Talk:First Presbyterian Church and Lewis Pintard House

sources and potential copyright issues

User:MacDoug's just added a lot to this article with no source for the text additions. Given that other usernames, possibly the same person, has copied in copyrighted material into wikipedia articles on New Rochelle area sites, i am inclined to be skeptical. can the new material be sourced? MacDoug's, can you please speak to the question of whether this material is written by you, reworded from other sources, or copied word-for-word? Sincerely, doncram (talk) 02:17, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Jvolkblum --Orlady (talk) 02:39, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

deleted photo

I just deleted link to a photo which was just added, and which was added and deleted before. I am not myself clear on why this photo is controversial, but I believe it is controversial to add it, and I believe that another editor would have been justified by Wikipedia policy and practices to delete it, so I just stepped in to do it already. I wish for discussion of the photo here before it is restored. It was added by an IP user. Based on past history this is likely to be identified (rightly or wrongly) as being associated with banned user Jvolklum. If the IP user would like to contact me off-line, I would like to discuss the particulars and see if I could help in obtaining permanent permission to use this and/or similar photos to illustrate the article. The photo seems nice, by the way, and it would be a nice addition to the article. :) doncram (talk) 02:58, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Images are particularly susceptible to copyright infringement, all the more reason that banned users with a history of stealing material should not be allowed to add them. By the way, to rub it in a bit, this article has been a nice example of why contributions of banned users should be deleted outright. This IP is the third identity that Jvolkblum has used to edit this article alone. Subjects in his/her realm of interest automatically become battlegrounds and time sinks. Over and over and over... —Wknight94 (talk) 03:17, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec, responding to first version of wknight's comment) I think that your terming it that way is pretty nasty and unhelpful. Offhand, I believe that this photograph, with its camera timestamp showing a date in October 2009, but with it uploaded to commons showing a date of October 2008, is a personally taken photo by the uploader who is legally allowed to release it to the public domain, and who is not required to give his/her real name to do so. I believe that such release is legal and I believe that it would be legal for wikipedia to display it. Your statement suggests, indirectly, that this is stolen material and i think that is not justified. I know you have more experience with Jvolklum and linked others than i do, and I expect you are legitimately frustrated for some past stuff which i haven't seen, but I think also that you and/or other editors have made false accusations and treated the person or persons unfairly at times that i have observed. To wit, the recent discussion at wt:NRHP in which it was claimed that a text passage was fabricated, while in fact it could be proven, and was proven, that the text passage was a legitimate quote. All of this will be grist for an unban proposal or two eventually, i hope. Anyhow, I think you are applying judgment from elsewhere when I prefer to consider the questioned material on a case-by-case basis. As i am currently doing with reviewing various NR neighborhood articles. doncram (talk) 03:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Having seen instances where Jvolkblum claimed to have personally created images that were identical to images I found elsewhere on the Internet (including one instance when the photographer's name was overlaid on the image uploaded to Commons), I have to assume that any claim made by this user is a lie. --Orlady (talk) 03:41, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

What is unhelpful is attributing such a high level of trust to someone who has clearly abused that trust, even recently. As Orlady says, Jvolkblum engages in the most damaging kind of policy abuse, i.e. the subtle introduction of copyright-violating content and photography which exposes this project and downstream content users to legal jeopardy. —Wknight94 (talk) 11:34, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I have comment elsewhere that the anger and level of distrust reflected in O and W's statements may be inappropriate, if you consider the possibility that more than one New Rochelle area editor may have gotten caught up in this. Treating "Jvolkblum" as monolithic evil, due to some evil-type actions taken by some who have been linked in, at first perhaps for them unfairly, and then perhaps simply to goad them, is unfair to others involved who may have never lied, stolen copyrighted material, etc., but simply who have tried to edit New Rochelle area articles. doncram (talk) 00:05, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Quoting and plagiarism

Two pieces of material, in which i included a fairly long quote, were just revised in the article, with edit summary "reworded into original words; quoting a source verbatim is arguably not plagiarism, but it's a very poor practice".

