User talk:Milst1

A belated welcome!

Sorry for the belated welcome, but the cookies are still warm!

Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, Milst1. I see that you've already been around a while and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Though you seem to have been successful in finding your way around, you may benefit from following some of the links below, which help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

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Again, welcome! Jax 0677 (talk) 12:34, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Help me!

Please help me with... I am writing a new article in my sandbox; the subject is a defunct business (closed in 1989). I have an illustrative image (a flyer advertising the defunct business), but I don't know if the image is "free" or not. Can I upload the image? Should I even upload the image for an article that doesn't yet exist? Thanks. Milst1 (talk) 22:47, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Unless there are explicit releases, you have to assume that such a document is covered by copyright. Also, since it is not a published source that a reader could look up in a library or other archive, it's not really the sort of reference that can be useful on Wikipedia. If it were not for the copyright problem, you might be able to consider using it for illustration, but not as a reference. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 00:13, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@Jmcgnh:

Yes, I was thinking as an illustration. But I have no idea how to get copyright permission to share an image of a flyer for a business that is now 30+ years gone. Any idea of how one goes about tracking such a thing down? Another question: The long-dead business was a theater show. I have souvenir programs that were sold at the "show", much like playbills. Would these be legit sources in the article for Wikipedia? I will read Wikipedia:Reliable sources now. Milst1 (talk) 14:30, 21 May 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Milst1 (talk • contribs) 22:56, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

There's a difference between 'notability' references and references that 'can be used'. None of these things you are suggesting can be used to establish notability.

There are 'fair-use' exceptions for some non-free (that is, copyrighted) images and other content on Wikipedia, but knowing nothing more specific about the materials you have in hand, I can only say it seems unlikely that they can be used.

But all of these things you are asking about seem to be materials that would be considered illustrations to accompany an article. Such illustrating material is secondary and a draft does not benefit from it as far as review consideration. An article must be based on published sources, sources that a diligent and determined reader would be able to verify at a sufficiently good library or other archive. If you cannot find sources such as this, I'm afraid Wikipedia's stance is that the subject is not notable enough to have an article. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 22:37, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@Jmcgnh:

I do not doubt the notability of the subject. There are a number of secondary, verifiable, reliable, accessible, and independent sources to support a claim for the subject's notability. I'm drafting a Wikipedia article for the subject because I was genuinely surprised that no such Wikipedia article already existed for it. If the rest of you disagree and don't find it to meet the criteria for notability, so be it.

I was actually just asking for help about copyright for illustrative images, and also about the usability of certain sources which are not as widely accessible as others. On that note, please allow a follow up question that I could not make clear earlier. Question: Is the original souvenir program from Star Wars (film) a legit citational source for technical information about the film in its Wikipedia article? So, in the Star Wars (film) article, could one write that such-and-such type of camera was used, or such-and-such a person was in the film crew, and cite the souvenir program as the source? Is the souvenir program, sold to filmgoers at theaters in 1977, a primary source or a secondary source? Thank you.Milst1 (talk) 17:37, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I think the answer is that is is not a published source, that is, it is not the sort of publication one would find in a library. There are all sorts of documents out there that eBay and other vendors treat as collectible ephemera that can't be used as sources because they can't be consulted by a general reader. Occasionally people try to reference artifacts or ephemera items like this when they appear in curated library or museum collections and the community sometimes allows it, sometimes doesn't. At least, that's my impression – there are likely editors with more experience than I have at dealing with these particular issues who would have a clearer explanation for what can be used and what can't. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 20:53, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

References

@Jmcgnh:

Thank you very much! Very helpful.Milst1 (talk) 22:15, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Sandbox

Hi, just letting you know that I added {{draft categories}} to User:Milst1/sandbox so that it wouldn't show up in the main categories. Also, I'm looking forward to your finished article—I'm always amazed by old school multimedia presentations that used lots of movie and slide projectors. :) Trivialist (talk) 23:19, 29 May 2020 (UTC) @Trivialist:

Thank you very much for that fix, and I apologize that it was needed. I didn't know that it could be "out there" if it was in my sandbox. In general, I have no clue about the guts of Wikipedia editing, so thanks again.Milst1 (talk) 23:35, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

@Trivialist:

And of course, thank you very much for your interest in the topic. This show was kind of a big deal in New York in the 1970s-80s, and I was bowled over when I could not find an article on Wikipedia. I'm working on an academic paper on the topic now, but I'll be careful to leave the primary research out of the article. Cheers to you, Trivialist.Milst1 (talk) 23:44, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

No problem, happy to help. :) Trivialist (talk) 23:46, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

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response

You wrote on my user talk page: I wrote The New York Experience article, then decided not to publish it on Wikipedia. It appears that you published it on Wikipedia without my permission. How do I take it down?Milst1 (talk) 23:55, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, you do not have that right. You had already published it when you clicked the submit or publish button at the bottom of the page, and you published it irrevocably under the WP:Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) , a free license, permitting everyone in the world to use, reuse, and change it, as long as they continue to credit you for the edits. If I or anyone thinks your work is of value to the encyclopedia, we have the right to use it for Wikipedia . If I or anyone else in the world thinks your work is of value for anything else, they can use it also. There is no way for you to withdraw the license once given. This is very clearly stated on the form with which you submit an edit. You continue to own the copyright to what you have written, and you would be entitled to take action against anyone who published it without also including the credit required under the terms of the license.

