Hello, BD (if I may call you that for short)! I was patrolling Schutz's tool for broken redirects when I came across this. You moved it to User talk:BD2412/Perry Shields, then to User talk:BD2412/temp, and than to your talk page. Since it's within your space, I would like to ask you what should be done with the page? Thanks, Dylan620 (contribs, logs)help us! 19:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Deleted. Sorry, I do a lot of starting pages in one space and then moving them to a more appropriate title so I will remember what I'm working on. Too many balls in the air! bd2412T 19:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
That's perfectly OK, do whatever you feel is best. :) Happy editing, Dylan620 (contribs, logs)help us! 19:27, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
A comment and a question about your recent edit of Eridu. First, the change from Sumerian to sumerian failed to preserve the capitalization it is due. A small thing but I thought to bring it to your attention as a general thing to watch for. I can fix it. The question is "What is the deal with replacing some spaces with a equivalent string. I'm sure this has been all thought out by the Powers That Be, but I don't understand the purpose OR when to use it. If you can point to enlightenment so I can use it in future editing it would be cool. Thanks.Ploversegg (talk) 22:18, 14 August 2009 (UTC)ploversegg
The non-breaking spaces prevent the separation of numbers and the units represented at the end of a line. So, for example, no matter what your screen size, 12 km will always appear as 12 km, and never as 12 km.
I'm confused about the function of this edit. Is such a redirect standard? -Silence (talk) 00:55, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Yes. It keeps us from having to correct intentional links to disambig pages, and takes them out of the "what links here" queue for articles to be corrected. It also informs the reader that the page on the other end of the link is a disambig. bd2412T 00:57, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
The latter function, though, could be served by a piped link. And most dab pages X that aren't named '(disambiguation)' don't have corresponding redirects from 'X (disambiguation)' (which would be very silly, since no one's gonna look for 'X (disambiguation)' before 'X').
Is this policy new? Is there a page specifying it? I've always been under the impression that ideally one would never use 'disambiguation', either in links or in article titles, except as required for the same reason parenthetical qualifiers are ever required in article titles: to distinguish from other, real pages. Otherwise the default would be 'X (disambiguation)' and not 'X' for dab pages not based off of articles called 'X'. -Silence (talk) 01:02, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Rollback should only be used for clearly unproductive edits. Using it to revert another admin on a system message, especially when there's no consensus either way for the change, is rather inappropriate. Mr.Z-man 01:59, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
I didn't want to risk making a new edit and messing things up - I was just aiming to restore it exactly as it was before. No disrespect intended to Prodego, for whom I have nothing but respect. bd2412T 02:14, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
BD2412 can revert my edits any time. :)Prodegotalk 02:27, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I'm puzzled by this edit, as I don't see how it comes under "other minor cleanup tasks". Could you explain? PamD (talk) 07:18, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, that is me lazily neglecting to change edit summaries. Those fall under "blank ancient IP talk page messages per Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 9#IP talk pages". They come up in this context because those IP talk pages include the disambiguation link. bd2412T 13:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi and thanks again for making the tremendous GSA pages so accessible to us. I just wanted to check what the protocol is for merging the articles. I see you did something with the U.S. Custom House (Baltimore, Maryland) page that I don't quite follow. Any explanation for me will be quite helpful.
