to remove it; does this restored material suffer from the same issues? He has also said that he thinks it's "untrue" that he used the Institute for Historical Review as a source, despite the fact that (as you've previously pointed out) he copied sentences verbatim from http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p377_Weber.html . I haven't responded to that on his talk page, because he's mostly just saying negative things there and blaming it all on me, so I didn't think the reception would be particularly good. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:13, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi. He wasn't reverting me; he was reverting this edit. :) He's right that it was removed without explanation. He has written that content, right after I removed it, and I told him thought it needed further work, but it's much improved: Talk:Dachau_concentration_camp#Copyright_problem_removed. If you see any remaining issues, could you let me know?

Do you happen to remember which article I cleaned had content from IHS? I can look, but I doubt I'll have time until this weekend, and the backlog at WP:CP is mighty compelling. :/ It would make it a whole lot easier for me to ask him about it! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:25, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

CCI on Capolinho

Hi MRG - A few of us have been working on Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Capolinho, and it's almost done. There are three articles left that I'm not sure how to deal with, and I'm hoping that you can help so that the CCI can be closed. The three articles are Cairo University, Egyptian nationalism and Captin Hima. Cairo University definitely has some copyvio, but I wasn't sure if a revert to before his edits was correct, given the number of succeeding edits by other editors (or would those be fruit of the tainted tree, and so ripe for reversion as well?). The user wrote Egyptian nationalism pretty much by himself, using mostly offline sources, so I can't tell if there is copyvio there or not. And I can't find any copyvio in Captin Hima, but something feels off to me, so I'm hoping you have a chance to take a look. Thanks in advance - WP needs more editors like you :) Dana boomer (talk) 19:29, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Awww. <blush> Thank you. :) I'm afraid I'm out of time tonight (morning comes early in my house :/), but I will put this on my list to look at in the morning. Hooray for you for working on nurturing this towards completion! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 02:20, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks! Another question (or maybe one of your TPS can help) - is there any way to tell if this edit is a copy of this or if it's the other way around? I can't find a copy of the Rotary website at archive.org, and that's pretty much as far as my sleuthing skills extend at this point... I'm working on Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Pietru at the moment, but there are quite a few that are giving me fits :) Thanks again, Dana boomer (talk) 02:42, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

My tricks for telling which comes first are laborious, I'm afraid. I look for the points where that text dump is changed to see if it brings it closer to or further from the source. I do this edit by edit, and it can take quite a while. :/ Small changes to the text prior to this point do not matter, but that particular edit (of December 2010) takes the content further away. That would mean that if they copied us, they would have had to have done so before then--but that doesn't help much, because they'd have had plenty of time.

So my next step is to go back to the first major changes and look for the text as it was written before the change. Increasing the odds (but not confirming) that our contributor did not write this, the text is used to describe a 2007 image upload: http://www.flickr.com/photos/c_a_bray/498516316/. (It doesn't confirm for me because I can't be sure that the text wasn't updated later.)

I think the text may have been taken from this book: [9], [10].

I would remove it.

Looking at the other issues now. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:32, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

User:Wizardman has taken care of Captain Hima. There are one of two things that I usually do with article where copied content from a CCI subject is too intermixed with content by others to extricate and reversion will pull out a lot by others. First, I may revert and place User:Moonriddengirl/CCIr on the talk page; second, I may blank it with {{copyvio}} and leave a note at the talk page. In that case, I will usually say that if the article is not rewritten without content from this contributor, or material derivative of his work, it will probably be reverted to [url this specific diff] after about a week. I used to do the second routinely, but experience gradually taught me that in some cases all the second does is deprive our readers of an article for a week for no reason. Now I judge by the number of contributors and their presence on Wikipedia. If I think that people are likely to undertake a rewrite, I may go with the second option. If not, I'll go with the first. I usually will do a diff between the last edit after his and the most recent as well. If there are new sections added, or major new content, that is not intermixed with his, and the new content seems policy/guideline compliant, I will sometimes try to resurrect it. As we all know, certain articles are highly prone to have content that is not policy/guideline compliant, though, and articles related to universities are pretty high on that list.

All that said, let me see what's up with those specific two articles. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:51, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Okay, in order to determine if the content can be excised, I was able to take the diff from just before his first edit to just after, as he kindly concentrated them: [11]. The entire history section was copied from [12], and I was able to excise it. Other content had already been removed. The bulk was taken from another Wikipedia article. I merged updates to that content back into List of Cairo University alumni. Off to make sure the images that I just added to that list are free. :) Then I'll look at the other article. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:22, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for all the answers. I can't see a preview of the Malta book on Gbooks, unfortunately. Oh well, there are plenty of other articles and CCI's for me to work on... Dana boomer (talk) 12:23, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I can't see a preview either, but we don't need to. :) With CCI, there is a presumption towards copying. This is unfortunate, but policy-supported by Wikipedia:Copyright violations. We know this person has violated copyright policies multiple times and there are red flags with the text. That is reason enough to remove it. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:30, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

• With the last article, as it was foundationally his and he has added the bulk of the content, I've blanked in the hope that knowledgeable and experienced editors in the area will help out. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:47, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Roland John Wiley

Heya, could you give me a second opinion on [13]? I think the article may be fine given this rewrite, and that it's slightly restructured from the original, but I'm not sure. Thanks! — madman 20:09, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I think it needed a bit more development, particularly as much of the content followed structurally on the original and it really didn't bring anything new to the table. Transformation is a big factor in fair use. :) In this case, I think the best approach is to model repair, so I've expanded the article. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 02:19, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

You're awesome as always! — madman 16:46, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh dear, this could be trouble

Have you seen http://aful.org/communiques/french-senate-proposes-to-legalize-piracy-french-20th yet? Looks like a world of hurt if every "out of commerce" twentieth century work in France suddenly is to come under a new copyright. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:20, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Greed. It's a scary thing. :( --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:39, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Honorsteem

Could you take a look at this user's talk page (specifically the copyright section), which is related to their listing at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2012 February 21, and try to explain the situation. I've obviously not explained myself in a way that they understand and am struggling to think of another angle I could take. Cheers. Dpmuk (talk) 22:52, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:28, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. You pretty much said what I was going to say but in an inoffensive way. Dpmuk (talk) 02:35, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Happy if I can help. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:16, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Lauren Harries and external links (copyright)

Hey, there, I'd appreciate it if you would take a look at the Lauren Harries article and both the link newly added, as well as Harries' YouTube channel link, which was already in the article. I've tried to keep the link out based on copyright concerns, but the other editor, although willing to talk, is insistent that it remain in, and I don't want to edit-war any more than I already have. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:54, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

While I was writing the above, Ponyo commented on the issue of whether the link should remain in the article pending discussion, and then removed the link. There's still, of course, the substantive issue, which could use some attention.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:57, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I have weighed in. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:21, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks much. I've followed up on your comments on the issue of Harries' YouTube link.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:18, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

101 Battalion

Hi, I see you have concerns re copyright for several items on the Wiki entry I made for our long-demobilised military unit, which was part of an army which no longer exists in a territory which attained it's independance more than 20 years ago and changed it's name.

The article which I credit as providing the original backbone for my Wiki entry ("Beeld van die SWA Gebiedsmag") appeared in an internal South African Defence Force (which ceased to exist when South Africa amalgamated the SADF and MK/APLA along with the Defence Forces of the TBVC states) Public Relations department publication which no longer exists, published and copyrighten to the now defunct SADF.

The original article was a few paragraphs long and in Afrikaans which I free-translated. I then significantly expanded the original piece with many facts which would not have been available to the author, corrected many pieces of mis-information/propaganda which were in the original article and, in essence, changed the shape and form of the article so that it is unrecognisable from the original. I added entire new paragraphs and the images.

The images are either my own (the flags and standards, as well as the cenotaph), or are the common property of members of the 101 Battalion League of which I am an executive committee member. We and I give our permission for all our images to be used.

This all begs the question: Were you reacting to some complaint re use of copyrighten work? If so I should like to be put in contact with the complainant as it appears they might have reproduced MY work elsewhere without my permission.

I note now that you have seen fit to delete our entire entry.

Please explain yourself.

Paul Oxley 41.185.74.151 (talk) 06:02, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

South Africa does allow copyright to be held by government agencies and their employees. Copyright in South Africa for anonymous works is 50 years from date of publication; for works with a known author, like this one, they are protected for fifty years from the date of the author's death. I'm afraid that when you base an article off of an existing work that is still within copyright, you create a derivative work. The rights to create a derivative work are reserved to the copyright holder. The US law that governs us defines a derivative work as follows:

A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”. 17 U.S.C. § 101

Translating, revising, modifying and elaborating a copyrighted work on Wikipedia is only permitted if we have permission from the copyright holder.

Given that the base of your article is a work in copyright, another editor has decided to rewrite it pending some verification of permission from the copyright holder. If you are able to verify license to the rights to the original article, it can still be restored.

And, yes, I was responding to a question raised by somebody else.

In terms of your note that "I should like to be put in contact with the complainant as it appears they might have reproduced MY work elsewhere without my permission", if you are talking about any reproductions of your work on Wikipedia elsewhere, I'm afraid that you gave them your permission when you placed it here. All content on Wikipedia is licensed for liberal reuse (including by commercial entities) and modification. As you edit, look at the terms of use to which you agree underneath the edit window. You'll see that it says, "By clicking the "Save Page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." So long as reusers meet the conditions there, they have your authorization to reuse your content. If they do not meet the licensing conditions (such as by providing a hyperlink or URL to the Wikipedia article), you can complain to them directly. Some recommended procedures are listed at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks.

I will reproduce this at your talk page as well. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Just to add, the author of the piece, PHR Snyman, was affiliated with the University of South Africa and may be a young enough man that he can be contacted, as he earned his PhD in 1992, having earned an MA in 1983. He seems to have been affiliated with the Human Sciences Research Council, but I do not know if he still is.(Wessels, André (1 January 2010). A Century of Postgraduate Anglo Boer War Studies. AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-920383-09-1. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:30, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Mr Oxley, thankyou for coming to speak to Moonriddengirl. I was the person who raised this concern with her, and despite my apparent actions in deleting much of the content, I am very keen to preserve and promote the South African/SWA military history of this period. Would you please give me some direct contact details or e-mail me through the emailthisuser function on my talkpage? I want to restore and improve this article, if we can do so while respecting Wikipedia's strict rules on the subject. I'm also very interested in hearing more about the Bush War in SWA. Buckshot06 (talk) 04:34, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

A favor, please?

This might be outside your bailiwick, but I was hoping you might take a look at the article I have been developing in my user space, Call Me Burroughs, and tell me if you notice any glaring omissions. I know that the article is not finished, but I feel it is close to the point that it can actually be published, and then continue improving it from there. Maybe generate a DYK along the way, and even push it to GA status. At any rate, your thoughts would be appreciated. Cheers! ---RepublicanJacobite_TheFortyFive 14:57, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I missed this! I'm sorry. If it's still there, i'll come take a quick look. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:05, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I certainly think it's publishable! I turned some of the quotations in one section into solid prose. It's important to be sure that we have a good "fair use" reason for a quote. If we just want to publish the information, we can put that into our own words, generally. :) It looks like a very good start to an article, and good luck with it! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:37, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate your rewrites, the section certainly flows better now. I am looking for a few more references regarding its influence, because I have found intriguing information, but not cited by reliable sources. I am looking for more solid information as to when it was recorded. I am reading the volume of Burroughs' letters that cover this period, but he never mentions recording this album, which seems odd, and it is not mentioned, as far as I can tell, in Ted Morgan's Burroughs biography. So, I want to find something solid as to the date. But, at this point, I think the necessary information is provided. The rest would just be icing. One last question, is there anything in there that you believe is DYK material. I think the bit about his influence on The Beatles is very interesting, especially his seemingly profound influence on Paul (of all people!). Thanks again for your time and attention. Cheers! ---RepublicanJacobite_TheFortyFive 18:18, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that's interesting, too. :) I share your pain in finding sources to talk about older recordings. Alas, everything Britney Spears ever warbled has been extensively documented, but the old jazz masters? Not so much. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I have reached an interesting impasse here: all of the currently-available information about when and where this album was recorded must be incorrect. I am currently reading the 2nd volume of Burroughs' letters, and he was not in Paris at all in 1965. Lebel's liner notes are dated April 1965, when Burroughs was in New York City, where he remained 'til September, when he went to London, where he remained 'til late November, at which point, he travelled to Tangier. He never mentions going to Paris. Furthermore, it makes no sense that Lebel's liner notes are dated April, but Burroughs recorded the album in October or November? The album has to have been recorded in 1964, but I cannot prove when. I am fascinated by this discrepancy. It is also interesting that, in all the letters from '64 and '65, he never mentions this album once. Fascinating. ---RepublicanJacobite_TheFortyFive 05:05, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I think in that case, our mandate is to simply note the discrepancy, if you can refer to reliable sources. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:53, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

My thought at this point is to simply avoid the issue of when it was recorded, at least until I find a source that gives a date. Otherwise, I think it is ready to publish. Further improvements can and will be made. Cheers! ---RepublicanJacobite_TheFortyFive 04:28, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Help with copyright

I have faced a CV problem recently with the use of a commission of inquiry report [14]. Since I plan to use the BICI report [15] furthermore (due to it being the only public document that contains important information not just about the Bahraini uprising, but also judiciary and politics of Bahrain), I have been advised to argue that copyright is only applicable to the report as a whole, to its format and to synthetic/analytical (i.e. original) sections of it. I'm not sure that much of the material I've used would be legitimately copyrightable since presumably it reproduces evidence submitted to the Commission with a view to wider dissemination, i.e. entry into the public domain. Two subsidiary points:

1. Does the copyright notice on the website in fact refer to the Report/the Report's contents or does it merely refer to the website? There is no copyright notice on the downloadable Report file as far as I can see; only on the website (not that absence of a copyright notice indicates absence of copyright). On the web page the Commission of Inquiry describes its role as that of a non-judicial fact-finding body established in the aftermath of conflict for the purpose of providing a narrative of events which took place during specified period(s) of unrest. CoIs share a commitment to fact-finding and helping societies to heal and implement successful, post-conflict transitions. This would appear to imply that a CoI would not seek to restrict dissemination of its factual reporting through copyright restriction and suggests that where factual findings are being represented, particularly quoting third party evidence, these could be expected to be freely available for reproduction.

