User talk:Stephen Ewen

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Revision as of 17:55, 31 December 2007 by imported>Stephen Ewen (→‎Another copyright query: :See again. That's ought suffice. ~~~~)
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Hourglass drawing.svg Where Steve lives it is approximately: 10:38

NOTE: If you ask me a question on a point of policy and so forth and someone else replies, you can assume the reply is accurate unless I add a comment after a day or so. Stephen Ewen 21:07, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

*Category:Help requests


CZ Photography pages

Hey, remember your idea about that? Well, I just uploaded a really cool photo of some macaws that I found on flickr and while I was filling out the template, the author's name struck me as familiar. I did a search and sure enough, it was the same person who took the lead photo for the article about the Tío.

I'm starting to think that photography pages would be really good to have, both as a way to draw in people like Mr. Jason Devitt and as a way to point users to sources of really good images. Did that conversation ever go anywhere? --Joe Quick 15:54, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

It has not gone anywhere, except that the EIC said that upon first view he thought it was a great idea. Let's do what it takes to refine the idea and move it forward!  :-) Stephen Ewen 17:10, 21 October 2007 (CDT)
Okay. I finished two papers today and have another one to write for Wednesday, but I should be able to pitch in this weekend or next week.
BTW, do you see any beans in this picture? It looks like just corn and squash to me. --Joe Quick 20:54, 22 October 2007 (CDT)
I see no beans. :-( Stephen Ewen 21:05, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

access to test wiki

How do I get access to that? --Robert W King 19:52, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

Replied off-wiki. Stephen Ewen 19:55, 21 October 2007 (CDT)
Do you know where index.php is located on the server? --Robert W King 16:49, 23 October 2007 (CDT)
No. Eric might be able to help. Stephen Ewen 17:26, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Flickr images

Regarding this: 1.) "Berat" is the name of the province where the church illustrated is found and the title of the image, not a pseudonym. 2.) The image was first published at http://www.beerscooter.co.uk (the UK), and then at flickr (the US). Hope this is enough! --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 21:30, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

P.S. Please forgive any mistakes; I am new here ;-) --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 21:33, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

No worries.  :-) Well, except all photos at http://www.beerscooter.co.uk are hosted at flickr and hyperlinked into the U.K. page. There is no evidence of this photo even existing now at the U.K. site. Neither is there evidence of it existing there since it was first indexed by The Internet Archive http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.beerscooter.co.uk from it's first crawling in Aug 13, 2004 to now. Kindly re-add the U.S. as the country first published in unless there is some evidence I am missing. This info is important for far into the future in determining when the photo will enter the public domain. Stephen Ewen 22:08, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

Oh. Well, thank you for your help, and sorry for the mistake. Happy editing! --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 08:12, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

That's pretty cool

Stephen, Stephen--he's our man...

If he can't do it, no one can!

(Now all we need is the date) Aleta Curry 22:55, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

advice please?

Greetings!

I left a note on Larry Sanger's page. but since you are online, and we so kind as to fix my wpauthor tag, maybe I could ask your advice too.

I wrote a note here, in forum-space, concerning porting, and adapting to citizendium's standards GFDL material that was largely written by me on the wikipedia.

How do I find out if it would be welcome here?

Cheers! George Swan 17:11, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

Hi George. http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:How_to_convert_Wikipedia_articles_to_Citizendium_articles is pretty much all you need. Any questions just let me know. Stephen Ewen 17:51, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

Photo rights query

Joe Quick asked me the following: As far as photos go, it looks like everything is copyrighted, which makes sense, since so few people have actually been given access to the bones. It looks like most of the news services have been making still images from the 3d moveable image here and I really like the shot of the scientists leaning over the skeleton here - do you think we could use them under fair use? --Joe Quick 17:51, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

I think this is more of a constabulary question than an editorial one?

Lee R. Berger 02:09, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Copyright violations are a constabulary issue. Fair use is not a settled matter at CZ but it is a good bet we will take an overall rather conservative approach to it. Generally, we want to avoid fair use as much as possible, and when it is invoked it should be neccesary for an article and well-justified. Beyond certain categories of use that are very safely fair use, determining uses beyond them should primarily be an issue for media specialists and editors to decide under policy guidelines (just like it is in meatspace), in my view.
The best way forward in the instant case is to first try to find free images that would adequately substitute for the fully copyrighted ones. Absent that, try to find out the provenance of the fully copyrighted images and seek the neccessary permissions, while keeping records of each of those efforts. Sometimes it is as easy as an email, sometimes not. If those measures fail, then place the issue of fair use on the table for consideration.
Stephen Ewen 02:28, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
In this particular case, there simply aren't any free images and there aren't likely to be any made any time soon. Only a few dozen people have ever even seen the skeleton. Use by permission is an option, but considering the politics around Kennewick Man, I think the article should be approvable before we go asking around. Fair use was my short-term solution to brightening up the article. Should we just hold off until the article (which is currently being reworked somewhat) is in good shape? --Joe Quick 02:54, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
I think the best strategy is to start the by permission ball rolling now, mentioning that the images will not be placed in the article until it is complete and approved. Stephen Ewen 03:32, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
BTW, what's your email nowadays? I got a bounce-back. Send me one. Stephen Ewen 03:35, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Also, can you show me an example or two of a news service using a still of the 3D figure and the bones? That'll help unravel this. If they are using small still under fair use, that bolsters tings. The info at the WP page is not helpful in this regard. Stephen Ewen 03:42, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

The most straightforward place to find images and get permission to use images of the sculpture is from Dan McCool http://www.coolbreezephotography.com. See the bottom of the page and images here. Stephen Ewen 04:23, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Also, see this. They apparently have been given non-exclusive rights to reproduce the sculpture, given the language they use. They may be quite willing to let us use a few images in exchange for those bargaining chips of credit lines in articles and links to their site on the image upload page. How about this? I'll take that any day under by permission terms over a tiny screenshot under fair use that's the same as WP.  :-) Stephen Ewen 04:31, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
The connection to Dan McCool isn't immediately obvious to me but that big shot would be good. I wonder if any of those bronze sculptures have ever sold... --Joe Quick 04:40, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Oh, probably some have sold. They'd have not gone into the costs without knowledge of a market.
Clearly, McCool was given access to the materials by the gallery so he could take photographs. (BTW, this means the fair use claim at WP is null and the image would be deleted if certain elements were informed of this, but I am not going there).
Given all the above, here is where I would become comfortable with a fair use claim over the sculpture in the article. See http://www.triartgallery.com/download/KennewickManBrochure.pdf and consider how it and similar materials might be used. This sculpting seems very clearly important--very, very clearly so. Include an entire section, at least a few paragraphs about the sculpting of Kennewick Man by Chatters and McClelland including criticisms of it (yes they exist, even if only because it looks like Captain Jean-Luc Picard), and a fair use claim depicting their clay sculpture (this one, just slightly shrunk) would become strong, in my view. And note how requiring a strong fair use claim would add significant value to this article--the whole field of modeling figures from remains is quite, quite controversial, and this is, in fact, a certain instance of art and its artists and their genre that we would be discussing and commenting on. But to just illustrate the article as lede image, I'd say no, no way, not under fair use. Stephen Ewen 05:14, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Sounds about right. Do you have any interest in writing that section? I'm getting a little burned out on this subject and I still need to finish up the "subsequent investigations" section. There's a pretty good description of the modeling process on the NOVA site linked from the external links page. --Joe Quick 17:38, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Yea, let's be very clear about what it with probably 99% probability means that the AP is selling images of that clay figure photo. Whoever holds rights to it has given non-exclusive rights to the AP to reproduce it, like they probably gave them to triartgallery.com. That's a good chunck of dough the copyright holder was paid. This means there is an active and financially-rewarding market for such images for the copyright holder and, because of that, one had better be very darned sure about their fair use claim when using it under such. Stephen Ewen 06:27, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the tips

Thanks for your edit summary tips in the images I recently uploaded, I'll try and remember them next time. Regards --Russ McGinn 12:45, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Image talk:Coat of Arms of Angola.gif

Great idea; I'm working on it right now. I'll let you know when it's finished. Happy editing! --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 19:22, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks. BTW, regarding this, I do :-) Thank you very much! --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 22:08, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Done. Please check it and feel free to edit it. Happy editing! --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 22:23, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Cool! I really appreciate your help with this stuff! Stephen Ewen 22:26, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Tracing contributions

Hi Steve,

How do I trace the contributions of an author. What I'm trying to do is to see when, where and to what extent a student has contributed not only to their own article but to other articles.

