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Robert - feel free to blank this again, as is your right, but can I just ask you to slow down for a minute and step back from this? You're fast approaching old territory again. I know you mean well here, and I've supported you in the past. Just ... chill, take it easy, and careful with the comments about others - Alison ^❤ 22:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To anyone who has a question about my username please read the following. I have no intention of changing the username. It makes no sense since so far several editors (including admins, who should know better, whom I call "badmins") have gone to the trouble of unearthing past history which had nothing to do with whatever was going on at the moment. As I am never to be allowed to put my past behind me without it being brought up like a weapon to assail me for others' tactical or rhetorical advantage, I have decided to follow the advice I received from another editor and "embrace" it.

Robert is one of the few editors who is not obliged to change his username, as his account was created many years before the rules were changed - Alison ^❤ 02:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted your edits about the alternative Iwan because no such article exists, nor would it be of similar provenance as Iwan's. Perhaps a hatnote may appropriate, but 99.9995% of people here will be searching for the footballer, not a redlinked "actor". The Rambling Man (talk) 23:01, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you can verify the actor with sources then no worries, but I still think it'd be a hatnote to the existing Roberts page, and not necessarily worthy of a pure dab page. But I'm happy to discuss it! The Rambling Man (talk) 23:10, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your note. As to your main question I got Olivier's page mixed up in my memory with Ben Kingsley's where there is a lengthy discussion about honors. Unfortunately, that discussion may not answer your question. I can suggest that you ask JackofOz on his User talk:JackofOz page. He is the editor that I rely on when these things come up. As to the use of the minor edit mark on your entry I can only relate to you my experience. In my early days of editing here I was chastised for using it. My understanding is that it should only be used if one is making a spelling or punctuation correction. The main reason for this is that an editors watchlist can be set up to not show edits marked as minor. Lots of vandals then use this to try and hide their nefarious work. Of course, one solution is to turn of the ignore minor edits item on ones watchlist but that is hard to convince everyone of. I have gone the other direction and I only mark something as minor if I am only changing one or two characters on a page, such as changing something from US to UK spelling. I hope that this helps and I apologize if I am telling you things that you already know. Again I think that you can rely on JackofOz. Cheers and happy editing. MarnetteD | Talk 23:27, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

British usage is usual to abreviate as UK, without full stops/periods, so when adding to infoboxes on articles written in British English, it's more appropriate to use that form, rather than U.K. David Underdown (talk) 18:37, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your interest in the articles covered within the scope of the G&S Project, but please don't make purely stylistic and formatting changes. Unless there is a reason for a change, editors should respect the stylistic choices made by article creators. We have worked hard to create a consistent style at the G&S Project: for example, we always start a new paragraph at the bottom of a bio article concerning the person's death. Please don't bury this information in the previous paragraph. The changes that you made to the Kendals' articles today are not, IMO, helpful and, in fact, I disagree with them. If you want to do research and expand an article, great! If you want to discuss a strategy, kindly mention open a discussion on the talk page, and I'll be happy to discuss it. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 03:51, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your message. The places where you inserted a fact tag were already sourced to the DNB article, which contains those facts. -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Rms125a@hotmail.com! As a truly neutral observer who watches the Edit-Warring/3RR Board, I want to let you know that my comments should not be taken as any judgement for or against the reason you brought the issue there. I'm only speaking from experience in watching and knowing what sort of reports filed there are appropriate for consideration. While you're absolutely correct that 3 revisions can get an editor blocked, the standard for this board is four or more. I've seen many, many reports dismissed simply because 3RR was not violated; way more than I have seen blocked for 3 reverts alone. I hope this helps somewhat, and good luck in whatever issue took you to that Admin board. Happy editing! :> Doc9871 (talk) 00:02, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Rms125a@hotmail.com. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Contributor copyright investigations concerning your contributions in relation to Wikipedia's copyrights policy. The listing can be found here. For some suggestions on responding, please see Responding to a CCI case. Thank you. Theleftorium 18:01, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Concerning your contribution, Aston Chichester, please note that Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images obtained from other web sites or printed material, without the permission of the author(s). This article or image appears to be a direct copy from http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=5747. As a copyright violation, Aston Chichester appears to qualify for deletion under the speedy deletion criteria. Aston Chichester has been tagged for deletion, and may have been deleted by the time you see this message.

