User talk:Adrignola/2011/04

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Dear Adrignola,

My name is Nicu. I find the book quite interesting, especially Chapter 3 with application of System Analysis and Design principles to Information Systems in Education. Is there any place with online content where I can find a guide/systematic description of how to apply principles from System Analysis and Design principles to Information Systems in Education?

Thnak you for your answer.

Best regards

-Nicu

I have found "Innovation in Information Systems Education-IAccelerated Systems Analysis And Design With Appreciative Inquiry - An Action Learning Approach" at the Communications of the Association for Information Systems site. Seems to be a pretty meaty topic. – Adrignola discuss 18:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

Dear Adrignola,

Thanks. But this is not really what I am looking for. In Chapter 3 of the online book you apply System Analysis and Design to different Education Information Technology Systems. Is there anywhere described how this can be done? (step 1, step 2, ... for Planning, Analysis, Design?) From where did you know how to apply it?

Thanks -Nicu

I'm not really sure which book you refer to on Wikibooks. While I'm almost finished with a degree in Information Technology, this topic would be at a master's level rather than a bachelor's level. I have done a lot of categorization of pages or general cleanup. Maybe you saw my name in the history of a page as a result of that, but I don't recall writing anything on this topic. – Adrignola discuss 15:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

There are a couple of books being created by copying paragraphs from different Wikipedia pages - An Introduction to Molecular Biology & Principles_of_Biochemistry. We told the author how to give the required attributions in January, but he persists in leaving them out. How lenient do you think we should be? Are we accepting that - well it's only from Wikpedia, so it's not worth making a fuss? Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 19:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Since we had a discussion on this before and came to the conclusion that inline references (<ref>Permanent link to Wikipedia page</ref>) would be all that is needed if pulling from quite a few Wikipedia pages, I think that we're already being quite lenient. If there are no references, it's plagiarism and a copyright violation and should be deleted. This system is actually superior to mixing up page histories with multiple imports and saves work for admins, but if the user won't even attribute, it's a violation of Wikipedia's license. Policy says anything that persists longer than a week without compliance with licensing following notification is fair game for removal. We've already notified as you noted, so the time is up. – Adrignola discuss 19:53, 5 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

I suppose he might not have fully understood what was required or we might have spotted this earlier, so we could allow the usual 7-days to put things right. And he has "created" a new book and a lot of new pages since the original discussion, some of which might have a few attributions of the expected type. He has included references to external sources where these were part of the original article, but if inspected I expect nearly all of the material would be found to be lacking enough references to the Wikipedia pages. It's probably better than he deserves, but I could check the books page by page and flag them up separately to make sure we are not being unfair. Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 20:44, 5 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

That's very kind of you. – Adrignola discuss 20:53, 5 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Do you think the present {{copyvio}} warning template is appropriate for cases of copying from Wikipedia without sufficent attribution? Perhaps we could make another one that better explains what the author needs to do in this situation. Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 18:44, 7 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

I do not. I've imported and customized {{copypaste}} for our needs. Feel free to tweak it if you like. – Adrignola discuss 19:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Looks good... except it no longer says the page may be deleted after 7 days. Would that sanction no longer apply in this case? Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 21:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

I have added information that it will be removed/deleted (depending on whether it's the whole page or not). We'd revision delete any revisions that contain the violating text if it's just a section of a page. – Adrignola discuss 21:42, 7 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Wikibooks:Templates/Licensing issues notices‎ has appeared in Category:Copyright violations. I know, it's a simple <noinclude> or something that needs adding but I have a mental blank and a headache... QU ^TalkQu

Fixed, I think (example=yes). --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 23:07, 7 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

FWIW, I think something like {{citations missing}} would help and inform people better. --darklama 22:08, 7 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for catching that, QuiteUnusual, and for fixing the call on the page, Pi zero. Darklama, I'm not stuck on the wording, so in true wiki tradition we can play with it until everyone is satisfied. – Adrignola discuss 01:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

What happened here? --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:04, 10 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