I resent that editorializing and think it is unnecessary and unhelpful. Your edit itself appears fine, as it integrated two chunks of material added at different times that indeed merited reworking. I resent the implication that what I wrote was plagiarism. You say "it is arguably not plagiarism" which implies that you yourself think, or you think many would think, that it is plagiarism. I think you misunderstand what is plagiarism. My personal definition of plagiarism is writing which fails to give adequate credit to its source, whether for ideas, details, or wording. It is not ever plagiarism to quote, when full credit is given to a source, as I had done here. On the other hand, paraphrasing sometimes is plagiarism, if the credit given fails to adequately convey any originality or distinctiveness in original wording that is still reflected in the paraphrased replacement.

I just thought i should mention that I will take exception to editorializing that labels my writing in negative ways like that. Better not to label it at all. The edit summary was gratuitous and somewhat insulting to me. doncram (talk) 02:38, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Your decision to quote a brochure from the New Rochelle Downtown Business Improvement District, instead of rewriting the article in your own words, was an expedient one that I believe was made to rescue the article from deletion. I am not saying it was wrong to do that, but I do believe that it is inconsistent with WP policy and guidelines to continue to maintain an article that contains verbatim quotations from that type of document (a nonauthoritative tertiary source) instead of providing original text. (My edit summary said, "quoting a source verbatim is arguably not plagiarism, but it's a very poor practice".)

There's a WP essay, Wikipedia:Quotations, that has some relevant observations, to wit (my observations are in italics):

1. The first thing to remember when using quotations within Wikipedia is that they must be sourced. -- OK on this point (the quote was sourced)
2. ...Use quotations when:

• using a unique phrase or term from someone’s speech or writing.
• dealing with a potentially controversial statement.

-- neither of these situations is applicable to this particular article

1. ...Try to avoid quotations when:

• a summary of a quote would be better. --Not really applicable here, since neither of the tests for using a quotation was met. However, considering that the Business Improvement District's point of view on these buildings is of no relevance, there's no particular value in summarizing it.

Bottom line: That quotation from the brochure needed to be replaced with original wording. --Orlady (talk) 04:55, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

You note correctly that i had used a complete quote from a not-great source (which I assert is unlike my practice everywhere else in wikipedia) and that it was "expedient" to rescue the article from deletion. However, I would say it was more necessary and appropriate, given the focus that you and a few other editors have had on New Rochelle area articles. This is the only area in the country where NRHP articles have been deleted repeatedly, and you yourself have deleted hundreds or possibly thousands of paraphrased passages in area articles. Anything paraphrased that is not a direct quote is, in practice, likely to be deleted by you if it is not your own. Including a direct longish quote that asserted some significance and was bullet-proof in terms of its sourcing, seems like a good strategy to counter your influence in this area. Now, for you to criticize the use of a longish quote seems ironic. I only used the quote because of your undue, strident criticism in this area.

You happen to be dead wrong here. In this instance (if I remember the various deleted items correctly), the banned user from New Rochelle had inserted verbatim text from the BID brochure, but had attributed that content to some other completely unrelated source. That's plagiarism of the worst kind, and the pervasive addition of that kind of material to New Rochelle articles is one of the reasons why I have become committed to combating the banned user's sockpuppetry in these articles. Your assertion that I would have deleted anything that was not a direct quote is offensive and without basis. I cannot recall any time that I myself have added long factual direct quotes from tertiary sources to Wikipedia articles, nor can I recall any instance where I deleted properly sourced self-worded content from an article while leaving long quotations behind. --Orlady (talk) 18:30, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

The bottomline that I would get to, instead, is that you need to back off and let other editors, including newbie ones, develop the articles in this area. You do have a talent for identifying small or not-so-small errors in wording in articles. However, I think I have more faith than you do that a community of New Rochelle area editors can evolve and get around to fixing any errors introduced in the necessarily messy process of building an encyclopedia. For example, you noted elsewhere that a sentence stated Rochelle Heights when it should have stated Rochelle Park, or the other way around, and therefore the sentence belonged in a different article. That kind of error would be found out by locals, given some time and leeway to develop the articles in rough form at first and sort it all out. I believe that your talents would be far more constructively applied at wp:PR, for example, where articles are more developed and editors have actually asked for and will usually appreciate scrutiny. Here, although you are accurate and "right" in some sense in most of your edits and what you yourself write, I think your scrutiny actually hurts more than it helps in terms of developing the wikipedia. doncram (talk) 17:57, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

How thoughtful and generous of you to tell me how to spend my own time as a volunteer. Since you seem to know how to run my personal life, will you also be telling me what to eat for dinner this evening?

