Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 8

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Correcting copyright information on an uploaded pic

Latest comment: 13 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

I uploaded some album covers for an artist article, they are from the 60s & 70s. I got the alert that there was probably a copyright infringement issue and wanted to go back and enter the copyright info correctly but can't figure out how. thanks, Kristi Schneider (talk) 15:55, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Kristi, I think all the images were all uploaded to Wikimedia Commons? If so they have all now been deleted as actual or possible copyright violations or lacking permission. Unless you are the person who owns the copyright on the images then they cannot be uploaded to Commons as you don't have permission to release them into the public ___domain. It looks like some of them you had started down the road but didn't supply the written permission of the copyright holder to Wikimedia - note Ken Berry is not likely to be the copyright holder so if you were relying on him saying "yes you can use these photos" that's not going to be enough.

The only way otherwise that these images can be used is under the Non-free content policy but these are very precise and all 10 conditions have to be met for non free content to be used on Wikipedia. A lot of attempts to use non free content fail under criteria 8 - "Contextual significance. Non-free content is used only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding." In essence the images must add to the text not just be decoration. Looking at the list of titles deleted from Commons, some of those are likely to have difficulties meeting criteria 8.

I'd suggest before trying to upload the images again you come back here with some information about where the images are from, what permission(s) you have and what you propose to use the images for and hopefully we can give you some advice on how best to use them. NtheP (talk) 16:42, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

<nitpicking> technically, putting images up on Commons doesn't necessarily release them into the public ___domain, it (usually) irrevocably licenses them under the CC-BY-SA copyleft license. Either way, the copyright holder is the one who has to do it, so NtheP's points are still perfectly valid.</nitpicking> Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:50, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I understand, however I see studio photos all over Wiki. Why can't I use an old studio photo? thanks, Kristi Schneider (talk) 21:10, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Kristi. I actually teach my adoptees a lesson on copyright which you may find useful. Basically, whenever someone takes a photo or creates an image, they own the rights to it. They can produce copies, sell them or publish them however they like, whilst retaining the right to produce more. Wikipedia is a "free" encyclopedia, so we only use photos which are free. That means the creator has released the photo under a license such as WP:CC-BY-SA, which effectively means we can use it as long as we say where it came from. We have lots of these pictures on Wikipedia Commons.

Now, there are some exceptions where we can use non-free images, and only when they meet the Non-free content critera. Such as "There is not and cannot possibly be a free equivalent," "The original produce cannot lose out," and "We use the image as little as we possibly can." These may explain the "studio photos" you see all over Wikipedia. Does that make sense? Oh and by the way, you can use an "old" studio photo, assuming its copyright has expired - and that's quite complicated and depends on what country the image is from. Worm^TT · (talk) 12:44, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Wonderfully horrible

Latest comment: 13 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion

Somewhere I had stumbled across something like "the best of the worst WP editing". One of the films on a list of films that I'm working on has a plot synopsis that it too precious to "fix" without memorializing it somehow. Re: Titanic:_The_Legend_Goes_On ~Eric F 184.76.225.106 (talk) 00:52, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Eric! So did you have a question about the editing related to the article? Sarah (talk) 01:00, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Not specifically related to ce -- but is there someplace to put this before I (attempt) editing? -- btw, my plate is quite full, so if anybody else wants to attempt this, please do. ~Eric F 184.76.225.106 (talk) 01:10, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

That looks like a pretty high quality film. ;-) You can always stop by WikiProject Animation, there might be some folks over there who might want to collaborate to help make mountains out of a tomato-hill. :) But, perhaps some other folks have other ideas. My to-do list is pretty high too, and sadly, film isn't an area I generally enjoy editing. But, wow, that film looks pretty...special. Heh! Sarah (talk) 01:15, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I kind of want to see it >.< I managed to avoid the other version. heather walls (talk) 01:22, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I have never seen the "other" version either. I'll take the cartoon over the "other," anytime! 3-D or NOT! Sarah (talk) 01:24, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Btw, that film currently has the distinction of being #1 on IMDB's worst films list (rating 1.3 of 10) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.76.225.106 (talk) 01:36, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

It beat out the cartoon "Anus Magillicutty" (work safe). Sarah (talk)

Oh, it looks like we have another article for the article request department. Sarah (talk) 01:45, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

My article keeps on getting rejected becaue of non reliable sources

Latest comment: 13 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Hello Everyone, I have tried to include reliable sources numerous times but it keeps on rejecting the article. Are online articles not considered notable sources? It would be great if anyone can help me get this article approved! Please help!