2. In response to attempts by (a group) to use WP copyright guidelines to delete passages of evidence from (a CoI) judgments and other materials, (my friend) asked the (CoI) what the position was concerning copyright of their publications. The brilliant answer that (he/she) got was that they were happy to have their materials as widely disseminated as possible subject only to acknowledgment of the source. I suspect that the Commission or any successor might well come up with a similar response.

3. per [16] The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry is no longer in operation. It is not clear whether the CoI has any residual existence or any succession. If it does not have a succession the question arises whether any copyright (report or website) remains in effect and if so with whom does it reside and what is the extent of the restrictions they are entitled to impose on dissemination of facts. These last points need a specialist to resolve. My friend suggested consulting you, who (he/she) found always straightforward and almost always helpful. "You can trust her judgment (and though her suggested rewrites are not necessarily ideal she is open to reasonable discussion of them)." Bahraini Activist ^{Talk to me} 10:51, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi. :) This is a difficult one, but my initial thoughts are this:

1. In the absence of evidence otherwise, we assume content is copyrighted, not free. The lack of copyright notice on the downloadable file is for that reason not helpful to us. We also cannot assume that a CoI intended their content to be public domain, even if they intended that it be part of the public record. As our guideline on Public domain notes, Wikipedia:PD#Public records, the two are distinct. With public domain content, there are no restrictions on reuse, including commercial reuse and modification. A CoI might well object to their content being modified, even if they don't mind it being commercialized. I have seen some such organizations explicitly permit reuse, but forbid modification. As these people do neither, I'm afraid we can't draw conclusions there.
2. We cannot, unfortunately, draw conclusions what one CoI will do based on what another does. For instance, some of the US state governments release their content into public domain, but most choose not to. We would need to get an explicit release from the copyright holder of this content.
3. That's the key question, but it's a major headache. What you're talking about here is whether or not this is an orphan work and, if so, if that helps us (see also Orphan works in the United States). Sadly, right now, I think it will not. :/ There is a drive to make using such documents easier, but even so there still exist boundaries to free use, including that you would need to follow formal processes attempting to track the copyright holder and, if the copyright holder should belatedly appear, you would be required to make financial reparation for use of his material. (See document from the US register of copyrights.)

You might consider contacting one of the commissioners with the view of asking who has inherited copyright to this content and, if they have inherited, if they would be willing to license the content using Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries. They would need to be willing to go on record as stating that they are the copyright owner, or authorized to speak on behalf of the copyright owner. But if anyone can, they can. :) ---Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:47, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

OTRS query for Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB)

Hi MRG! I've posted this query on the OTRS Noticeboard, but sometimes they're a bit slow to reply.

I need a check TicketNumber 2012021110008071 (placed on the talk page) to verify that material from both

• http://www.themasb.org/about/masb-mission/
• http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/dominique.hanssens/Website/content/Long-Term%20PUP%202011%20-Hanssens.pdf

has now been released under a compatible free license. The article is now virtually blank and I don't want to restore any of the material until I know for sure that it has a compatible license. There have been past problems with the authors sending invalid permission letters, and I want to make sure they've got it right this time. Voceditenore (talk) 13:19, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's good to go. You can restore whatever seems appropriate. :) --User:Moonriddengirl 13:22, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I restored the lot. It probably needs copyediting for style, though. I've also left a note at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2012 February 17 re the book, Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance (not used in this article) but used extensively in many others. If the book isn't included in that OTRS which I suspect it's not [17], those articles need to be checked and I've left a link to them over at the CP page. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 15:57, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! If I had time, I'd look now, but, alas, I'm running later than I want to be. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:55, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I have received permission from the publisher to make the portions of the book (Marketing Metrics) that appear on Wikipedia open source, but I am unclear how to proceed from here. Can someone please contact me at karenmharvey@gmail.com. Thank you! Karenmharvey (talk) 19:59, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

As author of Marketing Metric (1st and 2nd editions), I verify that Karen Harvey and MASB have received permission from the authors and the publisher to post the material described above. Please contact her for more information. Farrisp (talk) 21:45, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Karen, I've written you. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:06, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I've looked for an email but can't find one. Could you resend it? Thank you! Karenmharvey (talk) 20:32, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Duck test ?

Please review User talk:Nikkimaria#hmmm_...? Unsure if SPI is needed in such a case? Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:41, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, yikes! :( Replying there. Thanks for letting me know. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Followup at Nikkimaria's talk. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:08, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Vrghs jacob

Hi there,

You wouldn't happen to remember him do you? I came across an account who has been editing very similar pages and I would appreciate your thoughts on this account: Varghesejacob (talk · contribs). Elockid ^(Talk) 01:26, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I've indeffed as a sock. Hope I got it all right as it was my first ever block (feel free to check). Editing same subject areas, similar user name, making comments about shared IPs despite this never having been mentioned to them, inserting copyright concerns (e.g. 2012 BRICS summit from [18], National Debt of India from [19] and Institute of Secretariat Training and Management from [20]). OK they're no quite staright copy and paste but they are definitely a problem copyright wise. Taken together that's enough quacking for me. Dpmuk (talk) 03:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Think this is going to need a mini CCI although I think I've just run out of time. Will look at it tomorrow if no one else has. Dpmuk (talk) 05:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't have time at the moment either. The one on the bottom took too much time. :/ I'll try to look into it later myself as well as anybody else waiting reply on the talk page. (Sorry, anybody else!) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:20, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Same here. Been pretty busy myself. Hope you get a look see in case there are any copyvios/any remaining problems.

@Dpmuk: thanks. Elockid ^(Talk) 01:31, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Mini CCI at User talk:Dpmuk/Varghesejacob. Slightly more there than I was expecting. I'll start working through it later. Dpmuk (talk) 02:14, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Copyvio bots? Don't get it ...

Next :) So, having given up on dealing with copyvio via DYK, I decided to refocus on my area of interest (medical articles), but patrolling new articles keeps leading me one place only-- more copyvio !!! National Institute of Traditional Medicine (Bhutan) I don't understand how this happens; he put up one after another that was a fully developed cut-and-paste article, no new page patroller discovered them, no one told him. What became of Coren bot that used to detect new copyvio articles, and aren't there other bots doing that now? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:56, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

oopsie. I just discovered that Calliopejen1 had notified him of an earlier copyvio, so he may need to be watched. I found a dozen complete cut-and-paste articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:01, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

User:DGG is watching, so my only remaining question is why is a bot not picking these up? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:53, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Well the first and most obvious reason could be that we had no bot between the end of January when CorenSearchBot went down and 24 February when MadmanBot picked up the slack. There was also a break for the same reason last year although I don't know the exact date of the top of my head.

Even if it's running it's only as good as google search results and the algorithms it uses. Things like slight re-wording and the like will definitely throw the bot of. At the end of the day a bot is never going to be as good as picking these things up as a human, especially if it's not an exact copy and paste. You've also got to remember that we like bots to have a low false positive rate, i.e. we don't want it tagging too many things as a problem that actually aren't. Without looking at the bot code I couldn't be certain why it didn't pick up College of Science and Technology (Bhutan) but if you really want to know the ins and outs of what the bot can and cannot pick up I'd suggest you ask User:Madman. Dpmuk (talk) 04:39, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that, Sandy. :) They're everywhere! FWIW, I find school articles - especially in countries without strong copyright laws - are among the highest hits for copyright problems, right alongside lists of television programs. There've been some articles that I've cleaned over and over again. Re: the bot, I think Dpmuk covered that. (I like the way you talked to that guy, by the way. Hopefully, he will stop with copying content; he seems to get it now, and his English is good, so he can contribute without doing it. The ones we have real problems with are the ones whose content is deleted as unintelligible if they write it themselves. They resort to copying because they don't seem able to contribute otherwise, and we wind up having to block them for WP:COMPETENCE. :/) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:20, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Admin attention

Another that appeared on medicine patrol, there are multiple copyvio notices on his talk page, and this article was cut-and-paste: [21] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:37, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

And he's got many more, after multiple warnings about cut-and-paste editing going back many months. CCI needed, sample Big Bow (chief) and Texas Handbook online. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:15, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I've blocked him for 48 hours after noting that he had received explicit block warnings in the middle of the year. So far, everything I've looked at from him has been copied from somewhere else - copyrighted source, public domain source, or Wikipedia article. This doesn't mean it all will be, but there's certainly enough of a pattern for a CCI. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Scarfaced Charley. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:11, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! This is so depressing ... I retreated to my medical area, only intending to patrol new articles, not realizing that would take me right back in to copyvio territory! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:10, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Maggie, given the extent of this person's copyright violations (which seem to go well beyond the usual copy-and-paste from websites given that they've been taking stuff from books and journals) and the number of prior warnings they'd received, and ignored, I think that an indefinite duration block is warranted. I certainly have no confidence that they'll edit within the rules once the block expires. Would you have any objection to me extending the block duration to indefinite? Regards, Nick-D (talk) 01:49, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Nick. I don't have any objections, no. :) I appreciate your checking. Blocking is no specialty of mine (I tend to block short), and if you think that an indefinite block will perhaps get the point across (or at least stop the behavior), go for it. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 02:01, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

OK done. Nick-D (talk) 02:25, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

You two get the big bucks for being admins, and I'm not, but won't an indefinite be more likely to encourage ... well, best not say it per WP:BEANS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:08, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes it does; sometimes they negotiate an unblock and go on to do well. The real problem is that if they're inclined to do the former, it may not matter whether we give them a brief block or an indef block. After the brief block, if they persist, I indef block. And we wind up at the same place. :/ I take a pretty hardline on WP:CSD#G5 with socking serial copyright infringers, at least the extreme ones. The only thing I can think to do to discourage them is to make clear that anything they add to Wikipedia will be removed until and unless they work out an unblock and stop violating copyright policies. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:16, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Copyleft notices

MRG, Hi, I'm working with a new user who wants to upload images from a third party website. He has spoken to the owners of that site and they are happy for their photos to be used with attribution. As I understand it that's not a problem and requesting attribution wouldn't invalidate a CC-by-SA licence? If they don't want to put a copyleft on their website is there an OTRS process for a blanket permission for all the images on the site or does it need to be dealt with on an image by image basis? Reading the OTRS process it implies that this is possible but I couldn't fathom the detail. Finally (sorry) some of the images aren't the copyright of the web site owner but were donated to him so obviously those can't be used without going to the original copyright holder but can a copyleft read along the lines of "permission granted for all images on this site except those expressly marked otherwise"? Thanks. NtheP (talk) 14:43, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Nthep. :) While I think it would really be best if they were to do the release on their site, it is possible for them to grant a blanket release to the images through OTRS, although they'd need to be very, very specific about which ones are excluded. And, yes, attribution can be required. :) The basic form they'd want to use is Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries, but they would want to tweak it. I would consider suggesting that they write, "I agree to publish the images on that website, except where expressly marked as reserved on the site, under the free license "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0" (unported)." Before recommending that route, though, I'd want to run that by the OTRS team to see if there's any additional language they need, such as indicating where the exception will be posted or indemnifying us if they fail to flag something.

How friendly is this new user with this website? Is he able to talk to them or does he want all of his ducks in a row before he approaches them? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 02:36, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this. I think he's pretty friendly with them and they appear to be raring to go. I really wanted to make sure WP was covered in case of a non released photo being used - not that I think the copyright holder would make too much fuss having already agreed to it being used on t'internet already. I'll ask him to see if they will put a copyleft up. NtheP (talk) 11:22, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. That would be the best option, because then it is the individual responsibility of the uploader to make sure that the image is released and there's no confusion as to what's cleared. :) We can't ever assume that copyright owners are okay with reuse; they may not mind it being published on one site, but our licenses allow modification and even putting images on t-shirts, and not everybody's cool with that. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:24, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

As we are talking images of headstones here I don't think T-shirts will enter into it (although you never know) :-)Anyway I'll see what happens and come back to you if there appear to be any problems. Thanks again for your help. NtheP (talk) 12:43, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Request

Hello. You removed copyright problems from Bob Breunig, but the user has come back under a new username (probably to avoid scrutiny). Can you check this edit to make sure it is copyvio-free? I believe it is changed significantly from this. Eagles 24/7 (C) 20:07, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I think it should be okay, so long as it hasn't copied content from any new sources that we don't know about. :) I did some spot checking and didn't find anything. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Eagles 24/7 (C) 17:31, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Interesting court decision

You may be interested in this. Imagine that, original posters for Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz are public domain, but the court ruled against the creation of derivative works. I know you're not that into image copyright issues, but this is an interesting headscratcher (and may require discussion as to whether or not we want to allow posters like that). PD or not PD, that is the question. Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:09, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

It's a long, complicated opinion, and I confess to not reading it carefully, but it appears to not be relevant to Wikipedia's use of theater posters. The central problem for the defendant was its creation of works based on the copyrights Warner Bros. owned in the films, not in the posters, which the court found were in the public domain. In addition, as I understand it, our use of theatrical posters is based on fair use as indicated by the tag {{Non-free poster}}, and fair use wasn't an issue in the 8th Circuit's case.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:46, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• For the first issue, it appears to me that the courts considered derivative works of the posters as being copyright violations in so far as the people creating the works were focusing on the characters, which were decided to be under copyright. As such, this implies that any PD posters on Commons may in fact be PD-No derivative works (which is ridiculous, I know).

