User talk:Marchjuly

African Union flag removal

Okay, I am kind of new on Wikipedia, but - I see for some reason that you have removed the file of Flag of African Union in article Flags of Africa. In fact, looking at the revision history, you have done this three times before.

.. Why? In what capacity a publicly displayed flag, in an article whose entire point is showcasing flags of Africa is not meeting these criteria? Especially since said file is already being used on main article for African Union, and its own article in Flag of African Union?

If the file itself is the problem - then it's a bigger problem than just this one article, since, again, it's used in several articles.

I'm sorry, I'm new so sorry if I misunderstand something fundamental, but I don't get what is so specific about this flag as compared to all the others in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shinobody (talk • contribs) 06:54, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi Shinobody. It has to do with the licensing of the file. File:African Union flag.svg is licensed as non-free content whereas all of the other flags in the article are either licensed as public domain or under a free license. Each use of non-free content on Wikipedia is required to satisfy all 10 non-free content criteria listed at WP:NFCCP. One of these criteria is WP:NFCC#10c which states that a separate specific non-free use rationale is required for each use of a non-free file.

You added the flag to the article, but you did not add the required non-free use rationale. In some cases, this can be simply fixed by adding the appropriate rationale for the desired usage, and I would've done that if a valid rationale could be written. The problem is that the intended use of the flag in the article is considered "decorative" since it would not be the subject or any sourced commentary within article and would not be used as the primary means of identifying the subject of the article. For public domain or freely licensed files, this is not such a big deal; for non-free files, however, this type of usage is not typically allowed per WP:NFLISTS and WP:NFTABLES because the context required by WP:NFCC#8 is not provided. In other words, simply wanting to "show" the flag is not enough to justify it's non-free use, but rather there has to be a strong contextual connection to the article content, so that omitting the flag would be detrimental to the reader's understanding of the article. The article is basically a picture album of flags and not critical discussion of the each flag, so you're going to have a really hard time writing a non-free use rationale for that type of usage. Moreover, Flag of the African Union is a stand-alone article about the flag itself and in such cases a link to the stand-alone article is preferred over other uses of the file whenever possible per item number 6 of WP:NFC#UUI. So, that is why the file is linked to and not displayed in the list article.

This application of Wikipedia's non-free content use policy is pretty consistent across other "list of flag" articles, but if you would like the opinion of others you can ask at WT:NFCC or WP:MCQ. You may also nominate the file for discussion at WP:FFD and see if you can establish a consensus for its non free use in the article. Finally, one last possibility might be to see whether the flag's licensing can be converted to public domain or a free license. You can ask about this at WP:MCQ, WP:FFD or c:COM:VP/C. Sometimes files which are really public domain are mistakenly licensed as non-free by the editor who uploads the file. Converting file copyright licenses, however, can be a bit tricky since copyright laws differ from country to country. So, I suggest you ask at one of the noticeboards I mentioned above just as a precaution before trying to convert the licensing yourself. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:50, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Rectified

Thanks. I have rectified the error and made it normal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saikirantangirala (talk • contribs) 08:03, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

That's good Saikirantangirala. Now just please try to remember to sign your posts so that there's no need for SineBot to do it for you. -- Marchjuly (talk) 09:50, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

DavidSmythe CV

Hello Marchjuly Thank-you for your helpful comments - and sorry if I'm replying in the wrong place. On reading your message I agree with you that writing an autobiography (or, in my case, a professional CV) is not necessarily a good thing. In any case, as I've pointed out in my reply to Dodger67, I am not (quite) notable enough as an academic, even though I did once hold a named professorial chair at an ancient major university. I only did the CV as an exercise in writing my first wiki article. I am happy to have the draft never published. Also, you are correct about my using my real name (naïvely believing in transparency and honesty) - so I'll apply for a change. Yours David DavidSmythe (talk) 10:20, 25 December 2016 (UTC)