The talk page was not protected against moves, strangely enough, unlike Cookbook talk:Table of Contents and Talk:Wikijunior. This despite the log stating it was in November 2005. I was prompted to check the status given the two instances of vandalism in a short period of time. Do you have a disagreement with the action? – Adrignola discuss 02:58, 10 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

I've no objections to what I now think you did. My query was because I was having trouble deciphering the log. I see you partially edit-protected it till tomorrow, and fully move-protected it indefinitely. When I first looked at it, the best I could make out was you'd protected it indefinitely till tomorrow, which seemed a neat trick (and is reminiscent of a line from The Mikado). Though the 2005 log entry still seems a moderately neat trick, as it does not indicate that any specific protections were imposed; only the edit description makes any specific claim. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 04:52, 10 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hi there, I was editing my userpage with an article about air conditioning. It's disallowing me because it doesn't have any bad content. I copied text from Wikipedia's article about air conditioning. it is at this page. Please adjust the filter and help me if you can. Thanks! Floorplanmaster (discuss • contribs) 21:05, 16 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

If you need to make use of text at Wikipedia, it is preferable to request an import of it at Wikibooks:Requests for import. I have imported the content from the aforementioned page and placed it on your user page. – Adrignola discuss 21:17, 16 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hello. I was wondering when the logo for Wikijunior would be uploaded. It's been a few years and the majority of the community has voted for the "three people" logo. --Turn685 (discuss • contribs) 21:06, 17 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

The logo page is located here

The file already exists on Commons, so it doesn't need uploading. I guess you mean used? Not convinced that the majority of the community have voted - participation was extremely low. QU ^TalkQu 21:12, 17 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

The logo was probably more relevant back when the idea was that Wikijunior would be split off from Wikibooks to http://wikijunior.org. Now that it's clear that it's not likely to be, the discussion on the logo is an interesting one but not likely to have any actual impact on operations. – Adrignola discuss 22:22, 17 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hi - I posted "Introductory Chemistry Online" last year, but it hasn't gone well. I have lots of negative email pointing out errors and other issues. I would like to withdraw the book, for now, and work on fixing things. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do this! Could you help me out here? Thanks...

As you were the only significant contributor, I have complied with this request. – Adrignola discuss 17:56, 19 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

An objection has been raised at User talk:Adrignola/Notes and if true this would be a significant impact. I have thus restored the book at this time. – Adrignola discuss 01:45, 22 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

I've also received an OTRS email on this. It states that the University of Illinois professor using this book is also the one who posted it here. So I have to ask why it was requested to be taken down if your students needed it for a test? I am going to have to seriously consider ignoring speedy deletion criterion #1 in light of this. – Adrignola discuss 12:34, 22 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Remember those books being created by copying paragraphs from different Wikipedia pages - An Introduction to Molecular Biology & Principles_of_Biochemistry. We told the author how to give the required attributions in January, and more recently advised him to add permanent links to the Wikipedia pages. Apart from a few cases, he has only been adding links to the latest page without any version information. Obviously permanent links are best, but I suppose by comparing page histories you could in principle work out approximately which version was used as the source. Do we actually have a policy laid down which requires permanent links in references, or is this just a customary practice we recommend to people? Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 17:22, 20 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

It's a customary practice, like most things at Wikibooks (I don't recall any policies formulated during my time here). – Adrignola discuss 21:32, 20 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

In my opinion it shouldn't need a policy because the requirement is based on the terms & conditions of the licenses under which content is published rather than community decided policy. So, an unattributed copy / paste from Wikipedia breaks the license conditions. A copy / paste attributed by a link to the current article may comply with the license, but it is questionable because you can only infer what version of the content was copied based on timestamps in the edit history, and that isn't 100% accurate. For example, if I copy a paragraph now, paste it in, spend 5 minutes formatting then save then in that 5 minutes several edits could have been made to the Wikipedia source. So it isn't 100% certain when the copy was taken. And yes, I've never seen a policy formulated and I'm not complaining about it. QU ^TalkQu 21:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

OK, I just wanted to get the story straight for when I talk to the author really. Regarding those books, I propose deleting the non-compliant pages and that the author should request undeletion of a few pages at a time according to the number he plans to fix over a 7 day period. If we wanted to be even stricter we could limit him to just 1 page at a time I suppose. Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 22:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

I was making an effort not to get involved on this discussion but alas, I can't, as this is something that I already made an effort to show people that they are going out of their way to build up a minor issue in something that is destructive and disruptive.

