User talk:Dj09ou

Hi, welcome! I really liked you copy-edit to Winter War. Cheers, --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:47, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I think I may have found my niche on Wikipedia for now with this stuff. I was originally planning to do some translation of English articles to French, but that required way more formatting knowledge than I currently have. :Until I get used to the system, I think I might stick to copy-editing, because I know I can do that. Thanks for taking the time to say something - I appreciate it. :)

Dj09ou (talk) 14:59, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Copy-editors are one of the most desired types of editors here. ;-)

The page "Wikipedia:Good article reassessment" is a constantly changing list of articles which often need to be copy-edited in order to retain their "good article" status. Often articles are biased because the writers are enthusiastic rather than malicious, and the article needs a fresh unbiased copy-edit in order to become more neutral. Other times the article has degraded because lots of people have all added a bit, and the flow has been lost in the process.

If you need a hand with any syntax, you can grab me any time. If you want some assistance over on French Wikipedia, I should be able to help you there as well, or else I can ask someone else to help you.

p.s. I have indented your comment here; we usually add an indent level with each reply so that it is easier to visually distinguish between each persons comments.

John Vandenberg ^(chat) 16:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've at least finished with the once-over of the Winter War. I'll see if I'm up to trying to reorganize it or not. The first problem I ran into was infoboxes; I wasn't quite sure how to use them, even after reading the articles on them a couple of times. I'm not entirely clear on why templates are necessary, but I attribute that to my dearth (read: nonexistence) of programming experience. I (think) I found a template for what I need on French Wikipedia, but I then ran into the problem of an image. It exists on English Wikipedia, but I couldn't get it to upload on French Wikipedia. Does it need to be re-uploaded? I'm assuming, then, that the problem with the picture would be what is preventing the rest of the information in the box from uploading. I don't know if that's sufficient information for you; I can provide you with more if you need it. Thanks for your help! Dj09ou (talk) 21:22, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Templates ensure that the presentation looks similar across many pages. If you browse the pages in this list you will see that they all have a very similar feel. The {{cite book}} template used in Winter_War#Bibliography results in a bibliography which is uniform throughout.

Some images are stored on our central depository called Wikimedia Commons, however only free/libre images are allowed to be uploaded to that project. There are a lot of free images on English Wikipedia that have not yet been moved to the Commons project.

If the image is not-free, such as a logo, then it needs to be uploaded to fr.Wikipedia. You can read more about uploading images to the French project at fr:Wikipédia:Règles d'utilisation des images.

If you need more help, let me know which image and which template is causing you grief. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 23:14, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, having done some research, I'm a little bit better educated on the image issue. Had to do some slogging through copyright stuff, but that's the way it goes. I guess it would be easier if I actually made it clear what I want to do. My interest is in translating articles on major American universities from English Wikipedia over to French Wikipedia. My intention was to begin with my alma mater, the University of Oklahoma (I do realize this creates conflict of interest issues, but I really don't plan on changing the content of the article - I really don't think it will be a problem). The issue I ran into right off the bat was an image, OUSeal.png, which appears in the infobox in the University of Oklahoma article. I have now determined (correctly, I hope) that this image, since it is copyrighted, is being used under fair use doctrine. But after consulting French Wikipedia, they are only willing to consider logos and such on a case-by-case basis, having banned the use of fair use images. I would hope that such a request would be granted, since I'm not abusing the image and am in fact using it to propagate the university's renown, which really amounts to free advertising for the university. But I'm not sure copyright law would look at it that way. With all that established, I guess I should just go ahead and petition French Wikipedia for an exception to their fair use policy here? Once we get that sorted out, I can see if that infobox nonsense doesn't just sort itself out. Thanks. Dj09ou (talk) 23:23, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]