User talk:Omegatron

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Wind power safety

Moved to Talk:Wind power#Safety

Floating sidebar

Replied on meta talk page. Harryboyles 00:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've been out of the loop on FU

As someone who doesn't edit much but rather uses wikipedia for what it was intended, I don't understand what is going on here with the mass removal of so many fair-use images from our biographies. I read your essay, but what I want to know is when the entire community agreed to this fair-use pogrom. It is very frustrating to not be able to see what the person looks like that I'm reading about. Or for that matter, being able to see the thing the article is talking about. I feel that this wonderful resource is under attack by so-called "purity trolls" who are using FSF polemics to prove a point. Yes, that is harsh rhetoric, but I have seen what this kind of "free" zealotry has done to other open source projects, like Debian. What you get is a an adequate, but not very good thing. What should be stressed is that sometimes we need to have shims, even seemingly shallow ones, to allow the house to be built. I don't know what to do, but I know there are tons of editors who feel the same way, and they are not wikisloths/wikileeches like myself. Please, can you tell me what the current state of the fight is? Is there hope for reverting to common sense policies or is it just going to get worse? --Dragon695 (talk) 14:05, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the community ever did agree to it. It was mandated from above without much thought. Several attempts have been made to undo the damage, with strong support, but when someone says "this is the the Will of the Foundation, which is non-negotiable", there's not much you can do; rational argument doesn't work at that point. Obviously this violates the consensus-based spirit of Wikipedia, but the Foundation can rewrite the rules about that, too, if it suits their personal agendas.

I'm also pretty much out of the loop. The attitudes of the people involved are very frustrating, and I have been trying to avoid conflict lately for the sake of my own sanity. But on anarchist Wikipedia, persistence always wins out over rational thought, so when you let people bully you into avoiding a conflict, you lose the conflict. I wish I had the patience to keep it up, because there is hope. We can certainly get the rules changed to not be asinine, but it would take a dedicated effort of a significant number of people, and we're not organized or steadfast enough.

Quotations, images, and sound clips are fundamentally different from written encyclopedia content. If someone isn't willing to freely license their text, we can just paraphrase it and keep the facts intact. (Even when people willfully release text under free licenses, we usually don't use it directly, anyway, because it's not written in an encyclopedic style.) But when someone refuses to freely license an image, we can't just paraphrase it. Fair use is a great right, but it's also a legally dangerous thing to rely solely on. If someone is generous enough to give us limited permission, we should take it. Refusing their gift because it's "not free enough" is just stupid. Our encyclopedia content should always remain non-negotiably free, but the aggregated content does not have to be. The fact that downstream users can't modify and republish pictures of a famous politician doesn't mean we should remove the pictures altogether. It's our duty as a reference work - as collectors of human knowledge - to include it, and we should include it in the most legally-safe way we can, which is not fair use.

(And I, for one, can't fathom why people with such an interest in copyright law are so eager to roll over and let the record companies and corporations destroy our right to fair use.[1][2][3][4] You would think people interested in freedom of thought and opposed to restrictive "intellectual property" would be defending such rights; not aggressively giving them up.) — Omegatron (talk) 03:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Uploading non-free images from a specific time period

Hi there, I'm currently editing this article,and would like to add this[5] picture.The original location of the picture is in this[6] site.The image is non-free,but indicates the old campus in 1985.Is there any way this can be uploaded onto wiki?

Amog (talk) 16:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why are you asking me? :) It looks like you already uploaded it anyway. — Omegatron (talk) 00:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah,I managed it a couple of minutes after i asked you.Thanks anyway! - Amog (talk) 19:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have another issue though.in the article SSNCE,I found that it's logo is marked under the GNU Free Documentation License.Isn't this wrong?..can't anything be done about it? Amog (talk) 13:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the person who uploaded it is the copyright holder? — Omegatron (talk) 00:02, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No,the website says that the college is owned by Shiv Nadar,therefore the logo is obviously owned by the the trust/the college.Further,since a non-replaceable logo has to be used to illustrate an organization,permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the logo is copyright violation,isn't it? — Amog (talk) 07:04, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you should tag it as a possibly unfree image. — Omegatron (talk) 13:31, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Will do,Thank you. - Amog |^Talk 13:55, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your RegExp fixer vandalized an equation

What's up with that? Dicklyon (talk) 02:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Because the math tags weren't on the same line as the equation, so I missed it in my manual review of the diff. — Omegatron (talk) 02:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple small edits and other issues

I'm having some trouble with a user known as Nseidm1. I noticed that you were one of the last users to deal with him. He is currently pushing questionable to fradualent material on oxyhydrogen, hydrogen fuel enhancement, and electrolysis of water. He uses many many small edits which makes it very difficult to check the material he has added or changed. I believe he is editing the material in an attempt promote a commercial interest.[7] I am very well versed in the phenomenon related to the scam he is promoting and can supply reliable information as needed. Just wondering if you knew the best way to proceed. Thanks.--OMCV (talk) 01:11, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I know all about it. He's reasonable, though. Talk to him and tell him not to use so many small edits. (Also you might want to try this to collapse multiple edits from the same person.) Any help you can give to oxyhydrogen would be greatly appreciated. Eventually we're going to fork the Brown's Gas and HHO stuff back into their own articles, but they need to be high quality before that happens (debunking all the crap surrounding them with reliable sources), or they will just be listed for deletion yet again, and people will continue to be mislead by these scams. — Omegatron (talk) 01:34, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusion: Image placeholders centralized discussion

Hi. I'm sending this to you because you participated in the Centralized discussion on image placeholders that ended on 23 April.