Authorship (right of attribution) is different across projects, I expect that most of those already active on this issue understand the differences that exist between the two projects, what we (me and some of you) disagree (in different degrees and aspects) is on the reliability and factual usefulness of the edit history to ascertain real contributions and what contributions should be classified for authorship (and ultimately the need for attribution). I will try to avoid getting into the different issues and mention only the fallacy in this discussion...

The primary problem in regard to the Wikipedia copy and paste is both a legal requirement and to some degree a moral obligation.

The legal requirement can be solved easily by including a statement of attribution into the work, anyone can do this and to my knowledge we haven't been pressured by the Wikimedia to expedite or correct this requirement since both project belong to the same entity, the reason why a special attribution should be included is for stand alone copies of the work.

The moral obligation is hard to defend, since Wikipedia is different from Wikibooks, most if not all articles are in disaggregated form aren't copyrightable this and the dilution of contributions puts the expectation of contributors in getting attributions very low, I would even say inexistent if the awareness of this facts was generalized, this is again in high contrast to our own project. That said the importation of the edit history is great, should be promoted but I don't see the need to force or make it an obligation, or even as a factor that should merit such considerations it certainly is not a way to promote contributions and ease participation, most people will not bother to understand how it works or how to request it, so ultimately if the issue is bothering you, you should do it for them, not press them into compliance, of course you can also attempt to educate...

The other issue is that if a copy paste is detected and remains a duplicate, over some time (7 days it an extremely low time-frame to see any evolution) it should be deleted not as a copyvio but as simple duplication of an encyclopedic article, without causing harm to the work (the deletion should optimally be substituted by a link to the Wikipedia content).

One of the real issues I have with these deletions, that sometimes are not simple copies, is the lacking of a log on copyvios deletions... --Panic (discuss • contribs) 17:51, 21 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Panic, I disagree when you say "The legal requirement can be solved easily by including a statement of attribution into the work...". I estimate a typical page in these books contain about 30 to 60 paragraphs each copied from between 5 and 15 different Wikipedia articles. That could add up to about 800 different links per book, so I think the best person to provide the information to satisfy the legal requirement must be the original author.

Your suggestion to replace duplicated text by a link to the original article is also not practical as in many cases there is no link target in the Wikipedia article that corresponds to the exact paragraphs which were copied. Even if you could specify the start of a duplicated section, how would you specify the end of it?

I agree with you that deletion of pages is rather harsh, but it seems to be all we can do when someone persists in ignoring the advice they have been given. Though, there is probably scope for improving our help pages to set out more clearly what level and style of attribution are expected for material copied from Wikipedia. Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 20:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Well the best person to provide the information is always the owner of rights over the copied works, if he choses to exert those rights. That is the core problem we fall under as we preemptively act to protect the project as we tag stuff as copyvio, most times this is fine as we are "protecting" the project (even that can be argued against). I agree that it may be the lesser of the evils but in the case of Wikipedia content or even PD (or similar, that can require attribution) my view is that deletion is the greater evil, and forcing people to comply with our procedures just exacerbates the problem.

As for the required attribution, placing a simple line stating that some content originated on Wikipedia will address the legal requirement, whatever the number of source articles, one could easily shortcut this discussion by placing said attribution on the work under discussion (since some other efforts have been put into it that would be wrong and non-productive but it would remove the "obligation" being forced on the contributor), of course that if the content is a simple replication then it should be prevented anyway, as I said above, but not on the argument of copyvio.

