User talk:VernoWhitney

International Growth Centre

Hi Verno - I wrote detailed material on this project which has been frozen by you because of copywrite concerns. But all the material is legal to use according to the IGC website.

"All use of web material is permitted under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC-BY-SA), version 3.0, except published papers which are copyright of the IGC". http://www.theigc.org/about

I am worried my efforts will be deleted!

Thanks

Adam —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.219.236.1 (talk) 10:19, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. As the work has now been licensed appropriately I have unblanked the article. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 12:05, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Copy vio

Hello....I've created the text which I would like to be inserted and have removed the exact word-to-word sentence. Please restore ASAP. Mar4d (talk) 12:16, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not just word-for-word sentences which are the problem. Phrases which closely paraphrase the original source's language and structure are also a problem because they are derivative works of the original copyrighted material. In this case, almost every sentence in the article closely resembles the source; for just one example, the article says:

there are over 300 French enterprises in the UAE, approximately half of which are in Dubai.

and the source says:

there are more than 300 French enterprises in the UAE, around half of which are in Dubai.

The article needs to be rewritten from scratch. While you can use the facts from the sources you've found, you can not use the similar phrasing as you've done here and as you did at Namira Salim. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:44, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I've changed the above quote. It is now different. Please move the content from the Temp page into mainspace. Thanks Mar4d (talk) 04:41, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Since I have already looked over the article more than once, I would rather another admin look it over to ensure that it is clean. It will come up for review in a couple of days. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:11, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about that

I edited the url link because I thought it was unnecessarily long, I obviously made a mistake by not checking if there was any difference. I thought it was an issue of the site adding stuff along the way (like YT does).. Sorry about that - CETTALK 23:43, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I figured that was why you did it, and yeah it's obnoxiously long. I know it can be truncated to just display the page, but I'm not sure if there's a way to trim it and keep the highlighting which makes it easier to pick out (and I didn't have time to fuss around with it earlier). No worries. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:26, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Suspected copyright violations

Hello! So I'm starting to contribute to suspected copyright violations. I was wondering, what do I put if the article was deleted? It looks like you don't do anything to it, but I'm not completely sure. Thanks! Endofskull (talk) 00:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

You don't have to put anything at all if it's deleted, only if the article's still there and you've checked it and either A) fixed the problem (or note that someone else did) or B) figured out that it wasn't a real problem in the first place (since the bot can hit quite a few false positives on its bad days). If you have any questions, feel free to ask - it's always nice to have more help at SCV. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:30, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Alright, thank you! :D Endofskull (talk) 03:04, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, VernoWhitney. You have new messages at Dondegroovily's talk page.
Message added 01:59 17 November 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hello, VernoWhitney. You have new messages at Dondegroovily's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Copy-pasting

Sorry for copy-pasting Bernd Fischer to Bernd Fischer (mathematician). As soon as I did it, I realised I made mistake. Thanks for correction of my mistake.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 02:24, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

No worries, it's all sorted now. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 03:28, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Ruth Kuczynski

Hi! You have just written: "From what I could tell the portions of the article cited to other sources looked fine (...)". However, I cannot watch this, because of lack of text. So, I will not write again. -- Cheers! dr Mibelz 06:00, 17 Nov 2010 (UTC)

I blanked the whole article because I wanted a second opinion about the rest of the text, but you should know that all of the article text is still visible in the article's history if you need to see it. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Susanne

Hi. I've moved Susanne to the name of the master account for future ease. Should have done that forever ago with Paknur, but, alas, handsight doesn't need glasses. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I did a similar thing and set up a redirect from Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/OSUHEY to Jansport87, but it could be moved if you think that would make things easier. Now I've got some questions for you.

First the short term ones. Do CCI redirects need to be noindexed? Also, I've added all of the substantial contribs now to this CCI and it's 187kb - shall I go ahead and split it in half for ease of access?

Second for longer term (and this is more musings than questions I suppose), maybe we can take some lessons from SPI as far as setting up active investigations and archives so that reopening or adding to socky CCIs isn't such a pain? And maybe we can ask SPI about including a link to CCIs for the sockmaster or suspected sockpuppet or something - since if new socks turn up any CCIs will need to be reexamined? VernoWhitney (talk) 19:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think; let's split it for access. If you can figure out how to improve our system, go for it. :) And I think that a cross-link to an SPI is a great idea! As far as "Noindex" from the redirect, it's a courtesy. If a contributor is indef-blocked and they aren't using a real name, I don't see that it's really a big deal. If they're using a real name, I would do it anyway both because John Smith might not have intended to violate copyright and because John Smith the baker from Georgia might be embarrassed by the copyright violations of John Smith the high school student from Wisconsin. :)

The reason I put it under the master account rather than just creating a redirect was simply for ease of future. Next time there's a sock for this account, we won't have to remember which of the socks we used for opening it. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:24, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Another question

I'd also like to help out with copyright investigations. Do I have to be a clerk to participate? If I don't, how do I participate without being a clerk? Thanks! Endofskull (talk) 20:55, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

No, you don't have to be a clerk - that's just for opening and closing investigations to make sure that things don't get missed or lost in the shuffle. There are detailed instructions are at the top of each CCI, but if they're not clear please do ask for clarification.