Thank you in advance!

Shawnmcmillanlaw (talk) 22:50, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

The basic rule of thumb for reliable resources is if they have editorial review or not. What are the sources? Chico Venancio (talk) 22:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Assuming you mean the sources found here. There are a couple of issues.

Sources need to be independent from the subject, and PRWeb is fails that criteria because it is a company devoted to publicity.

Sources should be focusing on the subject, the new stories seem to be focused on the cases, not on the lawyer.

Also, your username suggests you are trying to write an article about yourself (or about you boss). That is not a great idea, conflict of interest can generate a bad article because of the difficulty in being neutral, and once the article exists other people may put things you do not wish in it. Furthermore, other editors tend to be more stringent with criteria when they sense the creator has a motive.

Chico Venancio (talk) 23:14, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Issues stemming from Word-to-Wiki conversion

Latest comment: 13 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Greetings,

I drafted my article using Word and then used Word-to-Wiki to convert it to MediaWiki formatting, but it ended up with three issues:

1) Several of the titles are in giant, bold lettering in MediaWiki, even though they were not like this in Word. How do I fix this?

2) In Word, my article had dozens of in-text references, all of which were marked by a superscript number and corresponding reference at the bottom. These references did not translate to MediaWiki and I am being told that my article has "no in-text references." What is the easiest way to turn my superscript letters into Wikipedia-worthy in-text references?

3) In addition to my in-text references, I have many other sources (clinical trials, etc.) that should be listed even though they don't correspond to a specific in-text reference. How and where do I include these?

Thank you. Writer (talk) 21:00, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi there Wordcouture, thanks for dropping by.

To fix your titles, you will need to use Wiki markup, which is what we use to format text at Wikipedia. For main headings, surround the tex with two equals signs - ==Like this== - for lesser headings, use more equals signs.
You references require different code. When you want to add a reference in an article, you need to use ref tags directly after the text you want to reference. To reference type this:<ref>Reference name & details</ref>, of course replacing the content with your actual reference. Once you have done that, go to the bottom of the page and create a references section by adding ==References== to the bottom of the page. Under that heading, you need to insert the reflist; type {{Reflist}}. This will mean that, any references made with the ref tags will be listed at the bottom of the page.
As much as possible, you should use in-text citations - use your references to support specific facts. If you have references which serve as further reading for the entire topic, create a further reading section - place ==Further reading== at the bottom of the page (below your references section) - and list your additional references there.

I hope that helps; let us know if you have any other problems. ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 21:18, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I am trying to submit an article and it is being rejected because of no notible sources

Latest comment: 13 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi! I am trying to submit an article about and author and expert in the field of Change Management. The article is being rejected because of my sources. The person has written two books about the topic, she speaks at conferences/companies worldwide on the subject, she has won some awards ans she has over 50 articles on the subject. How do I go about getting the article cited correctly?Gsschweppe (talk) 17:31, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi there, good to see you. I guess you are referring to this article: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Kate Nelson? That was declined because there were no reliable sources. Wikipedia articles need sources which are reliable - this means that we can trust them to give accurate information and that they are good indicators of whether something is notable. The sources you have at the moment are not sufficient: Amazon cannot determine if something is notable because it's just trying to sell you the book; one source seems to be from the person themselves, which is no help, as someone cannot determine themselves whether they are notable (chances are, they're not going to be neutral about themselves); and the final source is a list of lots of authors, which doesn't mean any of them are notable. If you think the person is notable, I suggest you search places like Google News - if you can find reviews or articles about the person there, you can use those as reliable sources (provided they are from websites which are established critics, not just someone's blog). I hope that makes sense (I know that notability and sourcing can be daunting at first) - let us know if you have any further problems. ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 21:23, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Grimm Fairy Tales (comics)

Latest comment: 13 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi! I'm working on a table at the bottom of my sandbox. I was wondering if someone could tell me if something like that would be helpful or just counter productive. I think it would be useful to let people know when there was more than 1 cover, and when it was published. Thoughts? Thepoodlechef (talk) 16:30, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Chef! I think what you're looking for is Help:Wikitable (and maybe the more complex Help:Table). There is a special kind of wiki-markup for tables, which follows:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! header 1
! header 2
! header 3
|-
| row 1, cell 1
| row 1, cell 2
| row 1, cell 3
|-
| row 2, cell 1
| row 2, cell 2
| row 2, cell 3
|}

