If you need help with something, feel free to ask. To leave a message for me, press the "new section" tab at the top of the page. Remember to sign your message with ~~~~. I will respond to all civil messages.
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The October 2009 issue of the Films WikiProject newsletter has been published. The newsletter includes details on the current membership roll call to readd your name from the inactive list to the active list. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. If you have an idea for improving the newsletter please leave a message on my talk page. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 05:50, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Mrg. It's looking good. I made a few tweaks to the language in spots where I got a bit confused. The one section I didn't follow was the last part of "handling copyright violations" where it reads:
:Move the salvageable content to the temporary subpage /Temp linked on the copyvio notice or another subpage, being careful to provide proper attribution to the authors of that content in accordance with Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia, and follow one of the processes below.
I wanted to add something there, but I'm still not quite sure what you were getting at. Seems to be missing something or "the processes below" is the wrong direction. Other than that, I think the entire piece works great. Thanks for all your work. — CactusWriter |needles13:31, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, yeah, one other thing. I don't know if you want to add a sentence about briefly checking the editor's other contributions for other possible violations (with a link to WP:CCI perhaps). I know it is something that you and I and others always do, so it is part of the process -- on the other hand, I would hate to open up another big can of worms on the page. Keeping it relatively simple would be ideal. Thoughts? — CactusWriter |needles13:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You made some great changes! Thanks. :)
Thanks for pointing out the unclear directions. Some of that was an artifact of earlier versions of the page, and some of it was my moving stuff around and forgetting to update. :) Does it make more sense now?
The project's Tag & Assess drive has begun. We will be assessing over 50,000 articles during the drive and we need your help! 200-article ranges can be adopted and completed at any pace. A variety of awards are available based on the number of articles assessed. Please help review whatever you are comfortable with, and if you have any questions, leave a message on the talk page of the drive. In addition, please add your name to the active member list if you have not already. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:57, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Invitation to participate in SecurePoll feedback and workshop
Hey CactusWriter, how you doing these days? A page you correctly deleted Mitchell Wiggs is the reason I'm here. Unless you have any objections, I'd like to restore the article, and userfy it for the article creator. He claims that he is not "the" Mitchell Wiggs, so indeed the user name is something that will have to be addressed as well. Rather than just "doing" it, I thought I'd prefer to get your input on it first. The article creator is discussing this at: User talk:MitchellWiggs. Do you have any insight on anything here that might be of value to me? Thanks for any feedback. — Ched : ? 08:45, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Ched. A reread of that article shows the A7 speedy was correct. The bio has no "actual" assertion of notability for this person. Being at the same parties as celebrities or meeting celebrities at an event does not make a person notable. And suggesting he is a notable musician and music producer but has never been on any record label and has no notable music is a clear contradiction. However, I have no problem if you wish to userfy the page to allow the editor to make another attempt at providing any significant references. Thanks for asking for my input. Good luck. — CactusWriter |needles18:18, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I ask that you work with me if at all possible. The baseline of people dying from influenza is 500,000 persons a year. In pandemic years like '57 and '68 that can double to the a million, and these are merely 'average' pandemic years. Now, that doesn't settle the copyright question, but it does lend some weight to the education side! In addition, I don't think WHO has a profit motive in holding press conferences, so we're not interfering with their ability to make a profit.
So, if we can make the case, say the civil standard of preponderance of evidence, more likely than not, 51%, I ask you to be open to the experiment, in fact welcome the experiment precisely because we are trying something new.
You mention substantial portion. The last time I looked at fair use, I was surprised at how much lattitude it gave, it was either 250 or 500 words. But it's not absolute, which makes the whole thing slippery, yeah, it does. I think there's a famous case in which one of news magazines like Atlantic or New Yorker had interviewed President Ford. Someone else republished the excerpt where he was explaining why he pardoned Nixon, and even though the excerpt was under the normal size threshold, a court ruled that it substantially enough interfered with the profit of the magazine. Again, WHO doesn't have a profit motive. It may even be public domain. I'm not going to base it on that. I'm going to look at fair use. And I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility to take excerpts from newspapers (probably shorter excerpts). It is dicey, the newspapers, I'll acknowledge that, but I still want to take a look at it.
PS We can't help everyone likely to be affected by this year's H1N1, but if we do our best intellectual work, we might be able to save several dozen lives. And that possibility should be taken very seriously.
Although I can appreciate your desire to provide accurate timely information, you must understand that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia -- it is not a news service. Additionally, we must adhere to strict legal guidelines for copyrighted material. The text that you are copying from the WHO website is definitely not Public Domain. Please notice the copyright notice found on the bottom of their website and as explicitly stated here. Our WP:FAIRUSE criteria permits only brief excerpts, properly attributed. Editors cannot create entire articles by copying other people's copyrighted words. It is illegal -- and allowing it can jeopardize the entire Wikipedia project. Therefore, we take copyright violations very seriously -- deleting copyright violations when found and blocking any editor who persists in infringing on copyrights.