Best wishes.--Pubdog (talk) 19:27, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
I merged the edit history for the material in my userspace with the article in the mainspace, so that the complete edit history would be in a single place. Cheers! bd2412T 19:40, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi, i noticed your edit here, and have seen one or two like it before. But I don't understand the benefit, and it appears wrong offhand, to me, to link to '"Foo (disambigation)"' when '"Foo" (disambiguation)' links directly to the right place. Can you please point me to a guideline section or previous discussion that applies? Or, let's discuss somewhere central, like at WikiProject Disambiguation. Please advise. doncram (talk) 01:00, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages, "To link to a disambiguation page (rather than to a page whose topic is a specific meaning), link to the title that includes the text "(disambiguation)", even if that's a redirect – for example, link to the redirect America (disambiguation) rather than the target page at "America". (If the redirect does not yet exist, create it and tag it with {{R to disambiguation page}}.) This helps distinguish accidental links to the disambiguation page from intentional ones". On disambig pages, this has the added effect of alerting the reader to the fact that the link leads to a disambig page. bd2412T 01:37, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Oh, okay, thanks. I've created a few thousand links the wrong way then, oh well. :) doncram (talk) 01:47, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Removing vandalism warnings from IP user talk pages[edit]
Why are you doing this? Your edit summaries say "Fixing links to disambiguation pages, improving links, other minor cleanup tasks using AWB)". Heironymous Rowe (talk) 17:56, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
is your name Marina? I am making that conclusion because you uploaded the image —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.46.89.201 (talk) 20:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
I requested the image - one of hundreds of images that I've uploaded - and was granted permission to use it. My identity is well established to this community, and if you review my edit history you'll quickly realize the absurdity of your "conclusion". bd2412T 20:54, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing the 'Dragan' disambiguation page! I'd have done a better job of creating it, and saved you the work, but I'm still learning the ropes. :) Buddy23Lee (talk) 23:11, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for moving this - did you notice that there was a formal Request to Move? Could you do the formal closing of that discussion, please? Thanks. PamD (talk) 11:58, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Hey BDA, hope you are doing well. I have a bit of a legal question, and I was hoping you could shed some light on the situation. this license template seems to me to be self contradictory. The second provision, "you avoid using words that can be considered offensive" appears to contradict the terms of CC-BY. I was wondering if you could explain the legal situation with both of those two provisions on the template, and how they interact with CC-BY 2.5. [1] Thanks! (for more info: [2]. Prodegotalk 05:09, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Just off to bed - will look tomorrow! bd2412T 05:09, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Excellent, thank you very much - good night! Prodegotalk 05:12, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
A license is basically a document saying "I own the copyright in this work, but I promise that I will not bring an action for copyright infringement if you to use the work according to these rules". In this case, if our use of this contributor's image was accompanied by "words that can be considered offensive", then it would be an infringement. However, "can be considered offensive" is a very broad phrase, as anything could conceivably be considered offensive to somebody, under the right conditions. The copyright owner could point to any word and correctly say that it could be considered offensive by someone, under some circumstance. In short, the license is no license at all, and the promise is illusory. bd2412T 14:52, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
No license at all sounds quite incompatible with commons. :) Mind if I link to your response at that discussion at the commons village pump? Alternately, if you would like to comment there... Prodegotalk 15:13, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
I'll comment there. Thanks! bd2412T 16:51, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Hiya, B.D. I never had this article on my watchlist (indeed had never read it before). It has, however, recently shown up on my watchlist, which leads me to believe that somehow links to one of your (myriad) archived pages. Or something... Best regards, Hamster Sandwich (talk) 23:55, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
I probably started writing it in a temp userspace, which may have originated as archive space - I do that for articles that are not ready for prime time, just use a temp space as a sandbox to rough them out until I'm ready to really start working on them. bd2412T 01:18, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the page does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the page or have a copy emailed to you. Iohannes Animosus (talk) 00:08, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
I created a redirect, not an article. If the article is deleted, the redirect should remain. If there is any concern that the article will be recreated, the redirect should be protected. bd2412T 01:06, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
I was just wondering whether you were aware that a requested move discussion was ongoing Talk:Tiddler#Requested move. Your move seems to have accidently pre-empted the result of the discussion. Dpmuk (talk) 09:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Deleted the bad one - the link to the deletion discussion is fine, as it redirects people looking for a deletion discussion on the disambig page to the page where that discussion took place. Cheers! bd2412T 14:07, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
If I run across other obvious "technical misspellings", such as The Field Where I Died (The X-Files episode -- missing the ")" -- do they need to go to RfD if they are stretching the bounds of "recent"? (No history to be preserved; remnant of move to correct form.) I usually try to track down the author to get them to request a WP:CSD#G7, but often, as in this case, they are no longer active. -- ToET 04:58, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
