User talk:Moonriddengirl/Archive 41

Archive 35 Archive 39 Archive 40 Archive 41 Archive 42 Archive 43 Archive 45

Moving

Hey MRG. Advice please. I just moved "Re-modeled" to "Remodeled (TV series)" as the title has changed. There is a page called "Remodeled" but it redirects somewhere else. Should I add a note at the top of the page renovation page "For the TV series, click here". Or since the page is a redirect, could you move the tv series to "Remodeleed" on it's own. Thanks. Jayy008 (talk) 17:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know which page people are more likely to look for. For now, I've added a hatnote at Renovation. If the tv series becomes a popular search item (right now, it doesn't have the page views to support that), we might want to replace the redirect and instead hat it to guide people to the article on renovation. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:12, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
Ah, right. Thanks. :) Jayy008 (talk) 17:13, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Any other way to check this?

I think it's quite possible that this edit [1] and others may be copyvio, but Google doesn't show up any evidence. Are there any useful tools around that might help? It's probably good faith if it is.

Which reminds me. How much of a translation can we use? I'm thinking of Jehoash Inscription - is that ok?

Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 20:28, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid we don't have any tools to speak of at the moment for checking. :/ I just do spot-checks in Google, Google books and sometimes other search engines, if it's really hinky.
I'm in the phone, so i'll look at the particular case you're talking about as soon as I can get done. :) But the general rule of thumb is that if it's too much to use if it weren't a translation, it's too much to use if it is. The same general fair use analyses applies. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:07, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
If it's the entire thing, as it looks like it is, then, yes, we can't use it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:28, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
Thannks, that's what I thought would be the case. And my original concern turns out to be real, see Talk:Aurangzeb#Copyvio Dougweller (talk) 06:48, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
Ah, good find, Doug. You have a good eye. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:07, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Simone Torres (history · last edit)

You have forgotten that other sections have copied from the URL. Maybe I should have blocked the headings rather than leave "Lifeline" remaining. Haven't you seen the </div> under one of the sections? They should have been removed as well as other revisions. --Gh87 (talk) 20:52, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks; I thought I'd gotten the section that was the problem. You do know that you can remove this material yourself, right? I would not do a rev deletion for content that minimal, and in articles where it is required, you can use the rev deletion template ({{copyvio-revdel}}) I pointed out before at the CP page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:55, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Image to be double checked please

Hi, quick favor please I have uploaded an image from a book. I am fairly certain it is free of copywrite. Would you please quickly check it will be ok as is.

 
Exploded view of the carapace of Emys orbicularis


Small thumb of it above (I hope) should get you to it. Its from an 1819 book so I felt it meets the Author (Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus) died more than 100 years ago (died in 1827) also the US copywrite law ie it predates 1924. Sorry if I seem pedantic here, last time I used an historical image someone tried to delete it, figured I would get it over with immediately. Cheers, Faendalimas talk 10:23, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

You should be perfectly fine with that. :) It fits solidly into the public domain. --11:03, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


Thanks for this, cheers, Faendalimas talk 11:32, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Cumulative copyvio

Hello MRG, I wonder if you can help me with the following: if there is a copyrighted book that includes (say a couple of hundred) articles on a particular subject, and we have a similar set of articles here at WP, if we fairly consistently use material from the book in each of our articles, is there a cumulative effect w.r.t. copyright violation? We may have paraphrased the info, but what if we've done so 200 times? I'd be interested to know from a general perspective and also a specific case where the articles are about songs, and the information used from the book is the performance credits (who sang/played what) as determined by the book's author (and which can't be paraphrased much). Thanks. Uniplex (talk) 13:05, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

That falls into the category of "good question", but unfortunately it's an answer we wouldn't know unless it was ever tested in court. :) I explored this one with our then-attorney Mike Godwin some time ago. As I recall, Mike's opinion at the time was that a court might lean towards evaluating each article as an independent entity; he did not think we needed to worry extensively about cumulative taking. I have not checked with current counsel, but I suspect after working with them on other issues that they would generally advise that we just try to avoid the issue by promptly addressing any problems we find. :) In terms of personal liability, it's a different issue. I can't offer legal advice, obviously, and I am not a lawyer, but in terms of determining my own "fair use" and personal liability, I would prepare for it to be cumulative, just in case.
In terms of performance credits, if these are fact and not opinion, then you can use those as freely as you like on Wikipedia, as US law doesn't care how much effort goes into discovering facts. Facts are still not copyrightable. The danger would be in if the author is speculating--"sounds like Soandso on bass". That's not fact; that's guessing. And it is copyrightable. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:07, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
Tread with care then! Thanks. Uniplex (talk) 20:54, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Interesting question. I have now, similar topic. Assuming we were to have individual articles on all songs listed by Rolling Stone in The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, with the list itself limited to the top whatever percentile, and each individual article had the song's placement on the aforementioned list, would that constitute a copyvio as the list could be recreated from information available on Wikipedia (and thus compiled by someone with too much time on their hands the will to do so)? Sorry if this is poorly phrased; it's near midnight here. Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:43, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Military history Project request

Hi, Monnriddengirl. Its been a while since we last talked. Since you are formost authority I can think of on matters on or relating to copyright on Wikipedia I'm here to inquire if I might be able to get you to volunteer for a Military history Project assistance program we've been working on.

Since my retirement from the coordinators circle at Milhist I've been trying to work a little on shoring up our academy, a project with vast potential but little use at the moment since its missing a good deal of information. In a review of the academy's lessons and how to guides I find that we have only one article addressing plagiarism properly, and nothing addressing copyright infringement. In an attempt to cover this area, I'm wondering if you would be willing to write two essays for us on the matter of Copyright.

In the first instance, we would benefit from an academy lesson aimed at an audience of new editors (the academy is being built as a help and how to guide with the newest of the new in mind, but it is also serving as a repository for help and how to for veterans. In this case, I think the newest of the new are likely going to be the ones who need to have copyright explained to them, not the vets, hence the comment). Ideally it should be simple enough that the new editors can grasp what is being said without a working knowledge of wiki lingo, but informative enough that they know what to do to avoid getting docked for copyright violations, or if they have gotten docked, how to properly handle the situation.

In the latter case, a walk through for the coordinators (something similar to this one used for closing our A-class reviews) detailing specific sequence of events to be taken in the event that we locate suspected or confirmed copyright pages would be of great use to us. In this latter case, since coordinators are mostly vets, you should be able to make the page detailed so we can make sure that any instance of copyright infringement is tagged, filed, and properly reported to the applicable pages.

If you are unable to do this do not worry too much about it, sooner or later someone will get around to it, but if are willing to put something together for us then we would happy to put it up for our members in the academy. If you would like more information about this you can drop me or The ed17 (talk · contribs) a line (I'm naming ed here, but since I have not informed he about this request he will need to read it first before he can answer :), and of course you are welcome to read through what we already have in the academy to get a better idea of what we trying to get out of our member's op-ed, help, and how to guides. We are also open to suggestions for those things me are missing in our academy to help get it up and running. TomStar81 (Talk) 12:51, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, TomStar81. :) Sure, I can help with that. While I'm massively time-pinched at the moment, this shouldn't be too difficult, since we have some existing documents that I can modify for this purpose. If you want to create a space for me to work and give me a link, I'll be happy to start populating both. (Talk page stalkers welcome to pitch in. :)) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:43, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. Lets put the newbie information on this page here, and we can put the veteran information on this page here. When you start typing save the pages with the {{WPMILHIST Academy}} and {{construction}} templates so we know that you are working on the pages and that they are for us. TSP'ers, if you read this, you are welcome to help with the process, but take note of the following:
  • 1) Material aimed for the introductory crowd needs to be kept as simple as possible, so avoid getting too technical in contributing to the former page. Remember, some of these guys are going to be fresh out of is anon contributing, so (theoretically) the easier it is for them to understand what we are saying the faster their copyvio violation(s) should stop.
  • 2) For the latter page, the process needs to be kept in chronological order, (beginning, middle, end) otherwise our veteran editors/coordinators/administrators are going to end up confused, and we all know that confusions results in very interesting screw-ups. If you need an example of how to work on a page implementing these prerequisite, you can look at this page which serves as a walk through for closing ACRs and lays out the steps to be taken (even the obvious ones) ever step of the way. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:22, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I've started on the beginners guide and will plug away at it, though I'm off to work now. Structure, etc., is very likely going to evolve as it goes, and I realize it may need simplification later. But it's a beginning. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:12, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
That is fine, don't worry too much about it. Like you said, you have to start somewhere, and occasionally starting things off in a disorganized and chaotic fashion is the best way to achieve both organized structure and order. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:25, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Re: SS Rohilla

Hello I am an amateur when it come to Wikipedia and though that I would add to the website, but have found my first two attempts block in relation to copyright issues.

I understand how easy it may be for one to infringe such laws but feel my two attempts do not fall into such a category. As an author I feel quite strongly about the wreck of the SS Rohilla and believe wholeheartedly that I am in a position to be able to add content here.

I am at a loss as to why my attempts here have been thwarted. On submitting the Mary K Roberts article I did so knowing that I have a professional ability to be able to submit such material and could authenticate my article with contact from the Mary K Roberts should the need arise. You might therefore appreciate why I am somewhat confused as to any reference to copyright breaches on subject matter I have written.

The subject matter surrounding content previously online at http://www.eskside.co.uk/ss_rohilla/rohilla_tragedy.htm, is correct as the website in question is mine. I did not think there would be any conflict as the content is obviously mine to submit. My recent Rohilla endeavours has been working as a BBC consultant regarding the SS Rohilla and as they have no objections to my providing content I fail to see why it is a problem iwth Wikipedia.

I would welcome your comments as to what I have done wrong and how one goes about resolving things so that I do not suffer a premature membership here.

Kind regards


Mr. C. Brittain If you have much, give of your wealth; if you have little, give of your heart. 13:11, 7 November 2011 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Whitbycolin (talkcontribs)

I hope, Moon, you don't mind if I field this one as a talk page stalker; you said you were very busy recently.
You know you are who you say you are but we have no assurance. Assuming you are, imagine the scenario where someone who was not you, someone of unknown provenance, turns up on Wikipedia and claims to own your copyright just as you are doing right now, when they in fact do not. It may sound far-fetched but it actually happens with regularity. So a first issue is that for the copyright owner's protection—your protection—any authority to compromise copyright in material needs to be done in a manner where the owner verifies that they have the authority to do so. I hope it's clear that your assertion of being the copyright owner is insufficient.

That's really just a side issue though. What you need to understand is that Wikipedia's text content, outside of certain exceptions, is copyrighted but licensed for reuse by our reader under two specific free copyright licenses (this is sometimes called copyleft). Your website states at the bottom that the content is copyrighted and it would be assumed to be so even if there was no notice. We could not even use your content with your verified permission for our use if you are retaining non-free copyright. We can only use your content if you freely license it under free copyright licenses compatible with our licenses, after you do so in a verifiable manner. There are essentially two ways to do this: by emailing the foundation through an email address associated with the domain name of the webpage, stating that you're freely licensing the content, or by posting the free copyright licenses on the website in place of the current copyright notice. For specific details on what to do, see Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:36, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I <3 talk page stalkers. :) Thank you, Fuhghettaboutit. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:59, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
You ice cream cone talk page stalkers? Don't mind if I do.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:11, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The second pair of eyes

I might be getting myself into more trouble here, but would you please take a closer look at recent history of Murzynek Bambo and Murzyn especially in light of the two blanket reverts that followed my own revisions enforcing compliance with our policy guidelines.(1st article) (2nd article). Lack of awareness of what constitutes a violation and what does not in Wikipedia, is often accompanied by further escalation of violence driven by vengeance, so I myself will not touch these articles with a ten foot pole. You're an expert in copyright law so please take it from there. -- A. Kupicki (talk) 15:05, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this problem to my attention. Considering that one of the quotes was almost 10% of the source and the other over 50% (!), I think that your concerns are well-founded. I have addressed both articles, by truncating one source and removing the other, leaving notes of explanation at both talk pages.
If I might make one suggestion, it is probably better to link in your edit summary to the policy/guideline WP:NFC (so far as I know, the only page that contains both on Wikipedia :)) or to the page Wikipedia:Copypaste. People don't always understand the issue, and clearly identifying it as a copyright concern can make a difference in how people respond. WP:QUOTEFARM is taken from a user essay and has no real force on Wikipedia, while WP:C is a pretty hard-core policy. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:59, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 7 November2011

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · EdwardsBot (talk) 12:47, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Krieger Schechter Day School

Hi Moon. I caught this page while patrolling new pages and found that it was a copyright violation. The content has been recreated and as far as I can tell, it's the same except for a {{Text release}} template being placed on the talk page. I've never run into this template before but it seems legitimate, especially since I see that you've worked on it. If I'm understanding correctly, a webpage giving WP permission is supposed to be archived in some way and linked in the template. The page linked doesn't seem to show any signs of permission; it's just an archive of the website's front page which makes no note of permissions of any sort. Has OTRS received anything?

My gut tells me that the person posting this information works for the school and is having trouble giving permission even though the text may still not be usable for advert/POV reasons. I just want to give them the benefit of the doubt. OlYeller21Talktome 18:03, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Uh oh! Try to fix a problem, create a new one. :/ I need to fix that pronto! (Off to do so; will return) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:22, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
Does this look better? [2]; [3] I see you've explained to the contributor; I added a bit more and have blanked the article pending verification. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:34, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
Looks good to me! OlYeller21Talktome 21:56, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Murzyn and Murzynek Bambo - inaccurate stats

  • Hi, I think you didn't scroll down on the Piekot source used in Murzynek Bambo - it has a break in it. The quote is actually 1175 out of 4120 characters, 29%. If you choose words, it's 187 out of 627 - a fraction under 30%. You may still think that's too much, but I'd just like to be accurate - it's not "over 50%" as you said on the talk page. More importantly perhaps, the Pirog quote is 1229 out of 18745 characters, 6.6%. Not 'nearly 10%'. If you choose words, it's 181 out of 2681 - 7.2%. Higher, but still - closer to 5% than 10%.
Perhaps more importantly though, no one in the AFD on Murzyn accused that article (with the same Pirog quote) of copyright infringement. The debate didn't even touch upon it. It can therefore be assumed that consensus was that this was a non-issue. Since fair use is in the eye of the beholder, perhaps you are being slightly overzealous?
Also, in my view, the content of the quotes justifies their use, and this is a scholarly article and not for profit. We can't reproduce the original poem, so Pirog's quote's description of the narrative ("Unfortunately Bambo cannot go to school with us" mirrors the poem's last line) is very important. Finally, the original material is likely to benefit from any link to this WP page (it'll receive more hits, not less), so it won't suffer from it. Shouldn't that lead us to a more lenient view of its use? Thanks Malick78 (talk) 20:50, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
Hey, sorry to but in here but I saw some issues that I can address as Moonriddengirl has been offline for hours. First off, that no one discussed a copyright issue in the AfD doesn't imply anything about the involved users' feeling regarding a copyright violation. Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. Secondly, WP:FAIRUSE covers that fair use doesn't mean free which is what Wikipedia strives to be. This is covered specifically in Wikipedia:Fair_use#Unacceptable_use when it gives, "Excessively long copyrighted excerpts" as an "example where non-free content may not be used". For instance, the article Tropic Thunder can't have 53 minutes (50%) of the movie as a playable clip in the article. OlYeller21Talktome 21:08, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Former user 9172: A new chapter

Hi MRG. First we had Former user 9172 (talk · contribs) then Hellenic Author (talk · contribs). Now the franchise is expanding to copyvio images with Remote Assistant (talk · contribs) performing similar, but more sophisticated edits, with the added twist that this time they are also adding what seems to be copyvio images which they uploaded via their account to Commons. You may want to take a look if/when you have the time. Take care. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 01:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your thorough response. Take care. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 01:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. :/ Thanks for recognizing him. I've tagged the images at Commons and will try to check back to make sure that either license is verified or the images removed. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:50, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
Don't mention it MRG and anyway you did most of the hard work. I have to thank you for your kindness and your quality work. All the best. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 01:59, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Permissions

Hi - email has just gone from the CEO to the permissions email address - thank you so much for your advice! AnOpenMedium (talk) 17:30, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

AN discussion

I have started a discussion about Richard Arthur Norton's edits at WP:AN#Richard Arthur Norton copyright violations. Fram (talk) 08:29, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for letting me know. I have shared some thoughts based on my experiences there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:45, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


I am not sure this guy is being incentivized to help. Can you negotiate with him or do you too lack sufficient faith? Kittybrewster 02:31, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
Oi. This is a hard question. :/ I apologize in advance for my TL:DR answer. :)
Richard has done some stellar work for Wikipedia; I've told him so. Particularly in his gift for finding images, he can be quite an asset to the project. It would be a shame to lose him.
But he really needs to stop working in defiance of our copyright policies and in hostility to those who raise questions about them. This has been an ongoing problem with him. If you look at the history of his talk page, he has been challenged on copyright matters (text and images) since before I ever registered. Some of the complaint seems valid; sometimes it is simply poor documentation practices on Richard's part; sometimes the other party has misunderstood our policies or the law that governs us. Maybe he is just beyond collegial conversation on the topic now, or maybe he started off that way, but for whatever reason I have had tremendous difficulty working with him. He has always seemed hostile to me on those few occasions when he has spoken and, as with the incident when he accused me of tagging his personal image for deletion, has given me cause to wonder if he really distinguishes me between others who have voiced concerns about his work. (Given his response to Beeblebrox here, I do have to wonder if he conflates others into a kind of generic "them".) Finding editors to work CCI is never easy; this is why we have the backlog we do. Richard made things very difficult for one of the few brave souls who ventured into the enormous task of evaluating his images, as with the completely unfair ANI accusation he lodged against this poor helpful fellow. He seems to perceive any and all efforts to clean up copyright questions as a fight. He may quietly address issues raised, but has never shown a willingness to proactively address them and (for whatever reason) has not stopped creating new issues, and seems resistant to entering into cordial conversation to resolve questions.
I can't cajole Richard into negotiation. I've tried, back when the image CCI launched. I don't want Wikipedia to lose him, but I don't think I can do anything if he does not come to the table with an openness that he has thus far completely lacked. I would not really have time at this point to mentor him even if he were completely open, but I could certainly lay down some recommended practices for him and some ways that he could ease the burden on the community of addressing the CCI. I don't lack faith in Richard's ability to help or modify his practices, but I do lack faith in my ability to reach him. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:11, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

1911 Encyclopedia Britannia

Howdy-doody. I've just left a note at User_talk:Dhartung#1911 Encyclopedia Britannia regarding attribution using the {{1911}} template for the PD version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I am hitting this problem on several articles, due to a common and (arguably) somewhat blasé usage of the template. The documentation itself says that without specifying the article being used as a source then it is pretty pointless, although of course it does at least satisfy the attribution requirements at some vague level.