For the second comment, that is indeed the default position and often used by people who don't want to look into the issue any further. However, we have numerous PD posters, such as File:The Mummy 1932 film poster.jpg, File:Poster - Island of Lost Men 01.jpg (featured), File:Deep Throat poster 2.jpg, File:Promises promises poster 01.jpg (run past Quadell), and the above-mentioned Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind posters. As such, it may require legal / policy input due to the "no derivative works" clause there. Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:57, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I suppose I disagree with your reading of the court's opinion. If I understand you properly, you believe the court decided that one could not create derivative works from PD material? If my understanding is correct, that's not the way I read it, but perhaps I missed something. If you want to quote some portion of the opinion that says that, that would save me a lot of work - or correct my understanding of your view. Either way, I'm out of here for the night.--Bbb23 (talk) 03:12, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• PD movie posters only. As for the quote:

  "[...] this freedom to make new works based on public domain materials ends where the resulting derivative work comes into conflict with a valid copyright. [...] [I]f material related to certain characters is in the public domain, but later works covered by copyright add new aspects to those characters, a work developed from the public domain material infringes the copyrights in the later works to the extent that it incorporates aspects of the characters developed solely in those later works. [...] [T]he only images in the public domain are the precise images in the publicity materials for The Wizard of Oz. [...] [P]roducts combining extracts from the public domain materials in a new arrangement [such as juxtaposing two public domain images or a public domain image and text in a way which evokes a copyrighted work] infringe the copyright in the corresponding film. [...] [T]he addition of visual details to each two-dimensional public domain image to create the three-dimensional product makes impermissible use of the “further delineation of the characters contained in the feature-length films." (spread across ten pages or so)

Seems I oversimplified. Although derivative works are permitted, such as the faithful reproduction of the poster or publicity shot in whole or in part on a material which it was not originally on, there are heavy restrictions. To use an example, they found a derivative work juxtaposing a public domain image of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz with the phrase "There's no place like home!" as a copyright violation because it shows influence from a copyrighted film. Action figures and the like are also assumed to have been influenced by the film, so they are a no go. I see why MRG avoids image copyrights Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:42, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

What a messy situation. :/ I first encountered the "PD but no derivatives" headscratcher in King Kong (see King Kong#Character rights; Talk:King Kong#Verification needed). Bbb23, thanks for dropping this judgment off on my talk page. I'ts pretty interesting, and Crisco 1492, I like the way you explicate the derivative work issue. If either of you think I should run this past the legal team to see if they can offer some suggestions for how we should handle such content, please let me know. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:58, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• At the very least a template should probably be drawn up explaining the limitations on derivative works (let's not forget, there's hundreds of PD posters out there... I've uploaded at least 30 myself). A policy discussion as to whether or not these are free enough for Wikipedia may be necessary. I don't think a run through the legal team is required, since we aren't making derivative works, just facilitating... which, since almost all our PD posters are from the web anyways, we aren't the only ones to do. Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• That seems sensible to me. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• I'll see if I can draw one up later (finishing up an article). Not sure which image to use. Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:28, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I confess to still not understanding what Crisco wants to do or why. The quote he supplied confirms my view of one of the holdings of the case, and it seems eminently sensible to me. You can make a derivative work from a PD poster as long as you don't infringe on a valid copyright in doing so, in this instance the copyright on the film character. Why should that change our view that using posters (with low resolution, etc.) is fair use? How does that affect whether these posters are "free enough"? Are we talking not about copyrighted posters but posters that are now in the PD? If so, our use of them in an article is not a derivative work. It's blatant copying and permissible because the work is in the PD. Some more on this Crisco? Sorry to be argumentative, but it's one of my many flaws.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:10, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

It's an interesting issue, and one which I've run into in a number of contexts, such as using pre-1978 Playbills which were published without copyright notice and in depicting other advertising materials with photographs on them like political campaign materials. My understanding of them is that it is OK to use if you use the full cover or page and do not emphasize copyrighted materials (such as the photograph which forms a part of the cover). But yes, what what all of these things are, are materials in the public domain which do not satisfy the Four Freedoms, because some derivative works are problematic. I'm not sure how you fix this though. It may be best not to get bogged down in the detail.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:57, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I've also got very confused over the issue of whether public domain is 'freer' than Creative Commons licenses (and the other way round). The best I've been able to work out is 'sometimes and sometimes not'. Some people release their photographs uploaded to Commons into the public domain. Others, editing pseudonymously, release them under a CC license. I've often wondered when those CC-licensed photos would fall into the public domain, as you often won't know the identity, let alone year of death, of the photographer (or artist for graphics). So would they technically be copyrighted (but available under a CC-license) for some very long period of time (120 years or something after first publication?). And is uploading to Commons the 'first publication' or is the first use on a WMF project the first publication (remembering anyone can download the photos from Commons and use them anywhere before they are used on any WMF project)? Of course, the photos being available under a CC-license makes it all rather moot, but releasing into the public domain seems simpler somehow (unless you want credit and stuff like that). I also have some vague memories of discussions about the 'rights of the author' to not have their works misrepresented being something separate from copyright. I believe the French had some case law on that. Carcharoth (talk) 17:43, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Wow. That's a point I've never thought of; releasing them under free license might actually keep them copyrighted longer. :O But releasing them into the public domain causes issues in those jurisdictions that don't accept this as valid or where legality of that is challenged (see, TPSers who don't know about this one), and in those jurisdictions CC0 is probably preferable. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:51, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Heh, I think we're getting "bogged down in the detail." --Bbb23 (talk) 17:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's what happens when you get a group of copyright geeks together. :) (Not that I'm saying all of you are copyright geeks. You know if the shoe fits. :D For me, it fits beautifully.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:07, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Copyright law is way too complicated. Wikipedia "law" is way too complicated. I just hope we don't complicate Wikipedia law any further. Sometimes, in both, we strive to be fairer and/or more complete, but, despite our best intentions, we end up with another layer of mud. But, hey, although I can be geeky, I'm still, above all, a big fan of simplicity.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Copyright law is way too complicated, yes! But it seems to me that the simplest way to avoid complicating Wikipedia law would be to outlaw edge cases, to avoid having to define the actual parameters, but I think a certain degree of complexity is probably preferable to that. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:16, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• Ah, the KISS principle. Shame it is unlikely to be applicable on Wikipedia. We have too many people from to many backgrounds interacting, and then there are laws which don't necessarily agree with each other either... Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:54, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• I didn't think we were allowed to agree with each other on Wikipedia. Actually, these kinds of conversations are a refreshing interlude in the otherwise contentious discussions I often get involved in at BLPN and the related BLPs. In the U.S., it's not so much that there laws that don't "agree" with each other, although there are conflicting laws, but rather there are many judges who don't agree on how the laws should be interpreted or applied.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:09, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• Fair enough. I guess that's one of the drawbacks from having fifty legal systems united under another, larger system. I'm assuming federal judges are influenced by the legal culture of where they come from. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:30, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• I wouldn't make any generalized assumptions about federal judges (I certainly don't).--Bbb23 (talk) 00:39, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• Good idea, although I think we can assume that most of them are not The Brethren. Mind you, I wouldn't doubt that judges like that exist. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:48, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• @Bbb23 As I noted above, we have several high quality free posters where this could be an issue (links to examples above). Lets say I take the picture of Anna May Wong from the poster for Island of Lost Men and try to create an action figure or bust. To do so, the courts decided that more likely than not I'd have drawn my inspiration from the film itself (which is copyrighted) and not the poster (which isn't). Notice of such limitations on the free posters we do have (i.e., not fair use posters) should be given. Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:50, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• I finally get your point (thanks for sticking in there). You want to warn people against what they might do. Got it. I can be very literal and sometimes needs things spelled out slowly.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:09, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• I have two preliminary templates ready here. Any input welcome. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:27, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• Why are there two? My comments relate to style and English mostly. For example, I wouldn't say that "case law has indicated" - it's an odd verb to use. Do you want us to directly edit them or what?--Bbb23 (talk) 00:39, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• I was unsure which symbol to use, so I made two. Feel free to fix my grammar... since I moved to Indonesia it's become a mess. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:44, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• I'll wait a bit to see if anyone more Wikipedia-policy-experienced than I has anything substantive to say about the template. Then, assuming no one else has, I'll copy edit. If no one, including me, does anything, feel free to remind me.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:00, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• Alrighty, tomorrow morning (UTC+7) I'll ping someone if there are no changes. Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:36, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• They look good to me, fwiw. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:13, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks. Hopefully others agree. I'll wait until tomorrow or so to bring them live. Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

It has long been the case that some derivative works of some free works may be unfree - see commons:Commons:De minimis for more examples. Some typical examples: if I take a picture of a street and you crop it to focus on a poster or billboard, that is a copyvio. If I take a picture of a street in France and you crop it to focus on a particular building, that may be a copyvio (if the building's design is under copyright). For the particular issue of character copyrights, here is a relevant deletion request on Commons, in which a purportedly public domain work prominently featuring a copyrighted Disney character was deleted with the unanimous consensus: commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:"Appreciate America. Come On Gang. All Out for Uncle Sam" (Mickey Mouse)" - NARA - 513869.tif. Dcoetzee 20:57, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• It would be nice to warn potential reusers, methinks. Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• I edited the top template (they are dupes) for style and English. One comment: is it necessary to have the last sentence ("You are solely responsible for ensuring that you do not infringe someone else's copyright.")? Except for "solely", it's redundant of the preceding sentence. If absolutely necessary, perhaps we could just strengthen the preceding sentence?--Bbb23 (talk) 01:41, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

• Sorry I forgot to ping you. Strengthening the third-last sentence seems like a good idea, but we should ensure that Wikimedia is not responsible if they misuse the items. Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:55, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Request

Hi Moonriddengirl
I have left a message for you on my talk page here James Mill section. Would appreciate your assistance on my post .Thanks Intothefire (talk) 08:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Replied. :) Please let me know here if you'd like further discussion. If you leave a message for me at your talk page, I may miss it. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:45, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks :) . Intothefire (talk) 13:35, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Image

Hi! if you are online, just take a look at the article Yash Chopra's Untitled Project and see if I can use that image. I cropped the original one, so its not a full image, but the file is unfree; I'm still quite apprehensive about non-free photos. Thanks. ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 13:55, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm still quite apprehensive about non-free photos, too. :/ I can't tell you for sure if you can use that image, because the question of whether an image is necessary under WP:NFC is debatable, and I don't consider myself any kind of specialist there. But I can tell you that you've misunderstood the question about replacement. :) Our non-free content rules require that we only use non-free images if no free image (or text) can be used to replace it. For "replaceable?", you're supposed to be explaining why there is no free image that can or will work (either already existing or to be made). If you think it can be replaced with a free image, you shouldn't use it. :)

For non-free images, you should ask yourself at least these questions:

• Could I get or take a free picture to replace it, or could I do just as well to describe it with text?
• This image is owned by somebody; by using it, too, am I hurting their chances to sell or commercially exploit this image?
• Are there already images, free or non-free, in the article that serve the same or similar purpose?
• Is the image I want to use high quality enough or large enough that people could use it to replace the original? (For example, if they print it out, would it be a high quality print)?
• Would this be the first place that this non-free image would be published or publicly displayed?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you probably shouldn't use it.

Once you go through that test, ask yourself whether using this image will make the article much easier to understand or much more informative. If you think so, and you didn't answer yes to any of the images above, then you may be okay.

If in doubt, you can always ask at WP:MCQ or WT:NFC. That's where I take image questions like that one. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:09, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The image has been uploaded by a large number of sites; however, it is an official promotional image of a film, and hence it is technically copyrighted by Yash Raj Films. There is only this one image with no variations; actually its the only legal proper image about the film (though a few illegal shoot photos have come up which can't be used for obvious reasons :P). So yes, maybe its alright. Can you take a last look and see if the licensing is fine?

Btw, now can I expand the extract part of List of highest-grossing Bollywood films to 15, 20, 25 and 30? ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 15:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

No, the licensing still says it is replaceable. If it's replaceable, we should not have it. :/ Looking at Template:Non-free use rationale, there are a few other changes that need to happen. You should include the copyright holder in the description.

In terms of the expansion, I'm concerned that 8 out of their list of 43 may still be too many. We currently have about 10% of the list reproduced. Your expansion pushes that closer to 20%. I really hate the current constraints we have on lists. :/ I'm so sorry that BOI didn't respond to you or the other user who approached them. But as I'm not the admin who made that call, I think on further reflection that you probably need to ask User:MLauba, maybe with a link here. He's not around much, but does visit occasionally. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The image is obviously replaceable with a better-quality photo if obtained later; right now there is only one photo. Perhaps I should clarify that in the rationale. Oh yeah, forgot to mention the copyright holder, thanks for pointing that out.

Its actually a 30-film list, not 43. At least on Wikipedia it was like that, so 8/30 means 27%. Okay, maybe instead of 15, 20, 25, 30 can we just have 20, 30 added? That would make 6/30 = 20%. Really is that so high? Anyways, we really need a bit more expansion as the list and its usage on other WP film articles is becoming terribly confusing. ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 15:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Studies on variance in paraphrasing standards

I was following the Normative study thread on your talk page (thread is now archived), and while I agree that a study of the general population might not be that illuminating, I thought of another discussion I'd had, on whether standards among editors doing clean-up work at CCI varies in the grey areas of plagiarism and close paraphrasing. What I was wondering was whether those who work at CCI and who take the time to look for these sort of issues, work to the same standards on plagiarism and close paraphrasing, or whether some are more conservative (strict) than others and some are more liberal (lenient)?