WP:CSD#R3, implausible typos. Unlikely that someone would errantly type exactly that again. bd2412T 14:46, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Agreed, but it's the "recently created" part that's a problem. -- ToET 15:36, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
(Butting in...) There is no precise definition of "recently"; it's a judgment call. After all, in view of the length of time humans have been using written language, everything on Wikipedia is extremely "recent." :-) R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:41, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
It does not "cover anything anyway. You lost all that content, including the chart and all of the references I had just put in today becuase of the threatened deletion. This is contrary to the procedure that was in the notice. It was done summarily and without due warning: this notice said that if a protest was filed it would not be deleted. An objection was filed. It was deleted. This is plainly wrong. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 15:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC) Stan
I've added the chart, and am in the process of moving over some of the refs. The table is a bit much. bd2412T 15:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
The table was useful data. It could be a link, or a hidden table, which somebody could click on. Just a constructive thought. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 15:51, 21 October 2009 (UTC) Stan
Okay, feel free to put it in as a hidden table, but if you do so, I'd appreciate if you make a similar table for the Jewish Justices for parity. Cheers! bd2412T 15:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
Would love to do that, but it's plainly beyond my knowledge/skill level. I agree with you that Jewish justices would benefit from the same treatment. Maybe the original author of the table knows how to do that? My thought is it would not clutter the article. User: Berean Hunter did quite a few tables like this concerning various lighthouse articles. I know he's under personal time constraints right now but . . . he is very helpful. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 16:06, 21 October 2009 (UTC) Stan
Teach yourself - Help:Table. 16:11, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
BD2412, I am curious: has any consensus (ever) been reached about United States magistrate judges? Is the fact that a person is a U.S. magistrate judge notable enough that an individual biography for each and every federal magistrate judge is notable? (as is the case with Article III district and appeals-court judges) Or are federal magistrate judges generally considered non-notable unless they achieve notability for some other reason (e.g., for some non-judicial achievement, or for being nominated to be a district judge)? What are your thoughts on this? Reply here or on my talk page. And thanks for all your hard work -- you are an incredible asset to the Wikipedia community; I have a great deal of respect for the work that you do.
Jarvishunt (talk) 25 November 2009 (UTC)
BD, you definitely know how to get a laugh out of me. List of federal judges appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes! All I can add is that it is a beautiful article to look at. Very nice work. (However, I would like to see all of the judges recreated in life-size, made entirely of Saranwrap and wire armitures.) Best regards, Hamster Sandwich (talk) 03:34, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I reverted your edit to Newgate Technology because the automated tool totally broke what little referencing is there, and we're waiting for the AfD on this spam article: The ambiguous link to NHS is on purpose from the author, and we're leaving it: That page asserts that there is no such thing as NHS of Northern Ireland, proving the author's rather lame and obvious peacock attempt. I quote from the NHS disam page:
Health and Care NI, the health service for Northern Ireland (which does not use the names "NHS" or "National Health Service")
Doesn't your tool preview your edits? There were big red REF errors on the page when I saw it. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 09:14, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Further to the above: I added the references. The use of in-list references has been enabled on the English Wikipedia (see Help:Citations#List-defined_references) - for future reference, if you see the following:
{{reflist|refs=
(references)
}}
you do not need to add {{reflist}}. If you do, you break the references. Please make sure that you do a preview before accepting changes! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 10:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me know, I'll keep an eye on ref changes. bd2412T 15:32, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
BD, per my query above, what do you think: do current (and past) United States magistrate judges warrant separate biographies? Or are does that level of position (with some exceptions) fail a notability test? What are your thoughts? Among those of us who have worked long and hard on judicial biographies, I think a consensus pretty clearly has been reached that all U.S. district judges (and now, nominees) are notable in and of themselves (and any AfDs on them would fail). Would you say the same of magistrate judges? I am very interested in your thoughts on this. Please reply here when you get a moment. Thanks so much! Jarvishunt (talk) 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I'll address this question now in the discussion at WP:USCJ. Cheers! bd2412T 00:56, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
I would only need to download the image, open it in Photoshop, resize it there and airbrush over any kinks. Since it would be a very small image for a very small use, it would not need to be scalable to a larger size. bd2412T 03:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Page de-orphaned, how does orphan template get removed?[edit]
Hi, BD.
I de-orphaned this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_potty_training_method but don't know what to do next. Do I click on the History tab and undo your orphan text? Disambiguation is also mentioned on the same line. Both disambiguation and orphaning have been fixed. Please advise, thanks!Manyhats (talk) 20:01, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Just edit the page and delete the orphan template on top. Cheers! bd2412T 20:04, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Done! Thanks for your help.Manyhats (talk) 21:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Should the list be sorted by total tenure (including senior status)? I believe so, because it's possible for a judge to sit on a bench for only twenty years and have senior status for another twenty (though that would make them pretty old). I know there's no "page ownership", but as you're basically the only person who's edited the page, you would be the one with the most input.
