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I apparently didn't do a good job with the International Home and Housewares Show page because you deleted it for copyright infrigement. How do I cite it so it isn't? I do have permission to put the information up....Please help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by LizGere (talkcontribs) 15:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi there. Large portions of text, even if attributed, are not accepted unless we have permission to use these. It's not a matter of citation but rather a matter of quantity - while short quotes to illustrate a specific point are perfectly acceptable, an entire article consisting of only a cited text is not.
This is for an obvious reason: due to the open and collaborative nature of the encyclopedia, cited text can only be handled in two fashions: either take it as it is or remove it. In other words, when the entire article is made of direct quotations only, we either have an article made of these quotations, or we do not have an article at all.
So what we need is permission to use and modify their content under the WP:CC-BY-SA license at the very least, this can be provided using the process described at WP:PERMISSION. Once this is received, the admins checking them will restore the content. MLauba (talk) 16:10, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


Thank you, Permission is in the works right now! LizGere (talk) 22:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)LizGere

Hi, I just noticed that about five weeks ago you removed most of the content of this article, see here. The guy who originally added that content was the main autor of that book: Donald G. Firesmith, active as User:DonFiresmith. Could you shortly explain how to proceed in a situation like this? -- Mdd (talk) 21:30, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

One more thing: I don't intent to resolve the situation right now, because I have more important things to do, you know. I just would like to know how such a situation could/should be resolved... for later. -- Mdd (talk) 21:51, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
There's two slightly different paths depending on whether we're dealing with the author or an agent (official or not) of the author:
In both cases, we'll be looking at two things, first, a release in a way that is compatible at least with CC-BY-SA, but second, also an understanding that this licensing to us is irrevocable, includes commercial use, and will be transmitted downstream to any Wikipedia mirror.
While this may appear cumbersone, given that the author is quite unlikely to sue Wikipedia over content he added himself, we follow up on these very strictly for a number of reasons:
  • Impersonation has happened before
  • We've had cases where text was added by an author, deemed OR, rephrased, and then the author started claiming copyright infringement and plagiarism
  • While the risk of litigation for this or other minor things is very low (heck, we even had an arbitrator stating flat out that we shouldn't bother about removing GFDL-only licensed content because nobody would take us to court over that), in the grand scheme of things, Wikipedia will eventually be dragged to court, either for BLP or copyright issues. What we don't want to happen is the lawyer for the claimant telling the judge "See your honor, these folks show a total contempt for libel and copyright laws, look at all the text that is there they stole from third parties, and even one of their arbitrators has dismissed this as a peccadillo!" Instead, we want our own lawyer to point out that copyright is a complex matter that even some arbitrators get wrong but that we have a dedicated task force that will mercilessly track and fix all issues it has been made aware of.
  • Last but not least, because it improves the integrity and reputation of Wikipedia one drop after the other, one article at a time.
Best, MLauba (talk) 09:53, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
If I may add, we have also had one case (still ongoing :/) of an author who placed information here without permission of his publishers. While the author's permission would not suffice in that case, if the publishers ever came asking us about it, his authorization would go a long way to showing good faith on our part. I agree with MLauba completely. Our job here is to show due diligence. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Ok, thank you. -- Mdd (talk) 22:07, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank You

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I appreciate the help. Regards, DSRH |talk 15:41, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: Willow City, Texas

It looks like I am going to have to just create stub articles now instead of trying to create real articles with multiple sources and expanded content. There is no longer any need for me to waste my time creating longer articles just to have a note accusing me of copyright infringement pop up each time, which then leads to content being removed that makes it a stub again. Its a shame because I enjoyed writing articles on the unique communities of Texas, but since I can't get those right anymore, I'll have to find something else to work on. --Acntx (talk) 19:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC).

