User talk:Sadads

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Sadads- I have no issue with your edits but I had a question for you. I saw that 22 days ago you edited the page "The Mind's Eye (radio company)" There are no external links nor references on this page. I am really interested in learning more about these productions and seeing if I could attain copies of them. I grew up listening to them on cassette tape and really miss them. I was hoping perhaps you had some info. Thanks, Leon — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.248.247.237 (talk) 05:37, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Copyright question (3d object images)

Hello Sadads, I have a question and I was wondering if you have any idea about the following: I would like to upload some images with 3D objects (coins and engraved gems) that belong to the Cornell University Library (CUL). I read that I have to specify the copyright of the objects which are in public domain, using PD-Old tags and with a second copyright license for the photographer and the description, using creative commons. Do I need to archive this permission in the Wikimedia OTRS system? If yes, should I submit a letter of permission from CUL and send it to the OTRS team? Do you know where I could find a sample such a letter? I found a sample letter at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Model_projects/OTRS_letter. Would this letter work? Or should we start a GLAM-project first? Thank you very much in advance.EVDiam (talk) 18:39, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

@EVDiam: Hi: 3D objects need to be release by the copyright holder of the images, because in the United States: only copies of 2D Public domain items automatically get released into the Public Domain. The Standard OTRS letter should work well: I would strongly recommend consulting with other people in your team, to figure out what license that you would like the images released under (Wikipedia can't do a "one time" use permission, it needs to be either a) public domain or b) a free license like CC-BY-SA). I would recommend CC-BY-SA, in that it requires other people to share the image under the same license and give credit to the CUL libraries. If your team likes the experimental release of the first couple images, it might be worth identifying the whole set of images on your Library's website as under a free license- so that its not only Wikipedia that benefits, but researchers and members of the public that stumble across the collection in its original context, Sadads (talk) 15:30, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

@Sadads:Hello Sadads, Thank you very much for your useful comments. I will definitely discuss this with the interested parties. Again, I really appreciate for taking the time to answer me. I look forward to future exchanges. EVDiam (talk) 01:34, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Template red links

Hi. I don't think it's canvassing to let you know about this discussion involving red links in templates, since you were the editor who was in at the start of the discussion, which has now gotten quite large on another page. Randy Kryn 21:49, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Ticktock Reassessment

Thanks for your prompt reassessment. I tend to agree with your comments, esp. plot summary too long, but I was reluctant to prune someone's hard work. I think the original Importance of "mid" was justified as the work is out-of-genre for Koontz, but I bow to your broader experience. Mainly I wanted to upgrade it from Stub to Start & I see that is done - thank you. Would you agree that the plot summary should be redacted? D A Patriarche, BSc (talk) (talk) 20:03, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

@D A Patriarche: Yep, plot summary definitely needs a good trim, lots of small and unnecessary details, and very poor writing. Sadads (talk) 20:28, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Wanted to ask why an article is not under WikiProject Novels's scope

Hi, I was wondering why you removed the tags stating Carter Kane is of interest to WikiProject Novels and the fantasy and Percy Jackson task forces. As far as I can tell, it is probably under the scope of the parent project (Novels), and it is most definitely under the Percy Jackson task-force's. Seems to be a similar case with the article Percy Jackson; both are about a fictional character in a children's fantasy series by author Rick Riordan -- and yet Percy Jackson is under the project's scope and Carter Kane is not. Thanks in advance. 2ReinreB2 (talk) 17:14, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

@2ReinreB2: Sorry that was a silly mistake (I was moving through the articles quickly). Normally fictional characters woudn't be in scope, except we have a task force :P I have made a similar mistake once or twice before with Harry Potter actor articles. Sadads (talk) 01:18, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing it up! Good to know about fictional characters though, I'll be sure to keep that in mind when I'm classifying things. 2ReinreB2 (talk) 02:15, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill ITN

--ceradon (talk • edits) 16:26, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

