User:A.amitkumar/Adoption school

Hi, and welcome to your adoption school. By the time you've completed the tests and tasks here, you should have a good working knowledge of Wikipedia's policies and processes, and should have no difficulty understanding and dealing with 99% of the the things you'll encounter on this site. You can ask me questions on my talkpage at any time if you aren't sure about anything here, and I also welcome suggestions for ways of improving this course.

You can complete the sections in any order; let me know when you've finished one and I'll mark it and close it for you. Save for a few cases, there are generally multiple ways to answer the questions; not many of them have clear right/wrong answers. Although I'll always try and give a reason for each mark, the basic responses you'll see are:

• Y Good answer; interprets policy correctly and shows a sound understanding of the issues involved.
• Y Incomplete/insufficient answer; whilst partly correct, there are better responses to this question.
• N Poor answer; shows an inadequate understanding of the policies and guidelines concerned.

Have fun!

Five Pillars

Wikipedia is governed by a large number of policies and guidelines - don't worry, you aren't expected to know all of these when you start out (or even after being here for a while!). All of these rules, however, stem in one way or another from Wikipedia's fundamental principles, which are known as the Five Pillars. Learn these and you can hazard an educated guess at all the rest. Please take a few minutes to read through the following pages: Pillar 1: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia Pillar 2: Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view Pillar 3: Wikipedia's content is free to reuse Pillar 4: Editors should be civil in their interactions Pillar 5: There are no firm rules

Cleanup Y Completed

Cleanup The Random article button (located in your left-hand sidebar menu) is very useful for locating articles that are in need of improvement (although I find that 90% of the time you get a random article on either an obscure village in the mountains of Pakistan or a little-known Eastern European football team...). However, there are easier ways to locate articles that need attention. When editors come across a page that needs to be improved but they are unable to do so themselves (due to time constraints, lack of sources or just because they don't feel like it) they will often tag it with a cleanup tag. As well as placing a notice at the top of the page to say what needs doing, this also has the effect of listing the article in one of several cleanup categories. You can access most of these categories here. What I'd like you to do is this: First, locate an article in need of cleanup. I'd suggest something fairly straightforward, like a page that needs copyediting for spelling and grammar (there's a full list of pages tagged thus here). Make three improvements to the page; these can be minor changes to word order, wikilinks, punctuation or typo fixes, I'm not fussed. When you've done this post a link to the article here - type the page name and enclose it in double square brackets, like this: [[Name of page]]. Microsoft Office password protection Y I'm rather on the fence over whether these changes can be classified as "improvements" or not. On the one hand, some of your changes made the information clearer for the reader and removed original research; on the other hand some of the edits changed the meaning of sentences and removed information. Since the article is severely lacking in sources, making a call on whether the original version is more correct than yours or vice versa is all but impossible - it would make an excellent candidate for completing the "References" section of your adoption school! Yunshui 雲‍水 07:18, 21 June 2013 (UTC) Now go to the page Commonly misspelled words and select a word from the list there. Put the incorrect spelling of the word into the Wikipedia search bar at the top right, prefacing it with a single tilde, like this "~mispeling". The tilde means that, rather than searching for an article titled "Mispeling", the search engine will instead return a list of pages which contain the word "mispeling". You can now open each of these in turn, locate the typo, and change it to the correct spelling. Post here when you've fixed three typos in this way. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assembly_modelling&diff=560789037&oldid=560608921 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Storm_Surge_%28ride%29&diff=560789173&oldid=560344473 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RetailMeNot%2C_Inc.&diff=560789205&oldid=560655286 Y Never again shall "aquire" darken the wiki!