Lee R. Berger 01:13, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Just navigate to that student's userpage. On the left of the page in the toolbox there will be a link, User contributions. That tells the whole story. Click on the link there diff and you can see precisely each contribution. Stephen Ewen 01:15, 28 October 2007 (CDT)
For example, see this diff. :-) Stephen Ewen 01:17, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Question

Hi Stephen, I still don't quite understand the notion of approved pages. I put a question here. Could you please have a look at it? Thank you in advance. --Paul Wormer 03:11, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

Reply is at Talk:Chemistry/Draft#Please_explain_draft_principle. Stephen Ewen 04:04, 29 October 2007 (CDT)
  • Stephen, thank you for your lightning response. So, if I may interpret your answer: After some authors (including myself) have made some changes to the draft of an approved article, it is up to one(?) editor (or one contributing author?) to decide that time is ready for the next release. When the time is ripe, we signal you and you will take care of the release. Do I understand the procedure correctly now?
Another thing, Pieter Kuiper asked here why the history of the approved article has vanished. I'm interested in the answer as well, so when you put a reply on that talk page, I appreciate that too. Thank you again, --Paul Wormer 03:40, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

You have it close.

Anyone may prod approval of an article. Authors do that by contacting a relevant area editor who has not contributed significantly to the article. The editor will then review the article, and if he or she feels it meets muster, can nominate it for approval. How editors deal with approval depends upon two factors: 1) whether they have contributed significantly to the text; or, 2) have not. In the case of #1, they follow the same procedure as authors do: they contact an editor to nominate the article for approval. In the case of #2, they simply act themselves to nominate the article for approval. Additional editors may "sign on" to the approval. See CZ:The_Editor_Role and CZ:Approval_Process#Who_may_approve for more complete explanations.

Constables don't approve articles. They serve others to do their role(s) effectively. The constable's role in approval is only to do the mechanics of approval, i.e., placing templates and locking pages in response to the approval process as lead by editors.

That initially sounds a bit complex, but it is really easy. Basically, if you wrote significantly, another editor does the approval; if not, you do the approval. A constable formalizes it by placing templates and locking pages.

Stephen Ewen 04:04, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

  • Yes, I understand that part of the procedure now, but my specific concern was not release 1.0, but release 1.1 (or even release 2.0) of an approved article. Do we go through the same steps and have to prod one or more non-involved editors again for a new release, even if the changes are minor? --Paul Wormer 04:33, 29 October 2007 (CDT)
How minor? If we are talking mere typos or grammatical issues, I can just step in and correct them in the current approved article. Just says what needs doing. If it regards actual content, however, yes, it needs to go through the process. If the changes are minor, however, it goes quicker. Stephen Ewen 04:40, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

Tilden pic

Hey, great! I was *wondering* where that came from! We just gotta find other PD pix! What about that old Brit cartoon of Ray Casey that we discussed *months* ago? The Daily Mail never replied, I take it. Can I send them another email, this time *copying* the damn thing, just to prove that we tried, and then reinsert it? You deleted it, as I recall, but you said that it would be easy to reinstate it. And there have got to be a *ton* of PD Australian pix, since the copyright on them is only 50 years.... Hayford Peirce 18:23, 30 October 2007 (CDT)

I've not forgotten Hayford, I'll get to this. :-) Stephen Ewen 02:46, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

Picture Cauchy

Hi Stephen, right now I'm working on Augustin-Louis Cauchy. I found a nice picture:

http://www.universalis.fr/corpus_media.php?mref=PH020402

Could I use it? Thank you, --Paul Wormer 09:32, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

PS The same picture is here:

http://www.sci-museum.kita.osaka.jp/~saito/scientist/math/cauchy.JPG

and here (where there is some Italian talk about the licence):

http://campusvirtual.unex.es/cala/epistemowikia/index.php?title=Imagen:Cauchy.jpg

Another picture (an older Cauchy) (here Library of Congress is mentioned as licence holder):

http://www.answers.com/topic/augustin-louis-cauchy?cat=technology

Reply
^^ This is absurdibly hilarious. --Robert W King 02:22, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

Stephen Ewen 22:26, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

http://www.universalis.fr/corpus_media.php?mref=PH020402 says "Lithographie de Jules Boilly, 1821." It should then be in the public domain. --06:35, 1 November 2007 (CDT)
Yes, the lithograph is, but what about the reproduction of it? French law allows copyright on "photographic works and works produced by techniques analogous to photography". I don't know if that would cover a lithograph. I do know the image there credits it to Jacques Boyer / Roger-Viollet, and examples of their copyrighted works of old works in France can be seen here. Lacking data, knowledge of how that stipulation in French law would apply to a lithograph, and a date of the reproduction of the lithograph, it is presumptuous to say we can just nab the image of it and tag it PD. Stephen Ewen 17:30, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

Here is the Roger-Viollet source of the image if you'd like to find out what they have to say: http://www.parisenimages.fr/en/terms-of-use-for-the-pictures.html Stephen Ewen 18:28, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

RE: Careful....

I really do not understand why the image was deleted. It is impossible for the image to be copyrighted, as the author of the painting, Hyacinthe Rigaud, died in 1743, and the droit d'auteur (French copyright law - English translation can be found here) says that proprietary rights expire 70 years after the author's death. If you can explain to me why that image is still protected by copyright laws, I will accept your decision. --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 20:42, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

Yes, rights to the painting are long expired. Not to all photographs of it, however. France is not like the U.S. in that way, as best I can tell. See for example the photo shown by Louvre Museum, who also holds the original painting. We have to make sure the photo originates with someone who published their own photo in the U.S.; then, the photo will be PD because "slavish copies" of PD works cannot be copyrighted in the U.S. We have no clue from where the image at the Commons was obtained. Stephen Ewen 20:52, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Well, then I should probably delete that image at the Commons, too :-) Sorry for the trouble; the new image is better, anyway. --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 20:57, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Few in the whole category there are sourced. Stephen Ewen 21:05, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Hmm... quite true. Check back in a few days; It'll be very different ;-) --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 21:14, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Also see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:When_to_use_the_PD-Art_tag#Country-specific_rules on France. Stephen Ewen 21:32, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Commons:When_to_use_the_PD-Art_tag isn't respected at the Wikimedia Commons. Whenever somebody tries to open a deletion request because of it, the request is closed as a kept because of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. --Kjetil Ree 06:39, 1 November 2007 (CDT)
And of course, Bridgeman does not apply to photos originating outside of the U.S. And too, this would explain why they are hosting these images without sourcing. To place the true source would probably in most cases be to say "this is infringement," rather than leaving it to implication. Stephen Ewen 12:26, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

I probably should have been a little slower

I think I just spammed the server with uploads. --Robert W King 21:31, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

Wow! You worked some magic with Image:Louis XIV by Rigaud, 1701, Louvre (cropped).jpg! Stephen Ewen 21:42, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
The problem was that the picture somehow captures the texture of the canvas and the color burn gradient wasn't having a fantastic time adjusting, so I had to really put some extreme adjustment on it. --Robert W King 21:47, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
What program(s) did you use? Stephen Ewen 21:53, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
The bestest free program there is, http://www.getpaint.net/ --Robert W King 21:54, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Ah, I use that too - unlike Adobe, I can actually figure out Paint.net, relatively so. Stephen Ewen 21:59, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

Assistance

I have a picture I'm uploading from a flickr user, with whom I got permission to use the photo from. I haven't done this process before so I may need some backup. --Robert W King 18:40, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

I'll hit an RBI if you don't hit a grand slam. :-) Stephen Ewen 18:45, 1 November 2007 (CDT)
I think I got everything. Can you double check? --Robert W King 18:49, 1 November 2007 (CDT)
Can you protect the following pages? :

--Robert W King 15:24, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

Done. Stephen Ewen 16:19, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

BTW, unless a photo is of such quality that a polite person should not have the gall, you might go ahead and first ask the flickr folk if they'd release the photo "under a Creative Commons license, the freer the better". Stephen Ewen 16:36, 2 November 2007 (CDT)
Normally, I would have but I went through thousands of photos with the tags of "bowling shirt", and that was an archetype of what I could consider one to be, without having people looking goofy in it. Additionally with the backstroke series of photos, I wanted something showing process. --Robert W King 16:39, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

Uploading photos

I am sooooo not attempting to crop/fix photos anymore (pace, Rob King). Cropped and uploaded to acer palmatum. First, it was so incredibly fiddly, took forever, everything is now blurry and I'm seeing stars, if my husband finds out for how long I was running the generator doing this I'm dead, but anyway I gave it a go to be a good sport but man, this just isn't my thing. Exhausted. Going to make tea. And, p.s., I made the page look a mess, to boot. Hate taxoboxes. Hate formatting. Hate everything! (except just writing) And MC and SC. And you guys. I don't hate you. Aleta Curry 22:59, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

It looks fine. BTW, since the resolution on these images is small and the licensing not free, and there is easy availability of similar photos in both higher resolution and under a free license, you should expect them to be replaced sooner or later. Stephen Ewen 23:11, 2 November 2007 (CDT)
BTW, nice to know I ain't the only one who's lived places without normal power provisions. :-) Stephen Ewen 23:18, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

