User:Www.wikinerds.org/Bullying

Request for Comment for this issue. Third opinion for this issue.

On 1 August 2005 I decided to contribute an article from my wiki www.jnanabase.org in Wikipedia. My wiki is GFDL, just like Wikipedia.

I proceeded and copied the text from my wiki's article and I pasted it to a new Wikipedia article Sphaera Mundi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphaera_Mundi

Because the article was written in my wiki, I added a standard attribution notice to cite the source, with a link back to my wiki's original article, as per required by GFDL and Wikipedia's policy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite_sources

On 3 August 2005 another Wikipedia user edited the article and added categories. On 9 August 2005 a different user cleaned it up and disambiguated some links.

On 12 August 2005, User:UninvitedCompany, who is a sysop, removed the attribution notice.

On 14 August 2005, User:Joe Kress (I don't know that user) re-added the attribution notice, as Wikipedia's policy requires: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite_sources

2 hours later UninvitedCompany removed the notice again. 3 hours later I added again the notice.

We had some discussion with UninvitedCompany and he says the source of Sphaera Mundi's shouldn't be included in the article because it's an "unreliable source" and because it's "spam", although my wiki appears in the 3rd position in a Google search for "sphaera mundi" and most other pages of my website have a PageRank of 6, while the site has been slashdotted 4 times: http://portal.wikinerds.org/taxonomy/term/49

According to the GFDL licence and copyright laws, proper attribution must be provided. Citing where an article was copied from is not spam.

In a similar incident, I also copied an article from my wiki to a new Wikipedia article with title Erhard Ratdolt, with an attribution notice. When UninvitedCompany removed the attribution notice, another sysop deleted the article saying "copyvio of Wikinerds. Deleting." - and this shows that an article copied from an external GFDL source into Wikipedia without proper attribution is copyright violation and a violation of the GFDL licence.

If the notice is deleted again from Sphaera Mundi (or any other article from my wiki without proper attribution), I will request its deletion.

Please someone explain to this sysop that articles copied from external GFDL wikis must contain proper attribution. We don't want our articles to appear in Wikipedia without attribution of the source.

Following the RFC, and after I said to UnivitedCompany that if he removed the attribution again I would prefer Sphaera Mundi to get deleted (since without the notice it's a copyvio), UnivitedCompany deleted the article. Another sysop re-posted the same article from my wiki, with a proper GFDL attribution, and I thank him for this. There is some ongoing discussion at Request for Comment for this issue and the Talk:Sphaera Mundi.

user:www.wikinerds.org in dispute with User:UninvitedCompany

UninvitedCompany is engaging in a campaing of reverting my edits, in particular edits where I cite sources in connection with Wikipedia's Citing Sources Policy and GFDL and Creative Commons Licence requirements, as well as removing relevant external links (such as a link "How to run a Freeciv server" in Freeciv). I believe that this user is bullying me only for their own satisfaction. Another user has already reverted UninvitedCompany's removals. UninvitedCompany has reverted me three times already, but I'm not going to participate in edit wars. I joined the Wikipedia project to help you create a wonderful encyclopedia and the only thing I get in return is bullying by UnivitedCompany. No other user has reverted me so far. Below I list the articles in connection to the dispute, together with the facts:

