User talk:Stephen Ewen

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Hourglass drawing.svg Where Steve lives it is approximately: 20:20

NOTE: If you ask me a question on a point of policy and so forth and someone else replies, you can assume the reply is accurate unless I add a comment after a day or so. Stephen Ewen 21:07, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

*Category:Help requests


CZ Photography pages

Hey, remember your idea about that? Well, I just uploaded a really cool photo of some macaws that I found on flickr and while I was filling out the template, the author's name struck me as familiar. I did a search and sure enough, it was the same person who took the lead photo for the article about the Tío.

I'm starting to think that photography pages would be really good to have, both as a way to draw in people like Mr. Jason Devitt and as a way to point users to sources of really good images. Did that conversation ever go anywhere? --Joe Quick 15:54, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

It has not gone anywhere, except that the EIC said that upon first view he thought it was a great idea. Let's do what it takes to refine the idea and move it forward!  :-) Stephen Ewen 17:10, 21 October 2007 (CDT)
Okay. I finished two papers today and have another one to write for Wednesday, but I should be able to pitch in this weekend or next week.
BTW, do you see any beans in this picture? It looks like just corn and squash to me. --Joe Quick 20:54, 22 October 2007 (CDT)
I see no beans. :-( Stephen Ewen 21:05, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

access to test wiki

How do I get access to that? --Robert W King 19:52, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

Replied off-wiki. Stephen Ewen 19:55, 21 October 2007 (CDT)
Do you know where index.php is located on the server? --Robert W King 16:49, 23 October 2007 (CDT)
No. Eric might be able to help. Stephen Ewen 17:26, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Flickr images

Regarding this: 1.) "Berat" is the name of the province where the church illustrated is found and the title of the image, not a pseudonym. 2.) The image was first published at http://www.beerscooter.co.uk (the UK), and then at flickr (the US). Hope this is enough! --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 21:30, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

P.S. Please forgive any mistakes; I am new here ;-) --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 21:33, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

No worries.  :-) Well, except all photos at http://www.beerscooter.co.uk are hosted at flickr and hyperlinked into the U.K. page. There is no evidence of this photo even existing now at the U.K. site. Neither is there evidence of it existing there since it was first indexed by The Internet Archive http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.beerscooter.co.uk from it's first crawling in Aug 13, 2004 to now. Kindly re-add the U.S. as the country first published in unless there is some evidence I am missing. This info is important for far into the future in determining when the photo will enter the public domain. Stephen Ewen 22:08, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

Oh. Well, thank you for your help, and sorry for the mistake. Happy editing! --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 08:12, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

That's pretty cool

Stephen, Stephen--he's our man...

If he can't do it, no one can!

(Now all we need is the date) Aleta Curry 22:55, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

advice please?

Greetings!

I left a note on Larry Sanger's page. but since you are online, and we so kind as to fix my wpauthor tag, maybe I could ask your advice too.

I wrote a note here, in forum-space, concerning porting, and adapting to citizendium's standards GFDL material that was largely written by me on the wikipedia.

How do I find out if it would be welcome here?

Cheers! George Swan 17:11, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

Hi George. http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:How_to_convert_Wikipedia_articles_to_Citizendium_articles is pretty much all you need. Any questions just let me know. Stephen Ewen 17:51, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

Photo rights query

Joe Quick asked me the following: As far as photos go, it looks like everything is copyrighted, which makes sense, since so few people have actually been given access to the bones. It looks like most of the news services have been making still images from the 3d moveable image here and I really like the shot of the scientists leaning over the skeleton here - do you think we could use them under fair use? --Joe Quick 17:51, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

I think this is more of a constabulary question than an editorial one?