French

Why not. Have you any model (in English) you used so far? If so it'd certainly help if you mailed me one. Aleksander Stos 02:48, 4 November 2007 (CST)

I do. See CZ:Media_Assets_Workgroup/Example_permission_request_letters. However, something less formal and more brief may be in order in this case, although I'm not sure. Stephen Ewen 02:55, 4 November 2007 (CST)
Thanks! I'm sending a mail. Actually I'm mailing here (see the bottom 2 lines) since I had impression the link you suggested was provided for a hard copy service (I might be wrong here, we'll see). BTW, do you go to sleep from time to time ;) ? Aleksander Stos 08:05, 4 November 2007 (CST)
I've never required much sleep. :D We don't need a hardcopy of the image, digital is completely fine. Stephen Ewen 11:40, 4 November 2007 (CST)
Stephen operates by flex-sleep. --Robert W King 13:08, 4 November 2007 (CST)
By the way, if you translated CZ:Media_Assets_Workgroup/Example_permission_request_letters into French, do upload it there! Stephen Ewen 11:42, 4 November 2007 (CST)
Well, I uploaded a text (not a translation). Unfotunately, with no accents -- my old notebook is still anglo-saxon ;) -- but better this than nothing. BTW, a google translation of the sentence "vet articles for accuracy and..." produces "veterinaire de la precision", that is "precise veterinarian" :) Aleksander Stos 13:39, 4 November 2007 (CST)

Subpagatebot malfunctions

subpagation bot eliminated all WP-tags it encountered, and is still doing it. Please halt is operation. Thanks. Yi Zhe Wu 10:38, 4 November 2007 (CST)

Thanks, Yi. The Bot has been blocked till this issue is fixed. Stephen Ewen 13:22, 4 November 2007 (CST)
Thanks, how is it now? Yi Zhe Wu 16:08, 4 November 2007 (CST)
It's been blocked for now, till the issue is fixed. Stephen Ewen 16:23, 4 November 2007 (CST)

Learning curve (I first typed "curse")

I gotta say that for me, at least, it is not at all "slight" -- in fact the contrary: baffling, with sheer brute force, determination, and repetition enabling me to *perhaps* overcome some of the obstacles. But, of course, I said that about MS-DOS back in 1984.... (On the other hand, I haven't changed my mind about that, hehe!) Anyway, I think I'm getting there, although some things still leave me puzzled. Hayford Peirce 22:32, 5 November 2007 (CST)

One puzzle

I see in the gallery for Bolognese sauce that all of the individual pictures have, if I go into it deep enough, the CC-picture thingee. But none of this shows up in the individual pictures shown in the gallery. There's no indication to the casual viewer that I am the CC or A of each picture.... (Not that I care, I'm just curious.) Hayford Peirce 22:32, 5 November 2007 (CST)

CZ's image goals

I take it that CZ's ultimate goal is to ensure that *each* and *every* image shown in an article has an attributable CC or A showing above the caption lines? And that each picture, if one digs deep enough, will give precise info about where this picture originated? Worthy goals, of course. And a lot of work for *you*! Hayford Peirce 22:32, 5 November 2007 (CST)

It is EASY. See your talk page. Stephen Ewen 22:34, 5 November 2007 (CST)

Cauchy again

Hi Stephen, I found a slightly nicer (straighter) title page of one of Cauchy's textbooks here: [1]

I'm prepared to write all sorts of licence info in the image file, but in the article I find it overdone. After all, every university math library has these collected works on the shelf, and scanning a page is as much work as copying it (less than a few minutes). Could we not use some very short abridged licence formulation to put in the caption of the figure? --Paul Wormer 04:02, 6 November 2007 (CST)

That's completely simple. It is Openlibrary.org who provided the media to us in usable form, right? You thus credit Openlibrary.org. You'd add {{PD-image|Openlibrary.org}} to the credit template. On the actual image upload page, you add as much info as you reasonably can, placing yourself in the shoes of one who finds the image at CZ 15+ years from now and who will want to know as much about it as they can know. I'd definitely add the info at the "details" link from the link you provided and that you obtained it from http://www.openlibrary.org/details/oeuvresdaugusti203caucrich. Stephen Ewen 04:31, 6 November 2007 (CST)

template creation

Hi, Steve, I did go to the Pine image and, as you say, it now looks a LOT easier! I think the HARD part, at least for me, was to get me to push that damn red button with the check mark in it in the first place. Maybe if you could move it out of the lefthand MARGIN and somehow set it right in the middle of the screen, below the previous steps, with big bold letters saying something like: NOW, THE FINAL STEP -- PUSH THIS DAMN RED BUTTON!!!! IF YOU DON'T THE PICTURE WON'T BE DONE CORRECTLY!!!! And maybe, when you get to page of the UPLOAD FILE on the left margin, at the very top you could rewrite things to say: "Uploading a pic in CZ is a little different from the WP process. We need to do TWO things to make it successful: 1.) Upload the picture itself 2.) THEN, before this process is finished, create a TEMPLATE that will be essential for future smooth running of CZ. The template creation is semi-automatic -- just upload your picture (following the easy instructions below), then follow the additional instructions to create the template -- and you'll be done!!!"

On the other hand, although I'm somewhat better about it than some of my friends, I've got a little bit of resistance to the JRTFM approach to things. Of course, I've developed this in part because I've learned over the years that so many F Manuals are almost worst than not reading them.... Hayford Peirce 11:10, 6 November 2007 (CST)

Oh, but there is a pay-off for users too in terms of ease-of-use! Note: the template makes the code to places the image you uploaded! Stephen Ewen 13:28, 6 November 2007 (CST)
Well, yeah, but you gotta get dummies like me to do it correctly in the first place! In any case, I'll be uploading at least one picture tomorrow, so I'll be able to try things out from scratch....Hayford Peirce 14:02, 6 November 2007 (CST)
If it makes you feel any better, I had to type an envelope some time ago. The overly busy secretary pointed me to the typewriter, pleading mercy with her eyes as if to say Would you do it yourself? Please? So I sat at the contraption. I suddenly became stumped. So what do I do with THIS thing? :-D Stephen Ewen 14:33, 6 November 2007 (CST)
A couple of years ago I was in an enormous store of old LP records looking for something or other. I came across an old LP of Samoan music for a couple of bucks and brought it home as a surprise for my Samoan GF. Her eyes lit up as she held up the record and examined it. Then she said, "But what do I *do* with it?"Hayford Peirce 14:41, 6 November 2007 (CST)
Ha! Ah, island life. BTW, I actually do remember when 8-track tapes were an improvement to the LP. :-)
Well, we were in Tucson, but wherever we were, it would be a question of *age* -- she'd never really seen a phonograph in operation. In any case, I just uploaded a new photo into Bolognese sauce and your template worked perfectly and easily. Thanks, and congratulations!

Keep in mind you don't even have to make the code to place an uploaded image into an article. The template on the image upload page creates it for you. Copy, paste. :-) Stephen Ewen 11:58, 7 November 2007 (CST)

Righto, I'll try to remember! Hayford Peirce 12:55, 7 November 2007 (CST)

Italian language

Hello, User:Hayford Peirce has pointed me your way. I imported the above from WP to put around my stub, which was the part of it that I wanted to preserve differently from WP. I then had to remove a lot of unused templates - but I haven't a clue about how to do that in the infobox. Please help! - Ro Thorpe 17:21, 6 November 2007 (CST)

Do you want the infobox template or no? If so, you have more importing to do, namely, template subpages from the source of the template, see the bottom of the page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_Language. Stephen Ewen 17:37, 6 November 2007 (CST)

Irish language .svg image

Thanks for re-uploading this. However, I have found through a test page - Irish language/test that it doesn't shrink the picture - we just get a big chunk of north-west Ireland. So still some gremlins... John Stephenson 01:19, 7 November 2007 (CST)

there's something wrong with my last article

Portuguese pork stew with clams (ameijoas con carne de porco à alentejana) has an extraneous metadata template line across the top of the text that I can't get rid of -- I musta done something wrong while creating the article, sigh. I think I'll just go back to chiseling letters into stones.... Hayford Peirce 12:55, 7 November 2007 (CST)

9/11

Update on 9-11 Attack: as you were involved with the discussion of the apparent bias in the 'immediate response' section, please see the Talk page and this edit - the old paragraph was put back in by Richard Jensen (Guiliani="brilliant" etc.). John Stephenson 03:26, 8 November 2007 (CST)

Telephone newspaper fork at Wikipedia

Stephen -- I was the opening (and closing) admin in the AfD at Wikipedia concerning the potential copyright issues in Citizendium forks - just wanted to thank you for adding your input. I've deleted all relevant material from the edit histories for the time being.

If you think to, please let me know how the license discussion here turns out, as I won't be able to monitor it at the present time. I'm sure the issue could arise again in the future.