List of Breweries in Vermont

Hi--

I wanted to touch base with you about some recent edits to the List of breweries in Vermont. There are a few of us who regularly curate the beer-related pages, and any extra help is appreciated. We've tried to be pretty diligent about keeping unsourced redlinks out of these "List of beers" pages [ie. WP:ListBrew. That one, in particular, has a pretty large number of redlinks. In your editing note you noted that it was "fine." I wasn't too clear on what that meant in the context of a page full of redlinks. Any clarification is appreciated. Prof. Mc (talk) 22:35, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

@Prof. Mc: Sorry for taking so long to respond, I have been running around doing other work: the list of breweries had been removed from the article wholesale during an earlier revision of the article; the list was source (tied to the index created by the Vermont Brewers Association), and didn't have any oddball items listed on it. I will be happy to help more around New England and Kansas breweries, after I finish up a few more other projects: I am working on meta:100wikidays, and just settling in after a move to Vermont. I will probably be filling in a number of those redlinks in the process, of #100wikidays, Sadads (talk) 23:32, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

@Sadads: No worries about response time. I completely understand. Yeah, I had removed the redlinks, though not the entire list. In genera we try to remove unsourced redlinks and unsourced breweries--otherwise the lists would be overrun with non-notable breweries. The various state Brewers' Association webpages aren't usually sources that are OK, since the state Brewers Associations will list anyone who pays a fee, not necessarily a notable brewery. But, if you're going to work on those and add some news sources at some point in the near future, I won't do any culling--I'm glad to have as many breweries listed as we can verify as notable. Thanks for the reply, and thanks for working on these. Prof. Mc (talk) 12:51, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Hiding in Plain Sight

I got carried away. At any rate, I din't realize that the NPR source would have sufficed: "as close as Basra was to me, falling victim to terrorism". The same article is found here plus the transcript of the interview.

Would this suit you?

• ... that novelist Nuruddin Farah's sister died in a terrorist attack, similar to how a character dies in his then newly finished novel Hiding in Plain Sight?

I guess this was your intention of using "newly finished".

--Efe (talk) 11:02, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

@Efe: Responded in the nom, but yes that is closer to my intention! Thanks for the energy, I always appreciate when others come through and do work on my articles :) I have been on a push recently to work on African literature, so I always find it interesting to see if other editors will come along and help: we are sorely undercovered in that area, and their is not a huge editor base looking at the overlap of literature and Africa due to WP:Systematic bias. Sadads (talk) 13:42, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Most welcome sir. --Efe (talk) 13:46, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Dragon Boy reviews

I sent you an email with the reviews of Dragon Boy. Fearstreetsaga (talk) 16:26, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Reference errors on 8 September

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Marthandavarma (novel) page, your edit caused a missing references list (help | help with group references). (Fix | Ask for help)

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Ant and Grasshopper

Dear Saddad, Since you have a literary focus, I ought not to have to point out to you that adding material unsanctioned by an [original text http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/perry/373.htm] counts as OR. I italicize the redundant words in your suggested revision that come from your personal reconstruction of the fable: "grasshopper carelessly enjoying a warm summer, not preparing for the impending cold winter, while an ant works tirelessly to prepare for winter." The Greek original starts in the actual winter with the grasshopper begging from the ant and that is where all comment should begin. I hope you'll appreciate where I'm coming from now.

It was not a good idea to delete my new online direction to the text, rather than to a printed edition that few have by them to check. And since I also added that my later revision included putting right faulty grammar, you should not have reverted wholesale. I think you are not crediting me with good faith and are turning this into a contest. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 15:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

@Mzilikazi1939: There are a number of problems with the assumptions that come with you revisions:

1. its a fable, and has taken on a narrative of its own as its been shared across the cultu: the summary of how the story is experienced across all tellings, is more important in the lead, than the "sanctioned" version. Authority does not lie in original texts: but rather in their cultural legacy
2. Descriptive redundancy of language is good in these cases, because it emphasizes the framework of the moral of the story.
3. You talk about authority, but point to a version with no editorial control, and no clear authority (the website doesn't document permission for taking the translations, nor does it have very clear sourcing: its a clearly commercial site promoting sales of books via Amazon). The textual work, on the other hand, is coming with the authority of OUP's editorial standards . Thats not to say the mythfolklore link shouldn't be in the external links, but it most certainly should not be a citation.