My concern has been that while at one end it is relatively easy to agree on what is obvious copyright violation (such as a straight cut-and-paste), it is not so easy at the other end, where legitimate disagreements can arise (fundamentally, people write in different styles and paraphrase things in different ways depending on their vocabulary and experience, so it is not surprising that different people paraphrase the same information different ways and disagree both on the 'best' way to do this, and on the 'bad' ways to do this - paraphrasing correctly depending on the context and the requirements of the end product is a skill that can be partially taught but also comes from experience).

One view I've seen is that it is best to err on the side of caution, but that could have unintended consequences in that those working on such issues may become progressively more conservative and cautious, and end up crossing the line the other way. i.e. saying something needs rewriting when it doesn't. This can end up promoting bad writing (and discouraging good writers), as people end up rewriting when they don't need to (and don't have the confidence to challenge those incorrectly pressing for a rewrite).

What I really want to know is whether those working at places like CCI issues are aware of this need to set bounds on both sides, both to be aware of when something definitely is a violation and when it definitely is not a violation, and to keep things clear in their mind what the commonly accepted standards are, rather than working to personal views? To put that another way, is there any reason to disagree with the assertion that the result of a CCI depends more on who ends up working on it, than anything else? i.e. someone with a conservative view will find more things that need fixing that someone who takes a more lenient view on what might need rewriting? This is what I was trying to say in a (now archived) discussion here on another user talk page that petered out (mainly because I didn't have time to follow up then).

What I'd really like to see is open and frank discussion of borderline cases, with those working on CCI issues following such examples and getting a feel for where the common areas of disagreement lie. Currently, it feels too much like anyone who might object to any of this work (including the subject of the CCI) would be made to feel like they were getting in the way, or discouraging people from working on the CCIs. I also see people asking you here about borderline cases, but shouldn't such discussions take place at a central location where everyone can learn from them? Carcharoth (talk) 14:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Those are interesting questions you raise. :) Starting at the bottom, it would be great to have a well-attended central location where close paraphrasing could be discussed (oh, please, without drama!), but we simply don't have such a forum. Things are discussed at WT:CP occasionally (and I think it's a good use for that page, actually), but it's not well attended. I have to admit that even I only check in on it occasionally. :/ We just don't have a large body of people watching out for this.

In terms of the subjectivity of paraphrasing issues, this is inevitable. I've seen both those who I think are too lenient and those who I think are too strict, and I'm willing to bet that to the former I am the latter and to the latter I am the former. :D I think it is best to err on the side of caution, myself, but I have seen content that does not in my opinion need rewriting flagged for issues. (When they come up at WP:CP, I will usually consult with another admin or copyright clerk or simply remove the tag, asking that examples be provided before it is restored.)

The majority of CCIs are, I believe, less about close paraphrasing and more about fragmented literal similarity--that is, I believe that most of our CCIs involve people who construct work by copying bits and pieces into existing articles. In these cases, there should not be much subjectivity in handling, as (as you say) direct copying is pretty clearcut. But where close paraphrasing is the issue, there is no doubt that subjectivity is involved. :) Clear standards would be a plus all around.

I'm not entirely sure how to best handle that, though. While Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing admirably attempts to set out some examples and overall guidance, there simply is no way to judge whether paraphrasing is adequate out of context, given that much of copyright depends on the specific use of the material and its centrality to both the source and the context in which it's being used. Back to the beginning of my post, if we had a lot of people working the area, then we could talk about specific examples, whether they constitute a problem or not, maybe at the talk page of a given CCI or maybe at a specific discussion board (again, drama free, fates willing). But the lack of people to join in these conversations has always been prohibitive to any real discussion. :/

We can try to encourage discussion at WT:CCI. Or perhaps I could copy over any conversations that drop off on my talk about whether or not something constitutes close paraphrase there or elsewhere? But I'm open to any other ideas you might have. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I was looking for an example of a list of examples built up over months (CCIs are usually blanked, and I don't think it would be fair on those working on CCIs and the subjects of the CCIs to rake over old issues there), and I realised that one such example is Wikipedia:Did you know/Removed. That archive allows examination of the standards of those submitting to DYK and of the standards of those reviewing and removing DYKs from the queues (ideally, such a study would be done 'blind' as there might be a presumption to assume that individual editors are always consistent, when that might not be the case).

The question I would expect anyone doing a retrospective study to ask is whether the standards applied are correct and consistent, and (because they involve articles scheduled to appear on the main page) whether the standards there are more conservative than maybe would be applied elsewhere. Enough examples have built up over several months now, I think, for that question to be answered with a degree of objectivity (though in some cases, failure to link to static page versions at the time the concerns were raised can make it hard to assess things again months later). There are two listed there that provoked disagreement that I know of: Bozeman Carnegie Library and Musa Muradov. There may be others. I think those DYK removals where there was disagreement should be flagged up in those archives.

Getting back to what you said, another thing I would ask is whether, when you see overzealous or plain incorrect flagging of issues, do you raise it with the editor who raised the 'issues' or not, and is there a way to do this that doesn't involve an argument breaking out? Carcharoth (talk) 15:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

There's no way to do it that you can be sure won't involve an argument breaking out. :) But I find it helpful, when I can, to take the same approach I do to copyright. I remind myself that these people are trying to help out in important work on Wikipedia. They genuinely deserve respect for that. My goal is to encourage them to approach it differently while not shaming them or diminishing their enthusiasm for the work in general.

I do address it, when I can, just the same as addressing copyright issues themselves, but I have to admit the amount of time I put into it sometimes depends on the amount of time and energy I have at a given moment. I believe a stitch in time saves nine, cliche though it may be, so I think it's a good use of time to try to modify behavior of both those who are sloppy with copyrights and those who are overzealous with them. It can be hard in either case, as people tie up a lot emotionally into this work, so I find it helpful not to try to convince them that they are wrong, if they are really in the grey area, but just to convince them that the local standards may be different. And, of course, all of this is problematized by the fact that I may be just as off-base as they are. :) The only entity that can declare copyright infringement (or not) is a court of law; I have been shocked by decisions on both sides of the divide there, too--although that's not really surprising since the standards they use are also generally subjective.

The DYK removal issue is probably a little different than the CCI issue. I would imagine, actually, that there may be, say, three levels of "strictness" people typically apply. This is just my speculation though, and an actual case study could prove me way off base. :) I'd bet people are more strict about copyright standards in material for the front page, for better or worse, just as they're probably more strict about sourcing requirements. It's our "foot forward", so to speak, so people want it to be our best, and they know it will receive a fair degree of scrutiny. I imagine that with CCIs, there is a presumption towards copying - this is reasonable and compliant with Wikipedia:Copyright violations, even though the purpose of CCI is actually to prevent wholesale presumptive removal of content by facilitating article-by-article evaluation. With most articles (again, I'm imagining), there may be a presumption away from copying. At least, that might explain who some extremely blatant copy-paste situations seem to pass multiple editors before winding up at CP.

So, a DYK removal study could be interesting and eye-opening. But it might not be consistent with the findings we would receive if we could conduct a study of the people who put the most time into working with close paraphrasing issues. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:46, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I hope to have a bit more time for Wikipedia starting in April. One of the things that was on my vague to-do list, but I just added to my online to do list, is a number of case studies to help people interested in working on copyright issues. I'm (vaguely) imagining a sequence of examples, starting with light paraphrasing and moving to more and more rewriting, where the early ones in the sequence are deemed to violate our rules and the later ones are deemed to be OK. I want to pick up on the theme noted by SandyGeorgia (I think) that it isn't just word count, it is structure as well (which, of course, makes the exercise far from trivial). I don't profess to be the expert on the issue, but I'm imagining creating a series, and getting the community to weigh in, so we can develop a rough borderline. As an important aside, I believe our (Wikipedia) borderline will be more conservative than the legal borderline.

Not sure when I can get to this, but now that I've written it down, I can be nagged if I don't have something by the end of April or so.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:23, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

As Bozeman Carnegie Library was mentioned above, we could use it as an example, not too deep in the archives. I will have to understand why that was pulled: two sentences I had a hard time to rephrase. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:46, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I have some hesitance at using actual examples, if only for the obvious problem of having an actual copyright violation preserved, rather than removed. My initial thought was to grab a chunk of pd text, then walk through some made up examples where some would be copyvios if the source were not pd, progressing to examples on the border, then examples that are clearly acceptable.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:00, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Still, I would like to know why, when two sentences seem a bit too close, a hook is pulled from the Main page instead of simply changing those two. I am relieved that the Great Dismal Swamp maroons from the same author were not pulled but made it to the stats. But I asked before, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:51, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

What's going on at AfC?

I spotted User talk:Tanbircdq#Your submission at Articles for creation on my watchlist and thought I'd take a look at Kamal Uddin (singer). I wasn't too impressed by the sources and looked at them. One of them when viewed through the Wayback machine dates to June 2010[22]. Besides the chronological sequence, we have from the article " In summer 1996, he boarded Al Jamia-Al Islamiyya Islamic School in Bolton, and studied a course to memorise the whole Qur'an." and from the source " boarded an Islamic school in Bolton called Al Jamia-Al Islamiyya. There he studied a course to memorise the whole Qur'an." Ah, found an earlier version at another source, [23]. And the sources seem pretty rubbish for a BLP (one doesn't seem to exist anymore, and when I tried Wayback I had some sort of virus attack). What can we do about this, both the copyvio and the bad sources for a BLP? I think I've mentioned problems with AfC before. Dougweller (talk) 16:53, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I guess someone (me?) should raise this with the editor who dealt with it? I see he wants to be an Admin. Dougweller (talk) 16:58, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I think addressing any concerns you have with him is a must. He may not be fully conversant in the requirements of sourcing for BLPs or may not be checking the sources directly, but simply eyeballing the article for what seems reasonable. He might not be looking for copied content. A gently worded explanation of your concerns might encourage more caution without robbing him of enthusiasm for helping out. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:28, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

It isn't just one editor, see Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mesut Kurtis "Kurtis showed a strong interest in Islamic nasheeds from a very young age. He joined several nasheed groups in Macedonia that performed locally, and also made several international visits including performances in Turkey and neighbouring places" and from 2009 [24] "Mesut showed a strong interest in Islamic nasheeds from a very young age. His beautiful, powerful, and passionate voice was noticed very early on, leading him to join several nasheed groups in Macedonia that performed locally, and also made several international visits including performances in Turkey and neighbouring places." Approach them both or is some training needed there? Dougweller (talk) 19:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I suspect more education of AfC reviewers in general may be needed. I G12'd Sargelu formation the other day after it had gone through AfC (yet another different reviewer). Found this one because the creator had also created Sargelu Formation which had been copyvio tagged. Dpmuk (talk) 19:17, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I accepted the above mentioned Kamal Uddin (singer). I checked the article for copyright violations with this tool and it came up clean on the check. As for the reliance on primary sources, I have added three news sources to the article. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 20:17, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

AfC is swamped. Reviewers are simply trying to get the backlog down as quickly as possible; even those of us who perform a copyvio check on every article do not necessarily have the time to thoroughly check every single one. I don't disagree that some of our reviewers are doing less than due diligence (or are inadequately versed in policy in general!), but we need all the hands we can get; it's difficult enough keeping the backlog stable without having to monitor other reviewers. A screening process would be ideal, but anything that would reduce the ease with which we can get more hands on deck would probably be a problem at this stage. sonia♫ 19:53, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Swamped indeed. Could we at least get the copyvio bot that's in article space to look through AFC? I axed one as a copyvio just last night. N419BH 20:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

User:Madman would be the one to ask about that - I'll point them here. Am I right in thinking that CorenSearchBot was doing this for a while? I know Madman started with an old version of CorenSearchBot code (all that was available) so it's possible that's why they're not currently being checked. Dpmuk (talk) 05:13, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Earwigbot used to do that. It was disabled by the same change in condition that disabled Corensearchbot, and it does not have the code that WMF supplied to Coren (and later to Madman) to permit it to do its thing. I'm not 100% sure that this would be supplied, but we can ask if Earwig is around and interested in keeping it going. Alternatively, it would be nice if Madman could somehow include AFC space in his new article scan.

Sorry for not joining in on this conversation much yesterday. :) I was determined to get as much done as I could at WP:CP. I had out of town guests on Saturday and will be having more this coming weekend and the one after (oi!) so getting away to volunteer is not easy. CP just keeps getting more backlogged. :/ We need help! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:09, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

No problem. CorenSearchBot's code currently excludes Talk pages of any variety, but it won't be a problem at all to include the Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation prefix. I'll make that change later today and hopefully we'll see the results soon! — madman 15:04, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

User:The Earwig is actively working on getting EarwigBot set up to check Articles for Creation for copyright violations. He already talked to Coren a few months ago and I think Earwig already has access. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 16:48, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah. Well, then I won't make that change right away, someone let me know... — madman 19:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks everyone, that should help. I wish it was as simple to make sure that the sourcing for BLPs was good. Dougweller (talk) 14:35, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Copyvios again

• Jeremy Sun (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Hello MRG, can you please take a look at this guy's contribution? FWIW, I see a lot of images taken from Chinese internet forum and uploaded here for reuse without valid permission/rationale. Thoughts? --Dave ^{♠♣♥♦™№1185©♪♫®} 18:42, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• I've indeffed him. I don't think we should be having him back without some evidence he'll follow copyright policies. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:05, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• About time, and good riddance to bad rubbish. Cheers~! --Dave ^{♠♣♥♦™№1185©♪♫®} 16:35, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Possible multi-wiki copyvio

Hi, Moonriddengirl, I hesitate to bother you with what may be nothing at all but I was rolling through unpatrolled new pages and found Dumitru_Dan_(Globetrotter), which was imported from Romanian WP. I checked the ro.wp page with duplication detector against the first ref linked in the article and the overall result was: Matching phrases found: 66. What troubles me are the first several sections of the results...

