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Honouring Bahamut, Part III

All right, made a quick analysis of the discussion, which has been silent for a couple of days now (I later supported an idea of naming an award after him as well, but this didn't get any discussion yet in that section except from the originator of the idea). Here's what I've summarized:

  • Four editors in a row expressed support for the idea; none were against it.
  • Of these four, ideas for what the box should be titled include these examples:
    • "Posthumously awarded, with our deepest condolences"
    • "Posthumously awarded, with great respect"
    • "In recognition of contributions to Wikipedia" (I later tested this on the sandbox)
  • User:TomStar81 has another idea: high floating icons. He gave an example, but I've never used them and I don't think it would draw attention to the awards in a way we'd want his page to. It also makes it appear they were on his page to begin with.
  • He and two editors also think a defaulted open position is appropriate, or even not collapsible. Put them there, then preserve the user page below. After all, scrolling reveals that the person has passed on.

These findings are quite useful. It appears that according to his closest peers here, we were going the wrong way with collapsing the userbox in our examples, and should instead have it stay open, or at least default to open. Two of the three posted ideas begin "Posthumously awarded" (I'm not counting myself one way or the other), so according to the input I think we should use that first. I would thus go with something like, "Posthumously awarded in recognition of contributions to Wikipedia" - thus including an idea from the third user - and am testing this on the sandbox for width. (I'll try to make it default open as well.)

So we're in the closing stretch of honouring him now. Let's finalize something and up it goes. =) CycloneGU (talk) 01:39, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

That seems to be a good approach. I'm not entirely comfortable with the uncollapsed barnstars myself, but the arrangement you've put in my sandbox does seem clear, which was my main concern. I will unprotect it and keep an eye on it, but nevertheless please drop me a note when you've added them, so I can protect it again. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:55, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Protection reduced to semi. :) All good to go, whenever you're ready. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:58, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
As someone much revered said before me back in something like 29 A.D. - it is finished. All good for protection again. I will update WP:RIP about this. CycloneGU (talk) 22:46, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Done. Thank you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:48, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

A little of the favor back

Hi.

I know you are busy but.. i need a little help, i`m working on translating the messages and stuff for the 2011 fundraising, and in the letter from Jimbo this phrase "We're a small organization, and I've worked hard over the years to keep us lean and tight" used wordreference, google translate and didn`t quite got it 100%, could you in other words, exactly what it means with "lean and tight"

You are! Wow. I'm impressed. :) What we mean by "lean and tight" is that we have a small staff (lean) and we try to spend as little as necessary to do a good job. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:48, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks a lot (x2) since you wrote the answer twice. Zidane tribal (talk) 20:41, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for weighing in on the long delay in getting an explanation of the implications of OTRS ticket 2010093010005573.

So, further comments I have -- should they be placed at Wikipedia:OTRS noticeboard#Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Is a year too long to wait for an explanation? or Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Is a year too long to wait for an explanation??

I was going to leave some comments today, but, after re-reading your comment I will hold most of the comments to give the AWOL team member who processed the ticket a further chance to respond. Clarification please, how much longer do you recommend I wait for the AWOL team member?

I will respond here to a point you raised that no one else has raised. Prior to leaving my note on the Village Pump it did occur to me that someone might consider the length of the sexual harrassment section disproportionate. I regard this as worthy of discussion -- worthy of discussion on the article's talk page -- or at least first on the talk page.

Maybe I don't need to ask this, but did you mean to suggest a concern over UNDUE justifies section blanking?

Concerns over UNDUE wouldn't really be in the mandate of the OTRS team, would they?

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 10:40, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Geo. Happy if I can help. :) In terms of discussing the issues further, I don't know that they belong at either board, per se. I only gave you my impression (without having read the ticket) just because it seemed like a year without any feedback at all was quite enough. Knowing who handled the ticket, I suspect you will receive a response within two days. Given the weekend, in your position, I would allow until Monday before seeking other avenues.
Yes, concerns over UNDUE are part of the mandate of the OTRS team, where UNDUE relates to living people. Issues of balance impact the neutrality of articles and may impact the real world reputation of article subjects. As WP:BLP says, "When in doubt, biographies should be pared back to a version that is completely sourced, neutral, and on-topic." When handling issues of this sort, I myself would ordinarily truncate or remove the content (since with BLPs we remove and then discuss rather than the other way around) and then open a section at the talk page or (if the article is particularly controversial) WP:BLPN. But as you know this ticket was unusual in a lot of ways: the agent didn't interact with the page at all, and the agent who did interact with the page (based on what you said; I haven't reviewed any conversations you may have had with him) evidently didn't feel in position to discuss the matter. The person who removed the material probably had no idea that the article even had a talk page. :/
In spite of the lengthy delay, though, I hope that you will soon get some satisfaction as to what happened and be able to find a way to negotiate a consensus-handling of the material in the article. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:59, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Okay, Monday. If they don't respond before tomorrow that will make it officially a year, 365 days.
As to whick public fora this should be discussed, I'll be frank, given the long delay, I just don't think it would be appropriate for me to agree to have this issue resolved in private.
Even if, for the sake of argument, other OTRS team members who gave the contents of the OTRS ticket a fair minded review endorsed the original OTRS team member's judgment that those contents merited the OTRS team taking action I would say other serious mistakes were made, mistakes serious enough that there should be a public discussion.
Even if, somehow, it turned out that no OTRS team member had made any mistakes, if, somehow, it turned out that I was the only one here who made mistakes, once that were explained to me, I would go to the Village Pump, and openly acknowledge, for the record, where I went wrong, so there would be a public record for any other good faith contributor who had the same kind issues. If apologies on my part seemed appropriate, I would offer them. This is standard to which I hold myself, and it is a standard I wish I could count on those entrusted with positions of trust here would also measure up to. Geo Swan (talk) 16:35, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't understand you. I didn't mean to suggest you shouldn't talk about it at all. :) I was thinking more of a forum like WP:BLPN, where we usually would discuss a matter like this. I didn't realize that you meant "further comments" related to the communication situation in itself; I thought you were talking about the content issues.
Where you put any additional comments you might have about the situation would probably depend on who you're trying to reach. The OTRS noticeboard is really likely to be read by only a handful of OTRS agents, but I do not know if VP has any broader penetration among that community. :/ I haven't read your conversations about this, but I think this is probably an unusual and unfortunate issue that rose because a year ago we didn't have any way to easily reach out to "the team." Now that we have an OTRS noticeboard, we do. This is not only important in a case like this where you didn't even know who the agent was, but in cases where OTRS agents may retire from volunteering.
I think one of the problems here is that no member of the OTRS team actually did take action on this article, beyond requesting a review of the ticket before the material was reviewed. I really hope that the new noticeboard will prevent situations like this from happening in the future. If the admin who requests review cannot assist, people at the noticeboard are meant to. Certainly, I tried. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:48, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Geo Swan (talk) 21:13, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

User:Iadrian yu is a new meta/sock puppet of banned User:Iaaasi

User:Iadrian yu is a new meta/sock puppet of User:Iaasi. He was banned many times by anti-semite and chauvinist edits in English Wikipedia. Notice: Iaaasi uses more (ISP) Internet Providers from Romania.--Bornicus (talk) 10:56, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I'm sorry, but I really don't do enough work with sock puppets to help you here. :( It takes me quite a long time to evaluate sock puppet concerns, and I have a short amount of time to do volunteer work on Wikipedia at the moment. Please take a look at WP:SPI for the proper place and procedure for reporting your concerns. You will need to provide some evidence there to help the administrators and clerks who work in the area to assist you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:12, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Just an FYI, Bornicus was reported to SPI themselves, by Iadrian yu no less, and was found to be a sockpuppet and is now blocked. -- Atama頭 16:52, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
One of the reasons why I don't do enough work with sock puppets. :) Thanks for the update! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:20, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Revdel/Restore

Can you figure out a possible revdel/restore to state for this -- Shahid Balwa. Article is part of two CCI's, but the copyvio removal doesn't have the blessing of too many IPs, but given that both CCIs have verbatim copyvios, I'm struggling to find an earlier revision that might be a possibility of a return to version. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 06:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)Just dropped by and did some work for once. Cheers. MLauba (Talk) 09:43, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Thank you Mlauba, I was beginning to hate the articles from these two CCIs. —SpacemanSpiff 09:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
That can be tough. :/ And, yes, thank you, MLauba. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:37, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi there

You're very welcome for the update. I was leary on posting and will be more than happy to provide it's source if you lie. That is, unless you've already researched and found it on your own. I don't mind and wouldn't take offense to something like this and would even expect it. People shouldn't just randomly update things to what they think they should be, but what they really are and be prepared to have proof. That's all for now. Take care and thanks for saying hello. Brian Brianicholas07 (talk) 10:31, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Replied at your talk page. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:36, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Page History Fix

Hello MRG, I hope all is well with you. Please see this note on my talk regarding a page history merge you performed. Thanks.--NortyNort (Holla) 12:32, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi! Good to see you. :) I'll be right there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:49, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. I have been MIA as of late but am in the middle of a move and career transition. I am back on East Coast time, so I won't be doing the 'night shift' anymore. I look forward to getting back into things when I am settled.--NortyNort (Holla) 12:57, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Glad to hear things are settling down for you. :) Keep in touch! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:32, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Moonriddengirl,
Thank you for your prompt reply and fixes(!!), however I am not sure what is meant by "...your edits will show in your edit history, although they are not accessible". -- Just curious. Once again, a big thank you! for all of your help. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 16:14, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Need Help!

Hello Moonriddengirl, this is Survir. Can you please block the following IP address user's who keep vandalizing pages and adding wrong information, User:109.150.209.89, 86.179.158.111. Both of these IP address belong to the same user as they both keep adding false information to the articles. For example, the following series Rehna Hai Teri Palkon Ki Chhaon Mein aired on Imagine TV, but these users keep changing it to STAR Plus. Also, they keep adding made up (hoax) titles of the series' under List of programs broadcast by Star Plus page. None of these so called series never aired on the channel as I have been watching this channel for last 10 years, and there is no other info about them online as well. I have reverted back some of there edits but they keep changing them constantly. Can you please block them. Thank you!Survir (talk) 21:03, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Survir. The problem with blocking in these cases is that these people just move to the next IP. :/ 86.179.158.111 has already moved on; if you're right that it's the same person (and it looks to me like you are), it is most recently at 109.150.209.89, and probably not going back. The problem is that we cannot talk to people like this to help them understand that they cannot do what they are doing, so we usually semiprotect pages to force them to get accounts. I've semiprotected List of programs broadcast by Star Plus for 10 days, and I've left a warning to the latest IP. If there are articles that you see them returning to, please let me know. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:07, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Moonriddengirl, first of all, thank you for the help. Now again this IP user with the following IP address User:109.148.215.169 is doing the same thing again to the following pages: Jyoti, Mann Kee Awaaz Pratigya, and so on. You can click on the IP user and view all the pages he/she has edited. Most of these articles are poorly written but still adding wrong info (such as changing the air date, the production house name, and other minor informations) to these articles shall not be allowed. I think only registered user's should be allowed to edit wikipedia, because most of these IP address users' destroy articles. I mean how much can be reverted... Please help! Thank you. Survir (talk) 23:37, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Odd development

Hello again MRG -- After you made the fixes to my deleted edits the pie-chart/numbers indeed reflected the adjusted 'deleted edits' count, and everything else was the same (again thank you), however I just checked the edit-count pie chart again and 'now' (a couple of hours later) the (green) pie section for 'article talk page' has shrunk to almost nothing, while the bar-graphs below have disappeared. It wasn't like this just after your fix, but now for some reason it is. Any idea what happened? -- Gwillhickers (talk) 19:30, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, not having seen it before, it is difficult for me to assess the changes, but perhaps you observed a temporary glitch? The bar graphs are visible now, and the green pie slice shows 7% of your overall edits, at 1205. This seems like a healthy number. In any event, my action would not have affected that figure, since they were not in article talk space. :)
In answer to your question above, if you look at the diff I gave you at Nortynort's talk page, it shows the edits you made in the date range. Those that have a line through them are listed in your contribution history, but cannot be accessed by you or most other editors. If you click on them, it will simply advise you that they have been revision deleted. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:04, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

copyvio at Prison Planet.com and infowars.com -

There's been a discussion at WP:RSN [1] on using these sites, but what hasn't been discussed is that they contain copyvio, eg [http://www.infowars.com/articles/science/autism_mercury_uk_chemist_tits_at_origins.htm] [2] and [3] are just a few (all linked to our articles). Is there anything in particular to be done or do we just go through looking for what is copyvio and remove those links? Dougweller (talk) 16:12, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. :/ My thought with sites like that: if they are generally regarded as reliable and there are useful links, we treat them on a case-by-case basis, like Youtube. We remove the ones we know are trouble and try to spread the word about linkvios to people who used them. If they are not generally regarded as reliable and useful links, we blacklist. This has been my approach. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:50, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Did you read the discussion? I'd say it's only reliable for stuff on what people like Alex Jones who runs them say. Probably never to be used for BLP articles (except as I've said for Jones et al) although I often see attempts to sneak them in. Dougweller (talk) 13:40, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi, Doug. I've glanced at it, but I really don't have time to do a full evaluation, I'm afraid. Huge backlog at CP, and I really like to try to knock that down on the weekends when I have time to edit as a volunteer. (I wound up putting a fair bit of this morning into actual work. :/) It sounds like from what you say that blacklist may be the best option here, particularly if the source is being misused in BLPs. There are two approaches here I'd consider. User:XLinkBot will only prevent newer and unregistered users from using the link, which would allow it to be used in those limited legitimate purposes. We also have Wikipedia:Spam blacklist for a more firm approach. In determining which is necessary, I'd recommend looking at their usages. For instance, [4]. I don't know if there's a way to restrict that to only see how it is being used in article space, but it seems that the links are often used in discussions, where I would personally allow more latitude. XLinkBot might be the way to go. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:04, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

America's Next Top Model, Cycle 17

Thanks once again for your help here. Mtking (edits) 21:03, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Sure. I find generally that it takes a while to get the copyright word down to all involved, and I'm happy to help get that word out. Saves us all a ton of work later. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:47, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Article for review

Hi, I have written the article Mohammad Ali Talpur and I would like some feedback and guidance on this article from you. This is my first step to fulfill the gap of Pakistani Art on wikipedia, My aim is to creates articles on pakistani art and artists.--Artmartxx (talk) 22:51, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Replying at your talk page. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:14, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Scanning and e-mailing from sources

Hi Moonriddengirl, what do you think of this exchange? I would guess that that might fall under fair use, but what do I know. Thanks, Ucucha (talk) 14:29, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I think what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. :) There's really two questions here: (a) is this a problem for us, and (b) is this a problem for them? Whether or not it would fall under fair use would have to be determined by a court evaluating all factors (although I suspect they'd be lenient in this case), but in my opinion liability would rest with the individuals involved. Napster got in trouble for facilitating these kinds of exchanges, but there was reasonable presumption that Napster had knowledge of direct infringement and that they gained financially from the interactions. Neither of these is the case here. I think there could be trouble if we had a policy officially supporting such exchanges, but we don't. (We do have Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request, but that is not explicitly connected to copyrighted sources.) I have on several occasions requested that people who have access to sources that I do not to compare them to articles for copyright concerns, and this has sometimes resulted in me being given access to the content instead. I am personally comfortable with that level of risk, and I personally don't consider it in any way immoral. My interest in the content protects the copyright holder; I am not using it for any other purpose. I would not boast about it on my userpage, though. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:55, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks; I'll point them to this discussion. Ucucha (talk) 15:10, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Made sure that this is obviously my opinion by adding in the words "in my opinion". :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:17, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Thx, that's quite helpful. - Dank (push to talk) 15:53, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk:2G spectrum scam

Can you respond and just check that I haven't left anything out? This is a record copyvio -- four CCIs point to this article!—SpacemanSpiff 16:24, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Whoa! Poor article. :) As soon as I finish mopping up after a new Mirror we've found, I'll be there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:25, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:NFCC#1?

Seems like I got here too late for this one. :( I'm sorry. I usually catch up the talk page earlier than this, but it seems like I missed some notes the last time I edited it and it had been relatively quiet after, so I didn't notice that these were up here until I came in to answer notes today.
That complicated explanation aside, I'm afraid I wouldn't have been able to help anyway. Non-free images are not my area, since my work outside of Wikipedia has been largely limited to text based concerns and since some of the rules we use about what we can and cannot have seem kind of subjective to me. I leave that to editors with a better feel for the community's stance. Ordinarily, I would have brought up concerns of that kind myself at WP:NFCR, but once it's at FfD I'm not sure what you could do. You could ask at WT:NFC, but that risks concerns about canvassing. :P
Now that they are deleted, the best idea might be to ask for clarification on the general principles at WT:NFC. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:18, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
I wouldn't really know what to say. :/ I'm not that familiar with ships and don't really grok why we cannot get free images of these ships. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:47, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Annefield Permissions

Thanks for the thorough review! You may have noticed two authors on the National Register submission -- I am the second author. This problem did occur to me, and I was not sure of the "public domain" attributes of a National Register submission. Nevertheless, I am friends with Mr. Smith, and I am certain I can obtain permission from him.--AVirginian (talk) 17:14, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank u

Hi,

Thank you so much for taking out time to review my article and explaining me in such a detail.I have learnt a lot . I will need ur guidance in future.

Thanx again. --Artmartxx (talk) 18:05, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm happy to have been able to help. I will be glad to offer you guidance in the future, time permitting. :) I do tend to be occupied with copyright cleanup when I'm volunteering. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:05, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

FYI I replied

here, thanks for your reply. =) Jesanj (talk) 18:10, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. :) I've followed up. Please feel free to tap me here if you need my attention again. I can't keep up with my watchlist these days as well as I'd like to! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:39, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Actor and Character names (TV shows like Heartbeat)

I'm slowly restoring episode summaries for Heartbeat (summarising after personally watching).

Are actor/character names sufficiently factual as to be non-copyrightable, or will we get into trouble if we lift the actor/character names off places like IMDB?