References Y Completed

References Because anyone can edit Wikipedia at any time, it's impossible to be sure that the information contained here is always accurate. At any point, a random passerby can change the text of a page to something that isn't actually correct - many do. We have methods in place to prevent this, but the most fundamental one is the requirement that information here must be verifiable. If Wikipedia says something, it should be possible to locate that information in a source and check that it is correct. Because of this, we need references to reliable sources in every article. Citing references is an area that many new editors struggle with - it does, however, look far more complicated than it actually is. See this essay for a simplified explanation of the process. Your next task is to find a page that require additional references and supply them. You can choose any page for this purpose (there's a full list of articles without sources here), but for the purposes of explanation, I'm going to use Jorge Bobone. What you need to do is this: First, find something in the article that looks as though it should be referenced. Facts and figures are a good place to start. For example, the last line of Jorge Bobone claims that "The crater Bobone on the Moon and the asteroid 2507 Bobone were named after him." How can we confirm that? Get your Google hat on. Do a search for the information that needs a citation, for example "jorge bobone crater". Lots of results pop up, including some from Wikipedia. You want to make sure that you cite information to a reliable source; a lot of the search results won't meet those criteria. For something like this, I suggest Google Books: in the Google menu on the left of the page, choose "More", then "Books". You'll see this. The very first entry, the Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Volume 1 clearly say something appropriate... open it up and you'll see this. It confirms that both the asteroid and the crater are named after him. Go back to the Jorge Bobone article (I often use multiple browser windows to make this sort of navigation easier; the article I'm editing is open in one, and the search is open in another). Enter the Edit screen. Find the information you want to cite on the page. Immediately after its appearance in the text, add the following string: <ref>Schmadel, Lutz; ''Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Volume 1'', Springer, 2003, page 205</ref> At the end of the article text (before the chunk of code that starts "{{Persondata...") you need a references section. Add the following: ==References== {{reflist}} The first part of this text creates the subheading "References"; the second creates a numbered list of references. Save or preview the page. If all has gone well, you should see a little blue [1] in the text, and lower down, under the References section, the details of the book. There are more complex ways of citing information (such as the {{cite book}} template), but don't worry about those for now. As long as you put sufficient information in between the <ref></ref> tags, it's fine. The minimum information is the author and title of the book (put the title in italics by placing two apostrophes ('') at either end); if you can also supply the publisher, ISBN, page number and year of publication that's a bonus. You can cite websites by putting the website address in between the <ref></ref> tags (don't forget the http://!) like this: <ref>http://www.example.co.uk</ref> again, there are better ways to do this, but for now, the important thing is to learn the use of <ref> tags. Have a go with the example I've give above, and then either see if you can find any more things in the article to reference or find another article in need of referencing. Let me know if you need a hand, or if you want anything explained further. When you've added three references (to this or any other article), leave a note here to let me know and I'll take a look for you. Gangoobai Created an article - might be a good example for this exercise. Y Yep, at least three good refs there. I've run the page through the Reflinks utility to expand the bare URLS you had in there - a useful tool to bookmark!

