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Hi, everyone. As I've been making some small changes to several opera stubs, and as I don't know a great deal about opera, I just want to explain here what I'm doing and why.
An administrator came to my talk page to ask for my help in cleaning up some copyright violations. It's discussed here at the admin noticeboard (although those links will no longer work when the pages are archived). Someone made an originally massive list of articles created by that user, who has now been blocked indefinitely. As people go through the articles on the list, they google phrases or check in other ways, and then remove any copyright violations, they find, and then strikethrough the name of the article on the list. Then an admin comes along every few hours, and makes lots of consecutive struck-through titles invisible.
I offered to help to remove possible copyright violations. In some cases there was obviously no problem — just a disambiguation pages saying that X can refer to a novel written in 1859 by Y or a film produced in 1987 by Z. However, in the case of long paragraphs, a lot of blatant copyvios were found, and some administrators expressed discomfort at leaving phrases that had been written by that editor, as sections could even have been copied from books, and so wouldn't show up in search engines.
I was looking in particular for statistically-unlikely phrases. "John Smith was born in London in 1842" is okay. "The son of a London banker, he was educated at . . ." is not okay, especially when combined with lots of other phrases that closely match an original.
The editor in question has created quite a few opera stubs can get access to Grove Online articles, so although I don't know much about opera, I chose opera stubs to look at. I generally looked at his first and last edits to a particular article, as minor changes in wording from other editors could prevent something from showing in an online search, but it would still be a copyvio. I went to the online Grove, sometimes added something to the Wikipedia articles, with a footnote mentioning Grove online, and sometimes removed something that didn't have a source cited (which isn't to say that I thought it had been simply made up). I tried to rewrite phrases in my own words.
If anyone has a problem with anything I removed, please feel free to restore it, as long as it's not a word-for-word version of a paragraph added by Orbicle. Rewriting would be preferable, and I would have rewritten things that I removed, if I had had enough confidence in their verifiability to actually stand over the edit myself.
I just want to bring this to the attention of people interested in opera, as I've edited several opera articles, and will probably edit more, because of this issue; so I'd like you all to know what's going on in case my name shows up on your watchlists and you wonder why I made a particular edit. Thanks. ElinorD (talk) 09:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Since there seems to be general agreement about our opinion, I made a statement on behalf of us at User talk:Orbicle#To reviewing admins and linked to this discussion. If anyone objects, I'll modify it accordingly. Fireplace 13:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I just wanted to bring to your attention the (hopefully soon to develop) discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers#Infoboxes for composers about the inclusion of infoboxes in articles about composers. Cheers, Mak (talk) 22:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I was wondering if somebody involved in this project could help the editor who has made this page, as I do not believe they understand how to make a case for establishing notability. Heck, I don't even know if the person meets WP:MUSIC or any other standard, but I'm willing to give the person a chance to demonstrate it. Unfortunately, I think they've gotten upset at me (based on a comment in the edit summary), so I don't feel comfortable trying to help them any further. If someone could give them a little mentoring, it might be helpful. FrozenPurpleCube 16:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Oh, and you might want to add it to your Wikiproject too. FrozenPurpleCube 18:42, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Biography Project banners are being put on all opera articles relating to people by Kingbotk a bot operated by Kingboyk. I suggested to Kingbotk that the banners increased clutter etc. on pages which were not being developed by the Biography Project. Here is his reply:
Kleinzach 00:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I do feel sorry for the way that discussion at WPBio turned out. As a member of the Biography project, I apologize for the lack of congeniality that may have sometimes come across in the responses from some of the project members. However, there are two things I'd ask of you:
1) Don't yet write off the Biography project, or the possibility of an association with it, in the future. Maybe chalk off this particular interaction as a bad experience, but not necessarily representative of the attitude of the project as a whole. I'd like to talk about this more in the future, but not spend a lot of time and page space on it right now, when maybe we've all been doing more discussing and less editing than we'd want to do.
2.) Please don't feel that the placement of the project banners threatens you with infoboxes being imposed on all of the composer or opera-related biographical articles against your will. Kingbotk has not been adding the needs-infobox parameter to the WPBio project banners. I know of no plans to dictate to either WPBio Working Groups or to other Projects what they must do regarding infoboxes.