When convenient

And no rush whatsoever, would you mind looking over Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins? I've done a major overhaul to that today (used to look like this), and feedback would be welcome. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 03:07, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Good stuff, it's clearer and crisper now. MLauba (talk) 12:23, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. By the way, I've run that request of yours but am thinking we might want to poke a bit more to get a few more diffs to confirm before adding. It is a can of a mind boggling number of worms. Limiting it to major edits and no reverts, we're talking 10,840 articles. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:28, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Dear lord :( We'd need a stubify bot or a nuke bot, whichever is more convenient. MLauba (talk) 12:34, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Check out This compared to that. MLauba (talk) 12:39, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I know there's a problem. I'm not sure how extensive it is in relation to overall contribs. I've poked about a bit in some of those and have found mostly edits that have not added creative content, but there's no way to exclude those kinds of edits that I'm aware of without human review. Going back as far as they do, I don't think there'd be any way to easily extricate edits through bot, and I suspect that a lot of the articles out of that 10,000+ have copyrightable content contributed entirely by other editors, so stubifying wouldn't work. Hmmm. We don't have a bot that lists articles created, but we can get that list through Wikipedia itself I think (I'm unsure if there are technical limitations.) We might really do better in this case to narrow focus. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:45, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I can send you the raw data if you'd like. It's broken down into 5 pages, from biggest contribs down, and I can send you page one through e-mail if you'd like to look at it and see what I mean. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:46, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Actually, for articles created, there's a Soxbot tool on toolserver, just click anyone's Contribs link, scroll to the bottom, and you'll find a link to the tool. It will return 100 results by default but you can then expand these. I stopped at 1500 and picked the above entirely at random.

For the e-mail, yes please. Note that I'm actually on business travels this week and probably will have only extremely limited Wiki-time :( MLauba (talk) 12:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I've sent you page 1. Articles created may be a better focus here. As to the limited Wiki-time, we've got open CCIs going back six months. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:02, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in SecurePoll feedback and workshop

As you participated in the recent Audit Subcommittee election, or in one of two requests for comment that relate to the use of SecurePoll for elections on this project, you are invited to participate in the SecurePoll feedback and workshop. Your comments, suggestions and observations are welcome.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Risker (talk) 08:27, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

A helpful hint

Hi. Evaluating Capital offences in the People's Republic of China, it occurred to me that you might find this useful: Wikisource:Help:Public domain. Certainly, I do. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:24, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

More eyes

Knowing that you are busy this week, I wanted to ask your opinion on Pells Pool. I believe this constitutes an abridgment (and hence a copyvio) of [1]. It contains syntax and language from the original. I wanted to know whether you thought this merited a {{close paraphrasing}} or a {{copyvio}} (and will not be offended if you use whichever of those may seem appropriate to you when you read it, if one does.) Thanks. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:46, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

There's been more movement on this at User_talk:Lidos#Handling_text_copyright. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for the long absence, the hotel I was in had massive connectivity issues so I gave up doing anything online at all.
For Pells Pool, technically, if I go back to the article's creation, what I see is both copy / pasting and close paraphrasing, making this in effect an unauthorized derivative. I'd stubify and start over. MLauba (talk) 10:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Hope you had a good trip. :) Thanks for the additional eyes. Sigh. :/ I've tagged it as a close paraphrase for now. If it isn't rewritten soon, I'll blank it for CP. If you think I'm being too generous with that, I will not be at all offended if you take additional or other action. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Spyros Vassiliou

greetings MLauba,

I've been looking over the [Spyros Vassiliou] page, which was flagged for speedy deletion and commented by you. I am related by marriage to this artist and recognize the username of the author of the page: he is the grandson of the artist and likely one of the authors of the original material. I've alerted him to the warnings on the page and expect him to respond. Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks for your concern.

Carpentis (talk) 01:14, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

OTRS

Whoot! Look at you, using your powers for good. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:59, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

LOL. Oh, and to answer your question from last night: confusing interface. MLauba (talk) 13:44, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Followup to WT:POLICY discussion

The part we've been talking about now reads simply: "WP:Copyright violations and WP:Copyrights: I'd prefer to let Moonriddengirl, MLauba and others who have followed the page closely classify these in whatever way works best for them." If you like, you can wait and see how the discussion plays out at VPP before making your call. (Watching) - Dank (push to talk) 15:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

already gave my 2 cents :) MLauba (talk) 15:52, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Achille Casanova