• (12 words, 87 characters)
• (11 words, 66 characters)
• (10 words, 53 characters)
• (10 words, 39 characters)
• (9 words, 62 characters)

I haven't much experience with this tool and I would appreciate your interpretation of these results. Thank you for your attention. - UnbelievableError (talk) 02:30, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. :) Not reading Romanian, I can't be sure, but I ran the tool on the article myself and have now read the source, through the assistance of Google translate, and I think it may have issues particularly in the sections related to the deaths of his companions - especially the one who died in Florida. I have rewritten our article a bit at en:Dumitru Dan (Globetrotter). It should be okay on our end, I think. I've left a message at the talk page of the Romanian article and at their cafe asking for help. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:00, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I also hit the "Don't speak the language" roadblock but didn't think of running the whole Romanian source through Google. <noting for future> You have gone above and beyond what I could have expected. Thanks much for all you do here. - UnbelievableError (talk) 02:44, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! I'm happy to help, and I appreciate your letting me know about the issue. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:59, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Lone Star (1996 film)

I don't think this qualifies as a copy-vio, but the length of the quotes here seem to press the limits of fair use. What do you think? ---RepublicanJacobite_TheFortyFive 18:40, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I think they are pressing the limits, particularly as there's not much transformative material around them. I've truncated them and brought in a number of other sources to make that a bit more encyclopedic and a bit less regurgitative. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:58, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Much improved! ---RepublicanJacobite_TheFortyFive 14:25, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

WT:C#RfC: What to do with respect to the copyright of countries with which the US does not have copyright relations?

Any ideas what to do about the beast I started there? It's developed in a way that I hoped it wouldn't and tried to stop. There's now been some discussion about drawing a conclusion but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Think it needs someone independent to look it over and either close or offer some sensible suggestions as to the way forward. I'm definitely involved and I have a feeling that even making suggestions won't go down well. Any ideas on who would be sensible to ask, and who might be willing, to take it on? I could post at WP:AN but I think it's best if it's dealt with by someone really quite knowledgeable in copyright. Dpmuk (talk) 21:41, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, if it weren't for my involvement as Maggie Dennis, I would do it. :) Hmm. This is to do with images, so I kind of wonder if we would do better to ask at WP:MCQ and/or WT:NFC. If that doesn't help, we might have to go with AN, but at least there's the legal background from the WMF which might help inform people of considerations. :/ If you think it's a good idea for me to ask for involvement, please let me know, and I'll head off to one or both of those fora to see who I may be able to drum up. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:50, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Had thought you probably wouldn't be available for that reason. I've asked at WP:MCQ and we'll see if someone takes it up. Yes, it is mainly images although it could, in principle at least, effect text although of course as soon as text was translated by someone outside these countries it would attract copyright so it's probably less likely to occur. Dpmuk (talk) 23:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

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Copyright help

Would you be able to help with a copyright question at Talk:Seyed Mohammad Marandi#The picture from guernicamag.com? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Big question there. :) I've answered. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

That's great, thanks! -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:31, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Happy to help where I can. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:08, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Patton again! :/

hello,

can you look at 2011122110016945 and say if he/she mentiones his/her name. I wonder if it is John Tefteller or not. Thanks.--GoP_T^C_N 13:27, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, as quoted at the deletion debate, it's connected to Blues Images. Contact them, and you'll be talking to the right person. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:28, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Watching

• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Caracas 2000/Archive
• Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Caracas 2000
• Isaac J Pardo, same level of English, same kind of citing (no inline, often uses El Nacional), same focus on Venezuelan writers

Paraphrasing passes (I think?) in this one, likely a google translation, for example:

Empezó a trabajar como médico interno en el hospital del Algodonal donde, junto con el doctor José Ignacio Baldó, se dedicó a la tisiología y a luchar contra la tuberculosis,

and

As physician, worked along with José Ignacio Baldó in the hospital of El Algodonal, facing the battle against tuberculosis in the zone.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:52, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Edits Caracas 2000 articles. [25], [26] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:39, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Ugh. We'll have to keep an eye on him. I'm not so good with sock puppets. I have a tendency to second-guess myself, but there are certainly red flags. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:54, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Confirmed and blocked, I have not checked the edits of Tierradegracia so it may be necessary to add him to the CCI. A while back I also blocked Amalivaca2000 (talk · contribs) and Amalivaca (talk · contribs), but those hadn't made edits that required cleanup. Amalthea 16:33, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I've checked Tierra and both Amalis and don't see any copyvio. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:54, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Amalthea. And thanks, Sandy, for catching it and checking into it. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:22, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

FYI, he has recently requested an unblock at User talk:Caracas 2000#Unblock request. Amalthea 19:50, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Should we note the sock puppetry there so that others are aware that he hasn't had a change of heart unaided? I'm not entirely sure what protocol is. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:08, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Right, I should have left a reference to that in the block comment. I see your TPS have not been idle and made it explicit on the talk page.
In cases like this, I personally would not be concerned about past block evasion. It's "just" a continuation of the carelessness and disregard of policy and expected conduct that lead to the block in the first place. If those concerns are acknowledged and sufficiently addressed it's enough for me.
Amalthea 21:13, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Claims of plagarism on Talk:Consolidated P-30

An editor has raised claims of plagarism on the Consolidated P-30 article - could you have a look, either at Talk:Consolidated P-30 or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft#Claims of plagarism on Talk:Consolidated P-30. Thanks.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:08, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I've replied at the latter. I'll try to keep an eye on it, but if I lose track of it, please feel free to nudge me if there's follow up there. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:49, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

RFA advice

Hello Moonriddengirl,

I was wondering if you would look over my past editing history and give me your opinion on how I can improve my chances for a successful RFA. Not that I'm standing for a RFA yet but you are well respected on wikipedia and I would appreciate your insight.TucsonDavidU.S.A. 04:20, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. :) I'd be happy to, but it will probably be a few days before I have time. I'll put some time into it on the weekend. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:38, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Just as a preview, I took a quick glance at your talk page and saw the question about File:Greenslade.jpg and saw the uploader question about the tag you placed on that album cover. I'll leave it to you to answer him, but I have declined the speedy deletion request, as Wikipedia:CSD#F9 is explicitly not applicable for images that are claimed under fair use, as this one is. :) While I will look more over the weekend, my first piece of advice would be to be very careful with deletion tags to ensure that they are appropriate for the instance being tagged. While an admin should catch problems like that, it will help prepare you for adminship yourself if you know the policies related to admin tool use pretty well. People will want evidence that you do. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Happy International Women's Day

	Award for a great woman
	On the internet no one knows if you're a dog, but I think you're of the female persuasion. Against kitchen slavery, and for women's writing: this award presented to a deserving woman. Drmies (talk) 16:26, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I am indeed. :D Thank you very much! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:09, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

User:Varghesejacob unblock request

Could you take a look at this for me please? I'd be mindful to decline this request given the similarity between the reply to my question and this statement by User:Vrghs jacob over on commons. Dpmuk (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I've declined it, it's so them. I'll email you the reason when I get home. Elockid (Alternate) ^(Talk) 23:48, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I'm convinced it's them, I'm just wanting to make sure the i's are dotted and the t's crossed what with it being my first ever block. Dpmuk (talk) 01:42, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

It was a good block, Dpmuk, with well-dogged i's and crossed t's. :) There was strooong quacking - deafening, really - and even if he had been able to prove that he was some other copyright-infringing person named Varghese Jacob, it would have been a good block given the strength of quacking. Sock-puppetry is not my area - I almost need a person to be wearing a "Hi, my name is...." label to block - and I'd have blocked him, too. And not just because he's wearing a "Hi, my name is..." label. :) If he had come back and proved to me that I was wrong, I would have said, "I'm so very sorry for the misunderstanding. I hope you can understand how it happened." And I would be sorry, but it would still have been a good block - evidence-based and reasonable under the circumstances.

In my opinion, what's important is to be responsive after a block and to be polite. Even if we're not wrong (which hopefully we generally won't be :)), we don't want to escalate things and may even be able to salvage a contributor on the wrong path. It's happened.

Even without whatever Elockid has, I'd have declined based on the good information you've found. The similarities are too strong to overlook. But I appreciate that Elockid has more information, especially if it turns out to be information we can use in future rounds of whack-a-mole. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:51, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Cheers for that. You know you don't have to be so long in your replies - I think I'd have been quite happy if you'd finished at the smiley. That said it is appreciated.

I wasn't as responsive as I'd have liked on that block but that was because I wanted to make sure I was on firm ground before replying in case I misled them. As it happened other's replied and made it moot anyway. Dpmuk (talk) 06:24, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

CCI input

And why I actually came here, I noticed that the editor who is the focus of a CCI has actually never been educated about the concerns. Is there anything you think should be added, or should all edits made since the CCI page was started be added just in case? Amalthea 16:36, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I think you did a great job there. (Truly. Love the way you communicated. :)) In terms of whether or not we should add all edits since the CCI page started, I think that depends on whether there is any evidence that problems continued. Even if he was angry and unconvinced when Laura contacted him, it's possible that the situation moderated his behavior.

I did a quick target-range contribution survey for post-CCI edits ([27]). The vast majority of his content is uncreative. Spot-checking several articles, I didn't find any issues. The one that had the most creative content, Markham Pan Am Centre, had a tiny bit of close following, but not what seemed to me copyright issue level in comparison to this press release. I cleaned it out. I'm not convinced that expanding the CCI is necessary, but am open to disagreement. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:09, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice and the quick check (and the kind the words!). I'll keep chipping away at the CCI, and when it's done will follow up with him and have another quick look at more recent edits. Cheers, Amalthea 19:55, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Extracted text as new work

MRG, I found an article which was made up entirely of extracts taken from a blogspot web page and nominated it for CSD. It was deleted seconds later, just before I discovered that the text at the web page was itself made up of extracts from a clearly public domain source, a book published in the mid-1800's. (Neither the article nor the web page attributed the text.) I asked the deleting sysop to restore it but he was not willing to do so because he was concerned that the web page could itself be considered a new work because it was made up of extracts selected from the PD source, not just one long chunk o'text. He did restore it to my userspace on the agreement that I'd check out his concern before restoring it back to its original page. I've since moved it onto my local drive, but I'd like to be lazy and solicit your opinion about the general principle involved here. I'm not asking that you spend your time actually looking at everything, but were hoping that you can give me the rules. If you do want to look at it — and I'm not asking that you do — the web page is here and the PD source is here and the deleted page is Cults, Fife. There was a 1989 facsimile edition of the PD work, but it didn't add anything to this text and made no explicit claim of copyright. Any advice you can give would be appreciated. Watching here. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) | DR goes to Wikimania! 22:58, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. :) His concerns are not off-base, in my opinion. People can take public domain content and create derivative works by "abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted", per 17 U.S.C. § 101. It's entirely possible by artistic arrangement of PD elements to create a copyrighted derivative.

However, the lack copyright protection in the underlying work is not affected. If our article copied the same order and arrangement of PD text that the other website did, I'd agree that we could have an issue, since we would be mimicking their abridgment. However, given that our article doesn't do this, or come close to doing this, I think we're probably okay so long as the text that we are reproducing is as it is given in the original source. In other words, we shouldn't copy over anything added or emended by the potentially copyrighted derivative.

If this came up at CP, I'd check carefully to ensure that our work is sufficiently different from the abridgment (seems to me to be amply different from the abridgment) and that any copied language duplicates the original and not the abridgment. If it satisfied me on both counts, I'd declare it PD and move on. We each take our own risks on Wikipedia, of course, as we are each legally responsible for our own actions. :) But if it were me, I'd be comfortable moving it back into article space, with proper attribution to avoid Wikipedia:Plagiarism problems (of course), if the language is all from the original or newly written by the contributor here. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:25, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very, very much for this very thorough analysis. You've always got the good answers. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) | DR goes to Wikimania! 18:48, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

PS: It seems to me that there is another issue here and that is the encyclopedic value of articles which are made up entirely of text taken from a 19th century source. That's particularly true for places which still exist. While the historic information is, of course, valuable it seems WP:UNDUE to have it as the only content of the article. And I've seen it again and again in dozens of articles created by editors who seem to spend all their time merely copying from PD sources. <sigh> Another subject for another day, I suppose. At least with proper attribution, the reader knows they're not exactly reading a Frommer's guidebook. Again, thanks, and best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) | DR goes to Wikimania! 19:00, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a problem. :) Some information doesn't change too much, but some of that stuff is really out of date - and not exactly au currant in terms of political perspective. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:54, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Audio file

I uploaded a 50-second sample of "Chammak Challo" on Wikimedia Commons; since the original song is copyrighted, I added a {{Non-free audio sample}} licensing tag. I don't know why, but its being tagged for speedy deletion. Is this normal? Just a checking procedure? You can see it here :- [28] ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 09:45, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, it's normal. :) Fair use is not permitted on Commons; you can upload content there that is under free license or public domain. You need to upload fair use audio samples on Wikipedia. But 50 seconds is longer than you can use. Audio clips can be no longer than 30 seconds or 10% of the length of the song. The song is 3:46, so the longest clip you can use is 30 seconds. 10% would be 22 seconds. See Wikipedia:NFC#Audio clips. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:13, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

You are being discussed at . . .

