User talk:JOwens00

Welcome!

Hello, JOwens00, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Simplified Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! SmartSE (talk) 16:00, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

December 2012

Hello JOwens00, and welcome to Wikipedia. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.

• You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and a cited source. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
• Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
• Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
• In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
• Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied without attribution. If you want to copy from another Wikipedia project or article, you can, but please follow the steps in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page . Thank you. SmartSE (talk) 16:00, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I just removed an older edit you made to CenturyLink for the same reason. I'm not completely certain if SEC filings are copyrighted or not, but I suspect that they are. Even if they weren't however, we shouldn't be copying large chunks of texts from other sources, even if they're copyfree. And SEC filings are WP:PRIMARY sources, not necessarily reliable, so they're not really good for inclusion in Wikipedia. And finally, the detail level is excessive. So, try, instead, to summarize information from reliable secondary sources. Qwyrxian (talk)

First, do you have any evidence that SEC filings are non-copyrighted? Documents produced by the US government are not copyrighted, but that same rule shouldn't necessarily apply to government forms filled in by private companies. Second, you've failed to address the other salient reasons for removal. Simply because there is copy-free text available does not mean that we should copy it into Wikipedia. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:51, 5 December 2012 (UTC)