This is Oren's Coaching School for and his adopted user(s). Lessons and other important information will be posted for adoptees. Any questions relating to the lessons can be left on the talk page. Credits for this Adoption School go to Hersfold one of the elders of the community who worked on the Adoption Program. However, this is a new and improved version of the adoption school - restructured to
reduce hazard to both students and teachers,
instil wikipedia's values and
provide adoptees a more personalised experience.
Also in the near future I will add a social game component - because learning on a wiki should be as much fun as working on a wiki!
Notice to vandalism patrollers: This page may contain links to files such as Image:Example.jpg and Media:Example.ogg. I understand that these links are commonly found in test edits, and that they may be removed to reduce the number of false alarms. I ask, however, that you please use caution when doing so on this page! Such files are used here for demonstrative purposes for the benefit of my adoptees. Changing them to files that do not exist is not very helpful. If you do replace a file link with something else, please make sure the replacement works before moving on. Thank you. BO | Talk 03:08, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Available Courses:
Lesson Books
Feel free to read ahead, you can take these lessons at any rate you like. Optional lessons are included if I feel you need them.
Adoptees should complete all required lessons to receive the link to the exam. If you have a suggestion for a lesson not covered here, please contact Oren Bochman.
Students who have completed the first course (or a similar program) may request to take additional courses.
Hello Anna2123456789, and welcome to my adoption school. This page, and its talk page, will be a centralized discussion point for the two of us in relation to anything to do with your mentorship; this way, we won't risk cluttering up our talk pages quite so much, and everything will be in one place instead of spread all over. Getting here isn't hard - you can keep a copy of the link I gave you around, or there's a link to the Adoption Center at the top of my userpage. Searching for "OrenBochman/Adopt" will also get this page among the first few hits.
You'll also notice I've put up a status box for you at the right here - you don't have to use this if you don't want to, however it could be useful if the two of us need to get together for a quick chat or something. This template does require a bit of setup to work the way it is intended, but it's nothing too involved.
So that I can get to know you a bit better, as well as some time to figure out where we're going to start, I've listed a short questionnaire below. All questions are completely optional, but remember answering them could be a great help for me in getting things ready. Please take the time to answer them Thanks!
Should you ever need to contact me about something relating to the mentorship, feel free to post to this page or its talk page. I'm watching these pages and will be notified as soon as something comes up. If it's urgent or unrelated to the program, then you are of course more than welcome to drop a note on my main talk page at User talk:OrenBochman. Then I'll get that god-awful ugly new messages bar and come running. Anyway, to your questions...
What do you feel your best Wikipedia skills are so far?
Answer:
What are your best contributions so far, and why?
Answer:Well I am pretty proud of the page I created Adrianna Bertola because I managed to find quite a few references, which I hadn't done before.
What areas do you feel you need the most improvement in?
Answer: Uploading images. I am not sure of some copyright tags. Also my communication I am still at school so School must come first, so I don't always have time but I will try and improve
Say you were going to work on getting an article to FA status (any article, I don't even care if it exists or not). What would the article be about, or what general topic would it be a part of?
Answer: A biography of a living person because I find them most interesting
Have you ever found yourself in a conflict with another editor? If so, on what article, and what was the dispute about?
Answer: Well the user who blocked me. Not proper conflict just looking through their talk page they knew I was young I just thought they were being bit insensitive
Have you ever been subject to any form of sanction or editing restriction? I can tell you've been blocked, but other sanctions are a bit more difficult to track down.
Answer: No, apart from being blocked.
What time zone do you live in? I am in GMT +2 or +1 depending on the time of year. Right now it's +2.
What do you expect to get out of this adoption progam ? Is there some goal you'd like to set for yourself, that you would plan to complete by the end of the program?
Answer: To upload images correctly
As your mentor, what do you expect from me? Is there anything in particular you'd like to see me do?
Answer: To like give me guidance
Take a look at the lessons I already have set some of them up. Which of these do you feel you don't need to take? Which of these do you feel you really need? Ignore the required/optional markers; since this isn't a normal adoption program, the normal expectations are waived.
Answer: Well I need to take the social, multimedia and the research programs will be fine.
When thinking about how to run this, I came up with an idea to run this as a sort of "obstacle course", where I would give you various tasks to complete each week, with the intention of giving you experience in various situations. If necessary, I may get some other users to assist with this. Would you be open to such a program, or would you prefer something different? Either way, what suggestions do you have?
Answer: No anything is fine
Are you be averse to using the {{Adopter}} and {{Adoptee}} userboxes?
Answer:
Thanks!