So, to my query. In all cases where I am coming across the issue, I am massively (and usually totally) rewriting the article ... and I am not using that pile of tat from 1911. If I have taken reasonable steps to locate the precise EB source without success, then can the template be removed in this situation? My concern is that although the articles are rewritten it may still be the case that at some point in the past the attribution was valid & therefore the template needs to remain, despite not a single pair of substantive words being the same.

While assuming good faith, it is theoretically not beyond the bounds of possibility that the template may in some cases have been deliberately misused in order to obfuscate or even totally mis-state the origin. Stranger things have happened! - Sitush (talk) 08:55, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Good morning. (Well, it is here. :D) As you say, the template does satisfy attribution requirements at some vague level. Those requirements are not legal, but social, but still exist. They go away, though, once the content is out of the article. Here's what I might do: find the point when the template was placed in the article and compare that url to the current url of the article. Duplication detector might help you. If there's nothing left, the template has no purpose. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:08, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
It is morning here, too, but I am not sure that it is a good one! Thanks for the advice. I'll run the dupe detector - I am fairly confident that there is nothing there in this specific instance but it will be handy for other articles. The big issue that you have cleared up is that once the live article no longer contains anything from EB then the template can indeed be removed. I was concerned because of all the palaver surrounding attribution and article history. So, at least in one respect, my morning is now looking up :) Sitush (talk) 11:27, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
Well, the situation may be different when the content is under copyright. I think it would be okay then, too, so long as the source is fully recorded in the history, but that would be one I'd probably run past our lawyers to see. But with a PD source, no. If the content is gone, the template can be, too. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:48, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

IEP needs some input

Hi MRG! Could you comment here at the IEP talk page? There seems to be a lot of confusion about the CCI. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 22:22, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Commented. :) (I'm glad Bilby is on board with the cleanup!) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! :) I'm glad he's on board too. He still seems a little perplexed about why we need dual processes, but I'm absolutely convinced that it's necessary for a CCI to mop up afterwards. Incidentally, the "party line" from the WMF/IEP that all these US OAs valiantly volunteered to step into the breech and are raring to go isn't quite what it's made out to be. See this exchange, for example. Judging from this, I suspect quite a few others have had the same sentiments. As my mother-in-law used to say "Che figura!". Best, Voceditenore (talk) 22:38, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) Just popping in to offer my agreement. I have to get back to some other pressing WP stuff, but I'm still watching all the USEP and IEP pages. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:52, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

CCI

I won't be making any comments on the IEP CCI or helping on it, because I must get back to some other pressing development projects - mainly NPP tools - which I hope due to the IEP issues will now be speedier along with a replacement for CorenBot. However, when I see CCI such as this one, it greatly distresses me to think of the 100s of hours the editor has invested in Wikipedia in good faith, but in total oblivion of our policies and Western copyright regulations. I think it clearly demonstrates that we have failed in our mission to provide the most basic editing rules and guidelines in a clear form to new users from other culture and language regions. I hope that the IEP issue will not only accelerate the development of Zoom, but also that of Article Creation Flow. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:18, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. They're are heartbreaking. Most of the editors I encounter who wind up at CCI were very likely editing in good faith without any awareness of the difficulties they were creating. However, this isn't a problem limited to editors from other culture and language regions. It's widespread. The first CCI I ever officially did was for an Australian, as I recall. The first unofficial one, a man from Florida. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:10, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
Yep. I'm an American and culturally pretty darned Western, but even I resent the assumption that this is a Global South vs. Westerners culture gap thing. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Image copyright query

Hi Moonriddengirl,

I've recently encountered this image at Dusty the Klepto Kitty. I don't know the image policy well enough to be sure if this constitutes a copyright violation or not; the presence of a watermark suggests it does, but it was used in an advertisement so may be okay under US law... Rather than tag it unnecessarily, I thought I'd ask for a wiser pair of eyes to take a look (that's you, btw). Can you check it when you have a moment, please? If you could let me know your thoughts on my talkpage, I'd appreciate it; I don't know a great deal about the complexities of image copyright and would like to learn more. Cheers, Yunshui  12:41, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Use in advertisements doesn't make it okay. :) The image is appropriately loaded as "non free", but it doesn't have an explanation of why it fits our non-free content guidelines. If we were to retain it, somebody would need to put up a good explanation of why it does. We seldom accept non-free images of living human celebrities on the basis that a new one could be obtained that is free; I imagine the same might apply to cats. :) I'd be likely to challenge the fair use of one, but I see that it's now been placed at WP:FFD, where I expect it'll be dealt with in short order. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Violation articles

Here's a little blast from the past for you. I've finally got round to weeding out the last outstanding violations in the sports results articles from the Darius Dhlomo case. I've removed the offending text and left a template warning on the talk page, but I'm not sure if you want to do any history blanking too. The relevant articles can be found in my contributions from 18:26 to 19:41 from today's edits (10 November 2011). I expect these to be pretty much the fial ones that will be found in my general topic area. I hope you're doing well! SFB 20:59, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Yay! Thank you very much for not giving up on this. :) I'll look to see what rev deletion is needed tomorrow. I'd like to do it tonight, but I'm completely wiped out. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:04, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
Done. Again, I thank you very much. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:25, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Character encoding

Hi Moonriddengirl. In the grand scheme of things, this is pretty unimportant, but I did notice that the CCI being currently discussed at WP:AN seems to not handle extended unicode characters properly (e.g. "Johan Makeléer" instead of "Johan Makeléer"). What is it that generates that list? Some sort of script or bot? Perhaps I can help fix it. 28bytes (talk) 23:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

If you can, that would be great. That kind of thing is well beyond me. :D User:Dcoetzee created that tool for us, and I know he believes in sharing source code. It's located here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:01, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, I will follow up with Dcoetzee. 28bytes (talk) 02:05, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
I investigated this. The names appear correctly in the HTML view and in the wikitext view for me. I'm guessing something went wrong between the download and the pasting of the text on the wiki - maybe it was opened in a text editor that doesn't render UTF8 text correctly? It seems to show up correctly in Notepad. It would help if I could get the exact query parameters used by User:MER-C to make the on-wiki listing, as well as what tools they used to put it on-wiki. Dcoetzee 02:57, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
Historically, I've been using Wordpad and Crimson Editor (the latter refusing to detect UTF-8 and the former... bleh). I've changed to Notepad++. I occasionally post CCIs from my Linux partition, but dealing with the \r\n is much trickier than you'd expect in gedit. MER-C 10:23, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
Okay, hopefully that'll fix the problem. I might provide separate download options with different line endings if that would be helpful (the tool dos2unix could also help here). I thought of having it post the results on wiki directly with a bot account, but is this feasible in your opinion? Dcoetzee 05:08, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
I think it's just a gedit bug. I'll bump my Fedora install to 16 after exams and see what happens. MER-C 04:08, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
Anything's possible, but an oldish gedit should work ok. Possibly it autodetected the file encoding and guessed incorrectly (I know very little about gedit). I see that when using File, Open there is a "Character Coding" option which can be set to utf-8, and command line option "--encoding=utf-8". Johnuniq (talk) 06:36, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Dominican Tea

I wonder if you could help by looking at Template:Did you know nominations/Dominica tea culture and suggesting what to do. I think this is a well-meaning new editor. I also think you are much more tactful than I am. Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 02:21, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. :) I've left a note at the user's talk page. I'm past my due date in terms of bedtime, though, so I don't really trust myself to evaluate the extensiveness of the issues in the article right now. If they are not extensive enough to require blanking, the best approach might be to remove any blatantly copied passages and to put {{Close paraphrase}} at the top of the article. If they are extensive enough to require blanking, that's probably the best approach pending a rewrite. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:52, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

CIL & Le plus grand Belge

Hi, looking at the comments raised during Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Le plus grand Belge I do not think that the advice from WMF legal is being engaged with in a meaningful way. There would be ways of changing the format of the list that is likely to make the concern irrelevant (such as re-sorting alphabetically or limiting how many names are used from the original list) or going back to legal with a community request for a more detailed clarification for polls, if we can define what our understanding of a poll is considering the huge variety in sample size, criteria, analysis etc. I am considering going the {{copyvio}} route for this particular list as it is not particularly key or notable (esp. being single sourced from a website that is not available), do you have any views on a better way to proceed that may generate more light than heat? Thanks -- (talk) 06:25, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

If we could get a meaningful RFC going, perhaps we could finally address the confusion and adopt a guideline. Going one article at a time is probably not the best way, since there will continue to be variance in how the matter is handled. I will ping our attorney with a question for clarification on the position on polls, given the variables you mention. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:05, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyright on Wikipedia

Thank you so much for giving me some more details on the paraphrasing problem. I also have a question about copying lists/tables, I posted a question about that at the copyright forum: [4] If you have any ideas about how to assess whether or not copying a table, list, chart etc. constitutes possible copyright violation, please let me know. I find the lists/tables/charts issue a bit befuddling. I haven't been able to track down a source as of yet that explains it to my satisfaction, but will continue looking into it. OttawaAC (talk) 15:53, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model, Cycle 7

Can you have a look at the copyright of this, I have to go out now but suspect may be more ? Mtking (edits) 21:41, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Argh. I will, but I won't be able to do it until later. I'm completely wiped out, I'm afraid! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
I am absolutely delighted to say that this time they copied from us. :) Thanks so much for bringing it up. I'm always happy to clear our good name. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:50, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for confirming that. Going back to America's Next Top Model, Cycle 16, can you confirm that the postings of Facebook user "America's Next Top Model Cycle 16" (see here) such as this one are also copies of the WP page and not the other way round. Mtking (edits) 03:08, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
Confirm? No, particularly because I'm not that familiar with Facebook. However, I have been taking them at their word that the page was updated about six months ago. As per Talk:America's Next Top Model, Cycle 16/Attribution, for instance, the content on episode 3, "Lori Goldstein" was placed on Wikipedia on 10 March. And this suggests they added content (all of it? some of it? Pictures only?) on May 14, which would support that six months claim. Is that an official Facebook channel? If so, it may bear further investigation. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:26, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
Like you I am not an expert, however it does look like it is an official page, given the uploads of pictures from the series.
On an septate, but related note can you have a look at America's Next Top Model, Cycle 16‎‎ the call out list has been the subject of editing, it is not possible to verify which version is correct without reliable sources, how ever the other editors at the page, think it is ok to forgo them. I have requested page protection, but can you have a look. Mtking (edits) 22:59, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

They may be able to cite the episodes themselves; per WP:PRIMARY, this should be okay: "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source." If it's a simple matter of describing what happened, without interpretation, it should be okay. :) I'll look more deeply into the Facebook page. I sincerely hope they aren't official. :/ It'll probably be tomorrow before I get a chance, though. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:25, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

That should work, however in this case with editors making changes and the programs no longer on-line (or accessible via CW website) it makes it nearly impossible to distinguish edits trying to correct mistakes with edits attempting to mislead. As for the face book site, bit more digging would seem to indicate it is NOT official - that would be www.facebook.com/ANTM. Mtking (edits) 02:35, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

An OTRS image

The OTRS information looks wrong to me, or maybe just badly formatted for File:SamAntpenseparation.png having only been edited by the uploader. I know you are busy but can you check when you get a chance. Thanks ww2censor (talk) 16:33, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, I don't have the best eye, but I think that image is probably derivative of File:LateTriassicGlobal.jpg, which is one of several cleared through OTRS. I think he probably just copied over the description without indicating his own modifications. That should be corrected, if so. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyright and sources at scribd.com

I keep coming across citations such as "Original text of "Ramanan"". scribd.com. Retrieved 2011-11-13..

Of course, we link to GBooks, to JSTOR etc but we do so in the belief that those organisations have sorted out any copyright issues. I am not sure that scrib.com oversees the upload process in any meaningful manner and, as such, we are potentially linking to off-wiki copyvio'd sources. Is this acceptable? My gut feeling is that it is not. - Sitush (talk) 17:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I have now been advised that scribd is not RS, period. That's the easy solution. ;) - Sitush (talk) 17:58, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
LOL! Yup. :) And I agree with you that Scribd has major copyright issues! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:58, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
I am not particularly au fait with the filtering and blacklisting systems, but is there no way to "block on sight" any future additions? I guess that there may be a complication because there is an article about the scribd site itself. - Sitush (talk) 01:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

A request...

Hello Moonriddengirl, sorry to ask this here, could you please delete my user page, thank you.   ■ MMXX  talk  01:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Certainly. :) It's done. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:07, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks a lot.   ■ MMXX  talk  01:08, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Email

One heading in your direction. :-) Risker (talk) 05:10, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Would you mind having a look at this?

Bob Mizer "The material in question was a series of black and white photographs, taken by Mizer, of young bodybuilders wearing what were known as posing straps — a precursor to the G-string. He would serve a nine-month prison sentence at a work camp in Saugus, California for what now seems tame. At the time, however, the mere suggestion of male nudity was not only frowned upon, but also illegal.

In spite of societal expectations and pressure from law enforcement, Mizer would go on to build a veritable empire on his beefcake photographs and films. He established the influential studio, the Athletic Model Guild (AMG) in 1945 with one or more heretofore unidentified partners, but by the time he published the first issue of Physique Pictorial he was operating the studio on his own. With assistance from his mother, Delia, and his brother, Joe, he would go on to photograph thousands of men, building a collection that includes nearly one million different images and thousands of films and videotapes."
  • website "The material in question was a series of black and white photographs, taken by Mizer, of young bodybuilders wearing what were known as posing straps — a precursor to the G-string. He would serve a nine-month prison sentence at a work camp in Saugus, California for what now seems tame. At the time, however, the mere suggestion of male nudity was not only frowned upon, but also illegal.
In spite of societal expectations and pressure from law enforcement, Mizer would go on to build a veritable empire on his beefcake photographs and films. He established the influential studio, the Athletic Mode Guild (AMG) in 1945 with one or more heretofore unidentified partners, but by the time he published the first issue of Physique Pictorial he was operating the studio on his own. With assistance from his mother, Delia, and his brother, Joe, he would go on to photograph thousands of men, building a collection that includes nearly one million different images and thousands of films and videotapes."

Talk:Bob Mizer "THIS article and photo is our own copyrighted material and full re-use is granted for Wikipedia under the CC-BY-SA and GFDL,"

AFAIK, there's been no contact of OTRS for this nor for the photo File:BobMizer.jpg. Website is marked: © 2011 BOB MIZER FOUNDATION.

Thanks! We hope (talk) 04:29, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
You did exactly the right thing there. :) I've added a bit at his talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:48, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Minor Characters of All My Children

Basically, it is the rebirth of List of All My Children miscellaneous characters. I hope: the rebirth does not violate copyrights. What do you think? --Gh87 (talk) 07:04, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I have created Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mayer2015 for I assume Marist2015 to be Mayer2015. --Gh87 (talk) 07:24, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
The article has been deleted under WP:G5: created by a banned user who has violated ban or block policies. You may not have to reply this message. Thank you! --George Ho (talk) 19:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I had time to delete it but not to reply. I was late for work. :) And it looks like I may have time to address your request below, but please remember that admins are volunteers, too. I work copyright cleanup, but seldom sock puppetry issues. I have too much trouble keeping up with my own area to want to expand. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:27, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

From Dougbermingham

Hi Moonriddengirl Thanks for getting back to me re: Birmingham to Bermingham. The material on 'Bermingham castles of Ireland' is taken from a book written over the last five through extensive research and I am in the process of trying to find a publisher. Due to it's specialised nature, this may not happen. Im not sure where Wiki stands where this is concerned but I would like to have the page restored. What do you suggest? Thanks again Douglas BerminghamDougbermingham (talk) 09:21, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. I am replying at your talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:16, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Complaint about -Coolcaesar (talk) 12:14, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

As you seem to be knowledgeable and have guided me in the past I thought I would paste what's below to you so you can tell him not too get aggressive with new comers and get on his high horse about damage to "his" article.

I assume it has been passed to him on his talk page but was not sure so perhaps you can check and do it for me if I've done things wrong.


"Please do not vandalize Wikipedia

Your vandalism to law firm on 5 September 2011 has been caught and reverted. If you do not cease such behavior immediately, you will be blocked or permanently banned from editing Wikipedia. Thank you for your cooperation. --Coolcaesar (talk) 12:14, 27 October 2011 (UTC) Your high handed approach! I have just logged into wiki after a few weeks and surprised at your accusations of vandalism and threats of banning without full analysis and based on assumptions which considering you say you are a lawyer and erudite one, you should know innocent mistakes and culpability of someone when there is no Mens Rea. It is not called for, and what's more it reflects badly on you especially with your background, and is more suggestive of your ego. As you may have gathered if you bothered to read the relevant parts relating to me that I am new to this Wiki editing and unlike some of you out there, do not spend half my life reading or editing it - just have too many other commitments! The amendment I made to "your" article that you did not agree with are (1) it is my reading of the reported quote else where, you may differ, but I have no objection if you revert it as it is minor (2)the other change done at 06.06 on 6th Sept. I feel is fully justified and contributes to the artcle.Mhakcm (talk) 11:48, 14 November 2011 (UTC)"

Mhakcm (talk) 11:56, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

You did indeed pass it along to him on his talk page. I'm sorry that your good faith edits were mischaracterized like that. :/ Unfortunately not everybody on Wikipedia assumes good faith of others--even though they are required to by policy. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:12, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposed addition to WP:Copy-paste

With sinking heart, my first contact with the US Education Program has been to find a copyio in a student sandbox. That has made me wonder: do we make it clear enough that copyvios are a no-no even in user pages? WP:Copy-paste, which I like to point people to as a nice clear statement, doesn't mention it. I am inclined to BOLDly add, just below the section "Can I copy-paste if I change the text a little bit?" another headed ""Can I copy-paste text into a user page in order to rework it?" to read "No. Wikipedia cannot host copyrighted material anywhere, not even in user pages, not even temporarily. If you want to re-work someone else's material for an article, you must do it off-line."

