copy JUST the Hitchhiker's article about the towel into Wikipedia? Would that be fair use, or would that be infringement upon copyright laws? 207.65.110.30 11:48, 8 Jun 2005
The lined h2g2 piece says "last Friday; 25 May this year". Did it actually settle on the numbered day? -- Baylink
Post-towel day 2006 - as said, it was a Thursday this year. Seeing as this is the day the story begins (and which Arthur could never get the hang of), I move that the celebrations be held regularily at the first Thursday at/after the 25th.
Was it a coincidence that 25 May is Star Wars day too?? Arivero 14:49, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Coincidence. I know it's the anniversary date of that movie, but it premiered in '77 whereas Towel Day started in 2001.
...And even though to tie-in Thursday with Towel Day may seem justly appropriate: really, it's not that hoopy with the bad karma from Thursday fighting the ever resourceful goodness of Towel Day.. Unless you believe they'll cancel each other out. I motion not to have Towel Day regularly on Thursdays. It's 25th for a reason, and I really could never get the hang of Thursdays.. DrWho42 23:37, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
We can move the day around all we want, but it will just make people confused, thus degrading the status and continium of the holiday. Therefore, Towel Day will stay on a fixed date like the founders initiated. May 25th, for all years to come.
Regarding the Star Wars Day (which doesn't even have an article to begin with) it's a pure coincidence. Either way I fail to see the problem with such two holidays the same day - there's nothing problematic about carrying a towel as a cape, hood or whatnot, to go with your Darth Vader or Jedi outfit.
-- KOJV 21:33, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Are those towels displayed in Innsbruck, or are they just printed with Innsbruck's GPS coordinates? Omphaloscope » talk 16:04, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Some information of the towel image. I'm the person who designed the towels and put them up in Innsbruck.
The towel and the image is from 2005.
Background information to the related project you can find here:
The Physical HoT Spot
More Images from Innsbruck
Update 2006: Berlin
Finally there is a shop for the towel:
DON'T PANIC Towel Shop
I added these lines here to give a background to the towel image on this talk page. If you want use the information or links you are free to do. Bazillus 22:36, 30 July 2007 (UTC)bazillus
Even though it provides the fact that there's actually people participating (in which I am in-amongst..), do we really think it be some necessary for this page? It's slightly bias to simply upload an image of yourself and give recognition thereto, but that's my piece of the Hagra biscuit... DrWho42 13:41, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Hi, i'm a writer from the german wikipedia. We want to enforce a stroke "don't panic" on our main page for May 25th as a witty invitation to join wikipedia as a writer. It would give us great pleasure if there were some writers in the english wikipedia to pursue the same aim. -- 84.58.201.198 01:31, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Write a new article that somehow ties in and uses the phrase, and I'll see that it gets on WP:DYK on the 25th... That's not a major main page featured thing but it WOULD be on there. Hope that helps. + + Lar: t/ c 14:51, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
This term . For some reason, if a strag [non-hitch hiker] discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. links to the notable sayings/phrases page but that page doesn't have it defined. I am not enough of a fan to fix it myself or I would. + + Lar: t/ c 14:51, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
That should be a fitting home for it. DrWho42 22:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
What kind of towel should I bring? Is there a recommended kind? A hand towel? A bath towel? beach towel? dish towel? etc??-- Sonjaaa 22:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Personally I carry a big beach towel, because its colorful and I can wrap it around my waist if I get tried of carrying it. BethEnd 15:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Just any towel will do. -- KOJV 21:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
We really could do with some referencing with these, especially for the latter bits. DrWho42 00:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
If anything, Towel Day should be on his daughter's birthday. His only child, she was born when he was 42, a coincidence he was keenly aware of, and obviously the center of his life. Rklawton 06:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Towel Day was on May 25th because I thought it would take a few weeks to spread the message. However, I never thought that Towel Day would extend beyond a basic wake for Douglas. I have been very pleased and surprised to see how quickly it caught on and how persistently it's been celebrated. Dclydew 20:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Please fire up calc.exe, switch to Advanced view, Hexadecimal numbers. Add 25 + 5, calculate. Switch back to Decimal. Happy? -- KOJV 21:30, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Would someone please explain to me how this article isn't 100% fancruft? It's clearly a made up holiday with very weak sources. Rklawton 05:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Would you please explain to me how any holiday ever is anything but "made up fancruft"?? On that aspect there's no difference to Towel Day versus Talk Like a Pirate Day, St. Patrick's Day or your favourite country National Day.
Take the USA for example. They shoot fireworks on 4th of July because some crazy dudes threw crates filled with tea in a canal 400 years ago. Sounds like fancruft to me. Norwegians run around like fuxx0red goons every May 17th because they left a mutually beneficial union with Sweden a bunch of centuries ago, dude, that makes no sense.