Updated DYK query On November 22, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Achille Casanova, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Jake Wartenberg 07:15, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations on your first(?) DYK! That was fun, wasn't it? :-D Regards SoWhy 09:13, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, except I actually missed it entirely, having been offline for the whole week-end. I'm running out of Vice-Chancellors of Switzerland to write about fast for more DYKs, though - just 1 left and I'm not entirely convinced I have both a hook and enough sources for him :) MLauba (talk) 09:18, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
There is so much to write about though. Just take a look at subjects that exist on de-wiki (or fr-wiki) that you care about and see if they exist here. I created a bunch of DYKs for subjects related to German Kabarett, all of them notable with hundreds of German sources but no article here. :-) Regards SoWhy 09:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
I saw that. I'm queueing up a 10-fold expansion of a Swiss Kabaretist (if nobody does it in the meantime) :) MLauba (talk) 09:52, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
And there goes Thomas Helbling, the last Vice Chancellor I'm gonna write about for a while :)
Good luck with that and the Kabarettists :-) Regards SoWhy 13:30, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I'll let you know if I get any useful information along those lines. When dealing with student assignments, I'd expect that a primary motivation for plagiarism/copyvio is the traditional "the easiest way to complete an assignment" motivation. After all, so many teachers don't check for it consistently or carefully enough... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 00:48, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I for one appreciate your butting in, because I was about to ask for your help. :) I'm heading out of town tomorrow, and this is likely to need assistance from a copyvio admin while I'm gone. Can you help out a bit? Especially with the one I've just tagged, I think one of the contributors has truly not understood copyright concerns, given that she started with quotation marks and removed them later after minimally altering the material. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Yup, just drop me a mail if there's anything you did I should be aware of :) and have a nice trip. MLauba (talk) 09:01, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. :) Quick overview: the two articles in question are Food power and Economy of Pittsburgh. I have blanked the sections which have problematic material, but the copyvio template doesn't necessarily accurately reflect which sources were used in that section. I separated the sections out later. In both cases, there are diffs at the talk page and at User_talk:Piotrus. Not being familiar with these student assignments, I gave a general notice to the first contributor, User talk:ShaqSmith, who has been proactive in trying to figure out what's going on but seems perhaps not fully conversant with copyright concepts. I have given very modified {{nothanks-web}} to User talk:Rach3191 and User talk:Jpd26. I don't know about the latter, but the former of that pair may also not be familiar with some of these concepts. Some of the material she copied, she put in quotation marks: [2] (some she did not: [3]). But she later removed the quotation marks after the barest of alterations: [4]. Note that in the last section, she altered only a single word. :/
User talk:Nikzen also added some problematic material to Food power. I have not communicated with him myself, but Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus did. I don't believe that he has created extensive issues.
I think the big thing to watch for now is problems in proposed replacement text, which should be added to the temporary page. I think it's pretty clear that these students are inexperienced with rewriting text to avoid copyright infringement or plagiarism, and I feel there is need to be particularly watchful for close paraphrasing. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:09, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Sociology of health and illness has problems as well. I've only tagged the section I know to be problematic, but more review may be needed. I've notified at User talk:T.starr.green. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
First World has problems, too. :( Again, I've only tagged the one section, but there may be more. Some of the text was added here. Some was added here. I'm off to leave a notice at User talk:JFA7. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:56, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I have listed articles that need review on Moonriddengirl's talk page, I'll try to review them myself today but any help is always appreciated - more eyes, less bugs. I am thinking about telling all the students who committed copyvios to write an essay on why did they do it and what they have learned as part of their amends. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 20:02, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Based on replies I am receiving from the students, the primary explanation is not realizing that copy-and-paste with reference given is still unacceptable. Lesson for me is to lecture more on plagiarism and copyvios and such before the next assignment. With regards to copyvio policing, my suggestion would be to develop a warning template for users talk better suited to our circumstances - see the section on "Plagiarism and copyvio warning" here, this link for example seems very useful (Moonriddengirl found it). Basically, students (and many other editors for that matter) may be scared and confused by our current templates; I think saying simply at the beginning "rewrite it in your own words", followed by links to further info, and only than some legal text, would work better. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 21:56, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

One more request

If you get a chance, can you manually transclude SCV to the CP daily pages? Otherwise, Dumbbot will duplicate the SCV listings. :) I hope that somebody will help us with that soon. I left a note at Schutz's French userpage on the 22nd (fr:Discussion_utilisateur:Schutz#Zorglbot_request) asking for the code, which so far he seems to be ignoring: [5]. Who knows? Maybe even though it seemed like a simple request, it's actually nightmarishly hard. If after I come back from Thanksgiving there's been no communication, I suppose I will ask if Zorglbot can be replaced at CP. I don't know what else to do. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

confused by you

I believe :) If you could answer this, I'd appreciate it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:47, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Oversight

Thanks. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 01:47, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I think I sort of know what happened; I just never saw this before. I think I owe you a thanks, so thank you! Drmies (talk) 05:50, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, MLauba. You have new messages at Basket of Puppies's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Basket of Puppies 23:21, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Thomas Helbling

Updated DYK query On November 29, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Thomas Helbling, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist (talk) 20:51, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Bring a drink and some kind of trailmix.

