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January 8

Need help including images in Wikipedia articles

Is there someone who could help me get an image into an article. I have the image (a film poster); I have the URL of where it comes from; I have the permission of the people who created it. They say there is no copyright—just use it! I have been down this road before. After days of emails and permissions granted, I still could not get through the legal thicket. That earlier image (a photo) was booted off of Wikimedia. I do not have a legal mind. If you would help me, reply on my user page and I will tell you more about it. Thanks for listening.--Foobarnix (talk) 04:33, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Which film is it? I'd be surprised if the poster is not copyrighted. As to the permission to use it, they really need to email the permission to Wikipedia (see here for how they can do that. As a rule, the copyright to a film poster is with the film company - I've never heard of a case where it isn't. Are they aware that giving the image to Wikipedia means that anyone can use the image for any purpose, including commercial use? If they just said that it can be used on Wikipedia only, that is not possible. -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 05:07, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, we tend to reply on this page so that other people can see the answers given! I have left a talkback on your talk page -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 05:12, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The movie is For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, a 2009 documentary film. I am developing an article about this very interesting film. The poster from the movie can be found at Posters. The writer/director in email said, regarding the poster: "Use the poster. It's our design, no copyright issues. Use whatever from our website..." The website he is referring to is the same site as above. I am sure he does not care who reproduces it and would be willing to release all rights.

My question is more general. I have tried several times in the past year to get permission to use pictures and have never gotten to the end of the long dark tunnel of legal declarations, permissions, and such things. The Wikipedia articles about all this overwhelm me with their complexity and endless definitions and special situations. Why does it have to be so hard? I know that I have to send some particular form to the owner, but what form? Thanks for responding, phantomsteve--Foobarnix (talk) 06:59, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What the producer told you sounds like he is giving permission for use only on Wikipedia, which is worthless here; the only permission of any value has to allow reuse by anyone for anything. Their poster page says, “© Copyright For The Love Of Movies 2009 All Rights Reserved.” And when you click on the poster thumb, it seems to require permission for each reuse. So I think permission is hopeless for this poster, and the way to go on this is non-free fair-use: one fair-use film poster is usually acceptable in the infobox of a film article to identify the subject of the article. Tag the poster with {{non-free poster}}, and in the non-free use rationale list the purpose as “to identify the subject of the article.” —teb728 t c 09:03, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(See Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission for general information on requesting permission. Among other things It has a link to Wikipedia:Example requests for permission, which gives examples of what to send to owners.) —teb728 t c 11:28, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are right; this whole area needs looking at and drastically simplifying. I once loaded some pictures I had taken myself. I clearly explained this and stated that I was happy for the pictures to be in the public domain. A while later I noticed they had been deleted by some anal individual because I had not ticked exactly the right combination of boxes, or included exactly the right combination of text templates, or something. There seem to be a group of people at Wikipedia whose mission is firstly to make it as difficult as possible to load pictures, and secondly to delete as many existing pictures as possible on the grounds of some minor procedural error that the deleter could just as easily fix themselves. 86.135.171.19 (talk) 14:58, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is a complex and confusing process, and even things being entirely released by creator into the public domain do have a bit of red tape. We really, really don't want to frustrate people, but due to copyright-GFDL fine print we need to be incredibly careful. Yes, there are editors that dig deeply into new image submissions, but they all mean well and understand that it won't help the project in the long run to try to push away new contributors. Question for you-- was the image you submitted being used in an article or article draft in your userspace? There are various guidelines about deletion of unused images, as well, and a lot of new editors might fall into this trap.

My best advice would be to ask the editors/admins that you feel are working against you directly on their talk pages and ask why they did what they've done and how you can avoid it in the future. I was very serious when I said they mean well, I swear! Good luck... ♪ Tstorm (talk) 15:09, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's even simpler than that - copyright violation in this digital age is simple to effect, much more so than before, but the consequences are still very serious. A large copyvio lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation could be very, very expensive and possibly jeopardise the future of this, and the other, Wikimedia projects. That's why we have to be so careful about protecting copyrights. – ukexpat (talk) 17:50, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"This whole area" does "need looking at and drastically simplifying", but understand what "this whole area" is: copyright law. Copyright is a mess on Wikipedia because copyright is a mess everywhere. Wikipedia has no control over copyright law, so we cannot fix the problem. Instead it is up to voters to elect representatives who will write copyright laws that serve the public interest rather than corporate interests. Who do you think writes these ridiculous laws and spends millions of dollars to lobby politicians to enact them? In the old days, the public could ignore the problem because only corporations could afford to get seriously into publishing. Anyone who could afford to publish back then could also afford to hire attorneys to tell them how to do it. Today computers have enabled almost anyone to be a publisher, but attorneys have only gotten more expensive. So we have a situation where technically almost everyone violates copyright laws. This may be acceptable on a site like Facebook (for now, anyway), but Wikipedia has to be more careful because we specifically label some of our media files as being OK for re-use by anyone. --Teratornis (talk) 20:38, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, for a pretty good introduction to copyright law as it impacts Wikimedia Commons, read everything linked from Commons:COM:EIC#Copyright. For example, our hypervigilance comes from Commons:Commons:Project scope/Precautionary principle. --Teratornis (talk) 20:38, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

