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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License for texts in Wikisource. CC BY-SA makes no sense

As far as I understand the texts in Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikibooks are published under the same conditions as in the Wikipedia - Creative Commons Attribution / Share-Alike License.

However, I know the author of a textbook on Quantum Physics, who agrees to publish his textbook in one of the sites of the Wikimedia Foundation. However, he agreed to transfer textbook without the right to edit and without the right to commercial use. This author is the rector of a university in Ukraine.

I am sure that the publication of the textbook (it is given only as an example) under the author's terms would contribute to the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation - the spread of free knowledge.

I also do not understand why the license CC BY-SA 3.0 is attributed to texts such as Shakespeare's sonnets, see fr example http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Sonnet_151_(Shakespeare) Editing of such texts makes no sense.

I do not know whether this issue was discussed. --Perohanych (talk) 08:03, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

This is not the place for this discussion, but I can clear a couple of things up:

• The Wikimedia Foundations thinks of itself as a commericial entity, so things must be licensed for commercial use to appear in its projects;
• Shakespeare's sonnets are in the public domain they are not under CC-BY-SA. THe public domain, with no restrictions, is less restrictive than CC-BY-SA so this isn't a problem.

Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 08:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

So, the author of the textbook on Quantum Physics is unable to publish the textbook in Wikiversity or Wikibooks if the author does not want it changed or printed and sold?

What should I suggest to the author? Publish it somewhere with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and then make a link on the textbook in the appropriate Wikipedia Articles ? --Perohanych (talk) 10:21, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, yes. You can use a book as a reference even if it's not online anywhere; if you upload it yourself somewhere, the author can put whatever conditions on it he or she likes. So in short: yes and yes. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:42, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

As a minor quibble, the Wikimedia Foundation isn't a commercial entity, and as far as I know doesn't 'think of itself' that way. (Indeed, it is a registered charity.) The decision to require all contributions to be free for non-commercial and commercial use is a philosophical and ethical choice, rather than a consequence of the Foundation's legal status. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:23, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The issue of requiring commercial use for content on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects is more of a consequence of the GFDL, which explicitly had such a requirement. Since the current license (CC-BY-SA 3.0) is in effect "GFDL v. 3.0" (at least falls under the "or later" clause of the earlier GFDL licenses originally used by Wikipedia), that really is the heritage of the concept. I think it is a good concept so far as it gives "maximum freedom" for others to reuse the content, but it also is an issue due to consistent licensing across all projects. Content on Wikipedia can be move to Wikibooks (and the other way around) or any of the other sister projects. You wouldn't be able to have that kind of freedom with different licensing systems on other projects. Wikinews has a bit of a different kind of heritage, but the principle is the same (and Wikinews content can be added to Wikipedia articles.... just not the other way around).

I don't object to people posting content for "non-commercial use only", as there certainly is a role for content of that nature. Sadly, there are times I would like to use such content for commercial projects, and it gets in the way of being able to offer that content for further distribution when it happens. Publication on something like Wikibooks or Wikipedia is precisely one of those kind of applications, where people may not really be making much in terms of earning money for their efforts, but being prohibited from doing commercial applications get in the way of being able to reuse the content in a meaningful way. --Robert Horning (talk) 21:00, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with GFDL. This is an issue of freedom. [1]. --NYKevin @295, i.e. 06:05, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikisource puts public domain notices on most pages where it applies. Wikisource doesnt put it on every chapter of a book (e.g. s:The Wind in the Willows/Chapter 2 vs s:The Wind in the Willows). Sometimes we dont put it on every poem in a collection of poems. i.e. s:Sonnet 151 (Shakespeare) doesnt contain a PD notice, however s:The Sonnets does have a PD notice at the bottom.

The Internet Archive accepts donations of Creative Commons -ND and -NC works.[2] John Vandenberg ^(chat) 22:54, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

India Education Program is out of control

My observations over the past couple of months, but especially in the last few days, is that Wikipedia:India Education Program, is out of control and has gone badly wrong. Something needs to be done.