I have reached new heights of "failure to be brief." Sorry. :( --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:13, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Hello, MLauba. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

And also...

By the way, ML -- in re-reading the discussion, I realize now that this move (my asking Stifle for confirmation on the OTRS ticket) may have seemed like I didn't trust you. It certainly might have come across as an insult. However, I simply didn't know that you had volunteered over at OTRS. Just one of those several gazillion WP happenings, I miss during my absences. If I had known that, I would have discussed the OTRS possibilities directly with you. I want you to know that I have complete faith in your opinions, and any perceived slight was inadvertent. Just chalk it up to my own bumbling methods. Sorry about that. CactusWriter | needles 13:37, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Nothing to be sorry about, you didn't know because I didn't tell anyone. MLauba (talk) 15:42, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Great. Happy to hear it. CactusWriter | needles 08:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Water Cure (torture) move

Thanks for your correction of my erroneous methods in disambiguating Water Cure (torture) from Water cure (therapy), and your message on the same. In full accordance with Murphy's Law, after completing the merge, I did actually come across info about the Move process while reading around to see if there was anything else I needed to do to in relation to the move. "Eh? What?", I thought to myself, "so that's what the 'Move' tab can be used for". It certainly did look to be an easier process, and I rather wish I'd kept exploring beforehand. In my attempts to balance the trade-off between reading around and getting things done, I got that one wrong, and I thank you for your correction of it, and your message.

I did consider creating a disambiguation page, and I think it was in reading around on that process that I came across the relevant material on the 'Move' process. I didn't know if I could justify creating a disambiguation page, even though I know that readers would benefit, since most searches on 'Water Cure' are indeed prompted by interest in the therapeutic aspect. It seems almost impossible not to stumble on the 'water cure' term in readings on health from almost any direction - medical, 'alternative medicine', anthropology, sociology, history, etc, whereas in years of reading around, my first ever encounter with the torture definition was via the Wikipedia article.

So thanks again for your efforts at both correction and education. Nice work.Wotnow (talk) 17:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)Wotnow

Water cure (therapy) future merge into Hydrotherapy

I remember now one reason I held off on creating the disambiguation page for Water cure. The Water cure (therapy) article is very impoverished, and I realised at the outset that after taking care of the confusion over 'Water Cure', sorting out the Water cure (therapy) article would logically follow.

The likely outcome of such attention would be a merge of the 'Water cure (therapy)' article into the Hydrotherapy article, since they are essentially one and the same. Water cure as a term has long been interchangeable with 'hydropathy', the earlier term for hydrotherpay, with both water cure and hydropathy becoming more historical terms as time went on. So any attempt to develop the 'Water cure (therapy)' article will inevitably result in two articles [hydrotherapy and 'Water cure (therapy)'] on the same topic.

I knew this from the outset, when I first proposed the solution to the confusion over 'Water Cure' - i.e. start with the definition and go from there. But the torture versus therapy issue was primary (you can't have readers genuinely seeking information, and getting railroaded into one particular viewpoint just because that article got the drop on another article - that's not education, that's marketing, and sometimes worse), and indeed was clouding the 'Water cure (therapy)' = 'Hydrotherapy' issue.

I also knew that the Hydrotherapy article needed improvement. And it struck me that it would probably be better to improve the Hydrotherapy article before picking up on any proposal to merge the Water cure (therapy) article into the Hydrotherapy article.

One question that arises in relation to any future merge of the 'Water cure (therapy)' article into the Hydrotherapy article, is what would happen to the disambiguation page. In my view, there would still be a need for disambiguation, since searchers are still going to look up the term 'water cure', mostly - but doubtless not exclusively - expecting to find something on therapy.Wotnow (talk) 18:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)Wotnow

Merge need not negate disambiguation page

A brief update, for I have no desire to give the impression of wanting to occupy your entire attenton, nor generate a talkfest.