Deletion Y Completed

Deletion Often, you'll encounter pages that are not suitable for Wikipedia, for one reason or another. Have a read of this essay, and then refer to the deletion policy before tackling the questions below. Speedy deletion You may want to check the specific policy on speedy deletion to respond to the following test. Below are a number of articles which may meet one or more of the speedy deletion criteria. For each example, say whether the article is an appropriate candidiate for speedy deletion, and which criterion it should be deleted under (some may be eligible under more than one). If you don't think it should be speedily deleted, say what you would do instead (if anything). Assume unless otherwise stated that all of these are found in article space. 1. Danille Stross A. Speedy delete as per A7 (non notable person) Y Yes - most admins would also have accepted G3 on this as well. 2. Waichi A. G1 (this would be gibberish for english wiki space - even though it might be a proper content in other language) N Sorry, but G1 specifically excludes "coherent non-English material". The usual course of action would be to tag the page with {{notenglish}} and list it at Pages for translation. If you were very sharp and did some digging you might have discovered that it's a Finnish copy of Sugiyama Waichi, so A10: Duplicate of existing article would apply. 3. Zack de Vries A. This could be a A7 (non-notable person), depending on how he cross checks on google search and could even end up as G3 (hoax). N There's enough in the article to constitute a claim to significance, which is all that's needed to avoid deletion under A7. It's also not a blatant hoax (with such pages, it should be immediately clear that the subject is a hoax; if you have to resort to Google, it's not blatant enough). The tag you want to use here is {{BLPPROD}}, proposing deletion as an unsourced biography. 4. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Barry Ross This example should be treated as an AfC submission A. This would be tagged as a stub and use maintenance tags to improve on content and add references. Y It's at Articles for creation, so simply rejecting the article would suffice as far as maintenence tags go - but you didn't fall into the trap of requesting A7, so well done for spotting that. (Just in case you didn't: because AFC submissions are not in the Article namespace, they cannot be tagged with A-anything.) 5. Alfreld Herchkerck A. This is a Wrong page as this name is not really related to the redirected page - is there an redirect tag for this? Need help to understand this There is a suitable CSD tag for this; it's R3: Implausible typo. You get a Y anyway, since saying, "This is outside my experience, can I have some help?" is always a good answer on Wikipedia. 6. Blgah A. G1 - gibberish Y Exactly. 7. Portland Square Bombing A. This page needs expansion(add maintenance tags for the same) Y Yes, absolutely correct. 8. User:Chest McFlink This example should be treated as a userpage A. User page is personal content and there is not much to be validated here. No issues on this one. Y There's a strong case to be made that this userpage is unsuitable (see the userpage policy), and it should probably be taken to Miscellany for deletion (AFD for non-article pages). However, you aren't obligated to tag everything you see, and so leaving it for someone else to deal wit (if they see a need to do so) is quite correct. 9. Tsutomu Yukawa A. If the article topic passes A7 then it seems fine. Y The sourcing isn't great, but you're absolutely right; there's no CSD tag that covers this page. 10. Johnny Awesome A. A7, G3 and probably even G10. Y Correct on all three; any or all of these tags apply. Thanks to Worm That Turned for constructing some of the pages linked to. Proposed deletion Proposed deletion (PROD) is Wikipedia's way of dealing with articles that are patently unsuitable, but that don't fall under any of the criteria for speedy deletion. Examples might include: non-notable books or films, personal essays, non-notable albums by notable artists, news stories, dictionary definitions and how-to guides. Basically, anything that's covered by What Wikipedia is not but isn't covered under speedy deletion can be a viable candidate for PROD. BLPPROD is a subset of the proposed deletion process that applies only to unsourced biographies of living people. Biographies of deceased people, or biographies with sources, are not subject to BLPPROD. Read through the policies linked above, and then answer the following questions: 1. Why do we have a specific deletion process for unsourced biographies of living people? A. WP policy states that any article about a living person should contain references - specifically for contentious issues/details. These contentious issues without proper references should either be encouraged to get references failing which deletion is the best option else it might end up with LIBEL. Y Yes, that's a pretty good summary of the issues. 