I am going to revert your change: please move disagreements to the articles' talk page, so that its not just a two person conversation, Sadads (talk) 16:36, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 18

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The Bugle: Issue CXIV, September 2015

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors, coordinator elections have begun Articles: Abbasids to a Yugoslav monitor Book reviews: Economics of warfare, Japan, and light horse Op-ed: We can (not) advance Timeline: This month in World War I

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 05:09, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

DYK for The Revenant (novel)

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:01, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history coordinator election

Greetings from WikiProject Military history! As a member of the project, you are invited to take part in our annual project coordinator election. If you wish to cast a vote, please do so on the election page by 23:59 (UTC) on 29 September. Yours, Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:21, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Suspension bridge

Please don't add images of non-suspension bridges to an article on suspension bridges (and which has too many, too small, images already). Andy Dingley (talk) 00:16, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: 1) there is not too many images, the history section is almost barren: and media is a big part of making articles engageable, 2) chain bridges are a type of supension bridge according to the very article you are referring, and 3) the very same bridge is mentioned in the article. Your reaction to the images appears very trigger happy; please take a bit more time to reflect before removing images. Sadads (talk) 12:34, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

There are many, many images of chain bridges to be had. The one you added is an unrealistic representation of Telford's Menai bridge, some years before the bridge was built. Whether by being based on an early draught, or (far more likely) by having been inaccurately copied from Telford's drawing, the version shown here is technically nonsense. There is no strength to the supporting towers, the chain anchorages are in the wrong place. A bridge like this could never stand (and it's certainly not a representation of Telford's bridge). An encyclopedia should not propagate unrealistic images like this in an article on the main technology.

The second image you've been restoring isn't even a suspension bridge. There are two adjacent bridges at Conway (at this time), this is Stephenson's tubular bridge, not the suspension bridge. Also it's part of a gallery of far too small images. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:13, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 1

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Books and Bytes - Issue 13

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 13, August-September 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs)

• New donations - EBSCO, IMF, more newspaper archives, and Arabic resources
• Expansion into new languages, including Viet and Catalan
• Spotlight: Elsevier partnership garners controversy, dialogue
• Conferences: PKP, IFLA, upcoming events

Read the full newsletter

The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:30, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Your interest in peer reviews

Hi Sadads; Your user page indicates your interest in literature articles. The GAR at Auden has been open for just over one full month now, and there appear to be no editors coming forward to support the top editor there or the old 2009 assessment. I did list it at all of the WikiProjects listed on its Talk page. Could you close out the GAR for Auden as you see best for the article. MusicAngels (talk) 19:51, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

@MusicAngels: Thanks for reaching out, I did a pass, and SilkTork's review seems to do a very good job at highlighting the main points: we will see if there is any more work on it, I would hate to see such a conversation cut off early. Sorry for the delayed response :) Sadads (talk) 13:41, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

This Friday: Women in Architecture edit-a-thon @ Cambridge, MA

You are invited to join the Women in Architecture edit-a-thon @ Cambridge, MA on October 16! (drop-in any time, 6-9pm)--Pharos (talk) 18:29, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

template: cite archive?

Hi Sadads, at Wikiconference I believe you said that people are working on a template for {{cite archive}}. I know someone who would love to work on that. Do you have any contacts? (Thanks again for all that you did at the conference.) - kosboot (talk) 04:03, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

@Kosboot: you want to talk to @The Interior: who is leading the charge at Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library/Archivists/Citation). We would love to find someone who can build the template, since it will need to interact with the Koha Citation standards. Sadads (talk) 17:38, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Sadads! - kosboot (talk) 19:09, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 17

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Recent assessments

Thank you for your recent assessments to these four articles -- Nine Yards of Other Cloth, The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, The Gold at the Starbow's End, and The Man Who Lost the Sea. All four were assessed as Start class, suggesting that you see some need for improvement. If referencing is your concern in these four articles, I'm interested in hearing your comments on the following observations.