The problem with senior status is that a judge can (or at least could, in the past) do virtually nothing judicial and still be in senior status. I think the rules on workload and availability have changed a bit over the years, but the only way to be sure that a judge was actually hearing cases is if they were active to the end. bd2412T 15:30, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Wouldn't that disqualify the four judges from Browning downward? And even if a judge is still "active", there have been times when judges have been incapacitated for up to a decade while being "active". Star Garnet (talk) 23:40, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
I see you have been using AWB with the edit summary "fixing links to disambiguation pages" to change proposition to pipe to proposition (philosophy). But proposition is not a dab page (unless you're using a version of the database over 4 months old) and the latter just redirects to the former.
I have reverted your change on Affirmation, a page I have on my watchlist, and I suspect you may need to revert this change on all the others.
I you think that proposition should be moved to proposition (philosophy) (so that it is no longer the primary topic of the dab page), you may propose this using the WP:RM process, but these changes should not be made before the move is approved.
Thanks for taking care of the move of POTS (disambiguation) to POTS. I know cleanup moves are one of those usually-thankless admin chores, so I like to make my appreciation explict when I'm involved in one. The minor stuff adds up to a lot. Cheers! —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 00:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Bowden (surname), and it appears to include a substantial copy of http://www.surnamedb.com/surname.aspx?name=Bowdon. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. See our copyright policy for further details.
This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 17:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
The material was already in the disambiguation page, Bowden; I only moved it to a separate page. bd2412T 17:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Now deleted. bd2412T 02:04, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
I understand why you reverted my move of Fascicle to Fascicle (disambiguation). However, it's not quite as simple as the WP policy you quoted. There are now two pages, Fascicle and Fasciculus. The first is a disambiguation page; the second is a real article. However, the first says that the terms 'Fascicle' and 'Fasciculus' are synonyms. If this is correct, then both should lead to the same page, surely? If it's not correct, then there should be two articles, one on each term, with cross-links and/or links to a disambiguation page. As it stands now, I think it's unhelpful. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:58, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Actually, it is pretty clear from looking at Fasciculus that this should be a disambig page also. bd2412T 14:12, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, you're right. In which case, the two can be merged, which I've done. (This is what I should have done in the first place, on reflection.) You might want to check that I've done the merge correctly. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:47, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
I would not say that they necessarily need to be merged, but they are sufficiently similar that this is an acceptable solution. bd2412T 02:04, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
*(and nicely done). bd2412T 04:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
The pages do need to be moved. The intent going forward is that when a new database dump is made, it will just over-write the old one at the same address, so we do not pile up obsolete and redundant lists. bd2412T 19:57, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Watch for templates at the top. See [3] --Pmsyyz (talk) 09:36, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't think the template at the top particularly matters if no one has made any objectionable edits from the page in over two years. IP addresses are dynamic, and can change from time to time, and even if they remain stable, there's no point in keeping anything on a page which relates to an IP address from which no one edits. bd2412T 12:27, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
MarmadukePercy (talk) is wishing you a MerryChristmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Don't eat yellow snow!
Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:Flaming/MC2008}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
I have removed the dated PROD template that you placed on User:Photoatb. The user appears to have been using her/his user page as a sandbox. In addition, PROD is intended for use on articles, not on User pages. Cnilep (talk) 22:18, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
I may have been a bit harsh in assessing, but it looks to me like an article on a band of borderline notability. bd2412T 23:08, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
Article Incubator Invitation for Bocconi School of Law Student-Edited Papers[edit]
Hi. I have put the article on Bocconi School of Law Student-Edited Papers in the article incubator, here: Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Bocconi School of Law Student-Edited Papers. Feel free to cooperate if you have any practical ideas to help establish notability. Incidentally, let me anticipate that the journal is actually the first student-edited legal working paper series, which has been created in Europe better to adapt to the editorial panorama of the Old Continent, where student-edited law reviews are nto nearly as popular as they are in the US. I have already provided references (e.g. an article appeared on the German Law Journal) for these claims. Thanks for any help you may provide me with, --Grasshopper6 (talk) 10:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Just a correction is article IV courts not article I courts:
The United States Territorial Courts are tribunals established in U.S. Insular areas by the U.S. Congress, pursuant to its power under Article I of the U.S. Constitution.