I don't know how much you know about copyvio cleanup, so feel free to ignore me if I'm telling you things you already know. First, you pick a CCI (we have plenty to choose from, and the main topics for each CCI are listed next to the names on the right-hand side of WP:CCI). Some are particularly hairy, but most are pretty straightforward so you can just look at the diff(s) and try to figure out if they are or aren't copyvio. Sometimes it's clear (i.e., directly copy/pasted from a source they cited in the edit, or simply adding an infobox with no creative material) and othertimes research is involved to see if the material is clean or not. Once you do whatever needs doing to an article (if anything) you mark it at the CCI page so others will know who checked it and what action was taken. And then of course you just move on to the next one. ^_^ VernoWhitney (talk) 21:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for helping me out on that. I have a question about it, though. How do I format what I've found? And, what do I do if it's not a copyright violation? I have some assumptions on what I should do, but I'm not completely sure. Endofskull (talk) 22:36, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by formatting what you've found, so you'll have to ask that question a different way.

If you finish checking an article and it doesn't have copyright violations then you can replace all of the diffs for that article on the CCI listing with {{n}} ~~~~ to signify that no problem was found. You could also add a comment after the {{n}} mentioning whatever the edit actually was (revert, infobox, etc.), but that's usually not necessary unless it's something that would be easily confused with copyvio and/or easy to overlook if the CCI is revisited, like copying a large chunk from a public domain source. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:44, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Alright. What I meant by "formatting" was how do you set up the report? For example:

"This article had ______________ problems because _________________"

But all I'm really looking for is what kind of order you do that in. I know it's not a "template like" thing (as I put in the example about). Thanks! Endofskull (talk) 22:57, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

As far as what to put on the CCI page its just something short like "Y action taken". You can look at a completed CCI to see how my work usually looks, but so long as it's readable by others the details don't matter. Any report of what the problem was for the particular article should usually be left at the article itself in an edit summary and/or its talk page or possibly WP:CP; since there are usually hundreds of articles in any given CCI readability is important barring exceptional circumstances. VernoWhitney (talk) 23:12, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I understand. So if it's copied word for word/a copyright violation, I take it to WP:CP? Endofskull (talk) 03:08, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, if there's a copyright violation then you can blank it with {{subst:copyvio}} and follow the instructions it generates to list it at WP:CP and an admin or more experienced editor will handle it from there. Note that it doesn't have to be copied word-for-word to be a copyright violation, close paraphrasing can be a problem too.

If you really get into it there are more subtleties and different ways to handle copyright violations, but the basic rule of blanking it and listing it at CP will always work. VernoWhitney (talk) 03:48, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

open gov lic

Hi Vernon, if and when you get time would you have a look at the status of this pic of David Cameron from the government website here I have also put it to the PUF page here - Off2riorob (talk) 21:38, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. Images should be included in the nicely broad "information featured on this website", but I don't know that we have a firm stance on the Open Government Licence yet so I'm looking into it. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:43, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I had a bit of a look but could only find comments about Crown copyright. I am thinking perhaps there is a commons compattable template for such a open sounding gov license, but its not PD I know that, no hurry, no worry. thanks. Off2riorob (talk) 21:47, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, it looks like it should be good to use, I'll have to condense my notes before I weigh in at the PUF though. My progress as follows for future reference:

• The current license states "These terms have been aligned to be interoperable with any Creative Commons Attribution Licence". Somewhat ambiguous but a good sign.
• Their Guidance for users is a little clearer, stating "You are also able to use information licensed under the Open Government Licence with information from other sources which has been licensed under a Creative Commons v3.0 Attribution Licence".
• The FAQ gives us even better:

The Open Government Licence terms are interoperable with the latest versions of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which covers copyright ... Information used under the Open Government Licence can be combined with information licensed under Creative Commons ... or with another work. This means that information can be mixed and re-purposed easily with other licence models requiring attribution in that the terms of the Open Government Licence should not present any barriers.

• This blog entry (including a comment by a Creative Commons staff member) as well as this and this and this all agree that the original terms and conditions page for the license used to be nice and explicit and state:

These terms have been aligned to be interoperable with any Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence. This means that you may mix the information with Creative Commons licensed content to create a derivative work that can be distributed under any Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence.