I have just realised that any merge of Water cure (therapy) into Hydrotherapy need not negate the disambiguation page (I have already outlined above why it wouldn't negate the need for disambiguation, but that still left the question of the page). It would just be a matter of bolding the term Water cure (therapy), and de-linking it. Since the link to Hydrotherapy is already in the sentence, the sentence itself doesn't even need to change, as an interested reader will most certainly click on the link. So on thinking it through, I've raised a non-issue, for which I apologise. But at least the process of thinking it through is documented for the sake of other readers.Wotnow (talk) 21:50, 2 December 2009 (UTC)Wotnow

You don't even need a reply from me, you figured it out yourself :) MLauba (talk) 22:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

My suggestions on how to improve copyvio template

You'll probably see it anyway, but here it is. Based on my recent experiences and discussions with my students. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 20:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Since you passed over Sociology of health and illness, I'm not entirely sure: does it still need review? The templates have been removed. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah yes, I haven't reviewed anything after my last comment on the talk page, so one of the previously blanked sections still needs a review, I'm afraid. MLauba (talk) 23:03, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
All right. I probably won't be able to do it today (well, yesterday from Wikipedia's perspective), but will do it tomorrow (um...today....) :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi. This is the only one still pending on December 2nd. I'm not quite sure what to do with it. I presume that the paraphrase does not constitute a copyvio, or you would have blanked it, but if I just remove the daily listing it will keep returning to us, like a bad penny. :) I haven't found the close paraphrasing myself, but like you I'm kind of scrambling with my schedule right now and haven't read the whole pdf. I scanned it (mechanically) for striking words. If you can point out to me the section where close paraphrasing begins, I'll take a stab at revising the material so we can get rid of the listing for good. I'm loathe to just rewrite the section without finding it, because I'm afraid that I will accidentally make it worse. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Review?

Hi. I'd be very grateful for a second pair of eyes on Talk:School for Creative and Performing Arts/Temp. The contributor has put a lot of work into the article and is working to repair copyright issues. However, I have picked up some duplication and close paraphrasing to various sources, which I have set out at Talk:School for Creative and Performing Arts/Temp (some of the examples there are more concerning than others). I would appreciate your input on the degree to which this represents a problem and what should be done to address it. I have been communicating with him primarily at his talk page.

Can you take a look when convenient? Please? :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

A first quick glance (only cross-reading, mind you, there's really a lot of material) doesn't raise any alarms. Running a couple of paragraphs through my plagiarism checker gives me only Wikipedia mirrors. That, however, could be a potential problem, if the text that registers as positive from the previous versions of the article has grown organically out of copyvio sources (and I'm not saying it does), we have an unauthorized derivative that is, in effect, tainted by the source.
I'll need to take a longer look at this.

MLauba (talk) 11:36, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Eep. That's what I get for working late. :/ I meant to link you the second time: "I have set out at User talk:Moonriddengirl/sandbox." :/ Sorry. I appreciate your looking! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I should also have phrased my first sentence more completely: "A first glance doesn't raise any alarms when comparing, in a cursory review, with the sources listed". It was just a cursory read, to be clear. That being said, that's one imposing molehill we're looking at :) MLauba (talk) 11:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
While I'm thinking about it, if you get an opportunity, assistance in follow-up at his talk page would still be much appreciated. The matter has been hanging for a bit, and I'd welcome assistance in deciding forward progress. If it isn't a good time, please let me know, and I'll pester somebody else about it. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:58, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Dreadfully sorry, I've pretty much had to keep a headset + mike nonstop for two or three days straight, and haven't had a chance to look into it (nor the item below) and won't be able to before tomorrow, but I will spend the time on Saturday. MLauba (talk) 16:45, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

User talk:Vivekhere

User talk:Vivekhere is requesting an unblock, and seems to understand what it takes to be a decent Wikipedia editor. I am inclined to grant the request, but wanted your opinion before acting. Please comment on his talk page. --Jayron32 06:50, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Unblocked myself, buggered if I can find out how to use the appropriate template to give my opinion (but I'm fully willing to learn how to do so properly in the future). MLauba (talk) 01:50, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
All good. --Jayron32 03:07, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Back - kinda

Had a piece of major RL trainwreck to deal with, I'm sorta-kinda around, haven't had a chance to look at my e-mails yet, will begin work down my backlogs this weekend a bit. Sorry about this. MLauba (talk) 01:53, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm so glad to see you! I hope all is well with you. There's no fires to be dealt with involving me, and if I can help you get back on track (carrying on your metaphor), please let me know. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:57, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Welcome back! :) Theleftorium 10:59, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

TA article

Hi MLauba!