This is why I argue that we shouldn't tag Wikipedia content as copyvio. If detected an educational effort can be made, tag the content with a similar but non deletionist template and if it is simply a copy and paste give it 30 days and then replace it with a link to Wikipedia if the content is duplicate (one should also take in consideration that at times content is moved from Wikipedia before deletion without any special procedures, or even a disputed version of a page, we as an independent project should not enforce or validate Wikipedia decisions in regards to our content), we can even announce on the talk page at Wikipedia that the content is being used as this does not prevent anyone to request an import of the edit history, but it removes barrier to sporadic contributors to understand complex procedures, subtle legal nuances and the inherent delay on the operation. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 20:38, 21 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Panic, I would be interested to see if anyone else supports your claim that "placing a simple line stating that some content originated on Wikipedia will address the legal requirement". If that is accepted, then the whole problem is easily solved. If not accepted, then we still have the practical problem of providing attribution for the 800 paragraphs or so in each book copied from various Wikipedia articles. Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 21:10, 21 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

See the C++ Programming work or any of the other projects I've contributed, all have complied with the attribution requirement in that way (mostly because at the time edit history couldn't be imported or the size of the used content was not significative), I also indicate those as I'm fully aware of what has been done, but I've seen similar atributions in other works... --Panic (discuss • contribs) 21:18, 21 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

I can't pinpoint what content was used without some work but on my other major projects you can probably have an idea by examining my contributions around the time the attribution was added. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 21:22, 21 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

So, this is a complicated area not least because the licensing changed (the move from GFDL to CC-BY-SA). WMF lists the following relevant points:

As an author, you agree to be attributed in any of the following fashions: a) through a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the article or articles you contributed to, b) through a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy which is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on this website, or c) through a list of all authors. (Any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions.) . This suggests a link just to the article might be enough, rather than the permanent link. However it then goes on to state

Indicate changes: If you make modifications or additions, you must indicate in a reasonable fashion that the original work has been modified. If you are re-using the page in a wiki, for example, indicating this in the page history is sufficient.. This one is more challenging if there is no revision history imported and no link to the actual version copied. How are modifications determined?

Anyway, I am not a lawyer. But I do think it is an abridgment of the moral rights of the original authors to have their work just pasted in here, without any link at all to the original source - and that's what is happening now. Recent Runes point is very valid, there's so much mixing up going on it's impossible to reasonably work out the original source unless the person editing here does it. QU ^TalkQu 22:08, 21 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

I think that in that respect we are all in agreement (the defense of the source original author/s, noting however that the definition of author and how we recognize them is not consensual, and varies form jurisdiction, this is important as covered in previous discussions as it has legal relevance), but we all have no problem in recognizing and acknowledging every contribution. Because of this, no one seems to be objecting to the moral and optimal solution of importing the edit histories, the point I was putting forward is that edit histories aren't exactly the ultimate repository for determining authorship (authorship is claimed not attributed) or even every contribution in the evolution of a work (in opposition to what is normally implied), an in the relevance in regards to Wikipedia, the authorship and license of the project is distinct as are the expectations of attribution as I stated above and that in these cases forcing the compliance of editors is not necessary nor is it the optimal solution.

The last part of your rational also indicates the basis of the problem, since most of the contributors are mostly anonymous volunteers, even unreachable outside of the project, so the view that they can be forced into compliance is unrealistic and places a unnecessary burden on the rest of the community to detect and categorize the infringement, ultimately leading to unnecessary deletions. We already do a good effort in cases there is real legal implications and in those cases it can be said that it benefits the project and it is ultimately necessary to avoid cross pollination of works with illegal content, but in cases the content is free or license compatible the burden should be taken by those that really care about the legal and moral correctness and ultimately the content owners as it constitutes no risk to the project and the suppression of such usable content is ultimately detrimental to our project evolution, even more if it can in most cases be easily fixed at any time.