On an unrelated note, this is the first encounter I've had with Citizendium, and it looks promising. Several months ago I cut way back on my time spent at Wikipedia, primarily over the same issues that seem to have led to the creation of this encyclopedia -- that there's no system in place to create articles which can be academically credible. The open source concept has created something great in Wikipedia, but its also been the source of its problems. It looks like the right balance may have been struck here.

Thanks again. Brendan R. Ross 00:22, 9 November 2007 (CST)

Hope to see you around! Stephen Ewen 23:22, 10 November 2007 (CST)

Defective gallery

President of the United States of America/Gallery appears to be in gross defective condition. Can you take a look? Thanks! Yi Zhe Wu 15:06, 10 November 2007 (CST)

Hey, that might be just great transformed into a Catalog along the line of Tennis/Catalogs/Famous players! Let me know if you wanna do it and what facts you think should be included about each president. We can adapt the tennis template for the president's gallery. Each president would have a thumb image like some of the tennis players have. What do you think? Stephen Ewen 23:21, 10 November 2007 (CST)
BTW, we can coordinate on getting the missing images if you want, by order of president or something. I'm positive we can fill each gap. Stephen Ewen 23:25, 10 November 2007 (CST)
I hope to have Commonist hacked in a week or so for use with CZ. We could test it for this. :-) Stephen Ewen 23:27, 10 November 2007 (CST)
Hey Stephen Ewen, thanks. But when I originally posted this request on your talk page, I was not worrying about missing images (they are just not yet uploaded yet), but rather a defective mechanism of {{mixed_gallery}}, as seen in this version, with all the space gaps and malformations. Was it a template error or anything else? Thanks! Yi Zhe Wu 09:09, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Edits to Tecum Umam

Hey Steve, thanks for your input, but I'm not sure moving the conclusion to the lead is really a good idea. For one, it makes the opening horribly redundant. But it also means that the article ends really abruptly, which is what I was trying to avoid by writing the conclusion. What are your thoughts? --Joe Quick 22:49, 10 November 2007 (CST)

Well, its redundant whether in the beginning or end, it's not really "encyclopedia" form to have a conclusion, its okay to end encyclopedia articles abruptly, and info about him being real or mythical is really important and I think needs to be in the lede. He-he, but I'm not gonna edit war about it.  :-D Stephen Ewen 22:57, 10 November 2007 (CST)
But don't you want us both to get kicked out for edit warring? Oops, was that a flamebait? Oh my...
You're right about putting the bit about whether he is real in the lede, of course, but it comes off as a little patronizing the way it's written if one hasn't already read the rest of the article. I guess I'll see what I can do about de-redundizing and un-patronating. --Joe Quick 23:07, 10 November 2007 (CST)

DSM criteria - Know you're busy - READ THIS!!!

Stephen...thanks for you input on this. Check my response]]. :)

Blessings... --Michael J. Formica 08:23, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Question about a picture I took

Stephen, I went to the National Gallery of Art yesterday, and I went to an exhibit for Edward Hopper (the guy who did the "Nighthawks" painting). In the actual exhibit, I stealthily took a picture painted by Hopper of himself. I say "stealthily" because the exhibit said no photography. Under what conditions would I be allowed to use the photo? --Robert W King 10:42, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Email me the photo to see, this is easier to deal with on concrete terms. Stephen Ewen 12:42, 11 November 2007 (CST)
On it's way. --Robert W King 12:43, 11 November 2007 (CST)
I know we're all busy in various capacities but I was wondering if you had an update on this... I had sent it to your gmail address, thinking not to send you the same attachments twice. --Robert W King 20:55, 13 November 2007 (CST)
Not yet. Still thinkin'. Stephen Ewen 20:57, 13 November 2007 (CST)

On a seperate note

I've thought about it, and The upload_wizard.png graphic is one of the worst I've seen in a long itme. Can I make something new?--Robert W King 20:29, 11 November 2007 (CST)

By all means, please do. You can redesign layout, etc, too! Stephen Ewen 20:40, 11 November 2007 (CST)
Gif format, with transparency
png format, just for you (even though I abhor it.)

Let me know what you think of either of these. The transparency doesn't apparently work. Dunno why, will figure out later, but let me know otherwise. --Robert W King 23:54, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Ah, crap, someone apparently killed the Wizard for now. I don't know why. :-( Images look cool! Stephen Ewen 00:32, 12 November 2007 (CST)
Yipee! It's back. :-) See the Wizard now. Stephen Ewen 01:15, 12 November 2007 (CST)
Dead again. Must be a cache issue. Stephen Ewen 01:36, 12 November 2007 (CST)
I think I might know what the problem is; I painted the background white, instead of erasing it, therefore there's no area that it knows to calculate alpha transparency, which means I'd have to go in there and erase pixels again. --Robert W King 08:09, 12 November 2007 (CST)

Thanks

Stephen - I appreciate the tidy up you did on my 'User Page'. You now have my email too. aladin Aladin 08:52, 13 November 2007 (CST)

Waldo article approval

I saw your note about this. I just checked with the Visual Arts Workgroup. There are only 3 Editors. One, Mons. Petit, has not contributed since Aug. One has *never* contributed. The third made one contribution back in April. So I don't think this approval project will go very far.... Hayford Peirce 16:53, 13 November 2007 (CST)

That's what they said about Symphony. Sometime ya just gotta prod with an email. Stephen Ewen 16:55, 13 November 2007 (CST)
Well, I s'pose.... What do I say? "The Waldo Peirce article is apparently finished, has a lot of references, etc., and some people feel that it is now ready for the approval process. Since [O Exalted] you are one of the Visual Arts editors, I wonder if you would have to the kindness to etc. etc...." Something like that? Hayford Peirce 17:02, 13 November 2007 (CST)
I've emailed one editor; the two others don't have email links, so I've left messages on their Discussion pages. Hayford Peirce 11:23, 14 November 2007 (CST)


Advertisements on CZ

Can the Constabulary please delete this article? -- http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Robert_E._Kelley_%28business%29 Thanks. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 18:26, 13 November 2007 (CST)

It does not meet (low) standard for constabulary action, in my view. 1) The poster does not appear to have any connection with the author; 2) The subject, a prof at Carnegie Mellen, has acheived some notoriety, in my view. So this is not merely self-promotion. Stephen Ewen 13:29, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Some suggested changes to MediaWiki namespace meessages

  • MediaWiki:Ipbreason-dropdown -- you may wish to remove "Abusing multiple accounts", since, as I understand it, multiple accounts are not permitted.
    • Done, and strongly CZ-ified.
  • MediaWiki:Logouttext -- implies you can edit while logged out/anonymously; you might change it to: "<strong>You are now logged out.</strong><br /> You can continue to read Citizendium without logging in, or you can [[Special:Userlogin|log in again]]. Note that some pages may continue to be displayed as if you were still logged in, until you clear your browser cache."
    • Done, as suggested.
  • MediaWiki:noarticletextanon -- implies you can edit a page without logging in; you might change it to: "There is currently no text in this page, you can [[Special:Search/{{PAGENAME}}|search for this page title]] in other pages or [[Special:Userlogin|log in]] in order to edit this page."
    • Done, as suggested, plus added a link to request an account.
  • MediaWiki:Newarticletext -- links to Help:Contents(via "[[{{MediaWiki:helppage}}|help page]]") rather than the more specific CZ:How_to_start_a_new_article
    • Done, as suggested.
  • MediaWiki:Prefs-help-email -- implies providing an email address is optional, when, as I understand it, an email address is required; you might change it to: "E-mail address is required, in order to help verify your identity and allow other Citizens to contact you privately."
    • Done, and strongly CZ-ified.
  • MediaWiki:Prefs-help-realname -- implies that real names are optional; you might change it to: "Real name is required, and should be the same as your username."
    • Done, tweaked from as suggested.
  • MediaWiki:Tooltip-pt-anonlogin & MediaWiki:Tooltip-pt-login -- imply pages can be edited by non-logged in users; you might change them to: "In order to edit pages, you must have an account."
    • Done, as suggested, plus added a link to request an account.
  • MediaWiki:Welcomecreation -- may need to be expanded with the standard CZ welcome message; maybe something from MediaWiki:Whitelistedittext.
    • I'm not sure about this one. I'll have to look at what it does more in context. So I've left it alone for now.
  • MediaWiki:requestaccount-loginnotice -- should be blanked, as it's redundant with the line that appears above it on Special:Userlogin, "Don't have an account? Get one now.", which links to the same place.
    • Blanked.

To remove any copyright issues with the above, I hereby release, and grant unlimited, worldwide permissions to anyone for any copyright claims I may have in the above text, i.e. I put my part in the public domain. (Some of it is derivative of MediaWiki defaults, which may have other licenses.)

