User talk:Refrigerator Heaven

I don't know if I'll be a frequent editor of Wickipedia but I'll check this page for messages from time to time and reply if appropriate. Please sign your posts. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 07:49, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Re: File:Orbit Science Fiction no.5 (Nov-Dec 1954).jpg is almost certainly Public Domain

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National Library for the Blind and PKD

I wondered why my copy of The Man in the High Castle had what appeared to be braile indentations on the cover. Perhaps the addition you made to the PKD article explains that one, thanks. Alastairward (talk) 13:10, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I geuss that's possible, especially if they are on the spine. Regardless, I'm pleased to have sorta publicised (sp?) that braille and special sound formats are available and potentially many more of his works will be available in those formats. Also, to show TMITHC was requested for NLS use in 1975 and that he generously gave "general permission" to use his works. If I understood the info on the NLS site correctly, even now dramatic literary works require permission if they are copyright protected. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 07:41, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I liked that part too, that PKD gave his general permission to the Library. Our articles are supposed to be free of any bias, so it's nice when the facts speak for themselves like that!

Also, I checked out the Meddler article you're creating. It looks good, well cited and some background information on the story too.

The only things I would change are to pull any critical analysis out of the plot section, give it its own section and cite it. Even if it's only a quote from PKD himself on the story.

That and to change the plot synopsis to, "The protagonist, Hasten, is sent in a Time Car as a last-ditch attempt to learn how this meddling worked its destructive force and how to correct the problem. Hasten eventually learns that his return trip is apparently the ultimate cause" Time travel is difficult to describe though isn't it?

It reminds me too, all that (joking) news about how the Large Hadron Collider may be sabotaging it's own past from the future, didn't PKD have a similar sort of story years ago? Alastairward (talk) 14:43, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think free of any bias is possible, even the selection of what to edit has some bias plus quite a bit of the neutrality rules are themselves quite biased but I know what you mean. It is nice when facts used appropriately "say" something you'd like said. A bit of a drag when fairness/neutrality requires writing something you'd rather wasn't said.

Thanks for the help with the draft. I thought the analysis was going to have to go even for fiction but an opinion from someone who has been around here longer cinched it. Right now I've got 4 sources for the same PKD note about the story but it's not something I can paraphrase & likely not even very meaningful to the general reader. Maybe I can find something usable to cite in some obscure place or something that just isn't handy to consult now and use it when I come across it. His short fiction has generally been badly neglected IMO. I tightened up what I didn't delete as you suggested. maybe I should have let you do that as the history goes with the article which I didn't realize before moving it. It seems to be in the "live" Wickipedia and maybe functioning properly except Search doesn't bring it up as a suggestion though it seems like it had a lot more links before I did the clean up. The word meddler really should have a disambiguation page but I'm not ready to tackle that. I haven't even figured out from the Help sections what I did wrong in the moving process or quite where to ask. I probably misunderstood something about the redirect cleanup that I'll have to get help fixing but it's part of the learning process. Anyway, your comments were very helpful and focussed. Much appreciated.

I agree about describing time travel. As Huston Smith wrote about something in a book I was reading a couple days ago, "the words never work". Time Pawn and Other Stories? ;-) "Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday" sounds a contender for what you have in mind though someone else wrote a story likelier to be the one you're thinking of. Have a Happy New Year or Happy Old Year, whichever direction you're heading now! Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 11:20, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure why Meddler doesn't show up in the search, possibly because of the redirect from Meddler. Meddler is listed at the top of the search results though. If we perhaps deleted that page, Meddler (short story) should still exist by itself. But then I've not really dealt with disambiguation pages either, so I don't know what the form is on them.

I'm stuck on GMT, so the New Year still approaches, have a good one yourself. Alastairward (talk) 13:35, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I just put in a request for help at Editor assisstance. That seems to be the right place. I still approach the New Year also and have a McKeson Triple Stout ready for the occasion (it's no longer available locally). A tab of Orange Sunshine would be more interesting but that hasn't been available for decades! Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 14:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Ping

I replied to your question at WP:EAR; a bit belated, as I forget I'd posted there. Short version: looks to me like you did everything fine. Cheers. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:14, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

The Last of the Masters data blanking & WikiCommons image uploading.

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Final discussion for Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

Hello, I note that you have commented on the first phase of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

As this RFC closes, there are two proposals being considered:

1. Proposal to Close This RfC
2. Alternate proposal to close this RFC: we don't need a whole new layer of bureaucracy

Your opinion on this is welcome. Okip 03:25, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Philip K. Dick Is Dead...

...Alas.

That last edit to the main PKD page reminded me of when I read that book, ages ago. My daughter wasn't even one, I was in a half decent place to live and my sister hadn't moved across the water to Liverpool yet, happy days.

Your restoration of the popular culture section didn't lose anything, but I noticed that the link in that section to Victoria Stewart's profile page (she wrote 800 Words: The Transmigration of Philip K. Dick) is now dead so I replaced it with one from the Way Back machine. Alastairward (talk) 22:52, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Copyright Status pertaining to "Last of the Masters" and other PKD works

Hello, I am hoping that you can be of assistance to my endeavour.