There's nothing weak about the sources of Towel Day. A globally beloved author clearly died and clearly left behind a great deal about towels, proclaiming them the ultimate item to carry around at any time. Someone thought of the idea to have people all over the world carry towels around at a specific day each year to show their fellow man what kind of complete freaks they are and what a great piece of litterature those strags are missing out on.
-- KOJV 21:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Someone marked the photos for deletion. I'm not sure why. Could you post a reason why they ought not to be on the page? There may be argument that the day itself doesn't have enough of a fan base to exist, in which case the page should be removed entirely, or mention the lack of any concrete organization behind the concept of towel day. But I don't see why these photos shouldn't be part of the page if it is to remain. Cedric Tsui 20 March 2007
Sorry for not keeping a closer eye on this discussion, and failing to notice that you replied. I am not a lawyer, but here is my understanding of the issue. The concept you described is called moral rights, and it is discussed here. The United States, where the English Wikipedia servers are hosted, has limited recognition of moral rights. Other jurisdictions, such as in many European countries, do recognize moral rights. I do not think moral rights extend beyond the author, so they do not protect against modifying your banner to discredit Towel Day or Douglas Adams.
In Canada, it is possible to waive moral rights, and different jurisdictions doubtless have varying definitions of moral rights.
As far as licensing goes, the GFDL does not appear to explicitly mention moral rights, but it does "preserve for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others."
You might want to use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which states:
So with either the GFDL or the CC-BY-SA-3.0, if I understand correctly, someone in the United States could modify your work in a derogatory manner, but someone in a country which recognizes moral rights could not. No one could state or imply that you endorse the modified version. But again, I am no expert on copyright law and there could be exceptions in some countries.
To summarize my understanding:
And to answer your last question, I would not like including the banner directly in the Towel Day article. Instead, provided you release the banner under a free license, you could upload the banner to the Wikimedia Commons, which already has a page about Towel Day. — Remember the dot ( talk) 16:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Politics rule 11:27, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I tagged the article with {{ notability}} as it does not currently make any claim, or establish why, it is notable. In fact, it doesn't appear to achieve any verifiability, which is entirely contrary to policy. It may be a fun topic and a fun article, but that is unfortunately not sufficient. - Tiswas( t) 16:34, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Notable, known in Germany and many other european countries with Douglas Adams being a very notable author. External references [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] , [9] .. do you need more of the about 2,570,000 for towel day and 375,000 for "towel day"? The source include the BBC, answers.com, wikihow, Flickr.. and everybody can see it on the first google result page, i dont see why you are even discussing notability. 212.202.200.65 18:03, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
The following might be interesting. Are they reliable? [11] [12] These were the only two after a zillion Web 2.0 stuff hits. Google needs a filter for "Reliable Source". -- User:Krator ( t c) 22:46, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Ok, here comes another search. How's this? That doesn't look bad, at all- it seems that everything is written by staff, rather than user-submitted. We can, in a way, cite the number of blogs that mention it- look at this. Right, that's all I could find. I will see if I still have my paper from Friday, and see if it has anything in there, later. I will also check the Sunday and Saturday columns. J Milburn 09:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Added trivia warning. Please integrate trivia content into article. 24.15.182.247 08:26, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
More of a "fair warning" than anything else. The current Image:Towelday_Towel.jpg is sourced as "(Uploaded from the en.wikipedia: en:Image:Towelday.jpg, there Uploaded by en:User:Bazillus on 28 September 2005 under GFDL.[sic]"
So it seems it's a copy of another image that was deleted from wikipedia for failing GFDL. A copy of a failed image is a failed image. Mdbrownmsw 19:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Mdbrownmsw 20:27, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
-- KOJV ( talk) 23:03, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
This whole section is unsourced. (Prempt: KOJV's page is not a wp:rs.) Mdbrownmsw 20:34, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Ugh. I just yanked this: "People ask Why a towel? and the answer is found in the third chapter of the first book. This and any further questions are answered at the Towel Day website where there also is a forum and a wiki for trivial discussions and additions."
Now that was the kind of thing the {{tone}} tag was up for. "People ask, 'Why a towel?'" They also ask, "Why is my encyclopedia using this lighthearted approach? "This and further questions..." are not answered here. Psych! Gotcha. Oh, and there's a forum there (please join!) where you can add anything that doesn't belong <str>here</str> in an encyclopedia.
Also, the "answer" to that question on kojv.net is essentially the synthesis yanked from this article earlier, but on another page.