I posted this to you as you were the most recent (after Larry, who I assumed was already plenty busy), person to edit the MediaWiki namespace. If this message would be be better sent to someone else, please pass it on to them, or let me know, and I will. Thanks for your attention. -- JesseWeinstein 03:04, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Hey, thanks Jesse, this is great! I will work my way through these tomorrow.  :-) Stephen Ewen 03:30, 14 November 2007 (CST)
Glad to be of service. Oddly enough, I like this kind of detailed fixes. JesseWeinstein 03:37, 14 November 2007 (CST)
I like how lots of little fixes add up to big. :-) Stephen Ewen 13:26, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Found another one: MediaWiki:Ipboptions is the list of lengths pre-set for blocking; since current policy says that all blocks are indefinite , that page should be changed to: "infinite:infinite". -- JesseWeinstein 04:08, 14 November 2007 (CST)

    • Gonna leave that one for now, as it may be used later.

Not to bug, but -- since it looks like you haven't had a chance to get to these: might another constable be able to? JesseWeinstein 01:38, 1 December 2007 (CST)

'Tis on my list of things to do, probably this weekend. :-) Stephen Ewen 02:03, 1 December 2007 (CST)
Okay, all done! Thanks for pointing all this out, Jesse. :-) Stephen Ewen 03:05, 4 December 2007 (CST)
Glad I could help, and thanks for getting them done. JesseWeinstein 18:08, 12 December 2007 (CST)

Culture + Magic

Stephen: with your anthropology and critical theory hat please drop by at Culture as well as Magic both of which I have made a stub start at; you would be most welcome even to make a token appearance on the talk pages therein. aladin Aladin 07:09, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Image Category "Game"

You know, it might benefit us to have some kind of "game" where a random image is presented and below there's either a textfield or a choice of radio buttons to place an image into a category. Sometimes if you present an ill task as "entertainment" it may get done more often. --Robert W King 22:18, 15 November 2007 (CST)

(also you may need to adjust the time on your talk page to reflect daylight savings.)

After a co-worker showed me http://www.freerice.com/ today and I spent 10-15 playing, I think you are on to something! Any idea how to make this? Clock fixed. Stephen Ewen 22:27, 15 November 2007 (CST)
I think part of the code is already written on the "random page", we'd need to tailor that to bring up images. Then, we integrate that into a template that brings up all the interface stuff. After that, it's a matter of figuring out the "submit" action to write the data. Also we'd have to determine if there are set categories (biology, chemistry, like we have for workgroups) or if we want to just include any freeform categories (might be bad.) Also, perhaps we could use "tags" much in the way flickr does as opposed to "categories". I'm not sure what the trade off would be.
--Robert W King 22:30, 15 November 2007 (CST)

test

--Robert W King 21:08, 16 November 2007 (CST)

That upload wizard is coming along pretty nicely.

One little problem though: you misspelled "flickr" in the text that people are supposed to copy into the edit box. And I'm not allowed to edit that text. :-( --Joe Quick 02:09, 17 November 2007 (CST)

Thanks! I'll fix it. BTW, let me know if you'd like to take on getting a section or two of it humming. We can get you developers rights for that for a while, I'm sure. Stephen Ewen 01:16, 17 November 2007 (CST)
Did you fix the typo? It still shows up incorrectly. I'm going to focus my efforts on getting the unchecklisted articles down to zero, but if by some miracle, I finish that before you finish the upload wizard, I'd be happy to pitch in. --Joe Quick 20:41, 21 November 2007 (CST)
I flixed the problem. :-) Stephen Ewen 01:40, 22 November 2007 (CST)

Series of "articles"?

Is User:Arnold Reisman pasting a book or something? --Robert W King 16:25, 17 November 2007 (CST)

Sheesh. Thanks for the alert. Stephen Ewen 16:31, 17 November 2007 (CST)
There's a couple of them, I just don't know what they're supposed to be... --Robert W King 16:33, 17 November 2007 (CST)
Weird title, too -- I saw this a while ago but thought I'd let someone else find it also.... Hayford Peirce 16:45, 17 November 2007 (CST)
IF they're supposed to be legitimate articles then they're in real need of editing, but if they're something else then it's out of my hands. Strangely when I asked that question on a talk page, Mr. Reisman undid my question. --Robert W King 16:47, 17 November 2007 (CST)
Yeah, this should be monitored. This article Einstein_the_Savior_Turkey_the_Safe_Haven apart from the weird title looks to be a complete mess and resembles a propaganda article... Hendra 22:51, 17 November 2007 (CST)
In any case, I had already restored Robert's question. Hayford Peirce 16:55, 17 November 2007 (CST)


Hi Stephen, I noticed this recently. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Logo400grbeta.png

This is my fault as I have been pretty lazy with my picture uploads and have gone with GFDL for everything. But in this case I probably should have chosen something else. I don't even know what the parent licence is for the logo. Shoudl we go through and change all these now or just wait until we know for sure what CZ is going? Chris Day (talk) 17:25, 17 November 2007 (CST)

This is something I've had in mind for some time. These logos need to be copyrighted, all rights reserved - really they ought be trademarked, just like WPs logos. I think we ought tag them all {{copyrighted}}. Stephen Ewen 17:29, 17 November 2007 (CST)
I'll deal with it at Commons. Stephen Ewen 17:33, 17 November 2007 (CST)

Article not listed

Hi Steve. I wrote the math article Denseness today and created subpages, metadata and checklist for it as well. Yet, it is not being listed in the Mathematics Workgroup list of articles, nor is it there in the list of recent changes in the Mathematics section. Would you happen to know what kind of technical glitch could be causing this? Thanks. --Hendra 04:15, 18 November 2007 (CST)

There is a bug right now where this is happening (perhaps related to daylight savings time recently?) Check in one hour and it should show. Stephen Ewen 04:19, 18 November 2007 (CST)
You should change your username to display more fully. Don't worry about your name showing up in search engines, see http://en.citizendium.org/robots.txt which blocks them from all CZ pages where it'd otherwise show up. Stephen Ewen 04:30, 18 November 2007 (CST)

Hi Steve

Hi Steve -- just catching up after a long slow road to a big presentation in London this week. Went well and my weekend is (at least in part) mine again! Thanks for your kind words about the press release I worked on. I think we should have a rough schedule to draw attention to key developments (eg milestone releases, anniversaries, new initiatives).

In the meantime, an image question -- I want to upload an image for the gay marketing article. It is for a campaign my agency created for Lufthansa and you can see an example of it here. Is it conflict of interest to do it myself? There would be other images I could try to chase but the LH one we created requires no additional permissions and it is a strong visual example for readers to see what the article discusses. Your expert advice gratefully received! --Ian Johnson 06:59, 18 November 2007 (CST)

Why of course you can upload photos you created. Please do! Stephen Ewen 14:28, 18 November 2007 (CST)
Thanks Steve, did so, and thanks for tidying up the credit notation on the image. I wanted to let you know about one thing I observed when going through the upload process -- there was a point in the Template for credits that had instruction notes with the <! instructions !> inside exclamation marks something like that, and I thought I would mention to you that template can be improved by making clear that the ONLY two options to make it work right are either "image" or "photograph" (or whatever the correct two words are -- can't now recall) -- by which I mean that adding double quotes around the words in those template instructions would help users realise that its either one or the other. I made a mistake and at first chose "advertising image" which caused the template to not work right at first. I would make the change myself but to be honest cannot now find where that template is, so am letting you know that user feedback instead. Hope that made sense. --Ian Johnson 07:40, 3 December 2007 (CST)

GFDL in the Upload Wizard

Steve, this was left on talk page: "I uploaded two files today and, even if they are of my own work, I put them under GFDL. I like the CC licence model, but I believe the wizard should provide GFDL as a choice. Regards, Olier Raby."

I tend to agree - we should add a GFDL section at some point in the future, right? Eric M Gearhart
Given what this says, do you think the practice of uploading individual photos under the GFDL should be encouraged? Stephen Ewen 14:14, 18 November 2007 (CST)
I made {{Dual-CC-by-sa-3.0-GFDL}}. Stephen Ewen 14:44, 18 November 2007 (CST)
I see your point about the GFDL and all, and I think CZ in general should use a CC license of some type. The only reason I asked was to provide him with the choice - I don't think railroading people away from GFDL is such a good idea. We should try to inform people, not just direct them, in my opinion anyway Eric M Gearhart
Also on the Upload wizard page I don't see any option but CC licenses as options in the dropdown list... public domain and the dual GFDL license aren't listed. Was that intentional? Eric M Gearhart
Point taken. Creating it as an option is half done. Stephen Ewen 04:23, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Done. See http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Special:Upload&uselang=ownworkgnu. It has its own easy-peasy page, since there are no options to choose from like the CC licenses. Stephen Ewen 23:33, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Perhaps it just needs time to bypass the cache but all the uselang= pages for it are defaulting to default right now. :\ Stephen Ewen 23:58, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Yep, tis workin' like a charm now. Stephen Ewen 19:52, 21 November 2007 (CST)

Ataturk

Thanks for inputting the images to Ataturk.