Several editors have already explained all of this to you on your talk page. If you wish to add updated text to Wikipedia articles, please write the information in your own words and cite the sources. It is as simple as that. In the time you have taken to write large comments to several editors, you could have written the information into the articles. If you are concerned about adding timely information, I would suggest that you consider contributing to Wikinews, which functions as our online news source. If you have further questions about whether text will pass copyright criteria, please feel free to ask. Good luck with your editing. — CactusWriter |needles11:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OTRS check
Hello, CactusWriter. You have new messages at Stifle's talk page. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Hi,a copyright infringement issues has been flagged on the Aberdeen Asset Management page. The entry was added by an employee of Aberdeen Asset management and was taken directly from the Aberdeen Asset management site. Can you please advise this article can be restored. I have removed the entry in question from the article.. Thanks -- 20.56 6 December 2009 (UTC) AberdeenManagement ([[User talk:AberdeenManagement|talk]
Okay. Thank you for deleting the copyright violation text. I have once again removed the CV template. During the past year, that article has had problems with the persistent addition of copyright infringements from numerous new accounts. Because the new accounts have user names associated with the company, these appear to have a conflict-of-interest, which runs counter to Wikipedia's policy on neutral point-of-view. Your own username is problematic as well. Please read WP:ORGNAME for the relevant policy. I see that a note has already been left on your user page advising you how to deal with this. If you have any questions about this, please ask. — CactusWriter |needles09:29, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oh my. I wanted to walk away from that one. I can understand the confusion. I would have to go with deletion of the large list and reproduce only a Top Ten list under fair use claim. I left some comments at the discussion. Hope I didn't add to the confusion. — CactusWriter |needles20:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I saw that you had weighed in, but did not notice you had written me back here. :) Thanks. You didn't add to the confusion at all; as you can see, I did pretty much that. I really prefer straightforward cases, with an occasional backwardscopyvio to make me feel like Sherlock Holmes. It's a good day when I find no listings that leave me going, "Well, um, well...." :D --Moonriddengirl(talk)12:44, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
First, thank you for the provided information. Please note that the copyright infringement issue was nowhere near my intentions, and I apologize for it.
Concerning the way forward, and since I definitely want to see the article back online as soon as possible, I intend to move in two directions:
First, I will ask the ePractice owners to send an email to wikipedia according to the instructions (send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en at wikimedia dot org or a postal letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. These messages must explicitly permit use under CC-BY-SA and the GFDL) so that the copyright issue can be settled properly.
In parallel, I will remove direct "copy-paste" content from the page and leave only the content that has been generated by me summarising the ePractice factsheets.
Please indicate whether the second option is considered acceptable (as it will result in information missing about many countries), so that the page can come online again. This will also allow the continuation of my work in order to create summaries for the rest of the countries.
Hi, Rentzepopoulos. Thanks for replying. I appreciate your willingness to resolve the issues. I will make a note on the CV report that you are seeking permission for use of the copyrighted text. In the meantime, if you wish to reconstruct the page without any of the copyrighted text, that would be fine. Please use this temporary page, Talk:EGovernment in Europe/Temp, which is created specifically for that purpose. You can certainly add in any original text you wrote from the original article (Be careful not to add any copyrighted text -- we can't allow those additions anywhere on Wikipedia. That is one reason that I needed to delete the text at User:rentzepopoulos/eGovernment in Europe) Also, you may wish to read WP:Close paraphrasing which talks about the need to avoid copyright infringement even in summarized text. Your new Temporary article will be checked by an administrator in 7 days -- and, if compliant, will be moved back into the mainspace. Or you can notify me if it is ready earlier. — CactusWriter |needles14:34, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Image
Here is a tough call, use your own opinion. Stacia Napierkowska has a few pictures in commons to draw from. Should we use the erotic sepia toned image, even though it is so compressed you can see pixellation in it. The compression is so high that the text cannot be read. Or should we use one of the less erotic but more detailed images from the Library of Congress. I guess the best compromise would be to find a newer version of the erotic one. What do you think? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:10, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the group of photos available at commons, my personal choice would be File:Stacia Napierkowska 001.jpg. It is the finest and clearest reproduction of the group. The File:Stacia Napierkowska.jpg would make a better encyclopedic photo -- I think it is a superior pose and presentation -- if only it is was higher quality. If we could find the original, rescan and restore it, that would be wonderful. User:Durova is a WP expert on old photo restoration. She could provide you with better advice on this. Good luck. — CactusWriter |needles09:01, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your observations. It seems like a total waste of space to keep an article of an insignificant defunct college that faded away after the campus was flooded. Its enrollment was always less than 100--at times when a friend of mine attended it was only 25. Can you give me directions to properly redirect it to Somerset Christian College? Thanks for your kind assistance. R/T-รัก-ไทย (talk) 12:16, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You will find the information you need at Help:Merging. To start the process, you should add the template "Mergeto" to the top of Alma White College, directing the article to a discussion at Talk:Somerset Christian College. Open the discussion at the talk page with your reasons and allow plenty of time for comments by interested editors. You can also place a WP:RFC tag on the page requesting neutral to contribute to the conversation. If you need further help with the process, feel free to ask. — CactusWriter |needles12:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. :) Could use a second set of admin eyes at Jamil Ghanim and at Talk:Jamil Ghanim. I believe the article constitutes an unusable derivative work and, not unusually, its creator does not. He is also quoting the entirety of the source on the talk page in spite of my informing him this is problematic under WP:NFC. Sometimes a second opinion is very helpful in such cases. Have you got time? --Moonriddengirl(talk)03:46, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I was twiddling away with writing something and by the time I pushed save, you were back. The exact word count? Even after the rewording -- that is funny. — CactusWriter |needles11:36, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
⚠ Thanks for uploading File:VeggietalesPirates.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of "file" pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Skier Dude (talk) 06:10, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This arbitration case has been closed, and the final decision may be viewed at the link above.
