WARNING!

edit

If anyone else finds their way onto this page, the following notes and comments are NOT FOR YOU. If you use them, act on them, or consider them it is at your own peril.

Search Talk Pages (including archives)

edit

To search any talk page, use the regular WP search blank (or my url bar shortcut) and enter:
[search terms] prefix:[base talk page name]
Examples:

  • transporterman prefix:User_talk:Collectonian
  • forum prefix:Wikipedia talk:User page
  • knoxville prefix:User_talk:TransporterMan

Is X an admin?

edit

Admin checker

About Me

edit

{{User toolbox|TransporterMan}} gives:

Misc

edit

Delete a user subpage: {{db-userreq}}

My scripts page

Some useful character entities:
~ = ~ [tilde]
# = # [number sign]
& = & [ampersand]
&lt; &gt; = < > [angle brackets]
&#91; &#93; = [ ] [square brackets]
&#123; &#125; = { } [curly brackets]
<nowiki>text</nowiki> can also be used instead of character entities to display HTML or WikiMarkup code or to prevent it from rendering.

edit

Wikimedia/pedia content must be completely free - nonprofit/educational license not enough if to be used freely. Anything that's not totally, utterly, unconditionally free must be used, if at all, under the non-free content policy and guideline.


From Image Use Policy (slightly different rules may apply to non-images, but this is a pretty good overview of the whole topic):

==Free licenses==
For a list of possible licenses which are considered "free enough" for Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Image copyright tags. Licenses which restrict the use of the media to non-profit or educational purposes only (i.e. noncommercial use only), or are given permission to only appear on Wikipedia, are not free enough for Wikipedia's usages or goals and will be deleted.[1]. Sources of free images can be found at Wikipedia:Free image resources. In short, Wikipedia media (with the exception of "fair use" media—see below) should be as "free" as Wikipedia's content—both to keep Wikipedia's own legal status secure as well as to allow for as much re-use of Wikipedia content as possible.
If a source does not declare a pre-existing free license, yet allows use of its content under terms commonly instituted by them, the source must explicitly declare that commercial use and modification is permitted. If it is not the case, it is to be assumed that it is not unless verification or permission from the copyright holder is obtained [TM:and that permission must be to make it completely free].
===Public domain===
Under United States copyright law, all images published before January 1, 1923 in the United States are now in the public domain, but this does not apply to images that were created prior to 1923 and published in 1923 or later. The year 1923 has special significance and this date will not roll forward before 2019.
Because Wikipedia pages, including non-English language pages, are currently hosted on a server in the United States, this law is particularly significant here. However, the interaction of Wikipedia, the GFDL, and international law is still under discussion.
While there are many places to acquire public domain photos at the public domain image resources, if you strongly suspect an image is a copyright infringement you should list it for deletion (see below). For example, an image that has no copyright status on its image description page and that you have seen it elsewhere under a copyright notice should be listed for deletion.
Also note that in the United States, reproductions of two-dimensional artwork which is in the public domain because of age do not generate a new copyright—for example, a straight-on photograph of the Mona Lisa would not be considered copyrighted (see Bridgeman v. Corel). Scans of images alone do not generate new copyrights—they merely inherit the copyright status of the image they are reproducing. This is not true of the copyright laws of some other countries, such as the United Kingdom.
A bit more about public domain from Wikimedia
===Fair use images===
Some usage of copyrighted materials without permission of the copyright holder can qualify as fair use in the United States (but not in most other jurisdictions). However, since Wikipedia aims to be a free-content encyclopedia, not every image that qualifies as fair-use may be appropriate. For details, or to ask questions about a specific instance, please see Wikipedia:Non-free content. Unauthorized use of copyrighted material under an invalid claim of fair use constitutes copyright infringement and is illegal.
Media which are mis-tagged as fair use or are a flagrant copyright violation can and will be deleted on sight. Frequent uploading of non-fair use non-free material can be justification for banning a Wikipedia user.
See also:

Linking to Pages Violating Copyright: Policy (the guideline is less helpful than the policy). The essential part is that linking to copyrighted material is fine and to be expected, but (emphasis added):

However, if you know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work. An example would be linking to a site hosting the lyrics of many popular songs without permission from their copyright holders. Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry [2]). Linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors.

The DMCA says "know" means actual knowledge or "the service provider is ... aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent". That's a pretty stiff test. Short of open and obvious copyright violation, I don't think this applies.

Footnotes How-to (see code)

edit

Placeholder[1] more text or (see code) can be on a single line

== Notes [or, more commonly, References] == (you insert this title)

{{reflist}} does the same thing as <references /> but in a smaller font:

Placeholder[1] more text or (see code) can be on a single line

== References ==

Note how making the footnotes appear cause them to reset and not reappear later.

Pre-formatted templates to use to format the footnotes (they go between <ref> and </ref>) can be obtained from general citation forms and specific sites (like Structurae, above).