A good example is to look at Wikipedia:India Education Program/Courses/Fall 2011/Computer Organization and Advanced Microprocessing. These students have a major deadline today (31 October) and so right now there is chaos in a number of computing-related articles with students from the program posting all kinds of rubbish - including blatant copyright violating text and images, and badly written/punctuated/formatted prose. I have only looked at a very small number of articles, but I suspect if you look at any of the articles highlighted on the course project page you will see problems created by these students. If these were "regular" editors many of them would have been blocked a long time ago, but most of them seem to be getting away with murder. Of course the odd one is blocked, and some of those that are blocked evade by creating a second sock puppet account.

I believe that the whole project needs a fundamental rethink. We do want new editors, but the way these editors are being brought on board - with instructions to edit an article at any costs in order to get a grade in their course - is just plain wrong.

Discuss? --Biker Biker (talk) 15:55, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I have noticed some problems in this department as well. As we all know, editing Wikipedia is not for everyone, but it appears that this project is giving out assignments as though it is. We can't really blame the students, they are just trying their level best to pass a class. I think a long talk with the instructors may be in order. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:36, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

The main and ongoing discussion about the serious issues arising from the India Education Program and the damage they are causing has been taking place on Wikipedia talk:India Education Program. It might be better to keep it all in one place. This specific program was initiated and funded by the Wikimedia Foundation. There is also a discussion at meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation - India Programs/Education Program where you can make your concerns known. Voceditenore (talk) 10:58, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Following on from the above post, there are two updates on the talk page which are of particular relevance: Context on IEP as well as Meeting with Director. We'll also be posting further updates on meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation - India Programs/Education Program. Hisham (talk) 03:32, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

About the "badly written/punctuated/formatted prose" complaint: We don't block people for using bad grammar or having poor English skills. The rule when you find such good-faith errors is WP:SOFIXIT, not REQUIREPERFECTION. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

No one has been blocked for "badly written/punctuated/formatted prose", and as far as I know, no one has seriously suggested this. But quite a lot of these students have been blocked for repeated copyvio. Having said that, I've been working on some of the clean-up, and on occasions the prose was so incomprehensible that it was impossible to know what they were trying to say and therefore impossible to fix. A lot of the "badly written" problems are related to copyvio. They stem from the students copypasting from a web site and then randomly removing some of the words or simply changing them to (inappropriate) synonyms. In at least one case I encountered badly written ungrammatical prose which has been pasted in verbatim from a website likewise written in ungrammatical, poorly punctuated English prose. In any case, the IEP has now halted the program, so no more copyvio will be coming in. But checking for and deleting copyvio from the existing contributions is going to take literally hundreds and hundreds of hours. Voceditenore (talk) 19:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Point of order: they haven't halted the program, as I understand it. They halted the program in one school, out of multiple schools which are running the program. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

The college which has been concluded is the College of Engineering Pune. At they Symbiosis College of Economics, 13 out of 14 classes have already concluded. There are therefore only 2 classes that are currnently active - one class at Symbiosis School of Economics and one at SNDT Women's University. Hisham (talk) 06:35, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Zip Code Artilces

A user, Hlecroy (talk · contribs), has started creating article for specific US zip codes. From what I've seen, most zip code articles are redirected to the corresponding city. I can't find any sort of guideline that states this or even shows that a precedent has been set and I can't think of an applicable Wikiproject. Any suggestions? Please either leave a TB for me on my talk page or leave suggestions there. OlYeller21^Talktome 22:28, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

They can easily be included in the corresponding parent articles. And no, currently the consensus is to do just that. I cannot see anything substantive being written on a run-of-the-mill zip code. –MuZemike 23:43, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Here's a more recent precedent that zip code articles are non-notable here. Thanks Secret ^account 20:58, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Redirect and if reverted, take to AfD. Forget notability, I think these are easy WP:NOT material, if not under WP:NOTDIRECTORY or as indiscriminate material, then simply WP:BADIDEA. There may be a few exceptions. 90210 might be able to support an actual article though it is currently a DAB page (I just found this; cute huh?). None of these can.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