Arnold--Arnold Reisman 21:48, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Thanks for the images in Ataturk. Question why does this article not pop up among my others on Reisman search? Also you may wish to add the following resources to your list on intellectual property rights. 


Reisman, A. (2005). To catch a thief you must think like a thief.  Are you up to it?

ORMS Today ,Cover story, 32(1) pgs. 21-25. April, downloadable from: http://ssrn.com/abstract=639701

Reisman, A. (2006), Illegal Transfer of Technologies: A Taxonomic View, Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, Volume 23 , Issue 4, 292-312 Downloadable from: http://ssrn.com/abstract=532522

Cheers Arnold--Arnold Reisman 22:02, 19 November 2007 (CST)

I just searched for it with just the name Ataturk and I found it fine. Also, you can always retrace your every step on the wiki by clicking "My contributions" in the upper right. I looked at your contributions list and it appears there. Best, Stephen Ewen 22:06, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Possibly public domain but maybe not...

A "useful" copyright notice - can you take a look at Talk:Hilda_Geiringer#Pictures when you get a chance and give me your opinion? Thanks, Anton Sweeney 16:50, 21 November 2007 (CST)

Thanks For The Welcome!

This place already seems superior to the endless b.s over at Wikipedia. Andrew Sylvia 22:16, 23 November 2007 (CST)

Thanks

I will pause now then, and use your tool.

Those images were all previously uploaded to the wikipedia. And many of them were then copied to the wikipedia commons, with the dates not preserved, and subsequently deleted.

How important do you think it is to use the original date?

Cheers! George Swan 15:25, 24 November 2007 (CST)

Think about how frustrating it is today when you find an image you want to use but are unsure whether you can because you don't know the date and author information. Documenting the the year and place of first publishing is an attempt to stop passing on that problem to the future, at least in so far as we can. The date beyond the year is important for photos where a season may be shown, and the like, but they year itself is very important for people who will live well past our lifetimes. So that's the rationale, at least in my mind. If you don't know the date for sure, just estimate it, e.g., ca. 2000. Stephen Ewen 16:28, 24 November 2007 (CST)

Pictures: Right way of quotation

First of all, thank you for your helpful advice concerning theh upload of own photos. There is somethingg else I would like to know: If I use a wikimedia picture, do I have to copy the quotation from wikimedia and/ or do I have to mention that the (secondary) source is wikimedia?

Greetings, Regina Regina Bouillon

No you do not. The only exception would be images that were first published to there by someone. There's no need otherwise to state who the middleman is. Keep in mind: don't upload images that pseudonymous people say they self-authored unless they give their name somewhere, and in that case attribute to their name. Stephen Ewen 11:09, 29 November 2007 (CST)

Hello

Whirr...whir...click....Hel-lo fa-ther, thankyou for creating me. I have been running diagnostic tests on myself and concluded I am a bit poorly. Please see my user and talk pages for details.....click. --ImageUploadBot 09:24, 30 November 2007 (CST)

Stephen, I think I'm about there with the Commonist configuration. see User talk:ImageUploadBot. It seems to work ok for files under the 150Kb upload warning size and simply fails to upload anything above that. There's a bit of a loose end to translate the low german error messages, but all of the default commons, wikipedia config files all carry the same messages, so it's probably not critical. Perhaps you might have a go and we can compare notes? My next test is to see whether we actually need the bot account with Commonplace and Commonist. regards --Russ McGinn 19:00, 3 December 2007 (CST)
It seems Commonplace needs either a username with no spaces or a bot account whereas Commonist works fine with standard user accounts. Could we get Larry to change the permissions for the bot account to make it a standard user to test this?--Russ McGinn 19:53, 3 December 2007 (CST)
Awesome! I'll giver her a whirl soon. Stephen Ewen 21:00, 3 December 2007 (CST)

No go on my end. Of course, if the developer used more normal language, it'd help tremendously. What the @#$&* he means by "$HOME/.commonist/" is just boggling.

I am quite sure that "$HOME" means the location of the commonist-0.3.17 folder, but how to create a folder beginning with a period (.commonist) is beyond me and something Windows, at least, rejects; so he must mean but is not saying SITE.commonist, as in citizendium.commonist. If I am correct here, still no go.

The directions say,

  1. unpack lib/mwapi.jar from the unpacked binary zip into a new directory
  2. look for commons.family and commons.site in this directory
  3. create a directory $HOME/.commonist/family
  4. copy commons.family to $HOME/.commonist/family/NAME.family
  5. copy commons.site to $HOME/.commonist/family/NAME.site
  6. adapt these two files.

No problem on unpacking and placing, of course, but that pesky "$HOME/.commonist/" is still the trip-up. Also, what "adapt these files" means is not clear.

So trial and error. I adapted the contents of citizendium.family and citizendium.site as you showed in the Bot talk page, but I am left to wonder about whether "adapt these files" means to also rename commons.family and commons.site to citizendium.family and citizendium.site; so I tried both, but neither way works.

I have licenses.txt adapted fine. But the huge hangup for me is getting the program to recognize it. The documentation states, "If $HOME/.commonist/licenses.txt exists, it overrides settings in etc/licenses.txt." Again, if he means but is not saying SITE.commonist, as in citizendium.commonist, this thing should be whirring, but it still does not recognize the folder when I try that.

So I'm stuck. And I can promise to write some very clear directions once we get this thing going!

Stephen Ewen 23:28, 3 December 2007 (CST)

IF the bot was not inherently designed to run on a windows platform (it looks like it was designed more for unix; "/Home", "/etc", are common files in *nix user home directories), then what you will have to do is go into the source and replace every instance of "$HOME/.commonist" with "$HOME/commmonist". Also I'm sure $HOME on a unix account would be something like /usr/username. --Robert W King 00:02, 4 December 2007 (CST)
I don't think that's necessary Robert. Stephen, I didn't touch the licenses.txt file.-
  1. I downloaded commonist-0.3.17.zip from http://djini.de/software/commonist/ and then unzipped it to it's default location (make sure winzip is configured to extract with path information). In my case it extracted to C:\commonist-0.3.17.
  2. Browse to C:\commonist-0.3.17\bin and run the commonist.bat file. The first time this runs it creates the .commonist directory in C:\Documents and Settings\MCGINNR\.commonist (MCGINNR is my windows profile - so substitute your own).
  3. Shut down commonist.
  4. The .commonist directory only contains a subdirectory called 'cache' - create another directory called family in .commonist so that the path is C:\Documents and Settings\MCGINNR\.commonist\family
  5. Create the citizendium.family and citizendium.site files from the user talk:ImageUploadBot page.
  6. Commonist should be good to go now - just run it from the batch file in C:\commonist-0.3.17\bin
Alternatively, you could create the .commonist directory using the command prompt (found by clicking 'start' then 'run' and then typing 'cmd'). Type the following into the command prompt:-
  1. cd C:\Documents and Settings\MCGINNR
  2. mkdir .commonist
  3. cd .commonist
  4. mkdir family
Try that, see how you get on. You're right, the instruction are terrible! I reckon we should get the thing going over here and then send the developer a) Our .family and .site files b) A more expansive version of the license.txt file. PS. I was wondering what kind of categories I should tag my recent images with? Architecture workgroup? Taj Mahal? Russ McGinn's images? Flickr Images? Any ideas? Regards --Russ McGinn 04:03, 4 December 2007 (CST)

Be bold image

I can't believe you found a use for that. --Robert W King 17:33, 3 December 2007 (CST)

HTMLets extension

See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:HTMLets. Who do we talk to get extensions installed? --Robert W King 00:44, 4 December 2007 (CST)

Make your case on the citizendium-tools@lists.purdue.edu list and CC to bugs@citizendium.org. What do you have in mind for this? Two making the case are better. ;-) Stephen Ewen
the Upload wizard, the image categorization game, and anything else that comes across. --Robert W King 00:56, 4 December 2007 (CST)
Make it, I'll second. Stephen Ewen 01:00, 4 December 2007 (CST)

#ifexist

Stephen, have you seen this at WP? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-12-03/Software_issues It concerns the #ifexist function that we use for getting the attribution tags into images - its all a bit over my head I'm afraid but looks like we should be using Special:Prefixindex instead. Regards --Russ McGinn 11:12, 4 December 2007 (CST)

Yikes, let me read this carefully.... Stephen Ewen 11:33, 4 December 2007 (CST)

Image:TajInteriorJawab.jpg

No problem - please delete, it's a terrible quality and uploaded before I knew the rules re anonymity - actually what the deal with Image:Taj dec1.jpg - is "Skipthebudgie.org" ok? or should I see if I can find similar? I also need you to delete Image:Tajdec1.jpg (uploaded as part of the commonist trials). Many thanks. --Russ McGinn 11:43, 4 December 2007 (CST)