First, if your concerns are about the unsourced plot summaries, it is my understanding that the work itself serves as the source for the summary (see WP:PLOTSUM#Citations and WP:FICTIONPLOT). I also note that the plot summary for The Sun Also Rises (a Featured Article) does not use sources in its plot summary. Two more Featured Articles (To Kill a Mockingbird and Pattern Recognition) do cite references, but only for exact quotes from the text.

Second, if your concerns are about the Publication History sections, I note that there is an in-text attribution of the source (see the final sentence of each section). I chose in-text attribution because there seems to be a general practice of including the ISFDB site as an external link in articles about science-fiction works, and I didn't want to duplicate the link with an in-line citation. But I have no strong objections to doing that. Alternately, the final sentences could be re-written to read "The foregoing was taken from the story's listing at ..."

Third, if your concern is about the failure to reference the various award nominations, I was under the impression that non-contentious material did not need to be referenced, especially given that the linked articles on each award contained that referencing. But I also believe that this is a minor point and it would be little trouble to duplicate the award articles' references in the instant article.

Of course, you might have concerns other than referencing. If so, I would greatly appreciate hearing about those, as well. Thank again for looking at these articles. NewYorkActuary (talk) 19:12, 18 October 2015 (UTC) NewYorkActuary (talk) 19:13, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

@NewYorkActuary: Actually, I have no concerns about the Plot summaries or the content currently in the articles. There are several elements of those articles, that prevent them from going beyond start class:

1. Referencing on content like the publishing history, critical elements, etc; even though non-controversal content, in theory, can go without referencing, you might as well footnote it to ensure that we have longterm WP:Verifiability, and lack of citations would prevent promotion to any of the reviewed classes.
2. The lack of various elements typical to most articles about fiction: thematic/stylistic notes from the reception; critical opinions by outside experts about the relative importance/quality of the articles. For more information about typical sections in these kinds of articles see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Novels.
3. Without the above elements, there is not a well rounded real-world sense of the importance of these novels, so we don't know the "why" of their notability, beyond nominal importance created by the awards. As someone who is unaware of the stories and the author, they don't thoroughly help me understand the works as real-world cultural objects with legacies, rather than static "simply-published" works. This kind of breadth is hard to develop for short stories.

In general, their are very few short stories that have sufficient scholarly literature to become B/GA/FA, because of the relatively limited authoritative commentary about them: there are clearly things to understand/know about the works beyond their plot/publication history/awards, but there is no good way to verify that, so as individual story articles: they simply can't come up to snuff. That being said, some editors merge groups of articles about short stories, into thorough conversations about series of works, or an author's corpus, etc. The best way to figure out what the appropriate group is, is to look at the landscape of authoritative critical works which talk about the stories, author, etc.