User:BD2412/300,000th edit party

Greetings! Earlier today I made my 300,000th Wikipedia edit, so I'm throwing a party on a subpage. There will be punch and cookies, although, sadly, the cake is a lie. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:42, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Hi everyone,
In the article Chronicle of a Death Foretold, in the section Plot, is written: "The night before the wedding day, festivities in preparation for the wedding had taken place at a local whorehouse run by Maria Alejandrina Cervantes, where the narrator had partied with Santiago and the Vicario twins until the early morning."
I think it's false, it should be corrected into something like: "The night following the wedding day, celebrations of the wedding carry on at a local whorehouse run by Maria Alejandrina Cervantes, where the narrator had partied with Santiago and the Vicario twins until the early morning."
Well, English is not my language, I let someone else correct it, 213.36.11.157 (talk) 11:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

New essay

I wrote a new essay WP:NOTGRAVEDANCING. Improve if you like. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 13:32, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Trans women

Look at the contributions of 89.100.150.198 and let me know your opinions about their contributions (someone other than 89.100.150.198 please.) Georgia guy (talk) 23:56, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

89.100.150.198 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:49, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I presume this relates to your edit war on Parinya Charoenphol (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I'm too tired to get involved. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:53, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Sid Melton

When was born Sid Melton? In 1917 or 1920? Scymso (talk) 09:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Our article at Sid Melton says 1917 and the Los Angeles times obituary at http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-passings-20111104,0,2646778.story confirms that. This is a question for WP:RD/M. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:24, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I received a message. Why?

I received a message when editing Tibetan pinyin:

“ Hello! Due to your recent edit war on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Aaron Muszalski, an administrator here on Wikipedia, has flagged your account for one more chance. Your edit below was not saved, but will be saved if you use the "Save Page" button again; if you think your edit may be against Wikipedia policy, please re-think your actions. Wikipedia always welcomes constructive contributions, but we are required to block your access to editing if you violate policy. You may back out of this page without saving your edit by clicking here. Thanks, Aaron Muszalski (talk) 18:55, 4 November 2011 (UTC) ”

But I've never edit The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or Aaron Muszalski as far as I know. Why can I receive this message? ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 19:07, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Somebody hit the wrong button -- it's taken care of.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

How was that performed? I haven't receive any message at my user talk page. Was that message located in my user subpages? ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 19:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

It was an error caused by an edit filter and this edit to MediaWiki:Test. Nothing at all that you did wrong. –xeno^talk 19:42, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I got hit with the exact same editnotice earlier, while saving changes to Noddy Holder, and it has left me rather disturbed ever since... wondering WTF was up with that. I guess I should be thankful to Google, because I would never have found this discussion thread without it. It's nice to finally know that I haven't unknowingly done something wrong.  -- WikHead (talk) 01:33, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Donations

I have become frustrated with Wikipedia this morning. When searching Google for a description of a French food, Wikipedia was the first site that came up. Many times, that is the case, and thank you to Wikipedia for answering my question. Today I noticed that at the top of the page there were messages from two people: Jimmy Wales and Susan Hewitt. These individuals are asking for money on behalf of Wikipedia, and I might have been interested in contributing, but I cannot find any way to contact either of these people, and I cannot find any way to contact any other actual person either. I do not want to post an article or argue with anyone about the content of any articles. I do not want to comment on any other issue other than to request more information about donations. Obviously, Wikipedia does not want to be contacted, and neither do the people soliciting the money, therefore I am not going to give you any. If this page is more like a letter than an article, and that offends somebody, then I apologize in advance, but there is simply no place else that I can find to post. I have named myself impossibletofindone, because Wikipedia rejected my first FIVE!!!!! choices of names. Too bad I probably won't remember what my name is by the next time I might choose to write something, and good luck to you people. Hope you can find some money. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Impossibletofindone (talk • contribs) 19:42, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

You can contact Jimmy Wales at User talk:Jimbo Wales by posting on his talk page. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 19:59, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

You can also try if http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Frequently_asked_questions has the information you want. Or ask here or at Wikipedia:Help desk, but note that we are volunteer editors and not official representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation which has a small staff for an organization running the fifth most visited website, plus many other websites. The English Wikipedia has around 15 million user accounts and a lot of good user names are taken. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:47, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Help urgently needed on unblock-en-l - barnstars available

Who wants to earn some barnstars?