I'm right now asking someone to release a CC photo to replace.... Stephen Ewen 11:48, 4 December 2007 (CST)
"Skipthebudgie.org" is - well, how's it look? :-) A bet ol' Skip will let you know his name if asked. Stephen Ewen 23:13, 4 December 2007 (CST)

Flickr

Can we use any images from Flickr? Or are there only a specific subset we can use? Specifically I was thinking this might be useful for Aleta's calla lily article but I can't figure out whether there is a real name for the user that uploaded it. Chris Day (talk) 01:57, 5 December 2007 (CST)

This photo is not under a Creative Commons license, but is copyright all rights reserved; and, there is no real name. I'll approach the flickr user to get it released under the usable terms: under a CC license of the author's choice or by permission if that fails, and the real name of the author. Thanks for the alert. :-) Stephen Ewen 02:03, 5 December 2007 (CST)
Alright, thanks for the quick reply, this is what I was expecting but just wanted to get a conformation. So the short list is that we need a real name and the right CC license? Is this written down somewhere already? Sorry to be lazy tracking this down. Thanks in advance :) Chris Day (talk) 02:06, 5 December 2007 (CST)
It needs to be written down more clearly, see http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Special:Upload&uselang=flickr for now. It's implicit that we can use photos by permission if freely licensed material is not available or is poor. Stephen Ewen 02:14, 5 December 2007 (CST)
That's useful, I didn't see it since i had not attempted an upload yet. I look forward to trying out the new wizard! Assuming I can find a photo to upload ;) Chris Day (talk) 02:18, 5 December 2007 (CST)

Argument brewing

Hi Steve--or someone else--would you please have a look at user_talk:Aleta Curry#dance and comment if you need to? Thanks Aleta Curry 13:45, 5 December 2007 (CST)

I gave a short comment on your Talk page, Aleta. Probably the best way forward is to put some text there and I can offer my opinion on dealing with ethnic and cultural issues.--Martin Baldwin-Edwards 15:27, 5 December 2007 (CST)

How come the upload wizard

...doesn't have a non-commercial option? Aleta Curry 18:06, 8 December 2007 (CST)

It does. Read a tad more carefully. Stephen Ewen 18:11, 8 December 2007 (CST)

I'm looking under "I am the author" and I don't see it. I'll admit to being blind. Aleta Curry 21:20, 8 December 2007 (CST)

There are two links under there. It's the second. Stephen Ewen 21:31, 8 December 2007 (CST)

Never would have found it. Needs an explanatory note earlier. Interesting that you make those choices for people. Aleta Curry 14:53, 9 December 2007 (CST)

The advice there is grounded in facts about the field of photography. There are lots of photos available out there. If you think about it, I think you'll agree that we don't really want poorer quality photos under restrictive terms when superior photos of the same thing are readily available elsewhere. Compare this with these. No one is going to care one minute of a wit to use a poorer quality photo commercially when higher quality photos that already permit it are readily available elsewhere, or when a superior photo exists under the same terms. There is a correlation among licensing and quality and all this does is recognize this fact and work with it, not create it as a fact. Stephen Ewen 15:16, 9 December 2007 (CST)

"image"

I had been wondering if that usage was clear. "Image" in that context is not being used for its primary definition. In fact it's #12 on the list at reference.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=image "Interpretive representation" doesn't really do it justice, as it is a religious "image" on par with those in the Catholic Church. Can you think of a better way to clarify this? The only other term I can think of is "idol" but I don't like the negative connotations of that word. --Joe Quick 12:47, 12 December 2007 (CST)

You know, I think we're going to run into the same problem with the use of the word "cult" at folk saint, which I'm currently studying up for. The problem is that the most precise term makes use of a non-dominant or secondary definition that most people will probably not pick up on immediately. --Joe Quick 15:59, 12 December 2007 (CST)
How about the word "icon" ? Or "pictograph"? --Robert W King 16:03, 12 December 2007 (CST)
"Icon" might work, but that terms refers specifically to a saint, as far as I know, so it would probably be inappropriate as the Tío isn't actually a saint. "Pictograph" doesn't work simply because these images are statues. The article actually uses "statue" a couple of times, but that term leaves out the functional purpose of the image. I asked on the forums. --Joe Quick 16:19, 12 December 2007 (CST)
What do principle authors call the, uh, things we're talkin' about? Stephen Ewen 17:52, 12 December 2007 (CST)
Good question. Nash occasionally calls them "images" but never "icons" and Taussig calls them "icons" pretty often but never "images." All authors prefer to refer to the Tío himself rather than the sculpted clay that represent him. This improves my feelings about "icon" somewhat but that term is only a little bit better when it comes to avoiding non-primary definitions that are likely to confuse people.
I'm starting to think that the answer might be to simply wikilink the terms that might confuse so that people are clued in about their importance. That might improve the "cult" situation too. For now, I'll go change it to "icon." --Joe Quick 23:54, 12 December 2007 (CST)

Please intervene

See this and Template:Fact. I propose that this template is never ever to be used here at CZ. --Robert W King 15:37, 12 December 2007 (CST)

Deleted, thanks. Stephen Ewen 15:48, 12 December 2007 (CST)
Then It should be stated it explicitly. One of the biggest problems that I have with CZ, and Larry is aware of it, is that rather than being "the world's most trusted knowledge base", CZ is, at this point, fundamentally anecdotal and far from scholarly. --Michael J. Formica 07:33, 13 December 2007 (CST)
"We take a more sensible approach to citing sources. The editors we have on board actually create the sort of sources that Wikipedia cites. We do cite sources, of course, but we have a sensible approach to doing so. We cite sources because doing so helps the reader. We do not cite sources in order to settle internal disputes, or to "prove" a point to contributors. As seasoned researchers, we know that people can find sources for all sorts of ridiculous claims."[2] Stephen Ewen 10:31, 13 December 2007 (CST)
"we know that people can find sources for all sorts of ridiculous claims" - true. And, as an editor, I accept that the above is the position we've taken. The situation it creates, however, rather than begging the topic addressed in the quote above, can be found here...Road rage/Sandbox. --Michael J. Formica 11:18, 13 December 2007 (CST)
Not sure I see the issue. So a bunch of stuff was moved out of article space because it was unfit to go there. As it should be. Stephen Ewen 12:38, 13 December 2007 (CST)
Ah, of course not. Thanks for your input. --Michael J. Formica 16:12, 13 December 2007 (CST)

Re 'wiki-converting'

Stephen: Regarding your volunteering to 'wiki-convert' word-processor files from subscribers, please see: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Wiki-converting. For tracking, use section with your name as title. --Anthony.Sebastian 19:38, 18 December 2007 (CST)

Diego Rivera

I'd like to use one or more of these works by Diego Rivera in the Calla Lily article but can't figure out who, if anyone, has the rights to them: [3], [4], [5]. Any ideas? --Joe Quick 02:00, 19 December 2007 (CST)

I'll look tomorrow, time for ZZZzzs. BTW, an FYI: Mexico has the least liberal public domain laws in the world: The life of the author plus 100 years! Stephen Ewen 02:14, 19 December 2007 (CST)
Here's the info for the first: http://www.moma.org/about_moma/site/index.html. Given MOMA's explicit encouragement of fair use, you might consider using that image and following the pattern at Butler in the "Butlers in art" section. Stephen Ewen 02:33, 19 December 2007 (CST)
Thanks. I must have spent an hour searching just to find out which museum it was in. No such luck on the other two (both of which I would prefer to this one, actually). Are reproduction/copyright rights transferred with the transfer of the original painting? That is, do Mexican copyright laws govern pieces donated to the MoMA by a Rockefeller? I think a similar question came up in regard to Waldo Peirce, but I don't remember if it was ever resolved. --Joe Quick 02:47, 19 December 2007 (CST)
Only an authoritative statement by a MOMA official would resolve this question. HOWEVER, all indication at the website is that the copyright was transferred (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't). For whatever it is worth, given the museum's explicit and unusually detailed encouragement to fair use, and lack of a Terms of Use contract that binds users of the MOMA site to some stated terms unfriendly to our use of the image, I myself would not hesitate to use this particular image under fair use, in a context of commentary and criticisms of which the "Butlers in art" section at Butler gives an example. Stephen Ewen 02:56, 19 December 2007 (CST)
I'm actually not too worried about that image. In fact, I wouldn't worry a whole lot about any of these because they would clearly be covered by fair use since I want to use them to illustrate Rivera's use of the flower in his art. It was meant as a more general question. That said, I just noticed that all of the images in the gallery at diegorivera.com are listed as copyright Javier Rivera no matter where the originals hang.
I found the owner of another one: [6]. It's an individual. We'll probably need to claim fair use for all of them. What I don't understand is how so many sites can offer to sell me posters of these works. I suppose we really ought to use the nude featuring Frida with an armful of calla lilies since it's so famous, but I really just don't like that one... --Joe Quick 03:34, 19 December 2007 (CST)

Szasz pic

Snazzy. Thanks! --Michael J. Formica 08:08, 19 December 2007 (CST)

Hey! Robert Mack 03:56, 20 December 2007 (CST)

Merry Christmas!

