User talk:Avitevel

Copyright and Wikipedia

Hi Avitevel,

Welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for your edits to Military Advocate General. However, at least one of the edit contained text copied and pasted from another website. Therefore I was forced to revert the entire set of edits. Please note that we take such issues very seriously, and you may not copy text from other sources into Wikipedia. You are however welcome to write your own prose relying on reliable third-party sources.

Please let me know if you need any assistance.

—Ynhockey ^(Talk) 15:55, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi again,

There are few points to note here:

1. It seems like the bulk of what you put in the article (if not everything) was directly copied and pasted from another website. This is not allowed, no matter where you are copying from and whether you specify the source. Everything written on Wikipedia must be written by the editors, because by editing you agree to license the text under a certain license, and the only way you can have such authority is if you own the copyright, i.e. if you wrote the text yourself.
2. As a general rule (there are certain exceptions), large chunks of text on Wikipedia should not be based on a single source, no matter how relevant. Even if you summarize the source in your own words, you shouldn't use this as the core of the article. The idea is to take individual facts from sources, not an entire body of text (and again, even individual sentences should never be copied verbatim).
3. While "official" sources (primary sources and self-published sources) are allowed, they should be used sparingly, only for the simplest and least controversial facts. For example, an author's website can be used as a source for their birth date, but should not be used for a description of their career. In this case too, it's better to avoid MAG's website as a source—but it should be linked to once in the External links section.

Hope these points helped. If you still have questions please reach out again.

—Ynhockey ^(Talk) 14:51, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Avitevel. If you have authorisation from the author of the text on the MAG website, then it makes me slightly concerned that you may have a WP:Conflict of interest with this subject. Could you advise what your relationship is with the MAG? Thanks, Number 57 16:18, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Avitevel,

Number 57 is correct: if you have an affiliation with the MAG, please let us know.

Also: I am not sure that the person who gave you this authorization him/herself is authorized to give it. Even if they are, it is unclear whether they understand what it means: authorization to publish text on Wikipedia means using a certain license, which allows anyone to reproduce the text, even for commercial purposes, under certain restrictions. There are two ways to give such authorization:

1. An official letter from the relevant authority with the explicit release of the text under a relevant license, or
2. An indication in the original source (i.e. the MAG website) that the entire text is licensed under this license.

Naturally either of these has to be publicly available, and approved by our OTRS team.

This might be difficult because, as far as I know, individual IDF branches do not own any intellectual property, and are not authorized to release materials under any license they choose.

I am not trying to discourage you to edit, or seek authorization to publish existing materials online here. Just saying that it's a complicated legal issue that, with large bodies like the IDF, requires more than just approval by email or phone call—and it's almost always easier to write your own content. If you know someone at the MAG who is responsible for this area though (or if you are that person), they should feel free to contact Wikimedia Israel (even me personally) for additional information on how this works, and how we can constructively partner.

—Ynhockey ^(Talk) 08:32, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Avitevel, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi Avitevel! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from experienced editors like John from Idegon (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 16:02, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

January 2019

Please do not use styles that are unusual, inappropriate or difficult to understand in articles, as you did in Panel (comics). There is a Manual of Style, and edits should not deliberately go against it without special reason. Thank you. freshacconci (✉) 17:58, 13 January 2019 (UTC)