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Suggestion_for_new_crats. MBisanz ^talk 22:18, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I would love to be able to help you out, knowing what a workhorse you are. But, alas, even if I could pass RFB, I'm not sure I'd have time. :/ I've been struggling to get WP:CP up to date for weeks, and I doubt I'm going to make it any time soon. Believe me, given that, I understand that you need somebody who will show up for work. :) (There are only a few of us plugging away at the board.) Appreciate User:Pharaoh of the Wizards thinking of me, though! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:52, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, I understand. I've kept CCI/CP on my watchlist and am amazed at the complexity those cases require. Good work on them. MBisanz ^talk 16:55, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

WP:PMG

You are invited to join to the project e^xtra999 (talk) 05:10, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the invitation. :) I don't believe I'll have time to significantly assist, unless a lot of people start working on copyright problems, but I've offered some input and an encouraging word there. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:49, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

CV fixed

Could you (or any admin watching this) please check the re-write of Mohamed Albuflasa article? thanks. Mohamed CJ ^(talk) 11:32, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for working on this. :) You do say something at the talk page that worries me, though: "I didn't write it from scratch; the problem wasn't that big, because most of text is translated from Arabic sources." I'm not sure, from that statement, if you realize that copyright law does not permit you to translate text directly into another language and place it here any more than it does to copy and paste in the same language. The copyright holder is the only person who holds the right to authorize translations and to release those for publication elsewhere. Before I look at the rewrite of the article, would you please take a look at your rewrite and make sure that the information you are drawing from Arabic sources is written in new language and structure and not just translated? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:02, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Wow, this is something new lol. I will check it, even though I'm sure it's clear of CV, because a friend of me re-wrote many parts of it in the last edit (he doesn't speak Arabic). Never the less, I'll check it ;) Mohamed CJ ^(talk) 13:43, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll do the checking tomorrow morning (GMT+3) :) Mohamed CJ ^(talk) 17:08, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done Mohamed CJ ^(talk) 07:30, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Great. I'll look at the rewrite a bit later today, unless a kindly talk page stalker gets there first. I'm out of time at the moment! Had to evaluate a WP:CCI request this morning. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:38, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I did a few minor tweaks, but nothing major. It seems okay to me. Thank you very much for repairing the issue. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:06, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Bodegas Faustino

Having found some copyvio at Battle of Mons Graupius I'm concerned about this article. The editor seems to have built this up bit by bit from various sources. I can find material probably copied from [29], [30] and [31]. His writing is not good, so at Mons Graupius he wrote "Agricolas staff in the provintial capital included his official staff officium, and bodyguard (the pedites and equites singulares) and to liase with the procurator, an equestrian officer in charge of finances. As he arrived he would have been carrying orders (mandata) from the emperor Vespasian to conclude the conquest. When Agricola arrived the only area remaining beyond Roman control was Caledonia." Note the discontinuation between the first half of the sentence and the bit "and to liase with the procurator As he arrived he would have been carrying orders (mandata) from the emperor Vespasian to conclude the conquest. When Agricola arrived the only area remaining beyond Roman control was Caledonia." - copied from Mons Graupius AD 83: Rome's Battle at the Edge of the World By Duncan Campbell [32] which says "Agricola will have made his way initially to the provincial capital at London, to meet his official staff (officium) and bodyguard (the pedites and equites singulares) and to liaise with the procurator, an equestrian officer incharge ot finances. He surely carried orders (mandata) from the emperor Vespasian, whom we can imagine repeating Claudius' instruction to Aulus Plautius to 'conquer the rest' (Dio 60.21)." Dougweller (talk) 13:57, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

And Viognier - compare his edits [33] with what looks like his source (in fact, he added it as a reference and then removed it)[34]. Dougweller (talk) 16:38, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Praetorian3005 (talk · contribs) is an obvious sock, having been created when Imperator1974 (talk · contribs) was blocked and editing the same articles. Taken to SPI but I haven't checked their edits yet. Dougweller (talk) 06:32, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Oi. Okay, I would almost wonder if Imperator1974 (talk · contribs) is himself a returning user. I'm not familiar with that pattern, however. But the SPI seems like a good idea, and maybe the clerks there will know if there is another editor who has exhibited this pattern.

I think there are language issues that might incline towards plagiarism here, but it also looks to me as though he is attempting to write content into his own words. The Viognier example is clearly plagiarism. He is adding without credit somebody else's opinions and observations. He should be told that this is not acceptable. The content is closely paraphrased in parts, but not, I think, to the point of a copyright issue (it can be hard to say, and it's possible I overlooked something, but I think it remains more plagiarism than copyvio). Have you pointed out Wikipedia:Copy-paste to him? Template:Uw-copyright-new might be helpful. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:11, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Do you agree with me about the Battle of Mons Graupius material being copyvio? I am concerned that he is editing using bits and pieces closely paraphrased from various sources. I've posted to his talk page as suggested. Dougweller (talk) 13:59, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Multiple thanks

Thanks again for your help with the new, combined Album article style guide. Now that the page has been created, it's even better than I thought it would be. With that being said, I still think this was one of the coolest things ever, so thanks again for that also! — Mudwater ^(Talk) 00:17, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that was a pretty stellar moment. :D Pretty thrilling to know that article subjects know what we're doing about them and appreciate it. You're doing all the work. All I did was help a bit...and pass along a request. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:37, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Help

Sorry to ask for more of your scarce time, but I wonder if you could perhaps offer some advice at User talk:Varghesejacob. The editor has some photos taken by his dad and by his dad's assistant, which he scanned, and I'm having trouble getting him to understand that that does not give him copyright. One example is File:AK Antony Portrait.jpg, which he claims as "own work". Any suggestions would be valuable -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:04, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again! -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:46, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Any chance you can have another word with this guy? He won't listen and is still arguing that he's right and we should take his dad's word for it that he owns the copyright in all of those photos -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:15, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

It can be hard for people to adjust to US law. We've run into issues with this before. I've had a word. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:35, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again. I guess it must also be hard to disagree with your dad when he's so important too ;-) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:20, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Slightly odd OTRS query

Is there any way to let the OTRS volunteers know that a user that may e-mail permission may not really understand what they're doing. The background to this query is at User talk:Kery sprm#Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission. I suspect they may well be able to e-mail from an official address (given that they state they work for the organisation in question) but given the conversation on their talk page I'm not sure they would really understand the release they're giving or indeed even by allowed by the organisation to give such a release. Dpmuk (talk) 13:38, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the crux of that conversation is "I have talked to my superiors about this, about allowing permission for wikipedia and other people to modify the informations at the original website. But they have decided that, it is not acceptable as the website is a government protected website, the property of the government, so they cannot allow it to be easily accessed and modified. But they did state that as long as I referenced the website at wikipedia, then there would be no problem." and that information would likely not appear in an OTRS ticket. Without such an OTRS volunteer generally has to assume a declaration of consent, especially one from an organization's domain, is valid. But for this specific case, I'll keep an eye out for tickets from this domain, though the contributor hasn't indicated he's going to assert permission since saying the above. On another note, this looks like another all-too-common case of "If it's referenced it's okay, right?" and I wish I knew how to challenge that assumption before it's made. — madman 14:02, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll own up to having missed that bit in the wall of text when I first replied to them - I've now refactored my reply a bit. My concern here would still be that they seem to think they have to give permission for the text they add so still may think this is the way forward (more on this at User talk:Wikipelli#Licensing. which they added after the wall of text I reference above). I hope they don't send an OTRS email but it's certainly not impossible. Dpmuk (talk) 14:06, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

In response to the end of your comment, is there a "difference between plagerism and copyright" essay or similar as I couldn't find one. If not we could probably do with writing one if any of us ever find the time! Dpmuk (talk) 14:08, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Haha, what is this time of which you speak? I actually might have a little more time in my day as a couple more users are looking at WP:SCV (God bless them) and I can move some of my efforts there to maintaining the bot... but then, I've also added OTRS to my workload, so clearly I'm just a masochist! And actually, looking at that exact quote again, there's another way to read it: that the organization would allow the content on their site to be edited on Wikipedia as long as there was a way for readers to get to the original content on the Web site. It seems to me that's a requirement for attribution that's perfectly valid under CC-BY-SA, but we really can't be sure until we either hear back from the contributor or see more information in an OTRS ticket. So maybe we should be hoping for that instead. — madman 14:23, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

We do have Wikipedia:Plagarism, which may help.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 15:01, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Indeed; the problem with essays and guidelines (and to some extent even policies), however, is that they're rarely read ahead of time; they're generally read after contributions have been undone and warnings have been issued. I wish there was something more proactive we could do but I know we're already doing much of what we can and this may just be a case of "If wishes were fishes, we'd walk on the sea." — madman 15:10, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I touched very briefly on plagiarism v copyvio in Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/August 2010/Editorials. That section was much bigger in drafts, but I realized that I was going off on my own hobby horse. :) I didn't really touch on it much in Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/A Beginners Guide to Copyright on Wikipedia. We could always add something to WP:Copy-paste. But, of course, Madman hits the crux of the matter: they won't know, because they won't have read. Even if we added it to the advisory and cautionary text boldly labeled "Please note" under the edit screen, they won't read it. I didn't read that stuff until long after I'd started contributing myself. I wonder how many do. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:30, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

request for your input

Hi,

If you have a moment, could you please take a look at the two recent questions at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems regarding Palestinian costumes and Tawfiq Canaan? A few users have expressed frustration that I've added the copyvio tag to several articles and requested a CCI on one user. I would appreciate your input. GabrielF (talk) 16:51, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh! Coincidentally, already given. :) I hadn't dropped by WT:CP lately (like in a week or so, it seems), so I started my morning with a scan of that page. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:25, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Please help us

We are unable to upload a promotional logo image for the Indian soap opera, Saas Bina Sasural. Can you please help us by creating a page notice which will be shown at the top while editing the article or by uploading an image which does not violates the copyrights. Please, we all would be thankful to you. I am a Wikipedian and I am a part of the Wikiproject India, I have been enrolled there to contribute to articles regarding with History of India, Indian culture, Hinduism, spirituality, mythology,Literature, Arts, Daily Soaps (frequently those aired on SONY TV), West Bengal and Kolkata. So please help us, we would be thankful to you. Thanking you, --Jagadhatri^২০১২ 06:52, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I'll be happy to help you as much as I can, but I'm sorry to say that the first thing I've had to do is tag the promotional logo being used there for copyright problems, as you have it on Commons. They can't accept copyrighted content. :/

I don't do much work with fair use images, but Wikipedia allows copyrighted images in some cases, and promotional logos for television programs seem to be permitted. For example, here's one that is used from an American television show: File:Days2004logo.jpg, and it seems okay to me under Wikipedia:Non-free content. So, I think what you can do is upload the image on Wikipedia and put the proper tags on it to show that it is a derivative work.

Based on the other images of this kind I've looked at, you should probably use {{Non-free television screenshot}} and {{Non-free logo}}. And then you would need to add a "fair use rationale". The one used at the image I linked above is {{Logo rationale}}. To use that, all you would need to do is add a parameter for the name of the article, like so: {{ subst:Logo rationale | Saas Bina Sasural}} .

I hope that this will fix the problem. Please let me know if I need to explain any of this better. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Copyright violater

User:Firstedit123 has replaced the existing biographical text of Natalia Makarova with this 600-word bio from the American Ballet Theatre, in this edit. I have restored the section to its former state, but could you please notify him/her on their talk page? And also stress that they need to fill out the Edit Summary on every edit that they make? Thank you very much. Softlavender (talk) 04:01, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Hi, I left a note and some advice on the editor's talk page. There's a useful non-bitey template for this at Template:Uw-copyright-new. I also added the "Copyright problem removed" template (Template:Cclean) to Talk:Natalia Makarova. These are useful for keeping track of removals and the source of the copyvio. I always add them when I've removed copyvio from an article. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 08:42, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Greetings, my fellow opera fan. Thanks for taking care of this. It's really above my "pay grade" (LOL), but now that you've shown me some ropes that helps me for the future. Also, I didn't want to be the "baddie" too much all in one place. :) Softlavender (talk) 08:50, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

From VanemTao

Hello, VanemTao. You have new messages at Moonriddengirl's talk page. I was looking for a message and did,nt find it. So ?

I thought maybe I have to write article about international conference what,s going on annualy in Perth ,Western Australia It,s called Buddhism & Australia.

What,s your opinion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by VanemTao (talk • contribs) 04:39, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello VanemTao. The message was from January 14th, two months ago. It has been archived at User talk:Moonriddengirl/Archive 19. See the section titled The international conference „Buddhism and Nordland. Best wishes, Voceditenore (talk) 07:49, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

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Nervous request for assistance

I recently passed an article through WP:AFC in full knowledge that it had a few issues and had been rejected previously (and some of the concerns addressed thereafter). I did a bit of work on it myself and left a note at Talk:Quazi Golam Dastgir#Copyright issues. A gut feeling about COI has now become more of a reality in the continuation of that thread, but with a twist regarding the potential copyright issues both relating to the text and proposed images. I really, really could use another set of eyes on that thread. The subject matter is notable and I do not see any big issues regarding the creator, who appears to be most amenable to suggestions etc, but we've reached a point where there are several possible solutions & I am not best qualified to advise on which may be the optimum. If you or one of your talk page stalkers could spare the time then I would be grateful. - Sitush (talk) 00:25, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay; work has been crazy. :) I've put a note there now. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:25, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

No worries, and thanks for the comments. I removed a lot of the POV etc & in the process that fixed a fair amount of potential copyvio, but I do think that this one can and should be rescued. Hopefully, the creator will respond over the weekend and I'll take another look at it next week. - Sitush (talk) 14:55, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Advice needed re a (probably) copyright translation

Hi MRG! Could you take a look at the conversation on User talk:Blues power (section: About Javier Vargas). I just wanted to make sure I'm giving him the right advice. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 06:55, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you are. :) If the content is a translation of the Spanish Wikipedia, the translation should be usable here under the license of that project, but we do need to verify that it was licensed. If, say, Warner made an illegal derivative work of the Spanish Wikipedia article by translating it and not complying with license, he would have recourse to ask them to take down their infringement, but there's no law that I know of that says he can appropriate their creative content by force. If there's no paper trail that Warner copied his friend's translation, we need to provide one...or they need to modify the license at their site. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:05, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

A Quick One

Hello, Moonriddengirl! I hope you can answer this one: you're the Cecil Adams of copyright around here, you know. Here's my query: let's say I want to back something up in, oh, the Led Zeppelin article with an interview quote. Let's say I choose something like... this, from the official YouTube channel. Now, since it is the "official" channel, there is no fear of copyright infringement, I would think. Can we link to official, and only official, YouTube channels like this for refs or external links? If not: why? I eagerly await your advice on this matter! Doc talk 12:40, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Since this is a quick one, I'm logging in quickly to reply. :) There is no policy whatsoever that prohibits linking to interviews, etc., if they are displayed under proper licensing or copyright condition so long as we are mindful of context. (See WP:LINKVIO; if they are using content under fair use, we would need to make sure that our link is fair as well. If they're the copyright owners, they aren't using it under fair use.)