Comments? JohnCD (talk) 22:17, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

That sounds great to me! :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. Done. JohnCD (talk) 11:04, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 November 2011

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · EdwardsBot (talk) 22:55, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Ryan Lavery and Gillian Andrassy created by a banned user

The speedy deletion tag ({{db-g5}}) has been active for nine hours. I have reverted from the redirect to article to have it deleted. What will you do with it? --George Ho (talk) 00:58, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

<blink> Quite probably nothing. I have limited time to volunteer on weekdays and several notes on my talk page to attend to, including an earlier one from you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:05, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Okay. Finished my other stuff. :) Mopped up here, too. But socks and speedies are not really my major focus these days; I would ordinarily recommend just waiting. Sooner or later, somebody will take action. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:30, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I think I may have violated copyright a while back

Hi. Back when I was still a newbie, I uploaded this image. I came across it in an article recently, and I think it should be deleted, because I do not believe (or at least, I'm not sure) that the copyright holder released it into the public domain, as I now understand it. Can you make sure it's deleted? I've already replaced it with a a free-use photograph of my own that's being used in articles. Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 01:59, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Done. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:33, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Suspected Copyright violation

Dear Moonriddengirl - I had placed my objection on an article on Marwat in the listing on 11th November 2011. The entire article (excluding vanity entries of notable people's names) has been word to word copied from http://www.khyber.org/pashtoplaces/lakkimarwat2.shtm and was reported earlier on as well but no action was taken. Please look into this blatant plagiarism which has gone to the extent that even sources have been copied ditto. I hope a prompt action in deletion of this material as per Wikipedia's policy. --Arbab Shahinshah (talk) 05:05, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello. Thanks for reporting on your concern. While copyright clerks may take some actions on articles after five days, administrators do not evaluate listings at the copyright problems board until they are at least 7 days old. Frequently, it is somewhere around 10. When this day comes current, the article will be evaluated and any necessary action taken. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:32, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyvio in history, but not in current version

Cadillac V-12 was tagged as a G12. At the time, it looked like this, which is clearly a copy of this site.

The editor has substantially rewritten, so it does not now have a problem. However, I thought I read once that having material under copyright in the history is technically a problem. It seems highly unlikely that a copyright holder would complain, but they might have the right to do so. I realize you have bigger issues on your plate at the moment, but I'm sure you've run into this in the past, so I hope you can respond with a canned answer.

I do plan on urging the editor to take a different approach in the future (one shouldn't even use copyrighted material as a first draft, as it can lead to inadvertent problems, but if one insists on doing so, do it offline, and don't bring it into article space or even user space until it is no longer in violation). However, I'd like to know if other actions are needed to remove the history.--SPhilbrickT 14:48, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

We do retain material under copyright in the history in some cases, but not as often as we used to as removing it now is technically easy and does not cause any issues with attribution. I've revdeleted accordingly. My concern is always where I think there is more chance of material being inadvertently restored, but I will typically rev delete substantial infringements like that one. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:24, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for reminding me about revdel. I think I used it once, but it isn't a regular tool for me, and I think of it as a tool for cleaning out accidental personal disclosures, but of course, it is well suite for this.--SPhilbrickT 13:36, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I want to help

On a separate subject, I see the need for help re RAN. I think the best way for me to help is to pick a block of articles, manually look for possible G12 (using Google I guess with CSBot not working) and report the results. Will this help, or is there something better to do?--SPhilbrickT 14:48, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

That will certainly help tons. :) It's probably the biggest help you could give, actually; although there is also a pressing need to identify when Richard copied content from one article to another, this is likely to be found at the same time. I think it's particularly urgent that we get as much done on this as we can in the next month, but I feel guilty even saying that because I may not be able to do that much. But while Richard is not under a complete topic ban, he is supposed to be helping, and this is a good opportunity to make sure he recognizes what we can and can't do with previously published text on Wikipedia. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:20, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyright Issues

Hello, I found some copyright issues from an article that I patrolled on. Can you please help me solve this problem? The article is Claims Advisory Group where it was copy-pasted from here. Thanks --Mohamed Aden Ighe (talk) 21:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I saw some similarity, but it's probably not so much a copy-paste as a close following, unless they removed some of the text from the website. :) I have rewritten the article, though, as it was a mess. I don't think that company meets notability, but I don't have time to follow up on it beyond placing tags. The title is very generic, and in my searches of reliable sources I am finding mostly references that coincidentally use the phrase, such as "Hog farms polluting rural areas" claims advisory group. (made up example; no attribution needed. :D) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:15, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

The Deletion of Z. Randall Stroope

Hello Moonriddengirl,

I am a music education student at Eastern Michigan University. This fall my English Professor assigned everyone in my class to construct a well-written Wikipedia page on a unique topic. I chose Z. Randall Stroope. I did not realize a page for Stroope was created and deleted. I am going to recreate the page. This recreated page should meet Wikipedia's guidelines; if not, please do not delete the page. Conversely, help me construct an appropriate Wikipedia page. Z. Randall Stroope comes from a great musical progeny and has made a profound impact on the world of choral music. He is most definitely deserving of a Wikipedia page.

Thank You, JsimsEMU — Preceding unsigned comment added by JsimsEMU (talkcontribs) 21:57, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. The previous article was deleted because it was copied and pasted from a previously published source, not because of any problem with the subject. We are not able to retain content that violates copyright policies. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:14, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Changes and fixes to page BOB MIZER

RE PAGE "BOB MIZER" ____ I hope this is the correct place to respond. I have completely replaced the Biography on our website (http://www.bobmizer.org/bob-mizer/biography/) which now leaves our text on Wikipedia open and not published anywhere else. We will also change the tag on the image to a tag that allows the image to be freely used by anyone, as soon as we can see the page again so we can make the change. Will this take care of the problems? Thanks for your help!

Bobmizer (talk) 23:52, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. :) I've replied at your talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:11, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Do we reproduce public domain sources?

Do we republish content from public domain sources with attribution? The example which interests me is André-Joseph Exaudet, which declares that its content is reproduced verbatim from the Choral Public Domain Library. --Lexein (talk) 03:41, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Indeed we do. :) As long as sufficient attribution is given per Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Public-domain sources, PD sources are perfectly fine (although not always regarded as the best practice when an article gets to higher peer review). --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:09, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Advice for Rjmains

Hi, MRG. I just chipped in with a presumptuous non-admin comment at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Advice for Rjmains. Could you please look at that thread and, if necessary, point out where I may have gone wrong or add any additional advice of your own? Deor (talk) 13:17, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

You said it all and perfectly. :) --User:Moonriddengirl 13:19, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Can you check my proposed wording and plan

Frederick E. Humphreys is a close paraphrase of this article at the New York State Military Museum site. I spoke to the executive director of the organization to see if the material might be in the public domain, due to age or other reasons. He knew the author, so I conclude it isn't old enough. The author was an employee of the National Guard, which has both national and state functions. Had it been a work of the US government, it would probably qualify as pd, but it seems more likely to be the work of a state employee, which I assume makes it potentially, but not automatically public domain. The executive director is willing to declare that it is public domain, and understand we want that in "writing".

I assume we want him to send something to OTRS. I see the wording that would be used if he is donating material under copyright but I'm not exactly sure what should be done if he is declaring that the work is pd. I see in Wikipedia:Donating_copyrighted_materials#Granting_us_permission_to_copy_material_already_online: suggested text for CC GNU licenses. By analogy, I think he could send an email stating "The text of the articles listed at http://dmna.state.ny.us/historic/articles/articlesindex.htm are available for modification and reuse, as they are public domain."

Are you comfortable with this wording?


I will also suggest that it would be helpful to add a notice on the page (while the page does not claim copyright, I'll explain that we work under the assumption that all pages are under copyright unless they explicitly qualify as public domain, or it is explicitly stated on the site).

For what it is worth, the executive director mentioned that, as an historian, he has some issues with Wikipedia, but we scored points with him by contacting him.--SPhilbrickT 17:29, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry I didn't get here yesterday. :( I didn't mean to neglect my talk page for the whole day; thinks were kind of nuts.
And ai, yi yi. This one opens up a can of worms. Questions that come to my mind: by what authority can this man declare that content Dr. Roberts wrote for a "Mass Media & War in U.S. History" class at the University at Albany is public domain? (Maybe he's Dr. Roberts? :)) Or Abigail And Paul Stambach? We recently had an OTRS letter of authorization overturned by Geoff Brigham because the author of it was not in position to donate the content into public domain, as there was no evidence that copyright had been surrendered to his office. I think there's no doubt that he can do as he likes with this one - at least, if it was done in the course of his duties, as the byline suggests. But if he's going to declare all the articles on the page are open, he'll probably need to explain why and under what authority he says so. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:28, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Sorry about the can of worms, but glad I asked before I wrote to him. (My goal is to cut down your workload – so far I'm not doing so hot.)
For background, the original issue was a RAN article copied from Humphreys article. That one, as noted at the bottom of the page, was written by R.H. vonHasseln, DMNA Historian, who was employed by the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs: Military History at the time. However, I didn't want to write for permission on each and every article, on the chance that some other articles might also be useful (or perhaps have already been used). My contact is the executive director of the organization. He was willing to treat all articles as public domain, not just the Humphreys one, so I wanted to go for the broader class. However, as you point out, some of that material was recently written for them, so some care must be taken to ensure that he has the authority to release all material, rather than just the material written by employees of the organization.
My original plan was to write to Michael, suggest wording he could send to OTRS, and also urge him to consider adding a pd notice to the site as well, on the assumption that writing an email would be easy, but editing the website might be a little more work.
I've looked a little closer at the list of articles, and I see a couple categories. The Humphreys article is probably straightforward, as it was written by an employee, as is true of the Black Americans in the US Military… article, written by an intern. However, some of the articles are reprinted by permission, and that permission is unlikely to include the right to release it into pd. The there are the Dr. Roberts students articles, which may have separate rights.
I'm now leaning toward asking for narrow permission for the Humphreys article, and suggesting that if he could put explicit pd notices on other articles where he has the authority to do so, it would help us in case we wanted to use others (noting that our rules require attribution even in the case of pd)
If I go for the narrower permission, I would word as follows (and include his name and position, and authority to make such decisions):

"The text of the article listed at http://dmna.state.ny.us/historic/articles/humphrey.htm is available for modification and reuse, as it is public domain."

Then follow up with wording suggesting that he add explicit pd notices wherever possible.--SPhilbrickT 13:49, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
That sounds like a good approach. Just please make sure that he understands that we would prefer he be sure that he has authority to do the release. That'll help us avoid another issue like the one we had with Puerto Rican portraits. :) (And you're definitely cutting down my workload if you're considering and addressing problems that would otherwise probably fall on my lap! :D Very much appreciated.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:01, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

-- RE PAGE of "BOB MIZER"

-- RE PAGE of "BOB MIZER" Thanks for the clear explanation and for your time. I did replace the original text on our site and added the statement as you suggested. At some point in the future, we will update our website, but now it does match our Wikipedia text and has the statement on the bottom of that page. Also, I updated the requirement of the tag on the photo, explaining why we need to use that picture. Thanks again for your clarifications. http://www.bobmizer.org/bob-mizer/biography --Bobmizer (talk) 19:26, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much. It's fixed. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:38, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Severe copyviolation at List of cases of penis removal

I have checked myself, and the creator of the article, who also added most of the content of the article, has admitted that List of cases of penis removal is majority outright copyviolation mixed with extremely close paraphrase. Samples of the copyvio can be found here- User:Bunser/Copyviolations on articles

at User talk:Nayyurc and at User talk:Karfks, the user first admitted to originally creating the article for trolling/ vandalism purposes because he thought it was funny, and wanted to see how long it lasted before it was deleted- he knew that the content was innapropiate. (Karfks and Nayyurc confirmed that they are the same person)

After I checked and found numerous copyvio cases, I conronted and asked him about it. He then admitted he had no idea what copyvio even was, and that most of the content on the article was copyvio. He used google translate, to directly transalte chinese language citations which make up a large part of the article, and directly copied from them mixed with close paraphrase.

As for the english language citations, I already demonstrated them to be full of copyvio at User:Bunser/Copyviolations on articles

He controlled multiple accounts which edited the article, Karfks, Nayyurc, Fernandi, and Edmalarrs, confirmin this on his Nayyurc talkpage. The majority of the content in the article was edited and added by him, most other edits by other editors are template fixes, image adding, spelling and grammar corrections. Only about one to 3 cases were added by other users. Now that he knows copyvio leads to severe legal problems, he has given permission to delete the article under G7 under Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion. Also, under G12, the "history is unsalvegably corrupted", the entire article was always full of copyvio in every single revision, from when it was created up till now.

In light of the fact that he #1 originally created the article as a vandalism/parnk and knew the the content was encyclopedic, #2 the article is full of extreme copyviolation, I request you put a speedy deletion tag on the article. again, at User talk:Nayyurc he has now given his consent to deletion, most of the content was added by him.

I have removed copyvio which he added to other articles, List of cases of penis removal is where arond 99% of his article space edits are located.Bunser (talk) 02:33, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Blatant infringement and Wikipedia:CSD#General merit the article for deletion under G12 and G7. Creator of the article has agreed on his talk page.Bunser (talk) 02:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I will confirm that the article I created, List of cases of penis removal, is indeed mostly copyviolations and close paraphrase, and that from when the article was created, and up to the current version, every single revision is filled with copyvio. I apologize for this and that it was a serious violation. I originally created the article as a joke and I knew it was inapropiate and not proper content, like some funny vandalism, and to use it for humour, seeing how long it would last before detected and deleted, but I didn't know anything about the copyvio policy or copyright laws. Now that I know and was informed of the copyviolations and the policy and the law, I will approve deletion of the article due to the massive problems and violations of copyright all over it. I will also confirm most of the content was added by me in my various accounts, like Karfks, Nayyurc, Fernandi, and Edmalarrs. Had i known that copyviolation was a severe violation, I would not have created the article.Nayyurc (talk) 02:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Seems it's all been mopped up. Thanks for identifying the issue, Bunser. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:20, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Articles listed in Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 November 6

What about the articles listed there? It has been more than seven days. Will other adminstrators do something if they have been watching this talk and if you won't do anything about it? --George Ho (talk) 03:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Be patient. MRG's a volunteer like almost everyone else on this website. MER-C 09:22, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
True that. :) Any administrator can work the copyright problems board; several copyright clerks can also address them. It's not exactly fun, and people don't flock to do it. I don't get any particular joy out of it myself (though I do think it's important work), and I can't say that the idea of spending hours of my weekend reviewing these makes me happy. It takes a lot less time to tag them than it does to evaluate them and clean them up, and as I've pointed out to you before, you can do more work there than you are doing, George, as it's obviously a matter of some urgency to you. You have the option of removing the content and requesting revision deletion. I'll be happy to explain more to you about how to analyze for which is the origin and, if you don't know, how to tag for revision deletion. Otherwise, you may just have to wait until some other volunteer (whether that's me or somebody else) gets around to doing the work. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:55, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Delightful ancient copyvio for you! You love me really ... :P

I've just CSD-tagged Marshfield skeletons for a G12, and notice it was a split from Marshfield, Gloucestershire. Go on, you love it already ....

The offending text seems to have been added (and it's quite a chunk of text) back in July 2006. (It comes from http://www2.glos.ac.uk/bgas/tbgas/v091/bg091014.pdf.) User:Cuzzer1202.

Fing is, though, fing is, that my nose-for-copyvios is actually yelling at me about pretty much the whole of the Marshfield, Gloucestershire article as well. :o( I think it needs a major hunt-down of stuff; I'll buy you a beer if I'm wrong :P

I also have a hunch that there may have been some socking going on in there. But my nose for socks (unless they're the sort that stick to the wall when you throw them) is not as accurate as my nose for copyvios. Anyways, what I'm doing here (in case you hadn't already gathered!) is passing the buck. Enjoy! Pesky (talkstalk!) 16:58, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Thaaaanks. :) There is little doubt that much of this was copied from somewhere, while some of it is probably OR. Note this edit: [5], and particularly:

They both displayed considerable science, and " Cabbage " promises to be at the very head of the lightweights. He is a man of approved bottom ( Yes I know, but thats what it says ), and a very severe and quick hitter.

The contributor added a lot of personal commentary, such as "I have heard of a murder somewhere in the market place where a husband murdered his wife and fled to Australia. Any clues ?"
That particular bit may be from a PD source and probably is, but who knows what? I haven't been able to find it, and he cited nothing. Still digging. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:46, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
A clue? Was this transcribed from a television show? Seeing if I can find anything out. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:48, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
I've found the episode in question ([6]), but I don't seem to be able to view it. No idea if the user transcribed from the show or just described it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
This is a good sign! When he actually, verifiably did copy content, he acknowledged his source: [7]. Looking further. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:58, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I wish you so much fun! I've alerted Kiefer.Wolfowitz to the problem, too. If it turns out that a complete re-write (or an almost complete one) may be necessary, then I'm prepared to help with that. My daughter (interested in gnome-like copy-editing) may also be able to help out. Any chance of CorenSearchBot being resurrected? I'm only partially-here at the moment, trouble with the damned neurological stuff (now seems to be affecting my latissimus dorsi muscle on the left - bummer!) So even sitting for any length of time is wearing. Pesky (talkstalk!) 17:40, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyvio image masquerading as oil painting?

