Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals pages, or – for assistance – at the help desk, rather than here, if at all appropriate. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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2013–14 Euroleague

Could someone fix it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.103.125.139 (talk) 22:44, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I suggest you post at Talk:2013–14 Euroleague with the specifics of what parts of the article need to be fixed. Good luck! GoingBatty (talk) 04:25, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Google and Yahoo's use of Wikipedia articles

Both Google and Yahoo use excerpts of Wikipedia pages in a right-hand side content pane. For example, you can search for "jean claude van damme". Both sites "cite" Wikipedia by including a link to "Wikipedia" that simply points to the article. That's it. I'm not well versed in the intricacies of licenses but it seems pretty obvious to me that both Google and Yahoo may not be in compliance with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For instance, there's no link to that license. I'm also not sure how the "Share Alike" cause works in conjunction with the search result pages returned. Anybody with a deeper understanding of this issue want to comment? Is merely a link to a CCAS 3.0-licensed article itself sufficient for attribution? Jason Quinn (talk) 11:42, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

They link the excerpt to the Wikipedia article where it is taken from. That takes care of the attribution part. As for 'providing a link to the license', I think that only applies when they copy the entire work, not merely one sentense. — Edokter (talk) — 12:37, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm also intrigued by the ShareAlike issue. If the excerpt is derivative work, then the search results must be published with the CC BY-SA licence as well. Now, if the excerpt is a fair use quote, then no. --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:31, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

As noted, such a small excerpt would almost certainly qualify as fair use like the excerpts in search result listings. I notice Bing does provide the license if you click the + to see the full excerpt. Google provides it if you click on the "Feedback/More info" link. Mr.Z-man 22:44, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't know the legal details but in practice, I think the main problem isn't the Wikipedia credit they give for the excerpt but that it's unclear that it only refers to one text paragraph, for example in jean claude van damme. The help desk gets many complaints about errors in the image(s) or infobox, usually without mentioning they saw the problem in a Google search and not at Wikipedia (sometimes they even link to a Wikipedia article with no image and claim it contains a wrong image). {{HD/GKG}} was made for the purpose. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:32, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

BAG Membership request

I have been nominated for BAG membership. Input is invited. The request can be found at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Cyberpower678 2.—cyberpower _Online^{Merry Christmas} 14:23, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

British Library "Mechanical Curator" image collection

Wild Turkey - Sportsman and Naturalist in Canada.jpeg, from the Mechanical Curator collection.

Looking for something worthwhile to do on Boxing Day, once you've finished all the mince pies?

A week ago, the British Library uploaded just over a million free images to Flickr, scanned from over 50,000 mostly nineteenth-century books. (BL blog post; news reports). There are some real gems in there -- here's a curated set of highlight images put together by the BL team, along with other sets, including 'Portraits', 'Maps', 'Christmas' and 'Science Fiction', found by the community, in addition to all of which the eponymous Mechanical Curator is posting a new random set of 100 images each Friday.

However, one initial issue with the collection is that so far it has been rather hard to search. The BL are hoping that people will eventually be able to crowd-tag it, but as of yet very few tags are in place right now; so at the moment it's quite hard to find images about a particular place or topic. (And certainly hard to find all of them).

And this is where we can come in. Commons now has a full list up of all the titles that were scanned, and is starting to work up a synoptic subject and place index to the book titles (though it's still at quite an early stage).

As a first step, the subject index has been been populated with a search for the word "history", for books with more than 15 images, and then the results organised geographically. This can produce quite a lot of hits, as shown by e.g the U.K. and Ireland page. But it's just the tip of the iceberg of what's still out there -- for most places and most topics there are still significantly better titles in the collection to be found than the ones so far included in the index.

So what would really make a difference -- what would open the doors to make this collection properly accessible -- would be any help that can be given to go through the list of books, either from the top or for particular keywords, and systematically build up this index.

Ultimately the value of these images is to be able to use them, and the wonderful thing is that they are all 100% public domain CC-0 free, so we are completely free to bring the images over to Commons and use them for any purpose we want. (See the project page on Commons for important details about how Commons would like images tagged if you do bring them over to put into articles, so we can keep the Commons pages in step with any information that gets added to their Flickr pages.)

Finally, it's worth noting that the BL is also making freely available the pdf files of the full scans of all the books in the collection, which can be accessed by hitting the 'more information' link in the panel on the right-hand side of any image. So if we can get this index in place and properly comprehensive, it will open the door not just to all the images, but also to over 50,000 volumes of public domain text content, that we can then freely re-use in whatever way we wish for articles. Jheald (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I second this appeal (but why wait 'til Boxing Day - it's something to do when the rest of the family are sleeping/ arguing after Christmas dinner!). Many thanks to Jheald, for the great work done to get things ready on Commons. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:50, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Senkaku Islands#Requested move

There currently a requested move at Talk:Senkaku Islands#Requested move, the numbers participating are disappointingly low and so a clear consensus is not emerging. It would help if some others would read the arguments and express their opinions on what is the most suitable name. -- PBS (talk) 17:26, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments requested

Hello, all! I was looking for some comments regarding an issue with a couple of sections in the diverging diamond interchange article. Only four votes have been cast so far, and though three of them go for one choice, I don't feel like four people (myself included) create any sort of consensus, so I thought I'd get some broader input. Your opinion would be much appreciated at the discussion. Thank you! —203 02:37, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

AfC Backlog

Articles for creation has an enormous backlog, with submissions as old as four weeks ago. If you have some spare time, helping to plough through the AfC backlog would be a great way to ensure that newbies are not discouraged. It's tiring and dispiriting work, so many hands would definitely help make this particular burden lighter. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:45, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Missing article?

Is there an article covering the current severe weather events affecting Ireland, the UK and France - i.e. from 23 December onwards, post Cyclone Xaver? Mjroots (talk) 19:33, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean Cyclone Xaver or Cyclone Dirk? :) --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:34, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Cyclone Dirk - thanks for that. Will be able to add to the article over coming days. Mjroots (talk) 21:53, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

"Sponsored content" - What the hell is going on?

I'm seeing "Sponsored Content Seeing ads? Wikimedia is experimenting with a new ad program. Add your thoughts here." all over the damn place.

• See screenshot

When I follow the link to complain about it, I see this:

• See screenshot

This page claims that the hoax came from "vandalism". However, on checking the edit history both the page in question (Names of China) and the template (Template:Chinese), nobody has made any edits. This isn't the only time I've seen this; there was another template, but I forgot which one. --benlisquare_T•C•E 12:20, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Here. --Closedmouth (talk) 12:23, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Whoops, didn't think to check the footer. Thanks. I guess that the template needs to be purged? I'm still seeing it. --benlisquare_T•C•E 12:24, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Purge the article. Purging the template doesn't really do much. --Closedmouth (talk) 12:43, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

possible hoax

I don't know exactly where to put this. If anyone knows a better place to put it, feel free to let me know.

I recently stumbled upon the article Breast Touching Festival of China though this mention on reddit. It smells like hoax to me. Can anyone verify if this is actually real? Amphicoelias (talk) 12:56, 29 December 2013 (UTC)