2. You come across an obviously inappropriate article (it's an unsourced personal essay) and tag it for deletion under PROD. The page's creator removes the tag. What would your next step be? A. The pages creator can remove the tag if proper references have been added. But if the editor has removed the tag without adding proper references/citations then i would re-add the tag and post in users talk page the reason about the tag and how he can object to it through proper process instead of deleting it. If there are other issues with the citation then other relevant tags can be used instead of re-adding the PROD deletion tag. N You can't re-add the tag. Once a PROD tag has been removed from a page, that page cannot be proposed for deletion via PROD again, even if the reasons for deletion remain valid. You would need to use either CSD or, more likely WP:AFD if you still felt the page warranted deletion. 3. You encounter a biography of a living person which contains four paragraphs of text, but only one reference (which does little more than verify the subject's name and existence). What tag would you place on the article? A. BLPPROD is not used for any article with atleast one reference then probably a BLP sources tag is the best way to move ahead. Y Assuming there's nothing controversial in the unsourced text, this is the best option. 4. Why were [1], [2] [3] and [4] incorrect applications of the BLPPROD tag? A.These articles seem to have references mentioned though not properly inline but surely that loses the criteria for BLPPROD as there are references present in the article. (other maintenance tags might have to be added to make the article better). Y Yes - the references do not have to be proper inline citations. External links or other sources, as long as they appear somewhere in the article, will suffice for the purposes of BLPPROD. 5. An unsourced BLP is tagged with {{prod blp}}, and the tag is removed after the addition of two sources. The page is still unsuitable for Wikipedia (it concerns an individual who's clearly only notable for one event, and is not likely to be notable for any other reason). Can you legitimately apply a regular {{Proposed deletion}} template to the article? A. For borderline notability article we can use WP:BARE. N You're correct, but you haven't answered the question - can a PROD tag be applied to a previously BLPPRODded article? For BLP articles, i dont think PROD is appropriate. may be an AFD if i still feel the article should be deleted. Articles for deletion Articles for deletion is a process for dealing with cases where an editor feels that an article should be deleted, but that article is not suitable for speedy deletion and a proposed deletion would be or has been contested. In other words, you would use AFD if you think that other editors might disagree with the decision to delete. At AFD, articles are put up for discussion for (usually) one week, and any editor is free to comment on whether the page should be deleted or not. When nominating an article for AFD, it's important to explain your reasoning. If the page could have been deleted as obviously non-notable, you need to explain why you think it isn't notable, and why you are using AFD instead of PROD or CSD. If your reason for deletion is anything other than notability, you need to show which policy it violates. When !voting in an AFD discussion (we use the term "!vote" instead of "vote" to indicate that AFD isn't a majority vote; decisions are not made purely on headcount), it's important to note (and preferably link to) the policies under which you feel the article should be deleted, and explain why it does not meet those policies. Whilst a lot of AFDs contain !votes that read, "per nominator", these are not given much weight by the reviewing administrators. If you want your opinion to count, you need to offer an explanation for your reasoning. There are also many common arguments to avoid; making any of these will not help your case. It is a great help to the reviewing administrator if you keep your comments in an AFD discussion concise and relevent to the discussion. Tangential arguments and long screeds tend to derail the discussion, and can make it very difficult to establish consensus. No quiz here, but instead, I'd like you to comment at five AFD discussions, and link to them below. 1. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ego (spirituality) Y Links to applicable policies are always good. 2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ravi Menon (businessman) Y Bonus points for actually starting the AFD yourself. 3. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Phonoscope Communications Y Not the best reason for filing an AFD (reverting to an earlier version might have been preferable, given the article's history). 4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Glasses Direct Y Again, not a stellar nomination - if a page is sufficiently promotional for deletion, then G11 is a better solution. Promotional material can be edited away; it's notability that's the deciding factor in most AFDs. 5. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/the remaining members of the council of grandmothers Y Sensible !vote, and extra points for getting involved in a particularly complicated discussion.