You apparently did not realize this. You do not own your userspace; it is not your personal web resource, or a place to put your personal material, but an auxiliary part of Wikipedia. You're a professional: before you place work on a web site, you should read the terms. You're an academic, and I thought every academic did realize the existence and meaning of WP's licensing.

However, we recognize that beginners, even beginners with academic experience, do make errors, and we try to be nice about it.

As a courtesy, if nobody else has edited it substantially, as was the case, we generally let people delete the material . You placed a notice asking an administrator to do so, and an administrator did. But anyone who knows of its existence can ask any administrator to undelete it, and then revise it as they see fit. Anyone who can find it in any of the sites which copy Wikipedia can do so also, and would be legally entitled to do so , as long as they retained the credit to you. If it is distributed here or elsewhere, your work would not have been stolen--it would be being used as the license you gave intended.

I am able to do so myself, and I consider it of value, as did hte other administrator . If it is just that you want to use it elsewhere, you can do that also; many contributors do. From what you said on the other administrator's talk page, " I need professional credit for the huge amount of work I've invested into it, including a ton of original research." You are perfectly entitled to publish it as you have written it under your own name, and to take credit. After it would be revised by others, you could publish only the part you had written, adding whatever material you wished to. (or you could publish the entire work or any part of it, taking credit for the part you had written. You would own the copyright on the whole, but the part that had been published here could be republished freely by anyone, and, according to the license, you would have had to say so when you republished it. It is true that most publishers will not publish a work that has been published elsewhere.; but most will publish a work of which a small part has been published elsewhere. And many universities do give credit for contributing professional-quality work to Wikipedia. DGG ( talk ) 02:19, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

incidentally, it is acceptable for you to remove the material I have written from your usertalk page, but it will remain in the article history. DGG ( talk ) 02:28, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@DGG:::Dear David, no, I did not understand the concept of the Sandbox at all and I did not understand that the copyright was surrendered in the Sandbox. I absolutely did think that it was my own personal draft space on Wikipedia (I doubt that I am the only one), and I had no understanding whatsoever that the contents of my Sandbox could be monitored, grabbed, and put out there by anyone without my knowledge or approval. No idea. I would never ever have touched the Sandbox if I had understood that "drafting" in the Sandbox was legally the same as publication. I thought that "publishing on Wikipedia" was "publishing on Wikipedia", and I thought that there was a process where I had to ask for reviews, etc. before I could even get an article actually out. I never ran across anything that said "the contents of your Sandbox may be randomly chosen for publication". Seeing the article live was a completely unexpected shock. I understand what a Creative Commons licensing is, but I had no idea that others could reach into my Sandbox.

Deletion is still justified; a good helping of the article could be considered original research, and this was a key reason that I didn't move to "publish" it (knowingly) to Wikipedia myself. I knew that it was in a gray area; many of my sources were ephemera and I relied more and more on primary sources as the work lengthened and deepened, and this also served as motivation to move the research off Wikipedia. But again, I honestly didn't know that I was "publishing on Wikipedia", and I wouldn't have knowingly "released" an article that violated the original research rules. -Martin

Milst1 (talk) 05:26, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

It is rather common that people simply forget to move things, or go away and abandon what could be perfectly good articles or fill in significant gaps.. There is no clear practice on wether or not we should go in and rescue them when this happens. Some reviewers and admins do this; some do not. I currently mainly work here to rescue content that has been unwisely abandoned or declined or deleted--in fact, back 12 years ago that was the primary reason I gave for being granted admin rights, to reach back into deleted articles. I tend to look on content rather impersonally, because I think fairer to judge on just what I see, but if I had checked your user page I would have sen you knew what you were writing about and I would have asked. Currently, I scan every draft about to be deleted for being unedited for 6 months except in fields where I'm ignorant; out of every batch of 200, I rescue or postpone about 10. Most people here don't like doing article work with such a low yield, but for some reason I rather like it.

You're not unique in not realizing the meaning of saving a draft. We have experimented and continue experimenting with ways to say it clearer without being obtrusive. I'm not sure when you saved the first edit whether it said "submit" or "publish"-- the interface fairly recently changed to "publish" trying to make it clearer. But it used to give a more conspicuous warning at the top of the edit window back when we thought fewer people understand.

Most academic people I know , even ones senior enough that their publication record no longer matters, won't write in WP because they don't want anyone else messing around with their final version. Some of the medical editors here are experimenting with writing review articles that can be published simultaneously in both an open access journal and in WP. The OA-journal version is of course fixed, the WP one available for editing. (And there are some other similar methods being experimented with.) None of us are under any delusion we have things right, or ever will. Basically we remain a collection of techno-anarchists who intended everything to be improvable forever. . Best wishes. David DGG ( talk ) 06:06, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

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Thanks for reaching out, @Adog, I'll be sure to check it out. Milst1 (talk) 20:46, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

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