Erhard Ratdolt: UnivitedCompany has reverted me three times so far, removing information that must be there due to Wikipedia's Citing Sources Policy and the GFDL licence. UPDATE: After UninvitedCompany deleted my attribution GFDL notice, a sysop of Wikipedia deleted this article saying "copyvio of Wikinerds. Deleting." - this proves that having no attribution in the article is copyright violation. I prefer to see all of my wiki's articles deleted from Wikipedia rather than keep them without the attribution notices that GFDL requires you to provide.
Sphaera Mundi: UnivitedCompany removed my edits where I was citing the source of the text. Another user, which I don't know, has already reverted him in agreement with Wikipedia:Cite_sources. However, UninvitedCompany reverted him. There is some discussion at Talk:Sphaera Mundi where UnivitedCompany attacks our credibility: "I don't believe that jnana.wikinerds.org really qualifies as a useful, citable source because it lacks authority. The "citation" was added by the operator of the wikinerds.org web site primarily as an effort to obtain publicity and a higher Google page rank. Take a look at wikinerds.org and decide for yourself. However he is wrong because, as I say in the talk page, We have a Google PageRank of 6 (and sometimes even higher) and many JnanaBase pages have a higher page rank than Wikipedia's pages (ask me and I'll give you the Google search keywords so you can see by yourself). We have been slashdotted four times. We do not get higher Google PageRank from links in Wikipedia because Wikipedia includes the nofollow value in the rel XHTML attribute in all external links, which means the links are not visible to Google. We are a popular credible not-for-profit website offering information about science and technology, developing content by using wikis. We joined Wikipedia to help this wonderful project and we only receive bullying from this user.
Vodafone: in that article we contributed a [Image:Vodafone 3g smsize.jpg photo] under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence 2.0 which requires prominent attribution, including the original URL, and according to the legal code "You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License and to the disclaimer of warranties." and "You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and give the Original Author credit reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing by conveying the name (or pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author if supplied; the title of the Work if supplied; to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and in the case of a Derivative Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work". In our understanding (IANAL), a link to the URL must be present in the page where the image appears, but UninvitedCompany keeps removing it, thus denying our attribution rights set forth by the CCL licence and academic standards of citation and authorship attribution.
See also: Discussion with UnivitedCompany, Discussion about Sphera Mundi, Discussion at Joe Kress talk page.
In addition, UnivitedCompany engages in an aggressive campaign to remove any links I have added. I added a link to How to run a Freeciv server in the Freeciv article by UninvitedCompany reverted me many times although the link is relevant! Similarly, when I added a link to my article Malakas in Wikipedia's Malakas article, UninvitedCompany reverted me two times, although the link was informative and contains more information that Wikipedia's page. Again, in the Bargaining article UninvitedCompany removed multiple times my link How to bargain in Greece, although it is relevant!
Just now User:UninvitedCompany voted to delete the JnanaBase article, which was not written by me (I just updated it), and UninvitedCompany says "Article written by founder of website" in an apparent attempt to damage my reputation.
He now says that it is a settled policy in Wikipedia to not provide attribution for images used inside articles, and that attribution should be provided only in their description pages. That's not true, I believe. Ithink it is not settled policy to provide attribution in image description pages. See Lev and also this google search. The Lev article says "2003 Bulgaria 100 levs bill. Obverse. Photo courtesy of Bulgarian National Bank ([1])" and also provides an external link. If it is settled policy, give me a link and if it's really settled policy I will delete all "courtesy of" attributions in images used in articles, leaving only the attribution in their description pages.
UninvitedCompany now says something about "reliable sources". In my view, he is trying to "prove" that if a Wikipedia article is copied from an "unreliable" source then no copyright, authorship, attribution or "citing sources" notice should be provided in the article. That's wrong. When Wikipedia publishes a piece of text of another website, under the GFDL, the notice must be included in the article, even if the other website is pornographic. Otherwise, Wikipedia must delete the article as a copy vio. It's so simple! If you don't want to include the attribution link, please delete articles copied from Wikinerds. Having an article from my wiki in Wikipedia without saying "this was not written by Wikipedia, it's something that was written at the JnanaBase wiki and we use it under the GFDL" is theft and copyright violation, in my view. Please either provide the notice or delete the article.

Please, help me resolve this issue, which I believe amounts to systematic bullying, and assign a mediator to explain to this user why they are wrong. This user is bullying me and removes attribution and copyright notices that should appear in articles. I have added one last time the attribution to Sphaera Mundi, as GFDL and Wikipedia's Cite Sources Policy requires it. If this user (or anyone else) removes the attribution, I'm not going to revert again, and I will ask for its deletion instead. Having GFDL-licensed Wikinerds' articles in Wikipedia is fine as long as an attribution notice is visible, as required by GFDL. But when this notice is removed, I consider the article to be a copyvio. I have asked for mediation to end UninvitedCompany's bullying. If he continues his bullying, I think you could help by deleting any article which is copied from Wikinerds and does not contain proper attribution. Right now there are two articles to watch: Sphaera Mundi and Vodafone (see this edit). If you are a mediator, you could also help with the mediation. Thanks. Www.wikinerds.org 09:28, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't have a comment on most of this, but one piece seems true: if Wikinerds requires attribution, and we don't want to give that attribution, we should remove any material that cannot be defended as fair use. Otherwise, we are violating their intellectual property rights. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:48, August 18, 2005 (UTC)