The TV program itself isn't much use - they don't credit minor actors' names. Nick4mony (talk) 14:16, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) Thank you very much for working on this! The names of actors involved in a show is strictly factual information, and you can use that no matter where you get it from. The only time you might run into trouble is if there is creativity in the way that somebody is displaying them. For instance, if somebody is using their own descriptions of the characters. Taking them from the IMDb should be fine. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:30, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I'll start plugging in the various names over the next few weeks (and "refactoring" - see its talk page). (Update/clarification) I ask because there's been some counter-intuitive legal action such as Nine Network v IceTV (alleged copyright infringement of TV program guide data in Australia), so having another opinion is reassuring, along with my intent for a fairly substantial transformation. Nick4mony (talk) 13:55, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 3 October 2011

I tagged a file [5] for WP:CSD as looking at the FUR provided, it was completely at odds with the copyright statement on the website it was taken from. Looking at other images uploaded by User:Flyingalbatross he is claiming images as coming from press releases for promotional purposes. Looking at the website link, this does't appear to be the case. Am I wrong in tagging these or do all of the images violate copyright. There is an all rights reserved statment on the websites concerned. Wee Curry Monster talk 12:20, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you raise a valid point there; the licensing tag used does not seem to be supported by the actual display of the images. Whether or not the images can be supported by fair use with a different licensing tag is another matter. I'm not really all that familiar with Wikipedia's standards on allowance of non-free images for ships, but it makes no sense to me why we could not get a free image of one of those sailing around.
It sounds like a fine idea to tag them for review. If you haven't, please make sure you explain to the uploader the importance of using accurate tags when claiming fair use and making sure that the use of the images meets WP:NFC in all particulars. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:27, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Billy Hathorn

Do we have any one-more-strike-and-you're-out sanctions on Billy right now? I've cleaned up a bunch of close paraphrasing on Bryan Hughes (Texas politician), which was just created less than three hours ago. Nyttend (talk) 03:08, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Please leave me a talkback: I'll not remember to come back here if you don't. Nyttend (talk) 03:09, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
He should have been out long ago; it's violations of the most egregious kind because he continues and continues, and doesn't respond to concerns. It's not only the copyvio issues-- he also creates bios of unnotable people by using information supplied by the subject or friends and family of the subject (law profiles, obit info), and he contines to create uncited articles. If there's another discussion of the need to block this user, pls ping me in, as I'm too busy IRL to keep up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:37, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
It's a state representative: there's no question that this guy passes WP:POLITICIAN. The page is also heavily cited from news articles and from state government websites; aside from its author, the page as I left it has no problems as far as I'm aware. Nyttend (talk) 11:32, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm not talking about this case-- speaking in general for other bios. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:24, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
I understand, as I've noticed that with other articles as well; I simply wanted to ensure that you realised this case was different from many of his other creations. Nyttend (talk) 01:03, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
I have a blanket "one strike and you're out" for anybody who creates additional problems while subject to a WP:CCI. My thought is that we are failing the community if we ask them to assist in cleaning up after somebody but permit them to continue making messes. But his is an unusual case, however, in that some of his close paraphrases are borderline, and his CCI has scarcely been touched due to the tremendous backlog there, so we don't have anything to demonstrate how widespread of an issue it may be. With blatant copy-pasting, there'd be no controversy. There was enough evidence, according to the discussions at ANI, to open the CCI, but there is only one green check mark on the whole listing. I think that a block in this kind of situation would need to follow consensus at ANI, and evidence would need to include demonstration of what was copied from where. (I frequently will put a note on the talk page when cleaning issues of that sort that include passages quoted from the sources in contrast to passages quoted from the article. It's easy to point to those when discussing problems with the creator or with others.) I don't myself have time to investigate this for an ANI listing right now. :/ I generally like to assemble very clear cases before proposing sanctions, and that can take many hours for me. I'm not the most active admin on the block button. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:23, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
You may want to check the page history; I found at least one bit of copy/pasting and at least one of close paraphrasing (I found several problematic bits, and I can't remember how many were of each type), so those I completely rewrote. Nyttend (talk) 11:32, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
FYI, I've left him this warning. Nyttend (talk) 12:14, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
I also cleaned up several bios he created after he was notified many times, but I'd have to go back in my contribs to find them ... I'm sorry I just don't have more time to help ... only saw this because I have your page watchlisted. He continues to create messes, so whatever the next step is, we should take it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:24, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Sandy, Nyttend - if one or both of you can find the other articles, I'd block for at least a week, and those would easily be enough for an ANI discussion to determine if the block should be extended. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 16:50, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Thank you, Ed, for pitching in here. I can try to take a look this weekend, but if you've both already cleaned content and can offer tangible examples, that would be soooo helpful. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:00, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
The only example that I can offer is Bryan Hughes, since I've not actively kept up on Billy's work; I only found it because I was looking through Special:Newpages for potential DYK noms. Nyttend (talk) 01:03, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Okay, here's more close paraphrasing; see the text I removed in this edit. I chopped it because it's based on a blog, but after I cut it, I decided to look at the source. Compare the text that I removed with the paragraph in the source that begins with "In the hearing" — this is unacceptable. I'm going to ask for action at ANI unless Ed believes this to be sufficient for blocking. Nyttend (talk) 01:16, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
And he's restored it again; I've removed it again with the rationale that it's based on a blog, but any more reversions will be done on copyright grounds to avoid the 3RR problem. Any more reversions are dependent on how much time I have available, which quite possibly will be almost nothing. Nyttend (talk) 03:45, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

That's an opinion piece from a miscellaneous businessman in the community. Clearly, that's not a reliable source for a BLP, and it's probably removable without fear of WP:3RR on that ground alone. But while close paraphrasing issues are subjective, this particular passage does not seem like the same kind of issue to me, although I may be overlooking something. It's just past 6:00 a.m. here, and last night was not a good one. :) But here's what was in the article:

Under oath at his own request, Hughes identified the informant as District 62 Representative Larry Phillips, an attorney from Sherman and a member of the Ethics Committee. Phillips, who was not under oath, removed himself as a committee member for the hearing and denied Hughes's accusation. The committee did not reach a judgment because of the lack of corroborating witnesses.

Source:

In the hearing, Rep. Hughes asked that he be placed under oath as he gave his testimony; but Rep. Phillips did not volunteer to give his testimony under oath [citation omitted]. Undoubtedly, as an attorney, Rep. Phillips knew that he could lose his attorney’s license if he lied under oath. The hearing ended without judgment because of the “he said, she said” nature of the conversation.

When I bring close paraphrasing concerns before ANI, I like to be able to demonstrate clearly where issues lie, as I did in one of the few of Billy's articles I've evaluated, here. The limited runs of duplicated text make it very easy for others to see the concern. Copyright problems can exist, of course, even in the absence of any duplication of material at all, but when talking about an appropriation of other creative elements, bulk is helpful in demonstrating issues. This is a small passage with similar structure, and one could argue that the structure is minimally creative because it is chronological - accusation, recusal, closure.

From what I've seen, Billy has been very difficult to work with. He seems often to skate the line, possibly unintentionally, and he does not work with others when problems are pointed out to him. As recently as 9/17, he is still denying that the review has uncovered issues (although I'm sure that the lack of progress on his individual CCI is contributing to that :/), but note that he was told about my comments at his talk page and asked to respond. He never did. It is impossible to determine if Billy understands and can correct problems when he will not acknowledge community concerns. Our community is not really quite as good at dealing with disruptive editing ("Rejects or ignores community input") than it is other issues. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:45, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

(With respect to the BLP concern, I have now notified him that the blog cannot be used. I hope that he will review the links I've provided and, whether he responds or not, behave appropriately with regards to sourcing. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:23, 28 September 2011 (UTC))
I've still not got time to catch up on Wiki today, but using non-reliable sources (like blogs) is another old pattern of his-- part of why I've long said he should not be editing-- the problems are not only copyvio, there are also multiple sourcing and notability issues, likely covering hundreds of articles that will never be cleaned up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:09, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
I have been speaking to Billy about BLP concerns. Dropping by to point out that he has once again used sources improperly, I see that he has now been indefinitely blocked. Maybe he will take notice and exercise more caution in the future. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:58, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Okay now. Please explain this in very short words, since I am obviously stupid. I compared those two examples for almost 10 minutes before I saw anything that might possibly be considered close paraphrasing - the fact that the information was placed in the same chronological order. Are you suggesting that it is better to mess up chronological sequencing to avoid the suggestion of close paraphrasing? Because, to put it honestly, at least 95% of the editors on this project would not have considered this close paraphrasing - nor, given the fact that there is a logical sequence here (the order in which things happened) and different vocabulary, would academic or journalistic sources, provided there is adequate attribution. Risker (talk) 00:38, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi, Risker. :) I had left Nyttend a talkback after my last note, but I'm not sure if your question will be seen. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:44, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
That doesn't look like close paraphrasing to me, but I do know that Billy has a history of it; see the WT:DYK archives... Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04
26, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
It doesn't look like it because the content that I removed isn't exactly what's quoted above: what I removed is significantly closer to the original than what's above. Nyttend (talk) 04:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Oh, yes, there's no doubt that Billy has a history of close paraphrasing issues. While the CCI has barely been touched, I've just documented there an issue flagged by another contributor. I did not look at the article at length, but grabbed the first tech match I saw...which turned out to be verbatim. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:48, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I have glanced at several articles randomly from Billy's CCI. Leaving aside the ones based on deadlinks, the first one I looked at (Bryan Sharratt) has issues now documented at the talk page; it's blanked and listed at CP. The second one also had problems, although I'm not decided on the best approach to it. This is what makes Billy difficult to work with. He has some blatant problems, and a whole lot of stuff that pushes really hard against the borders. Take a look at this edit:

Prior to his Senate tenure, Dr. Hinton was among a dozen doctors who worked for passage of the state's chiropractic licensing act. Louisiana was the last of the fifty states to pass a chiropractic licensing act. Hinton was at the ceremony in 1974, when then Governor Edwin Washington Edwards signed the legislation. Hinton then served for nine years as a member of the Louisiana Board of Chiropractic Examiners and was designated “Chiropractor of the Year" in 1984 by his peers

Take a look at his source:

He was among a dozen doctors who worked diligently for passage of the state's chiropractic licensing act. Louisiana was the last state in the U.S. to pass a chiropractic licensing act, and Dr. Hinton was among those on hand when the governor signed the law in 1974. Dr. Hinton then served for nine years as a member of the Louisiana Board of Chiropractic Examiners. He was named "Chiropractor of the Year" in 1984 by the Chiropractic Association of Louisiana.

I've bolded to highlight only actual duplication. Obviously, the content surrounding it doesn't deviate that far from the source. Glancing at the duplication detector, it seems there may be a couple of more passages of concern for literal duplication, though not much. It's a short source.

His work is full of this kind of stuff. It needs to be cleaned up, obviously, but the best approach to getting it cleaned is difficult to determine. When we encounter an isolated paragraph in one of his articles like this, can we assume that the rest of it is okay, that he only failed to rewrite that passage? Many of his articles draw on offline sources or deadlinks. What do we do with those?

I have seen people with worse copyright problems than Billy come back to be productive editors, learning to rewrite to the extent expected by the community. One of the problems with Billy, however, is that Billy does not seem to work with other people. He denies issues and generally does not seem to respond when specific problems are pointed out to him (during his last ANI incident, an uninvolved administrator told him to respond to close paraphrasing concerns at one point, and he did not). I have not had extensive dealing with him myself. But in terms of my recent interactions with him, I told him plainly why he could not use the source that Nyttend had been removing. He put the information back with a new source that was reliable--but did not support his information. Nyttend quite rightly picked up on this and removed it again. I pointed out to him that it was still not WP:BLP compliant, so he put the material back with two new sources which only partially supported his information. I gather this is not unusual behavior for him.

I think at this point, we may need to ask the community to look at his pattern at ANI and to figure out what should be done here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:40, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Then we should be prepared to deal with socking next. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:00, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Sandy - where did socking come from? MRG - I'm thinking an ANI is best too, as a block right now would be brought there anyway. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:34, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Ed, I'm afraid you've missed a major development. :) He was idefinitely blocked by another admin yesterday. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:37, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Oh. My bad. :-) Well then, I'll watch ANI for any more developments! Hope you're still well (and enjoying your WMF role!) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:54, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Sigh

Talk page access needs to be revoked: [6]. MER-C 08:26, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, dear. :/ I've given him a warning, as it is possible that he does not know that this is forbidden outside of article space. Somehow. We'll see what happens now. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:10, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
One of the things that might help is taking the examples above and showing how to present the information present in the sources without crossing the line into close paraphrasing. I still fail to understand how those warned or blocked for this sort of thing will ever make progress if they are not shown with at least one example. Too often the procedure is to show two texts side by side and say "text A is too close to text B". There is very rarely any attempt to produce text C and say "this is one way it could be done better". My theory is that this involves people having to actually write text C and that would be too much effort, or they realise that it is harder than it looks to produce text C. I've also rarely seen editors who are warned about this produce a hypothetical text C and ask if that is OK, as oftentimes the editor giving the warning has moved on and is not prepared to follow through with the educational part of this (leaving warnings is easy, educating someone in how to write is harder). Is anyone willing to try explaining how the information in the two examples above can (if it should) be incorporated into the relevant articles? And not just hand-waving examples, but actual text. I also suspect the problem comes down to people thinking that editing from one source in isolation is OK. Really, you need to bring in other sources to remedy the problems that arise from using too much from a single source, and teaching that is (again) hard. But if no-one makes the effort to explain that, and only issues warning, things won't improve. Carcharoth (talk) 17:49, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Actually, I've written text C for people many, many times, but it is difficult to work with somebody who does not acknowledge that there is a problem. Even with the relatively clearcut and simple issue with BLP sourcing, I have had some challenge making myself understood in my recent efforts with him before and after his block. :/ I'm not sure if he yet understands that issue. Having limited time myself, I give it to people who are receptive. I'm happy to try to work with him if somebody can convince him that work is needed. (That said, I don't have time to mentor him, to make sure that he does not continue with issues. As I mentioned last time (I think) we talked about this, I've done this before, and it can take me hours to review their articles. I just don't have those hours at the moment.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:05, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Oh sure, I know you take the time to write text C, but others don't. I do sometimes suggest it, but the reaction is usually for people to insist it is not their responsibility and to then walk away. That is not unreasonable. What I do find unreasonable is when people warn an editor and then (when that editor takes the time to rewrite the text), to not follow up and say "yes, that is better" or "no, try again". It is failing on the educational side of things, as I said. And I should have made it clearer that the above was a general gripe, not specifically about Billy Hathorn who, as you have found out, doesn't really engage with issues or only does so minimally. My view is that when there is disagreement about how to write properly from a source, all those involved should be willing to discuss it until everyone is on the same page, not just argue for a bit and then depart still not agreeing on how to write articles. That perpetuates problems, rather than solving them. Carcharoth (talk) 20:52, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Sorry if I came off defensive there. :) Truth is, I feel guilty. It bothers me that I don't have more time to pitch in on this than I currently do. But honestly I was on the verge of burning out on this work when the position I'm currently occupying was advertised. I needed something else to focus on for a while, I think, if I'm to continue. :/ My intentions are that when my contract expires I'll get back into the old swing. Then I won't have to feel guilty anymore. :)
I have put some thought into this since my last response (although due to user error have only just noticed that you wrote me back), and I was actually thinking perhaps we could make use of Wikiversity to host a tutorial more complete than our close paraphrasing essay? I'm not sure if Wikiversity would allow this, but it seems to me that it would be legitimately instructive material to show people, step by step, how to properly paraphrase. What do you think? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:27, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Interesting idea (really, the venue matters less than the end product - getting people to improve their writing skills if they genuinely are interested in doing so). I've had time to think on aspects of this as well, and my main concern is that as far as I can tell for borderline (and not so borderline) cases it is perfectly legitimate for users to disagree over whether a particular text is close paraphrasing of a source or not. So my question is what happens at that point? If an editor thinks something doesn't cross the line into close paraphrasing, should they say so (and risk a big argument), or should they give way and rewrite a bit to satisfy whoever they are disagreeing with? Is it more damaging to end up with people rewriting things they don't need to rewrite, or more damaging to have people think something is OK when it isn't? Both are wrong, but while I see lots of effort made to avoid the latter (identified problems not being addressed), I don't see much effort being made to avoid the former (people carrying out unnecessary rewrites). Carcharoth (talk) 22:44, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I can't really say how things are handled outside of WP:CP when there is disagreement, but I have seen people disagree about this before. Generally, if two or more contributors are disagreeing about the paraphrase at the talk page, the uninvolved admin who handles the CP listing will make the call. And when I am the admin making that call, if I think it's borderline, I will usually round up another admin or two who work copyright to help look at the content to make the decision.

Our copyright policy is written conservatively; the passage that tends to generate more work for me is this one: "Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt Wikipedia. If in doubt, write the content yourself, thereby creating a new copyrighted work which can be included in Wikipedia without trouble." (I link to WP:C not because I think you haven't read it, but because I am required to attribute. :D) Because of this passage, if there is significant good faith concern about paraphrase (meaning that it is not clearly beyond reason), I would sooner help rewrite it myself than dismiss it as unwarranted. It's all connected to the exemption doctrine policy, really. The big difference here is that, unlike with a picture of Spiderman, we almost always do have the option of creating free text. :) I have myself created new text to replace close paraphrasing concerns that I thought very tenuous. I don't use {{cclean}} on the talk; I don't rev delete; I don't in any way suggest the content is a copyright violation in my edit summary. I usually just note that I am "revising to separate further from source" or something like that.

Certainly if somebody thinks something is not a close paraphrase, they should say so. How they say so matters, though, just as much as it matters how people who think (or know) there is a problem approach it. I'd really like to see diplomacy and consideration on all sides of the copyright equation. We should approach the issue thoughtfully and try to keep emotions down. I think our best chance of creating a harmonious community, conscious of copyright issues and in agreement as to what constitutes acceptable content, will come in eliminating drama and shame from the equation insofar as humanly possible. I try to "assume good faith" to the breaking point on this issue, but I may have a natural advantage there in that in my professional career I have worked with people in person who would have seemed deliberately obtuse if I had not known them well enough to know better. Some people - even those whose paraphrases are blatantly unacceptable - simply have a hard time getting that. I can understand that even highly intelligent people can have blind spots in certain areas; spatial intelligence is challenging for me. But just because I'm not naturally inclined to be a great architect doesn't mean I'm not great with other areas. :) But by the same token, we don't want to burn people who try to help identify copyright problems if they are wrong; they, too, are trying to improve the project and need to be kindly brought in line with community standards. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:35, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Still need help

Hello again Moonriddengirl,

It appears that I'm not going anywhere with Paul Polansky's page. I did message Mtking and he replied that he objected to one sentence which I re-phrased into a totally neutral one. Then I asked him what else I need to modify or remove and he hasn't replied. Can "you" do something about it? Do you think the small article about Paul's still bias? Anything else I need to do or edit until that tag's gone? I hope you can help me out! Many thanks!