Lee R. Berger 02:09, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Copyright violations are a constabulary issue. Fair use is not a settled matter at CZ but it is a good bet we will take an overall rather conservative approach to it. Generally, we want to avoid fair use as much as possible, and when it is invoked it should be neccesary for an article and well-justified. Beyond certain categories of use that are very safely fair use, determining uses beyond them should primarily be an issue for media specialists and editors to decide under policy guidelines (just like it is in meatspace), in my view.
The best way forward in the instant case is to first try to find free images that would adequately substitute for the fully copyrighted ones. Absent that, try to find out the provenance of the fully copyrighted images and seek the neccessary permissions, while keeping records of each of those efforts. Sometimes it is as easy as an email, sometimes not. If those measures fail, then place the issue of fair use on the table for consideration.
Stephen Ewen 02:28, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
In this particular case, there simply aren't any free images and there aren't likely to be any made any time soon. Only a few dozen people have ever even seen the skeleton. Use by permission is an option, but considering the politics around Kennewick Man, I think the article should be approvable before we go asking around. Fair use was my short-term solution to brightening up the article. Should we just hold off until the article (which is currently being reworked somewhat) is in good shape? --Joe Quick 02:54, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
I think the best strategy is to start the by permission ball rolling now, mentioning that the images will not be placed in the article until it is complete and approved. Stephen Ewen 03:32, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
BTW, what's your email nowadays? I got a bounce-back. Send me one. Stephen Ewen 03:35, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Also, can you show me an example or two of a news service using a still of the 3D figure and the bones? That'll help unravel this. If they are using small still under fair use, that bolsters tings. The info at the WP page is not helpful in this regard. Stephen Ewen 03:42, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

The most straightforward place to find images and get permission to use images of the sculpture is from Dan McCool http://www.coolbreezephotography.com. See the bottom of the page and images here. Stephen Ewen 04:23, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Also, see this. They apparently have been given non-exclusive rights to reproduce the sculpture, given the language they use. They may be quite willing to let us use a few images in exchange for those bargaining chips of credit lines in articles and links to their site on the image upload page. How about this? I'll take that any day under by permission terms over a tiny screenshot under fair use that's the same as WP.  :-) Stephen Ewen 04:31, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
The connection to Dan McCool isn't immediately obvious to me but that big shot would be good. I wonder if any of those bronze sculptures have ever sold... --Joe Quick 04:40, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Oh, probably some have sold. They'd have not gone into the costs without knowledge of a market.
Clearly, McCool was given access to the materials by the gallery so he could take photographs. (BTW, this means the fair use claim at WP is null and the image would be deleted if certain elements were informed of this, but I am not going there).
Given all the above, here is where I would become comfortable with a fair use claim over the sculpture in the article. See http://www.triartgallery.com/download/KennewickManBrochure.pdf and consider how it and similar materials might be used. This sculpting seems very clearly important--very, very clearly so. Include an entire section, at least a few paragraphs about the sculpting of Kennewick Man by Chatters and McClelland including criticisms of it (yes they exist, even if only because it looks like Captain Jean-Luc Picard), and a fair use claim depicting their clay sculpture (this one, just slightly shrunk) would become strong, in my view. And note how requiring a strong fair use claim would add significant value to this article--the whole field of modeling figures from remains is quite, quite controversial, and this is, in fact, a certain instance of art and its artists and their genre that we would be discussing and commenting on. But to just illustrate the article as lede image, I'd say no, no way, not under fair use. Stephen Ewen 05:14, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Sounds about right. Do you have any interest in writing that section? I'm getting a little burned out on this subject and I still need to finish up the "subsequent investigations" section. There's a pretty good description of the modeling process on the NOVA site linked from the external links page. --Joe Quick 17:38, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Yea, let's be very clear about what it with probably 99% probability means that the AP is selling images of that clay figure photo. Whoever holds rights to it has given non-exclusive rights to the AP to reproduce it, like they probably gave them to triartgallery.com. That's a good chunck of dough the copyright holder was paid. This means there is an active and financially-rewarding market for such images for the copyright holder and, because of that, one had better be very darned sure about their fair use claim when using it under such. Stephen Ewen 06:27, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the tips

Thanks for your edit summary tips in the images I recently uploaded, I'll try and remember them next time. Regards --Russ McGinn 12:45, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Image talk:Coat of Arms of Angola.gif

Great idea; I'm working on it right now. I'll let you know when it's finished. Happy editing! --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 19:22, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks. BTW, regarding this, I do :-) Thank you very much! --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 22:08, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Done. Please check it and feel free to edit it. Happy editing! --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 22:23, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Cool! I really appreciate your help with this stuff! Stephen Ewen 22:26, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Tracing contributions

Hi Steve,

How do I trace the contributions of an author. What I'm trying to do is to see when, where and to what extent a student has contributed not only to their own article but to other articles.