May I remind you that I first got involved with the New Rochelle articles by trying to be helpful (from a distance) to a user who I thought was a dedicated, but somewhat clueless, new contributor? And that I was shocked at first to learn that this user was a sockpuppet? --Orlady (talk) 18:30, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

notice to Orlady and Yonkinator

Hey, i noticed activity adding and deleting photos to this article. For the moment I am considering this article to be within the set of NR articles which i "manage". I am somewhat self-appointed in this role, but Orlady has asked me to manage others, see my Talk page. Here, I am taking the position for now that the photos, which are at commons, are relevant to this article and should be included. You or anyone may please discuss here at the Talk page. Please do not engage in edit warring. As far as I know, also, Yonkinator is not banned; in fact Yonkinator is not even blocked. For anyone else, there is a pending Unban process which would clarify that Yonkinator is not banned and/or otherwise provide amnesty. Again, please discuss here. doncram (talk) 14:59, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I reverted one edit that Yonkinator had made several weeks ago in accordance with Wikipedia policy on enforcing user bans. Yonkinator is a confirmed sockpuppet in the Jvolkblum group and is blocked. Yonkinator is not, however, blocked at Commons. Those Commons photos that Yonkinator inserted in the article and that you restored were uploaded to Commons by Yonkinator, who claims to have taken the photos himself, one in July 2007 and the other in summer 2009. Appallingly, there is a prevalent attitude at Commons that uploaders' statements should be accepted on good faith -- even when those uploaders have been proven to be brazen liars in connection with other Commons images or at other Wikimedia projects -- unless there is solid evidence that the specific image has been misrepresented. I suspect (based on the quality of the photos and the characteristics of the electronic files) that both of these images are professional photos copied from some other source, but I have not found them elsewhere on the Internet so I cannot provide solid proof that Yonkinator did not create them. However, since Jvolkblum socks have previously claimed personal ownership of images that turned out to be copied from websites such as http://www.newrochelleny.com/photo.asp , http://nrhs.nred.org/ , http://www.newrochelledowntown.com/ , and others, as well as "Flickr-washing" various photos to get them listed at Commons, there is no basis for accepting their images in good faith. --Orlady (talk) 15:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, okay, i didn't notice that Yonkinator's edit was a few weeks ago; I thot the edit and your reversion were immediate, implying Y is not blocked, when I take it from what you say that Y has since been blocked.

I believe you Orlady that there have been other photos which someone uploaded to commons and turned out to be copies. However, I don't necessarily believe that person is the same person as Yonkinator, because multiple persons may have been caught up the whole mess of accounts labelled as sockpuppets. This whole mess is really a mess, due to what appears to me to be sloppiness in making claims of Jvolkblum-association, and sloppiness about which are sockpuppets vs. meatpuppets vs. neither, etc. I don't really want to trace through the multiple identities involved at Commons, in addition to trying to sort out what has gone on in Wikipedia. I suggest starting over with a real, one-time amnesty, allowing whoever is Yonkinator here to operate from one account, and likewise in Commons. Then it would be easy to trace everything going forward. The past stuff is essentially impossible to sort out. If you are so sure that there is one person involved, then you should be willing to agree to allow one account that can be monitored, and it should be easy to show if that person then creates new sockpuppets. Checkuser investigations currently have effectively no power to move me, as they essentially just show a new account is linked to other accounts that have been linked in previously, possibly unfairly, which proves nothing helpful. On the other hand, if an amnesty is given, and then future checkuser investigation prove links of activity in multiple accounts to the one amnesty account, all will be clear. doncram (talk) 21:50, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Who is plagiarizing whom?

I want to create a Wikivoyage listing for this point of interest, but I'm not sure whether to link this as the primary source. Did they copy this Wikipedia article without attribution? Or is it the other way around? Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:40, 23 April 2018 (UTC)