Note however that I'm making this points in relation to the policing and enforcing options available to administrators (most of those in this thread are discussing on how it should be enforced not in establishing an utopic guideline for all Wikibookians). --Panic (discuss • contribs) 22:48, 21 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Well, putting large philosophical issues aside, I think RecentRunes idea of deleting the non-compliant pages, the undeleting for the author to fix (assuming the author requests undeletion) is by far the reasonable approach to current problem at hand. Thenub314 (talk) 23:04, 21 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

For what I remember deletions and undeletions have some costs (structural), there is also a problem of logging such deletion (if a log is maintained of copyvio deletions they become less problematic) and ultimatly there is the problem of alienating contributors (it all depends on how it is done). --Panic (discuss • contribs) 23:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

If a author is contributing to a wikipedia article then copyright remain to wikipedia/WMF not author. So if a person copying and writing it include content from wikipedia is legally right (Panic view). The best way to show attribution is as suggested by QU. I hope it will help.

thanks.......... lalsingh

The copyrights aren't never lost to Wikimedia foundation, they are licensed. Of course depending on the jurisdiction, in some places if the ownership is not claimed any copyrightable contribution defaults to the recognized existing authors (under US law this is not the case, so the use of the content hosted across WMF servers is not impacted by this, in other formats it can). But in the specific case of Wikipedia only the specific aggregation of the various encyclopedic articles is copyrightable (one can can and has been argued that some articles go beyond simple encyclopedic content, but these cases can be see as falling outside of the objective of Wikipedia).

In the case of the optimal attribution (the use of the edit histories) what I was pointing to is how we go about it. We can say that we are enforcing the deletion policy in forcing editors to be the ones that request the import process, but there is another way to comply to the requirements, even if non optimal it protects the content (that at times is not simple duplication and if deleted will be lost), in place of blindly attempt to enforce rights that in the first place should be exerted by the owners. In other words we are treating free usable content in the same way we treat the infringements of non-free content with a clear losses to the project.

The fault of course is not on the requirements nor the practice it is on the copyright law itself, the abolishing of obligatory copyright statement that forces us to be preemptively protective of the project. If the statement was obligatory the practice would be more in line with how trade marks are protected, exclusively by the owners. It is a sad state of affairs when no one can easily identify public domain works, it is in fact the slow death of public domain since it becomes harder to determine the validity of the claimed ownership of non-free works. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 17:30, 22 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hi Adrignola, I wanted to thank you for the welcome. I have completed, or nearly so, an analysis of one volumetric recipe. Currently, I have posted it on my talk page, and was wondering if you had any comments? I find a lot of errors in the recipe versus the type of bread I would have expected based upon the title, and I worry that adding it to the recipe itself, as the analysis currently exists, may be too harsh a critique. Frances Davey was correct in her/his observation that varying flour amounts from ambiguous cup volumes skews the entire formula. The recipe I picked included mL measures as well as cups, but it also called for a range of flour volumes instead of a precise amount. Because the analysis was performed in a spreadsheet, I was able to plug in some alternate numbers in various scenarios, and was surprised to see the variances largely disappear when the flour weights were the same. Anyway, I'd be very interested in any comments about the analysis that you may have, particularly as it relates to whether it is appropriate for posting on the recipe page, or whether something more discreet is called for, such as the recipe's talk page. One problem is that if someone comes along and decides to edit the recipe, perhaps because they tested it in their kitchen (I can't do that with this recipe due to milk protein allergy, I need to eat all food I make), then decided to edit some of the values in the ingredient list, then the analysis table would also require a bit of calculation to correctly update. Gzuufy (discuss • contribs) 02:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'd say that harsh critiques are desirable, as improvements to the recipes are very helpful and that's the whole point of a wiki anyone can edit. I'd suggest keeping the analysis on the same page as the percentages, but to avoid overwhelming the reader with the nitty gritty of its derivation, placing the content between Template:Hidden begin and Template:Hidden end. Those can be styled too, so a template specific to the Cookbook can be made with styles built-in, allowing you to call, say, Template:Analysis begin, and not have to retype the styling. The hiding of the detailed analysis with the percentage table still showing makes things more discreet while not relegating the clear work you put in to the talk page. – Adrignola discuss 12:17, 26 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Okay, thank you. I'm nearly certain I read your reply without all of its nuances fully comprehended, yesterday. Perhaps fatigue was involved. I updated the recipe itself, which puts the decision within moderators fields of expertise. Presumably, some edits are not approved, and perhaps that would be best! Gzuufy (discuss • contribs) 19:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)Reply