Lee R. Berger 01:13, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Just navigate to that student's userpage. On the left of the page in the toolbox there will be a link, User contributions. That tells the whole story. Click on the link there diff and you can see precisely each contribution. Stephen Ewen 01:15, 28 October 2007 (CDT)
For example, see this diff. :-) Stephen Ewen 01:17, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Question

Hi Stephen, I still don't quite understand the notion of approved pages. I put a question here. Could you please have a look at it? Thank you in advance. --Paul Wormer 03:11, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

Reply is at Talk:Chemistry/Draft#Please_explain_draft_principle. Stephen Ewen 04:04, 29 October 2007 (CDT)
  • Stephen, thank you for your lightning response. So, if I may interpret your answer: After some authors (including myself) have made some changes to the draft of an approved article, it is up to one(?) editor (or one contributing author?) to decide that time is ready for the next release. When the time is ripe, we signal you and you will take care of the release. Do I understand the procedure correctly now?
Another thing, Pieter Kuiper asked here why the history of the approved article has vanished. I'm interested in the answer as well, so when you put a reply on that talk page, I appreciate that too. Thank you again, --Paul Wormer 03:40, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

You have it close.

Anyone may prod approval of an article. Authors do that by contacting a relevant area editor who has not contributed significantly to the article. The editor will then review the article, and if he or she feels it meets muster, can nominate it for approval. How editors deal with approval depends upon two factors: 1) whether they have contributed significantly to the text; or, 2) have not. In the case of #1, they follow the same procedure as authors do: they contact an editor to nominate the article for approval. In the case of #2, they simply act themselves to nominate the article for approval. Additional editors may "sign on" to the approval. See CZ:The_Editor_Role and CZ:Approval_Process#Who_may_approve for more complete explanations.

Constables don't approve articles. They serve others to do their role(s) effectively. The constable's role in approval is only to do the mechanics of approval, i.e., placing templates and locking pages in response to the approval process as lead by editors.

That initially sounds a bit complex, but it is really easy. Basically, if you wrote significantly, another editor does the approval; if not, you do the approval. A constable formalizes it by placing templates and locking pages.

Stephen Ewen 04:04, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

  • Yes, I understand that part of the procedure now, but my specific concern was not release 1.0, but release 1.1 (or even release 2.0) of an approved article. Do we go through the same steps and have to prod one or more non-involved editors again for a new release, even if the changes are minor? --Paul Wormer 04:33, 29 October 2007 (CDT)
How minor? If we are talking mere typos or grammatical issues, I can just step in and correct them in the current approved article. Just says what needs doing. If it regards actual content, however, yes, it needs to go through the process. If the changes are minor, however, it goes quicker. Stephen Ewen 04:40, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

Tilden pic

Hey, great! I was *wondering* where that came from! We just gotta find other PD pix! What about that old Brit cartoon of Ray Casey that we discussed *months* ago? The Daily Mail never replied, I take it. Can I send them another email, this time *copying* the damn thing, just to prove that we tried, and then reinsert it? You deleted it, as I recall, but you said that it would be easy to reinstate it. And there have got to be a *ton* of PD Australian pix, since the copyright on them is only 50 years.... Hayford Peirce 18:23, 30 October 2007 (CDT)

I've not forgotten Hayford, I'll get to this. :-) Stephen Ewen 02:46, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

Picture Cauchy

Hi Stephen, right now I'm working on Augustin-Louis Cauchy. I found a nice picture:

http://www.universalis.fr/corpus_media.php?mref=PH020402

Could I use it? Thank you, --Paul Wormer 09:32, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