I think with that wording in the original terms and conditions it shouldn't be a problem for us to accept material licensed under the OGL, we should just work up a template to provide appropriate attribution. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any other info either. IMO, and judging from the above info, its a Commons-acceptable license and {{OGL}} should be created on Commons and listed at Commons:Copyright tags (under Other free tags?).--Nilfanion (talk) 00:51, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• - Thats real cool, well done. The PUF is not so important anyways (I could close it if its better) as is this version of the pic as it is there for upload by me or someone with the correct template .. when we have one. Do you want me to talk to someone/somewhere? about getting the template created or shall I leave it with you for the time being? Off2riorob (talk) 22:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

• I think I'll see if I can whip up a template right now actually, but the PUF should probably stay open so someone can point out my error in case I've gotten something horribly wrong. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:44, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply Nilfanion, I'm glad I didn't miss any other conversations before running around and doing that research. I suppose I also could've mentioned that the license certainly appeared to be free allowing commercial reuse, modification etc., but it's usually the details that get things messed up when it comes to licensing. I should get around to making the commons template tonight. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:17, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

...I guess not tonight. Commons license templates are rather more complex than on Wikipedia, so that'll have to wait for later. VernoWhitney (talk) 03:27, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

No hurry, no worry, nice work Verno. Off2riorob (talk) 03:33, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

my article dissapeared

Dear VernoWhitney, I am very sorry to disturb you, but I have big problem. Some days ago my artcle on Wikipedia disappeared and there was no concrete reason, just general statement that there could be possible copyright infridgement. I don´t understand it at alll. In the article there were just basic facts from my own CV - this is really my copyright and the list of my own compositions, nothing else, only a few links to reviews etc, nothing which could infringe opy right of anybody else at all. I really don´t understand where is the problem and nobody explained me it. And what is more important, nobody rplied what should I do to get back the article. I would be verygratefulk for your or anybody´s else help. Just to say what to do, nothing else. With the very best regards Sylvie Bodorova —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.208.127.251 (talk) 23:09, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the article in question, so I'm afraid I don't know what's going on at this point. I'll try and get to it later tonight or tomorrow and see what's going on. I'll post back here once I've figured anything out. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:12, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Hi. I'm afraid that the article contains content taken from your website. Since content is automatically copyright protected under the US law that governs Wikipedia, we cannot use that material without proof that you are licensing it for our reuse. I see that you have written to our OTRS team about the matter and have received an e-mail with additional instructions for clarifying. We should be able to get the article live again within a few days. However, I do need to note that we cannot guarantee that the continue will remain in use on Wikipedia. Wikipedia's articles are open for editing by anyone, and content may be modified to bring it in line with our core content policies and guidelines: Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:No original research. Please let us know if you have any questions or encounter any difficulties with the verification process. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Moonriddengirl - I was just now getting around to this and you beat me to the explanation. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:43, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you again

I have a quick question. How do I deal with things like this? "The Tale of Two Bad Mice: (41 edits, 41 major, +8137) (+8137)(+187)(+1246)(+282)(+264)(+138)(+866)(+135)(+658)(+557)(+585)(+196)(+1276)(+115)(+1975)(+2208)(+102)(+120)(+117)(+398)(+249)(+191)(+1629)(+701)(+229)(+723)(+189)(+2316)(+2313)(+320)(+1221)(+915)(+1205)(+1024)(+958)(+1299)(+128)(+980)(+1635)(+226)(+967)"

(Not specifically the one above, but just in general). What website is it saying it's violating? Endofskull (talk) 04:10, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll answer in both the general and the specific. In general, it's not telling you what it's violating. You'll have to click on the diff and then try to figure out where the text might be from. Looking at the "Background" section of the CCI or at other articles that have already been found to have problems will often given you some idea of what to look for and where it might have been copied from. Some editors copied from whatever they could find on the Internet, some copied from one particular source or a small group of sources, and some make it easy and copied from the references they've cited right next to the copied text.

Now in that specific case, the contributor seems to have generally copied from the cited references, which is nice. The catch is that they're print sources, which means if Google Books and/or Amazon don't provide the full texts to preview it's hard to confirm the copyvio, which makes it difficult. In that case the article was edited by a sock of a banned user, so if you're able to you can just go through and remove all of the text they've added (or revert to the version before they ever touched it) without even checking for copyvio. That said, the editor also edited a lot of GAs and FAs and we'd like to salvage the content if we can, and as I said before if your unsure of an article you can always just blank it with {{subst:copyvio}} and someone else will see what can be done. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:06, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Endofskull (talk) 21:17, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Edstat and me

Hi VW! I assure you that visiting my talk page won't be worse than a colonoscopy, but I wish your visiting would be a lot better. (Sigh ...) Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 00:36, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

With such a pleasant invitation, how could I resist? VernoWhitney (talk) 03:55, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I removed the (last?) act of the drama from my page. (Edstat has said "goodbye" on several pages and seems to have stopped editing.)