The addition of the needs-infobox parameter to the banner on some articles, I believe was done solely by individuals, myself included (see again the Talk:Claudio Monteverdi example), in what now seems as a misguided attempt to be helpful, in order to generate lists of articles that could have infoboxes added. It honestly never occurred to me that someone might not want an infobox (embarassed face goes here). My comment on the Monteverdi talk page about infoboxes being standard for Biography articles, may, in the first place, have been inaccurate, and in the second place was never meant to imply that you'd be forced to have them. So, if that comment contributed in any way to the general impression that it seems some of you now have, I am very, very, sorry, and if there is any way I could have known that it would contribute to such an understanding, I would have been much more careful about what I was saying.
My sincere hopes that this will settle down, and I will try to devote my best efforts to being helpful in any way possible regarding all of the above. -- Lini 03:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you to Lini for your suggestion above (02:40, 17 April 2007) which is interesting and worth considering. However IMO the Opera Project should remain independent and responsible for its own assessments. Let me explain why.
In some ways, this situation has been forced on us prematurely. When most of us became involved in the project - in 2005 or 2006 - the coverage was dire and the quality was poor. We have done a lot in the last 18 months or so, but many of our articles still remain as stubs (hopefully viable rather than minimal) or as semi-finished articles containing basic facts rather than substance. We also have a large number of short articles which will permanently remain short, for lack of sources etc., at least in English.
The assessment systems used on WP tend to concentrate on major, or at least long articles, with an assumption that any text can be developed and expanded to some kind of ideal well-detailed completeness. It we are going to have a system - though I'd really prefer to put off any assessment until more work has been done - I'd propose having one which divides articles into different types (major, minor, background or whatever) as well as states (stub, start, B, A etc.).
Also if we want to get involved in this we should probably find out more about the Wikipedia CD Selection (Wikipedia 1.0, or whatver it is called). I understand that it was this group that asked for assessments in the first place, hence all the bot activity. - Kleinzach 14:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 | → | Archive 20 |
Hi, everyone. As I've been making some small changes to several opera stubs, and as I don't know a great deal about opera, I just want to explain here what I'm doing and why.
An administrator came to my talk page to ask for my help in cleaning up some copyright violations. It's discussed here at the admin noticeboard (although those links will no longer work when the pages are archived). Someone made an originally massive list of articles created by that user, who has now been blocked indefinitely. As people go through the articles on the list, they google phrases or check in other ways, and then remove any copyright violations, they find, and then strikethrough the name of the article on the list. Then an admin comes along every few hours, and makes lots of consecutive struck-through titles invisible.
I offered to help to remove possible copyright violations. In some cases there was obviously no problem — just a disambiguation pages saying that X can refer to a novel written in 1859 by Y or a film produced in 1987 by Z. However, in the case of long paragraphs, a lot of blatant copyvios were found, and some administrators expressed discomfort at leaving phrases that had been written by that editor, as sections could even have been copied from books, and so wouldn't show up in search engines.
I was looking in particular for statistically-unlikely phrases. "John Smith was born in London in 1842" is okay. "The son of a London banker, he was educated at . . ." is not okay, especially when combined with lots of other phrases that closely match an original.
The editor in question has created quite a few opera stubs can get access to Grove Online articles, so although I don't know much about opera, I chose opera stubs to look at. I generally looked at his first and last edits to a particular article, as minor changes in wording from other editors could prevent something from showing in an online search, but it would still be a copyvio. I went to the online Grove, sometimes added something to the Wikipedia articles, with a footnote mentioning Grove online, and sometimes removed something that didn't have a source cited (which isn't to say that I thought it had been simply made up). I tried to rewrite phrases in my own words.
If anyone has a problem with anything I removed, please feel free to restore it, as long as it's not a word-for-word version of a paragraph added by Orbicle. Rewriting would be preferable, and I would have rewritten things that I removed, if I had had enough confidence in their verifiability to actually stand over the edit myself.