PS The same picture is here:

http://www.sci-museum.kita.osaka.jp/~saito/scientist/math/cauchy.JPG

and here (where there is some Italian talk about the licence):

http://campusvirtual.unex.es/cala/epistemowikia/index.php?title=Imagen:Cauchy.jpg

Another picture (an older Cauchy) (here Library of Congress is mentioned as licence holder):

http://www.answers.com/topic/augustin-louis-cauchy?cat=technology

Reply
^^ This is absurdibly hilarious. --Robert W King 02:22, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

Stephen Ewen 22:26, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

http://www.universalis.fr/corpus_media.php?mref=PH020402 says "Lithographie de Jules Boilly, 1821." It should then be in the public domain. --06:35, 1 November 2007 (CDT)
Yes, the lithograph is, but what about the reproduction of it? French law allows copyright on "photographic works and works produced by techniques analogous to photography". I don't know if that would cover a lithograph. I do know the image there credits it to Jacques Boyer / Roger-Viollet, and examples of their copyrighted works of old works in France can be seen here. Lacking data, knowledge of how that stipulation in French law would apply to a lithograph, and a date of the reproduction of the lithograph, it is presumptuous to say we can just nab the image of it and tag it PD. Stephen Ewen 17:30, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

Here is the Roger-Viollet source of the image if you'd like to find out what they have to say: http://www.parisenimages.fr/en/terms-of-use-for-the-pictures.html Stephen Ewen 18:28, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

RE: Careful....

I really do not understand why the image was deleted. It is impossible for the image to be copyrighted, as the author of the painting, Hyacinthe Rigaud, died in 1743, and the droit d'auteur (French copyright law - English translation can be found here) says that proprietary rights expire 70 years after the author's death. If you can explain to me why that image is still protected by copyright laws, I will accept your decision. --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 20:42, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

Yes, rights to the painting are long expired. Not to all photographs of it, however. France is not like the U.S. in that way, as best I can tell. See for example the photo shown by Louvre Museum, who also holds the original painting. We have to make sure the photo originates with someone who published their own photo in the U.S.; then, the photo will be PD because "slavish copies" of PD works cannot be copyrighted in the U.S. We have no clue from where the image at the Commons was obtained. Stephen Ewen 20:52, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Well, then I should probably delete that image at the Commons, too :-) Sorry for the trouble; the new image is better, anyway. --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 20:57, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Few in the whole category there are sourced. Stephen Ewen 21:05, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Hmm... quite true. Check back in a few days; It'll be very different ;-) --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 21:14, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Also see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:When_to_use_the_PD-Art_tag#Country-specific_rules on France. Stephen Ewen 21:32, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Commons:When_to_use_the_PD-Art_tag isn't respected at the Wikimedia Commons. Whenever somebody tries to open a deletion request because of it, the request is closed as a kept because of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. --Kjetil Ree 06:39, 1 November 2007 (CDT)
And of course, Bridgeman does not apply to photos originating outside of the U.S. And too, this would explain why they are hosting these images without sourcing. To place the true source would probably in most cases be to say "this is infringement," rather than leaving it to implication. Stephen Ewen 12:26, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

I probably should have been a little slower

I think I just spammed the server with uploads. --Robert W King 21:31, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

Wow! You worked some magic with Image:Louis XIV by Rigaud, 1701, Louvre (cropped).jpg! Stephen Ewen 21:42, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
The problem was that the picture somehow captures the texture of the canvas and the color burn gradient wasn't having a fantastic time adjusting, so I had to really put some extreme adjustment on it. --Robert W King 21:47, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
What program(s) did you use? Stephen Ewen 21:53, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
The bestest free program there is, http://www.getpaint.net/ --Robert W King 21:54, 31 October 2007 (CDT)
Ah, I use that too - unlike Adobe, I can actually figure out Paint.net, relatively so. Stephen Ewen 21:59, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

Assistance

I have a picture I'm uploading from a flickr user, with whom I got permission to use the photo from. I haven't done this process before so I may need some backup. --Robert W King 18:40, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