There are occasions when official sources may actually violate somebody else's copyright; I've seen particularly marginal organizations copy and paste newspaper articles to their website for clear purposes of promoting their organization. Linking to those can be a problem. We need to judge, case by case, whether we believe the organization has the rights to host the content. If it's on their official DVD, odds are really good they do. And if they don't, I wouldn't worry too much myself about legal fall-out for that, because (if I were the person who linked it), I think I could make a really good case that I had a reasonable expectation that the content was legal. (The risk we face if we link to copyright violations is being found responsible for contributory infringement; as our article on secondary liability explains, knowledge is a factor here. This doesn't mean, of course, that we can link to live streaming versions of blockbuster hits and claim that we didn't know it was an infringement. :D The courts aren't that gullible. But if we say, "Well, it was from their DVD and hosted on their official site, so I thought it was legal," I think the courts would be more likely to say, "Yeah, that makes sense." Note the "I think"; I can't guarantee that, and I can't give anybody legal advice.)

Another factor to be considered here is whether or not deep linking to a specific video violates their terms. On YouTube, I think this should not be an issue, unless Youtube has terms I don't know about. On other official sites, you might want to read their Terms to see what they say about it, since you would be solely responsible if you use their content in a way that violates those Terms. In any event, we have no policy against it.

From a policy perspective, you should be 100% fine with linking to that. From a personal liability perspective, I would feel comfortable linking it but can't (I'm afraid) give you any guarantees. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:48, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Again you prove why you are the one to ask! Thank you very much for your advice on this, and I can certainly see the "case by case" basis that must be considered. Cheers :> Doc talk 14:01, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

How to deal with violators

Hi Moonridden. I don't normally deal with the copyright side of Wikipedia, so I'm not clear on what is currently best practice when one suspects a trove of violations. There was a ticket, Ticket:2012031310001197, that pointed out a copyright violation on Church of Christ in China. I checked, and it's indeed an almost ver batim copy of fragments of this book, published in 1999. Looking at the other contributions of the creator, Phillip J (talk · contribs), I fear this isn't his only violation. So, yeah, if you could point me in the correct direction...Thanks. Someguy1221 (talk) 10:11, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Ugh.

Okay, the usual procedure is to check through his other edits and see if there are several unaddressed issues with copyright. If so, you would request or (since you're an admin) simply open a WP:CCI. When I'm simply opening a CCI, I make sure there are substantial outstanding issues. If I have any doubts, or even if I just want a second opinion, I'll request it.

In this case, I did it already.

This would be my worst nightmare, except that it's relatively an extremely brief list of articles. This contributor has founded a number of important articles with content copied from hard to access print sources. I've found extensive copying from at least three. (In addition, he's extensively translated from other Wikis without attribution, but that's much easier to repair.) Other editors have invested major time in polishing this stuff, and we can't keep it. I can only imagine how dismayed I would be to find out that my hard work was for nothing. :(

Anyway, he's listed at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Phillip J.

At some point, we need to do something about CCI. It's a good process, I think (modestly :D), but suffers seriously from lack of manpower. We may have to reach a more aggressive method of resolution if we can't draft more people to work there. I've always resisted that, but I don't know what else to do. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:36, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Admiration

I was just admiring this terrific article and was not a bit surprised to discover you were its primary author; since I'd been meaning to leave you a note anyway thanking you for your kindness in consulting on "structural paraphrasing" back in January, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and offer a general thanks for all you do. (I've finally admitted my Wikiholism was too great to keep away and am returning for at least some Watchlist maintenance.) Cheers, and keep up the great work, Khazar2 (talk) 01:55, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the kind words and for letting me know. :) I'm glad that you've decided to continue. It's inevitable that we run into rocky patches in our collaborations, but the encyclopedia needs us. :D I hope you'll find future contributions less stressful. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:19, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Pure Reason Revolution charitable donation

Moonriddengirl, you really ought to practice what you preach. You say I must provide a reliable source for my edit, yet your source is unreliable and flawed, as it pertains to the article subject. By extension, if I were to put on the internet somewhere that I intend to find a cure for cancer, then I could create an article about my ability to cure cancer and cite MY OWN claims as a reliable source? Do me a favour. Mullionwitch (talk) 15:35, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I have replied at your talk page. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:38, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

• In that case, you cannot possibly object to my latest alteration, unless you can find proof of the date and amount of the charitable contribution. I look forward to you doing this. You will, however be wasting your time Mullionwitch (talk) 16:01, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Canada Education Program

When something like this is set up, do you know who makes sure the students understand our guidelines and policies. I've just found someone adding obvious copyvio edits (and signing them) from this project. See my comments at User talk:Sub specie aeternitatis. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 21:00, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid I don't. I could probably find out, particularly in my work capacity, but I think this is a bit odd because it's hovering somewhere between staff and volunteer initiative, due to the transition from the Outreach:Public Policy Initiative to the Outreach:Wikipedia Education Program.

Maybe you should speak to User:Bob the Wikipedian in his new role as online communications contractor for the GEP? I'm sure he's pretty familiar with the ins-and-outs of the program. :) To reach him in that capacity, you can leave him a note at User talk:Rob Schnautz (WMF). --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:59, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, done. Dougweller (talk) 14:54, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

The answer (Rob pointed me to someone else) was nothing. They are just treated as ordinary editors. Dougweller (talk) 18:33, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

A couple of second opinions requested

I'm slowly working through Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Dawkeye02 and have a couple of examples where I'm not sure whether or not there is a problem and would appreciate a second opinion.

1. Adolf Piening: where parts of (+1833) look similar to [35]
2. HMS Loch Achray (K426): where I have concerns that (+1483) is very similar to [36], although the source is pretty much a list .

Thanks.Nigel Ish (talk) 21:35, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. :) I reworded what I saw in #2. It's possible I overlooked something, but that seems to have been fairly minimal. Looking into #1 now. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:26, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the first example is a bit closely paraphrased. Any chance you can revise it a bit? It's a bit challenging for me since it's not a subject I know well. If not, please just put a {{close paraphrasing}} tag at the top and, if nobody else handles it, I'll give it a go when it comes by WP:CP. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:45, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

How does it look now? I think its far enough away from the source now, but...Nigel Ish (talk) 19:03, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you so much for that meticulous work. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:12, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Removing historical copyvio revisions

Hi . I saw you are quite active at WP:CP and have no idea where to request this, so apologies if this isn't the proper process! This edit added a bunch of copyvio text that remained until I just removed it, with some rewording in between. I guess these historical revisions should be removed from the article, is this something you can action? Thanks, Nikthestoned 12:43, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I am. :) Done. Thanks very much for finding and cleaning this up! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:55, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

No worries; many thanks! Nikthestoned 15:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

How about a 3O

MRG, there's a 3O request in which your name has been mentioned. Unless you're not neutral to that dispute or to the parties (I'm not, so I can't give one), your help would be appreciated if you have the time. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) | DR goes to Wikimania! 14:31, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. :) Thanks; I'll drop by and see if I can help out. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	Keep it up! Sidatio (talk) 15:07, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi!! Thank you, and it's great to see you. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:27, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

copyright status of Google translate results

Hi,

I wanted to ask you about the whether text copied and pasted with some modifications from Google translates result's of a foreign-language website constituted copyvio. The article in question is Sochi Police and the history section of the article, which constitutes the bulk of the text, is clearly taken from the Google translate results of this official website] with some modifications. GabrielF (talk) 00:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Last I checked the jury was still out on whether or not machine translations could themselves be copyrighted (I myself think not, since copyright protects human creativity), but either way the original can be copyrighted...and is. The copyright owners of the original are the only ones who have the right to authorize and license translations. Using content that is translated and placed here is no different than using content that is copied directly from another website; minimal alterations to a translation are no different than close paraphrasing of an English source. :) We need verification of license, or the content would need to go. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:21, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

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DYK for Torture during the 2011–2012 Bahraini uprising

The DYK project (nominate) 16:02, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

This is because you helped me clean CV ;) Mohamed CJ ^(talk) 16:09, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

All I did was help you review it. :) But thanks for writing it and helping our readers learn more about it! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:18, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Re: Just Sayin'

Cool! That was part of the idea behind those lists in the first place: they seemed like good "maps" for filling in the blanks. (Not that I've been diligent about that...) -- Gyrofrog (talk) 16:02, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Surveying copyright contributions

Hi! You might recall we had a chat here about the possibility of surveying WP to understand the extent of copyright problems. I've spent some time working on possible semi-automatic methodologies, but the essential problem is that all plagiarism detectors assume that the copy you are providing is a one-off, unique document, whereas by its nature WP isn't. :) So a quantitative general survey is going to be tricky. In the meantime, I was curious, so I've been running a small sample look at a particular subject area, as it seems viable to do a quantitative study in a set field: I'm using Australian schools, as I could reasonably expect copyright violations to occur, and the sources are generally fairly limited so they're relativly easy to follow up. At this stage, having completed the first 300 articles, (the target should be about 1000), we're sitting at a very consistent average of about 20-25% containing copyright violations, with a majority of those having significant violations defined as a major portion of the article. That would be conservative, unfortunately, and to be honest I don't see that figure falling. Once I finish I'll go back and collect data on the text, to see if there are any patterns in the time it was added, types of users who added it, or content areas, but my first round is just to collect the initial data. I'm not sure what to do with this when I'm done, although we will have less copyvio on Wikipedia, so that's a plus, but the 20-25% figure is enough of a surprise that I thought you might be interested at an early stage. - Bilby (talk) 03:08, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

As an aside, I think the original discussion was focused on evaluating percentages of edits which contain copyrighted violations. My focus at the moment is on articles, though, rather than editors, and that is something which will be easier to survey. It, of course, makes no statement about percentage of edits. - Bilby (talk) 03:21, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Bilby. :) I would expect you to have a high hit rate in school articles; they're a frequent and recurring copyright issue at WP:CP, particularly in the lower grades, which seem to be heavily edited by children and teenagers. (Universities have issues, too, though - especially in countries that don't strongly emphasize plagiarism or copyright issues.) Also a high proportion for hits: television programs. Those are two of our most frequent repeat offenders. That said, I'm sorry to hear that the percentage is so high. :/ Are you flagging problems as you find them so we can mop them up?

I can certainly understand the challenges of evaluating general articles, knowing how long it can take me to evaluate a single article. :/ I'd be really interested, though, in finding out how high the rate of problems are in areas that aren't overrepresented at CP - like, say, medical articles. They come through occasionally, but not often. I don't guess there's any good way to do that, though? (That said, it does raise the concern that a single highly active editor can skew results in one field. For instance, had you done this to gastropods prior to the Graham Bould cleanup, imagine what our article rate would be!) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:24, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm handling the copyvio per a CCI as I go, rather than just flagging it - it is blatant enough to be handled easily, as blatant copyvio is my focus here, and I don't think the right approach on WP would be to identify a problem but not do anything to fix it. I'm also flagging the articles in a list to revisit later in case there's a need of further steps for cleanup, and to follow up with the contributors. My aim isn't to say "there's lots of copyvio" but identify the conditions under which it occurs and the steps needed to find it, so I need a solid sample, but I don't need it to remain. Plus I'd love to be able to say "there was a lot of copyvio, but there isn't now", because that would be cool.