General comments on the issue of image permissions

It sounds like I hit a nerve with my comments about images and copyrights. Let me make a few points:

People who think they have legal permission to allow use of media are often mistaken, as user teb728 points out in this particular case. That makes the whole permissions issue even more vexing.
It is very important not to blame Wikipedia editors for yanking images (a point already make above). Think of them as protecting Wikipedia from serious lawsuits, not as mean old deletionists. The fault lies entirely with the complicated copyright laws.
This whole discussion is so interesting, it makes me think there should be some kind of forum or a special page for discussing the perennial issue of getting through the copyright jungle.
In addition, I would like to see a volunteer group of Wikipedians who love legal stuff, and whose only job is to help other editors write the correct letters needed to get permissions. I bet there would be a lot more nice images in Wikipedia if so many editors had not just given up like I did.
Wikipedia does in fact have all the information one needs to learn how to handle copyrights. It is just that it is so spread around, so complicated, and so voluminous, that you cannot always find what you need. For example, phantomsteve pointed me to the very useful page WP:IOWN. I had never seen this page before, even though I have spent days wading through similar pages.

I want to particularly thank editor teb728 for his suggestions. Using his ideas, I am going to plunge into the thicket and try one more time.--Foobarnix (talk) 00:56, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally, we would like all the pages that are on Wikimedia Commons and about copyright to be listed under Commons:COM:EIC#Copyright. The analogous heading in the Editor's index to Wikipedia is WP:EIW#Copy. We have a page: Wikipedia:Media copyright questions which functions like you suggest in your fourth point. There is lots of help available, but no easy way to magically make every user aware of the bits they need, when they need them. That will probably have to wait until computers can pass the Turing test. Until then, there is little doubt that we fail to get all the contributions we could get, since we can't expect every user to become something of an amateur legal expert before they can upload their first photo. There are too many special cases for the upload form to handle nicely. Sites that achieve truly massive participation (such as Flickr) just let users do pretty much whatever they want, until copyright holders complain about specific images, and as a result they have millions of copyright violations at all times. --Teratornis (talk) 04:00, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

maggots

please remove the search word maggots. its very disgusting —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.139.202.107 (talk) 05:26, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's just a word, and a maggot is just a living creature, so no can do, sorry - Wikipedia is not censored! -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 05:44, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

TV Series

You create a page for WIKI, how do you add "TV Series" at the end of it?

Keycoke (talk) 06:07, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The way you should have done it is to move it, which your account would have been able to do in about 4 hours! I will make the old page a redirect to the new one that you created -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 06:24, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

HTML

how t create web site using hyper text markup language —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.174.98.109 (talk) 11:17, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for clarification... is it that you're trying to use HTML in the editing box here at the site? If so, we don't use it directly, but there is a similar scheme of "wiki markup". However, nothing other than plain text (with few exceptions) should be in articles. If you're looking to create a page outside of Wikipedia, you won't find any "how-to" things here, but there are plenty of resources on the internet as a whole.

One more thing to say... If you do post a new article about a television series, you'd want to use the categorization system we have built in to make sure it finds its place. There are a few different ways to edit to do this, so I'd recommend reading WP:CAT for something of a tutorial. Good luck! ♪ Tstorm (talk) 14:59, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An additional point if you are wanting to create your own website (rather than an article on Wikipedia), I recently began learning some html and css, and I found this resource provided a good introduction: w3schools, and the good people on the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk were very helpful and had quite a bit of patience with me and my noob questions. If you are talking about how to create a wikipedia page, I am just about to drop a welcome template with some useful links on your talk page - I'd suggest you try reading some of that material, and ask any further questions here. Good Luck, Darigan (talk) 12:59, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Using anchors

I am trying to use Template:Anchor to link to images in a wikipedia article but somehow I don't manage to make it work properly. The article in question is Glossary of Japanese swords. The link "see image" at the end of the "shinogi" entry of the glossary is supposed to link to the second image of the article. However when clicking on "see image" I end up at the first image (instead of the second). How can I fix this? bamse (talk) 15:04, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Both images have an anchor. Simply link to the correct one (change). — Edokter • Talk — 01:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The boshi appears in the first image (anchor "parts") not in the second image (anchor "tsukurikomi") so I undid your edit. Still the same problem as before, I cannot jump to the second anchor ("tsukurikomi") for some reason. See for instance the "see image" links of "hira-zukuri" or "shinogi-zukuri" which should link to the second image but currently link to the first image. bamse (talk) 18:10, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Clicking on 'See image' in those items does take me to the second image, so it is working correctly. — Edokter • Talk — 00:05, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Andy Russell