I hope the feedback helps! Keep up the good work; I have written plenty of articles, which I would have a really hard time bringing up to sufficient breadth for B/GA/FA, but they still are important contributions to human knowledge. For instance, I don't think I would be able to push Whetstone Brook beyond start, without Extensive archival research, and creative use of public records. However, that doesn't mean you aren't providing an important contribution to public knowledge: its just recognizing that the best research on a topic, is sometimes hard to compile because of the nature of the topic or its scholarly community. Sadads (talk) 01:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the helpful response. I have some follow-up questions:
Prior to your assessments, I simply hadn't given much thought to the subject at all. I knew at the start that these short-story articles were never going to be Good or Featured articles, but that's as far as my thinking took me. Now that I've had occasion to look into the assessment criteria, I see that B-class is really what I ought to be shooting for. I agree that these articles are nowhere near B-class and, indeed, might never be. But I'd still like to try. It's clear to me that they all currently fail criterion B-2 for "obvious omissions", with the omissions being of the type you mentioned in your response (i.e., context, commentary, etc.). But my question here is -- do you see any of the other B-class criteria not being met here?
I noticed that, although you assessed all of these articles as "Low" importance for the Novels project, you did not make any assessments of importance for the Science Fiction project. Was that an oversight, or were you deferring to the SF project for those assessments? My feeling is that these stories truly are of "Low" importance under the broad scope of Novels, but that being nominated for prestigious science-fiction awards makes them of "Mid" importance to the science-fiction project. (Before typing this, I did a random check of novels that either won or made the short-list for the Pulitzer Prize and noted that, with only rare exceptions, these novels generally are granted "Mid" importance status by the Novels project.) Do you see any reason why I couldn't (or shouldn't) classify these as "Mid" importance for the SF project?
Two minor points. First, I noticed that you subsequently assessed another of my new articles (i.e., not one of the four listed above), but also noticed that you had not looked at a sixth one, Exploration Team. This last was not a new article, but an expansion of a stub. I'll go ahead and assess it as Start-class/Low-importance for the Novels project, because I don't see how you would have reached an assessment that was different than the other five. But if I'm wrong about that, please let me know. Second (and final!), thank you for the barnstar. However, I'm not much into self-promotion and will be removing it from my Talk page. I trust that you won't be offended by that. Please know that the good thoughts were appreciated.
I look forward to your response. Nothing here is urgent, so please feel free to answer at your convenience. Thanks again for the help. NewYorkActuary (talk) 20:40, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Mission for you

Your mission if you decide to accept it, Mr. Sadads, is to see if you can get The Mariner's Mirror added to the Taylor & Francis Arts & Humanities package. I really, really want online access as thumbing through bound issues is really pretty hit or miss.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:10, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

@Sturmvogel 66: Persuing as part of my official job :) We are going to ask for their Strategic Studies collection, which should provide a bundle of additionally useful sources. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:43, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

That would do quite nicely!--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:29, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 5

Newsletter • October 2015

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

We did it!

In July, we launched five pilot WikiProjects: WikiProjects Cannabis, Evolutionary Biology, Ghana, Hampshire, and Women's Health. We also use the new design, named "WPX UI," on WikiProject Women in Technology, Women in Red, WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health. We are currently looking for projects for the next round of testing. If you are interested, please sign up on the Pilots page.

Shortly after our launch we presented at Wikimania 2015. Our slides are on Wikimedia Commons.

Then after all that work, we went through the process of figuring out whether we accomplished our goal. We reached out to participants on the redesigned WikiProjects, and we asked them to complete a survey. (If you filled out your survey—thank you!) While there are still some issues with the WikiProject tools and the new design, there appears to be general satisfaction (at least among those who responded). The results of the survey and more are documented in our grant report filed with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The work continues!

There is more work that needs to be done, so we have applied for a renewal of our grant. Comments on the proposal are welcome. We would like to improve what we have already started on the English Wikipedia and to also expand to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Why those? Because they are multilingual projects and because there needs to be better coordination across Wikimedia projects. More details are available in the renewal proposal.

How can the Wikimedia Foundation support WikiProjects?

The Wikimedia Developer Summit will be held in San Francisco in January 2016. The recently established Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in investigating what technical support they can provide for WikiProjects, i.e., support beyond just templates and bots. I have plenty of opinions myself, but I want to hear what you think. The session is being planned on Phabricator, the Wikimedia bug tracker. If you are not familiar with Phabricator, you can log in with your Wikipedia username and password through the "Login or Register: MediaWiki" button on the login page. Your feedback can help make editing Wikipedia a better experience.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 09:03, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the helpful hint!

Hey Sadad, I really to appreciate the warm welcome. I will make sure to sign from now on :). As of right now I don't have any questions. But I'm sure something will come up and I'm glad I have you here. Talk to you soon and happy editing!GregoryBenjamin (talk) 19:19, 27 October 2015 (UTC)