User:Arab Cowboy is prohibited from making changes to any article about a person with respect to their ethnicity or nationality for one year and is placed on a 1 revert per week restriction for one year.
User:Supreme Deliciousness is prohibited from making changes to any article about a person with respect to their ethnicity or nationality for one year and is placed on a 1 revert per week restriction for one year.
Asmahan is placed under article probation for six months.
Any article within the scope of this case, where an extended dispute related to the national or ethnic identity of an individual is occuring may be placed under article probation by an uninvolved administrator for up to six months.
Uninvolved administrators may perform escalating blocks on editors who do not abide by these remedies.
Thank you for your kind threat " I want to make it clear that another reversion at List of evangelical Christians will be considered a violation of WP:Edit warring. And will result in you being blocked from editing." It was the other party who reverted my edit, and who instigated the deletion of an article about the person whose name I included. There was diversity of opinion toas the the notability, but the one who reverted my edit has reverted other names as well, and seems to regard himself as the final authority. Again, thank you very much. R/T-รัก-ไทย (talk) 16:02, 19 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if you took my note as meaning that I would engage in an edit war. "I intend to keep expressing my judgments, which seem to differ from yours. R/T-รัก-ไทย (talk) 04:59, 17 December 2009 (UTC)" I simply meant that this editor seemed to be trying to intimidate me, and that I would continue to make meaningful contributions. I certainly would never lower myself to get in such a war nor would I intentionally violate Wiki standards. Regards, R/T-รัก-ไทย (talk) 07:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I see that Nefer Tweety has self-reverted their accidental re-introduction of the copyright infringing text. I have left notices about the continuing dispute on Asmahan at the talk page and a cautionary warning to User:Nefer Tweety on their talk page. Supreme Deliciousness, considering that it just took a dozen arbitrators and several weeks to resolve your arbitration case, it would be in Wikipedia's and everyone's best interest if you refrained from editing Asmahan or the related articles. Jumping back in there, making accusations and restarting the old disputes isn't wise. I would strongly suggest you step back from there during your probationary period. Allow other non-involved editors to develop that article during the next months. Thanks and good luck. — CactusWriter |needles14:17, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Cactus.... Supreme Deliciousness is acting up at Asmahan again, bringing back potentially copyrighted text that had been removed. For the sake of peace on WP, please stop this. -- Nefer Tweety (talk) 10:29, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I replied on my talk page, but the gist of it is that I dont think that my looking at sources provided by SD and deciding on my own what changes are needed (and making those changes) is editing on SDs behalf. I also do not think that the edit to the talk page by SD was a violation of his topic ban, he is only prohibited from making changes to articles, not providing sources on talk pages. nableezy - 16:53, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A review at ANI affirmed the conclusion that SD is attempting to stretch the boundaries of the ban -- in essence, violating the spirit -- and has violated the sanctions. A brief 12hr block has been given as well as a second admonishment (after mine from last week) for SD to stay away from Asmahan. It is hoped that the brief block will get SD's attention so that edit wars and further sanctions will not occur. I am not questioning any edits which you undertake of your own volition -- the article certainly needs some care and attention from neutral editors after the several months of POV warring. Good luck with it. Cheers. — CactusWriter |needles17:19, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
article regarding Larissa Shasko (speedily deleted as Larissa shasko)
Hey there... cool that you deleted the Larissa shasko (small s), I was trying to create an article for her with proper capitalization "Larissa Shasko" and couldn't get past the auto-reference to 2008 election candidates...
As per the copyright infringement... I had used larissa's own website, and could easily attain her permission (we are close friends and colleagues)... The only reason I left the copied and pasted short bio was because I didn't want to edit the small s article while the large s wasn't allowing me...
so how can I start on a large s, Larissa Shasko article?