I hope to hear back from you soon.
Of course, if you have any questions for me, do feel free to ask them!
This program is for your benefit, and I want to make sure it's run in a way that gets the best done for you. :-) BO | Talk 02:52, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
This is probably the most important assignment I'll give, because this is the only one where failure to adhere exactly according to policy will result in an indefinite block from editing the encyclopedia – pay attention.
On Wikipedia, you can only include text which has been released under CC-BY-SA and the GFDL. In fact, if you notice, every time when you edit, the following text is underneath the editing window:
Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable.
So you are in effect contributing every time you edit. Now, let's think about that non-free content criteria - "No free equivalent" means that you will never be able to license text under it (except for quoting) - as you can re-write it in your own words to create an equivalent. You always, always, always have to write things in your own words or make it VERY clear that you are not.
When people refer to Commons on Wikipedia, they're generally referring to Wikimedia Commons, a repository of free material. Images on Commons can be linked directly to Wikipedia, like that picture just to the right and above. Now, since Commons is a free repository, fair use is not permitted. It makes sense to upload free images to Commons, so that they can be used by all language encyclopedias.
Copyright is a serious problem on a free encyclopedia. As I said before, any work that is submitted must be released under the CC-BY-SA License and the GFDL.
Free images are those which can be freely used anywhere on Wikipedia. A free image may be either public domain, or released under a free license, such as CC-BY-SA. Free images can be used in any article where their presence would add value. As long as there is a consensus among the editors working on an article that the image is appropriate for the article, it's safe to say that it can remain in an article. Free images can even be modified and used elsewhere.
Non-free images, however, are subject to restrictions. Album covers and TV screenshots are two types of images that are typically non-free. They may belong to a person or organization who has not agreed to release them freely to the public, and there may be restrictions on how they are used. You have to meet ALL of the non free content criteria in order to use them.
Problems arise when people upload images that are not their own. Most images are under some form of copyright, even if it's not explicitly stated anywhere. This is usually the case with anything found on the internet. When these images are uploaded, Wikipedia must adhere to a very strict policy known as "fair use". What this basically is doing is giving us a reason to use an otherwise non-free image, on the basis that it is for educational purposes, using it has no measurable effect on the copyright holder's rights, and that we have no other alternative. The establishment of this reason is called the fair use rationale, part of a set of criteria that MUST accompany any fair use/copyright tag on Wikipedia. These criteria are:
A specific fair use tag (see link above) that describes what the image is.
The source of the image (this is usually a website, but could also be a book or magazine that you scanned the picture out of)
The image itself must be of low resolution. If it is high resolution, that version must be deleted and replaced with another (essentially, worse) version.
A fair use rationale explaining:
Where the image is to be used (This page MUST be in the main (article) namespace. Fair use images MUST NOT be used anywhere else)
That the image cannot be used to replace any marketing role or otherwise infringe upon the owner's commercial rights to the image
How the image is being used, in a way that fits within the fair use policy (i.e., identification purposes, etc.)
That there is no way the image can possibly be replaced with a free version
The image must have been previously published elsewhere
Only when an image meets all of these criteria may it be used. Fair use images must be used in at least one article (not "orphaned"), and articles using fair use images must use as few of them as possible. Any image that does not meet these criteria to the letter will be deleted. Any user that repeatedly uploads images not meeting these criteria to the letter will be blocked.
As a further note, I mentioned that fair use images must not be able to be replaced by a free alternative. What this basically means is, there is no way you, me, or anyone else could go out and take a picture of this same thing and release it under a free license. For example:
I could upload a picture of Barack Obama from the White House. Normally government works are automatically public domain, but let's say for the purpose of this discussion that the White House holds the copyright to that particular picture of the President. I can claim fair use, but the claim would be invalid because you could just as easily go to a speech Bush is giving and take a picture of him yourself. (That's what happened here) This is considered replaceable fair use and so would be deleted.
Person X could upload a picture of the Empire State Building from a marketing kit they distributed. This image would likely be copyrighted, and so they claim fair use. But I happen to have been to New York and have a picture of the ESB. I upload that instead and release it into the public domain. The first, copyrighted picture, is also replaceable.
For the article on the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I want to upload an image of their logo (visible in no great detail here). I go to their website and upload their version. This fair use is allowable, because no matter where or how they display their logo, it'll be under the same copyright. Since the simple art of scanning or taking a picture of a piece of work is not enough to justify my ownership of the rights to the image, there is no way to obtain a free version of the logo.
For a full description of the policies and guidelines concerning fair use, read WP:FU.