Hi. Please don't blank out IP talk pages, as you did here. The discussion you linked to in your edit summary was nearly four years ago, and I don't think blanking old warnings is now considered useful. In particular, for a school IP like this (which only seemed dormant because it was on a long block), the {{sharedipedu}} and {{repeatvandal}} templates at the top are useful and relevant to any new users of the IP, and when the long block ends and the pupils start vandalising again, it helps RC patrollers and admins to see what has been going on without delving into the history. When the number of old warnings becomes excessive, a better way to hide them is to collapse them within {{Old IP warnings top}} ... {{Old IP warnings bottom}}, which give the effect you see here. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 16:13, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
We have many, many thousands of IP talk pages with nothing on them but a single four or five year old warning. Most do not even have a template of the type you describe, and because IP addresses are dynamic, there is no way of knowing (short of checking them all) whether a 4-5 your old school template is even still valid. The reason we blank these pages is because the warnings on them are unlikely to apply to their current users, and the pages cause unnecessary link-load to the articles identified therein. In the unlikely event that an IP address which has been dormant for several years suddenly becomes the source of new vandalism, the previous record is available in the page history (as the pages are blanked, rather than deleted). Absent a discussion achieving a new consensus relative to that under which I have been blanking these pages for several years now, there is no reason to curtail this clean-up. bd2412T 16:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Fair enough for pages dormant for four or five years, but this had been dormant only just over one year, all but ten days of which was accounted for by a block. JohnCD (talk) 17:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
That is a reasonable point. I will adjust my list to avoid blanking recently unblocked pages - let's say, those unblocked from a long-term block within the past year. bd2412T 18:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Good, thanks. I'd be inclined to suggest that sharedipedu templates should be left, as I think school IPs are normally static; but a year's unblocked dormancy is probably enough to throw doubt on whether it's still a school! Regards, JohnCD (talk) 18:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
We must include the attribution section to avoid any appearance of plagiarism, and because I promised the GSA that we would include it. The section also provides an external link to the original source material, without which the article would be unreferenced. bd2412T 22:46, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
First, are you serious, and why are we going here again? The footnoted referencing in the articles provides attribution, and thus there is no "appearance of plagiarism". Or um, again since it is still properly referenced this makes absolutly no sense whatsoever: "without which the article would be unreferenced". (read what is now just an essay, but was once a guideline, WP:ATTRIBUTION, specifically the section "How to cite sources" which is recommended via footnotes) Plus, as I mentioned in the edit summary removing the attribution, the GSA is a federal government entity and cannot claim copyright to their original work, at all, and I'm pretty sure you know that from all your work on legal articles. As a tax payer, I've paid for it, so in many ways I own it too, thus I'm not going to attribute it as I own it (and so does everyone else in the US) which is one of the main arguments for why federal works were not granted copyrights. Or, to tie this up, nobody has to do this: "All works derived from this material must credit the U.S. General Services Administration." Aboutmovies (talk) 00:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
As I happen to be an intellectual property attorney, I can enlighten you with the fact that not everything published by the U.S. government is in the public domain. The government also hosts works commissioned of, and written by, private authors. Sometimes these are susceptible to copyright protection in favor of the original authors. That is why I communicated our desire to use these materials to the GSA, and came to an agreement to include this notice of attribution. This is very different from the other situation you are thinking about, regarding the FJC articles, from which we have only taken raw information rather than lengthy tracts of verbatim prose, and for which we have therefore made no representations to the body generating the work. bd2412T 03:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
As I too happen to be licensed attorney and focused on IP in law school, I too have some knowledge in the area, and I would suggest you carefully parse what I wrote: "cannot claim copyright to their original work". As in, I am well aware that the government can hold copyrights, and they may host copyrighted material or use copyrighted material (NASA and the JPL are a common example), but they cannot copyright their original work. Which is what I said, above. If the material here is copyrighted by someone else, then we have a different problem, as attribution would be to that source, right? Aboutmovies (talk) 03:53, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