I'll hit an RBI if you don't hit a grand slam. :-) Stephen Ewen 18:45, 1 November 2007 (CDT)
I think I got everything. Can you double check? --Robert W King 18:49, 1 November 2007 (CDT)
Can you protect the following pages? :

--Robert W King 15:24, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

Done. Stephen Ewen 16:19, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

BTW, unless a photo is of such quality that a polite person should not have the gall, you might go ahead and first ask the flickr folk if they'd release the photo "under a Creative Commons license, the freer the better". Stephen Ewen 16:36, 2 November 2007 (CDT)
Normally, I would have but I went through thousands of photos with the tags of "bowling shirt", and that was an archetype of what I could consider one to be, without having people looking goofy in it. Additionally with the backstroke series of photos, I wanted something showing process. --Robert W King 16:39, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

Uploading photos

I am sooooo not attempting to crop/fix photos anymore (pace, Rob King). Cropped and uploaded to acer palmatum. First, it was so incredibly fiddly, took forever, everything is now blurry and I'm seeing stars, if my husband finds out for how long I was running the generator doing this I'm dead, but anyway I gave it a go to be a good sport but man, this just isn't my thing. Exhausted. Going to make tea. And, p.s., I made the page look a mess, to boot. Hate taxoboxes. Hate formatting. Hate everything! (except just writing) And MC and SC. And you guys. I don't hate you. Aleta Curry 22:59, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

It looks fine. BTW, since the resolution on these images is small and the licensing not free, and there is easy availability of similar photos in both higher resolution and under a free license, you should expect them to be replaced sooner or later. Stephen Ewen 23:11, 2 November 2007 (CDT)
BTW, nice to know I ain't the only one who's lived places without normal power provisions. :-) Stephen Ewen 23:18, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

French

Why not. Have you any model (in English) you used so far? If so it'd certainly help if you mailed me one. Aleksander Stos 02:48, 4 November 2007 (CST)

I do. See CZ:Media_Assets_Workgroup/Example_permission_request_letters. However, something less formal and more brief may be in order in this case, although I'm not sure. Stephen Ewen 02:55, 4 November 2007 (CST)
Thanks! I'm sending a mail. Actually I'm mailing here (see the bottom 2 lines) since I had impression the link you suggested was provided for a hard copy service (I might be wrong here, we'll see). BTW, do you go to sleep from time to time ;) ? Aleksander Stos 08:05, 4 November 2007 (CST)
I've never required much sleep. :D We don't need a hardcopy of the image, digital is completely fine. Stephen Ewen 11:40, 4 November 2007 (CST)
Stephen operates by flex-sleep. --Robert W King 13:08, 4 November 2007 (CST)
By the way, if you translated CZ:Media_Assets_Workgroup/Example_permission_request_letters into French, do upload it there! Stephen Ewen 11:42, 4 November 2007 (CST)
Well, I uploaded a text (not a translation). Unfotunately, with no accents -- my old notebook is still anglo-saxon ;) -- but better this than nothing. BTW, a google translation of the sentence "vet articles for accuracy and..." produces "veterinaire de la precision", that is "precise veterinarian" :) Aleksander Stos 13:39, 4 November 2007 (CST)

Subpagatebot malfunctions

subpagation bot eliminated all WP-tags it encountered, and is still doing it. Please halt is operation. Thanks. Yi Zhe Wu 10:38, 4 November 2007 (CST)

Thanks, Yi. The Bot has been blocked till this issue is fixed. Stephen Ewen 13:22, 4 November 2007 (CST)
Thanks, how is it now? Yi Zhe Wu 16:08, 4 November 2007 (CST)
It's been blocked for now, till the issue is fixed. Stephen Ewen 16:23, 4 November 2007 (CST)

Learning curve (I first typed "curse")