Vandals Y Completed

Vandals Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, not all the edits that are made are constructive - some, in fact, are deliberately disruptive and need to be reverted. Please have a read of this essay and this guideline, then answer the questions and perform the tasks below. There's no time limit for this, it's more important that your work in this area be accurate than fast. If you aren't sure whether it's vandalism or not, it probably isn't. Good faith and vandalism Please explain below the difference between a good faith edit and a vandalism edit, and how you would tell them apart. In context of vandalism, good faith edits are disruptive edits which are usually mistakes, unintended, accidental or in some cases just due to lack of knowledge. Vandalism on the other hand is deliberate/intentional attempt to mess up the content. There is no specific set of rules to identify and differentiate vandalism, but most times if the edits are repetitive or extremely deliberate, or large content removal without edit comments etc... it can be pin pointed as vandalism... Most good faith edits are not repetitive, and upon correction actually understand the change/revert if done with a proper edit summary. Y Damn near textbook answer. Please find and revert three examples of good faith but unhelpful edits, and three examples of vandalism. Please warn the editors with the correct template and give the diffs of your revisions below. 1.[5] You get this one for free - thanks for that! Y 2.[6] Deliberate vulgar texts Y 3.[7] [8] Deliberate irrelevant insulting texts. Y All obvious vandalism, no problems there. Good faith reverts 1. [9] Probably pressed the ref button and saved without looking at the preview. Y 2.[10] PRobably a delete while trying to edit the page and did not check the preview before saving. Y 3.[11] Probably a mistake in pressing the bold text icon in editing mode and did not check preview before saving. Y First and third were definitely misclicks - I'm not completely sure the second wasn't vandalism, but there's no harm in giving them the benefit of the doubt. Warning and reporting Please answer the following questions Why do we warn users? To inform the editors that edits were disruptive(this can sometimes be effective in stopping further disruptive edits from the user), Also Certain level of warnings are necessary before requiring admin intervention too. Y Correct on both counts. When would a 4im warning be appropriate? This is appropriate for severe confirmed deliberate vandalism acts. Y If they have vandalised several times but haven't been warned before, this is indeed the way to go (though do check that they haven't had previous warnings that have been blanked). 4im warnings are also appropriate in instances of very obvious and severe vandalism, such as egregious personal attacks. What should you do if a user who has received a level 4 or 4im warning vandalises again? Report to WP:AIV. As the user has already received enough warnings and these warnings are not preventing the vandalism's Y Bang on. Please give examples of three warnings that you might need to use while vandal patrolling and explain what they are used for. Warnings for vandalism of page, warn for testing edits, Warning for content blanking, warning for personal attacks on userpages, warning for adding defamatory content in articles. etc... Y All of the above may come into play when you're patrolling for vandalism. Find and revert some vandalism. Warn each user appropriately, using the correct kind of warning and level. Posts the diffs of those warnings below. [12] [13] etc... Y Your STiki work means you're rather spoiled for choice... Find an edit which could be a test edit and revert it. Warn the user with the most appropriate template, then post the diff below. Report 2 users to AIV and post the diffs below. Be sure to follow the guidelines and only report users where necessary; do not report simply for the sake of this task. [14] [15] Y The second diff there is a warning, but you've reported around eighty vandals to AIV in the last three months, and taking a few random samples, they seem to have been good calls on your part. Dealing with difficult users Why do we deny recognition to trolls and vandals? Typical vandals usually vie for recognition, granting them recognition would increase their vandal activities and encourage them. Y Exactly. We don't feed trolls if we can help it. How can you tell between a good faith user asking why you reverted their edit, and a troll trying to harass you? A good faith revert usually comes with a valid reason (even if sometimes in a rude note), A troll on the hand would be unreasonable and pestering, if in doubt it is best to assume good faith. Y Bonus points for mentioning AGF. Protection In what circumstances should a page be semi-protected? Usually for persistent vandalism by unregistered users, socks etc... Y Yes; it can also be applied for edit wars where all parties are not yet autoconfirmed. In what circumstances should a page be fully protected? Content disputes, non- consensus in edits, edit warring etc... Y Those are the most common reasons, yes. Correctly request the protection of one page (semi or full); post the diff of your request (from WP:RPP) below. [16] Filled this in for you Y Good call, full protection was applied shortly afterwards.