Yeah, it'd be great if we had a reliable source that explained the towel bit. We don't. Mdbrownmsw 20:48, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
copy JUST the Hitchhiker's article about the towel into Wikipedia? Would that be fair use, or would that be infringement upon copyright laws? 207.65.110.30 11:48, 8 Jun 2005
The lined h2g2 piece says "last Friday; 25 May this year". Did it actually settle on the numbered day? -- Baylink
Post-towel day 2006 - as said, it was a Thursday this year. Seeing as this is the day the story begins (and which Arthur could never get the hang of), I move that the celebrations be held regularily at the first Thursday at/after the 25th.
Was it a coincidence that 25 May is Star Wars day too?? Arivero 14:49, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Coincidence. I know it's the anniversary date of that movie, but it premiered in '77 whereas Towel Day started in 2001.
...And even though to tie-in Thursday with Towel Day may seem justly appropriate: really, it's not that hoopy with the bad karma from Thursday fighting the ever resourceful goodness of Towel Day.. Unless you believe they'll cancel each other out. I motion not to have Towel Day regularly on Thursdays. It's 25th for a reason, and I really could never get the hang of Thursdays.. DrWho42 23:37, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
We can move the day around all we want, but it will just make people confused, thus degrading the status and continium of the holiday. Therefore, Towel Day will stay on a fixed date like the founders initiated. May 25th, for all years to come.
Regarding the Star Wars Day (which doesn't even have an article to begin with) it's a pure coincidence. Either way I fail to see the problem with such two holidays the same day - there's nothing problematic about carrying a towel as a cape, hood or whatnot, to go with your Darth Vader or Jedi outfit.
-- KOJV 21:33, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Are those towels displayed in Innsbruck, or are they just printed with Innsbruck's GPS coordinates? Omphaloscope » talk 16:04, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Some information of the towel image. I'm the person who designed the towels and put them up in Innsbruck.
The towel and the image is from 2005.
Background information to the related project you can find here:
The Physical HoT Spot
More Images from Innsbruck
Update 2006: Berlin
Finally there is a shop for the towel:
DON'T PANIC Towel Shop
I added these lines here to give a background to the towel image on this talk page. If you want use the information or links you are free to do. Bazillus 22:36, 30 July 2007 (UTC)bazillus
Even though it provides the fact that there's actually people participating (in which I am in-amongst..), do we really think it be some necessary for this page? It's slightly bias to simply upload an image of yourself and give recognition thereto, but that's my piece of the Hagra biscuit... DrWho42 13:41, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Hi, i'm a writer from the german wikipedia. We want to enforce a stroke "don't panic" on our main page for May 25th as a witty invitation to join wikipedia as a writer. It would give us great pleasure if there were some writers in the english wikipedia to pursue the same aim. -- 84.58.201.198 01:31, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Write a new article that somehow ties in and uses the phrase, and I'll see that it gets on WP:DYK on the 25th... That's not a major main page featured thing but it WOULD be on there. Hope that helps. + + Lar: t/ c 14:51, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
This term . For some reason, if a strag [non-hitch hiker] discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. links to the notable sayings/phrases page but that page doesn't have it defined. I am not enough of a fan to fix it myself or I would. + + Lar: t/ c 14:51, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
That should be a fitting home for it. DrWho42 22:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
What kind of towel should I bring? Is there a recommended kind? A hand towel? A bath towel? beach towel? dish towel? etc??-- Sonjaaa 22:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Personally I carry a big beach towel, because its colorful and I can wrap it around my waist if I get tried of carrying it. BethEnd 15:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Just any towel will do. -- KOJV 21:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
We really could do with some referencing with these, especially for the latter bits. DrWho42 00:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
If anything, Towel Day should be on his daughter's birthday. His only child, she was born when he was 42, a coincidence he was keenly aware of, and obviously the center of his life. Rklawton 06:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Towel Day was on May 25th because I thought it would take a few weeks to spread the message. However, I never thought that Towel Day would extend beyond a basic wake for Douglas. I have been very pleased and surprised to see how quickly it caught on and how persistently it's been celebrated. Dclydew 20:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Please fire up calc.exe, switch to Advanced view, Hexadecimal numbers. Add 25 + 5, calculate. Switch back to Decimal. Happy? -- KOJV 21:30, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Would someone please explain to me how this article isn't 100% fancruft? It's clearly a made up holiday with very weak sources. Rklawton 05:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Would you please explain to me how any holiday ever is anything but "made up fancruft"?? On that aspect there's no difference to Towel Day versus Talk Like a Pirate Day, St. Patrick's Day or your favourite country National Day.
Take the USA for example. They shoot fireworks on 4th of July because some crazy dudes threw crates filled with tea in a canal 400 years ago. Sounds like fancruft to me. Norwegians run around like fuxx0red goons every May 17th because they left a mutually beneficial union with Sweden a bunch of centuries ago, dude, that makes no sense.