In 1959 he appeared in a Mexican movie Viste Christina 68.62.146.228 (talk) 15:39, 8 January 2011 (UTC) Cine Nostalgia[reply]

I imagine you are telling us this because you want that fact added to his biography. The problem is that searching Google books, news and web does not find any sources that verify the information. In fact, I have not even been able to confirm that there ever was a movie by the name Viste Christina. Well, found it after some sleuthing. The movie is Vístete Cristina (not Viste Christina), and the particular Andy Russell is Andy Russell (singer). If you want to add this, go ahead, but please cite to a reliable source, e.g., possibly something from here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:14, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Expand template dead yet?

What's the status of the {Expand} template? It was up for deletion, but I don't know if there was consensus or if bots had started removing them, and I don't want to add more if that's already been decided. Also, if it's gone, what's the alternative (expand section, maybe?), aside from just writing it, obviously. Ocaasi (talk) 15:54, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think this was answered on IRC. Wikipedia_talk:TFD#Review_instructions_for_Expand reveals it's still up in the air, and might be fixed by [Removing the template from any article with a {-stub} template; Replacing {expand|section} with {expand section} (or {empty section} if the section is empty); Replacing it with {incomplete} when multiple sections are empty; or Removing it completely when the talk page does not exist / contains only Wikiproject templates and it was placed with a generic Twinkle™-edit summary or no edit summary, etc.]. So I guess it's user discretion for now, with the understanding that it might get retagged once the WP:TFD discussion resolves. Ocaasi (talk) 16:11, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Visibility on Wikipedia

I am wondering if there are ways to increase a company's visibility on Wikipedia. Can you help? 76.99.202.242 (talk) 16:02, 8 January 2011 (UTC)--76.99.202.242 (talk) 16:02, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No. Promotional articles are specifically forbidden - see WP:PROMOTION. For guidlines on how to write a neutral article about a notable company see WP:COMPANY. Roger (talk) 16:10, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd add slightly to that, with caution. First read our policy on WP:SPAM and WP:COI (conflict of interest), so you know what not to do. Then go find the best and most reliable sources you can find in which the company is mentioned using WP:RS as your guide and WP:NPOV as your goal. Before you get started, draft an article in your WP:USERSPACE or make proposals for changes on the article's WP:TALK page. Solicit opinions from other editors to make sure the article additions are neutral. We can increase visibility, so to speak, so long as it is already supported by sources (rather than forced on a topic where it is not warranted)--and the 'view' is whatever the sources present, neither positively nor negatively slanted. Ocaasi (talk) 16:17, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also see Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations. Note that visibility on Wikipedia is not always favorable to the subject. --Teratornis (talk) 20:18, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Size of fonts

Could you please explain why, although a tad smaller, sub-section headings (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc), appear to be be bolded and therefore clearer than section headings? (At least they do on my screen). Thanks in advance.

RASAM (talk) 16:37, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The heading tags h1 through h6 are defined in the CSS stylesheets for Vector or Monobook. The style for h1 and h2 is normal, while h3 through h6 are bold.

If you really want to bold h1 and h2, add this to Special:MyPage/skin.css:

/* Bold h1 and h2 */
h1, h2 { font-weight: bold; }
.editsection { font-weight: normal; }

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:10, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Linking to the sandbox from the sandbox

Why is it not possible to link to Wikipedia:Sandbox from within the sandbox? 81.131.1.105 (talk) 16:48, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A self link (when the target of a link is the same as the page on which it appears) does not display the link, and the text appears in bold. This is true on any page on Wikipedia. --Mysdaao ^talk 19:16, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For instance, the following link will be in bold and not "linked": Wikipedia:Help desk Dismas|^(talk) 20:25, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

New Articles

Since the Alexbot is currently not running, are there other ways to find new articles? Could you find them by the cat scan? For more information, I want to find articles recently created since December 26, 2010 that are related to NASCAR so I can complete the projects newsletter. Thanks. Nascar 1996 16:48, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Special:NewPages lists new pages that have been created. By default, it shows only the article namespace, and it goes back up to one month. --Mysdaao ^talk 19:20, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No understanding !!