I am currently looking for an article that appeared in the dead tree version of the Tages-Anzeiger, to verify a citation in a Wikipedia article. The article doesn't seem to be publicly available online. Are you aware of any way to access copies of TA articles that have appeared in print? Thanks, decltype (talk) 00:15, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Dreadfully sorry for the lack of response, I had a major RL interruption. I have no idea but if you provide me with the required details (and this isn't moot by now), I'll send out some mails to find out. MLauba (talk) 01:52, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Welcome back, hope all is well. Using my de-0 skills, I managed to locate a page on the TA website indicating that they have an online archive, free for subscribers, but also available to others for a fee (ePaper öffnen — Alle Ausgaben können Sie auch in elektronischer Form lesen.), Zusätzlich profitieren TA-Abonnentinnen und -Abonnenten von 50 Gratis-Artikeln für das Online-Archiv des Tages-Anzeigers.[6] If you would take a look and let me know if I'm on the right track, it'd be much appreciated. Regards, decltype (talk) 13:39, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Almost, for subscribers to the paper they can retrieve up to 50 articles free of charge. You may want to check with User:Sandstein, if memory serves he's living in the TA-reader-area and might be a subscriber. Otherwise, the fee list is in Swiss Francs by amount of articles. MLauba (talk) 01:11, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Well, I would think his subscription does not include the right to redistribute articles to third parties :) But that's okay, I enjoy the thrill of entering my credit card details into foreign-language websites :) Sadly, I won't be using the article in question to WP:Verify anything, since it turned out to contain blatant factual errors. Oh well, thanks anyway. decltype (talk) 12:20, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Notification: Proposed 'Motion to Close' at Wikipedia:Community de-adminship/Draft RfC

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Community de-adminship/Draft RfC re: a 'Motion to close', which would dissolve Cda as a proposal. The motion includes an !vote. You have previously commented at Wikipedia:WikiProject Administrator/Admin Recall. Best Wishes for the Holidays, Jusdafax 06:37, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Barbara Buchholz Artikel

Hi MLauba,

ich habe eine neue Version des englischen Barbara Buchholz Artikels geschrieben, wie vorgeschlagen, auf einer temporären Talk-Page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Barbara_Buchholz/Temp

Wie geht es jetzt weiter?

Danke für die Hilfe & schöne restliche Festtage bzw. einen guten Rutsch!

Spacejump (talk) 15:01, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Another gentle ping from WP:VG

Dear MLauba,

You are receiving this message because either [[Category:WikiProject Video games members]] or {{User WPVG}} is somewhere in your userspace, and you are currently listed in the "Unknown" section on the project's member list.

The member list is meant to provide a clearer picture of active membership. It is recommended that you update your status if you plan to regularly:

Members listed in the "Unknown" section will be removed from the membership list and category at the end of January 2010. You may re-add yourself to the active list at any time. Thank you for your help, and we look forward to working with you.

Sincerely, the Video Games WikiProject (delivery by xenobot 21:54, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

The article Nino Munoz has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

worthy photographer, but has not attracted enough notice to meet biographical notability

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Peripitus (Talk) 03:15, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Vektorman

Thanks for the information. I was very reluctant to restore the article content and only did so on the understanding that the contributor would make appopriate changes, which he seems to have made little or no attempt to do. Sorry. Deb (talk) 15:35, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

No need to be sorry, it happens, the notion that GFDL content has become a problem is still quite alien to come to terms with. MLauba (talk) 19:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you...