You can add more headers, rows and columns as required. For deeper insight, please refer to the help pages linked previously. Happy editing! benzband (talk) 18:36, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Getting More Traffic

Latest comment: 13 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Hi! I'm editing the Occupational segregation article for my class on Poverty, Gender and Development at Rice University. I'm really hoping to increase traffic to my page (and the pages of my class members) both to get more people to read about the issue in general, and to have more editors and therefore improve the quality of the page. Does anyone have suggestions for increasing page traffic/ getting more editors/ more readership? K Gagalis (talk) 01:19, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi K Gagalis, welcome to the Teahouse.

I must say I am a little confused by the question, it is not one I've seen commonly and frankly I don't know how to measure traffic on an article by article scale. The general idea of Wikipedia is to make a better encyclopedia, not to increase traffic. I'm assuming you want to increase traffic in order to reach the goals you mention, let me start by saying you have done a great job with that article.

One of the very important and oftentimes overlooked step of writing and article is to place wikilinks to the article in question on articles of related subjects. Though the article you mention does not seem to suffer from a lack of links (they can be found at the "What links here" link on the left bar).

Another way to get more editors to take a look at the article is to find a WikiProject that the article falls in its description and ask for help/input there, but you also have already done that in this case.

All that I can say now is to congratulate you for your edits in occupational segregation and to cheer you into keeping the work up. Chico Venancio (talk) 01:50, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Chicovenancio thanks so much for your input! I really appreciate it. K Gagalis (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:15, 11 April 2012 (UTC).

Hi K Gagalis! I'll just add a little to this:

add relevant links to your article through Wikipedia; and check what links to an indicidual article at Special:WhatLinksHere.
you can also check individual article traffic with this very useful tool: stats.grok.se (just enter the article name and it displays a graph of page visits per day).

Some good ways of attracting attention:

getting you article highlighted in the Did You Know section of the Main Page, or…
…simply improving it. Once it reaches Featured Article status, you can submit it for display on the Main Page "Featured Article" section.

Hope this helps. Cheers, benzband (talk) 09:04, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

My first article was rejected. Is my current, pending version more appropriate

Latest comment: 13 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

the article "Return on Social Business" is pending review. I've added more references --- and can add more. Do I need to be putting links for related Wikipedia articles? Advice is greatly appreciated. HalSchlenger (talk) 23:45, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Hal! I looked over your article a bit just now, and did some searches through your sources, and through Google. I don't actually see the "Return on Social Business" metrics you're describing mentioned in any of them. And it doesn't seem to be a very widespread term on the internet as a whole. Could you point me to some reliable sources that describe this metric, which might prove its notability? Cheers, - J-Mo ^{Talk to Me} _{Email Me} 02:20, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

J-Mo, thanks for your time reviewing. "Social business" is a term that is replacing "Enterprise 2.0" and "Social collaboration." The Forbes article [1] from last week again speaks to this. There are various articles about the challenges for calculating the ROI for these efforts, and we wanted to share thoughts about it. So two thoughts: 1) Should we pursue an article on 'return on social business' or 'return on __?___', or 2) should we instead create an article on "social business," for which the current article is about "socially responsible business."

Thanks in advance for your advice, HalHalSchlenger (talk) 15:04, 11 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by HalSchlenger (talk • contribs) 03:06, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hal, reading through your proposal again, it seems to me like you're making an argument for the adoption of this particular metric, RoSB, by social business companies. Your article proposal is well-written, but I'm concerned that it seems like what we call original research around here. Basically, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so Wikipedia articles should not make new arguments or present new research findings that aren't already published in other reliable sources (such as academic journals, magazines, newspapers, books, conference proceedings, etc). This article reads to me as though it is proposing this new metric and attempting to demonstrate its utility. That's a job for a research paper, not an encyclopedia article I think. Once the metric has been widely adopted, an article could be written that described its genesis, its history and its quality. Does that make sense? Am I reading things right?

There is an article on Social business, by the way. Perhaps you could give that article a look and see if any of the citations you've gathered would be appropriate there? Anyways, hopefully your next AfC reviewer will have some other specific ideas for you. Feel free to come back here if you have more questions, or to let us know how things are going! - J-Mo ^{Talk to Me} _{Email Me} 23:35, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Pros and cons of using your real name as your UserID

Latest comment: 13 years ago10 comments9 people in discussion

The older guard seem to frown on using their real name as a UserID.