Hi MRG. I stretched AGF as far as I can, but still, could you possibly check this case? Its uploader was enquiring about adding it to the article. Thank you very much. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 18:27, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I can't tell if it's a painting or a digitally manipulated photo, I'm afraid. It's very low resolution. Even if it's an oil painting, it may be a derivative work. Can you bring that up at Commons:Commons:VPC for evaluation by editors there? They've sometimes helped me straighten out that kind of thing. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:32, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
According to Calliopejen this is a manipulated image of this original. Please see the discussion here. As far as Commons, I have very little experience there regarding their noticeboards but I will try if the new info I just provided is not sufficient for you. Thank you MRG. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 01:26, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
I do believe she's right. :) I'm not an admin at Commons, though, so I can't do anything but tag it. I'll do so. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:27, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
I am not very familiar with their tagging system otherwise I wouldn't have bothered you. I have tagged a few redirects here and there but I don't think their templates work the same as in Wikipedia so I avoid tagging images there. Thank you very much MRG and sorry for the disturbance. Take care. BTW I think you should become an admin in Commons asap. :) Dr.K. λogosπraxis 01:36, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
LOL! Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. :) I've got as much as I can handle on Wikipedia at the moment, but if we ever get the copyvios over here under control I'll look into it. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:37, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
If you need a nominator, or co-nom as the case may be, for adminship at Commons, please look no further. :) Dr.K. λogosπraxis 01:53, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Ghostrider51 Uploads

Hi,

I posted a talk page notice on this users page about the copyright status of his uploads, he responded by e-mail to say he either took them himself or has consent from the owner to upload them. I have replied to his talk page saying he should file WP:ORTS proof for them and said if he needs help he should talk to you. If he has not filed them in a few days I will probably list them for deletion. Mtking (edits) 08:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. I've told him about Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries. In honor of the US Thanksgiving holiday, you might want to give him a little leeway in your filing in case he has trouble getting ahold of people. I haven't looked at them all, but I notice the first one lives in LA. He might be ignoring his email this week in preference of entering a food induced coma. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:20, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipe-tan copyvio

Hi Moonriddengirl,

while trying to gather information about the copyright status of a non-free file I uploaded, I stumbled over [8] (scroll to the bottom and see image at the left side where it says "Kundenbewertung"). This looks like a derivative work of File:Wikipe-tan holding sign (cropped version).png. I don't see that attribution is provided anywhere on that website, so I suspect this is a copyright violation, but I am not familiar with the procedures for such a case (I believe it will involve contacting the site owner). Your opinion would be welcome. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 11:03, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) No doubt that's a derivative. Process for following up does involve contacting the site owner, although not all site owners respond. There's some recommended approaches at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. Ultimately, only the people who have substantially contributed to the image have the legal right to complain, but anybody can write to them to ask them to attribute. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:16, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Img of an exhibit question

Can you look at this img File:MCA-Exhibit-5-January-2007.jpg, is there a copyright issue relating to the copyright status of the subject ? Mtking (edits) 11:04, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Quite possibly. Let's run that one through WP:PUF. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:05, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

image copyright questions

Thank you, Moonriddengirl. Love that handle, by the way. Here's what you told me:

Thanks for your e-mail, I think the best thing you can do is to provide WP:ORTS verification that in each case you are the illegitimate copyright owner or that you have the consent from the owner to licence the images for free use worldwide. If you have any questions about this, the person to ask is User Talk:Moonriddengirl who I will alert to this matter. Mtking (edits) 08:03, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I hope I have provided the necessary verification. I tried to figure out how to add the Creative Commons tag to my images, but it doesn't seem to be a simple copy and paste operation. How does one actually get the tag from the Wikipedia server to the image?

Ghostrider51 (talk) 17:59, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Ghostrider51

photo permissions

I hereby affirm that I am the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive copyright of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Johnny_Klimek_photo.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Andy_Hill.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mani_color.jpg I agree to publish that work under the free license "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0" (unported) and GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).] I acknowledge that by doing so I grant anyone the right to use the work in a commercial product or otherwise, and to modify it according to their needs, provided that they abide by the terms of the license and any other applicable laws. I am aware that this agreement is not limited to Wikipedia or related sites. I am aware that I always retain copyright of my work, and retain the right to be attributed in accordance with the license chosen. Modifications others make to the work will not be claimed to have been made by me. I acknowledge that I cannot withdraw this agreement, and that the content may or may not be kept permanently on a Wikimedia project. Andrew Hill aka Ghostrider51 Copyright Holder/Appointed Representative 11/21/2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ghostrider51 (talkcontribs) 17:10, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Your feedback on new RfA supplement proposal?

Hi MRG, I know you're really busy but when you get a chance I'd love to get your feedback on my new RfA supplement proposal at Wikipedia:Tool apprenticeship (please leave feedback at Wikipedia talk:Tool apprenticeship), since I trust your judgement. Here's the brief overview:

In tool apprenticeship, a user who has an immediate practical need for a particular administrator tool or tools, such as deletion or protection, makes a request to receive that tool. The user is judged according the the following criteria:
  • The user must be in good standing;
  • The user must have an immediate practical need for the tool;
  • To the greatest extent possible, the user should be active and have sufficient experience in the area in which they plan to use the tool.
Satisfying these, they receive the tool on a trial basis for a limited period (weeks to months). When this period expires, the tool is automatically revoked. The trial period is subject to probation (tool revocation in case of misuse), and may involve voluntary mentoring.
After or shortly before the end of their trial, the user can file a request to retain the tool permanently, based on their performance during the trial period, which will be granted if the user substantially used the tool and exercised good judgement. If the request is denied, the user will be given extensive feedback on their usage and may (if their misuse was not too egregious) have the opportunity for another trial period. Over time, a user who performs a variety of tasks may acquire many tools, giving them similar status to current administrators.

Thanks! Dcoetzee 18:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Derrick! I've glanced at the page, and I'm for anything that spreads the work. :D I don't have time to read through everything this morning, but I'll look at it over the weekend for sure. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:14, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Hey, just pinging you on this, I know you're busy but it'd mean a lot to me if you get a chance to look at it before I RfC it. Thanks! :-) Dcoetzee 16:29, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Follow up on my practice for copyvios

(from your archives [9]. It would have been easier to follow up if I had been notified of the discussion.)

Yes , I indeed always advise rewriting, and I almost never revisiondelete. Such I believe to be the policy . And if not rewriting, stubbification. Again, such I believe to be the policy. What I understand one should do in the cases of undoubted copyvio, where the actual subject is notable, is:

  1. If the copyvio is short enough to be turned into a short quotation, do so.
  2. If the copyvio can be removed, while still leaving the bulk of the contents, remove it
    1. Alternatively, if there is a non-copyvio version in the history, that still has most of the information, revert to it..
  3. If removing the copyvio would remove most of the meaningful contents, then Stubbify it to remove the copyvio and still leave the identification and a RS (which may well be the material wrongly copied)
    1. Alternatively, if one is able to rewrite some or all of the material, rewrite it, of course avoiding close paraphrase.

As I understand policy, It is usually not necessary to delete the copyvio version from the history, unless there is an outside complaint. It is my understanding that there in most cases where we remove copyvio we do it because we have seen it, rather than there being an outside complaint, but if there is, it must of course be honored. I am unsure about whether we should normally honor it by just deleting, and revision delete only when requested, or revision-delete whenever there is an outside complaint. There might be special reasons to revision delete for copyvio otherwise, but I think they would be limited & I can not immediately think of any.

What I say above is no more than existing policy , at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins#Handling copyright violations

If new, clean text has been proposed
Always investigate first to see if new content has been proposed at the temporary subpage /Temp linked on the copyvio notice or at the article's talk page. If so,
  • Check to be sure that contributors to the new version have not violated the attribution rights of earlier creators, but have properly attributed,
  • Make sure that all copyright infringement has been removed and that there are not new issues with close paraphrasing,
  • If the new content is clear of licensing violations or copyright concerns, it may be used to replace the original article (when the original article does not have salvageable content or history) or history merged into it (if the original does have usable content). If replacing an article, you may wish to move the original "copyright violation" article to a subpage such as [[Article/deleted revisions date]] prior to deletion. This will make selective deletions or undeletions at the article title easier to manage. (See Wikipedia:Selective deletion.) If merging, you may wish to use Wikipedia:Revision deletion on the versions that contain the copyright infringement to help avoid inadvertent restoration in the future.
If there are clean versions in history or salvageable content on the page: Revert back to the last clean revision or remove the infringing text from the article, using an appropriate edit summary. Leave a note at the article's talk page explaining the removal (the template {{cclean}} may be used). It may be a good idea to use Wikipedia:Revision deletion on the versions that contain the copyright infringement to help avoid inadvertent restoration in the future if the copyrighted content is extensive. Otherwise, so long as the infringing text is removed from the public face of the article, it may not need to be removed/deleted permanently unless the copyright holder complains via OTRS or unless other contributors persist in restoring it.

I note the word may. which seems to leave it open to go either way--and it seems not to apply at all if one replaces the complete text. The only purpose given seems to be avoiding inadvertent re-addition in complex situations, Myself, I cannot recall instances of such restorations that I've worked on, though what I've worked on is mainly complete or almost complete article copyvio & may not be representative. I'm sure they can be found among the hundreds of millions of edits, I note also the guideline p. doesn't explicitly give the option of preparing the clean text oneself. But I and some other admins do have the ability & interest to write articles sometimes, and we're not as a while less qualified than anyone else. Neither in many cases is the original contributor, unless COI interferes.

As for the postulated conflict with WP:Revision delete, from that p.

Blatant copyright violations that can be redacted without removing attribution to non-infringing contributors. If redacting a revision would remove any contributor's attribution, this criterion can not be used. Best practices for copyrighted text removal can be found at Wikipedia:Copyright problems and should take precedence over this criterion. DGG ( talk ) 02:08, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

The rationale for not doing more, as I see it, is that since we cannot remove the material from the outside we. No matter what we do here, it will never be totally destroyed, unless the rights holder can track down every indexed and unindexed outside version--which is almost always impossible, It is therefore enough to make it normally invisible to the reader--which would correspond to removing physical material from circulation, but not actually destroying it. In the RW, when material is ordered actually destroyed, but usually it's just removed. DGG ( talk ) 02:08, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

<blink>That's quite a lot of text. :) Sorry I forgot to follow up with you after my flight, but you weren't notified I'm sure because this isn't really a noticeboard...just an informal conversation point. I'm not sure I follow your "rationale for not doing more". There are several good reasons to rev delete copyvios....as you quote yourself above: "It may be a good idea to use Wikipedia:Revision deletion on the versions that contain the copyright infringement to help avoid inadvertent restoration in the future if the copyrighted content is extensive." This happens.
Particularly when an article would qualify for a G12, I can think of no good reason not to rev delete. Your last paragraph seems to argue that the reason for not doing more is that we can't clean it up elsewhere? Is there any other reason? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:38, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
What's your feeling on this one? The entire article was blatant copyvio, so that's what's there in the history. Particualrly when an article's that "young", isn't it generally better to delete it an advise the creating editor to re-write from scratch? I'm really not sure on this one, but I know other people do tend to disagree with me on it. And can we have some clear policy on it, pretty please? Pesky (talkstalk!) 12:30, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
A clear policy? I doubt it. :) The problem with incrementally altering out a copyvio is that you run the risk of creating a derivative work. To be completely, 100% safe, we probably should start from scratch. But if the copyvio is all gone, I tend not to worry about. That's the kind of thing I would rev delete. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:41, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Um, as I'm not an admin (and never wanna be a Nadmin!) would you like to clean that one up to remove the copyvio version? :P Pesky (talkstalk!) 22:08, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts?

Hi Moon. Elen and I were chatting, and I volunteered to look at old articles I created, and delete or fix copyvios where I see them. She thought that a good idea. I presumed that it might be best for me not to tick off items myself, and she thought (but suggested I check with you) that this might be the case, but that perhaps I could create a subpage where I recorded articles I had checked and what you found. Thoughts? If that is correct, I'll have to root around again to remember how to create such a subpage. Best.--Epeefleche (talk) 11:16, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I think that's a good idea, and it is very much in line with what I suggested you might do at ANI: "if you are unhappy with the way other people are cleaning up the CCI, why don't you do it before they get there? While you should not mark an article as resolved on your CCI, there is absolutely no reason that you can't put a note underneath the article title that you believe you have fixed it. Other CCI subjects have done this, and it can work well". The reason I would recommend placing a note underneath the article title that you believe you have fixed it is that if you make a separate subpage, there is a possibility that it will be overlooked by people reviewing your CCI, and it will make more work for them. An ordinary listing in a CCI looks like this (I'm not evaluating the article; I picked it randomly from the page):
* [[:Roger Cressey]]: (2 edits, 2 major, +3177) '''{{dif|392275610|(+1636)}}{{dif|392277165|(+3177)}}'''
What I would recommend you do is this:
* [[:Roger Cressey]]: (2 edits, 2 major, +3177) '''{{dif|392275610|(+1636)}}{{dif|392277165|(+3177)}}'''
:*Paraphrased from [url]. Rewrote content in [diff]. --~~~~
That will allow other people to very easily compare the diff they're looking at with the diff of your rewrite and the link to the source so they can more easily mark the article "repaired" to move on. (They ought to check other sources, if they have concern that you might have overlooked something.) It would reduce the chance that somebody will overlook that the content has been rewritten or removed and make workflow far more efficient, keeping up all, literally, "on the same page". :)
If you're interested in doing this, please let me know, and I'll tweak the instructions at the top of your CCI page accordingly. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:58, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the helpful input. That sounds good. As I said, I'm happy to volunteer to do it. I may need further guidance, and appreciate your offer to give it, but starting next week (when I will have more time than this week) I'll focus on examining our relevant fix-it guideline, and doing this. Best.--Epeefleche (talk) 19:32, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Epeefleche: I'd be happy to take the foot of the gas on your CCI for a couple of weeks to let you catch up. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:44, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Very large donation of copyrighted material

Hi Moon. I've recently run into an enthusiast (may be more) who has been researching an architect and his works for nearly 20 years. He has published his research on a website he has created and would like to donate the material to Wikipedia. I usually only deal with small submissions and even then, I usually try to get someone to rewrite it as what they want to donate typically isn't written in an encyclopedic tone. This case seems quite different as it's all referenced and written and seems to all be written in an encyclopedic tone although I haven't read through everything. He even has several photos of each structure that he has personally gone to see. The amount of information is quite impressive.

The website is bradfordleegilbert.com and the user is Dfcoe although if you want to see the span of the material to be donated, here's the list of structures. I've considered altering applicable Wikiprojects given the amount of potential additions to WP but I wanted to get the copyright issues settled first.

Do you think the best thing to do would be to ask him to apply the CC-BY-SA license to his website or to submit an OTRS ticket? It seems that an OTRS ticket for every potential article created via his research might be excessive. Feel free to jump in if you feel like that would be easier. I've just been chatting with him to try and ease some frustration that was created regarding the text (it was originally deleted as a copyright violation). OlYeller21Talktome 18:29, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Injecting a small point here: don't assume he'll want CC-BY-SA, consider CC-BY and CC0 depending on how he feels about attribution and licensing of derivative works. Dcoetzee 18:46, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Another stalker comment: Some of the buildings in question already have articles on WP (e.g., Illinois Central "Central Station"/Central Station (Chicago terminal) and Boston & Maine Passenger Station, Beverly, Massachusetts/Beverly Depot (MBTA station)). Make sure he understands that in those cases he should integrate the material into the existing articles rather than creating duplicates. Deor (talk) 18:58, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, both of you. To be honest, I don't understand the difference between those licensing types but I'm sure I can teach myself. I had noticed that some already had articles but assumed that we could cross that bridge when we come to it. At this point, it's not even 100% clear that he wants to make contributions to WP outside of a donation and the article he has already created. I'll definitely keep that in mind as well as notability issues as I'm not even 100% sure that all of the buildings are notable. OlYeller21Talktome 19:17, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Not sure if it helps, but I find the "human-readable" version of the CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence here to be, well, human-readable. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 19:27, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Grandiose. That's actually the first place I stopped when I started looking. I may have been looking in the wrong places but it doesn't seem that WP explains the different types of common licenses very clearly. The CreativeCommons website does it really well (in my opinion). OlYeller21Talktome 19:51, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

speedy deletion of soc.culture.tamil

www.asiachinaof.com had taken material written by me to create news group soc.culture.tamil in UUnet and have it in their website. It is weird. It is nothing to do with Chinese or Chinese food. I sent them email as given below.

http://www.asiachinaof.com/161.html. Please review this. This China based website took my material and voting transaction in UUnet which is a public domain operation of 1992 in their website.

By all means asiachinaof.com is nothing to do with soc.culture.tamil or UUnet.

I sent them this email given below to Asia China.

< Hello yt314@qq.com,

I respectfully request you to remove http://www.asiachinaof.com/161.html

It is nothing to do with Chinese people or Chinese culture or Chinese Food.

That body of material was written by me, Meyyur Parthasarathy Krishna Raj..

You not having my permission would be copy right violation.

Thanks again.

Meyyur Parthasarathy Krishna Raj

> Meyyur (talk) 23:10, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry. :( I hope that they will respond favorably to you. I'm afraid that there's nothing that we can do on this end if they have copied content from you that you published elsewhere. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:43, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 November 2011

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · EdwardsBot (talk) 01:18, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Need Help!

Hello Moonriddengirl, can you please block the following IP user User:109.148.213.32. He/she is constantly vandalizing articles related to Indian television series' (adding wrong air dates, made up titles, etc...). For example, the page List of programs broadcast by Star Plus was safe until the protection lock is removed. As soon as the protection was removed from the page, this IP user started adding false infomation all over again. I understand that the IP address will change or move to a different IP number, but this one has been into existance for a while, so can you please block it. Furthermore, he/she doesn't understand that what is the point for having a page on a particular article on Wikipedia if it doesn't provide accurate information. I have reverted few pages (but seriously he/she needs to STOP). Please HELP! Thank you!Survir (talk) 02:27, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I'm afraid I can't; you need to first reach out to him at his talk page to explain politely and precisely what's wrong with his edits. It's hard for me to tell since I don't know anything about the TV channel. :) If he disagrees with you, you can invite him to explain why. We do sometimes block people if they won't work with others, but we have to assume good faith and give them every chance to do it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:55, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Grandma's Gifts

Hey. I nominated the article for a G6 deletion to make way for the move. Someone went ahead and made the move. Just wanted to let you know where to find it now. OlYeller21Talktome 02:47, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:20, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Text looks great. :) One suggestion: you don't seem to be using footnotes 1 and 2 necessarily after the content it supports, but generally for the whole paragraph. I don't think that's a good idea, in case somebody inserts something footnoted to another source. Also, it is confusing that footnote 1 doesn't support anything in the sentence it follows. :) I would recommend using the footnotes directly after content it supports. Then again, I may overscrupulous with footnoting, so you can always seek another opinion there. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:31, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Hey. Thanks for taking a look. I'll definitely go and be more careful about the application of foot notes. I don't want anyone to think I was trying to mislead. OlYeller21Talktome 12:43, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Didn't come off that way at all. It just feels like you're using the footnotes to support pretty much the paragraph, which is not necessarily a bad practice, except that since our articles can be edited by anybody, there's a chance that reference will become confused. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:48, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Protocol questions

I added several items to the Wikipedia:Copyright problems. In three cases, there may no longer be a problem. My question - should I remove them from the list of items to be investigations, or should I leave that to a second pair of eyes? I'm following the second path, but I'd like to know the usual protocol, if there is one.