...for not jumping on the hyperbole bandwagon and researching NEWT yourself. Comments like this are well appreciated, whether you support, opposed, or don't care about NEWT. —Ed (talkmajestic titan) 19:52, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I did NPP. I stopped it once certain people kindly pointed out that I wasn't caution enough with my tagging. The NEWT methodology might have been an issue, but the argument that the poor patrollers' ego must never be exposed to scrutiny and criticism is frankly ludicrous.
Everything on Wikipedia must stand up to scrutiny. And NPP is not immune to that - except that there's extremely little oversight in that area of the project.
And there lies the heart of the problem. NPP is one of the things many newbies start doing once their primary reason for registering is gone (they wrote what they wanted) and they look for ways to make themselves useful. Which is laudable, but because of the WP:BITE aspect of NPP (or rather, WP:CSD), an overly zealous NPP is a net loss for the project. But this perspective has completely been lost in this discussion, it's all about getting back to the people who participated in WP:NEWT, WP:ABF be damned. MLauba (talk) 20:10, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for undertaking the clean-up at Frank Ifield. We are trying to keep a centralised tally of who is working on which of the articles that have been flagged at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20091230 - it is at that editor's talk page, User talk:Derek R Bullamore#Help needed to rescue articles. If you intend to rescue more of Derek's articles, it would be helpful to keep that page informed, so we don't end up with several editors working on the same article. Thanks. Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:19, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Not specifically, this one was done as part of the WP:CP clearance as it was listed there. I'm mostly only relisting the pending items to allow for more time since the CCI team is actively reworking, but Ifield was a quick fix that you identified yourself for action. MLauba (talk) 15:32, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
OK, thanks. Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:41, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

In your cleanup, I think you deleted a discography (non-contentious, I think - chart placings and so forth) which had been prepared after the version you reverted back to. Although obviously it will need checking against sources, it would be a lot of work to recreate it from scratch. Is it possible for you to reinstate it (and, ideally, the rest of the text as at December 2009) so that other editors can work from that version - say at User:Ghmyrtle/sandbox Ifield? Apologies for not mentioning it at the time, I should have checked in greater detail. Thanks. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:59, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm probably a bit more dense today than usual, I see Moonriddengirl having restored the discography yesterday, and from what I can tell looking at the deleted revision, nothing non-infringing is left to recover. What am I missing? MLauba (talk) 10:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
D'oh!! - entirely my mistake, I should have scrolled down the page..... sorry! Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:04, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Phew, I was starting to worry about my reading comprehension :) Not a good thing when you work on copyvios, I recon :) MLauba (talk) 11:09, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Is there any reason why this article has not fully returned to the 'main file' ? I am probably being a little over zealous, but delays cause me to worry. Thanks,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 02:11, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused. I moved the draft from temp space to full article yesterday without any editorial changes to your draft? MLauba (talk) 09:15, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Oh, if you're referring to the message box at top of the article, that was an oversight that I just corrected. If for whatever reason I forget about removing it, you can do it yourself without worry - when the article is moved from the temp page to mainspace, that's an endorsement of the rewrite. Good job BTW. MLauba (talk) 09:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Thankyou

....for the barnstar. --AussieLegend (talk) 13:26, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your work on this article, and enabling it to return to the mainspace. I do not wish to quibble, but a Google search seems to indicate his backing band are known / billed as the Rocket 88's (not Rocket 88s) as is now shown. I am not an expert on Mr. Woods (nor, probably, you either), but I did not want to change the various notations without a second opinion. I do believe, however, Wiki should strive to get this correct. What do you think ? Regards,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 11:40, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Derek, let me be blunt here. You had made mistakes because you didn't know / understand copyright laws, something that is sufficiently complex that even some of our Arbs got it wrong in the past. And while I'm still concerned that some of your rewrites follow allmusic too closely at times, the mistakes you made in good faith in the past do not detract, at least in my view, from your passion or your expertise on these musical topics.
What I mean to say is, I guess, as far as I'm concerned, you're an editor in good standing who was tripped up on copyright matters, who may still need some more experience at paraphrasing, but who most certainly doesn't require advice or permission to fix things like that.
I do have, as I said, some concerns about specific turns of phrases (you'll be able to see this with the Paul Lamb for instance), and I fully appreciate how difficult it becomes when you write about the same subject twice or three times with just one source to come up with original language. But you're willing and eager to help fix the whole issue, something most people in your situation just walk away from, so when you see me who is, indeed, not an expert on these topics at all, typo up or mess up the accuracy of something, just fix it :) MLauba (talk) 11:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, that's fine. I did not want to simply appear to be riding roughshod over your efforts, as it might have looked to someone, let's say, more sensitive. Also, I still feel a little delicate and unsure over my standing on Wikipedia, and the last thing I want to do is cause aggravation with admins etc. Regards,
Derek R Bullamore (talk) 12:14, 14 January 2010 (UTC)