Reliable sources Y Completed

Reliable sources All of the information in Wikipedia should, at least in theory, have been published already in some sort of reliable source. Deciding what is and is not a reliable source can sometimes be a tricky process. Please read Identifying reliable sources and comment on the use of sources below, answering the following in each case: Does the source meet Wikipedia's guideline for reliable sources? Does the source verify the text? Does the source count towards the topic's notability? (note that not all sources which meet the criteria for reliability automatically help extablish notability) Note that the text quoted is not taken from the article - links to the articles in question are provided only for context. Kylie Minogue Article text: Kylie Minogue was the headline act at the 2012 Malasian Grand Prix. Source cited: [17] The source is a blog post which explicitly advertises its ties to the person in question. Blogs are usually one of the least reliable sources. This is poor sourcing as per me. Y Per WP:USERG, sources such as blogs are almost never regarded as reliable - Minogue's official blog might be a reliable source for certain statements, but this isn't it. Incisoscutum Article text: Placoderms like Incisoscutum engaged in penetrative sex and gave birth to live young. Source cited: [18] This would be a reliable source - notable journal page and also provides some background. Y Yep, nothing to complain about here. Mohamed H.A. Hassan Article text: Hassan is the Executive Director of TWAS. Source cited: [19] It is a properly cited page. The website has posted the resume of Mohamed in this case and it is a valid third party validation and resource to mention so. Y, but with caution. Personal resumes are not regarded as especially sound sources - for a claim like this, it's potentially useable under WP:SELFPUB, but there are probably better sources available. Arthur & George Article text: The book explains that Conan Doyle argued successfully that Edalji's nearsightedness would have prevented him from committing the crimes. Source cited: [20] This is a valid source too as this article instead cites other valid sources to corroborate its text - more over Y It's a valid source, but it doesn't say anything about the content of the book, which is the subject of the article. It therefore does not verify the statement above ("The book explains..."), although it does verify Conan-Doyle's argument. This Providence Article text: The band's Christian morality is clearly expressed through their song lyrics. Source cited: [21] Very poor citation citation - a user review on amazon is an extremely bad citation used to make a point. Y Indeed; WP:USERG disqualifies user reviews such as those found on Amazon from being reliable sources. Mount Erebus Article text: The mountain is named after the personification of darkness in ancient Greek mythology. Source cited: [22] This citation may probably explain what erebus means in greek but doesnt show any valid reason to believe if that word was the inspiration to name the mountain. 50-50 on this. I am not sure. Y Well spotted - the book meets the requirements for a reliable source, but doesn't actually verify the statement in the article. Ami Suzuki Article text: Suzuki was born on February 9th, 1982. Source cited: [23] IMDB many times may not be used as a reliable source as the details may not be accurate and many times user editable. Though the information is correct in this scenario, i have a doubt if this is valid or not. Y WP:IMDB is worth a read - but if in doubt, don't use IMDb as a source. Seth Kimbrough Article text: Kimbrough's earliest memory of BMX riding is the day that his brother taught him the "bunny hop" technique. Source cited: [24] This is a valid source - hoffman bikes is one of the sponsors for Seth Kimbrough and the detail is taken from the profile posted on their website. Y Yep, it's legit. Note, however, that this wouldn't count towards establishing Kimbrough's notability on Wikipedia, since it's a first person interview conducted by one of his sponsors (and therefore not independent of the subject).

Markup Y Completed

Markup Wiki syntax can be, frankly, a right pain in the proverbials when you start editing. After a while, it becomes second nature - so much so that I now use it instinctively in places where it doesn't work, like emails and Word documents - but it takes time to become familiar with the nuances. Below are a list of markup tasks you can play about with to help increase your understanding. Most of the necessary codes are available at the cheatsheet. Format the words on this line into bold text. Y Format the words on this line into italic text. Y Create a level 2 header for this line. Y Create a level 3 header for this line. Y Indent this line. Y Indent this line one level further than the previous one. Y Outdent this line. Y Put the following quote into a separate block: This is a quote which I'd like you to block off from the rest of the text on this page. Y Turn the following into a numbered list: Item one Item two Item three Item four Y Turn the following into a bulleted list: Item one Item two Item three Item four Y Make the text on this line red. Y Make the text on this line small. Y Create a link to the page on Barry Manilow Y Create a link to the "Health" subsection of the Barry Manilow page. Make it display on this page as Things that have gone wrong with Barry -- is there a better faster way for this? Y There is; it's this: [[Barry Manilow#Health| Things that have gone wrong with Barry]] Create a link to the Wikipedia policy on maintaining a neutral point of view. WP:NPOV Y Make this link: http://www.britannica.co.uk display on this page as Encyclopedia Britannica Y Add the Like template to the end of this line. {{LIKE}} - I am not sure if this is what i was supposed to do on this. i actually did not understand what the like template meant in this question. Please let me know if this is not what is expected. Y You have the right idea - it didn't work because you put it in capitals. {{Like}} is what you need. Make the picture of Emperor penguins at File:Emperor penguins.jpg display on this page as a thumbnail. Give it the caption: "A bunch of penguins". (Please suggest better ways or direct to any help article if any). Y Using a gallery for a single picture isn't really what the <gallery> tag is for, although it does work. A better way to do this would have been [[File:Emperor penguins.jpg | thumb | A bunch of penguins]]. Galleries are used for displaying multiple thumbnail images together. A bunch of penguins Create a two column table. In column one, titled "Things", list the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. In column 2, titled "Stuff", list the first four things that spring to mind. (This table is the first time i am making a table... I had to refer the tables section to get this - which might still be not what is expected as an answer.) Y Slightly more complicated than it needs to be (and there's an extra } at the end), but this is a perfectly correct and sensible way to construct a table. Things Stuff 1 Stuff1 2 Stuff2 3 Stuff3 4 Stuff4 }