In one case, Gettysburg's Unknown Soldier in Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 November 19, some material was clearly copied form a 2009 NYT article, but further investigation shows that the material inquisition came from a PD source. While I think there is an open issue regarding how the reference should be formed (see this question), he copyright issue is now moot, so I'm unsure whether it is fine for me to remove it form the list, or if it would be better for someone else to do so.

In another case, Robert Edward Lee Mountcastle in Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#16_November_2011, I realized, after reporting that the source was PD. I've noted as such, so a reviewer can easily make the call. Again, the question is, am I permitted to close it, or should someone else.

In a third case, Raoul Wallenberg Award in Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#18_November_2011, the editor has rewritten in a way that seems to cure the problem (see Talk:Raoul_Wallenberg_Award/temp ). If this version is acceptable, I'm not sure of the next step, whether the copyright problem is solved and the editor told he can copy the new version in, or if someone else should do it.

Please note, I'm not asking for any of these to be handled immediately or out of process, just trying to understand whether I am allowed to handle an incident I reported.--SPhilbrickT 19:27, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

So sorry for my delay. :) I'll get back wtih youfirst thing in the morning! Promise. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 03:27, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Again, sorry for the delay. I don't want to slow down your work, which is much appreciated. :)
The seven day period at CP is to allow time for copyright problems to be settled. We can close out items early any time common sense says that closing them out early doesn't cause issues. :) (I wouldn't close an item early if, for example, we had a glorious B class article tagged and the tagger wrote a new temp version that would barely clear stub. I'd give the community more time to work with it and even to offer evidence that the tag was incorrect.) IAR still works at WP:CP as intended: if a rule gets in the way of fixing things, ignore it. But don't break it without good reason. (For instance, I'm not fussed when non-admins remove the "copyvio" tag out of process as long as their removal is for good reason--if they prove the content is public domain or rewrite the problem well. I am fussed if they remove the tag out of process and reexpose the copyvio.)
What I would do if the problems have been fixed is go ahead and resolve them at the copyright problems board. Any administrator can do this. We don't remove listings, in case we ever need to go back to them. I've fixed the Gettysburg's Unknown Soldier attribution and closed out the listing at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 November 19, and I see that you've already handled the issue at Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#16_November_2011. With regards to the temp at Raoul Wallenberg Award, you should assess it. If you think it resolves the problem, you do one of two things: you either move it over the old article, deleting it entirely (obviously can only do this if it does not have any content from the old article that was added by somebody else) or you merge it in. I would base my call there on the extensiveness of the copyright issue and how many people edited the article before and after the CCI subject. If the history is short and especially if the CCI subject was the only contributor, I'd replace it. If the history is extensive and especially if the CCI was not the founding editor, I'd merge and use revision deletion as it may seem necessary to prevent inadvertent restoration. If you haven't done a history merge before (for all I know, you've done billions :D), it's not as scary as the directions (at least used to) make it sound. I'd be happy to demonstrate, if you think the rewrite is good and a merge is the preferred option. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:37, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the extensive answers. No, I haven't done a merge, but I really should learn how. I have a full plate today, and will probably wait till past turkey day to try it.--SPhilbrickT 14:07, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Email

I've written to you! AnOpenMedium (talk) 11:19, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Replied. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:19, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Many thanks! I've sent you what I hope is a last question...AnOpenMedium (talk) 16:13, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Your Review is Needed

Hello Moonriddengirl.

I have significantly overhauled the article-list Bollywood films of 2011. It is now possessing both a table and text material which adds to the table. The contents of the tabel and text are, of course, subject to change as the year hasn't ended and a few very high-profile releases such as Desi Boyz, The Dirty Picture and Don 2 will be releasing post end-November. I have tried to keep it as neutral as possible, but if any problem occurs please do not hesitate to point it out.

Also, I would be much obliged if you could enlighten me regarding A-class articles and A-class reviewing, as I'm totally unfamiliar with it despite it being the last step before getting an FA. I plan to upgrade some articles to the level of A-class, so I hope to first know all the particulars regarding it. The manual given i WP wasn't too clear, and spoke in the most general terms, and hence I hope you can clarify my doubts in a more detailed manner.

Thank you. AnkitBhattWDF 15:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm looking into this, but I'm so sorry--somebody restored the table before you started. We can't use the table. :( I'm looking into what you added after to see what I can salvage. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:20, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm happy to say it was easy to salvage what you'd done, as it was just the table added by the other guy that I needed to remove. That's a really good start. :) I've expanded a bit on The Bodyguard for a reason. According to the US copyright law that governs Wikipedia, the more we transform our source material, the more likely it is that we are making "fair use" of it and not going to get in trouble for copyright law. If we can bring in material from other sources to form new text about a topic, then we are creating something new that BOI does not own. All the information about the other films is drawn from the copyrighted source at Box Office India. Is it possible for you to find information from newspapers or other industry websites to expand those a bit? If we can develop good textual descriptions of the release and the economic impact of these films, we're in good shape!
Different projects have different review standards, and I'm not sure whether you'd be looking for review of film articles only, but I see that the film project doesn't seem to do "A" reviews. (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Film/Assessment) Lots of projects don't. If it's a film-related article, I would probably just skip "A" review and go straight for Wikipedia:Good articles. The review process is similar to FA and it'll probably better help identify problem areas. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:36, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
I'll try my level best to obtain outside references, but it will be quite tough to obtain the refs for the BO figures. I'm happy that the re-working has not violated any copyright restrictions. Regarding the A-class, the particular article I had in mind was Ra.One. The article very recently was promoted to GA. But I'm not satisfied with that at all. I really want to push it to FA level. Perhaps you can suggest some tips for improvement? Thanks for your time :). AnkitBhattWDF 16:55, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Sorry for my delay. :) I've never conducted a "featured article" review, but I have to say that at a glance that article looks pretty stunningly impressive. One suggestion I'd have is reviewing the lead to see if all those references are really need. Some of them may not be, if the information is non-controversial and is sourced in the body, in accordance with Wikipedia:Lead#Citations. Have you thought about Wikipedia:Peer review? It might be a good final step before pushing it to Featured Article. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:42, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
No probs at all. Well I'm hapy you are impressed, though Scieberking is less impressed and wishes to give the article time for proper copyediting (which I am unfamiliar with :) ). Regarding the lead, yes there are many references in the article itself. I put up the refs just for the sake of safety, in case somebody later objected to the lack of referenced material in the lead. And yeah, we did have a peer review, though it was so short I doubt it could be called comprehensive. Thanks for having boosted my confidence, this may be my first FA, so I'm super excited :D. Cheers! AnkitBhattWDF 13:58, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Good luck! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:39, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Concerns of something maybe being a copyvio

This expansion was recently done to the Retail design article. It added a lot of nice info, which I went in and formatted a bit and all that. But, since the references are ones that I can't exactly check, i'm concerned that the user may have added a copyvio or two. Or they may not have, but I have no way of telling, so I wanted to see what you thought. SilverserenC 06:21, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

<blink> This is that guy's first edit? :O I've done a pretty thorough spot-check through Google and Google books and I didn't find anything. There's lots of red flags, but we could just be dealing with a very good writer. :) In the absence of any evidence of copying, I'd probably leave it as is. I might be tempted to put {{cv-unsure}} on the talk page, but I'm loathe to do anything that seems unfriendly. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:27, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
While I can't prove it isn't a copyvio either, this does look like a very good first edit, with appropriate, thorough rewriting. The section on the different plans seems e.g. to be taken from [10] (a source also included in the article), but with rewritten text. Fram (talk) 13:43, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, Fram! That's helpful. Let's hope we can keep this guy. :) There's a bit of OR in there, but, wow! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:50, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for looking at it. I added a citation needed to the one paragraph that didn't have a reference attached, though I suspect the reference at the end of the next paragraph is meant to apply to it. SilverserenC 17:20, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Pic from a magazine

hello,

am I allowed to upload a picture from a Jet magazine as fair use? Thanks.--♫GoP♫TCN 13:49, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. There's a lot of factors that go into that; it depends entirely on whether you can defend its need in the article under WP:NFC. :) That's not really my major work area, but I would not consider using it myself unless there is sourced commentary about the actual incident depicted. But I would really recommend you run it past WT:NFC for feedback. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:52, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick reply! Will ask.--♫GoP♫TCN 13:53, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Vera Bate Lombardi

I notice you've re-written this; it's been on my mind to fix this situation, and I apologize for not making a start sooner (I was winding down, as I'm going away in about seven hours). You said in the edit summary you knew nothing about the woman; I only know a bit, but I'd say you've pretty much covered it... well done! Swanny18 (talk) 23:48, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! :) I did my best with it, but, boy, that story was hard to follow. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:38, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
My thanks for your work on this too. There was a lot of material to synthesise without creating another copyvio and you've succeeded admirably. Colonies Chris (talk) 10:08, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Dorothea Puente

Can you peek at the article Dorothea Puente. It had an image of her with a proper FUR template. Someone keeps removing it, believing that the copyright holder has to give permission for fair use. The person is dead and there is no projected revenue loss. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, yes. Very strange. :/ I don't know if the image meets WP:NFC or not, but the removal based on its being copyrighted is out of keeping with our approach to images. I've put it back and will explain to the other user. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:18, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


Possible banning or blocking of User38563

Dear Admin. I write you with a concern and prayer. User38563 deletes and keeps editing and undoing work from my and others job. He kees delete fact about the IBO boxing title, just because he has a personal problem with the title and sanctioning body. I think he keeps ruining and deleting facst from aritcle I and others have worked hard on.

And his language and communication with others is bad. Ex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/User38563

Thanks :)

David-golota (talk) 20:38, 24 November 2011 (UTC) David-golota

Hi. I'm afraid that I cannot assist with this matter via a talk page request. :) While we may be able to block contributors who are clearly vandalizing, this looks like a content dispute and should be handled in accordance with dispute resolution. If the contributor does not respond to conversation, one of the forums listed there may be able to help. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:12, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Threats

It's unfortunate that you feel the need to make unnecessary threats. Your attitude in dealing with this issue is the primary thing that drives editors AWAY from Wikipedia. It's indeed a very sad thing. However, since you have the power to abuse simple editors such as me with the threat of a banning over such a simple dispute, there is nothing I can do. It's a SHAME that you allow blatant copyright abuse at Wikipedia. I will notify the copyright holder, and reference this conversation. =//= Johnny Squeaky 04:41, 26 November 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnny Squeaky (talkcontribs)

Thank you for your note; I've replied at your talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:42, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
I would like to apologize for my bad attitude with you about this, I'm out of line. You're quite right, I need to follow the established process (something I softly beat into people almost daily where I work - "follow the established process if you want to change something"). I'll try to be on better behavior. =//= Johnny Squeaky

Microsoft clipart license

Hello again MRG, at http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/images/ there are many "free" clipart images. I can't fathom the license ([11] section 17) though: do you know if it is okay to incorporate some of these (along with original material) into an illustration for use in Wikipedia? If so, what should the license for the resultant work be? Uniplex (talk) 12:29, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we can use them unless we can somehow make a case under WP:NFC. :/ Here's the passage that concerns me:

You may not: (i) sell, license, or distribute copies of the media elements by themselves or as a product if the primary value of the product is the media elements; (ii) grant your customers rights to further license or distribute the media elements; (iii) license or distribute for commercial purposes media elements that include the representation of identifiable individuals, governments, logos, trademarks, or emblems or use these types of images in ways that could imply an endorsement or association with your product, entity or activity; or (iv) create obscene works using the media elements.

17(i) is not an issue as long as we keep the elements de minimis, but 17(ii) is, I think, a major issue. All of our licenses require that we permit reuse elsewhere. If it's really important to you, you might try asking at WP:MCQ in case somebody knows a loophole. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:22, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Sounds like it's best avoided—I'll see if I can find something suitable in Commons instead. Thanks, Uniplex (talk) 15:42, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Confusing copyright status

I'm in a discussion over at Talk:Barrio Santa Rosa (Tucson, Arizona) that's got me fairly confused. There's a sizable blockquote from a NRHP Featured Listing at http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/feature/weekly_features/11_09_30_Barrio_Santa_Rosa_HD.htm. That would presumably be public domain. However, on investigating the nomination document, which was authored by the Arizona State Parks department, I found that the listing summary was frequently word-for-word from the original document, though not much more than a sentence at a time. If that was done here, we'd be blanking it as a clear copyvio. However, Doncram asserts that the NPS edit/summarization created a new work of the USG, putting it in the PD, and I'm not sure he's wrong. What do you think? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:12, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I think we can't risk it. The NPS has created a derivative work, which may have its own copyright, but it does not affect the protection of the original. We do not know what kind of license the NPS may have had to use the application in preparing their summary, but we do know that those applications are not released into public domain. We wrote them some time ago and their reply is documented in OTRS. I don't have time right now to search the system (which takes for freaking ever now, as I'm sure you know :P), but I know it's in there because I wrote them and put it there myself. :) Unfortunately, their copyright statement is vague: "Information created or owned by the NPS and presented on this website, unless otherwise indicated, is considered in the public domain."[12] If they simply wrote, "Content of this website, unless otherwise indicated, is considered in the public domain" then we could presume that they had license to release it. They don't; they specific that it must be "information created or owned by the NPS". In the absence of evidence otherwise, I would assume that anything we find on their website is public domain, but in this case we do have evidence that the "information" was not "created" by the NPS.
Personally, I suspect that some employee of the NPS has used the application document without giving a thought to the copyright status of the original, but we don't have any way of determining it without writing to them. Is it possible to use brief quotes and summary written by us, maybe based on the original instead of the derivative work? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:38, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Apparently, you're wrong because you're wrong. In any case, I've raised it over at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 November 25 to get wider input (which hasn't yet materialized).--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:10, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. :) I've copied over my opinion there. We'll let some other administrator close the listing next week. Meanwhile, I'm searching the OTRS system for the ticket now that I am back home. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:15, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deathlands

Hello Moonriddengirl. A long time ago you edited (copyvio clean up) some of the articles listed in this AfD nomination. I think you might be interested in commenting there, the copyright concerns are a part of the nom rationale. Thanks for any help. Best regards. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 11:02, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Have done so. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:11, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 07:16, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

G12 versus stubbing (and RD1)

Hi. I know you're terribly busy, but G12 versus stubbing has come up again in relation to the new CCI. Fram and Edison are discussing at User talk:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )#November 2011, e.g. this comment. Previous discussion was User talk:Moonriddengirl/Archive 40#I haz a copyvio G12 question .... I think that now is as good a time as any for a discussion on RD1. Thanks. Flatscan (talk) 06:05, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Oops! I'm sorry. I totally missed this last night. :( Sorry, but it was a particularly long day. I'd agree with you there. Where's the best place to hold it? WP:VPP? WT:CSD? Wikipedia talk:Copyright violations? I note that last policy doesn't even mention the possibility of Rd1. Maybe the best thing to do so is start by drafting up some language for that talk page, get it reviewed and entered in, and then talk at WT:CSD about implementing a note about stub/history delete as an option? What do you think? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:15, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply, don't worry about it. The issue relates to both CSD and RD, but I see this more as "when should RD1 be encouraged" rather than "when is it okay to skip G12". I'm still leaning towards WT:Copyright problems, second choice WT:Revision deletion; notifications on all affected pages and listings on RfC and CENT. I'll start framing the issue offline. Regarding VPP, I realized recently that its relatively brief archiving period makes holding an extended discussion difficult. Flatscan (talk) 05:25, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Okay, what about proposing language something like "When copied or closely paraphrased content is substantial or when inadvertent or intentional restoration is likely, revisions of the article containing improperly used copyrighted material should generally be revision deleted under criterion RD1"? It's a tad bit waffly with the generally and the vague substantial, but it's a starting point. :) Thoughts? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:37, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
That's a good start; it might be a little clearer if formatted as a list (substantial and restoration as separate items). I'll keep thinking about it. There is definitely a void here – for example, the detailed instructions at WP:Text Copyright Violations 101#Partial infringement only say "if appropriate request revision deletion". Flatscan (talk) 05:10, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
I have an outline of an RD1 RfC almost ready for drafting in user space, but I saw your comments at WT:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License#Attribution of material copy-pasted from one wp article into another wp article and started thinking about an omnibus discussion on attribution. WP:Copying within Wikipedia is regularly cited, but there are fairly widespread misconceptions and oversights. I'm leaning towards RD1, since it is a manageable task that will produce usable guidance. Flatscan (talk) 05:43, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Agreed. I'll let you know what the legal team says. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:49, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to let you know, I've asked, but only one of them is in the country at the moment, and with the holiday just over it may be a few more days. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:30, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

DYK needs you!