It has recently surprised me to learn that there are somewhere around fifty Philip K. Dick stories in the public domain. Wow. If this is indeed the case, I have to wonder why Proj. Gutenberg has only but a fifth of that amount published in its online archive. [Gutenberg.org/browse/authors/d#a33399]

I was examining your research in regard to the copyright status of the 1954 shorts “Adjustment Team” (first published in Orbit Sci-Fi #4) and “Last of the Masters” (first published in Orbit Sci-Fi #5) which is presented in those stories’ respective Wikipedia articles; the information would seem to be thorough and altogether in order (however I’m no expert). Now although it may be claimed and technically substantiated that such Dick works are in the public domain, are they nevertheless truly so? Can it be realistically stated that such PKD stories are as much public domain as, say, the plays of William Shakespeare?

The reason for my interest is that I would like to introduce certain P.K. Dick stories presumably residing in the public domain into another area of media. And I’m wondering whether I would encounter a problem with the PKD Trust if I actually did so. I e-mailed Dick’s Estate via the contact form on their authorized website and requested their official stance concerning the area of copyright status as detailed in the Wikipedia article for “The Last of the Masters”. I’ve yet to receive a response. I have to believe, on general principle, that the PKD Trust would likely challenge the information put forward in the various Wikipedia articles which collectively comment that numerous Dick literary works exist in a copyright-free condition.

Anyhow.. I know that you're probably not an attorney or the like, still can you advise me? ~ GreyZarak 19 Sept 2010

Project Gutenberg is intentionally decentralized. For example, there is no selection policy dictating what texts to add. Instead, individual volunteers work on what they are interested in, or have available. The Project Gutenberg collection is intended to preserve items for the long term, so they cannot be lost by any one localized accident. In an effort to ensure this, the entire collection is backed-up regularly and mirrored on servers in many different locations.

[Project Gutenberg]

I was surprised to learn any of PKD's works are in the public domain in the US and astounded to learn a large number of such works exist. I imagine many people who would scan US public domain works by PKD for Project Gutenberg have assumed everything was copyrighted and not checked to see if this is true.

To the best of my knowledge Shakespeare's works are public domain in every nation on earth. That may not be the case with all of the works of Philip K. Dick which are in the public domain in the United States. I haven't researched for other nations. If copyright status in other countries than the US is relevant to to your project, it would be advisable to consult an attorney specializing in such matters. A look at the "PD-US-not renewed" tag and its links might be helpful. Possibly to use something that is public domain in the US you might have to restrict distribution or negociate rights for one or more countries based on different copyright status under the laws of the other country or countries.

If the PKD Trust wants to challenge accuracy of copyright information here it can do so on the same basis as anyone else and may even get extra deference if anything is a little ambiguous. It has greater ability than others to challenge use of anything it asserts it holds copyright for since it can issue a DMCA takedown notice. E.g., the scan of "Adjustment Team". That was scanned from Orbit #4 as stated and there is a scan of the table of contents and copyright notice page of that magazine which I also scanned and uploaded. Since RE0000190631 claims renewal of a non-existant work titled "Adjustment Team" first published in Imaginative tales, Sept. 1955, the Trust might find it difficult to claim copyright infringement regarding the "Adjustment Team" story from Orbit for which copyright was not renewed.

I can advise you to verify something is in the public domain, not just presume that it is before making use of it and to document that it is in the public domain if it has previously been copyrighted. If possible use a site for distribution of your works such as archive.org or wickimedia so others will be checking the accuracy of public domain claims reducing the possibility of accidental copyright infringement and perhaps providing some protection against incorrect claims of copyright infringement. The US Copyright Office has much information available and can answer some questions if contacted at http://www.copyright.gov/help/general-form.html. There is much information available for helping you with copyright research which you can find or find links to on Wikimedia Foundation sites. [[1]] and [[2]] are good places to review basic information about the public domain. The latter has a section on "The public domain and derivative works" that may be of special interest to you.

I won't speculate on possible actions or inactions of the PKD Trust.

Hope this is of some help. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 02:44, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your altogether helpful input. It's most appreciated! ~ GreyZarak 13 Oct 2010 —Preceding undated comment added 13:25, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

Original Research

In case you didn't see it, discussion about edits that affects you going on here WP:NORN#Adjustment Team. Livewireo (talk) 07:04, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

There's no reason why I would have seen it since no one mentioned anything about it to me. As far as I know, it wasn't mentioned to anyone involved with editing the article (except one data blanking edit) or interested in improving it. Apparently some editors with unknown motivation just moved from the article's talk page to a "back room" where they could agree they were right without involved or subject-knowledgeable editors seeing and meddling in their discussion or noticing it later. It's six months since then and not a single editor who was part of the discussion has done anything to improve the article. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 11:59, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Small Town good-to-go

See here. AKA Londonjackbooks 19:58, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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