Puregoldxxxx (talk) 22:57, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I'm sorry for the delay in my response. I'm afraid my talk page has not had much activity lately, and I'm only just now catching up. I see that since you left the note another user has reviewed the article and removed the tags. Typically, I do not like to remove tags placed by other contributors unless I am (or have time to become) an involved editor in the page. This is why I had suggested earlier that if you could not come to agreement with Mtking, you consider asking for feedback at a noticeboard. In this case, I would have gone to WP:COIN or WP:NPOVN. This attracts contributors who are familiar with problems related to COI or NPOV editing who may be able to assist you. If you run into problems in the future, you may want to consider that avenue for assistance. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:10, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you so much Moonriddengirl for your help through out, finally it has been removed. Btw, I'm from Wilmington, NC but currently in Europe working. I will try to learn more about editing on wikipedia and try to become like you if possible! Puregoldxxxx (talk) 19:19, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

A glitch in the system?

Hello again MRG,

I am not sure if you are the one to approach on this matter, but here' goes... On the Stephen Decatur page I have used the 'notes' tag i.e. {{#tag:ref|...text,text,text...|group="Note"}} which, when inserted into a line of text generates a note in a section near the bottom of the page. A reference ( <ref> ... </ref> ) can also be added to the note, which generates a reference number within that note. This was done, and with no hitches, however, as of yesterday the notes no longer show a ref number but instead shows a line of strange looking characters in place of the ref number. I checked another page where this was done and the same problem exists there. Apparently there is a glitch or software problem occurring somewhere. Any ideas what happened? -- Gwillhickers (talk) 18:08, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) This is a known issue with the deployment of Mediawiki 1.18. I'm hoping it will be fixed soon, as it's messing up my articles too. :-) Regards, Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:30, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
Glad you knew that one, Ed. :) I'd been told there were glitches with 1.18, but I wouldn't have known this specific issue was among them! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:29, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Just some more feed back 'for your records' -- The problem has apparently been fixed. No more 'Hieroglyphics' in place of a ref number. Only ref numbers embedded in the notes tag turned up this way. When I went 'back in history' before the glitch(?) had surfaced on one of the effected pages, it too would show the same problem. In any event, the problem is now 'history' so apparently it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed with 'a pair of pliers and a screwdriver' (haha!). -- Gwillhickers (talk) 16:22, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Happy to hear it's been repaired. :) There were apparently a whole lot of issues with 1.18; I'm sure those guys were busy! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:59, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

CCI

Hi MRG - I've been slowly working my way through Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20110912, and I'm down to just one article that I don't know what to do with (it's nowhere near my area of interest/expertise). Would you want to check to make sure I'm doing everything properly, and perhaps either taking care of or telling me how to deal with the last article so that this CCI can be closed? Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 18:15, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Ose\fio also appears to only have one article left. I couldn't find any page of which it was a copyvio, but didn't want to prematurely mark it as cleared. Dana boomer (talk) 18:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. :) I've done the necessary mop-up on both. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:28, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
You're quite welcome, and thank you for completing the finishing paperwork! Another question - I've started on Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/GiW. The text in the article Airspace Surveillance and Control Command (Lithuania) comes from this website, however, I can't find the tables in the article on that website, and don't know where the contributor got that information from. Because the text, which makes up the far majority of this article, is a blatant copyvio (and has been since the start), should I tag it with {{db-copyvio}}, or should I blank the offending text, leaving the tables and tag with {{subst:copyvio}}? Dana boomer (talk) 12:42, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
I believe OTRS permission is verified for this site in ticket:2011040610015669. Better double check. MER-C 12:51, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Oh, thanks, MER-C! Looking now. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:51, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

MER-C is right; all text from kam.lt is licensed under CC-By-SA. So while this one is a copyright problem, because it isn't attributed, it can be fixed by using {{CCBYSASource}} in the "reference" section of the article and adding an OTRS template to the talk. Which I'll do right now. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thank you! It looks like a good chunk of this user's work was copied from that website, so knowing that it's OTRS verified will make things easier. Dana boomer (talk) 13:26, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
OK, I tried it for myself at Military Police in Lithuania and associated talk page. Feel free to yell at me if I screwed anything up. If I end up doing more CCI work, would it be beneficial for me to apply for OTRS rights? (I'm not sure if "OTRS rights" is even the correct phrasing, so out of the loop am I on that aspect of WP!) Dana boomer (talk) 13:38, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
That looks great to me. :) OTRS doesn't come up that often in CCI, so it isn't really necessary, but it's always an option if you want to do OTRS work. :D The OTRS admins operate independently of any specific project and they select which applicants to accept. If you do apply for OTRS work, they'll undoubtedly expect you to put some time into it beyond just checking tickets for this kind of thing. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:41, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Ah well, probably not something I need then. Do you happen to know if there are any other OTRS tags associated with this account/CCI? I have found pages with copyvios from this site and this one. Is there any central listing of OTRS tags (other than in the OTRS system) where I can find this information out for myself? Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 17:15, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
There's no central listing of OTRS tags, but I think we can safely assume that there are no other tickets associated with it. I've looked at the listing for this one, and I see that Verno mentioned this specific ticket in the "background" section. This is an unusual case; I've not seen a CCI that had this particular issue before. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:58, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

User talk:Jacobisq CCI

As you may have noticed i work quite closely with User talk:Jacobisq. It is best if he is able to clean things up as he knows the material better than anybody and i'm sure his work was done entirely in good faith. If he is unable to help then I think I should be able to help in his place as a second best option. Anyway, i wait and see how things develop.--Penbat (talk) 14:45, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I did not notice that you work quite closely with him, but I'm delighted to hear that you are willing to help. :) As I said at his talk page, this is a really unusual situation. We don't really have a procedure in place for this. And I agree with you that his work was done entirely in good faith; I would not wish to discourage him from continuing to work on Wikipedia. If he does not return within a week or so, would you be willing to start looking into his articles for this issue? If so, I'll be happy to generate a list of them. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:56, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Fine --Penbat (talk) 11:01, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Magazine cover

Moonriddengirl, another editor asked me for advice on the use of a magazine cover as an illustration in a BLP. I'm unsure whether the fair use criteria are fulfilled in this case or not – the BLP subject is shown on the cover, together with some of her work, and the (now defunct) magazine's coverage of her is briefly discussed in the text. Could you have a look? The relevant talk page thread is Talk:Kelly_Wearstler#Domino cover, and the image can be seen in this article version. Best, --JN466 19:28, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I have seen keen misgivings about that in terms of WP:NFC. I've weighed in there. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:43, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for stopping by. :) --JN466 11:02, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Consensus

Hey MRG! A little help please. I have always thought that during a discussion the more people that agree with something, that's the consensus and that's what the page will be like. However, after some disagreements with a user I have read a little more into it. And I see that if we can't agree, a 3O is needed, but my question is what happens next? If the user disagrees with the 3O user etc. Thanks. Jayy008 (talk) 19:35, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) We have a department at the Dispute resolution noticeboard that should then resolve such problems. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:10, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Kudpung. :) That's a good place to go, Jayy008. Wikipedia:Dispute resolution offers a general overview of how things are handled. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:32, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you! Jayy008 (talk) 14:37, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Andrew Lees

Hey, I responded to your comments at User talk:Andrewlees, please drop by as I think you didn't see the whole picture. Yoenit (talk) 12:46, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, thank you! You're right; that context is pretty important. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:57, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Probable copyvio - can you and your team find the original?

I CSD tagged Supply chain engineering as a copyvio with the note that I couldn't find the original; see what you think. Particularly bearing in mind the edit summary which accompanied the first paste-in ( 18:03, 4 September 2011‎ Akhilsukhija (talk | contribs)‎ (9,958 bytes) (The page refers to a brief on Supply chain engineering its methodology and definitions) ) Just to emphasise - the first edit was putting up 9,958 bytes.

I've dropped a short note onto Ronhjones' talk page about this one. Fing is, though, fing is ... I know this has to be a copyvio. And someone needs to be able to track it down, and I don't know where to start with it, except to say that as it "refers to a brief", that's most likely where it came from. Can you help? Pesky (talk …stalk!) 03:17, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Your gut instincts are good there. :) Here's some basic detective steps I follow. When I see a massive foundational chunk of text like that where an editor continued working after, I follow him to see what changes he made. Doing so highlights this significant change. If you look down towards the bottom, we see that his source is German. Happily, a search for the German term takes me to de Wikipedia. This is a translation of that article, but it's only an attribution issue. I can repair that and speak to the contributor about it. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:10, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Oh, if you encounter this in the future, the thing to do is tag the talk page {{Cv-unsure}}, which tag lets people know that you have concerns about the copyright status and then to go ahead and ask the contributor as you did. :) You don't want to leave it unmarked at all in case your instincts are on the mark (as they were here), but G12s are only appropriate for obvious copyright problems, and we do have to know where the content came from for that. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:18, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you! You are truly brilliant. I can't think, for the life of me, why I didn't go through the diffs, as you suggest. Senior moment, or something .... I shall remember the {{Cv-unsure}} template for further use. The sheer number of copyvios - even blatant ones - making it through to a month old before they get picked up, is horrible! I've only been keeping my CSD log since 23rd September, and just a brief skim over it for that horrible {{db-copyvio}} thing will make you shudder. All bar a couple are from new page patrolling. It seems that WikiWolfcubs have a "nose" for this particular type of prey! I just wish I could NPP faster, and for longer at a time! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 20:13, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
I've been doing this work for a long time and have developed some practices that have proved helpful. :) I appreciate your keeping up with it, and I certainly hope that we get CorenSearchBot back soon. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:37, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Madam I requested the author of that article. He sends me a free licence under GNU Free Documentation licence. Is it useful madam?--Sridhar100000 (talk) 15:25, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid probably not.  :/ We now require free license under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. If they are willing to freely license content under that license, please have them send confirmation to the Wikimedia Foundation. They can use the form (and the contact address) at Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:33, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

Hi-My thanks to Wikimedia Foundation for fixing the recent bug that was created when Wikipedia was updated. The internet explorer on my computer shut down and then had to re-start as the result of this bug. It was frustrating. Please thank the people for fixing the bug. Thank you-RFD (talk) 15:05, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that was the work of volunteers (who do a lot of the coding) or staff, but I'll find out and pass it on regardless. :) I'm glad things are working for you again. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:25, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

CCI question

When working on a CCI, if you find that the contributor added infringing material but that someone had previously cleared it out, is that tagged with a {{y}} or {{n}}? The instructions imply that you only say 'y' if you actually removed content, but I feel like I'm misreading them. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:13, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

(I think it'd be handy to show a 'y' if for no other reason than to give a quick visual indication of how prone a particular author editor was to cutting and pasting text from other sources.) JohnInDC (talk) 21:46, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Hmm. We may need to reconsider the instructions. I typically do {{y}} no matter how removes it, because I agree with John. I just clarify that the content was already cleaned. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
I suppose it would be complicating things too much to add a third state - a yellow circle maybe - meaning, "sure looked like a copyvio but it was edited out of the article in the meantime, and it wasn't worth the time to track it down". JohnInDC (talk) 18:13, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea. We created that system without putting a lot of time into the niceties. :) I frequently improvise--I use ? for when content is removed presumptively or for that situation. It wouldn't hurt to have some clearer markers. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:09, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Help needed with copyvio or backwards copy problem

Hi Moonriddengirl, I need your experience to decide which one it is. When working on Meir M. Lehman, I just found a reference that is almost of copy of the Wikipedia article: Meir M. Lehman 2001 Hans Karlsson Award Recipient.

But:

  • The title of the IEEE Computer Society reference is wrong: it should be the "2001 Harlan D. Mills Award Recipient". Lehman never received the Hans Karlsson Award. Strange error.
  • The Wikipedia text is most closely created on June 9, 2009 by Gareth Jones (talk) in multiple editions, with one intervention of 192.118.32.80 (talk) (an IP address in Jerusalem, Israel).

I can't decide between a copyvio or a backwards copy. And I don't want to upset Gareth Jones, if there is no reason to do so. Can you give your opinion on this? -- SchreyP (messages) 20:27, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I would stake a bet that this is a backwards copy. :) We look at the second edit and see that " His research contributions include the Software Evolution." was altered to read "His research contributions include the early realisation of the software evolution phenomenon and the Software evolution and then here to "His research contributions include the early realisation of the software evolution phenomenon and the so called Lehman's laws of software evolution." Months later, another contributor changed it to the American spelling of "realization." This is strong evidence of natural evolution, given that the external site tells us, "His research contributions include the early realization of the software evolution phenomenon and the eponymous Lehman's laws of software evolution." Evidently, they copied it at some point after Gareth changed "so called Lehman's" to read "eponymous Lehman's", here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:04, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm happy that I asked you first! It would have been a real bad feeling to have given a copyvio warning to Gareth Jones, and finding this out afterwards. Thank you! -- SchreyP (messages) 21:18, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Problem again...

  • MRG, that was a fast one~! As a matter of fact, I was beginning to suspect that he might even be the sock of a BANNED editor but I haven't got a clue who it might be. Anyway, that's just my hunch... you know me, a sensistive nose for sniffing out these smelly socks whenever they appear and most of the time I'm right more than I'm wrong. Hopefully, I got this one wrong and his damage is limited only to that small area, even though it is still quite big after I've glanced it through on WP:CCI. Anyhow, thanks again and cheers~! --Dave ♠♣♥♦™№1185©♪♫® 00:03, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Another one...

  1. File:INS Chakra (Akula).jpg
  2. File:Saryu class NPOV.jpeg
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List of highest-grossing Bollywood films in overseas markets

Hi, this copyvio was recreated a month ago but I missed it. You may want to resurrect the talk page. The same old BOI issue exists with some circular referencing hiding the same data this time (now removed). Thanks --Fæ (talk) 08:08, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) I did. Since the article previously survived AfD, I've converted the PROD to a {{copyvio}}. Perhaps the editor who recreated the article was unaware of the copyright concerns. He may be willing to put the work into making a usable article there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:05, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for that, I looked at the AfD and then strangely did not put 2 and 2 together to realise that a PROD was not the right way to go. --Fæ (talk) 10:14, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

BOI

Hey dear friend. Thank you for stopping by once again. You must have forgotten already about me, but Harminder from BOI did contact a few weeks back. He did give consent and said he'd send a permission if I gave him the right instructions. Right now, however, they are extremely busy as this is the time in the year which has numerous film releases and they have to deal with their collections. I've sent him a reminder, let's hope they did not change their opinion. Till then, que sera sera (whatever will be, will be). Thanks for everything and regards. Shahid • Talk2me 10:14, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

No, of course I've not forgotten about you. I think that's fantastic, and I will certainly be crossing my fingers! It would be a great thing for Wikipedia if they follow through with that. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:18, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you, I'm trying my best, at times I feel I'm badgering them too much but they have always replied and been polite. They're busy and that's easy to understand. Shahid • Talk2me 10:30, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't really care to much if the article is deleted, but I wanted to point out that the reason I used the site as a source was that there is another article (along the same lines) that has nearly exact quotes from that same website (in fact, I think that's how I found the Box Office India website.) In any case, It doesn't hurt my feelings but I just thought you might like to know about it. =] Thanks! Ncboy2010 (talk) 21:53, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

roll-back of W. Ian Lipkin page

How aggravating that copyrighted work was put on here. However, an edit I added was not copyrighted, and the revert deleted my work. And for some reason Wikipedia didn't save my edit in its history. I'm kinda' new to this, so maybe I'm just missing it. At any rate, I understand why you did what you did, but I kinda' wish you had done a more surgical removal of copyrighted work, and left my legit work in there. Oh well, no hard feelings. :-) It was only words lost, and words can always be retyped. I'll just be sure to keep my own back-up of work in the future. Happy editing :-) Dustinlull (talk) 22:22, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. The article was blanked for a week to allow interested contributors an opportunity to propose clean text, but I'm afraid that when nobody does we often have no choice but to roll back to the last presumed clean version. I can, however, resurrect your text for you. You can place it back into the article where ever you deem appropriate:

Lipkin served as a science consultant for the film Contagion.[1] The film has been praised for its scientific accuracy.

I wish that circumstances were different, but I'm afraid that there's a real shortage of people doing this work. :/

--Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:27, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks so much! I appreciate your help. :-)Dustinlull (talk) 22:31, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Bangladesh Liberation War

Hi there, I had initially raised this issue with MLauba but I noticed you stating on his talk page that he is away these days. I would therefore like to see if you can help me on this matter.

This is my message that I had initially posted on MLauba's talk page:

Today, I come to you with an entirely different issue. I am trying to edit this highly controversial topic [Bangladesh Liberation War] but it is protected by an individual named Ragib. He will not respond to any of my objections raised in the talk page except for one-liners & he keeps reverting my changes to the article on the basis of POV issues. I highly suspect him to be a biased individual who is prejudiced against any changing of the false narrative with factual information that the Wikipedia article relating to this topic depicts.

Please help as I am 500% confident about the work I am citing regarding the changes I am making & I am trained in the subject of History & Political Science but user Ragib is defying all logic and reason and I believe he his abusing his authority with regards to this article. I want to lodge some kind of complaint or do something about it but I am relatively new and do not know such procedures.

Fact is, I haven't even challenged the narrative of the war as portrayed in the Wikipedia article as of yet. I have only questioned the number of Pakistani troops involved, the number cited there - I have already refuted it (if you see the talk page of the article and in the section titled 'Number of Pakistani Troops'). Now a number of Bangladeshis & Indians are ganging up on me without providing evidence to the contrary and using similar tactics as have been used in the past (discredit any author who challenges the popular narrative) to stop legitimate questions being raised and editions made based on recently declassified information pertaining to the war.