Copyright Y Completed

Copyright You probably already know that copy-pasting text from elsewhere is strongly frowned upon in Wikipedia. It's one of the things newer editors often fall foul of. Copyright, because it has legal ramifications in the real world, is one of the most important things to get right here, and for the same reason, is also a bit of a minefield. I've prepared a short quiz to test your understanding of the major issues, however you'll need to do a bit of background reading first. The principal pages that cover copyright issues are as follows: Wikipedia's official copyright status and licensing Wikipedia's policy on copyright violations Wikipedia's policy on image copyright Instructions on donating copyrighted material All the answers you're likely to need should be in one or more of these pages. 1. You find a book on Amazon that appears to be reusing the text of Wikipedia articles - in fact, they proudly announce it on the cover! The book costs £20.00. Are they allowed to use other writers' work to make money in this way? If so, why? If not, why not? A. Text of WP is shareable and re-usable under the wikipedia commons license. If due credit is given it is legal. More over WP kind of encourages reuse of its articles especially if due credit is given for the same. Y Yes, this is legit - it's how VDM Publishing make their living. 2. Is it ever permissible to copy and paste text from another website to Wikipedia? If so, under what circumstances would this be allowed? A. It would be a very rare instance where copy paste is allowed - one instance is that copy paste from public domain sources (where copy rights are expired or not applicable) are valid. Y Yes - websites that are clearly published under CC-BY-SA or GNUFDL are also fair game. 3. A new user uploads a picture of Tony Blair from a newspaper article in the free newspaper The Metro. The newspaper has national circulation, and is read by millions of people daily, so the image is already readily available; it's also easy to find on Google Images. Is this picture: a) Acceptable under "fair use"? b) Acceptable because it's in the public domain? c) Acceptable because it doesn't cost anything - the newspaper is given away for free? d) Acceptable for some other reason? e) Unacceptable because it's under copyright? f) Unacceptable for another reason? Please give a brief reason for your answer. A. e, unacceptable because most newspapers even if given away free are under copyright, except if it is in a public domain (which usually could be the case for very old news pictures etc...) Y The copyright on press photos is generally owned by either a freelance photographer, a press agency, or the newspaper itself - rarely if ever will they be suitably licensed for use on WIkipedia. 4. You find a new article that appears to contain a block of text (about half the article's content) which has been copied directly from a non-free source. The rest of the article seems to be original material. What do you do? A. I will tag it with copypaste tag and mention the source in the tag. Y Usually caution is a good thing in tagging, but this course of action is actually a bit too circumspect. Wikipedia cannot host copyrighted material for any length of time, so the correct thing to do is to immediately delete the section that infringes copyright. Leave an edit summary and perhaps a talkpage message explaining your reasons - but get the copyvio removed ASAP. 5. An editor adds some text from a website that he owns the copyright to. He has issued a statement on the original website saying that, "the content of this site can be freely used on the English version of Wikipedia". Is the text acceptable? If not, why not? A. This should be acceptable because the copy right owner has granted permission in the same place where the material is present and made his intentions clear. N Unfortunately not. Wikipedia's licence requires that all Wikipedia content be free to distribute, alter and reuse, by anyone, anywhere. Therefore any content from another source must also be free to distribute, alter and resue, by anyone, anywhere. The permission above is too restrictive - you can't license material just for use on Wikipedia. 6. A user uploads an image that he has created, a Microsoft Paint version of a diagram from a copyrighted work. His version is all but identical to the original, but is definitely his own work. Can this image be used on Wikipedia? A. No, there are certain restrictions with copying art work and other copyrighted material. Copyright is the restriction from copying it in any form, taking pictures, scans or even just replicating it in anyway so this could be a violation of copyright of that material. Y Absolutely right - derivative works that don't generate a new creative copyright (like the diagram described above) are still covered by the original copyright. 7. Some images may be better off being uploaded to Wikimedia Commons rather than Wikipedia. To which project would you upload the following: a) A screenshot from Doom 3'. b) An image from Flickr that had been released under a CC-BY-SA licence. c) A scan of a medieval painting, dating to 1223. d) A photograph of Ian Botham that you took yourself at a cricket match. e) A picture of your hand, taken by your cousin (he says he's happy for you to use it however you see fit). f) A low-resolution copy of a company logo. A. All these are better off loaded to commons to be used as appropriate. N Nope, there are two images here (a and f) which would be covered by copyright. They are not free, and therefore can't be uploaded to Commons. However, both of them would probably by acceptable here under Fair Use, and therefore they can be uploaded locally to Wikipedia. 8. The subject of an article, a minor local celebrity, has uploaded a promotional photo of himself, taken at a book signing, to use on his Wikipedia page. Does he own the copyright to it? Can it be used on Wikipedia? A. The copyright is held by the photographer so this would be questionable. Y The photographer does indeed own the copyright. They might have relinquished it to the subject (that can often be the case for promotional shots), but in that case we would need the editor to provide evidence of this transfer of rights. 9. A new editor wants to use text from her website on Wikipedia. Assuming that the text is suitably impartial and that she isn't affiliated with the subject, what would you advise her to do in order to allow Wikipedia to use her work? A. Post a explicit message on her website that WP can use the content as needed and then use it accordingly. Patrollers who come across such content would be assured that the content is given due permission by the site owner. Y Sort of. To be more precise, she has two options. She can add the CC-BY-SA licence to her site, making it universally free, or she can email the OTRS permissions team with a release. There's more information at WP:DCM, which is the place to direct any new users with questions like this. 10. An editor adds the text, "Carter's discovery of the tomb created a sensation in London, where he was widely celebrated. Banners were hung in his honour, and a national holiday was declared," to the article Howard Carter. The source provided for this text (a recently published book on Carter's life) contains the wording, "His discovery of Tutankhamun's grave created a sensation back in London, where he was heavily feted. People hung banners from their windows in his honour, and the Queen declared a national holiday." Has the editor committed a copyright violation? A.this is close paraphrasing and will end up as a copy right issue. Y It is indeed, and it will.