If you believe that the article or image is not a copyright violation, or if you have permission from the copyright holder to release the content freely under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License (CC-BY-SA) then you should do one of the following:

• If you have permission from the author, leave a message explaining the details at Talk:Aston Chichester and send an email with the message to permissions-enwikimedia.org. See Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission for instructions.
• If a note on the original website states that it is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, leave a note at Talk:Aston Chichester with a link to where we can find that note.
• If you hold the copyright to the material: send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-enwikimedia.org or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the CC-BY-SA and GFDL, and note that you have done so on Talk:Aston Chichester.

However, for textual content, you may simply consider rewriting the content in your own words. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with our copyright policy. Wikipedia takes copyright concerns very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Thank you. JamesBWatson (talk) 20:10, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

James, I understand what you are saying and I understand the importance of copyright compliance. All I am saying is that I never recklessly disregarded a copyright warning. On the contrary I rewrote as best I could, assuming that if the article still was not satisfactorily in compliance that I would be advised accordingly. Some of the articles cited on the CCI are very, very old, or written within the last 48 hours. In the former case if they are in violation of copyright policy they should have been tagged as such and I would have either rewritten them or, if unable to, let them wither on the vine. Rms125a@hotmail.com (talk) 22:16, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am perfectly willing to believe that you did not intentionally infringe copyright, but you have not been particularly concerned with making sure you didn't, and seem to think that it was up to others to make sure you didn't. The assumption that because nobody has noticed a copyright violation and drawn it to your attention the violation does not exist is a strange one. Also "they should have been tagged" seems to be based on the belief that every single edit by every editor should be scrutinised for possible copyright infringement. If this were so then Wikipedians would spend more time checking other people's edits than writing anything new. The onus is on you to avoid copying other people's work, not on others to continually look over your shoulder to make sure you are not doing so. JamesBWatson (talk) 22:27, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's not exactly what I meant, but moving forward, could you review, for example, the recently re-edited Ivan Vranetic and Talk:Aston Chichester/Temp and advise if they pass muster, so I can have an idea that I am going in the right direction. Thanks. ‎Rms125a@hotmail.com (talk) 22:38, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I have had a quick look at Talk:Aston Chichester/Temp. On the whole it looks alright, but I think there are still some problems. For example, the following pair of sentences are much too close:

He entered the Jesuits and became a teacher at Wimbledon and Beaumont Colleges, at both of which he served as Rector.

He entered the Society of Jesus in 1897, and taught at Wimbledon and Beaumont Colleges, at both of which he served as Rector.

These are really exactly parallel, with only a few changes in wording. Better to try to get right away from the wording that the original writer used. Try to think in terms of writing your own account, rather than in terms of changing the existing account to avoid copyright problems. For example, you have changed "He entered the Society of Jesus" to "He entered the Jesuits", but is that how you would have written it yourself? Obviously I don't know you, and perhaps you would have, but most people wouldn't. How about "He became a Jesuit", for example, or "He joined the Jesuits". "Became a teacher at Wimbledon and Beaumont Colleges" and "taught at Wimbledon and Beaumont Colleges" are perhaps not so close as to be problematic on their own, but combined with the rest of the sentence they are similar enough to add to the overall picture. And you have not rewritten "at both of which he served as Rector" at all. How about He became a Jesuit and then, perhaps not immediately after that sentence, He worked as a teacher, and at times as rector, at both Wimbledon College and Beaumont College. Even this follows the original more closely than is really necessary, but it would, I think, be much better than the existing version. Notice that it is not necessary to express yourself in the same terms as the writer of your source. For example, you don't have to use "entered", or "served as". Personally I would be very unlikely to say someone "served as rector": I would be more likely to say "he worked as the rector", or "he did the job of rector", or simply "he was the rector". Try to think along those lines: how would you have said it, if you had been writing from scratch?

I hope that has been of some help to you. I also apologise if earlier I was a little unfriendly: I certainly didn't mean to be, but sometimes I come over that way.

I'm afraid I don't have time now to look over Ivan Vranetić, but I see that Theleftorium has placed a copyright notice on it since you last edited the article, and Theleftorium knows more about copyright issues than I do, so it is fairly safe to assume there is still a problem there. You could try asking Theleftorium for advice about that.