We don't know whether it is or not, which is exactly why I asked express permission from GSA, which I obtained with the promise of attribution. bd2412T 03:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Then we have some problems, don't we? First, that is not what the attribution placed on the article I removed it from said, at all. That is to say, the attribution comes across as claiming copyright as an original work: "Material on this page was initially produced". Second, if we don't know, I'm assuming they don't know, which creates a bit of a problem with attributing this to the copyright holder, right? As in if you go take a picture, and I then use it on my website under some sort of non-exclusive license or via fair use, I can't force anyone who takes it from my website to credit me, right? As in, I ain't the copyright holder, ergo I can't force nut'n! Or here, if the GSA is using someone else's copyrighted material, they can't force people to credit them, as they are not the copyright holder. Or even more importantly, I believe we need to remove it. Since we do not know who the actual copyright holder may be (and thus the copyright status), we have to treat this as non-free content since it was just copy & pasted, and it would fail the non-free content guideline as everything in the article could easily be re-written, as I did with this article several years ago using one of those GSA sources. Now, of course Feist comes into play, and maybe parts of the copyrighted works the GSA used may not actually qualify for copyright as being simply facts, but then we would be back to a completely GSA crated original work, and then 17 USC comes back into play, and no attribution is required. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:48, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
The GSA owns the material, irrespective of who created it, meaning they own any copyright that may be imparted in the material, and thus the right to license the material to us under the GFDL. Feist, on the other hand, is only about compilations of fact where no creativity is required, and does not apply to the GSA articles as it does to the FJC articles. We have another situation in this vein coming up shortly. The New Georgia Encyclopedia ("NGE") consists of about 2,200 well-written articles produced by private authors for the NGE, which owns those articles, and which is in turn owned by a consortium of institutions of higher education in Georgia. The NGE is willing to donate their entire collection for incorporation into Wikipedia, provided that we maintain an attribution notice much like the one that is presently in place on the GSA articles - which I have shown to the NGE for guidance on how we would incorporate their works. bd2412T 19:33, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
You and I both know that that is just not accurate "meaning they own any copyright that may be imparted in the material". Unless they were given the copyright, bought the copyright (or purchased it via eminent domain), or created the material, then they do not own the copyright, regardless of physical possession of the material ("GSA owns the material"). I own Copyright: Cases and Materials, 7th, but that only gives my the book, not the copyright and no rights to redistribute other than selling the physical copy. And I know you know this, so there has to be some disconnect here as I'm just not following what exactly you are trying to say in this entire thread (and you still haven't answered why removing the attribution part leaves the article unreferenced). Here's the problem I'm having:
The attribution phrase in the article says: "Material on this page was initially produced" which here on this page you indicate that is not accurate. That is, if they didn't produce it, then why say they did. To be accurate, it should say they own the copyright or something to that affect.
I wrote: "If the material here is copyrighted by someone else..." and you replied "We don't know whether it is or not". OK, then you write "The GSA owns the material". So, if we don't know (your words), then how come suddenly we do know? As in, if they purchased or otherwise properly acquired the copyrights of others (not bought the book at the store), fine, I get that. But again, not what the attribution statement says and not quite what you have said above ("don't know").
Feist always comes into play in copyright situations. It may not apply to the entire work, but I never said or implied it did, as I said "parts". As in Feist states: "As a constitutional matter, copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity." and as Jane C. Ginsburg follows up: "...the Feist case may explain why single discrete facts are unprotectable because of their preexistance and the absence of human authorship." (Copyright: Cases and Materials, 7th, p. 130) Or, in otherwords, you cannot copyright mere facts. The expression of those facts, yes, but not the facts themselves. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the GSA material is non-fiction, which means they are not making it up, as in it is filled mainly with facts (who/what/when/where/how). Some of it (the other parts) may include commentary and postulations, speculation and the like, and those parts (along with the exact expression of the facts and the overall structure) could be copyrightable. As in, what I am trying to explain here and in my above reference to Feist is this: If the GSA took a book by John Doe and acquired the copyright of the book and then used it as the basis for these webpages, fine, the GSA would have a valid copyright on the elements they incorporated into the articles, but the facts themselves would not be copyrighted. But, on the otherhand, if they again acquired the copyright but then just took facts from it and incorporated these mere factoids into the GSA's existing original works (not a copy and paste job), then since the facts are not copyrightable, there is no derivative work and since GSA is fed, no copyright (as in basically what the FJC bios and CongBios do), unless they took every fact used and presented it in basically the same way and thus copying more than just the mere facts but also getting into creative elements of the author. Now, if they went and bought the book at Barnes & Noble and then copied the material and pasted into their website, then they didn't acquire any copyright and have no claim to one (obviously the author/publisher of the book would have a variety of claims).