I'm sorry that I don't spell your name correctly at times.

Live long and prosper!

Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 08:52, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

copyvio: El Salvador national football team

It still hasn't been resolved. I know that there are no other infringements, in the article there is mostly graphs that is all. Although I have learned from past mistakes and added text from other websites in my own words and I asure you that other infringments will not be found due to precautions. Thanks. Jaime070996 00:44, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I haven't looked into the article thoroughly, so I can't speak to the possibility of further problems yet, but when you removed the blanking you restored the paragraph which was clearly explained to be a problem on the talk page with only minimal changes. Translating a copyrighted work and/or closely paraphrasing it leaves a derivative work which is still a copyright violation. VernoWhitney (talk) 00:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Brown Lady

Hi, thanks for your comments on the article's Talk Page. It's getting rather complicated now and I feel that I've expended more time and effort on it than it deserves. Regarding your highlighted sections, what is an alternative phrase to 'taking photographs'? How else do you say 'Country Life magazine' - that's actually the name of the magazine. How else do you say 'two photographers' when there were two photographers, and how else do you say Captain Provand and Indre Shira when they were called Captain Provand and Indre Shire? Jack1956 (talk) 22:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Those are bare facts, so they don't need to be reworded. The problem is that the same facts are being presented in the same order, for paragraphs in a row. Those elements, the language and structure, are creative and so copyrightable. Trying to write an article (or as in this case, large portions of an article) from a single source without dramatically reducing the information provided is almost always an invitation for close paraphrase problems. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:01, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Enjoy!

Hope your vacation is a good one. :) I'm off as of Thursday; we'll have a bit of catching up to do, but maybe things will be quiet during the holiday. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, hopefully. I'll have my computer with me too, so I should be online intermittently. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:30, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

"Natural art" ‎ (G4: Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Natural art).

Hi VernoWhitney, you have deleted "Natural art" ‎ (G4: Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Natural art). The article has been deleted earler (over a year and a half ago) due to lacks of any references. I have added many new references and sources. (e.g.. 7 new links to Wiki articles about the subject and many other sources). If you find a moment please have a look at the new article and see for yourself. If you still find any problems please let me know how to fix it to revert the deletion. Thanks!.--User:Art&concepts (talk)--Art&concepts (talk) 19:00, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The reasons provided for deletion in the discussion were a lack of references, self-promotion, and a neologism. The article appears to be substantially identical, including the wording of the article prose. The addition of wikilinks and self-published sources do nothing to address the reasons for deletion. VernoWhitney (talk) 02:47, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Thank you. I understand. If, with time, I find more important external sources and references I'll try to work on it again and let you know. Thanks for help. Art&concepts (talk)Art&concepts (talk) 21:52, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

update Cameron pic

Hi Verno , am I ok to add the pic? I feel it is compatible, do we need any additional templates? Can I move it to commons? Off2riorob (talk) 19:48, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a free license so it should be good to go. I'm sure the template could be improved, but there shouldn't be anything wrong with the image and I've created {{OGL}} on commons so it can be licensed the same way there. VernoWhitney (talk) 04:49, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah great, I cropped it and converted it to a png file here and added it to the article. Thanks for creating the commons template, great work. I will move it to commons later today. Off2riorob (talk) 11:28, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

OTRS ticket

Can you have a look at OTRS ticket 2009083110002122, regarding File:SuzanneLilar.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) (en image) and File:Suzanne Lilar.1980s.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) (commons equivalent)? Thanks. Magog the Ogre (talk) 19:51, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

That ticket is not usable permission. I haven't looked for any other tickets, but I imagine they'd be mentioned if there were any. VernoWhitney (talk) 04:21, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, could you tag the image on en.wp then? Thanks. Magog the Ogre (talk) 11:38, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

You may wish to participate

User:Wuhwuzdat has made a very WP:Pointy deletion nomination of List of management consulting firms after two of his wholesale deletions of article content were reverted and explained here. Since you participated in the 1st AfD, I am notifying you of the 2nd AfD in the event you wish to participate. --Mike Cline (talk) 18:59, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

User:Binesi

This user Binesi does not appear to understand copyright rules on wiki. In this edit he copied directly from the book "Dragon lady: the life and legend of the last empress of China"

I don't have the authority to give a warning, but i posted a notice about copyright rules on his page, can you warn him? (i don't think he will take my warning at face value, since he has a clear dispute with me about the content of the article in question, so he might think i'm making up rules in order to get back at him)Дунгане (talk) 17:51, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

never mind, he now understands that he broke copyright rules.Дунгане (talk) 19:17, 28 November 2010 (UTC)