The unblock request mailing list, unblock-en-l@lists.wikimedia.org , is around for blocked users to appeal blocks when they do not know how or are unable to do so on-wiki. Unfortunately, and despite the fact that there are over 100 people subscribed to this list and receiving email from it, I am handling the vast majority of the requests this list receives completely by myself. It's been this way for a few weeks, before which User:DeltaQuad was the only one actively reviewing appeals. In short, we really really really need some help!

If you are not subscribed to this list and would like to assist with reviewing block appeals, please go to https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/unblock-en-l and sign up. Why should you do so? Many of the people emailing us are trying to edit Wikipedia for the first time, but are unable to due to a rangeblock or autoblock on their IP address. By reviewing these appeals in a timely manner, you're helping new editors get started on Wikipedia. Furthermore, there's an added incentive for you...

For the remainder of the month of November, I am offering an Admin's Barnstar to anyone who handles at least 15 appeals send to this list. It may sound like a lot, but this list often receives more than a dozen appeals each day, so you're sure to get there quickly if you check your email regularly. Furthermore, the three admins other than myself who respond to the most appeals for the remainder of November will receive Bronze, Silver, and Gold Wiki Awards for their exceptional service. Fine print follows my signature.

If you want to help but aren't sure how, don't worry - subscribe and stick around for a bit. You'll find a lot of the emails we send are boilerplate text that you can copy from previous responses and then edit as needed. So sign up and help today! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 00:24, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Fine print: In order to receive credit towards either award, any response you send must be cc'd to the unblock mailing list per standard procedure. Each admin may only get credit once per appealing user; i.e., if you respond to an appeal asking for more information, you don't get credit for two appeals by responding again when they user sends the information you need. Also, except where replies are sent within a few minutes of each other, only the first admin to respond to a given stage of an appeal gets credit; i.e., if Admin A responds to a user's request, then Admin B sends another response an hour later, only Admin A is going to get credit because it had already been dealt with. List-only emails do not receive credit. You receive credit just for sending a useful response; you need not unblock (or decline to unblock) a user. Currently subscribed users are also eligible provided they actually start helping like DQ and I have been asking them to do for weeks :-P.

Policy/Legality Regarding Possible Reformatted Wikipedia Website

For years, I've waged an unsuccessful war to remove an ever-increasing tide of Family Guy, comic book, and movie-of-the-week pop culture trivia from Wikipedia articles. Even where I've had some modest success by grinding through the torturous Wikipedia bureaucracy to establish that, no, Green Lantern comic books are not relevant to the biography of Boss Tweed, eventually it always creeps back... with interest. I've finally given up. Wikipedia belongs to the cultureless neckbeards and manchildren. This has, however, given me an idea. I'm considering creating a website which would fetch Wikipedia articles, and strip them of all "trivia" and "in popular culture" sections. I might also, for example, have it remove any sentence which contains stringers such as "The Simpsons" or "Family Guy". The website would be essentially invisible. All it would do is fetch (edited) Wikipedia content. My question is: Would this be (a) legal, (b) in agreement with Wikipedia's license, and (c) ethical? -- SmashTheState (talk) 11:54, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not an expert, but I believe in general that it's OK to reproduce all the CC-BY-SA content (see Wikipedia:Copyrights). The caveat is that you need to list all the authors that have worked on that content (text, images, sounds, etc.) and provide a link to the history of the page(s) you have reproduced so that the original authors receive credit for their work. This is my general understanding, but like I said, I'm no expert. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 12:46, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the CC-BY-SA content would be the stuff Wikipedia editors created (i.e. text and images created by Wikipedians). It would not cover things like quotes and fair use images that we use under fair use laws and our internal policies. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 12:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that under the CC-BY-SA license you can copy any of our content provided you include attribution (who is it BY) and Share Alike (SA) your version. This can be done by a footer like the one used on Wikipedia pages e.g. "Thanks to the editors of Wikipedia who contributed this content. This text is available under the CC-BY-SA license. Additional terms may apply" but I Am Not A Lawyer filceolaire (talk) 14:12, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