Thankyou S.faris (talk) 22:39, 10 October 2011 (UTC)farisS.faris (talk) 22:39, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm so sorry; I would love to help you, but I just simply do not have time. :( I am far behind on the copyright cleanup work that I do, and I have no time to look into content disputes of this sort right now. I would strongly recommend that you consider the dispute resolution noticeboard or one of the other venues recommended in the dispute resolution policy. I realize that it is frustrating to feel like there is nobody available to assist you, and I do wish that I could help you work out your dispute with these other editors. I hope you won't give up; it's just a matter of finding the right place. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:43, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 October 2011

Block User

Hi. I think it's better to block this user. Thank you.--Mej (talk) 12:50, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. You may be right, but we generally give people escalating cautions. :) I've given him a somewhat sterner warning for his edits to Fan club. I'll keep an eye on him for a few minutes but won't be around much longer. If he picks it up later, a note to WP:AIV might get it taken care of. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:54, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Selfishness denotes an excessive or exclusive concern with oneself, and as such it exceeds mere self interest or self concern. Insofar as a decision maker knowingly burdens or harms others for personal gain, the decision is selfish. In contrast, self-interest is more general. Self-interest is merely including one's own needs and desires in the schema of priorities, and is inclusive of both cooperation and selfishness.[citation needed] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Myspain (talk • contribs) 12:58, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for weighing in. :) Stop vandalizing, okay? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:00, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

michele parrinello entry

Apparently, looks like you deleted the entry for "Michele Parrinello", a top scientist (see "Dirac medal" or "metadynamics" or "Car-Parrinello method"). Please reconsider. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.167.201.130 (talk) 14:36, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. The article was not deleted because the man is not important or notable but, I'm afraid, because the contributor who created the article is not welcome to contribute here. He has been unwilling or unable to work within Wikipedia's copyright policies, so we are not able to accept content that he creates. We cannot be sure that anything he contributes to Wikipedia is actually his work. We would certainly welcome a new article on this individual, written by somebody who can respect these policies (Wikipedia:Copy-paste). --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:36, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I see... Anyway, I think you should leave at least the basic information (something like "Michele Parrinello (September 7, Messine) is an Italian physicist, known for his work on physical chemistry and numerical simulation."). This would let other people more easily contribute. From a "normal" user, like me, it is much easier to edit an existing page rather than going through the process of creating a new one (I did it myself a couple of times, and I recall it not being particularly straightforward). In addition, that would not leave orphaned all the existing pages pointing to this entry. Just my 2 cents, thanks for your attention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.167.201.237 (talk) 11:55, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Here 'tis... Michele Parrinello . Best, Voceditenore (talk) 16:28, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
Yay! :D And it is better than what we had to begin with. :) 192.167.201.237, thank you for bringing this up. It would be great if we had the ability to replace every copyright problem we receive with at least basic information, but the fact is that we do not have the manpower to do so. :/ We have thousands of articles waiting for copyright review, and while the community is frequently invited to rewrite content they seldom do. I have written a couple hundred articles to replace copyright problems myself, but it's a fraction of what I've had to delete. In this particular case, there were far too many articles created by this person to even evaluate them; given that we know he has this problem and that he had been told he was not welcome to contribute without demonstrating first that he could overcome them, they were almost all deleted presumptively. People like that can leave quite a mess for the rest of us to mop up. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:40, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks guys, good work! :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.167.201.232 (talk) 15:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Daniel Ferro Bio

Thank you for your help. I am trying to get Daniel Ferro's bio posted on wikipedia. He is a distinguished vocal coach - with numerous of his students on wikipedia. I keep following all the directions sent to me and its still not working. I removed the quote that was the copywright problem and only posted his bio as a temporary draft (which is what they suggested) - and that still wasnt posted. I am a bit confused as what to do next. Can you please help with this. His bio is neutral and factual. Thank you. ferrovoce Ferrovoce (talk) 16:02, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I'll reply at your talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi MRG. Just a note to say that I've started a stub for this article today (Daniel Ferro) and will fill it out over the next day or two. He is a very prominent voice teacher and I've been able to find enough independent sources for a brief biography. It could be made longer, but unfortunately many of the sources for his early career are behind paywalls or in books are only available in libraries. But it should be a viable article nevertheless. I'll drop a note on Ferrovoce's talk page Best, Voceditenore (talk) 17:17, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

consensus

Hey MRG. I was wandering if I could take a little of your time? I won't request you read all of this. I'm just curious as to what happens next? The discussion seems to be over, it's clear what the majority would like to see. The impression I've gotten is that we simply have to wait for everyone to agree. Jayy008 (talk) 16:35, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. You don't have to wait for everybody to agree, as this may never happen. :) I'm not sure which conversation you're talking about; there's an official RfC which is still pretty young on that page, but the conversation you link to is just a conversation. Either way, once enough time has been given for everybody to weigh in (leave more time for the RfC than the conversation), anyone who is uninvolved can read consensus. Once declared, it can be implemented. You might want to reach out to somebody neutral, perhaps at the WP:DRN, to close the conversation. (You can also ask an administrator, if it's the RfC, at WP:AN...but not yet. It needs more time. :)) Make sure either way that your request is neutrally worded. It's best if you don't lead the reviewer towards any particular position to avoid causing disruption of the process, as, if the conversation goes your way, those who oppose it are likely to argue that you influenced the outcome. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
Ah, right. I get it. I'll wait for some others on the RFC for a few days and see what happens. We have added a request for that and the reply was not helpful in the least. So the RFC is the best way to go. Thanks. Jayy008 (talk) 16:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Luuurvely little detective job for someone. Not.

Creator of Elcert, which I've just had to tag for CSD G12. Whole thing was lifted from a pdf, which I found after a few minutes search.

The guy has been here since 2007. And has hundreds of contributions. If he's producing G12's four years after being with us, any guesses as to how many of his other creations are also copyvios? Who would take on the job of checking every damned page he's created? Pesky (talk …stalk!) 16:46, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I wouldn't mind having a look, but unless you tell the name of "the guy" it is kinda hard. Yoenit (talk) 08:16, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
I suspect that this is Eiland under discussion.  Velella  Velella Talk   09:04, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
Yep, that's the one! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 09:31, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
The community would take it on, if need is demonstrated. :) If you find several outstanding copyvios in his contrib history, you can request an investigation at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations. It will join the dozens already waiting review, but at least it will eventually be evaluated. Previously deleted copyvios do count, but I like to see at least five instances before assuming that a CCI is necessary. It's a massive consumption of community resources, and we want to be sure that it's needed. As you indicate, it's a fair amount of detective work. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:20, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Reference copyvio-ing another source?

This source is currently being used in the article, Journal of Cosmology. It is a copy of a statement made by the Journal on their website, which they later took down. This scientist, David Dobbs, copied the statement and uploaded it onto his blog site. What I want to know is, isn't this statement copyrighted to the Journal of Cosmology? Especially since they took it down themselves, they probably don't want other people to see it, so is this copy of it saved by this scientist on his blog a copyvio? If so, it's a reference we shouldn't be using, but I wanted to check with you (or any of your talk page stalkers) to see if it is indeed a copyright violation. SilverserenC 21:38, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, one of two possibilities. Either it is, as it says, a copy from the JoC site or else it is not. In the former instance, it is a rather blatant copy (perhaps even authorised). In the latter, it is clearly not a wp:RS. Is there some verifiable way to know if the copy is faithful to the text that is no longer on the JoC site? LeadSongDog come howl! 02:37, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
It is being discussed here and the other users are stating that it is a faithful copy, but i'm fairly certain it (and what seems to be other copies of it on other science blogs) is not authorized by the JoC. SilverserenC 03:17, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) The material was a press release, reproductions will be seen as fair use, especially if they are used for critical commentary like here. Yoenit (talk) 08:12, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
These cases are always fun. :) There are a couple of issues to consider here: (1) is it reliable? and (2) can we link to it (in light of WP:LINKVIO)? I would say that reliability depends on the reliability of the blog itself, since we have no way to verify that it is accurate other than the word of the uploader. But that's my own personal opinion, of course. In terms of whether or not it's a copyvio, I think this is a borderline case. While we are not permitted to reproduce press releases on Wikipedia ourselves by last consensus (WP:COMPLIC), I'm inclined to agree with Yoenit. If it were being used without critical commentary, that would be one thing. If I were using it (assuming the blog is itself reliable, which I don't know), I'd be inclined to quote it as "cited in". Even better if my use included reference to the critical commentary around it, since it further reduces the ambiguity of my own use. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:58, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

For clarity's sake, the exact thing concerned is (current citation #11 in the JOC article)

  • "The Controversy of the Hoover Meteorite Study: Official Statement The Journal of Cosmology, Have the Terrorists Won?". Journal of Cosmology. 8 March 2011. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

Which is obviously acceptable. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:59, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Daniel Ferro Bio

Thank you for responding to my message and helping me. I am a consultant for Mr. Ferro's vocal program and the bio originally submitted is my own writting. I'm not copying from the source, I am the source and its information that is factual to his professional career and the bio used whenever someone requests information on Mr. Ferro. If the information is not from a published source is it not able to be included on wikipiedia?

I see that today someone created a bio for Daniel Ferro. However there is no mention of his study at Columbia, his 33+ years teaching at Juilliard and Master Classes around the world, his many honors and the creation of his vocal program. These are what he is known for in the music world. How do I get that information included in his bio? Does it have to come from a published source that I can cite to be included?

I have read numerous pages on wikipedia trying to research this. If you could please give me some advice, guidelines on how I can do this or improve his bio so it is accurate, I'd appreciate your help. Ferrovoce (talk) 16:01, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Ferrovoce, I'm the one who created the article and left a note on your talk page. As I said, I haven't finished it yet and plan to add more tomorrow, some of which I can certainly source from the official biography, but I'm not going to copy it in verbatim, and in any case, I don't think that's particularly desirable. Neverthless, if you want to donate the text on the website to be used on Wikipedia please follow the procedure at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. Although, be prepared for it to be copyedited for encyclopedic style. I believe Moonriddengirl has already given you that link. I also have to tell you quite frankly that independent sources are required to establish notability. I want to make sure the article has these. An article sourced solely to someone's official biography, created or heavily edited by someone clearly associated with them, and that reads like a CV or publicity blurb, often gets taken to articles for deletion which is a real pain for everyone. Just be patient. The article will be fine in the end. Trust me  ;-), I'm an experienced editor and a longtime member of WikiProject Opera. Voceditenore (talk) 20:50, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
(talk page stalker)Frankly, you're lucky, Ferrovoce: Voceditenore is one of our top opera editors. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:59, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

indo-pakistani war of 1947

dear moonriddengirl,

the article about the indo-pakistani war of 1947 is flooded with copyright violations, especially section 3 about "operation gulmarg" (starting from the "when the invasion of Kashmir began..."-sentence). i added a copyrightvio-tag a while ago but nothing has happened. i believe the copyright violating content was inserted by a couple ip-accounts. the inserted copyright violating content was clearly taken from here [7], from the "when the invasion of Kashmir began..."-sentence and all the way down! also note that this book is extremely biased and not reliable at all, thus failing wp:rs big time. there might be additional worrisome sections as well, but section 3 takes the cake.-- mustihussain (talk) 17:04, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) The tag you added doesn't do anything but alert bypassers to potential issues; the one you use to starts the cleanup of copyrighted content is {{copyvio}}. It requires that after tagging the article, you list it for administrator review at the copyright problems board. It contains directions for that listing and even generates the code you need to use, so it's as easy as possible. In this particular case, I'll go take a look. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:40, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
I've mopped up. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
thanks!-- mustihussain (talk) 15:15, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Did I mess up?

I'd like a check on my thinking, back on 10/4 I removed some content from three articles as copyvios. The user User:Akgravgaard has posted a request for clarification on my talk and I've responded User_talk:Vsmith#Colombia_edits. The user self-identifies as the journalist who wrote at least some of the content for other websites - some of the ones I found in my google copyvio search. So she appears to have been copying her own work to wiki articles. I've replied to her question, but would appreciate it if you could take a look as I'm no expert here and don't want to "chase off" a potential good editor. Thanks, Vsmith (talk) 01:56, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Happy to. :) Heading right over. Thanks for both cleaning up the copyright problem and keeping in mind the ultimate goal of retaining the contributor. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 09:34, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. I should have mentioned that user:Akgravgaard provided an e-mail address in her note on my talk, however, I blanked it as a courtesy -- the address remains in the history of my talk if you need it. Vsmith (talk) 10:10, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. :) That particular email address is of the kind that gives us trouble. :/ (Can't be positively verified as the person.) But I can reach out to her through it if she doesn't respond. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:20, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Ummm, it's me again .... copyvio and all sorts of concerns

Heya! I've come across some stuff which bothers me - dropped a message about it over at Village Pump (misc). I think it needs copyvio people as well as others on this job - could take a while to clear up (and it's too big for me!) Cheers, Pesky (talk …stalk!) 11:56, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm on this a little bit although I'm about to head out. I'll look at it more later today if no one beats me to it. Dpmuk (talk) 12:05, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
Yikes! I'm glad to see that this is getting a lot of attention. :/ I don't have time to help out there today, but I'll try to pitch in on the weekend, WP:CP allowing. I'm trying to keep that from getting too far behind. (Speaking of which, there are a couple of tickets over there that I'd like a second pair of eyes on. If any talk page stalkers feel like it. :) They're clearly marked on a couple of days in September.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:31, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
I commented on two, were there more? Franamax (talk) 00:46, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

We all love that image, but...

See Talk:Muhammad/images#Infobox image, revisited. Those of us who regularly participate on that page would be interested in your thoughts on copyright problems with restoring the original calligraphic art that graced the Muhammad infobox until it was deleted from Commons last May. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:20, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Weighed in there, although I'm afraid only to defer. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:24, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

OTRS

Hello. I want to ask you about those deletions: [8]. Could you clarify why that content did not pass OTRS permission ([9])? Thanks in advance :) GiW (talk) 18:38, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for pointing that out; I will restore the information taken from that source. However, the diff you provide above includes information that was removed presumptively as well. The actual diff (which I will undo) is this one. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:19, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

OTRS help

We have two GORGEOUS images of the new queen of Bhutan, but they've just been tagged for deletion as missing permission. We got permission from the king's press office for one great image of him, so I'm guessing they're behind (or would be supportive of) the new uploads. Could you email the address associated with the prior OTRS ticket and ask them about File:20110506-IMG_2120.jpg and File:20110507-AH9Q2379.jpg? I just sent out messages to the person I'm pretty sure is the photographer in a variety of places, but I'm not sure if he's the copyright holder. Would be very sad to end up having to delete these! Calliopejen1 (talk) 03:07, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Sure. Let me look at the OTRS ticket. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:46, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Uh oh. A little complicated-the permission for the last image came from a gmail account. :/ I need to find an official address. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:49, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Found the official address, [10]. I will write to them, cc'ing our gmail correspondent. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:06, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Need Help!

Hello Moonriddengirl, this is Survir. I really need your help to resolve the following issue. Following page Saath Nibhaana Saathiya is constantly being moved to Saathiya (TV series). This is not the original title of the series. The series is known as Saath Nibhaana Saathiya [Source: the official site of the series and all the internet articles associated with the title]. Furthermore, Saathiya (TV series) cannot be used for the title for Saath Nibhaana Saathiya, since there was a television series earlier on Sahara One channel by the name Saathiya (with the tagline Pyaar Ka Nayaa Ehsaas). This series was always known as Saathiya without the tagline; therefore, the wiki page title on this series should have been Saathiya (TV series). However, someone created the article page on Sahara One's series with the following title, Saathiya – Pyar ka Naya Ehsaas. Now, my question is can you please move the page [[Saathiya (TV series) to Saath Nibhaana Saathiya and move the page Saathiya – Pyar ka Naya Ehsaas to Saathiya (TV series). Also, please move the talk pages associated with each articles as well. By the way, follwing user User:Avenue X at Cicero has left a message on the talk page Talk:Saathiya – Pyar ka Naya Ehsaas, saying that this series was known as with its full title including the tagline. This is very untrue. I have seen this entire series, and it was only known as Saathiya (additional source YouTube title song for both of the series'). He/she also quoted "a Google seach would atleast mention the 2004 serial somewhere". This is not true as well, there are quite a few aritcle on Wikipedia, you just have to search as Saathiya Sahara One because there was a 2002 Bollywood movie with the title Saathiya. Furthermore, Indian television serials are not heavily promoted on Internet especially those of Sahara One channel, and this is the reason that there are not that many articles associated with the earlier series.

I will really appreciate your help. I don't want to get into an argument with anyone on Wikipedia by moving the pages again and again. I have already created the disambig page for Saathiya. Thank you! By the way, this page Saath Nibhaana Saathiya have a lot of issues if you notice, and most of the info is copied off of other sources. Survir (talk) 03:13, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Survir. You don't have any option but to talk to the other contributor; this is required if you disagree with him. I have temporarily created a disambiguation page under the TV series name, but this is not a permanent solution. Wikipedia works by agreement, and you will each have the opportunity to convince the other or anyone else that may express an opinion on the title. Please contribute to Talk:Saathiya – Pyar ka Naya Ehsaas. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:37, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Moonriddengirl and talk page watchers. I have started a discussion at User talk:Moonriddengirl/Copyright in lists#Copyright of polls. I put it there so that it could be found more easily in the future, especially if that page is eventually promoted to a guideline, but it could be moved to WT:Non-free content if necessary. Summary: I think that discussion at WP:Articles for deletion/200 Greatest Israelis and related AfDs – that poll results are not protected by copyright – conflicts with feedback from the WMF's attorney (WT:Non-free content/Archive 51#Attorney feedback). Thanks. Flatscan (talk) 04:53, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. It does seem to conflict. And I am myself pretty uncomfortable in the whole area. :/ I'll make a note there, but I suspect that it would get a lot more attention if it were placed at WT:NFC. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:00, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

IEP copyvios

FYI: Wikipedia talk:India Education Program#More copyright violations. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:50, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I've created a form letter that can be dropped on students' talk pages if they have persisting issues that may clarify the problem for them. I also tried turning that into a template, but for some reason only the "comments" optional parameter functions. I'm not so good with templates. :) For now, it's at User:Moonriddengirl/Uw-copyright-new and it is usable, if not fully functional. The language in the template version is a bit more developed than the "form letter" version.
I don't really have more time to put into it at the moment, but I'll let people at that conversation know. If they think it has value, maybe somebody will help fix it up. Otherwise, well, it'll have value to me. :) It's not my first self-created template hosted in my userspace. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:48, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for all your efforts. User:Voceditenore, who is in fact our Wikipedia opera specialist, spent an hour removing all the copyvios from the article and did a gallant job just to be left with a stub that duplicates the content of an existing article. He deserves a medal for this an the other work he's put into this and other IEP issues. The biggest problem is that we can't have our regular editors tying up their time on issues like these. I've spent another five hours on it to day as well. Clearly the IEP ambassadors must do more checking rather than handing out barnstars and Wikilove for articles that have to be deleted. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:23, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
User:Voceditenore is awesome in lots of areas. I'm a fan. :)
I agree that this has been a huge mess, but I think (speaking completely as Moonriddengirl the volunteer) that what we're going to need to do is assess the overall state of the situation to see what we can do about it on our end. Having worked copyright for ten billion years or so on Wikipedia, I know that you can talk until you're blue in the face to some people, explaining over and over again how copyright works, and they still will not get it. It stands to reason to me that the IEP and other campus programs are going to get some of those people, especially if they're only here for a grade. Those people, we have no choice but to block.
We might also expect that some of the ambassadors are going to be more diligent at looking for copyright problems than others. I think barnstars and Wikilove are probably not a problem as long as the ambassadors and students giving and getting them are among the ones who "get it". Our challenge is probably in figuring out which ambassadors do not get it and helping them get it—either by teaching them about copyright issues themselves (if that's the problem) or teaching them to be effective copyright-issue patrollers. I don't have time right now, but if you think it would be helpful, I'd be happy to draw up some form letters or templates that we could give ambassadors when we know that students they are mentoring have violated these policies undetected. This not only gives us the opportunity to repair the issue, but it would also help us identify potentially weak spots in the chain. If an ambassador continues to have students violating policy and does not seem to be helping the situation, the problem may be with that ambassador.
Alternatively, somebody may want to talk to the programme heads about educating ambassadors about "copyright detection 101"--and that's where I fall into a weird position with my dual roles. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:38, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
This would all be eversomuch easier if CorenSearchBot were working. :( --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:38, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

No, no Kudpung, "She deserves a medal..." ;-) I'm a woman, despite my rather misleading user name. Don't worry, most people think I'm a "he". I always thought my discourse style was obviously feminine, but maybe not...

