RArt94

Good Morning RArt.
I have been editing American sculpture articles for a while and was interested to note your recent edits in many of them. I am particularly enjoying your images,(discussing art without showing it is no fun) though much of your text is well written too. You might have noticed that I've removed most (all?) mentions of auctions and we can talk about this if you wish. When I post this the color of your talk label will change from red to blue. If you add something, anything, to your talk page then the same metamorphism will occur there. There is ( opinion ) some stigma attached to edits made by editors in red, so putting something on your user page seems like a good idea to me. Anyway, welcome to our little American Sculpture group. Carptrash (talk) 15:05, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

• Response to Carptrash: Thanks for your message(talk?). It was enlightening and helpful so be assured that it really was appreciated (especially since I'm pretty new to the Wikipedia experience).

I'm really unclear as to which of my edits you changed. I won't presume to be absolutely certain of your aversion to my mention of auction, but I have some ideas and in order for me to get a better handle on the situation, I'd need an example or two of what you changed. And then I'd definitely like to talk to you about why you decided the changes were necessary because I think we'd both like to continue contributing to Wikipedia and I also believe we have similar souls and intentions which leads me to believe that we'd best serve one another and the Wiki community if we work together to make edits and entries palatable to as many readers as possible. Again, many thanks. RArt94 (talk) 05:05, 27 July 2009 (UTC)RArt94

Conversations at wikipedia can happen a couple of ways. One is that we both post here, another is that we both post at my place and a third is that you post one place and I post another. This is probably not best in that our back-and-forths get separated. So how about we do it here? Since I don't know how much of an understanding of how wikipedia works, in a physical sense, I'm going to assume that you need to know a few basic things and will present my opinion of what those are. After I edit an article or post something on someone's user page, I usually click the WATCH tab, upper right. This means that whenever an edit is made to that page it will show up on my watchlist located a bar above the watch option. So today I see that an adit was made by you at Adolph Alexander Weinman. I now have two windows open, one to write this note with and the other open at AAW. So I go to the history tab there and get a list of the recent edits. You, you, me you. I click on the last edit and see what was posting last, what it was that you had done. What you did was add back the reference and link that I had removed. Okay, I'm not going to argue with you about that. But posting links to what seem to be commercial ventures, especially if all the references and links you add go back to the same place, and they seem to . ...... in wikipedia that is sort of like a deer walking around in deer hunting season with a bulls eye pained on it. You will most likely draw fire. Think of me (this might not be too reassuring) as friendly fire, I'm on your side, but still dropping bombs on you.

Is this making sense? Anyway, you can go to any article that you've edited and look in the history and see what I did to your edits. In a couple of cases (perhaps only one, but I might do it more) you've added an image that . ..... comes from where? Editors at wikipedia are not allowed to just pluck images off the WWW and stick them in articles. Quite to the contrary, there are huge issues about copyrights here, with a whole phalanx of copyright police stomping around wanting to know if you understand the laws involved and just looking to do an images recomended for speedy delete (or something) on your work.

Enough for now, Carptrash (talk) 17:53, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

• Hello again,

I was honestly grateful for your original post and took your criticism to be constructive even without knowing whether I was experiencing friendly fire or not. Also, I know that I changed something after you changed it but here's what happend: I read your note then I tried to look at some of my edits to see what I had done wrong, I noticed that an image didn't have a reference and assuming that it was supposed to and that I had orginally forgotten to put it there, I put the reference there. Later, I accidentally stumbled across a way to look at the articles history, etc. and I noticed that you changed it and saw that you said that I didn't need a reference for an image. So, thanks for the heads up. Moreover, I assure you that whatever I have posted has not just been plucked from an internet site. Quite the contrary, I have permission to use the images and am completely within my rights. Let me explain a little something about myself: I'm a college student. I have no financial incentive to use one site or another. I really don't care so long as the source is reliable. This summer, I'm working in a library at my school but in my free time I'm doing some editing. I do editing for professors, fellow students, and after doing some work for a former art teacher of mine, I got some new contacts. Contacts with phDs and such have started giving me articles and whatnot, and with their permission, I've decided to start making edits. I have more than one source, but as a student, I am really into the whole citation business so until I get more info from my sources (exact dates, journal titles, etc.), I'm going to use the source(s) with which I am most comfortable citing. You'll see more sources from me soon. I feel need to impress upon you the fact that I have no sinister motivation in any of my post. If it seems that way, please be specific in pointing out which post(in this case, I'm afraid it will be posts) so that I can address the issue. It would behoove me to take into account the things you're saying because I don't want other users to think that I'm posting erroneous garbage or slanted info so please, take me seriously and don't think I'm being sarcastic or trying to placate you when I say that I appreciate communicating with you and seek advice. In fact, I was so anxious to get counsel on this matter that I sent an email somewhere to a wiki contact person to ask how I can change what I'm saying to be less offensive/questionable/dubious? Cheers.RArt94 (talk) 20:29, 27 July 2009 (UTC)RArt94

Sorry that I didn't get back to you sooner, but I work (like you, in a library) Friday, Saturday and Sunday so am one of the rare people who get up and think, "Thank god it's Monday morning." So, on to your posting. You wrote:

Moreover, I assure you that whatever I have posted has not just been plucked from an internet site. Quite the contrary, I have permission to use the images and am completely within my rights.

It seems to me that all of your images, or at least those I've checked, are coming from ragoarts.com. Did they give you permission to use them? Do you and they understand that when an image is posted on wikipedia that the owner of the rights gives up the rights to that image? Citations are good things, but are likely to get deleted if they always lead back to a dot com. Many editors figure that it's someone getting free exposure.

You'll see more sources from me soon. I feel need to impress upon you the fact that I have no sinister motivation in any of my post. I don't want other users to think that I'm posting erroneous garbage or slanted info.

It's not that so much as it appears that you are advertising what a great job ragoarts.com is doing selling American sculpture. Take their name off everything and you'll do just fine. Hopefully you'll do just fine anyway but it could be an uphill climb.

Talk to you later, Carptrash (talk) 17:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)