Interaction Y Completed

Whilst mastering the technical nuances of Wikipedia can be a challenge (one you've hopefully overcome in the above sections), it pales in comparison to navigating the delicate web of interaction between Wikipedia's users. Although our primary goal - one we should never lose sight of - is the construction of the world's greatest encylopedia, the nature of the project means that you will have to communicate with other editors in order to get things done. Politeness The most fundamental policy governing user interaction is Civility, one of the Five Pillars you learned about earlier. Basically, you are expected to communicate with other editors in a respectful manner, assume that they are acting in good faith and avoid insulting or otherwise attacking them. Remember, behind every IP or ridiculous username is a real person, and it's that real person who is being hurt by insults, accusations and abuse hurled their way. 1. What would your response be if another user called you a "blithering imbecile"? A. Will warn the user about CIVILITY in WP in their user page. If it continues then i will involve an admin or use ANI. Y Yes, that's fairly appropriate. 2. A source you added to an article is removed with the edit summary, "Removing crappy reference". Is this a personal attack? A. No, unless the editor would say something like removing reference by crappy editor it wouldn't be a personal attack. Until the attack is on the content in question, it is not a personal attack (though it might seem rude). Y Exactly - attacking a reference is not the same as attacking a person. 3. In the heat of the moment, you refer to another editor as an "idiot". He posts this template on your talkpage and reports you to the administrators board. You respond to the report at the admin board - what do you say? A. I would apologize for the same and explain why i responded so (not as a justification but an explanation about why i slipped on civility). Y Excellent answer, I couldn't have given a better response myself. Assuming good faith In learning about vandalism, you will have come across the idea of a "good faith edit", i.e. an edit that doesn't actually improve the article, but was made with the intention of doing so. The same applies to other editors' posts in discussions. Whilst it may seem that User:X is belittling you at every turn and is clearly biased and/or incompetent, there's actually a strong likelihood that he believes the same thing of you, and is doing his best to protect Wikipedia from what he sees as your problematic editing. In the same vein, don't automatically assume that a comment you find upsetting was intended to cause an upset - other users don't know you, and they don't know what sort of thing will push your buttons. 1. You add a large amount of sourced text to an article, which another editor removes. When you discuss it on the talkpage, the editor argues that your source "was written by an incompetent sot" and implies (but doesn't directly state) that you must be equally incompetent to have used it. How do you respond? A. Need to be careful in such conversations and assume good faith. I will just try to be objective in this scenario and point to references and probably peer reviews if they exist. if i have to make an assumption in such situations i would assume it in a positive attitude than take the editors arguments in negative sense. Y Good answer. 2. You encounter a new editor who is removing sourced content from a biographical page, claiming that it is disrespectful to the subject to include it. How do you explain the situation to them? A. I will explain to him that we need to keep a neutral point of view in such scenarios and if the sources are valid then the information needs to remain in the biography and such details are not disrespectful but truthful. Y That's a good answer, but it lacks one vital element - in such circumstances, you should almost always be referring to the biographies of living persons policy. BLP is a bit of a trump card on Wikipedia, and its provisos sometimes conflict with (and almost always override) other policies like WP:NPOV. Consensus Decisions on Wikipedia are made based on community consensus. This means that we are largely unconcerned with issues of right or wrong, true or false, correct or incorrect - what matters on Wikipedia is what the community decides. Because not every user can be involved in every possible discussion, we have policies and guidelines that have developed widespread consensus for use, and these serve to provide the opinion of Wikipedia editors in general. For example, in an Articles for deletion discussion or a Request for comment, only a handful users will participate - but by quoting relevent policies (such as WP:What Wikipedia is not) they are able to convey the established view of the Wikipedia community as a whole. For this reason, local consensus does not override policy - if you can get three people on a talkpage to agree to include a link to your fansite on your favourite actor's article, that doesn't mean you have the authority to override the policy on external links. That said, it is important to get agreement from the community for any potentially controversial edit or action you wish to make, even if you believe it to be in line with policy. If you make such an edit and it gets reverted, the appropriate response is to discuss it with the user who reverted you, ideally on the article's talkpage so that other users can comment too. Only when there is clear agreement (not necessarily unanimous, but definitely obvious to an outside observer) to include your revision should you go ahead with it. 1. At Articles for deletion, a discussion has taken place in which User:X proposes deleting a page (because after much searching, no-one has been able to locate suitable sources for it) and User:Y proposes keeping it because they have found it useful for a research project. Four other editors chime in to support the Keep vote, all with the rationale, "per User:Y, page is useful" or something very similar. You are the admin closing the discussion; do you close it as Keep, Delete or No Consensus, and why? A. I would keep it. Because the aspects of the articles validity though governed by some policies cannot be always implemented as a hard and fast rule. Consensus many times can be to neglect such rules. Also maintenance tags for sources can be put in place for such articles. Y There's no definitive right or wrong answer to this, as long as you explain your reasoning, but in this case, it's important to remember that policy is consensus. Three editors at an AFD with no better argument than WP:ITSUSEFUL does not constitute a consensus to override existing policy. You are allowed to ignore the rules sometimes, but you need to give a good reason for doing so. 2. On an article talkpage, three users disagree with your addition of an external link to the subject's official site, even though such a link is allowed under the External links policy. No other editors have supported your position. What do you do? A. If the reasons provided are valid then I will agree with them - irrespective of how proper the source is. If the reasons are not valid i will bring out the reasons in the talk page - and if the reasons provided are still not valid, i will probably reach out to an admin or more experienced editor to get more understanding and help. Y I like your attitude, that's precisely the right sort of approach to take in disputes like this. Resolving disputes If two or more editors are unable to agree on some aspect of an article, and no consensus seems to be possible, then continuing to argue on the talkpage is somewhat futile. Recognising this, Wikipedia has developed a number of processes for resolving such disputes. In rough order of escalation, these are: Third opinion. If only two editors are involved, they can request that another uninvolved editor examines the dispute and gives their opinion. This is not binding, but the fresh perspective can sometimes break the deadlock. Request for comment. Starting a Request for comment (RFC) on the article's talkpage will attract other editors who are not involved with the dispute - basically, a whole load of third opinions. RFCs are usually constructed around a simple yes/no proposal, e.g. "Should content about the subject's hairstyle be included in the article", which editors either support or oppose. RFCs typically invite comment for a month before closing. The results of an RFC are not technically binding, but they are generally considered to be indicative of consensus and so are usually adhered to. Dispute resolution noticeboard. Reports posted on the Dispute resolution noticeboard (DRN) are viewed by numerous editors who will try and mediate the disagreement. The DRN is often used for disputes which are more complex than the simple support/oppose mechanism of an RFC, such as disputes involving accusations of sockpuppetry, multiple pages or several interrelated content issues. Mediation. The Mediation Committee is a small group of trusted editors who will formally oversee a structured debate on a disputed issue. All involved parties must agree to mediation, and are expected (though not obliged) to abide by any successful outcome. Arbitration. If all other options in resolving a dispute have been exhausted, the case can be brought to the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom). This is a panel of editors (almost always highly experienced administrators) who have been elected by the community to provide a final resolution to disputes. Decisions made by the Arbitration Committee are binding, meaning that users who edit in defiance of an ArbCom ruling may be blocked or otherwise sanctioned. No questions on this section; the above is provided purely for your information. Hopefully, you'll never have to use any of it!

Related pages

• Article creation for beginners
• References for beginners
• Anti-vandalism for beginners
• Images for beginners
• Templates for beginners
• Deletion for beginners
• Twinkle for beginners