Best, Signora Voceditenore (talk) 13:49, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

It took me a while to figure it out. :D I find that having "girl" in my username eliminates all most doubt. (Even though that's nothing to do with my choice of it.) I also find that it doesn't always lead to good places. :/ Voceditenoregirl would have just been awkward, though. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:53, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
(Random comment from talk-page stalker...) Wow, I also didn't realize that you were a woman! Three women talking together on Wikipedia, what are the odds?... Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:19, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
There's a heap of us! Me, too! And some who contribute to my talk page ..... All us females coming out of the closet, look ... noooooo! We are NOT the bogeyman! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 04:34, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
Adding: those surveys are very misleading! Females are either (1) less likely to fill in the surveys, and / or (2) less likely to admit to being female when they do fill in those surveys! And, without outing anyone, I personally know of about a dozen who hang out in IRC regularly, as well, all unbeknownst to most! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 04:44, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

CCI request

I saw this coming from a mile away: WP:CCI#Wikipedia:India Education Program. I intend to accept it, but I'm not sure whether it may be necessary given the current cleanup efforts. MER-C 02:30, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Another lesson, if possible?

Hi, MRG. In my gnoming of the same set of topics I suspect are rife with paste-ins, I've come across this one: Integrated accounting system, with a sibling in Non-integrated accounting system. For the former article, I straight-googled "Obviously, then there will be no separate sets of books for Costing" (I've downcased a inappropriate caps in the article, but it matched those caps exactly in:

[www.costmanagement.net.in/upld/216_resource_31_MAY_1995.doc]

I'd have left it as a possible mirror, except for the date! I've watchlisted the articles, so I'll see if you perform any actions, to learn. Thanks again. Tony (talk) 13:09, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I've blanked them both, since your dated document and the history of copyvios at the user's talk page make a compelling argument. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:59, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. Tony (talk) 06:29, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I made some decently big changes to this message. I basically gutted the section on PD/CC works, because the odds that students are using these are extremely low and it is likely to cause confusion. Instead, I put a note at the bottom saying that there are rare exceptions, and if you think the article you want to use is an exception, ask at the help desk. Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:05, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Brilliant! Much better, thank you. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:42, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Top grossing Bollywood Films of 2011

Hi, another BOI failure of copyright. I have tagged the article and made a note on the talk page pointing to your essay, but you may want to take this a step further. Cheers --Fæ (talk) 16:39, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I have redirected and protected the redirect, and I have added usable content to Bollywood films of 2011#Top grossing films of the year. Maybe giving them options will help? I'm afraid that these lists are causing people to stumble into trouble. :( It would be so awesome if we do wind up getting permission for that content. The whole ugly problem would just go away. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:34, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Deletion of Alpha Iota Delta

Hi

I have been attempting to add 6 Honor Societies to the Fordham University Wiki site for days now. These 6 Honor Societies Fordham is a member of as seen in the membership section of The American Honor Society website. Alpha Iota Delta is the honor society for Information Sciences (computer) and lists Fordham as a member. I am an active alumni for 30 years and check my facts before I post on Wiki.

May I ask why you keep deleting it? Are you deleting the other 5 societies I added?

You can emial me directly at ranieves@chpnet.org

Thank you

-Ray — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ramray (talk • contribs) 17:14, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) I haven't edited the Fordham University article, so it is difficult for me to say what issues are, but looking at comments in the article history, I would say that it seems people feel the list is too long and is overwhelming the article. ([11]) I'm afraid that these kinds of disagreements are not uncommon. You're quite right to reach out for an explanation, but your best bet would be to take it up at Talk:Fordham University, where involved contributors can respond. Wikipedia:Dispute resolution includes some tips for how to get neutral outsiders to weigh in, if consensus can't be reached.
If you're asking about the article on Alpha Iota Delta, which was deleted in 2009, it was a violation of our copyright policy, I'm afraid. Wikipedia:Copy-paste includes a general overview of these. The contributor who created it copied it from another website. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:40, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Invitation to join the January 2012 Move to Commons Drive

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CCI (again!)

Hi Maggie - I've still been working through Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/GiW, and I'm down to just two articles left. I've been through the article and tagged them both as having some OTRS-verified material, as well as removing some copyvios from other sites. However, they both have some bits and pieces that I can't verify as having come from anyplace specifically. I'm hoping that you or maybe some of your copyvio-expert TPSs may have better luck than me. Once the last remaining issues on these two articles are taken care of, I think this CCI can be closed. Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 15:04, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Message at your talk. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:26, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Another one for CCI?

  • Hi, Dave. :) He doesn't seem to have been blocked for copyright problems, but for sock puppetry and disruption. I see there have been a few issues with images, but all that I see left at a glance in his uploads are fair use. Can you give me some links to current issues? Or to recent problems with text? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:56, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
  • While I'd really like to help, I'm afraid that I'm a bit time challenged these days. I really don't have time to dig deeply into people. :/ I'm glad to hear that Drmies is on it, though, and if there's diffs to current issues I'll be happy to open a CCI. I can try to take a look this weekend, when I have time off work, but I find I usually don't get much further than sweeping up the backlog at WP:CP, if I even make it through that. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:40, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Alright, take your time and grab some R&R, you've most certainly earned it. Anyway, it's not like he's going anywhere now that his block has been resetted to expire on 13 November instead. Although Drmies and JamesBWatson are watching him, your expertise in WP:CCI was what prompted me to approach you for help in the first place. Many thanks again. Remember, take your time... but hurry up~! Just kidding... --Dave ♠♣♥♦™№1185©♪♫® 12:56, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks. :) But I'm not resting and relaxing, I'm working. :D I spend more time living and breathing Wikipedia now than I ever did before. It does make it hard to keep up. It can take me an hour or more to evaluate a contributor to see if a CCI is necessary. If I have a couple of current diffs, it's a lot easier for me to invest it, when I've got soooo much other work piling up for me to do. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
I've said this before, Maggie... but you're awesome. Thanks for the work that you do. :-) If I had the time to help you, I would. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:23, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Need Help!

Hello Moonriddengirl, this is Survir. Can you please help me protect the following page List of programs broadcast by Star Plus. This page is constantly being vandalized by the same IP address that I have told you about earlier. He/she keeps adding made up names to the list of programs. Earlier you Semi-protected the page, and that really helped. The page was fine until the protection was removed. Can you please fully protect the page, if you can. I will really appreciate your help. Thank you! Your friend Survir (talk) 01:34, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I see that User:Kudpung has protected the page. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:08, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I have some Bones for you to chew!

I decided to have a break from NPP and go reflinking on old linkrot-tagged pages ..... already CSD G12'd a couple of things .... and including The Superhero in the Alley (Bones episode), which seems, unfortunately, to have been a straight lift from a site no longer in existence (bonestvseries.net). Fing is, though, fing is, if this one was a straight lift - how many others are? Wayback Machine is unhelpful, though it does show the kinda thing which was appearing on the site, you can't actually get to this darned episode! So, who's up for some nice police work now that clever sniffer-Wolfcub has found one for you :D "Clever doggy, give the nice doggy a biscuit"[Gaspode, Pratchett]. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 16:24, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Was all of the material added by the same editor? If so just start a wp:CCI and we can nuke from orbit everything that is even remotely suspicious. If we are dealing with a variable IP or single use socks I wouldn't even know where to start cleaning that up. Also, how did you determine it was a copyvio with no source in the first place? Yoenit (talk) 00:42, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
Hmm. This one is a bit tricky. :) I've restored the article (which Fastily speedily deleted), but tagged it with {{copyvio}} while we work through this.
The website in question displays October 2010 as the earliest dated item, and I note that it credits the Wikimedia Foundation at the top listing of the archived set. The article itself was created in February 2010, and I believe it was copied from Wikia, which is compatibly licensed (but was not credited). That said, it is so much too long that I believe it crosses the line into potential infringement simply based on the amount of detail, particularly given the absolute lack of critical commentary.
Articles about television shows are a chronic copyright problem. People liberally copy episode summaries from other sources, and reverse infringement is also rampant. Typically, if an article is listed at CP, I will check other uploads by the same user, as Yoenit suggests. But frankly I think we lack the manpower to do the thorough scour that television articles in general would require. If I'm thoroughly investigating a summary list, it can take me hours. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:03, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Question?

How would I go about reporting a suspected sock of an already blocked sockmaster? As I believe that Achmednut321 is back. Sarujo (talk) 23:35, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) You would have to file a report at wp:SPI, which is so complex I have still no idea how it works despite trying it three times. Those guys should really work on their accessibility, although I suppose it helps in keeping the number of frivolous reports down. /rant off. Luckily it seems the sock is already blocked in this case. Yoenit (talk) 00:49, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
They really do need to work on their transparency. At this point, I feel like the obscurity of the process is purposeful so that blocks can be enacted on certain people without having evidence for it. I have yet to be shown that this opinion isn't true. And don't even get me started on "behavioral" evidence... /rant SilverserenC 03:35, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
I agree that filing at SPI is pretty complex. I'm never 100% sure that I'm doing it right. I don't watch the process anywhere near enough to know about transparency issues, but, Silver, I have to admit I got kind of a laugh out of the juxtaposition of these thoughts: "I feel like the obscurity of the process is purposeful so that blocks can be enacted on certain people without having evidence for it. I have yet to be shown that this opinion isn't true." Maybe it's just because I'm barely awake still, but it struck me as funny since it implies in the first sentence a preferred standard of "innocent until proven guilty" and in the second "guilty until proven innocent." :)
In terms of behavioral evidence, I have not blocked a lot of socks myself, but those I have blocked have been almost universally blocked on behavioral evidence. Since I am not a CU, I don't have any other kind. :/ Fortunately, some people are pretty obvious. "Achmed Nuts of 321" didn't fall far from the tree. :/ I believe he may be still here as an IP; I'm looking into that. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:29, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
In terms of an IP, I believe that this one may be Achmednut due to this message on my talk page. Sarujo (talk) 16:35, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure if the IPs are Achmednut or an opportunist who saw his name on your talk page. :) We'll see if he comes back. Meanwhile, perhaps you might archive some of those older messages in case they're giving vandals ideas. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:15, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Urgent

Hi MRG. See Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_October_17#.22Article_cv.23.22_templates where someone has nominated both Template:Article-cv and Template:Article-cv2 for deletion. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 09:58, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the heads up. :) That would have caused quite a mess! :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:44, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

User:Hzhuge and Resource Space Model

Hi Moon. I just ran across this article and immediately sensed a copyvio. I did some digging and found the original, copyrighted source. After tagging it as a copypaste until I could check the whole text, I noticed that the account that created the article either is or represents the author of the book. I would normally ask the author to donate but it's a textbook so I'm guessing donating isn't easy. This is way outside of my realm of copyright knowledge. How do you suggest I proceed? Nominate for G12? Ask the user to submit an OTRS ticket? OlYellerTalktome 00:18, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

This article also has a very serious case of COI, and I suspect, sockpuppetry. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:49, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, at base it's unusable unless we get permission. If there is an assertion of authorship, G12 is not applicable, and I typically take usernames as a de facto assertion. :) In this case, we go through the WP:CP process, although I have created one of my own long-winded templates to notify in these cases at User:Moonriddengirl/vp. I've gone ahead and taken it through the process myself. :) If he doesn't verify in a week, the article will be deleted. The template I left him includes some suggestions for making sure material complies with policy; if it doesn't, we can take further steps then. Alternatively, I have seen articles AfDed while at CP, generally when people think that even if permission comes through it won't make the article worth keeping. If we do that, though, to avoid biting we should probably leave a custom notice to the contributor rather than the template, something just saying, "I have concerns that even if permission is provided this article does not meet our inclusion guidelines, so I have...." --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:03, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 October 2011

3RR

3RR disagreement here. User has reverted my edits three times. I thought that the original version of the page must stay until disagreement was over. I don't believe the user is willing to continue a discussion. Jayy008 (talk) 18:43, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Jayy. :) Typically, per WP:BRD, the original version should stay, but the original version is the one preceding the edit that was reverted. That is, the one before this edit of yours. :) While the issue is hashed out, the original wording of "as" should be retained. That's the heart of the "bold, revert, discuss" cycle. You made a change; he objected and changed it back; now you discuss. Your bold change is the point where disagreement begins, and it doesn't stay in during the discussion. (That is, again, typically; if a bold change is to address copyright or BLP concerns, it's handled differently.)
In terms of the other changes, articles are not locked while content is disputed unless an edit war makes that necessary. I don't understand why, if your only argument is with the word "as", you have repeatedly undone all of his edits: [12], [13]. :/ This isn't a good approach, Jayy. It makes it look like you are being aggressive and not collaborating towards the improvement of the article. Even if this were a case where the change should remain (if you were removing a WP:BLP problem, for instance), you shouldn't undo all of the subsequent edits to put back in that one. You should target the specific concern.
At this juncture, your job is to bring in somebody else who will continue the discussion so that you can both avoid edit warring. You might try WP:3O. Remember to ask neutrally and to follow their directions, or you might not get a response. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:17, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I understand that. So thanks. My other question, don't all editors who break 3RR get blocked no matter what, though? Jayy008 (talk) 18:08, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

IEP

Hi MRG. I've left a message on your other page, but I'll just address one of your points here: It may be worth exploring if there is a specific cultural element, as this can help us tailor our approach. This is indeed the crux of the matter, but one which I feel has been poorly understood by our western WMF people. It's also an issue that risks being avoided because of it's political correctness inferences. However, copyvio/plagiarism is endemic all across Asia. It is tolerated by everyone from students to the dean. I know, because I've lived and taught in universities here for nearly 13 years, and any amount of gathering of statistics won't assist in identifying this as a specific issue. It needs to be met head on by WMF representatives who travel to these countries to set up new education and outreach programmes, and they need to know how to address these cultural aspects 'the Asian way'. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:53, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm attending the meeting today, and I will try to make sure that this is properly addressed, although you do put your finger on the difficulty there. :) I've visited Asia, but not at any length and certainly not enough to get a feel for their approach to copyright, but what you say doesn't surprise me. As you know, I've been pretty much full time on copyright cleanup on Wikipedia for years, and some of our most troubled articles involve India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh and China. In the case of India and Pakistan, I have actually seen government websites that have copied Wikipedia without acknowledgement. My typical approach when talking to people about copyright is to try to divorce it from any moral issues; it can be seen as shameful, and I don't find this constructive. So I emphasize that certain practices are unacceptable here. If this differs from "the Asian way" or you have any additional tips, I'm all ears. :) You've offered a lot of valuable input to this issue, and I'm not embarrassed to ask for more. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:47, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
(Stalking) That's an interesting concept, Moon. Divorcing the morality of plagiarism/copyvios is something that other editors and I see to be having trouble with. Several other editors including myself have had what might be called an emotional response to the wave of plagiarism and wondering how educational institutions involved with IEP can let this happen. Ultimately, feeling outraged or any sort of response based on our perception of morality is probably not constructive. As it seems that everyone involved thinks that WP is the number one priority here, morals regarding plagiarism can essentially be removed from the equation and our policies can be focused on.
This is a bit of a rant/epiphany but I thought I'd share. OlYellerTalktome 14:59, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
Seeing it as a problem with the entirety of Asia is a bit of a broad brush. In the Nanjing University project, although we have seen quite a few copyvios, we didn't see anything near the level of problems that there have been with the IEP. We haven't seen students having to be blocked and then blocked again for copyvio; we haven't had problems with campus ambassadors and even instructors engaging in copyvio (although, we didn't have any campus ambassadors!)
The problems revolved more around formatting, notability, verifiability, failing to realise an article on a topic already existed, and a need for lots of copy-editing; some of these are common to any new editors, and the last is understandable when English is the students' second language. What we have seen with the Nanjing project is the additional problem that it is natural for these students to write in flowery, poetic terms, rather than neutral, factual terms. But an inappropriate tone is a lot less of an issue for Wikipedia than a flagrant copyright violation! Having said all this, the project "only" had 180 students, so was on a different scale.
Speaking of government websites not acknowledging use of Wikipedia, the Malaysian Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has some problems with this as well (see Dugong, which we can presume is not the only example). --Demiurge1000 (talk) 16:29, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear that it's not that widespread, Demiurge. (Another government lifting from us? Sigh. :/) OlYeller, it can be hard to avoid getting outraged. There are times when I feel myself getting huffy especially when working on particularly egregious CCIs, but I do think as you say that it's not a constructive approach. I've worked with enough people to know that many of them really intend no harm and some of them are very willing to work with us to overcome issues once they get past the initial shock. In fact, one of our early CCIs came back later to give me a barnstar for helping him, which means a lot to me. :) That said, I feel a bit differently about people who come back with sock puppets to continue violating our copyright policies. :/ If we've tried to work with them and they won't get it to the point that we have had to block them, they cross the line into a form of vandalism (imo) if they insist on editing anyway. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:28, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Me again!