Hey there. I know you're really busy but DYK are currently having a problem with the issue of close paraphrasing and what that entails exactly. Would you be willing to help us draft up some guidelines? Please? PanydThe muffin is not subtle 20:14, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to help. I'm reaaaaally time pressed at the moment. :/ I'm still working on Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/A Beginners Guide to Copyright on Wikipedia and I haven't even started the other guide I've promised them (I'll have to look at my talk page history to see what it is). Can you tell me where the issue is? Does Wikipedia:Close paraphrase not help? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:18, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
It's too big and complicated for the newbies it seems and even old time reviewers can't necessarily agree on what it means in practice. I'll go report back to DYK and ask what to do now. Thank you anyway! PanydThe muffin is not subtle 00:56, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
I'll try. Any chance anybody over there wants to work on it with me? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:15, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
I can help with examples and a 'What not to do' thing. I'll just need someone to correct me. PanydThe muffin is not subtle 16:48, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
Panyd, the DYK talk page hs gotten pretty busy, so I'll put this here-- perhaps the biggest reason so many copyvio and close paraphrasing issues are found at DYK is probably that many high-volume editors there edit via cut-and-paste. They grab the source text, and alter a few words and phrases, but retain the structure of the original source. The single best piece of advice to help stem the tide is to remind them to never edit via cut-and-paste. Read your sources, then set them aside and write your own words. The same notion can help reviewers: read the source, then read the article, and notice how often you will find the structure is the same as the source, then you can see how just a few words were altered, but they essentially copied the source structure. The "never edit via cut-and-paste" will really cover most of the problems I've seen at DYK, where some of the DYK leaders basically copied in NYT obituariaries and changed a few words to churn out hundreds (or thousands) of articles, which is also what Hathorn did. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:52, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
That's good advice, Sandy. :) Panyd, just point me to whatever space we'd be working in and let me know when you're ready to go. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:56, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

User:Flyguy33

Can you please revoke User:Flyguy33's use of rollback? Check out the history of Template:Penn State Nittany Lions football navbox. He used rollback on twice on one of the most established and respected editors in WikiProject College football (User:Jweiss11) simply because he was owning his own Penn State navbox and didn't like the changes Jweiss made (which, by the way, were in an effort to standardize all college football navboxes and were the furthest thing from vandalism possible). Flyguy clearly has no respect or knowledge of rollback and when to use it. How he ever got the privilege to begin with is beyond me. Jrcla2 (talk) 06:06, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I've given him a warning. If you see him misusing the tool again, let me know, please, and I will remove it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:55, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. Jrcla2 (talk) 13:35, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 November 2011

List of highest-grossing Bollywood films of 2011

Hi, could you (or a watcher) re-delete this copyvio as per previous grounds? I'm afraid Tere_Mast has already received a full copyvio warning but I'm a bit fatigued dealing irate and ungrateful people this week. Thanks -- (talk) 14:21, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Deleted. I've explained the issue a little more completely, as some contributors may be confused by the situation. It's counterintuitive for them. If (s)he keeps placing it, I'll take appropriate action. :/ Sigh. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:30, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Criticism of the Seventh-day Adventist Church

Hello again. If you have time, please could you check my recent action at Criticism of the Seventh-day Adventist Church? I have just restored a much earlier version because of copyvios from a blog, details in Talk:Criticism_of_the_Seventh-day_Adventist_Church#Copyright_violations. Thanks. --Mirokado (talk) 14:55, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm so sorry that you put all that time into working on a contaminated base. :( I hate that. I've confirmed the copying from the previously published blog that you note at the talk page. I would really recommend that you supply some example passages at the talk page to demonstrate that the taking was extensive. For instance, a hundred words or so of this would be helpful. :/ I think we will probably need to do a revision deletion, so people will not be able to see for themselves how bad it may have been. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:34, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
(If you'd like help documenting that at the talk page, I'll be happy to help. I don't have time at the moment, however. And I may need to be poked later in case I forget. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:35, 2 November 2011 (UTC))
Thanks, I will update the talk page with one or two examples as you suggest this evening and post here again. --Mirokado (talk) 12:13, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
Examples added. --Mirokado (talk) 00:22, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm afraid more will have to go too, even in the current version there is stuff from the same blog, but I can't deal with it tonight. --Mirokado (talk) 01:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm sorry. :/ Church-related articles are copyvio magnets. Just like with TV shows, people seem completely oblivious to copyright implications. I appreciate your thoroughness here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:47, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I think the article is now clean, at least as far as easily-found content from that website is concerned. If you agree, I will close that section of the talk page off, as we do for a move discussion, so it is a clear record of this issue. Clearly I leave any revdels to you, this diff covers the systematic copying the earlier phrases were minor in comparison and I suggest not hiding those. --Mirokado (talk) 00:23, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
You will also need to revdel this change: I suppose I must try harder not to be funny... --Mirokado (talk) 01:14, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
A little reminder about this (you say above you might need one...) --Mirokado (talk) 22:47, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I did. :) I don't have time to do any rev deleting right now (Thanksgiving stuff I have to attend to), but I am reminded and it is back on my mental radar. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:54, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I may not have time to do anything else on my talk page today, but I will not let this slip my radar again. :) Thank you for your patience! I've mopped up. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:29, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for sorting this out. It is of course no real pleasure to have to improve Wikipedia by removing things, but improve it we will one way or another. --Mirokado (talk) 18:52, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

Hello. You have been invited to share your views and provide consensus on the matter of coloring regarding the current-running films of List of highest-grossing Bollywood films. Please go here to add your viewpoint. Cheers. AnkitBhattWDF 14:52, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I'm afraid I'd best not give an opinion. If I have to act on the article for copyright concerns, it's better if I not become involved as an editor. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:16, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
This mattter does not regard copyrights at all. It simply regards the matter of coloring the current-running films as a way to highlight them. Your opinion is much needed, as Fae is brushing off all logical questions and absolutely insists on keeping the color out in spite of perfectly valid reasons not to do so. A neutral editor may be able to help sort issues. I also suggest that you read all the arguments previously taken place and understand what each of us is saying. An example of coloring (which you must be knowing) is for the List of highest-grossing films. Thank you. AnkitBhattWDF 17:04, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi. It's not just a matter of staying uninvolved in copyright questions. :) People are unfortunately quick to conclude bias when you intervene with their edits. I find it best in controversial issues to be able to clearly demonstrate that my involvement is purely administrative. In this case, there's a bit of a double issue in that I've already engaged as an admin in the question of coloring in film lists. This was the first RFC I closed; I can't remember at the moment where the second one is placed. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:56, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Your expertise

Hi Moonriddengirl, I was wondering if you would lend your expertise concerning potential copyvios in this thread. There are multiple issues with the photo but if it is a copyright issue then the others wouldn't be worth continuing. I'm assuming that it was a previously unpublished photo...but I may be wrong, too. Cheers,
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 15:56, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) I'm happy to take a look, although images are really not my primary area! Too many variables to keep track of. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:24, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
The conversation there seems to have wrapped up, so I'll just add here that you're right to work from the assumption (unless we know otherwise) that the photo was not published at date of creation. Unless we nail down point of publication, we have to assume that it was published as recently as last week. :) But for a photo from the mid-1840s, we should be safe. This chart offers some handy guidance on copyright expiration terms, and for unpublished photos it is life of the author + 70 years. If the photographer died in 1940 or earlier, no matter when the work was published, it is public domain. Since we don't know who the photographer was, date of death can be hard to determine, but assuming the photographer was even as young as 10 (unlikely, in those days--not exactly point and click cameras :D), he would have been born around 1835. I feel comfortable assuming he died in 1940 or earlier...probably much earlier. From a copyright perspective, we should be okay. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:51, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for the input. That puts my last concern to rest and I guess we can ignore some site disclaimers that seem to project unwarranted propriety. You've been very helpful.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 16:01, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Pune Pilot Review

Hi Moonriddengirl, I'd like to interview you for the Pune Pilot review I'm doing for WMF, if you are willing. Is December 5, Sunday afternoon/evening possible, Bay Area time? Toryread (talk) 16:22, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Have replied via email. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:21, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

RevDel request

Could you quickly RevDel the revision of Mike Dovilla at 06:06, 30 November 2011 (by Noradhunter) per RD1? It's a copyvio from here. HurricaneFan25 20:25, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

  Done Looked like "blatant copyvio" to me. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:37, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
Also, can you delete the 02:48, 26 November 2011 and 02:55, 26 November 2011 revisions of Effects of Hurricane Felix in Nicaragua? It's copyrighted text from here. HurricaneFan25 18:51, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
  Done --Mkativerata (talk) 19:01, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Royal Albanian Army

Seems to be an almost complete copyvio of Susan Cross's work at orbat.com: http://www.orbat.com/site/ww2/drleo/042_albania/Albania.htm - check the earliest revisions. If you tell me what you think should happen, I can carry out all the changes or deletion of the page myself. Kind regards and many thanks for all your work. Buckshot06 (talk) 10:34, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. :/
If this had been detected immediately, this could have been addressed under WP:CSD#G12. As it was not, using {{copyvio}} is probably the best approach. This allows time for the contributor to demonstrate, for instance, if he owns the copyright to the content. I've done the tagging and the notification. I know you said you could do it yourself, but I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving the material published, so I went ahead. :)
WP:CV101 has some basic suggestions for what to do in these kinds of situations. If you can't easily excise it, blanking is frequently the best option. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:15, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Degradation Trip

hello,

can you check if there is any copyright violation in Degradation Trip, because I don't have access to mtv.com (I don't live in USA). I don't know, maybe you live in USA; if yes, can you check for issues? Thanks.--♫GoP♫TCN 18:32, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Do you have any reason to suspect copyright violation? I don't really have time to go fishing, so to speak. :) I'd need some reason for concern. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:14, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

User:Jacobisq CCI request

Following this up: [13]. The editor in question has only edited once since then. I still am undecided on this request, but am leaning towards declining it.

Also, there's another Commons uploader that needs his uploads scrutinized. MER-C 12:25, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

With respect to User:Jacobisq, User:Penbat said he would look into it, here. We need to generate the list of articles for him, though. I'll check and see if he's still willing. I'd much prefer not to have to open a CCI. Better if it can just be quietly fixed up.
I'll trot the other fellow by Commons. If he has few enough remaining, I may just open a deletion discussion. If he doesn't, I'll hit the admin's noticeboard. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:18, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
I put it on VPC instead: Commons:Commons:Village pump/Copyright#User:Kos93. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:47, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
I am still willing although I note that User_talk:Jacobisq does imply that he will be returning but it could be a number of weeks more to wait.--Penbat (talk) 13:50, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
I ran the contribution survey; you can access it and/or move it across to en.wp at [14]. MER-C 03:06, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Oscar Griffin, Jr.

Hi-I started an article on Oscar Griffin, Jr.. He received the 1963 Pulitzer Prize. You had deleted the article because the original article was started by a banned editor. Griffin died November 23, 2011. When I started articles I like to keep them as stubs and let others expanded them. The editors who take care of the Recent Deaths section in Wikipedia removed redlinks after one month. That is the reason I started the article. I have no problems about the article being deleted but please let me know if you do delete it. Thank you-RFD (talk) 00:42, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) I have no desire to delete articles if I don't have to. The particular banned editor who created the last one is, unfortunately, a known serial violator of our copyright policies. His articles were deleted for safety on that front alone. Thank you for starting up a new article on him; I hope it thrives. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:27, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
Hi-Thank you for your comment-RFD (talk) 13:31, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Vrghs Jacob

Back again as Ravelnine. I've asked jpgordon to see if he can do a match (socks are all old, so an SPI won't get us anywhere), but I think this is close enough for a duck (same copyvios on Commons, same articles here including supporting his 59.178 IP in an edit war). Whaddyathink? —SpacemanSpiff 22:29, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I think there's some pretty strong quacking there. Wikistalk confirms areas of interest, and the copyvios are persisting. I think an SPI might be helpful just to do a sock drawer check. If this is Vrghs, he went from August to October without using the account. That's suspicious in itself. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:09, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
I'll block this one now, I'll see if jpgordon gets a chance to reply in a couple of days, if not we can file an SPI. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 19:14, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

File:RhysMorgan2.jpeg

Can you swing by File:RhysMorgan2.jpeg and the discussion at Talk:Rhys Morgan#Year of Birth and Photo and give your comments on the correct permissions needed. Thanks. Mtking (edits) 01:55, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Done. :) I'm going to try to keep an eye on the discussion, but please let me know if I seem to miss follow up. Even though I'm on Wikipedia nearly constantly, it's not usually in this account, and I can lose track of stuff. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:50, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Pinoy Big Brother: Double Up

Thank you very much for your efforts on sorting out the copyvio's on Pinoy Big Brother: Double Up.  Chzz  ►  23:20, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Those articles are always fun. :/ Hopefully I haven't missed anything, but I tried doing spot checks throughout. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Hey, look!

here.  :-) — Coren (talk) 02:08, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Yay! Excellent work, Coren! Risker (talk) 02:15, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
Whooot! More work! But less copyvios! Fabulous news. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:24, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The Hyderabadi27‎ copyvio image matter

Thanks for handling it. I know how overloaded you are, so sorry to dump that one in your lap. With text copyvios, I try to handle them without running to your department for help. But, I just don't have a lot of experience with image copyvios. So, I followed your contribs on the matter in order to learn, and I will know how to handle it next time. You are the most unsung heroine on the project I know of. Thanks so much. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:13, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. :) I'm happy to help where I can. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:09, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Lifeboat foundation/Henson article/copyright non issue.

As you probably figured out, a previous version of the article was copied out of Wikipedia and used by Lifeboat.

I think the best thing to do would be to revert the article to the Nov 4 version.

But whatever.

Best wishes,

Keith Henson (talk) 02:37, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I did figure that out. :) I put the {{backwardscopy}} on the talk page to document that. Assuming that you are the Keith Henson discussed in the article, you might want to let Lifeboat know that they cannot legally copy content from Wikipedia unless they follow the terms of the license; WP:REUSE explains how. This content is copyrighted. When cleaning copyright, I don't assess other issues, generally, although I did notice in looking at the article now that a fact in it is sourced to the Lifeboat biography. Now that we know this is a WP:CIRCULAR source, it is excluded as a reference for the article. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:23, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I am not certain the Lifeboat bio is entirely copied from the Wikipedia article. However, it was Eric Raymond (ESR) who added the bit you deleted. He may have sent it to Eric Klien at Lifeboat first. I will cc those people and see if they want to fix it. It doesn't matter to me but ESR may want that bit credited. He is picky about giving credit where due.

Keith Henson (talk) 21:59, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 December 2011

RAN discussion

Your feedback would be welcomed here. --jbmurray (talkcontribs) 01:34, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Asking question there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Holt Ashley

It Looks like you deleted Holt Ashley article. Can I create a new one? Thanks Naayar (talk) 02:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

As long as you aren't a blocked contributor coming back to edit in defiance of your ban. :) Please be sure to use your own words and presentation, citing to reliable source. The reason the article was deleted was that the contributor who made it is a serial infringer of our copyright policy who was violating his block. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:04, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Re:Copyright Academy courses

Sorry for the slow delay, I'm having my first (unpleasant) experience with a historiography, and getting the paper to look like the examples has been a royal pain in my...uh...lower back, and all associated regions in that general area :)

Anyway...

I had a read through of both the courses you penned, and I walked away with little to no confusion (sometimes we read things too fast, hence the reason to reread before moving). It is my opinion that these two courses are set for publishing, and I thank you sincerely on behalf of the Military history Project.

  The WikiChevrons
For your help in supplying vital academy courses to the Military history Project for use by both new contributors and veteran editors I hereby bestow up you the Wikichevrons. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:40, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
Thank you! I'm very happy if you find them useful. :) You guys have an awesome project, and I appreciate that you put so much time into giving guidance to your members. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:17, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Coeliac crisis

Hi. I think it may be appropriate to blank this article for now, while its author sorts out significant copyright issues. Can you point me to instructions/procedures for this. [15][16][17]. I've pointed out the problem to the editor [18] and he's made a minor change [19] but the problem seems to be more significant than I first thought and much rewriting is needed. I'm going out now and will take any advice you may offer when I'm back. Cheers! --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:32, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I have moved this article temporarily to my user space until I address the concerns expressed here, and I redirected Coeliac crisis to Coeliac disease MaenK.A.Talk 10:56, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Thank you, but we can't publish the content even in your user space if it violates copyright policies (as explained at Wikipedia:Copy-paste. I've left more information at your userpage. Anthony, I appreciate your finding the problem. :) Generally {{copyvio}} is the right way to go with issues like this one. Blanking the article with it pulls the content from publication and gives the creator a week (or more!) to address the problem. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:31, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for the information, and I ll work again on the article MaenK.A.Talk 14:42, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Please take a look at this, is this how u want me to do? just to change the phrases and words? MaenK.A.Talk 14:45, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Apologies

Sorry. I didn't intend to do that. I think it was an edit conflict problem.