I have no idea how to make the necessary changes on my Wikipedia page. I am OK with the so-so photographs, but the content is woefully inaccurate. I wish to list the following but have no idea how to do it. Could you guys PLEASE do it for me ?:

Ronnie Nyogetsu Reishin Seldin studied Shakuhachi in Kyoto, Japan with Kurahashi Yodo Sensei, who was a disciple of Jin Nyodo. There in 1975, he received the name Nyogetsu and a teaching certificate at the level of Jun Shihan in the Kinko school of shakuhachi. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1947.

After his return to New York, Nyogetsu was awarded the rank of Shi-han (Master) in 1978, as a result of his efforts to spread the teaching of this instrument in America.

In 1980, he received his Dai-Shihan, or Grand Master's license. In April 2001, Nyogetsu received a Koku-An Dai-Shihan (Grand Master's license at the level of Kyu-Dan, or 9th level) from Japan's Living National Treasure in shakuhachi, Aoki Reibo. He was also given the name Reishin (Heart/Mind of the Bell) to go along with it. Nyogetsu is the first non-Japanese to receive this high award.

Nyogetsu has performed in numerous concerts, lectures and demonstrations in the metropolitan area and around the United States as well as Canada, Mexico, Scotland, and Argentina. Not only has he toured Japan many times, he has also been interviewed on radio and television both here and in Japan, and has performed on the soundtracks of several documentary films including the Academy Award nominated documentary "A Family Gathering" (1989) for which he also co-composed the sound track. Nyogetsu's playing also appears on the GRAMMY-nominated "The Planet Sleeps" (SONY).

Ronnie Nyogetsu has released several recordings of shakuhachi music including cassettes, LPs and CDs. Mr. Seldin is the founder of Ki-sui-an shakuhachi dojo with branches in Manhattan, Rochester/Syracuse, Philadelphia, and Baltimore/Wash.D.C. In addition to teaching privately, Mr. Seldin is also part of the Japanese Music Program at the graduate Center of the City University of New York where he gives lectures on and demonstrations of the shakuhachi. He is also on faculty at New York University (NYU). His shakuhachi school - KiSuiAn Shakuhachi Dojo - has been the largest and most active in the World outside of Japan for the past three decades.

Ronnie Nyogetsu Reishin Seldin was Artist in Residence for Fall 2002 at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Nyogetsu was the University Artist in Residence at New York University (Spring 2004). In 2004, he also produced the Fourth International World Shakuhachi Festival at New York University. It proved to be the largest gathering of non-Japanese Shakuhachi players in History. ------ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nyogetsu (talk • contribs) 16:51, 8 January 2011 (UTC) [reply]

I reverted the changes you made to the article about you. First, it messsed up the article. Second, you have a conflict of interest because the article is about you. If you want to make changes to the article, the best way is to suggest them on the Talk page of the article because of your conflict. Bear in mind that every asssertion in a Wikipedia article has to be supported by a third-party reliable source.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:57, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just to specify a bit. The best thing is to post suggestions on changes or additions (at best small parts at a time with a good reason stated; and with a reference (just type the website/bookname/newspaper article if you're unfamiliar with formatting; others will undoubtedly do that)) on Talk:Ronnie Nyogetsu Reishin Seldin. That is generally a good procedure for large changes, but as you have a conflict of interest it makes sure a "second set of eyes" looks at it neutrally. Don't worry about messing up tables; those things are easy to fix... My suggestion would be to first make clear which info is inaccurate, and provide sources for that so the errors can be fixed; that seems to be the most urgent discussion point... Have fun! L.tak (talk) 17:06, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to notable alumni

Hello,

I noticed that the list of notable alumni was underrepresented on the university that I go to's page (Thunderbird School of Global Management). When I added factual references that are verifiable without having to go into the school's contact list (which is available to every student and would not be considered private information), all of them were deleted by the editor. I was wondering if this was so because I did not provide references in the correct format or what? If there is a certain page that we have to put the link to the page where we got the information, I would be happy to do it, but I don't want to go through the process again only to have the work deleted due to a failure in following any specific procedures. I am not extremely tech savvy, but all of the names and grad dates followed the format of names before them and the hyperlinks to the companies pages were correct most had the companies' CEO name listed directly on them.

Thanks, Tony —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.90.53.254 (talk) 19:35, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If the person you are adding doesn't have an article about him/her on Wikipedia, then the person is probably not notable by Wikipedia's standards. Please understand that "notable" on Wikipedia is not going to be the same definition as "notable" at your university. -- kainaw ™ 19:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

copying articles from Wikipedia

Dear Help desk, For the last few days, to be exact, since the beginning of the year I have had problems to copy formatted articles from Wikipedia.I don´t know what the reason for this "calamity" is. Can you help me? Greetings, Duftrosengarten — Preceding unsigned comment added by Duftrosengarten (talk • contribs) 19:45, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by a "formatted article"? A PDF file? If so, see Help:Books/Frequently Asked Questions. --Teratornis (talk) 20:14, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]