You are very welcome to ask me any further questions, and I will try to answer as soon as I can. JamesBWatson (talk) 23:25, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I now see that, even as I was writing that, Theleftorium wrote you a comment about Ivan Vranetić! JamesBWatson (talk) 23:28, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article began as a copy of [1] and remains an unusable unauthorized derivative work of that source + http://yad-vashem.blogspot.com/2010/02/in-tribute-vranetic-righteous-among.html, which was added by JanDeFietser (talk · contribs). For an example of close paraphrasing, consider the following:

Some 20 years after the war Vranetic came to Israel and married Montilio, who died 12 years ago. Vranetic was accompanied at Yad Vashem by his grandson.

The article says:

Some 20 years after the war Vranetić came to Israel and married Montilio (who died in 1997). He was accompanied at the ceremony by his grandson.

There are other passages that similarly follow too closely.

While facts are not copyrightable, creative elements of presentation - including both structure and language - are. So that it will not constitute a derivative work, this article should be rewritten in the temporary space that is now linked from the article's front. The essay Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing contains some suggestions for rewriting that may help avoid these issues. The article Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches, while about plagiarism rather than copyright concerns, also contains some suggestions for reusing material from sources that may be helpful, beginning under "Avoiding plagiarism". Theleftorium 22:50, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid your rewrite still contains problematic content. For an example of close paraphrasing, consider the following:

After qualifying as a general nurse Diana Anderson trained as a midwife [...] In February 1958 Diana Anderson joined the QARANC as a Nursing Officer where she worked as a midwife in many military hospitals.

The article says:

After qualifying as a general nurse, Anderson trained as a midwife. In February 1958 she joined the QARANC as a Nursing Officer, working as a midwife in military hospitals.

This kind of paraphrasing is unacceptable. You can't just copy content from the article into the temp space; the temp is supposed to be a clean start. The same thing applies to Talk:Dilwyn Lewis/Temp. Now the temp pages will have to be deleted too. Theleftorium 23:40, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The histories of the temp pages are supposed to be move to the namespace after the original article is deleted. Therefore there shouldn't be any copyvios in the history. The point of the temp spaces is to rewrite the articles from scratch, not to make adjustments to the already existing articles. That will only leave us with a derivative work. I'm not an admin so I can't delete any pages, but someone else will look over them when they are evaluated at WP:Copyright problems. Theleftorium 23:49, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have asked User:Moonriddengirl to explain the situation to you since my English is a bit lacking and she's better at explaining. She is a bit busy at the moment, though, so please be patient. Theleftorium 00:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. What User:Theleftorium is explaining here is that when we rewrite articles to eliminate copyright problems, we have to start over from scratch. You can't copy the one that was a copyright problem and build from that because then you wind up with an unauthorized "derivative work". When you rewrite articles in the temporary space, you shouldn't copy the contents from the original article.

Rewriting articles to avoid close paraphrasing is a bit of a challenge. While facts are not copyrightable, creative elements of presentation - including both structure and language - are. I'm sure that User:TheLeftorium has already told you about the essay Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing, which contains some suggestions for rewriting that may help avoid these issues. I don't know if he's mentioned it, but the article Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches, while about plagiarism rather than copyright concerns, also contains some suggestions for reusing material from sources that may be helpful, beginning under "Avoiding plagiarism".

In my personal experience, it's a lot easier to rewrite when you look at larger sections of text. For instance, as the source says:

Her nurse training started in 1952 at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford. After qualifying as a general nurse Diana Anderson trained as a midwife at Freedom Fields Hospital in Plymouth and the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester. In February 1958 Diana Anderson joined the QARANC as a Nursing Officer where she worked as a midwife in many military hospitals.

I would first extract the facts:

• started nurse training 1952, Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford
• midwife training in Freedom Fields Hospital in Plymouth; Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester
• February 1958, Nursing Officer QARANC
• Service as a midwife, various military hospitals.

Then I'd look at those and try to pull out what's important to form a new paragraph:

Having studied nursing and midwifery, Diana Anderson became a practicing midwife in February 1958 for the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps.

(While usually we are required to give credit when we copy other Wikipedians, I don't mind at all if you want to use any of that. I release that sentence with no credit required. :))

Ideally, you would find a couple of additional sources to mix into this. Even if you completely rewrite the material, using only one source can make it hard to avoid creating a "close paraphrase." The problem is that while facts are not copyrighted, the choice of which facts to write about can be. The more diverse sources you have, the easier it is to avoid falling into that problem, because you can be selective with which facts build a new whole in your article. If you can't find multiple sources, it can sometimes help to be very selective about which facts matter. Along with restructuring and using your own words, that will usually do it. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:00, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]