128.59.171.194 (talk) 17:31, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Large-scale copyvios on Criss Angel

Hi MRG. I just detected large-scale copyvios and close paraphrasing from Cris Angel's bio on the Las Vegas Sun website. Maybe we have to blank large sections of the article. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 23:18, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Example string: Angel credits his work ethic to his father, who was a successful restaurant and doughnut shop owner. John Sarantakos, who, like Criss, was dedicated to personal fitness, died from cancer in 1998.Criss Angel with Lucky the RabbitAngel was bit by the magic bug at the age of 7 when his aunt Stella taught him a card trick. "From that day on, I was hooked," he said. "I felt this incredible sense of power that an adult didn't understand how it worked, but I did.". Dr.K. λogosπraxis 23:29, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Another from the official bio website with string: Criss has received numerous awards throughout his career. He has been named Magician of the Year an unprecedented six times including one from The Magic Castle, far more than any other magician. This spring, Criss was the youngest magician inducted into the International Magicians Society Hall of Fame and received the.... Dr.K. λogosπraxis 23:41, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks like you are well underway to cleaning this up! Sorry I didn't get by yesterday; things have been crazy with the winter holiday season and a bit of weekend working. :) I'm looking now to confirm when content entered. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:02, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Thank you MRG. No need to explain. I have to apologise for bringing this stuff to your attention exclusively but I find working with you is both pleasant and stress-free. So I have a tendency to repeat the pattern, even though I know how busy you are. To my defence, I hope at least, I don't do this often. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 17:38, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
You are welcome to come by. :) I'm always glad to help with this kind of work, and you do not do it too often by any means. :D I do appreciate your patience, though, when I'm not as accessible as I want to be! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:42, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Thank you MRG. As far as me being patient, I like to think about it more along the lines of being reasonable. Noone should reasonably expect instant responses from anyone, let alone a busy volunteer such as yourself, especially in labour-intensive matters like copyvios. So please don't feel any pressure when you see any of my requests. :) Dr.K. λogosπraxis 17:52, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Huh. Looks a bit like some COI editing in that article from a couple of named accounts: [20], [21]. I need to look into the picture the latter account uploaded. And check to see if his edits to the other articles in his contrib log are neutral. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:20, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Good find. When you see adjectives like "coveted" you know it is a clear indication of promo-talk, locally known as WP:SPAM. Thank you again for your help. Best wishes to you during this holiday season. Take care. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 17:38, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Consensus

Hello there. This notice is being sent to inform you that there is currently a consensus discussion going on here. It will be greatly appreciated if you could participate in this debate, as you have worked on this article before and are familiar with its working and history. Thank you. AnkitBhattWDF 08:47, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry. :/ I still believe that I need to remain WP:UNINVOLVED. Once BOI releases their estimates (if they ever do!) I can take part in editorial decisions related to that page, but in the meantime I just watch over it for copyright concerns. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:58, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2011 December 11

Can you have a look at the three copyright Helmet pictures I have nominated at Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2011 December 11 (File:LSU Helmet.png, File:Michigan Wolverines football helmet.gif and File:Texas Football.png) I believe that the use of the pictures taken from a copyright website (http://nationalchamps.net/Helmet_Project) cant be justified under Fair Use as only part of the image represents the logo and that a free version could be taken at any game and then a FUR could be made for the logo part of that free use picture. I would appreciate your thoughts on this. Mtking (edits) 05:30, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I would also like to know what you think of File:BaylorHelmet.gif, the logo element is clearly not copyrightable, and there is no indication that the source website licences the use of the images. Mtking (edits) 05:46, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
FYI, there is a discussion regarding the candor of Mtking's deletions at WikiProject College Football and another on a user's talk page. It appears they were nominated to prove a point. By his logic, any football uniform, logo, or helmet could be deleted. You would agree that this is illogical, no? Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 05:56, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
I repeat that they were not nominated to prove a point, I have nominated others before without issue. I am not saying that any football uniform, logo, or helmet could be deleted but any football uniform, or helmet image that is not free use should be deleted as it is clearly replaceable by one that is free use. Mtking (edits) 06:02, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Oh, dear. This one has already gotten a little messy. :(
I've posted a question at the FFDs, but I need ask you, Purpleback, to modify your comments here as they are a bit of a problem under WP:CANVASS. It seems like a partisan audience and is certainly a biased message, asking them to vote in a specific way at the FFD. It's concerning that Tony did just that; he may have done it on his own if not prompted, but we'll never know. I'm sure it was just the heat of the moment (seeing stuff nominated for deletion when you disagree with the rationales can be concerning) but better to remove that than taint the discussion with canvassing concerns. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:55, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, but no. It's not canvassing, as it is piggybacking on an existing discussion that I did not start; and it's perfectly acceptable to notify related WikiProjects when files in their purview are nominated for deletion. In fact, Mtking should have done it when he nominated the pages in the first place. TonyTheTiger expressly asked for other's opinions on what should be done; my response was that I viewed the discussion as disruptive and worthy of immediate closure as keep. The case that what I did is canvassing is weak at best. I'm not seeing how attempting to halt a clearly POINT/disruptive discussion is particularly a bad thing in any respect Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 20:20, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
When you are telling people how to vote in a deletion debate, I'm afraid that to an uninvolved person it looks like canvassing. I don't believe that speedy keep is going to be an option, now that there is a "delete" opinion. It's important, though, that people arrive at their own opinions in deletion discussions so that we get a true reading of consensus. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:23, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

in good time

Clerks or admins opening investigation pages are requested to keep an eye on them to ensure that they are handled in good time. Please do.S711 (talk) 20:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Have you looked at the CCI list? I'm afraid there's quite a backlog. We've had some open for over two years. Yours may not be completed for quite some time. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:15, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
You have not done anything about it at all, as far as I can see. What is the point of opening an investigation, when there will be no real investigation, at least not for some years? Very strange.S711 (talk) 19:20, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
The point is that we know that you have violated the site's copyright policies and this is something that will eventually need to be checked. Sooner or later, somebody will have time to check your articles to make sure that they are your own work. If we do not have a list of the issue anywhere, we run the risk of redundant labor if anybody else finds one of your articles that violates policy. If you'd like to rally people to help out at CCI, that would be great. Anyone without a history of copyright issues is welcome to help out. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:12, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
It is the responsability of the clerks or administrators who started the investigation pages to take care that they are handled in good time. You started the investigation, so take that responsability.S711 (talk) 23:15, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Your CCI will be handled eventually. If you want to propose some kind of time limit or responsible agency on these, you may wish to take it up at WP:VPR. There is currently nothing to indicate that it is my responsibility to take care that this will be handled in "good time", even if there were some definition of what "good time" means when dealing with cleanup of multiple copyright violations. I'll be surprised if the community wants to give articles some kind of amnesty just because there aren't enough volunteers to clean up behind people who violate copyright policies. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:46, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
I'll go one further and note that if we ever did manage to define "good time" and find that a CCI is taking too long to work through, the correct response would then be to simply blanket delete every article that was contributed to. This is obviously an undesirable outcome – we'd much rather salvage everything we can – hence the desire to keep the matter open until we do have time to work through it. — Coren (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

David Coulthard article

A couple of days ago I noticed what looked like a significant copyright issue at David Coulthard which appeared to have been introduced initially with this edit in 2004.

I've put some time in to rewriting significant chunks of the article [22]. Before I remove the relevant templates from the page, I would appreciate an uninvolved third party having a look at the current version. Would you have the time to look or could you point me in the right direction?

Thank you. Longwayround (talk) 14:09, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I'll be happy to take a look! I don't have time right now (I'm passing through), but will be very happy to pop in I hope later today, unless a talk page stalker gets there first. Thank you very much for working on fixing the problem! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:02, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Didn't work

You missed all the autoblocks on User:Alarbus (see User talk:Alarbus#December 2011) I've cleared them now. :) Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:30, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. :) That's a tool I don't use very often. I was just reading up on how. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:32, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
It's no problem. That tool tends to be one I use a lot! Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:18, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Overzealous Duplication Detector?

I'm puzzled by this action, evidently based on this report. The "matched phrases" seem trivial and certainly are not cause for deletion. Is there something more? LeadSongDog come howl! 17:54, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Duplication detector does not work on content that has been blanked. :) Did you look at his talk page? User talk:Madhero88#Copyright problems may clarify. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:00, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, that clears it up. Still find that DD match a bit worrisome, though. Surely it should ignore trivial words (articles, e.g.) when making its match. That would make close paraphrasing less likely to escape detection, wouldn't it? LeadSongDog come howl! 19:38, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm hesitant to respond definitely, but confident that if I say it wrong, I will be quickly corrected :)
My impression is that Duplication Detector is intentionally mindless, and the existence of a "hit" is not proof of a problem, but simply a report on how many matches are found and how long. I assume that a DD report has to be reviewed by a human; when I review one, I concentrate on the longer phrases, and pay less attention to the later entires which may literally be a word or two.
I think this is in contrast to CorenSearch Bot, which still shouldn't be used mindlessly, but is intended to report only if there's an indication of a problem, and is tweaked on occasion to help reduce false positives.
For example, in the revised DD I'm not concerned about seeing "of this condition" in both places, but finding "patients in whom initial labs are available had either high titer iga ttg or iga deficiency suggesting that standard diagnostic testing is adequate for initial evaluation of celiac crisis in acutely ill individuals additionally in all patients small intestinal biopsy revealed marked villous atrophy and given the prolonged time to recovery of many of these patients data from the initial biopsy was clinically valuable" in both places is quite telling.--SPhilbrickT 21:53, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
CSBot uses a completely different scheme, which shouldn't be seen as less mindless so much as orthogonal to tools like DD. My bot estimates "amount of work to change X into Y" ignoring "noise" words; this makes it more robust against minor rearranging of words and sentences, and it's a bit smarter about looking at the whole text rather than independent fragments, but that's at the cost of making it more likely to think that two independently written texts about the same thing "look" like each other.

Both tools require human judgement to be useful, in the end. — Coren (talk) 00:26, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I would agree with this. I approached User:Dcoetzee about this tool primarily because we get articles at CP that list sources with no indication of where in the source the problem is. Once there was a 60 page pdf listed; it took me an hour to scan that document just to find the copied content. Duplication detector was intended originally to help me find the problem by highlighting the duplicated text. It is a massive time-saver at CP. I wasn't even thinking about its usefulness in helping us identify the kind of problems when I requested it, but it's pretty useful for that. When "dup det" shows us, say, a run of 150 words have been copied, I know we have one kind of copyright issue. If there are 150 sentence fragments, we have another kind. The former case is a traditional cut & paste violation, while the latter suggests misunderstanding of close paraphrasing requirements. (And we always have to look at the kinds of words being copied. 150 instances of "and if" duplicated wouldn't necessarily indicate a copyright problem. :) I routinely mark duplication detector to evaluate 4 word runs and up. I seldom go with the default of 2.) Once duplication detector has done its work, we have to find the problem areas and evaluate the text in both the original and the Wikipedia article. This helps us figure out if the tool is missing something that human evaluation can detect. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:30, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, in detection theory the probability of false alarms hinges upon the signal to noise ratio upon which it trips. Good detection system designs minimize systemic interference. In this case, where the human is the detector, the signal being detected is masked by much unnecessary noise. The example linked above as "revised DD" shows a huge number of matches on citations, which can only serve to mask signal: the human is forced to examine each citation reported in order to tell if it is a problem or not. This is at best an unnecessary workload. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:57, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
The intention of the design of the Duplication Detector report is that the longest matches are listed first, so that the most serious potential problems are examined first. If there are no serious problems, this should be evident at a glance, and consideration of every listed match is unnecessary. The total number of matches is generally unrelated to the amount of actual copyright violation and shouldn't be interpreted as a metric. False positives like quotations/citations are not excluded because it's intended to exhaustively list all possible copied phrases that need to be checked, with the human user doing the filtering, rather than risk missing anything. Fuzzy checking for close paraphrasing is an important feature that hasn't been implemented. Dcoetzee 17:18, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
I get that it's simpler to implement this way, but it is far too demanding of the user's diligence, especially under the present onslaught of copyvio material. Matches on compound proper nouns, for instance "India Law Journal" or "New England Journal of Medicine", should count as a single word, not three. Matches of text inside ref tags should likely be segregated from the others, too. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:09, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
What you are asking for is simply not technically feasible. CSBot's algorithm is not nearly sophisticated enough for such intelligence, and it already is extremely computationally expensive to perform. What you are asking requires semantic analysis of the sort that will likely never exist until the general AI problem is solved.
That said, I really don't understand where you see a problem here. We have a number of tools to help find similarities and offer them for perusal and analysis by humans. The alternative is "google it yourself and visually find similarities", which is considerably more demanding on the users' time and effort. — Coren (talk) 18:59, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
Exactly, as a fairly regular reviewer of the reports, I have no trouble observing that a match on "New England Journal of Medicine" is not the same as a match on some other five word phrase. While it may be technologically feasible to identify such phrases, it would be quite a project, and would save little. CSB and DD help a user determine in seconds what needs to be reviewed. The actual review, assessment and actions takes considerably longer. If someone can cut three seconds to one, I won't stand in their way, but it isn't the critical path in copyvio issues.--SPhilbrickT 19:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
Some of these things, like excluding text inside ref tags, could be easily implemented if they were useful enough (although it operates on the HTML version, not the wikitext, but refs should still be evident). Dcoetzee 20:53, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
I'll defer to the regular users, then. LeadSongDog come howl! 07:44, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 December 2011

Request to remove copyvio tag

Hi! I have rewritten large parts of the article that were suspected of copyvio and have requested that they be checked, and if appropriate, the tag removed. Thanks. Tinpisa (talk) 10:09, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) I'm afraid that this has become very complicated now. There is a reason that the tag placed on the article advises the following:
Simply modifying copyrighted text is not sufficient to avoid copyright infringement—if the original copyright violation cannot be cleanly removed or the article reverted to a prior version, it is best to write the article from scratch. (See Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing.)
Writing from scratch means starting over. Incrementally modifying a copyrighted work creates a derivative work, and at a glance I am concerned that this is what you may have inadvertently done. For instance, I see the following sentence in one of the sources:
The evidence of G.T. Hamilton Harding, senior superintendent of police, took the court by surprise as he said that he had filed the FIR against the accused under the instructions of the chief secretary to the government of Punjab and he did not know the facts of the case.
When you placed this into the article, here, it read as follows:
The evidence of G.T. Hamilton Harding, senior superintendent of police, took the court by surprise, as he said that he had filed the FIR against the accused under the instructions of the chief secretary to the government of Punjab and he did not know the facts of the case.
Now it says:
The evidence of G.T.H. Hamilton Harding, the Lahore superintendent of police, shocked the court, when he stated that he had filed the First Information Report against the accused under specific orders from the chief secretary (D.J. Boyd[79]) to the governor of Punjab (Sir Geoffrey Montmorency[79]) and that he was unaware of the details of the case.
As you can see, you are still using the structure of the original.
I need to look more deeply into this to determine how extensive such issues actually may be. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
I've put more information at your talk page. I would request that you put more time into this for reasons explained there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your quick response and help at guiding me. I shall try to rewrite the article completely as suggested by you. Do I have some time to do this, or would you be blanking the article immediately? I would also earnestly request you to also write an email to India Law Journal requesting for permission to reproduce parts of their article as an intermediate step. Thanks once again. Tinpisa (talk) 14:14, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
The issue is broader than just that one section. The phrase "Singh had surrendered the pistol himself when he asked the police to arrest him" is closely paraphrased from the source too. I'd urge Tinpisa to read wp:Close paraphrasing. A release from the journal isn't needed, what is needed is a clean rewrite. To be safe, just keep the list of references and build the text fresh. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:00, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
I have re-written a few paragraphs. Could you please take a minute to see if I'm on the right track? Does the article look better now? Thanks for your patience. Tinpisa (talk) 19:33, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
It seems you've missed the point. Don't try to save the old text, start fresh. Shuffling a few words at this point can't save the article from being a derivative work. Take a chainsaw to it. I'd suggest you turn the article into just a list of refs with zero text. You should be ok to keep the infobox. Then for each ref, decide what it talks about that belongs in the article. Reduce those to succinct bullets with cited sources. Decide on a logical structure for the article de novo. Sequence your bullets to fit that structure. Trim what doesn't belong. Then start writing new text, being careful not to use the sources' wording. LeadSongDog come howl! 05:05, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with this advice, Tinpisa. You're still making incremental changes. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:38, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Copyright question

Would you mind taking a look at the conversation here and making a statement? Ryan Vesey Review me! 22:26, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry! I don't know how I overlooked this! It's an image issue, which is not my major area, but I'll see if I can offer any input. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:39, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the comment. It looks like the image will be deleted after the orphaned fair use delayed deletion tag expires otherwise I'll keep an eye on it. Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

dear TPS

Sorry to use your own talk here MRG, but you're the "go to" person regarding copyright stuff.

brought about by
page in question
editor
quick recap
  • the editor (who for the moment I'll assume is the actual person here) wrote an auto-bio at: this site, and would like to contribute information to the article. there has been some discussion at both his talk (and a mention of it at my talk). I'm looking for the best way to proceed here as it doesn't appear to be some attempt at self-promotion as much as documenting background and facts about the person. Any help is appreciated. TY — Ched :  ?  17:34, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
Notes at his talk page and yours. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Awwww ... Thank you so much MRG .. you are such a da-gum sweet person. :-) ... I honestly don't know where you find the time to do all that you do here. — Ched :  ?  19:01, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
    • I'm convinced that she never eats, sleeps, or moves. But that's just me. ;-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Little Arthur Duncan

Hello again. I was considering creating a new article for this blues musician. However, I noticed the following message as I opened the page.

13:52, 9 January 2008 Moonriddengirl (talk | contribs) deleted "Little Arthur Duncan" ‎ (CSD G12: Blatant Copyright infringement)

Can I ask you if it is alright for me to proceed ? Regards, Derek R Bullamore (talk) 18:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) It appears there was previous page by the same name that contained text copied, no doubt verbatim, from a copyright source, such as this one and it was deleted for that reason. If your new page avoids that problem you can certainly start the page again, or you could make a user subpage such as User:Derek R Bullamore/Little Arthur Duncan, start it there and ask for it to be reviewed before putting it into mainspace. Good luck. ww2censor (talk) 18:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Well, it's now available for dissection at Little Arthur Duncan, if anyone so wishes. Thank you - Derek R Bullamore (talk) 01:36, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Hi, Derek. :) ww2censor is spot on about why it was deleted. Since I'm always a little conservative with G12s, the fact that I used that rather than running it through WP:CP means it must have been a blatant paste. (In this case, it was copied word-for-word and nothing else from [23]). I'm always happy to see people create new articles to replace ones we had to use for copyright problems. Thanks for doing it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:25, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Discussion on linking to streamed copies of albums

Wikipedia policy allows us to link to legal streamed copies of albums. It would be useful to draw up a guideline on how and when to link to such albums; however, there is concern that it may not be appropriate as the music would not be available in all parts of the world. Is the benefit of having access to the music for most users outweighed by the fact that some users will follow a link to find the music is not playable in their region? Your view would be helpful at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums. SilkTork ✔Tea time 02:25, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Interesting! There! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:22, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

RAN: Revisiting Topic Ban

Moonriddengirl, please see this discussion. Your contribution is invited. --jbmurray (talkcontribs) 08:31, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

There. Thank you. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:16, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Moonriddengirl. You participated in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive228#Richard Arthur Norton copyright violations, in which a one-month topic ban on creating new articles and making page moves was imposed on Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk · contribs). The closing admin has asked for community input about whether to remove the topic ban or make it indefinite at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Richard Arthur Norton: Revisiting topic ban; Should it be removed or made indefinite?. Cunard (talk) 08:49, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

How is this not copyvio?