There's nothing weak about the sources of Towel Day. A globally beloved author clearly died and clearly left behind a great deal about towels, proclaiming them the ultimate item to carry around at any time. Someone thought of the idea to have people all over the world carry towels around at a specific day each year to show their fellow man what kind of complete freaks they are and what a great piece of litterature those strags are missing out on.
-- KOJV 21:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Someone marked the photos for deletion. I'm not sure why. Could you post a reason why they ought not to be on the page? There may be argument that the day itself doesn't have enough of a fan base to exist, in which case the page should be removed entirely, or mention the lack of any concrete organization behind the concept of towel day. But I don't see why these photos shouldn't be part of the page if it is to remain. Cedric Tsui 20 March 2007
Sorry for not keeping a closer eye on this discussion, and failing to notice that you replied. I am not a lawyer, but here is my understanding of the issue. The concept you described is called moral rights, and it is discussed here. The United States, where the English Wikipedia servers are hosted, has limited recognition of moral rights. Other jurisdictions, such as in many European countries, do recognize moral rights. I do not think moral rights extend beyond the author, so they do not protect against modifying your banner to discredit Towel Day or Douglas Adams.
In Canada, it is possible to waive moral rights, and different jurisdictions doubtless have varying definitions of moral rights.
As far as licensing goes, the GFDL does not appear to explicitly mention moral rights, but it does "preserve for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others."
You might want to use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which states:
So with either the GFDL or the CC-BY-SA-3.0, if I understand correctly, someone in the United States could modify your work in a derogatory manner, but someone in a country which recognizes moral rights could not. No one could state or imply that you endorse the modified version. But again, I am no expert on copyright law and there could be exceptions in some countries.
To summarize my understanding:
And to answer your last question, I would not like including the banner directly in the Towel Day article. Instead, provided you release the banner under a free license, you could upload the banner to the Wikimedia Commons, which already has a page about Towel Day. — Remember the dot ( talk) 16:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Politics rule 11:27, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I tagged the article with {{ notability}} as it does not currently make any claim, or establish why, it is notable. In fact, it doesn't appear to achieve any verifiability, which is entirely contrary to policy. It may be a fun topic and a fun article, but that is unfortunately not sufficient. - Tiswas( t) 16:34, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Notable, known in Germany and many other european countries with Douglas Adams being a very notable author. External references [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] , [9] .. do you need more of the about 2,570,000 for towel day and 375,000 for "towel day"? The source include the BBC, answers.com, wikihow, Flickr.. and everybody can see it on the first google result page, i dont see why you are even discussing notability. 212.202.200.65 18:03, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
The following might be interesting. Are they reliable? [11] [12] These were the only two after a zillion Web 2.0 stuff hits. Google needs a filter for "Reliable Source". -- User:Krator ( t c) 22:46, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Ok, here comes another search. How's this? That doesn't look bad, at all- it seems that everything is written by staff, rather than user-submitted. We can, in a way, cite the number of blogs that mention it- look at this. Right, that's all I could find. I will see if I still have my paper from Friday, and see if it has anything in there, later. I will also check the Sunday and Saturday columns. J Milburn 09:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Added trivia warning. Please integrate trivia content into article. 24.15.182.247 08:26, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
More of a "fair warning" than anything else. The current Image:Towelday_Towel.jpg is sourced as "(Uploaded from the en.wikipedia: en:Image:Towelday.jpg, there Uploaded by en:User:Bazillus on 28 September 2005 under GFDL.[sic]"
So it seems it's a copy of another image that was deleted from wikipedia for failing GFDL. A copy of a failed image is a failed image. Mdbrownmsw 19:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Mdbrownmsw 20:27, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
-- KOJV ( talk) 23:03, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
This whole section is unsourced. (Prempt: KOJV's page is not a wp:rs.) Mdbrownmsw 20:34, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Ugh. I just yanked this: "People ask Why a towel? and the answer is found in the third chapter of the first book. This and any further questions are answered at the Towel Day website where there also is a forum and a wiki for trivial discussions and additions."
Now that was the kind of thing the {{tone}} tag was up for. "People ask, 'Why a towel?'" They also ask, "Why is my encyclopedia using this lighthearted approach? "This and further questions..." are not answered here. Psych! Gotcha. Oh, and there's a forum there (please join!) where you can add anything that doesn't belong <str>here</str> in an encyclopedia.
Also, the "answer" to that question on kojv.net is essentially the synthesis yanked from this article earlier, but on another page.
Yeah, it'd be great if we had a reliable source that explained the towel bit. We don't. Mdbrownmsw 20:48, 13 November 2007 (UTC)