Hi Maggie - I've been working on Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Communicat, and again, am down to just a couple of articles that I can't finish off. I hope you don't mind me bringing them here when I've gone as far as I can - I just would hate to see the CCI's languish when there's only one or two articles holding them up. Anyway, the issue with the two articles left here is that they are sourced mainly to offline sources, and while the user has a lot of copyvio'd stuff (probably more than 75%), he also added some relatively decent stuff. So, I don't know where you draw the line when you presumptively remove content. Anyway, I hope you (or a TPS) can help, so that we can get this CCI closed up! Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 23:39, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't mind at all! I'm happy to see your progress. :) I don't have time to look at this tonight, but I hope to be able to wrap it up in the morning. (Note to me: try to wrap this up in the morning.) Great work. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:20, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
Whether you remove presumptively is a gut call, and it's based on the behavior of the user (what was the proportion of clean material? how many sources are inaccessible) and the state of the article, really. In this case, I did some spot checks and came up with some troublesome material, so I was pretty aggressive in pruning and rewriting. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:58, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks to the both of you for cleaning up the remains of this long-term problem. Edward321 (talk) 13:50, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

RfC

You are quoted several times at my RfC.

Alas, your statement that users typically discover copyright concerns in the course of investigating questionable content, suggesting AGF be applied to me, was not quoted.

Nor was my action (on every appropriate talk page) to state that you viewed the copyright problems at Freedom in the World as minor mentioned, by my critics. (I wrote something like "I do not lose sleep wondering why you rewrote an article that had no major copyright problems".)

Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 11:22, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. If you think people are not catching full context of a conversation, it may be helpful to supply diffs. :) I'm very happy to see that Demiurge agrees with my stance that people on both sides of the copyright question should be treated courteously. That's a standard that I think must not be allowed to slip. Everyone who wants to improve Wikipedia should be encouraged to contribute in line with community standards; editors are not disposable. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:01, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
For the record, I agree with your stance, and I also support apple pie, motherhood, and the flag.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 12:07, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
Good. :) I'm not much of a fan of pies myself, but I do support many other baked goods. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:07, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Image Copyrights

Do you know anyone that's good with image copyrights? Danger and I have been working on some extensive copyright issues at Data flow diagram that are stemming from one very persistent student. The source that I have found to be copied has several diagrams that the same student has recreated in some sort of Draw program and uploaded to WP for use in the article. You can see an example here. I stay away from picture copyvios because I'm not sure where the line between a copyright violation and ones own work is drawn. If you know someone I can speak to or a place that helps explain that line, I would be grateful if you could point me in that direction. OlYellerTalktome 17:16, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Ol' Yeller. You may wish to post your question at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions (or, rather than tag the image for speedy deletion, instead submit it to Wikipedia:Files for deletion for discussion). You will find several editors who consistently work those boards. I think they can help discuss the issue with you. IMO, the example above is definitely a derivative work. — CactusWriter (talk) 18:12, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm glad CactusWriter weighed in here because, OlYeller, I have similar issues. :D I find language much easier to assess. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:21, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Cactus and Moon! OlYellerTalktome 19:59, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Former user 9172

Hi MRG. Please see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Former user 9172. Thank you. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 00:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. I see he's been blocked. I've mopped up. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:01, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you as always. :) Take care MRG. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 11:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

UNGA2011

ikindly note that, and particurarly as an admin, your blind rvt restores content that should ot be. "He was congratulation by uutgoing "Lihaas (talk) 06:28, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

then reword the damn thing if you hae a prob with it. You dont need to CENSOR it! it pretty acruiately described what is sat and the you should take it to talk to describe your EXACTPROBLEM so others ca see that too.!Lihaas (talk) 10:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
My exact problems are described at the talk. Hopefully, you have a better understanding of the issues with my latest note. I am not rewording the article because I am not an editor of the article; I am an uninvolved administrator removing content that is unacceptable under our policies. You cannot say that somebody said something they didn't, especially if they are a living person. If I become an editor of the article, then this becomes a content dispute and somebody else has to get involved. Further, now that I see that there is a core misunderstanding here, making sure you realize what the problem is has become very important to avoid your misattributing quotes in other articles. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:51, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz

Dear Moonridden Girl,

I am Mansoor Ijaz, the eldest son of Dr Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz, writing to you today from London, UK. I noticed that you have deleted the entirety of the Wikipedia page of information about my father. While I have no role in or any knowledge of who wrote that page in the first place, it contained a lot of pretty accurate and highly detailed data that is relevant to the public domain.

As I cannot see it anymore, it is not clear how we could perhaps work together to fix the copyright problems you refer to in your fix. I would like my father's contributions to Physics and other fields of pursuit in his life to be available to the public and would like to see if we cannot resurrect that page in some form acceptable to you.

Again, I have no personal interest in this other than he was an important scientist who made important contributions to the fields he studied. I have been alternately villified, celebrated and ignored in my own role as a public figure in certain sensitive political and policymaking issues in my lifetime, as my own Wikipedia page will attest.

Would appreciate your feedback on this and if you are willing to work with me and my brothers to insure that an accurate portrayal is put up, properly documented, then please would you send me that page which was originally formulated by the editor known as IRONBOY and let me have an initial go at it?

Thanks, Mansoor IJAZ109.231.229.69 (talk) 16:27, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I am not permitted to send you the text contributed by Ironboy, as we are not allowed to distribute copyright problems. Ironboy may have meant well, but at that point in his Wikipedia career he had an unfortunate tendency to create articles by pasting content from sources. One of the sources used seems to have been written by your family, but is copyrighted to The Weekly Standard. Otherwise, we could ask you to provide permission for the text. Even if you did, however, we would not be able to use the article as he wrote it because he copied from other sources written by other people as well.
The article, as I'm sure you know, has not been deleted. While frequently we do delete such articles, I wanted to at least retain the barest outline that others could build upon, as due to systemtic bias Wikipedia's coverage of Pakistani physicists is not likely to be complete. It is a shame to have lost so much information, but what remains has been marked as a "stub" in hopes of attracting other contributors who may recognize your father's name to build onto it.
Generally, we do not encourage family members of subjects to work on articles so that we avoid bias, but I would be happy to work with you to get some more information up about your father. If you register an account, you could work on something in a sandbox, and I'd be happy to help you consider whether the content meets policies on verifability and neutrality, as well as that prohibiting original research. (One of the difficulties of writing about family members is that you may know details that are not published in reliable sources, but as nice as it would be to include those, we can't.) It would probably be best to take a straightforward approach to adding basic information, reliably sourced, about his many accomplishments.
If you'd like to give this a shot, please let me know. I'll be happy to help you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:13, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Did you know help

Hi. On Wikipedia talk:Did you know#Copyvio_checks, concerns have been raised based on [14] and I'm really, really stumped as to how fix that wording. You can't reword "world record" as it is a technical term. The event type tends to be organised pretty much from shortest distance to longest as a really, really standard convention in both swimming and in athletics. I could take out the word metre and replace with just m. But that wouldn't seem to address that issue. Changing the order of these things doesn't seem like it would clear it up. :/ And yeah. :( Stumped and not sure how to fix this. :( Help? --LauraHale (talk) 19:21, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Based on the duplication detector (which I have to note for accuracy reflects the current version of the article), I don't think it needs fixing. :) I agree with you that the organization of shortest to longest is natural and that there is little creativity in the text. I've scanned through the source and the article (but not in-depth; have to make school lunch in a minute!), and I don't see any issues. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:28, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Source

Hello Moonriddengirl. Would you mind telling whether or not this is a reliable source?[15]

Thank you,

Yours,

--&レア (talk) 14:19, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. The website itself is a fan site, so it's probably not reliable. The interview itself would be, but the problem is that you cannot link to it on the fansite because that would be a WP:LINKVIO and you can't really even be 100% sure that it's been reproduced accurately. (Though, honestly, it probably has.) Ideally, you would want to get ahold of the original if you can. Sometimes you can find previews of Google books that show the entire interview. Alas, all I see for Aperture are snippets. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:54, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
Can I use the snippets of Aperture? --&レア (talk) 16:41, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, only if you find snippets that are appropriate to the article. :) I understand that Google books shows different results for different people. Any chance you can get the issue of the magazine via interlibrary loan? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

ICES Intertemporal Computable Equilibrium System

Hi,

Could you revisit Talk:ICES Intertemporal Computable Equilibrium System and have a look. This one seems marginal but if the contributor has previously had copyvio issues, then this may also be one as well. - Whpq (talk) 20:23, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Good find! Under the circumstances, reblanked and relisted. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:47, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz

Thank you for the response.

You can be certain I will only want to put up what is verifiable, having lived through the nightmare of those who wished to put up non-verifiable information about me for the past 10 years.

Please let me know how and when we can proceed and I will do what I can to bring data in that is verifiable and in the public domain, where possible.

Best, Mansoor — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.231.229.69 (talk) 09:36, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

The first thing you should do, then, is register for an account. Wikipedia:Why create an account? explains some of the advantages of this, but in your case it would be helpful in creating a sandbox in your user space. At the bottom of that box is a colored page that says "Create an account now." Once you've created an account, let me know your user name, and I'll create a "sandbox" for you to work in and give you a bit more information. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:12, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Concrete Aggregates Corporation

Hi MRG. if you have moment please check this as I'm an absolute dunce on © stuff. But I'll know for the future. Thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:37, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Good morning, Kudpung. :) Will happily take a look. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:39, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm having a really hard time navigating that site. Pages keep refusing to load. :/ But I managed to get the page to load, and I note that it says at the bottom: "Original content from WikiPedia. under GNU Free Documentation License. See full disclaimer." I need to find out where it came from and what happened to the original text. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:44, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm heading to the airport in 10 minutes, so I'm afraid I don't have time to find this right now. :/ So far I'm at a loss. I can't see that we ever had an article under Concrete Aggregates, Inc. or under the present title. Wikipilipinas will not allow me to look at the history of their page, so I can't even get a rough date. :/ I'll have to look at it later unless somebody else unravels the mystery, but we need to know where the original page was and what happened to it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:51, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=GNU_Free_Documentation_License --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:24, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
Did you misread it? As far as I can see it reads "Original content from WikiPilipinas", so was likely on their site first and so unusable as it's only licensed under GFDL. Dpmuk (talk) 00:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
I must have, then. Thanks for looking into it Dpmuk.. I have no idea why that website was being so wonky with me. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:40, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Crusader Gold

Hi Moonriddengirl,

Thanks very much for your advice on David Gibbins' novel Crusader Gold. In future I'll follow your guidelines about plot summaries for novels, and I will look to making this more encyclopedic in content as you suggest. Many thanks again Curwen Littledale , 23 October 2011 (UTC)Curwen Littledale (talk) 12:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC).

Thank you for contributing the article. :) If you run into questions at any point, please feel free to stop by. I'm generally happy to offer input, if I can. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:39, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Picture

Hi,

I wanted to use this picture in order to illustrate an article on postmodern art. [16] I don't know what the rules are on fair use and things of modern art. Can it be used anywhere? Can this picture File:Duchamp Fountaine.jpg also be used anywhere?

Yours,

--&レア (talk) 15:05, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) There's some simple best practices for using images you find on Wikipedia or Commons. If it is marked public domain, you can reuse it anywhere. If it's compatibly licensed, you can use it anywhere as long as you follow the licensing requirements (usually attribution). If it is marked for non-free use, you can only use it if your usage meets non-free content policies and guidelines and if you write a specific fair use rationale for the article where you want to use it.
This is a bit complicated by two factors. First, images can be falsely labeled public domain or compatibly licensed. In that case, you shouldn't get in any trouble for linking them on Wikipedia, as you are operating in good faith. (If you have doubts about an image's status, though, it's a good idea to bring up the image at least on WP:MCQ.) The second is that local laws which govern individual users may be different than the US laws that govern Wikipedia. We may have images here that are public domain in the United States that are not public domain in other countries. If you're going to reuse an image outside of Wikipedia, you might want to be careful to evaluate whatever local laws impact you. :)
Any talk page stalkers passing by, if this doesn't make sense, please help me clarify it. I'm a bit jet laggy, but trying. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:38, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. I read what you wrote, however, in short, would you say that it is a yes or a no to using the first image in postmodern art and the latter in Western art history? --&レア (talk) 14:40, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
BTW, I live in the UK, so I don't know if it's the same here as it is in the US.--&レア (talk) 14:42, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
When it's on Commons (and it is), you should be able to use it in any article in Wikipedia. If it was uploaded incorrectly, that's not your fault. I'm not myself 100% sure if I would use that image outside of Wikipedia, as I'm not 100% sure about the copyright status of some of the images on the walls and whether or not they would be de minimis. But I would not hesitate to link to them in an article on Wikipedia, including the two you mention. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:50, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Olivia (TV series) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Olivia (TV series) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Olivia (TV series) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. VegetaSaiyan 23:57, 24 October 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by VegetaSaiyan (talk • contribs)

This seems like a pretty questionable nomination, but on the little toy computer I'm working on, I'm not going to look into this. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:28, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Bhutan royalty photos

Ever hear back about licensing permission? Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:07, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Nothing we an use yet. :/ I wrote to the guy who gave us permission last time as well as to their official press office. The guy who gave us permission last time wrote back to say that he no longer worked in that department and could not help us, but he did cc' a colleague whom he said could. I have not heard from this colleague or from anybody at the press office. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:22, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

I haz a copyvio G12 question ...

If an entire page is straight copy-paste copyvio from a number of different pages, is it still a G12? I just got ticked off for G12'ing something, on the basis that "it was rewritable by proper non copyvio writing from the extensive refs given".

If it needs a complete re-write to stop it being a blatant copyvio, is it not still a blatant copyvio and a candidate for a G12? Input appreciated! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 07:07, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Right. A page that is a straight copy-paste (unless there's credible assertion of permission) is a G12; a page that is a straight attack page is a G10, a page that is nothing but advertisement is a G11. Rewriting could fix any of them so that they were no longer speedy candidates, but unless somebody rewrites them, they are. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:36, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) The article in question is Google Chrome complete version history. I have sent it to afd because it is an obvious violation of WP:NOTDIRECTORY point 6, besides being copyvio and all. DGG obviously thought the article had potential for rewrite, but he should have sent it to wp:CP so he could rewrite it rather than just put up an under construction tag. Yoenit (talk) 10:47, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! I don't have time to look at it before my flight (must eat breakfast!), but if it needs a {{copyvio}} can you put it on? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:53, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
I will stick one on just to be safe. Yoenit (talk) 10:59, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, guys'n'gals :P Every scrap of "information" in the list was a verbatim lift of the "sources" pages .... Pesky (talk …stalk!) 17:05, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I do remain a bit concerned that DGG seems to be giving people entirely the wrong impression about copyvios. He's specifically stated: "As for some specific policies, Copyvio is NOT automatically nuked on site" (I think he meant 'sight'). He seems to be more worried about editor retention than things which could actually put the project to a heck of a lot of cost / trouble, etc. Yes, we need to retain editors. But retaining copyvios is not the way to go about it. Could you possibly have a word with him on this? Pesky (talk …stalk!) 21:45, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I have a related question: if G12 is declined because the article is rewritten and/or stubbed, should WP:Revision deletion RD1 be used? DGG is a convenient example because he patrols G12s, declines, and rewrites/stubs; and he is an admin who could RD1 by himself. Flatscan (talk) 04:36, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
That was my next question! :o) Pesky (talk …stalk!) 05:34, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
I'll try to remember to talk to DGG when I get back to my home computer--probably at some point on Friday. We don't really have but probably need to get some kind of guidelines for when RD1 should be used to eliminate copyvios from history. For attribution concerns, that used to be a much bigger deal and much more difficult to do. It was our habit to retain the content then for obvious reasons. The question is to what extent it represents a risk of restoration, I guess. Maybe we ought to spin up some central chat about that? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:44, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
I see it as balancing investigation work against that risk. I agree that hunting down and revdeling long-forgotten historical revisions is not worth the effort, especially with the flood of copyvio in new articles. I think that declining a G12 due to rewrite without RD1 discards the investigation, however small the risk, while a small amount of marginal work performing the RD1 fixes the problem completely. Is WT:Revision deletion the proper place, or is WT:Copyright problems? RD1 explicitly defers to CP. Flatscan (talk) 04:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Background of the Spanish Civil War

Hello again, MRG. The article Background of the Spanish Civil War is a Featured Article Candidate, and I'm performing source spotchecks to make sure the article correctly reflects the source material without plagiarism or copyright violation. I've run into a situation that seems borderline to me, and I was hoping I could get your opinion. The article states the following:

"Radicals became more aggressive and conservatives turned to paramilitary and vigilante actions. According to official sources, 330 people were assassinated and 1,511 were wounded in political violence; records show 213 failed assassination attempts, 113 general strikes, and the destruction (typically by arson) of 160 religious buildings."