Or, I guess, what exactly is the situation here? At first you said "don't know" as to the copyright status, but now you are acting like you do know. Help me understand, as the attribution statement that currently exists is not accurate by what you have said here, and is plain contradicting within itself in relation to Federal law. And I'd like to know not just for Wikipedia and its copyright rules, but also as an American taxpayer, as I really don't like agencies trying to overstep their bounds. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:19, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Let me be very specific, then. In mid-August of last year, I communicated by email and by telephone with Sarah Garner, who is the administrator of GSA's materials regarding historic buildings. I requested permission to use the text and images on the GSA's historic building description pages. Ms. Garner specifically informed me that many, but not all, of the materials in that collection are in the public domain. Ms. Garner also informed me that the copyrights in those materials which are not in the public domain are owned by GSA, and that the GSA freely allows use of all textual materials regarding their historic buildings. In order to clear up any doubt as to the permissibility of Wikipedia's intended use, I made the unilateral offer to include attributions containing the specific language currently reflected, and this offer was readily accepted by Ms. Garner. I have no idea which specific materials are in the public domain and which are covered by copyrights owned by the GSA; it is irrelevant, as we were given permission to use all of these materials, under the GFDL. Some of these materials were compiled by a handful of U.S. government employees essentially working as hobbyist-historians on their own time, and who later donated these materials to the U.S. government. As far as I recall, Ms. Garner did not specify other means by which copyright to those materials that were not in the public domain came to be owned by GSA, but there are any number of means through which the government acquires copyrighted text, primarily purchase or donations of collections, or by commissioning private authors to produce such text.
Regarding Feist, the key to that case was that the organization of facts (specifically names and telephone numbers) in the phone book required no creativity, including selectivity. While each GSA description, like any non-fiction work, is a collection of facts, the GSA has exercised great selectivity in deciding which facts about its buildings to present, and which to withhold; and it has presented those facts in prose which required more than a modicum of creativity, which is all that is required under U.S. copyright law. To the extent that any of the materials from the GSA historic buildings collection may have been authored by private individuals, such material is undoubtedly subject to copyright protection, which extends to the creation of derivative works based on those materials. bd2412T 12:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Created status table on project To Do list--Pubdog (talk) 11:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Excellent work! bd2412T 20:04, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks ... from all the subsequent work you've done, it looks like I've not done this quite right. Please advise.
It's no big deal. The purpose of putting the materials in project space was so that they could be finished there and then moved to mainspace. Since I did some work on them before, I am merging in the edit histories for compliance with the GFDL. For future reference, that is how those that are left should proceed. Also, it is my understanding that for article titles, "United States" should be spelled out, and courthouses that have been renamed for someone should be listed under their current name. Cheers! bd2412T 02:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining. I'm afraid I didn't understand that process, but now it is clear. Sorry to have to put you to all the extra work. As you can see, opened discussion about use of U.S., esp in re: my previous articles on NRHP Post Offices.--Pubdog (talk) 11:00, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Hello BD2412! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 22 of the articles that you created are tagged as Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring these articles up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 936 article backlog. Once the articles are adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the list:
I've scoped this out a little. I think it would not be too difficult to scrape all the articles from the NGE site and import them into the WikiProject Georgia namespace as temporary pages. I'm not as comfortable with importing them directly into the article namespace without human review, because NGE uses different naming conventions than we do and it will not be a simple task to identify whether an existing Wikipedia article on the same topic exists (although in some cases I can make an educated guess). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
I tend to agree, but I think it will be easy enough for me to compile a list of articles suitable for direct importation. With respect to their convention on human names, if the dates in parentheses can be eliminated from the titles, we should be okay. bd2412T 17:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Will you want to import the images that many (most?) articles display? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:06, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
At the moment, that is a trickier issue. The NGE owns its articles but not its images, although some of its images (particularly those provided by the state of Georgia itself) are in the public domain. For example, in their article on Right Whales, there are two images, both of which can be expanded in a window that shows licensing information; the first is from the Georgia Department of Economic Development, and is therefore in the public domain. The second is from Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, a private institution, and so is privately owned. Ideally, I'd like to sweep up all the PD images, but this throws in an additional level of complexity. bd2412T 22:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