The new guard, thinking about authenticity, accountability, and transparency, seem to be using their real names.

I suspect the old guard knows something the rest of us have not yet perceived.

BruceCamber (talk) 15:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Bruce! Thanks for visiting the Teahouse and welcome to Wikipedia. I actually started using my real name after I started to do more research and work with Wikipedia as part of my master's degree. I used to use pseudonyms, but, eventually it just made sense for me to be who I am with my real name. It seems to just be personal preference. I do know a lot of women (though I know you are just asking about this in general) who don't want to use their real names for safety reasons, which makes sense as well. I also know Wikipedians who have psuedonyms depending on what they like to edit (i.e. something more controversial or sexual content, perhaps they don't want associated with their real name). I'm "old guard" in regards to my participation online (BBSing anyone?), but, eventually went new school, I suppose :D Sarah (talk) 15:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

It's a matter of personal taste. Take a look, for instance, at WP:REALNAME. I appreciate editors who use their real name. At the same time, as a female, I find I don't like to use my real name on most internet forums. If I were male I would be more inclined to do so, depending on how vulnerable that would make me to random harassment for editing on controversial articles on Wikipedia (which I have in the past). Softlavender (talk) 15:25, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Perfectly informative answers. At this time, I'll just remain myself! -Bruce BruceCamber (talk) 15:28, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Just as another perspective, I'm probably in the "new guard"; I chose this username before I even decided to register because I was looking for a way to use it! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:31, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Bruce. I can talk a bit about this from experience. :) I use a pseudonym, but that's more habit than anything - I openly acknowledge who I am on my user page. This has been both good and bad. On the good side, I occasionally get emails from people asking for help or advice, and who choose to contact me directly. This has been great. I think having a real name has encouraged people to get in touch when they needed help. On the negative side, occasionally I have been in some heated disputes, and in a couple of instances that has led to the threat of real-world trouble. Once or twice I have been threatened with legal action, and in one situation a person contacted my employer directly. None of these were in regard to controversial issues - sometimes it is surprising how a person can get very, very angry over an incredibly minor issue, at least to an outsider's eyes.

Countering the bad, there is a reason why I chose to connect my real identity with my pseudonym. I don't believe we can ever trust anonymity online, and thus it creates a false sense of security. If my secret identity was revealed, my history - everything I've ever done under that alias - is open to inspection. Accordingly, I prefer to edit under the assumption that people can find me, and only do things that I'm willing to stand by under my real name. Sometimes that can be difficult, but I prefer to know I'm accountable than imagine that I'm not and suddenly discover otherwise. - Bilby (talk) 15:48, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Bruce! I'm apart of the "new guard", use my real life nickname, and am learning that it doesn't matter what name you use as long as you're being authentic in this community. Initially I was hesitant to use my nickname but then the matter of transparency won me over; I want people to know what I'm doing. For safety purposes, I have my Dad ^_^ By the way - it's nice to meet you!!! GMHayes (talk) 15:54, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Bruce! I haven't had problems using a portion of my name as my username, which identifies me as a female. Like the others, I believe in that transparency that's associated with this decision. --Rosiestep (talk) 02:24, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Bruce, you seem to have struck a chord here. As you can see, my username is Worm That Turned - which is quite an unusual internet handle. I've used it since 1998, so it was logical to bring it here when I came on to wikipedia. I have a very common name - indeed, my real name is actually registerred as a user account (by someone else!), so using my alias actually gives a lot more authenticity and accountability than that. It's not hard to find out all sorts of information about me, from this alias.
I'd actually go on to say that both the old guard and the new guard (I'm not sure which I fit in!) have multiple users who use their real names, and a large amount who don't. I don't think it makes a huge difference how long you've been here. Worm^TT · (talk) 13:30, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I use my real name, and in editing Wikipedia, always have. I do partly just because Wikipedia editing is closely tied to the real world for me - I first started editing for a class assignment, and am heavily involved in real world outreach type things. I've run in to few problems with using my name, including a situation a while ago where I annoyed a bunch of lunatics who started attempting to harass me in real life - but overall I'm still quite glad I edit under my real name. (Bilby's reasons above also resonate with me.) Kevin (kgorman-ucb) (talk) 19:42, 11 April 2012 (UTC)