This is sourced to this Council of Europe whitepaper, where the information is on page 80, section 14. Does this look like a close paraphrasing problem to you? Thanks for any advice. – Quadell (talk) 14:23, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The gurus of Google books have decided that page 80 should not be part of my preview. I can see 79 and 81, but for 80 I get the helpful "Page 80 is not part of this book preview." (I've often wondered how they decide who gets to preview what.) If you can drop me an example of the text from the source, I'd be happy to give an opinion. Otherwise, maybe a talk stalker will get luckier on the page view roulette? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:27, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Wow, that's annoying. Section 14 says as follows: "In the wake of the civil war, the country was plunged in chaos: strikes were frequent, violence was rife, radicalisation of the situation was under way. According to official sources, during this period 330 people were assassinated and 1 511 wounded in politically related violence. Records show 213 failed assassination attempts, 113 strikes, and the destruction of 160 religious buildings." – Quadell (talk) 15:15, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
That's pretty close, but if that's the extent of it, I would really just recommend either turning it into a direct quotation or revising it to separate it from the source. The facts are not copyrightable, as I know you know, but they're kind of lockstep with the language and presentation of the source. Given that it doesn't identify its "official sources" and "records", it may well be worth using it as a quote anyway. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:54, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your wisdom, as always. – Quadell (talk) 17:01, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Sorry to jump in but I was pointed here by Quadell. The passage's history is quite complex. Once upon a time, it was referenced by a previous editor to a book not in my own possession; so, under the scrutiny of either ACR or FAC #1 (I can't recall which) I switched it over to the UN source. This makes it hard (I assume a case of close paraphrasing on the part of the UN writer) to quote directly, I will try to distinguish it as much as possible, although it's hard to do with statistics like that. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 17:27, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Possibly unfree files on Ra.One

Hi MRG, can you suggest what to do with the files: File:SRK Arjun Ra One.jpg, File:RaOne 23 cam.jpg, File:RaOneCriminal.ogg and File:RA One VFX before after.jpg, all appearing on the article Ra.One. I have left a note to the user who uploaded them, but I am unsure on the line of action I am supposed to take. I'm not a copyright expert, so I'm not sure if the files are unfree in the first place. File:RaOneCriminal.ogg looks to be a clear violation, but the rest of them look to be picked up from blogs, and/or are derived from movie screenshots. Lynch7 16:13, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

I tagged File:SRK Arjun Ra One.jpg and File:RA One VFX before after.jpg as lacking permission. Theoretically they could be public domain as the uploader claims, but it is extremely unlikely (I have never heard of any movie trailer being released in the public domain). File:RaOne 23 cam.jpg is tagged as lacking a source. This image might be public domain, but we still need a source and evidence of permission. Yoenit (talk) 13:49, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Yoenit. Lynch7 13:52, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, thanks, Yoenit. :D Seems like the user in question doesn't understand the difference between public domain and being publicly available. The latter doesn't necessarily imply the former. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:24, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:India Education Program

Hi MRG! Could you comment in this section re the presumptive removal of anything in fluent English from the IEP projects? Seems a bit drastic at this point. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 16:46, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) I will, yes! Coming right over. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:01, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 October 2011

Statistics

Hello.

I was wondering, when it comes to statistics which are not public domain, what are the copyright rules on using them (i.e. can you use statistics from copyrighted sources?)

Yours,

--&レア (talk) 11:09, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Bare facts can't be copyrighted, which includes most statistics. It is important to note however that the way such facts are presented can be copyrighted (graphs, table formatting). Also, if there is human creativity involved in the production of the "statistics" it can be copyrighted. I can't think of a good example of that, but I remember a case about Bollywood box office numbers which were estimated rather than measured and were thus copyrighted. Yoenit (talk) 14:04, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
Oi, yes. That one is a pain in the neck. :/ Yes, if the statistics are actually educated guesses, ala CCC Information Services v. Maclean Hunter Market Reports, they may be copyrightable. But facts are free for everybody. :) Thanks, Yoenit. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:48, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. Two questions. Firstly, how do you tell the difference between copyrighted and not-copyrighted statistics, and secondly, if the statistics are copyrighted, how do you use them? --&レア (talk) 16:58, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
Answering your second question first, if statistics are copyrighted, you would use them as you would direct quotes from a book--in limited quantity and mingled with other material. For example, our attorney opined that as the statistics on the earnings of Bollywood films was not factual, but an educated guess, we could not safely reproduce their chart of top grossing films. But we can talk about them, like so: Bollywood films of 2011#Top grossing films of the year. By mingling the pseudo-statistics with other material, we create something new with the content that we would not do if we simply reproduced their chart.
In terms of determining the difference between copyrighted and non-copyrighted statistics, you need to consider how they were generated. The Bollywood statistics are guesstimates rather than records of receipts, as evidently they don't have good records of receipts. If they were records of receipts, they would be strictly factual and free for everyone. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:17, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Publishers

Hi, can you tell me where to find publishers of songs for the purpose of permission of use and payment of royalties? I have abut five that I cannot find or verify. Thanks, Katie 68.118.56.107 (talk) 18:42, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'm afraid I can't help you with that one. You might have some luck at the WP:Ref desk, but I'd recommend that you name the songs when you ask. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:11, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) In the USA you could start with the Music Publishers Association who maintain a database. ww2censor (talk) 21:59, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:49, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

User talk:Haus der Kulturen der Welt

FYI, a user who you indefinitely blocked for username back in March 2010 is requesting unblock. The person had also been adding links to their website, but usually on obscure topics where the links seemed to add value. EdJohnston (talk) 16:11, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. :) If he's up for choosing a name within policy, I have no objections to his being renamed. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:08, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Is there any advice you can give on this seemingly unreasonable picture deletion request ? Would very much appreciate couple of minutes of your time on this. Kind regards from Geneva, Buckshot06 (talk) 10:26, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I've replied there. Sorry about this. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:05, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Concern regarding inexperienced editor tagging things as possibly copyrighted

Hi, Moonriddengirl. Since you specialize in copyright violations, I was hoping you wouldn't mind helping me out on something with regard to it. Gh87 (talk · contribs) is a fairly inexperienced Wikipedia editor, whose inexperience has shown in deletion nominations, prodding and image tagging. See here and here. It is my belief that Gh87's inexperience has extended to tagging fictional character biographies as copyrighted. Gh87 recently tagged this article's plot summary as a possible copyright violation, for example. But I don't see any copyright violation from looking at this article in comparison to the SoapCentral.com biography. Not to mention, one biography is written in present tense, while the latter is not. Is it okay for Gh87 to just go around tagging any fictional character article as possibly copyrighted without any evidence that it is? Gh87 seems to believe that all the Wikipedia soap opera plot summaries are copyrighted, as though editors of Wikipedia cannot write their own plot summaries. Further, I even pointed out to Gh87 that SoapCentral.com has been known to plagiarize the plot summaries of soap opera characters on Wikipedia, which Gh87 is skeptical of. But I have seen that myself. How do we defend against that, where it turns out that Wikipedia is not the one that plagiarized material?

Will you comment about this here or at Gh87's talk page? Or both? I feel that Gh87 needs guidance on this, among another things. To me, it's another way for Gh87 to try and get these articles deleted. For some reason, the user thinks that these characters being from a show that was recently cancelled makes them non-notable (see the first link above). 174.137.184.36 (talk) 20:35, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Just letting you know I'll still be waiting for your response/help, even if I'm blocked again. I don't like using my real IP to surf the web/to post anything while on the web. 82.200.168.154 (talk) 00:39, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
User:Gh87 seems to have good reasons for his concern. I just dropped in at random on one of his tags - Hayley Vaughan Santos - and confirmed that the summary was copied verbatim from SoapCentral.com. Fortunately, there was no concern in that case that they had copied from us, as internet archives confirmed that they had created their article in 2001. When internet archives do not confirm, there are other things we look for at the copyright problems board...such as signs of natural evolution. If in the first edit the content in our article was closer to the external source than later, after it was edited here, it is more likely they had it first. If, on the other hand, it gradually changed in our article to become more like the external source, it is more likely they copied from us. If you can show me some instances where SoapCentral.com copied from us, that could be helpful - it may make it easier to work out how likely such reverse copying is, when the internet archives cannot clarify.
I don't have clue what constitutes notability in soap opera characters, not having worked in that area myself. :) But copyright concerns are valid and, unfortunately, tend to be rampant in television shows. Fans frequently do not understand that the material they want to duplicate is copyrighted. Even press releases cannot be freely reproduced at Wikipedia; while their authors may well intend for them to be shared, they don't necessarily agree to the required terms of commercial reproduction & modification.
I trust that Gh87 wouldn't tag any article without some good reason to think there might be a copyright problem, but I'll take a look at the article that concerns you. It's not a problem to err on the side of caution, if Gh87 is, but we don't want to err too much on the side of caution. :)
By the way, I'm not sure why you are editing from proxies, but this is a problem in itself. You may want to review Wikipedia:WikiProject on open proxies/Help:blocked to see if there is a way that you can contribute without encountering this problem. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:22, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I've looked at the origin of the article in question. It is a derivative work. When it was created here, it used substantially more content from the previously published soapcentral bio; see [17]. For example, the source says the following:

After following Babe's mother, Krystal in the Chandler mansion's secret passageway, Liza found a marriage license that had been stashed behind one of the bricks. The marriage license was proof that Babe had been married to Paul Cramer when she married JR. When Liza showed the paper to JR, he immediately confronted Babe, who admitted that she married Paul after a one-night stand, but it had been annulled after Bess was born. JR told Babe that he forgave her and even asked her to remarry him. Babe accepted and began planning the big wedding she always wanted.

The article said this:

After following Krystal into the Chandler mansion's secret passageway, Liza found a marriage license that had been stashed behind one of the bricks. The marriage license was proof that Babe had been married to Paul Cramer when she married J.R. When Liza showed the paper to J.R, he immediately confronted Babe, who admitted that she married Paul after a one-night stand but it had been annulled after Bess was born. JR told Babe that he forgave her and even asked her to remarry him. Babe accepted and began planning the big wedding she always wanted.

While it's possible that the content has evolved enough over time to be safe, it does warrant evaluation. The tag is by no means spurious, as there could be continuing close paraphrasing issues in the text. Given the length of the article, this could take some time. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:40, 22

About Hayley Vaughan Santos, was it really necessary to destroy all the edit history like that? I know I am comparing apples and oranges, but I very much doubt that Barack Obama's edit history would have been cleaned like that if it had involved a section with copyrighted text. Also, just like Wikipedia plot summaries evolve over time, so do SoapCentral's. Are you completely sure that SoapCentral did not copy any of Wikipedia's Hayley Vaughan biography? I didn't check it with Wayback yet.
What constitutes notability in soap opera articles is the same for all articles. WP:Notability. I'm not clear on what you mean about press releases, since I have seen Wikipedia blockquote press releases before. Short ones, not long ones.
But back to the matter, I have come across proof that SoapCentral has plagiarized Wikipedia. While trying to see if this was discussed on Wikipedia before by using "Search," I located a discussion on the Téa Delgado article. See Talk:Téa Delgado#Soap Opera Central not above copying Wikipedia. I researched this using the Wayback like you did, and this is what I found. Look at this text:

Two years later, Téa returned to town for a brief visit. She visited Todd, and it was evident that Todd was still hurt by her having left him. Todd next ran into Téa in Hawaii. Blair and Sam Rappaport had secretly gone to Hawaii with Manning kids Starr and Jack, but Blair's bodyguards tipped Todd off and he followed them there. Téa warned Blair about Todd's plan to kidnap the kids, allowing Blair and the children to safely return to Llanview. Todd's plan to kidnap his children having gone awry, he ended up shipwrecked on a deserted island with Téa and Ross Rayburn, a man Todd had hired to help him with the kidnapping. Todd and Ross both vied for Téa's affections. After Todd spied Téa kissing Ross, he decided to leave the island alone. As he prepared to depart, Téa showed up and told Todd that she was in love with him and always had been. A wave of emotions came over Todd and he admitted to Téa that he wanted to be with her, too. The two then made love for the first time. Afterwards, however, Téa discovered that Todd still had a picture of Blair and painfully realized that he was still in love with Blair, despite having earlier sworn that he was through with her. Though hurt by this realization, Téa gave her blessing for Todd to romantically reunite with Blair. Desperate to get home to his family, Todd risked his life by getting on a make shift raft and rowing out into sea. He washed up on a beach in Guam, and from there made his way back to Llanview. Téa and Ross were later rescued.

The Téa Wikipedia article had it first. It was created on July 22, 2008.[18] On July 4, 2008, SoapCentral's looked like this and it was still that way on December 19, 2008.[19] So it's easy to see that SoapCentral copied Wikipedia. I would tell this to Gh87, but he or she would probably just tag the Téa storyline section as copyrighted regardless. But I'll bring this to the attention of editors of that article by leaving a message in aforementioned talk page topic.
Is it so wrong to keep responding to you as a proxy, even though I'll keep getting blocked? I read the link you gave me, and I fit what is said in the "Editing despite the fact" portion. I don't want my identity revealed, but I'm also not interested in starting an account. I've been editing Wikipedia for a long time like this, and have only recently started to get blocked as a proxy. Zzuuzz must be watching your talk page, since he or she caught me a second time and left a message for me about open proxies and starting an account. 85.195.138.27 (talk) 23:18, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
It is standard operating procedure to delete the editing history when it contains a substantial copyright violation. This is no less true of political articles than television articles. Whether the external site turned around and took some of the content back from us is beside the point; the point is, we know we never had the right to the extensive material, and we cannot risk it being inadvertently or purposefully restored.
Brief quotations of press releases are fine, as are brief quotations of all sources. The problem comes in with contributors who copy content extensively, wholesale or without acknowledging that it's copied.
You need to assume good faith with respect to Gh87. This is a policy on Wikipedia. It's demonstrable that he's found legitimate concerns, and there's no reason to presume that he would tag material that was shown to be clear of problems.
With respect to the backwards copy example, that's helpful. The template to use at the talk page of the article is {{backwardscopy}}. Please be sure to put the evidence in the comments field, as the discussion may be lost if the talk page is ever archived. The template should remain and may help anyone ever mistaking the content as a copyright problem.
Unless you are evading a block of some kind, I don't believe there's any policy violation in using a proxy, but I would imagine it would get annoying. I don't know who watches my talk page. Last time I looked, there were a few. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Standard operating procedure to delete the editing history when it contains a substantial copyright violation? How much would qualify as "substantial"? Usually, when text is a copyright violation on Wikipedia, I see people remove it. Not clear out the edit history. How is that allowed when it ruins providing proof of certain edits? I can't imagine such a thing being done to the Barack Obama article. Providing "diffs" is too important for that article. For every article. Wiping out the edit history like that means only administrators can access it, right? And what do you mean by "Whether the external site turned around and took some of the content back from us is beside the point"? Are you saying even in the case of a "backwardscopy"? Or the site copying what is theirs anyway? It appears that you mean the latter.
No, in some cases, I can't assume good faith with respect to Gh87. He or she has proven that I can't usually assume good faith when it comes to his or her editing of soap opera articles, especially cancelled ones, and deletion debates about them. This latest edit, listing the Téa article,[20] is just another example. At least he or she didn't tag the plot section as possibly copyrighted, after what I said above. But saying the text is "either from..." when the evidence is quite clear which site did the copying is just ugh.
I would have tagged the talk page as "backwardscopy," but it says "This article is substantially duplicated by a piece in an external publication. Please do not flag this article as a copyright violation of the following source." I'd hardly categorize was is cited above as "substantial"?
No, I'm not evading a block. But it does appear that Zzuuzz is watching your talk page.[21] Or at least started watching it to track me. It doesn't help that Zzuuzz is also often at the copyright boards. 85.195.138.27 (talk) 09:00, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, it is standard operating procedure to delete the editing history when it contains a substantial copyright violation. How much qualifies as "substantial" is a judgment call. In my judgment, as an uninvolved administrator, this was substantial. If you want to see people clear copyvios out of editing history, you might want to follow me. You will see me doing it with articles of all stripes; I do not care if they are political articles or soap opera articles. And, yes, revision deletion means that only admins can access the history. This is far more transparent than our previous method of selective deletion, where contributors were attributed generally only in a list or (as was far more common) when we simply wiped out all edits that followed the copyvio and deleted everything that came after.
What I mean with respect to subsequent borrowing is this: if an article on Wikipedia substantially copies an unfree source, subsequent edits to it are likely to constitute a derivative work. We can't keep the derivative material. If we have a paragraph copied from Source A and an editor inserts an original fragment, it still constitutes a derivative work. It does not make any difference to us if Source A later copies the original fragment to emend their own content. We still are not authorized to use the original work.
In terms of the backwards copying you found, I don't know how substantial the content is, but "substantial" has a special meaning under copyright law. It does not always require extensive taking. I do know that if duplication is later detected and the template is not used, there is higher risk of it being removed from Wikipedia under the mistaken assumption that they had it first. If you don't think it's a risk, though, feel free not to tag the talk page. If I were investigating it, I would, as I've had to fight to protect content on pages even when the tag is used. But as you're the one investigating it, it's up to you. :)
In terms of Gh87 and assuming good faith, so far his copyright tags have had merit. Whatever his opinion of soap opera articles may be, I don't think I've seen him tag anything for copyright problem that was not a legitimate copyright concern. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:36, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

A strange case

I hate to ask for help, knowing how busy you are, but your talents are many and this situation hits upon a couple of them. I've come across this page while reviewing OTRS:2011091710013775. Note that the title of the sub-page, and the name of the subject do not match. I'm considering moving the subpage to article space under the correct name, however there is the complicating factor of Pohick2 having been blocked for copyvios, so I'm not sure whether it should be moved at all. Could you take a wee peek when time allows and let me know what you think? Cheers, --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 15:53, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Just jumping in, the user blanked it at one point and so I assume it's basically a sandbox. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:16, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Seems like a sandbox to me. :) Generally speaking, when salvaging Pohick's work, I have written articles on Pohick's subjects from scratch, as it's easier than checking for his fragmented copying and as his articles use some pretty sketchy sources. I don't know if it is true, but I was contacted some time back by somebody who said he was writing for pay. If so, this would explain why he didn't take the time to put content into his own words and why he was so undiscriminating with sourcing he used.
While many of his subjects are clearly notable, I can't verify notability here. :/ This page has some of his typical challenges with sourcing. Of the embedded links, 1, 5, 7 & 11 no longer exist; the subject's name is not mentioned in 2, 4, 9, 10 & 12; 3 & 6 are Wikipedia articles, again with no mention of the subject. 13 is a comment purportedly by the subject on a blog ([22]). Inline footnote 2 is unusable as well, as it is simply the introduction page for a journal ([23]).
The only real "sources" in this page are this reference where she is one of 70 poets included in an anthology, a blurb on her publisher's website, and a reproduction of a 2002 piece of criticism she wrote for a newspaper (which is a WP:LINKVIO). One of the external links looks likely ([24]), although it's a WP:SPS. The other one is meaningless for us. I've done a google book search and come up with a little, but I'm not sure she meets WP:AUTHOR. I haven't found anything about the "US National Women's History Award" (see [25]), so I really can't determine its notability. :/ Her book Skywriting in the Minor Key is in Google books, but I suspect it is self-published. Her publisher is BTS Books; their Facebook profile gives their full name as "Between These Shores"--which is the title of her project with her husband. (There's absolutely nothing wrong with having your own publishing house, but it doesn't speak to notability.)
If you think she may meet inclusion guidelines, I wouldn't see any problem with mining what's verifiable out of Pohick's page as it would stub it right down. Even the bulk of the lists of publications is unverifiable. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:48, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Wow, thank for for the thorough reply. I was going do a background source/notability search prior to transferring the user sub-page to article space, I was more concerned with Pohicks history as I am relatively unfamiliar with the events that led to their block and the fall-out in general. I think it's best not to move the article, and if Ms. Geraghty meets WP:AUTHOR in the future a new article could be started from scratch. Off to close the ticket! Cheers for the advice once again. --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 14:26, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
No problem; as I said, it has been a habit of mine to just rewrite these myself, and I was going to do that had investigation born out notability. It's almost as easy to report on what I'm seeing as it is to find it out for myself, and better if it saves redundant labor. :) I can't really explain why Pohick made it a habit to paste content. Perhaps there's a philosophical disagreement with intellectual property laws or perhaps, as my correspondent suggested, he was only here for the paycheck and didn't care enough to compose his own text. I'm not entirely certain that's true, since I can't figure out who would have paid for many of his articles, but I can't entirely discount it, either. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:39, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

You have been gossiped about...