Inapproriate Conduct Common to Wikipedia and WikiChat

edit

Incivility

  • Rudeness, insults, name-calling, gross profanity or indecent suggestions;
  • Racial, ethnic, sexual and religious slurs, or derogatory references to groups such as social classes or nationalities.
  • Belittling a user or a user's work.
  • Taunting or baiting.
  • Lying to mislead, including deliberately asserting false information.
  • Quoting another editor out of context to give the impression they hold views they do not hold, or to malign them.

Legal threats

  • Making any threat of legal action against any other user, or against the community, other than a report of copyright infringement or defamation made through the means provided for those claims (which does not include claims or threats made directly to other users).
  • Making any statement which can be reasonably understood or interpreted to be a legal threat.

Personal attacks

  • Insulting or disparaging a user, no matter how it is done.
  • Racial, sexual, homophobic, ageist, religious, political, ethnic, or other epithets (such as against people with disabilities) in reference to or toward any contributor, if any possibility exists whatsoever that the person to whom they are directed or any person viewing them will find them offensive, insulting, or disparaging or if used to offend, insult, or disparage.
  • Using someone's affiliations as an ad hominem means of dismissing or discrediting their views—regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream, save and except pointing out an editor's known, relevant conflict of interest and its relevance to the discussion at hand.
  • Accusations or speculations about impropriety, wrongdoing, bad faith, or other personal behavior that lack evidence.
  • Threats of violence.
  • Threats of vandalism to article, talk, user, user talk, or other pages.
  • Threats or actions which deliberately expose other Wikipedia editors to political, religious or other negative consequences by government, their employer or any others.
  • Other threats.
  • Linking to external attacks, harassment, or other material which would be unacceptable if placed on a page here.

Harassment

  • Singling out of one or more users, and joining discussions on pages or topics they may edit or debates where they contribute, in order to repeatedly confront or inhibit their work, with an apparent aim of creating irritation, annoyance, or distress to the user (wikihounding).
  • Posting or speculating about of any other user's personal information.
  • Placing warnings, accusations, annoying, or embarrassing material on another user's user page or user talk page.
  • Replacing any material on a user's user page or user talk page which has been removed by the user.
  • Engaging in harassment off-wiki or in the real world.

WikiBullying

  • Asserting ownership of all or part of a page (other than the user's own user page and talk page).
  • Issuing do-not-edit, do-not-remove, or do-not-delete orders, demands, or threats for all or part of a page.
  • Inventing or stating guidelines and branding them as policy without obtaining consensus.

Vandalism

  • There are too many forms of vandalism to list here. See the vandalism article.

Applicable to Wikipedia, but not to WikiChat:
Bots
Editing policy
Edit warring and 3RR
Ownership of articles
Sock puppetry
User accounts

Burden

edit

Based on inquiries with Blueboar, I'm now pretty confident that the process is:

  • Asserting editor has burden to provide a source. (The best practice is to find a source if none is provided, but the WP:BURDEN is on the asserter if someone objects to the absence of the source).
  • If a source is provided, but another editor objects to the reliability of the source then there is no burden, it's a matter to be worked out by discussion and consensus. (It is also best practice, not an obligation, to say why you are objecting, though I can't believe that in the real editing world you'd ever see an objection to reliability without some statement of justification.)
  • Once the objection has been made, then the asserting editor has the obligation to defend the reliability of the source or to replace it with a better one, but at this point the decision of who wins becomes a matter for consensus.

When an objection is made to a paper, non–online source, or an online pay–only source, WP:SOURCEACCESS applies and note 2 of Burden says that "When there is dispute about whether a piece of text is fully supported by a given source, direct quotes and other relevant details from the source should be provided to other editors as a courtesy." That also makes that a best practice, not a requirement, and [I would add] there are obvious limits imposed by copyright considerations.

Finally, in light of the answer at the bottom of this page, also by Blueboar, WP:REDFLAG only applies to truly extraordinary claims.

Map UK coordinate system

edit

{{gbmapping|ST679803}} = grid reference ST679803
clicking on the link will take you to GeoHack with conversions at top

Prose Attribution history

edit

See the following discussions:

  1. Wikipedia:Attribution/FAQ#When_should_I_use_prose_attributions.3F — a FAQ for a failed policy proposal that died in April, 2007, but which was (the policy proposal, not the FAQ) retained per Jimbo as a "canonical summary" for the reasons stated here; the status of the FAQ is less certain: it was marked as {{historical}} until 17 Sept 2009 when it was, without discussion, changed to {{essay}}
  2. Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_21#Prose_attributions
  3. Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_22#Phrasal_attribution
  4. Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_33#Is_detailed_attribution_good_or_bad_practice.3F
  5. Only reference to it I've found so far in policy is Wikipedia:V#cite_note-3 about blogs, mentioned in #3, above.