I just want to bring this to the attention of people interested in opera, as I've edited several opera articles, and will probably edit more, because of this issue; so I'd like you all to know what's going on in case my name shows up on your watchlists and you wonder why I made a particular edit. Thanks. ElinorD (talk) 09:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Since there seems to be general agreement about our opinion, I made a statement on behalf of us at User talk:Orbicle#To reviewing admins and linked to this discussion. If anyone objects, I'll modify it accordingly. Fireplace 13:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I just wanted to bring to your attention the (hopefully soon to develop) discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers#Infoboxes for composers about the inclusion of infoboxes in articles about composers. Cheers, Mak (talk) 22:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I was wondering if somebody involved in this project could help the editor who has made this page, as I do not believe they understand how to make a case for establishing notability. Heck, I don't even know if the person meets WP:MUSIC or any other standard, but I'm willing to give the person a chance to demonstrate it. Unfortunately, I think they've gotten upset at me (based on a comment in the edit summary), so I don't feel comfortable trying to help them any further. If someone could give them a little mentoring, it might be helpful. FrozenPurpleCube 16:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Oh, and you might want to add it to your Wikiproject too. FrozenPurpleCube 18:42, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Biography Project banners are being put on all opera articles relating to people by Kingbotk a bot operated by Kingboyk. I suggested to Kingbotk that the banners increased clutter etc. on pages which were not being developed by the Biography Project. Here is his reply:
Kleinzach 00:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I do feel sorry for the way that discussion at WPBio turned out. As a member of the Biography project, I apologize for the lack of congeniality that may have sometimes come across in the responses from some of the project members. However, there are two things I'd ask of you:
1) Don't yet write off the Biography project, or the possibility of an association with it, in the future. Maybe chalk off this particular interaction as a bad experience, but not necessarily representative of the attitude of the project as a whole. I'd like to talk about this more in the future, but not spend a lot of time and page space on it right now, when maybe we've all been doing more discussing and less editing than we'd want to do.
2.) Please don't feel that the placement of the project banners threatens you with infoboxes being imposed on all of the composer or opera-related biographical articles against your will. Kingbotk has not been adding the needs-infobox parameter to the WPBio project banners. I know of no plans to dictate to either WPBio Working Groups or to other Projects what they must do regarding infoboxes.
The addition of the needs-infobox parameter to the banner on some articles, I believe was done solely by individuals, myself included (see again the Talk:Claudio Monteverdi example), in what now seems as a misguided attempt to be helpful, in order to generate lists of articles that could have infoboxes added. It honestly never occurred to me that someone might not want an infobox (embarassed face goes here). My comment on the Monteverdi talk page about infoboxes being standard for Biography articles, may, in the first place, have been inaccurate, and in the second place was never meant to imply that you'd be forced to have them. So, if that comment contributed in any way to the general impression that it seems some of you now have, I am very, very, sorry, and if there is any way I could have known that it would contribute to such an understanding, I would have been much more careful about what I was saying.
My sincere hopes that this will settle down, and I will try to devote my best efforts to being helpful in any way possible regarding all of the above. -- Lini 03:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you to Lini for your suggestion above (02:40, 17 April 2007) which is interesting and worth considering. However IMO the Opera Project should remain independent and responsible for its own assessments. Let me explain why.
In some ways, this situation has been forced on us prematurely. When most of us became involved in the project - in 2005 or 2006 - the coverage was dire and the quality was poor. We have done a lot in the last 18 months or so, but many of our articles still remain as stubs (hopefully viable rather than minimal) or as semi-finished articles containing basic facts rather than substance. We also have a large number of short articles which will permanently remain short, for lack of sources etc., at least in English.
The assessment systems used on WP tend to concentrate on major, or at least long articles, with an assumption that any text can be developed and expanded to some kind of ideal well-detailed completeness. It we are going to have a system - though I'd really prefer to put off any assessment until more work has been done - I'd propose having one which divides articles into different types (major, minor, background or whatever) as well as states (stub, start, B, A etc.).
Also if we want to get involved in this we should probably find out more about the Wikipedia CD Selection (Wikipedia 1.0, or whatver it is called). I understand that it was this group that asked for assessments in the first place, hence all the bot activity. - Kleinzach 14:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)