... here!. xoxox from all of us here at the back of Special:NewPages--Shirt58 (talk) 14:07, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

LOL! Whoot! I am a threat! :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:13, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

What to do?

Hello again MRG! In my travels, I stumbled across Notcutts, and realized that a good portion of the article had been copied from the company website in a text dump by an IP in early 2010. I reverted the article back to what I believe is the last clean version, and placed a cclean tag on the talk page, but am unsure what to do now. Should the history be cleansed? Is there anything further I need to do? Thank you (as always!), Dana boomer (talk) 19:36, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, I've done a bit of work (mostly just secretarial stuff) on Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Joyaaioxom, and it's down to just one article which the user created. I did a quick search and can't find evidence of copyvio on that article, but I'm new at this and probably missing something! Once that article is taken care of, I think this CCI can be closed! Thirdly (wow, I'm keeping you busy today!), I think something went wonky with the contributions survey bot at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Borsoka. There are a bunch of redlinked articles with weird characters that have no history of being created/deleted. Thank you, Dana boomer (talk) 20:15, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) The CCI script may be having problems with some diacritics, but it looks to be processing the contributions OK. For instance, the name of the article Dragoș, mentioned in the CCI section Articles 41-60 [26] shows up with strange characters there, but the diff of addition info +6336 shows it was added by this editor [27] and the article still exists. Same with Bacău and Csanád. BTW, great work. Novickas (talk) 22:21, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Oh, thank you Novickas! I hadn't even noticed the contrib diffs had processed correctly! Dana boomer (talk) 23:14, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, Novickas, and thank you, Dana boomer. :) I've done the revision deletion at Notcutts (when there's that much content, I think it's safest to avoid inadvertent restoration later) and cleaned up Tabu Taid. I was cleaning it up presumptively based on some extremely "red flag" text, but I am strongly inclined to believe that if I could access it, I would find the origin of the text in this now missing blog. I'm double-checking one of his other articles marked "clean", as it seems a bit hinky to me. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:01, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Report of copywrite issues.

Hi,

a report was made Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biology#copy-paste_problem_of_article_Phyllanthus_acidus here. I looked at it briefly. To me it does not appear to be a true copy and paste but a rewrite. The rewrite does not give credit or references and this is an issue. Could you have a look and see what you think please. Cheers, Faendalimas talk 20:34, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) It's pretty obvious that this was the source of the article when created. (Duplication detector.) Personally, I think it crosses the line into being too closely paraphrased (For instance, source: "The Otaheite gooseberry is prone to attack by the phyllanthus caterpiller in Florida. This pest eats the bark and also the young leaves, causing total defoliation in a few days if not controlled by pesticides." Article: "The Otaheite gooseberry is observed to be attacked by the Phyllanthus caterpillar, above all in Florida. This pest feeds on the bark and young leaves, causing total defoliation in just a few days if there is no sufficiently early application of pesticides.") I don't know that it crosses the line into copyvio, though, and would be inclined to tag it {{close paraphrase}}. Certainly, it does need to give credit to its source.
I'll take a look at what remains and see what I can do to further separate it myself. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:47, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

section header

MRG, can you do me a favour and have a look at User:Starling0616 and the draft article there. The editor seems to have copyvio tagged their own article, why I'm not too sure - please read the talk page as well. I don't think it's anything that a decent copyedit can't resolve but I don't want to play around with the notice even if it was self inflicted and possibly incomplete. Thanks. NtheP (talk) 18:57, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) looking at the history it appears the user started a draft first, copied that to mainspace as Carol Buckley, somebody else tagged it for copyvio and he then copied it back to his userpage. So at this point Carol Buckley and User:Starling0616 are duplicates. I have also alerted User_talk:MikeWazowski, who tagged the article as copyvio. I suggest suggest future discussion on this takes places at talk:Carol Buckley. Yoenit (talk) 19:12, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

File:River_Alexander.jpg

Hi you marked File:River_Alexander.jpg as "Received but insufficient. However, I presume that you only saw the most recent forward. I request that you locate the original permission that was sent over email directly from the copyright owner. I know that it was sent. Booth088 (talk) 03:06, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

IEP: Vandalism now

Hi Maggie. Vandalism to various student list pages has now begun by IP users who geolocate to India. I suspect that these are students who are not logging in. If the vandalism continues, the IPs will be blocked and this will affect all computers on those networks. Copyvio still continues, and at a rate we can't keep up with. Voceditenore has taken a few days leave - she's earned it! --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:38, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Ugh. Just what we needed, an additional layer of complication here. The good thing is that at least the other campus ambassadors have started work. User:Dcoetzee, for instance, is assessing the students he's been assigned; I wrote him last night to help out with one who isn't on his list, as the topic falls into his area of work. I think blocking vandalism is a perfectly reasonable response. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:29, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
The downsides are, that none of the Indians are prepared to turn those tables of students into generic vertical plainlists for us so that we can insert them into our watchlists, and those at the top of the project have gone incommunicado again. Se have to face up to the fact that the campus ambassadors are really inexperienced, and the managers are burying their heads in the sand. Come January when the second phase of expansion starts in India, and we still haven got CorenBot, or the new page patrolling tools, I see us all being in a pickle, and none of the regulars here wanting to do this again. FWIW, I've spent 12 hours on this today again and I rather feel my real areas of expertise at Wikipeia. are getting neglected. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:48, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
I'll see what I can do about getting a plainlist for you. I really hope we're going to have CorenBot soon; I know Erik is working with Google to see what we can do. I'm not sure what current plans are for beginning the second phase of the program. I'll see what I can find out. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:52, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
We need one vertical plainlist of all IEP articles and , and one plainlist of all the student names. These lists can be dumped into our raw watchlists. In view of the importance and urgency, I would have thought that one of the paid clerks in the WMF office could be assigned to striping all the table code and other markup to provide those lists. The whole Global Education Programme was started without a peep to the plebs on the factory floor, and it's not really their job to go round sweeping up a mess caused by the paid 'experts'. I don't really want to bother Philippe about it because he's so busy on other stuff, but I might just call Hisham tomorrow and find out what the heck is going on. It's been a week since they returned from their joyride to America and still nothing's happened.--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:16, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
WMF doesn't really have paid clerks, per se. :) But I've passed along the need for both lists (I read through the IEP talk page), and I hope that something usable will be produced soon. The Foundation is definitely concerned about this. I took a joyride to San Francisco last week myself, and I spoke directly with two of the Global Education Program managers. They told me about the efforts to reach out to the non-Indian campus ambassadors to deploy them in cleanup. Fortunately, some of these campus ambassadors (I know) are quite experienced in this area. For instance, User:Dcoetzee is one of my go-to guys for copyright matters related to images and technical text; he is the author of most of the remaining tools we have--both the CCI tool and duplication detector, for instance.
It seems like a good idea to ask Hisham for an update. As I understand it, Hisham and Nitika are in charge of this, and he really should have a better idea than anybody else where things stand. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:35, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
OK. Don't worry about the lists, I managed to get hold of User talk:Manishearth in India and he's doing it for us right now. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:05, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
If you need more eyes somewhere, let me know. I'd be happy to assist as best I can. OlYeller21Talktome 16:47, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Trick or treat!

 Whpq has given you some caramel and a candy apple! Caramel and candy-coated apples are fun Halloween treats, and promote WikiLove on Halloween. Hopefully these have made your Halloween (and the proceeding days) much sweeter. Happy Halloween!


If Trick-or-treaters come your way, add {{subst:Halloween apples}} to their talkpage with a spoooooky message!

Whoot! It's Halloween! Happy reminder. Thank you. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:16, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi again! I've raised a suggestion/request for a volunteer liason at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_United_Nations#Liason_re_license_of_UN_texts_on_WMF_projects. We know that WP is widely used by authors of UN materials, and generally well regarded there. Yet UN pubs generally are copyable under a noncommercial license that doesn't work well for us. I'm convinced there's room and good will to work out an arrangement, perhaps involving some sort of non-free tag, that would permit generous reuse of UN materials on WP. Your insight, and those of your TPSs would be helpful. Cheers, LeadSongDog come howl! 16:00, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) Recently in my role as a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation, I raised the issue with our legal team and with Erik Moller about whether the French Wikinews could accept content licensed for non-commercial reuse as part of their exemption doctrine policy. I'm afraid that the answer was that this is not an acceptable exception. :/ If they are not willing to permit commercial reuse, we may not be able to use their material any more liberally than any other incompatibly licensed content. (It is not likely to be us that concerns them, but our content reusers.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:04, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
That too was my concern. But if we have a way to suitably tag the non-free content so that the reusers can automagically strip it out, can we not deal with that? LeadSongDog come howl! 16:10, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm concerned that we probably can't, based on the response that Wikinews got. They were looking for permission to use content for educational purposes, even commercially, and were told that they couldn't restrict it so far. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:14, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
In that case, persuading the UN agencies to expressly permit use at WP would be even more necessary. At the very least, we should be able to make it clear to those agencies that their policies are inhibiting us from actions that would support their missions. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:24, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
No, permitting use at Wikipedia won't work, either. We can't accept content permitted for Wikipedia. :/ We really need them to permit under our license...unless we can do a license shift, which seems unlikely. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:36, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, I suppose they might be persuaded of the merits of accepting that necessity, even if only for some materials. Could you, perhaps, find time to craft a stand-alone explanation of why it is we can't work with their existing license, or suggest someone who could? I see that User:Bobrayner has already stepped up to my request for a volunteer liason. ;-) LeadSongDog come howl! 16:58, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Twist of Shadows.jpg

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Thank you. DASHBot (talk) 17:53, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Is this plagiarism? I need to know how the rules apply to content copied from Wikipedia ... Case example, Opinion wanted.

Moonriddengirl:

I need an opinion on a specific case example. It's not a hard one, but I need someone else's judgment besides my own, and you obviously know this stuff.

I don't want to post anywhere where someone might get upset because it's off-topic.

This concerns a webpage at an academic institution. The content appears as a single FAQ article and is prominently linked on a persisting sidebar. The text is presented in one paragraph, 9 sentences in length, with a single footnote at the end in this form: " ... and building construction decisions.(1)"

The first two sentences may or may not be original writing. The next 7 sentences are copied directly from Wikipedia. There are no quotation marks used and there is no indentation of the copied text. In the body of the text, there is no mention of the source of the material, aside from the parenthesized (1).

Viewed on screen, the footnote simply reads: "Smart Grid" ... the underlying url points to the Wikipedia Smart Grid article. On print preview, the full url is shown.

I've posted a three page (pdf) annotated illustration of the content and have highlighted the copied text. The copied text is also displayed and highlighted as it appeared on Wikipedia.

Could you please look at it and respond with any thoughts or comments you have about plagiarism or the Creative Commons License. The illustration is posted as a document at scribd: scribd/CSUS-Smart-Grid-Plagiarism

I would greatly appreciate it if you could look at this. Thank you. --Pgm8693 (talk) 00:10, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) My answer to this may not be as straightforward as you would like. Sorry, but plagiarism is complicated!
First, I primarily work with copyright concerns, not plagiarism. Copyright is a legal construct, and while the boundaries are not firmly defined (there's a lot of subjectivity), it does have legal boundaries. The concept of plagiarism is social and cultural. Had I not already known this, it would have been brought home to me sharply when we were working on the guideline Wikipedia:Plagiarism. For one big difference, some people's definitions of plagiarism do not allow for inadvertent plagiarism; others do. Some believe in self-plagiarism; others do not. For some, a reference is sufficient. Others, like Wikipedia, require that copying be explicitly acknowledged.
On Wikipedia, the situation you describe would constitute plagiarism (by consensus), because while the source is acknowledged, copying is not. Some of the editors with whom I talked while we were making that guideline would not regard it as plagiarism at all because they cite their source.
In terms of licensing, it may constitute a licensing violation. It would be helpful to view the page in context where it was originally published. Was there any statement anywhere about the CC-By-SA license? If not, their use of the material is not compliant with Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content. They have provided attribution by giving the URL of the article (the link is sufficient; they don't need to use quotation marks or otherwise indicate what material is original although they do need to indicate that the material has been modified), but they have not clearly and visibly licensed the content under CC-By-SA. If you want to ask them to rectify the situation, you might use some of the language at Wikipedia:Mirrors. By giving credit, they are already going further than many of our reusers. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:31, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
THANK YOU! That's all I need: "it depends and it's complicated." The page does have what I think is a standard CC-by-SA note at the bottom. I'm going to go with: "it may be a violation of this and that." I'm going to toss it out to the faculty to see what they think ... it looks bad on the face of it, and that, along with "it may be a violation" is all I need. Thanks again. In real life, if you are interested, I'm here: everydaypsychology.com. Pgm8693 (talk) 14:59, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Article:Copyright

I'm sorry, I didn't know that my edition included copyrighted material, where was the copyrighted material from? --Puramyun31 (talk) 01:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

The message at the top of the copyright problem template advises against "restor[ing] or edit[ing] the blanked content on this page until the issue is resolved by an administrator, copyright clerk or OTRS agent" because doing so makes you (legally) liable for any copyvio content contained within. The copyvio template was inserted in the revision immediately after the one you reverted to, and is mentioned in the edit summary. See Talk:Copyright#Copyright for discussion of the potential copyright problem. MER-C 05:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, MER-C. :) That's exactly it, of course. Puramyun31, it is always a good idea to understand why such a major change was made before reverting it. Edit summaries and talk pages are helpful there, and the reason for the change was fully documented in both in this case. It would have been great to be able to keep the more detailed version, but we could not. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:20, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

IEP

Hi. If you are working on IEP clean up, for easy checking and follow up of students and their articles, please see:

IEP student and article lists and how to use them

If you are not working on this clean up, please pass this message along to anyone you know who is. Thanks, --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:05, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Will do! Currently I'm working on cleanup at WP:CP, where we have a bit of a backlog. :/ Thanks for pursuing that. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:15, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Possible plagiarism

Just found an edit that appears to be plagarism, although content has seen been edited away. Perhaps worth checking contributions from User talk:Savethefish24 to see if this occurred in other edits. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 00:04, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it did. Most of the content placed by User:Savethefish24 was copied. I'm currently checking User:Savethefish. This seems to have been an intern at the organization that hosted the originals, but unfortunately there was never any authentication of identity or permission that I can see. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:13, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
Weirdly, he seems to have been okay when he was User:ASMFC Intern. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:18, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
Okay, it seems like the problem was caught when he was User:Savethefish and cleaned up, but not detected in his subsequent accounts. Wasn't expecting to do a mini-WP:CCI this morning. :) Thanks for finding that. When you remove this kind of content, though, please refer readers to Wikipedia:Copy-paste or Wikipedia:Copyrights. Plagiarism is a much smaller issue, and the real problem here is lack of permission to reproduce. While plagiarism can be dealt with through full attribution, lack of compatible license can't. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:24, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
Cool, thank you! Regards, SunCreator (talk) 20:35, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 October 2011

Copyvio request

As I know you are the copyright guru around here, I was wondering if you would mind taking a look at the issue I've raised here? Thanks! TDL (talk) 04:35, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I have, and I share your concerns. I've weighed in there and at the contributor's talk page. :/ Thanks. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:13, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

A. K. Fazlul Huq

I see that you have reverted the captioned article to an much old version. Just wondering what was the concern in the article for such a drastic action. Arman (Talk) 07:38, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyright violation. The article was listed for evaluation at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 August 1. The explanation is on the talk page, right here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:11, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Template

Hi Moon! Quick question if you know off the top of your head. Is there an article talk page template advising that the external site has properly released text under GFDL and CC-BY-SA (in the situation where OTRS was not involved). Thanks.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:10, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

No, we don't have one of those. You'd think we would, but nobody has ever made one. :) Maybe it's time to remedy that. :) Hmm. You know, I think it's worth considering this idea. If content is taken from a website that is not generally released (for instance, if a copyright holder releases a page after being challenged), do you think we could encourage people to take a printscreen of the release, upload it and link it from the template? I have seen cases where evidently copyright holders have put those releases on websites but later taken them down, whereupon (lacking proof the release was ever there) we have lost the content. This is why my own little verification template cautions people that the "release is irrevocable and must continue to be displayed, or the material may need to be removed". If we can't encourage people to do this for themselves, I wonder if we could create a template that asks somebody else to do it for them, akin to the current "picture needed" box used in some project templates.
Do you (or any talk page stalkers) think this one is worth village pumping? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I definitely think a template is a good idea, not just because the website might remove the permission but also because many editors aren't aware of our licensing rules and this may lead to less incorrect copyright tagging if editors saw the tag and knew it had already been considered. Whether it would be better to upload a screenshot or use one of the many available websites that will take a snapshot of another site may need some discussion. Dpmuk (talk) 11:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I am late. Just saw the response and will post more when I get back from work. Just a quick thought: we could use webcitation.org for these, so the version with the release is available permanently, and the archived link could be used in the template.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:50, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay. I went ahead and created it. See {{Text release}}. Completely open to changes as to all aspects of name, text, functionality and documentation. Tell me what you think. Also, you and stalkers probably have a better idea of where this template should be listed for use, so if you think it appropriate, go do so, or advise me where. Thanks.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:50, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Awesome. I've done some tweaking and added it to the usage instructions of a few other templates; I'll try to add it to the guideline for granting permission once I get off the phone! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:08, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
Great! I see you've added it in a few places. We'll see if people actually use it. I think I'll add a z number tracker for substitutions (you know I didn't instruct whether to substitute or not because it's not clear to me that it matters; it should work both ways).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:25, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
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