The editor adding this material [24] insists it is not copyvio, although some of it is copy and paste from [25], ie "During the exploration, which is still in course, many peaces of ceramic articles for everyday use along with a certain number of metal objects have been found, which have all helped to date the settlement in the period of the early Bronz Age, between 1000 and 1200 B.C." is from the website (which is also not a reliable source, although that's another issue). All s/he's done is changed 1000 to 1800 because s/he disagrees with the date. I presume it's the same editor as 78.2.110.200 (talk · contribs). Have I missed something? I suspect it may all be copyvio as the editor won't provide a source although I asked them to. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 14:27, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The user may not understand copyright issues or may be the author of the original text. Either way, it's a violation of our copyright policies. The other information has no source. I've removed it again. I would recommend you consider protecting if it continues, since it's a changing IP. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:41, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Ok, thanks, just wanted to make sure I hadn't overlooked something given the editor's insistence it wasn't copyvio. Dougweller (talk) 15:06, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Believe it or not, I had an editor tell me today that they weren't violating copyright because they found some images using Google.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:50, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Some baklava for you!

  This is the sugar on top of my pretty please. Drmies (talk) 01:21, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Two problems (general and specific)

General: I thought about adding my specific concern to Wikipedia:Copyright problems, but that page is NOT FRIENDLY. I clicked on "report to today's section" and was overwhelmed by scary wikicode. I could probably figure it out, but if a page looks scary to me, it will chase away n00bs like there is no tomorrow. You (or interested page watchers) may want to do something about it - currently, this page does not encourage people to list problems, by being way to complicated.

Specific: Anyway, I was doing a GA review, and I noticed that copyvio instances listed earlier on its talk page were still present: Talk:What_Work_Is#copied_from_amazon.com and the one below. I do not feel I need to investigate if there are more till those two are fixed (speaking with my GAN reviewer hat on), but it may be of interest to copyvio folks, and frankly I am not sure what needs to be tagged onto the main article. Do we need a big black scary one? Note this is an educational assignment. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:06, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with you entirely about your general comment. It took me a while to figure it out and I used to hand code websites for a hobby. I'm still unsure whether I did the right thing with the David Coulthard article, despite believing that I was following the guidelines. Longwayround (talk) 23:55, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
I will look into this one a bit later when I have more time, but the CP page is not really created for text inquiries; it's meant to host templated notices. I kind of wonder if the instructions here would be better altered to reflect that; the text you're meant to put on that page is generated by the template you use to blank the article. :/ I'm not sure how it could be made friendlier overall. The way listings are left hasn't changed much, but I'm sure I've gotten quite used to it over the years. Would you find a set-up like Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files easier? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:45, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Allowable length of quotes in footnotes

I'm wrestling with some issues, particularity the allowable length of quotes in footnotes. I posed my question at Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#.22brief_verbatim_textual_excerpts.22_revisited. I hope you will get a chance to weigh in.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:47, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Weighed in. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:45, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

CCI update

I'm unsure what to do with the CCI request regarding User:Wikiwatcher1. Although the nomination is flawed (scanning PD images from copyrighted books is generally OK and the bit about the website is irrelevant if the images are PD) it does have valid points especially relating to the (too) brief upload documentation and successful deletion requests. As such, please give a second opinion on this matter. Thanks. (It appears to be a drive-by request.)

As for User:Kos93, your post on commons:Commons:Village pump/Copyright has been totally ignored... sigh. MER-C 08:14, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll come by and take a look at the CCI later on today, I hope. As to the Commons request, I'm not entirely sure what to do about that one. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:23, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

OTRS request

I'm once again trying to clear out the copypaste backlog and need someone to take a look at an OTRS ticket for me. I posted to the OTRS noticeboard a couple of days ago but to date had no response. Could you or a friendly talk page stalker take a look for me. Dpmuk (talk) 18:31, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Replied there and have written to the owner. Can you blank the content pending verification? Hopefully it won't take long. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:00, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Done. I've also left a note on the original uploaders page although as they haven't edited in so long I doubt it will help. Have blanked the entire article as so much of it was introduced in that one edit. Can't find a source for all of it, but I haven't looked too hard as hopefully it will soon become moot. Dpmuk (talk) 19:22, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Request for revdelete

I wish I could come to you with good news for once (fingers crossed). Could you do do a rev delete on HMS Imogen (D44) from this revision through this one? All revisions appear to be copyvios, or at least the information was removed as such. Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:10, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :D After comparing the source to the article, I see enough close paraphrasing to concern me about inadvertent restoration. Have rev deleted. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:37, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
  • In the current revision? Uh oh... Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:42, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
  • No, the current revision looks fine. :) I checked the historical version. I don't rev delete unless I myself see the issue or we're dealing with a CCI. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:45, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Oh, okay. *phew*. I was worried Nikkimara would have a fit if the article reached the DYK queue and had paraphrasing issues. Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:49, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Well, I didn't review it that closely. :) But it looks like User:Sturmvogel 66 did the rewrite, and I'd be seriously surprised to find issues. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:55, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
  • As would I... as would I. As he dumped everything when he saw it was a copyvio, I doubt he reused anything. Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:58, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Little guidence for some one in need

Hi Moon, I wish to create a wikipedia page because I'm intending to float the company I founded, people are asking about my heritage and have created a sand box and saved its contents at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit

My Wikipedia title is Mark Wheeler Singapore and e-mail address is mark.wheeler@mwgroup.com.sg

Unfortunately I cannot find it on the web thereafter

The content is:

Mark Wheeler was born 10th January 1964 at Bury St Edmunds, England, Great Britain, graduated from Glyndŵr University (formly Aston Technical college), Wrexham with a National Diploma in Technology Engineering, Professional Engineering Practice Certificate from Leeds University and Master in Operational Research from Sheffield Hallam University. Embarked on Subsea Offshore Diving career (whilst a reservist with Royal Welch Fusiliers, High Town Barracks, Wrexham) and trained at Fort William, Fort Bovisand and Sandnes Norway qualifying as a North Sea Saturation Diver, mentored by former "HMS Edinburgh" and "Uncle John" saturation diving teams personnel. Undertook worldwide Sub Sea operations, from (NDT) inspection to construction with offshore contractors Oceaneering, Comex and Rockwater throughout North Sea, West Africa, Middle East, and Far East for major Oil and Gas companies such as Shell, Total and Statoil. Thereafter started MW Group (Measurement Worldwide Group) and it's services were recognised by the US Department of Navy under NAVSEA, Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC). Mark Wheeler's entrepreneurial abilities were recognised by HRH Prince Andrew for Defence Awards, Winner of the British Chamber of Commerce Small Medium Enterprise (SME) Awards and nominated Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year. Mark Wheeler Singapore (talk) 07:37, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Hi Mark! First of all, have a look at your talk page - there is a "welcome" message that gives you a broad overview of what Wikipedia is about. The test you made to the Sandbox is here. It disappeared simply because other people used it to experiment after you did.
OK, now to the main part of your question. There are a lot of problems with what you propose. First of all, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, and to qualify for inclusion an individual article's topic (in this case you and/or your company) must be notable. In general this means the topic must have received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. If your company is yet to be floated, it is unlikely that it would be considered "notable".
There are also a number of problems with writing an article about yourself. You will get plenty of "help", whether you want it or not, from other Wikipedians if you do so. If an article about yourself doesn't pass Wikipedia's guidelines, it will very quickly disappear.
Using Wikipedia to publicise yourself or your company is not acceptable, nor is using Wikipedia to host information. Unfortunately, it would seem to me that the best place to have information about your background is on your company's website.
So, in short, Wikipedia doesn't appear to be the place for information about you. What you might be more interested in is helping with articles about things you have expertise in (remembering that Wikipedia reports pre-existing knowledge). It's good fun, and you get to correspond with the nicest people (like Moony). Worth thinking about!
--Shirt58 (talk) 09:01, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, Shirt58, for your excellent advice. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:19, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
No problem. I just hope I haven't chased off someone with expertise in specialised fields who could make good contributions to the project. (On the other hand, I wish I had kept track of how long it took me to write that. Sound business advice like that can set you back $ 290 an hour, charged in 6 minute blocks...)--Shirt58 (talk) 08:59, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
LOL! I almost missed this up here. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:33, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Article deleted as a copyright infringement

Hi there, Moonriddengirl. At first let me congratulate you with the upcoming Christmas. My name is George, and I've been indefinitely blocked by your decision in April this year. I do not contest this decision, but I do ask you to reconsider another decision you have made, particularly on the article In the name of John. You've deleted it on May 10, with the following rationale: “Listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems for over seven days: unaddressed CCI; no rewrite proposed”. In fact it was written from a to z without any written sources, cause I haven't found one. I've used only stories that I've been told and interviews I've made with eyewitnesses (or earwitnesses, if more precisely). As long as I know, this is not the subject of copyright protection. Thus, I'd like you to restore this article to the Wikipedia's mainspace. Thanks. — George Serdechny. 11:59, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I cannot take your word for it. I appreciate that you may have meant well with your contributions, but you violated our copyright policies in a number of articles. Assuming good intentions, it may be that you do not fully understand our policies or the US copyright laws that govern us. For instance, the lyrics themselves cannot be included - nor a translation of them - without verification that they are under no copyright.
That said, if you did in fact rely on stories you've been told and interviews you've made, the content would not have been appropriate for Wikipedia anyway, as it contravenes our "no original research" policy. As that policy explains, "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article about it. If you discover something new, Wikipedia is not the place to premiere such a discovery." While I do not usually email copies of articles deleted for copyright problems, there is no identified source for this one (other than the lyrics), and I'd be happy to email you a copy of the article if you'd like that you may consider for publication at a venue that does welcome original research. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:16, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Well, actually it's me who cannot take your word for granted. This is not the only one article, which was deleted on the groundless accusations of copyvio. But since I was forcibly silenced by being blocked indefinitely, I just can't prove otherwise, and since it was you who blocked me, it's up to you to deal with it. When you're taking some responsibilities, i.e. adminship, you should be ready enough to deal with possible consequences of your decisions. Besides of that, have you ever heard about the presumption of authorship? Never? 99,5% of wikipedia editors never heard about it, so you're not alone. Never mind. Forget it, just scratch it. But anyway you can not just say that due "no original research" policy you leave the matters as they are now. At first you restore the article, then start standart deletion procedure per OR, and then, me or somebody else will be given a chance to edit the article and save it, if of course it realy needs any edits to be saved. — George Serdechny 18:07, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm leaving matters as they are based on Wikipedia:Copyright violations, not WP:NOR. I'm simply explaining why the content would likely not be appropriate for inclusion if no copyright issues existed. If you wish to be unblocked, you need to appeal your block at your talk page through proper processes. I explained how and what you needed to do at the time I blocked you: here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:47, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Copyright violations doesn't state that matters should be left still, so if you want to continue current status quo find more decent explanation. And as for me, I don't wish to be unblocked, I just want you to do your job and do it willingly, not reluctantly, 'cause you're the admin, not me. — George Serdechny 09:07, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
It says " If contributors have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation, it may be assumed without further evidence that all of their major contributions are copyright violations, and they may be removed indiscriminately." It is, unfortunately, necessary to assume that your contributions are copyright violations. I will not be undeleting the article, and, to avoid repetition, I may not respond further unless there is something substantial for me to respond to. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:32, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

HELP! MRG PLEASE!

Hey Moonriddengirl, the Lady and I have a question for you at Talk:The Young Men's Magazine. Can you please have a look? I'll paste some baklava below to sweeten the deal. Also, a child in the womb benefits from hearing the "other" parent--where have you been these last few months? Drmies (talk) 01:19, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I have replied. :) Hopefully you will not take my baklava away! In terms of the unborn, absentee parenting can give powerful incentives to excel! I'll be the one it is trying to impress. -Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:30, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Left you a follow-up, mom. Drmies (talk) 04:31, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Mark Kopytman, or the chicken and the egg...

This one's a bit beyond me. The text is from his page, which currently bears a CC licence. It's also at http://www.bmop.org/explore-bmop/musicians/mark-kopytman which doesn't. I deleted it as a copyvio, then checked further and they have licensed it. Question is, which page came first? Or, if they supplied the text to bmop, does it matter? As to his notability, I've not heard of him, but BBC Radio 3 doesn't play everything in the classical and modern classical area (I wish they'd play a damn sight less Bach...). Peridon (talk) 20:05, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I have the same problem with my station! Looking at the history..... --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:41, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
I think we can assume that the official site came first. It bears a copyright notice from 2005 and asserts "136106 page views since Saturday 02 April, 2005". I've been able to confirm via wayback that the page existed as least as early as July 2006. (The license statement is not in any of the archives; I would bet it was recently added in response to these copyright concerns.) The BMOP page seems very likely to have been created to support a November 2008 performance at the local Sanders Theater, but could have been even later. The page is not archived by Wayback, unfortunately. The site itself has existed for quite some time, but their website *seems* to have undergone some major revamping recently. I'd be inclined to drop {{dual}} at the bottom of the page and consider the copyright issue resolved. Notability is an entirely different question. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:52, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. I get confused in some of these copyright things, but I am learning... Peridon (talk) 19:30, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
Can't even get that template or the {{text release}} one to work. Can't see how to get the URL in. Grrrr..... Peridon (talk) 19:43, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

It's slightly weird, what with all that "sourcepath", etc. I did it. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:58, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again. Peridon (talk) 20:20, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Metropolitan State College of Denver

I'm just trying to help out a school that has helped me. It would be great if you helped me cite sources rather than accuse me of plagiarism. --JLAmidei (talk) 04:26, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi JLAmidei. The problem is, even if you had provided the source(s) for the text you copied, it would still be a copyright infringement. The pages of the college website are all clearly marked:
© Metropolitan State College of Denver.
In fact, text from any website which does not explicitly display a compatible license for re-use of its material (or has sent written confirmation of permission) cannot be used on Wikipedia, apart from very brief, clearly marked quotes, and even then only in very specific cases. (See Wikipedia:Non-free content for more about this.) That's why it's important to read all the linked guidance pages in the notice on your talk page. Another problem is that material written for official websites and publicity material for events etc. is almost invariably promotional in tone and needs to be re-written in neutral, encyclopedic style. If you'd like some help expanding the article and suggestions for how to go about it, check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 07:03, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for answering my questions. I didn't know what was going on. I was only trying to help improve the school's Wikipedia page(s). --JLAmidei (talk) 10:31, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
Don't worry, it's a mistake that lots of new editors make. Unlike most internet sites, Wikipedia has very stringent copyright rules to protect its legal position. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 10:44, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, Voceditenore, for explaining in my absence. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:20, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Protected page of National University of Advanced Legal Studies, request for adding some more info.

In the protected page of National University of Advanced Legal Studies, on the right side, in the box, can this information be added, please?

  • address – KINFRA Hi-Tech Park, HMT Colony P.O., Kalamassery, PIN 683 503.
  • phone – +91-484-2555990, 2555991.
  • fax – +91-484-2555992."

I tried doing it and did save my edit, but found it to be a protected page after that and hence this request. --anielnair (talk) 10:36, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) The page is not protected; you have successfully edited it several times. The reason why that material will not show up in the infobox is because the infobox is not coded to allow that information. If you think it should be, I would recommend bringing it up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities. The template would have to be changed for it to work, and the community would need to agree first that the change is a good idea. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:18, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

WHY YOU DELETE EXAMSGURU PAGE

WHY YOU DELETE EXAMSGURU PAGE THEY HAVE PROPER REFERENCE, AND WHY NOT YOU DELETE THIS PAGES http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studyplaces I WILL SEND A LEGAL NOTICE TO YOU AND WIKIPEDIA — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.113.95.20 (talk) 12:15, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I deleted Examsguru page because the community agreed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Examsguru that it did not substantiate that it met the notability guidelines for organizations with independent, reliable sources. Press releases do not count. I did not delete Studyplaces because there was no community discussion on it. (See WP:OTHERSTUFF.) If you think that Studyplaces does not meet inclusion guidelines, see Wikipedia:Deletion process for your next steps. If you think the community did not agree that it didn't meet the notability guidelines, or if you have substantial new information (such as additional sources that are not press releases or associated with the organization) see Wikipedia:Deletion review. In terms of your legal notice, see Wikipedia:No legal threats. You cannot issue legal threats here. You must work within community processes or deal with your concerns outside of Wikipedia. Beyond that, there is no legal requirement that Wikipedia publish any article. As a private website, we are free to set our own inclusion criteria and enforce them. You are far more likely to succeed if you can demonstrate why the article should be published. The only arguments for publication at the deletion debate failed to explain how sources like these press releases are usable in accordance with our site's policies: [26], [27]. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:16, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Javier Vargas

I just somewhat randomly came across this article. I suspect it may be a copy and paste exercise from various sources for purely promotional reasons. But, I've been wrong before ! When you have the time to have a peek. Thanks,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 22:26, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) The detect duplicator report is pretty bad. Actually this comparison with his website biography is even worse. I just don't time to ww2censor (talk) 06:23, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
(another talk page stalker). It was verbatim. I've reduced it to a viable stub and referenced it. He is a notable musician (most of the reliable sources (newspapers, etc.) are in Spanish). Someone can build it back up in the future, but not me ;-). Voceditenore (talk) 10:12, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
Note to MRG: This might need revdel, given the huge size of the verbatim chunk. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 10:22, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  Done (yet another tps) I revdel'd all versions prior to the recent stubification. I'm still newish at revdel, so don't hesitate to double-check my work.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 23:43, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Seeking your opinion on the quoting a full poem

There is a difference of opinion here on the quoting of a poem by Marion Angus, who died in 1946. What is the likely relevant period covering the admissibility of this? AllyD (talk) 19:37, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I've removed the peom again, primarily bacause we need to err on the sie of caution when it comes to copyright. Although, bizzarly, I do not have too much experience of UK copyrights I also believe that this is still in copyright. If the author died in 1946 then the work would have still been in copyright for the whole of 1995 (under pma + 50 years) and so would have automatically been extended to pma + 70 (i.e. to 2016) under the new regulations then introduced. Consquently I believe this text is still under copyright in the UK. Additionally as it would have still been under UK copyright on 1 January 1996 then I believe it will be copyrighted in the US as well. Dpmuk (talk) 00:18, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Agree in all accords. If it's not PD in the US we can't use it. I've removed it and explained to the contributor. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:17, 20 December 2011 (UTC)