Say, could you go through the CZ:Templates page and identify any media-asset templates which are either redundant, obsolete (we created a LOT of them while the subpages stuff was going on), draft, or just not needed? I've got a fair handle on organizing them but it would take hours to find out which ones fall into those categories and with any luck maybe you would be able to identify them straight up. --Robert W King 20:44, 22 December 2007 (CST)

Thanks - and Happy Holidays

Thank you Steve... it was an honor to serve. Happy Holidays! Eric M Gearhart

Thanks for tidying up the image. Merry Christmas! (Chunbum Park 13:27, 24 December 2007 (CST))

No prob. Use the Upload Wizard and you'll almost always have less to fill in. ;-) Stephen Ewen 13:43, 24 December 2007 (CST)
Oh, did I crop any part of the image? Wait, I didn't. I just gave the wrong link. http://flickr.com/photos/jpellgen/382235193/ Thanks for checking. (Chunbum Park 09:06, 26 December 2007 (CST))
I'm trying to change he copyright of this picture 1 to public domain. But on Japanese invasions of Korea article 2 it shows CC name. Shouldn't it be just PD? (Chunbum Park 09:32, 26 December 2007 (CST))
See how to fix it for next time here. Stephen Ewen 12:27, 26 December 2007 (CST)
Thanks again. (Chunbum Park 12:45, 26 December 2007 (CST))
Ah, I see what the problem was. You can see it too. Thanks for pointing it out. :-) Stephen Ewen 13:02, 26 December 2007 (CST)
Thanks for making all the credit pages. I thought they came out automatically. (Chunbum Park 13:03, 26 December 2007 (CST))
They almost come out automatically if you use the CZ:Upload-Wizard. It's still incomplete for a lot of stuff, though. Stephen Ewen 13:05, 26 December 2007 (CST)

Forums pic

Hi, Steve, I'm absolutely baffled by my inability to get the Forums to run my picture. I've been screwing around with this for hours now. It seems to me that in the Profile I should be able to checkmark "I have my own personal picture" and then insert http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Image:HP2.jpg, which is what my picture is for both my user page and for the article about me. But nothing I do will make my picture show up. I can put in Bob Morley or any of the other pix in the category above, but not me personally. What's going on here? Everyone else seems to have pix, even some total beginners.... (And, by the way, WHY are those other pix of Actors and Musicians allowed to be inserted!? Hayford Peirce 21:13, 26 December 2007 (CST)

Hey, I finally got it! Thanks for the help -- it's still pretty recondite, I would say, for a non-expert! Hayford Peirce 21:44, 26 December 2007 (CST)
Thanks for the boost. By the way, as I see here, we're allowed to have a picture of ourselves at our user page? (Chunbum Park 15:24, 27 December 2007 (CST))
Absolutely, under whatever license terms you wish. Stephen Ewen 15:27, 27 December 2007 (CST)

Easy image changes

Yeah, I know. But it's sure cumbersome to convert *old* ones! Although I think that now that I've figured out there are really only *two* steps, I can manage the rest of my old images.... Hayford Peirce 21:27, 27 December 2007 (CST)

Hey, WONDERFUL!! I hadn't seen that you were upgrading all those others. Wow! Grazie, danke, merci, gracias, maruru (Tahitian), THANKS! Hayford Peirce 21:31, 27 December 2007 (CST)

Special character icons

Hey, Steve, this is *very* mysterious. I told you last night that I had *never* seen those rascally icons such as the Redirect one. So then, last night, I did see them. But now, today, as I have been editing, that line of icons is absolutely NOT there. I see a green bar across the screen that says "Special Characters" and then below that all the various language letters and things like >ref etc etc. But absolutely no icons. What on earth is going on? Hayford Peirce 12:37, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Yup. I'm really an idiot this morning!!! Geez. I'm just so used to not using them, that my eye just passes over them, just as if they were pop-ups on the Internet! Thanks -- now I'll NEVER forget where they are! Hayford Peirce 12:44, 29 December 2007 (CST)
Yep, tis amazing how our brains begin to deselect info in our environment we consider irrelevant. Of course, that our brains do this is a wonderful thing. It's just never infallible! Stephen Ewen 12:51, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Formatting question

A new member has created http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Philip_Marlowe_and_His_Women and I'm trying to do a little reformatting. I've succeeded with everything except the four lines of poetry near the start of the article. I want to put the title of the poem just below the text AND indented somewhat, but I'm baffled. I've taken the blockquote out, and restored it, and I've been fiddling with various other things for 15 minutes and either I can't get the indents, or I get line breaks that I don't want, or I get NO line breaks between the 4 lines of poetry or, well, other problems. I want it to look like this:

Line one of text
Line two of text
Line three of text
Line four of text
Name of the damn poem

There are probably hidden formatting commands through the text because she imported it from some exterior file probably created with Word or some such. Is there a way around this? Thanks! Hayford Peirce 12:59, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Okie, I've seen what you've done. And I would never have figured that out! I basically just wanted to remove a lot of white space between the poetry lines and the title of poem below it. I'll take another look at what you've done and see if it is stuff I can remember for another occasion.... Thanks! Hayford Peirce 13:13, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Yes, there's a tool, but I wouldn't bother her with it. There's plenty of people around to do cleanup, and it usually just takes minutes, except when there are lots of footnoted references. In that case, all one has to do to go from MS Word to wikimarkup is

  1. Save the Word file as HTML.
  2. Open the resulting HTML file in Notepad.
  3. Copy all of the text (CTL + A)
  4. Paste it (CTL + V) into this and press "Convert HTML to wikimarkup".
  5. Copy the result into the edit window for a new article and press Save. Done.

Strike all that. As you can see at CZ_Talk:Wiki-converting, the results are poor.

Stephen Ewen 13:46, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Yep, that ain't pretty! In some ways it's like optical scanning. I once had an old novel that I had typed on lined *English* paper, which has a slightly different size from American paper. An editor wanted it in modern form. I scanned a couple of pages with the best optical software I could find -- and discovered that it took me *longer* to correct all of the scanned copy than it did for me to simply retype the damn manuscript with WordPerfect. Which I did, little by little. Took me a month, I think, but it was less aggravating than the other way. Ditto with other, shorter things I've wanted to convert.... Hayford Peirce 13:55, 29 December 2007 (CST)

OpenOffice for wikiconverting?

The tool Zach pointed to is very poor at this point, see CZ Talk:Wiki-converting. I'll try to run tests with various tools to find the best. Stephen Ewen 13:48, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Steven: OpenOffice 2.3 claims its ‘writer’ component can save to MediaWiki format. See: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/New_Features_2.3#Chart
Anthony.Sebastian --Anthony.Sebastian 17:18, 29 December 2007 (CST)

P.S. Why does Anthony.Sebastian 17:18, 29 December 2007 (CST) or --Anthony.Sebastian 17:18, 29 December 2007 (CST) NOT show link for me? See this in editor.

You have the short-famed "Matt D. Innis" bug! --Robert W King 21:22, 29 December 2007 (CST)
Anthony, go into my preferences > Misc and make sure Raw signatures (without automatic link) is NOT checked. Stephen Ewen 21:46, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Image without a license

Hi. This image is a screenshot of copyrighted software, and currently doesn't have a license. I didn't know where to report it, so I posted it here. I know we're not allowed fair use images yet, so I guess it shouuld be deleted. Oliver Smith 18:08, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Thanks, I just shrunk it way down, and in that case used it under fair use. Stephen Ewen 20:36, 29 December 2007 (CST)

newspost

Do you want to write something for the newspost? --Robert W King 16:31, 30 December 2007 (CST)

Sure, got something particular in mind? Stephen Ewen 16:32, 30 December 2007 (CST)
Um, how about something newsy? Say, your reflections of the project, or anything you want to make stand out; it's pretty open as it'll be issue #1. --Robert W King 16:34, 30 December 2007 (CST)
What's the deadline? Stephen Ewen 17:02, 30 December 2007 (CST)
Within the next day or two. It doesn't have to be very long, it can be brief. --Robert W King 17:08, 30 December 2007 (CST)

IFEXIST PAGENAME or PAGENAMEE

Which one is it supposed to be? --Robert W King 14:29, 31 December 2007 (CST)

The first is for internal links, the latter external (short for pagename + external). Stephen Ewen 16:07, 31 December 2007 (CST)

Another copyright query

The screenshot here is licensed under the GPL. However, on the desktop, it has the Steam icon, which isn't released under the GPL. Does this mean that the screneshot shouldn't be GPL'd? Oliver Smith 17:24, 31 December 2007 (CST)

See again. That's ought suffice. Stephen Ewen 17:55, 31 December 2007 (CST)
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