I picked schools because they are easy enough to work with - you know where the material will come from (almost always the school's website) and you know it will occur frequently enough to give a good dataset. Although I had expected about 10% as a hit rate, not 20%+. I had considered television programs, and the other one which I find a lot of problems in are author's biographies, as there is a ready-made source of content on their websites. If I can design a decent methodology I will try more general topics, but the difficulty is that issue about old copyvio vs new ones - the old stuff is much harder to identify, so you need to know where to look in archives. That's ok if the references are good, but old articles are poorly referenced as well. Still, I'm hoping I can eventually identify key factors that will point to risk articles, at least, noting that this will take a long time to do, and that I'm using Grounded Theory, so you can never tell if it will work. :) - Bilby (talk) 13:02, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Just as a quick comment. I have enough data now to have a direction - while I think looking for old copyvio is somethihg that would be tricky to do in general, (once the website has been changed, a Google search won't help, and archives need a target to search), it should be fairly easy to develop a bot or external application that could check for old and new copyvio in a particular area of concern, such as schools, where we can resonably predict the types of sources, and which won't need any special permission from external sources. This semester is pretty hectic, but I'll see if I can make a shot at it. It will be too special-purpose to help a lot, but it might be nice to have a quick tool that can check articles within a particular sector. If you see something like this as being valuable, I might be able to throw a couple of students at this as one of their projects in the next semester, presuming I don't have the chance to get it working earlier. :) - Bilby (talk) 01:19, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I do tend to neglect the top of my talk page. :/ Sorry! It would be awesome to have a bot that can scan particularly problematic areas. I have no idea what Grounded Theory is, but I have a lot of confidence in you. :D If you think something like this (which sounds more mystical than mechanical to me) can be created and used to root out copyright issues, that sounds great to me! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:05, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

A question about copyright

If a report is leaked to the press by a whistle blower is it still copyrighted? I ask as the Hamoodur Rahman Commission of Inquiry Into the 1971 India-Pakistan War has been used as a source here[37] and a look at the report[38] finds it a little to close to call it paraphrasing in my opinion. Would it be best to remove or just rewrite? Darkness Shines (talk) 21:25, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. :) Yes, the copyright owner doesn't lose rights when a whistle blower leaks the document. If you can, it is always best to rewrite to address paraphrasing issues, particularly if it's only a little close. If you have time and inclination, that would be fantastic so that we can keep our information intact. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:40, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Will rewrite, that you. Darkness Shines (talk) 22:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

• Sorry to bother you again, I require some advice. Please bear in mind I am under an IBAN and can only provide diffs if you request them. Is it a copyright violation to copy and paste a large portion of this

  There is reliable evidence to show that during this period the miscreants indulged in large scale massacres and rape against pro-Pakistan elements, in the towns of Dacca, Narayanganj, Chittagong, Chandragona, Rungamati, Khulna, Dinajpur, Dhakargaoa, Kushtia, Ishuali, Noakhali, sylhet, Maulvi Bazaar, Rangpur, Saidpur, Jessore, Barisal, Mymensingh, Rajshal?, Pabna, Sirojgonj, Comilla, Brahman, Baria, Bogra, Naugaon, Santapur and several other smaller places.[39]

Into the article Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War Darkness Shines (talk) 12:17, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) First, an IBAN has nothing to do with copyright; I'm not even going to look into what your IBAN is to answer this question. Second, that quote is WP:WEASELly and does not have a WP:NPOV. "There is reliable evidence" accuses without actually providing said evidence - reliable or otherwise; that it appears in a printed source does provide some special sauce to make this source reliable. It happens that editors will use such quotes and say "it appeared in a reliable source; I'm not making the accusation but merely repeating an accusation someone else made". I highly recommend against that. "Miscreant" is a largely pejorative word; you could get around that by choosing a different one since it has to be paraphrased but still, it calls into question the neutrality of the source. Finally, not having read the article you are trying to put this in, I would ask this: whether you put it in "as is" and have it removed for copyright violation, or you paraphrase it and risk significant discussion and reverts over WP:NPOV, WP:RS, and WP:WEIGHT (among others), I wonder: does it really add anything to the article?  Frank  |  talk  12:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I have not put it in, I had in fact removed it. The source is a primary source which I have pointed out on the article talk page. And no, it adds nothing to the article. Darkness Shines (talk) 12:37, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Note, not all of the above quote is in the article, I cannot show what is in the article due to the IBAN.

Um, well, putting any creative content into any article without following the requirements of WP:NFC is a violation of WP:C, which is what a Wikipedia:Copyright violations is. :) So, if it's gone in verbatim from the source without quotation marks, then, yes, it's a violation of copyright policy. If it's not a lot of content, it might be reparable with quotation marks and WP:INTEXT attribution. If it is, it may require rewriting and should probably be removed until it is rewritten. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:10, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Flag copyright

Hi Moonriddengirl! I need a copyright expert's insight on a deletion discussion at Commons. It's a tough one, I'm not 100% confident in what I'm arguing, so it'd be a huge help if I could get an experienced user's insight. Note that I've also asked your colleagues Wizardman and MER-C, so if you're too busy to take a look, not to worry! Regards, Osiris (talk) 00:35, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. :) Done, although nothing definitive. My major suggestion is to ask at their village pump for copyright for more feedback from experienced Commons users. I think it's probably PD in the US, but am not at all sure about Australia given the legal document you found. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:54, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Aaah! I didn't know about this noticeboard! Will post something there shortly. Thank you very much for your input! :) Osiris (talk) 12:42, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Hans Engelmann

The copyright infringing section was replaced after I tagged it, although I found two sentences in the new version still too similar to the source. Were these enough for the section to be removed or was there more (maybe something from another source) that I didn't notice? Peter E. James (talk) 00:54, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah! It took me a minute to understand this one. There was nothing proposed in the temporary space (Talk:Hans Engelmann/Temp) and nothing said in the talk page to indicate there was a rewrite. Evidently the contributor did not follow the directions you left him at his talk page or on the template blanking the article, but rewrote it in situ. I'm afraid I didn't notice this. :/ Rewriting in situ can be particularly difficult as people tend to modify rather than write from scratch, which puts us at risk of derivative work issues, but I will take a look to see if the problems seem to have been addressed. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:59, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Some of it was salvageable; some of it was not, for that very reason. I have restored the content that seems to have been sufficiently rewritten from the source, except for the unsourced speculation about alcohol abuse having led to his death. Thanks for pointing this out. :) If you happen to see a contributor rewriting copyright-blanked content in the article space, please either redirect them to the temporary space they're supposed to use or make a note at the talk page. The former is much to be preferred, since they can be encouraged - in accordance with the directions - not to simply modify the content, but to write it from scratch. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:17, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Reverted vandalism

I reverted vandalism. Kindly watch to make certain this vandal does not persist. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.25.216.49 (talk) 07:53, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for notifying me. I have fixed the page for a time so that only registered, experienced Wikipedians are able to alter it. I think they would not do so without considering the reasons and how they apply to policies. I'll try to keep an eye on it; please let me know if you notice that the vandal returns. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:54, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much.

Saffron Bandit

This looks to me like a copy and paste copyright violation from the cited source. But I would rather you, or one of your esteemed colleagues, give it a second look. Thanks,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 15:35, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Derek. Good to see you. :) I agree completely, and I've applied the mop. Thanks much for finding the issue! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:18, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Good to talk again - thanks for acting promptly. Regards, Derek R Bullamore (talk) 16:22, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Template:Extra chronology 2 listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Extra chronology 2. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Extra chronology 2 redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Magioladitis (talk) 17:14, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Cavalia

Too many fair use images used here, dontcha think? 99.122.238.88 (talk) 20:46, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I think so. I've put a tag on the article and asked if anyone experienced in this area wants to help out at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 55#Non-free content overuse?. Notwithstanding my time pinch, I'd probably approach the uploader directly, but I think somebody who works with NF images could probably better explain point 3(a), including giving suggestions for how to determine how many non-free images is "too man". --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:30, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

The Irish Rover

This one has me stumped and I didn't even come across it doing copyright stuff, just normal browsing. This edit removed the lyrics as a copyright violation and that's where it gets interesting. It would appear that common consensus on the internet (including some almost reliable sources) is that the lyrics are from the 19th century, which would make them well and truly PD (although I suppose there may be some question as to whether they were "published"). However everyone also seems to suggest that the earliest references are from the 1940s. I suspect that this is a reference to the song although it's hard to know for sure. This (under Crofts) is undoubtedly a reference to it but means little for the lyrics if they existed before then. Given the number of covers of this song, including, as far as I can see, the description of the lyrics as traditional in some of those recording, I think that many performers also think the lyrics are PD. However I think this is an impossible case to prove so fear we may have to keep them deleted so thought I'd see if I'd missed something by asking you and also get your opinion. Dpmuk (talk) 05:48, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Well, if this is accurate, and I suspect it is, then the lyrics may well still be in copyright. Voceditenore (talk) 10:08, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, I think that makes a pretty strong case, Voceditenore. Good find! Keeping them deleted seems necessary, unless we find some contrary verification that they're PD, in accordance with WP:C "You must also in most cases verify that the material is compatibly licensed or public domain." --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:15, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd agree that at first glance that seems to somewhat solve the problem but... many sites / books etc seem to attribute it to Joseph Croft and I suspect that's who they are referring to. However it would appear that his version (per this link) was published in 1951 and there's much talk of it existing before that, for example many forums talk of it appearing in a book from the 1940s, although the best I can find is the dubious link above. I happen to think it's probably PD, and Joseph Croft just has copyright on an arrangement not the lyrics, and we're struggling to find anything because it wasn't written down for a long time. That said I brought it here to see if anyone had any helpful knowledge of this kind of situation, such as knowing a useful website, and as it appears we've got no further than I did so I agree it will have to stay removed unless a) we find prove of earlier publication or b) someone else tests this in the courts. Dpmuk (talk) 15:45, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

How to cleanup an old copyvio problem?

This is rather a minor problem, but I would like to know how to do it, if it can be done. In January I realized that some material in Melrose, Florida was a direct copy (from the cited source, which I realized was on-line only after I finally found the hard copy in the library). The copyvio was added three years ago. I removed the copyvio and deleted the series of edits that added it, but there have been a number of edits since the copyvio was added, and it still shows in the intermediate versions in the page history. Is there a way to remove the copyvio from all pages in the history without deleting valid edits? -- Donald Albury 13:43, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

In short no. I notice you've revdeled the edits where the text was introduced. You could if you desired revdel all versions up to the one where you removed the text and we often do so. This is compatible with our license as we only need to keep a list of contributors, not who contributed. In this instance I don't think it's worthwhile however as I suspect the text is unlikely to be re-introduced even without revdel and by revdeling we would lose who made some of the major changes afterwards from the history (we'd know who edited but not who did what). Given that knowing who introduced text is often helpful I think the benefits of not revdeling outweigh those of doing so. There is legal opinion that leaving copyright vios in the history is OK and I know there is a page on this somewhere but I couldn't find it the other day when I was looking for it - hopefully Moonriddengirl will be able to remind me where it is. Dpmuk (talk) 15:57, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Bottom of the copyright policy: here. :) Unless we can lose the revisions without losing much (the copyvio and some minor style changes, say), my own tendency is to rev delete where (a) chance of inadvertent or intentional restoration seems high, or (b) the content is really massive. Suffice to say that a combination of (a) and (b) will take me to great lengths. :) That the risks of (a) are substantial doesn't escape me; I once inadvertently restored a copyvio myself. Contributor A introduced some copied content; Contributor B introduced some copied content; Contributor C found and removed the copyvio from Contributor A; I found the copyvio from Contributor B and reverted to the last clean - which contained the copied content from Contributor A. Fortunately, this one was resolved fairly quickly. :P This is one of the reasons why I tend to not only use {{cclean}} at the article talk but often to use caps in my edit summaries: "copyright problem removed. PLEASE DO NOT RESTORE. See talk." I hope this will attract attention of anybody scanning edit histories, as I did. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:16, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh, wait. You're looking for a legal opinion, not a policy statement. Hmm. I'll have to think about that one. Not remembering off hand. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:17, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure I once found a much more in-depth description of why keeping copyvio in the history is OK than is available at m:Wikipedia and copyright issues. It had to do with it being an "archive" and I'm reasonably certain it was based on legal advice. Unfortunately I've completely forgotten where I found it! I do think the difficulty in finding policies, guidelines etc is one of the biggest failing of how wikipedia is currently run but that's a different issue! Dpmuk (talk) 22:30, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I'll try to make my edit summaries more forceful when I can't revdel all versions. -- Donald Albury 16:57, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Protestant missions in China 1807–1953

Hi --

I'd be willing to try to fix the problem at Protestant missions in China 1807–1953. It should be pretty simple if the only offending passages are the three you mention on the talk page. The section on "Missionary Activity, 1860-1900" should be revised in any case, since it puts way too much emphasis on Hudson Taylor. This is pretty straightforward.

But how can I tell whether there is bad material elsewhere? I can't get WikiTrust to work on the old versions.

Thanks for your help.

ch (talk) 20:50, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Your help would be most welcome! :) Sadly, they're not the only three issues; for instance, looking at the earliest edits, I immediately find hits on this and this. We have to assume that everything that was added by User:Phillip J needs to be rewritten from scratch, if it is to be retained. That would mean that everything that is in this version of the article needs to go. Anything added after that in this series of edits can stay, but only if we can make sure that it's original and didn't build off of anything in the original article. For instance, comparing the last version of the article edited by Phillip J with the version as it existed right before blanking, the lead seems to be okay (though it needs a more thorough read-through than I have time for at the moment), but the next section begins with copied content and may have other material that still recognizable mixed in it. In the next section, I can see at a glance that there is some derivative content; for instance "By the Treaty of Nanking (1842) they were force to grant Western nations five ports for residence and trade plus several other concessions, including Hong Kong to British rule, indemnity for opium destroyed, and British monitoring of tariff rates" has been altered to "By the Treaty of Nanking (1842), the British forced the Chinese to grant Western nations five ports for residence and trade, plus several other concessions, including Hong Kong to British rule, indemnity for opium destroyed, and British monitoring of tariff rates." The changes to this are minimal; it is still quite obviously copied from the book. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:07, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Lokenath Brahmachari!

I fully agree with you here. I was the first person to add a copyright violation tag in the article! Will you delete the copyvio template from the article? I'll write a portion in my own language! --Tito Dutta (Send me a message) 12:49, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

It would be great if you would write it in your own language. :) It's unusual to remove the {{copyvio}} tag early, in case the contributor can verify permission, but in this case I've made an exception. If he does verify permission, we can always bring it back or merge it into what you write.

Please be extra careful with your rewrite. :) When content starts as a copy, we have to take extra care that we don't wind up with a derivative work.

Thank you very much for locating the copyright issue to begin with! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:53, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for delay in reply! The whole article was full of spam and non sense entries! See this edit, they made Wikipedia a travel guide.. and many more!

Actually the article title was "Baba Lokenath Brahmachari" (it is similar too, Great Savior Jesus Christ), I moved the article to Lokenath Brahmachari. Still the word Brahmachari may be considered honorific, it means Celibate! But, removing Brahmachari from the title may be sensitive, so, I have not done it.

Yes, I'll be careful while editing. Thank you! --Tito Dutta (Send me a message) 13:13, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

		The Socratic Barnstar
		Thanks for your suggestions for Lokenath Brahmachari article! --Tito Dutta (Send me a message) 13:18, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh, thank you very much! But you're doing all the hard work. :D You found the problem and are fixing it; I only assisted you a little. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:35, 24 March 2012 (UTC)