That discussion must produce a conclusion.

We originally asked "Should the addition of this box [example right] be allowed? Does the placeholder system and graphic image need to be improved to satisfy policies and guidelines for inclusion? Is it appropriate to some kinds of biographies, but not to others?" (See introduction).

Conclusions to centralized discussions are either marked as 'policy', 'guideline', 'endorsed', 'rejected', 'no consensus', or 'no change' etc. We should now decide for this discussion.

Please read and approve or disapprove the section here: Conclusion --Kleinzach (talk) 11:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please note this message conforms to WP:CANVASSING and has not been sent to anyone has not already participated in the centralized discussion.

Follow current literature on MOSNUM

Omegatron: I think your recent post of a {disputed} tag on MOSNUM amounts to the improper actions of an involved administrator. I’ve posted a complain on Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#Interference by involved administrator. Greg L (talk) 02:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's a witch hunt

I assure you I know neither User:Classicaio nor User:Wittiams. I have nothing to do with them. I, User:NotSarenne, was blocked under the false assumption of being a sockpuppet of User:Sarenne. I only picked the account name after repeatedly being accused of sockpuppetry by User:Fnagaton when I was making anonymous edits. I never used Tor. I never used multiple accounts. I don't know User:Sarenne at all. Since then I've noticed quite a few accounts getting blocked as "sockpuppet of User:NotSarenne". The truth is, a few of these were accounts that I created one after another - after getting blocked again to be precise. I wouldn't have created any other accounts but blocking the complete sub-network of my ISP leaves me with only a few options. Many of the blocked so-called sockpuppets, like the two above mentioned accounts, have nothing to do with me. I don't know who they are. Many of them were blocked for very little, things which clearly didn't justify indefinite blocks. Several other involved accounts behave exactly the same, if not worse, but they are not even admonished. The point isn't that it's unfair. The point is, this behaviour of the involved admins doesn't make any sense whatsoever. See also [[8]]. --202.120.139.211 (talk) 23:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They're obviously socks of someone. Are you just objecting that your blocked username is associated with them? — Omegatron (talk) 00:14, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My definition of sockpuppet requires two accounts at minimum. Otherwise it may be a vandal or whatever but not a sockpuppet. A sockpuppet itself isn't the definition of evil. The guidelines themselves provide examples of using sockpuppets without negative intentions. Quite obviously "check user" cannot prove that someone is a sockpuppet of another account and it's less than useful to prove that someone is not a sockpuppet. As I have witnessed people being blocked as sockpuppet of NotSarenne who provably were not him or associated with him in anyway, I can testify that "check user" doesn't work or isn't used correctly. Sarenne and NotSarenne have become useful tools to get rid of annoying people without the need to provide credible evidence. --217.87.63.197 (talk) 18:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, sockpuppets are not inherently evil (I even have one), but it is bad to use sockpuppets "for the purpose of deception, distraction, or to create the illusion of broader support for a position than actually exists". The two accounts you mentioned were created to jump immediately into a specific discussion and repeat the same things being repeated by other users. It's obvious that they're controlled by another user, either as sockpuppets (to make it look like there is more support for something than actually exists), or as strawpuppets (to discredit the opposition and make it easy to block real users with the same opinions), or, more likely, just to sow confusion and distract users from other issues. Checkuser is not used in these cases, since the behavior of the sock is obviously inappropriate. The association with NotSarenne is just due to the behavior, not to any specific evidence proving they are the same user. — Omegatron (talk) 00:12, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay but I disagree that they show behavior similar to that of NotSarenne. They were no more disruptive than several, heavily disruptive, unblocked users whose behavior is much more similar than that of NotSarenne. Also it's just your interpretation that they were blocked without any evidence. You know as well as I do that several users here would claim that there was absolute undeniable proof. Especially those kind of users who had been convincted of sockpuppetry with check user and by matching behavior but who weren't blocked. --217.87.60.244 (talk) 06:21, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NYC Meetup: June 1, 2008

In the afternoon, we will hold a session dedicated to meta:Wikimedia New York City activities, elect a board of directors, and hold salon-style group discussions on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects (see the last meeting's minutes).

We'll also review our recent Wikipedia Takes Manhattan event, and make preparations for our exciting successor Wiki Week bonanza, being planned with Columbia University students for September or October.

In the evening, we'll share dinner and chat at a local restaurant, and (weather permitting) hold a late-night astronomy event at Columbia's telescopes.

You can add or remove your name from the New York City Meetups invite list at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Invite list.

Also, check out our regional US Wikimedia chapters blog Wiki Northeast (and we're open to guest posts).
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 00:19, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wind power capacity factor

I listed a source on the Talk:Wind power page. You can derive the capacity factor for 2001 from this source. Mrshaba (talk) 03:43, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]