I was hoping for an unequivocal "no," but that will do. :-) Anyway, User:R'n'B/NGE test is now up. This is a first, fairly simple, attempt at matching NGE article titles to Wikipedia titles. Your input as to ways to improve the results would be welcome. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:15, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that there are a few dozen match-ups to disambig titles. bd2412T 03:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Added a separate column for disambig page matches. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Well done. I notice that most of these are human name disambigs. Perhaps we can match the existing birth/death dates in the NGE parens against the birth/death cats of the ambiguously named persons? The rest we'll have to do by hand. bd2412T 18:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm going to forward this to the NGE folks, as we are pretty close to settling on a set of guinea pig articles. Mind if I move it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state) space? bd2412T 22:07, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Go right ahead. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:51, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I just noticed that the list of federal courthouses in Ohio doesn't have the former Zanesville courthouse. Nyttend (talk) 00:48, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
We have currently rounded up about half of the 600+ current and former federal courthouses in the U.S. - this is very much a work in progress. bd2412T 03:36, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Completely. I probably clicked the rollback button by accident while scrolling up my watchlist! bd2412T 17:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
naming conventions for U.S. post offices and courthouses[edit]
Hi BD2412, glad to see you have kept on developing the U.S. courthouses list and articles. The List of United States federal courthouses list-article is looking great. I'd like to ask, though, if you could pause in moves/renamings of U.S. post office and courthouse articles, in order to have a discussion on the appropriate namings. Not sure where the discussion should take place, hopefully at a naming conventions Talk page to attract the uninvolved-but-knowledgeable-about-this-kind-of-topic editors. It comes up for me because User:Pubdog brought up the subject at my talk page just now (User talk:Doncram#U.S. vs United States, and I already had it on my To-Do list to try to organize some discussion about post office names in particular (still showing at User talk:Doncram#Conformance of Post Office articles from some time ago). I haven't fully focussed on it yet, just now, but i think the issues include when to spell out U.S. to United States and how disambiguating phrases should be done, when to move to a specific altho less-used/uncommon name for a given site, and maybe more. I would invite Pubdog and User:Daniel Case (who has done a lot of post office articles and i think is an advocate of spelling stuff out fully perhaps like you) to participate. Would that be okay, and if so where? Note it is not just about courthouses that is your domain, but also about many post offices that do not have any courthouse associations. Also i know you know that i work on NRHP articles, but you may not know that i did a whole lot of NRHP disambiguating, including setting up massive U.S. Post Office disambiguation page, and I have thot about naming conventions and disambiguation a good deal. --doncram (talk) 02:16, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I'll be glad to participate in the discussion, but the renaming is part of a larger scheme of history merges. I only have a dozen or so articles to go, and can always move them back if consensus develops in that direction. bd2412T 02:22, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Since this building is no longer a post office, should the name be changed? Or does it go with what the NRHP names it. CTJF83chat 03:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Does it have a modern official name? If it's known as the United States Post Office and Court House, and has not been formally renamed, I'd leave it at that. bd2412T 03:51, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm actually not sure, I'll drive by tomorrow and see. CTJF83chat 04:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
That's the advantage of living in Davenport. bd2412T 05:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Engraved in the building it says post office, but the sign out front doesn't. We can leave it as post office I guess (even though it isn't.) CTJF83chat 21:01, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I uploaded a new pic, should the old one be deleted, or just left alone, because it's free? CTJF83chat 21:37, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I'd say leave it at the current title - it's engraved, after all! Regarding the image, I think it would be fine to have both in the article (with the old one perhaps on the left side, as it shows a slightly different perspective). No reason to delete a PD image. Cheers! bd2412T 22:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I forgot to say "thanks." So Thanks! 2,000+ high-quality articles are a great improvement to WP. I still think that we should encourage them to explicitly move to CC-BY-SA at their site, but the exact machanics are much less important than The actual article incorporation, however it is done. -Arch dude (talk) 03:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi! I saw your note about the New Georgia Ency. on the Village Pump. I'd like to put a note about it in the Signpost -- can you give me anymore information about how this project got started, etc? Thanks!! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 07:33, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Sure. I came across the NGE in mid-December while researching a Georgia native for whom a federal courthouse was named (for the List of United States federal courthouses). I submitted a comment to the contact address on the NGE website indicating that Wikipedia would be interested in hosting their content if they would be willing to release it under the appropriate license - which, I pointed out, would enable their materials to be updated by the entire world, and would likely give much greater exposure to their project. About a week later, I was contacted by Jamil S. Zainaldin, President of the Georgia Humanities Council, who is a believer in Wikipedia's potential and was receptive to the idea. We had a series of conversations and telephone conferences with other principals of the NGE, and ultimately agreed to the test release of ten articles, which is currently underway (and for which we could certainly use some help). If this effort succeeds, as it should, then the NGE will release all 2,200 of its articles for our use, and hopefully we can use this as a model to persuade similar publications to follow suit. Cheers! bd2412T 15:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
The NGE released an eleventh article over the weekend, so I updated it to reflect that. Otherwise, all is well. Thanks! bd2412T 03:46, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