What about practicality? How many servers would be dedicated to the task? This would essentially double the amount of internet traffic associated with each request from a visitor who doesn't want to be sullied by such trivia: Download entire article from Wikipedia server, sanitize it through software which remains to be written on servers which remain to be rented, then send 99% of said content out from the sanitizing servers using additional bandwidth. Who is going to pay for the effort to sanitize articles through dedicated servers and for the additional bandwidth? - Ac44ck (talk) 03:44, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, you're right. I could stick Google ads on it to pay for it, but that's more obnoxious than what it's replacing. What about a Greasemonkey script which does the same thing? Are there any legal implications to modifying the content of a Wikipedia page? I remember a bunch of websites suing an ISP years ago (Earthlink, perhaps?) for stripping off their ads and replacing them with their own. -- SmashTheState (talk) 14:54, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Or you could realize that excess trivia on some articles is a minor annoyance that isn't really worth the amount of effort and intelligence you want to throw at the problem. You obviously have the experience, and it sounds like you have the smarts and knowledge, to do big things within wikipedia ... a jihad against excess Simpsons items seems like a pretty feeble target. (And I speak as somebody who gets really irritated with this sort of piffle, too.) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:19, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Just look at the OP's talk page and previous contributions, that might answer your question. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:03, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I refuse to take criticism from someone whose primary cultural interest is large-breasted 6 year olds with spiky heads and eyes the size of hubcaps. -- SmashTheState (talk) 20:42, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Who is watching Special:FeedbackDashboard?

I am curious to know who else has been watching the new editor feedback dashboard at Special:FeedbackDashboard. I would also like to hear what others think of the responses so far. Thanks. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 12:31, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Attribution

I just noticed today that when pages are displayed on the new Wikipedia Mobile site there is no link to the History page. I think this means we are in breach of the "Attribution" requirement of the CC-BY-SA license.

Even on the normal site there is nothing to tell people that contributors are listed on the View history tab. Should we ammend the footer to read:

The copyright to this text is owned by the contributors listed on the
History page and is made available under the
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; additional terms may apply.
See Terms of Use for details.

(Cross posted from Wikimedia Talk:Terms of use) --filceolaire (talk) 13:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

This is sort of a wikipedia history question

It appears to me that in November 2004 I added a picture [3] to the John LaFarge article. The picture is still there, but when I click on it I find no mention of me in its history. It is not really a big deal, but it is nice (opinion) to be at acknowledged for the work that I do here, or am I missing something? Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 04:13, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

The file was moved to commons, and the original Wikipedia file deleted. You were the original uploader, as can be seen here: [4] (viewable only by admins). I'm not sure one way or another whether or not it is normal to note the original uploader when stuff is transferred to commons, especially public domain material. This is different from text you compose yourself, which is your own original work, and for which Wikipedia's license mandates that you be credited for (via the article history). I don't know that the purely technical aspect of uploading a picture requires attribution as required by Wikipedia's license. It could, but I don't know one way or the other. If you are concerned and wish to persue it, you should probably do so at Commons, as they (and NOT Wikipedia) are currently hosting said picture. --Jayron32 04:22, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy reply J. No, it is not really important, it was just a surprise. I sometimes go to a lot of work finding usable images and don't get a warm fuzzy feeling seeing someone else's name on what I consider to have been my work. Or maybe I just like to see my name in print or something. Carptrash (talk) 04:28, 6 November 2011 (UTC)