I gotta say that for me, at least, it is not at all "slight" -- in fact the contrary: baffling, with sheer brute force, determination, and repetition enabling me to *perhaps* overcome some of the obstacles. But, of course, I said that about MS-DOS back in 1984.... (On the other hand, I haven't changed my mind about that, hehe!) Anyway, I think I'm getting there, although some things still leave me puzzled. Hayford Peirce 22:32, 5 November 2007 (CST)

One puzzle

I see in the gallery for Bolognese sauce that all of the individual pictures have, if I go into it deep enough, the CC-picture thingee. But none of this shows up in the individual pictures shown in the gallery. There's no indication to the casual viewer that I am the CC or A of each picture.... (Not that I care, I'm just curious.) Hayford Peirce 22:32, 5 November 2007 (CST)

CZ's image goals

I take it that CZ's ultimate goal is to ensure that *each* and *every* image shown in an article has an attributable CC or A showing above the caption lines? And that each picture, if one digs deep enough, will give precise info about where this picture originated? Worthy goals, of course. And a lot of work for *you*! Hayford Peirce 22:32, 5 November 2007 (CST)

It is EASY. See your talk page. Stephen Ewen 22:34, 5 November 2007 (CST)

Cauchy again

Hi Stephen, I found a slightly nicer (straighter) title page of one of Cauchy's textbooks here: [1]

I'm prepared to write all sorts of licence info in the image file, but in the article I find it overdone. After all, every university math library has these collected works on the shelf, and scanning a page is as much work as copying it (less than a few minutes). Could we not use some very short abridged licence formulation to put in the caption of the figure? --Paul Wormer 04:02, 6 November 2007 (CST)

That's completely simple. It is Openlibrary.org who provided the media to us in usable form, right? You thus credit Openlibrary.org. You'd add {{PD-image|Openlibrary.org}} to the credit template. On the actual image upload page, you add as much info as you reasonably can, placing yourself in the shoes of one who finds the image at CZ 15+ years from now and who will want to know as much about it as they can know. I'd definitely add the info at the "details" link from the link you provided and that you obtained it from http://www.openlibrary.org/details/oeuvresdaugusti203caucrich. Stephen Ewen 04:31, 6 November 2007 (CST)

template creation

Hi, Steve, I did go to the Pine image and, as you say, it now looks a LOT easier! I think the HARD part, at least for me, was to get me to push that damn red button with the check mark in it in the first place. Maybe if you could move it out of the lefthand MARGIN and somehow set it right in the middle of the screen, below the previous steps, with big bold letters saying something like: NOW, THE FINAL STEP -- PUSH THIS DAMN RED BUTTON!!!! IF YOU DON'T THE PICTURE WON'T BE DONE CORRECTLY!!!! And maybe, when you get to page of the UPLOAD FILE on the left margin, at the very top you could rewrite things to say: "Uploading a pic in CZ is a little different from the WP process. We need to do TWO things to make it successful: 1.) Upload the picture itself 2.) THEN, before this process is finished, create a TEMPLATE that will be essential for future smooth running of CZ. The template creation is semi-automatic -- just upload your picture (following the easy instructions below), then follow the additional instructions to create the template -- and you'll be done!!!"

On the other hand, although I'm somewhat better about it than some of my friends, I've got a little bit of resistance to the JRTFM approach to things. Of course, I've developed this in part because I've learned over the years that so many F Manuals are almost worst than not reading them.... Hayford Peirce 11:10, 6 November 2007 (CST)

Oh, but there is a pay-off for users too in terms of ease-of-use! Note: the template makes the code to places the image you uploaded! Stephen Ewen 13:28, 6 November 2007 (CST)
Well, yeah, but you gotta get dummies like me to do it correctly in the first place! In any case, I'll be uploading at least one picture tomorrow, so I'll be able to try things out from scratch....Hayford Peirce 14:02, 6 November 2007 (CST)
If it makes you feel any better, I had to type an envelope some time ago. The overly busy secretary pointed me to the typewriter, pleading mercy with her eyes as if to say Would you do it yourself? Please? So I sat at the contraption. I suddenly became stumped. So what do I do with THIS thing? :-D Stephen Ewen 14:33, 6 November 2007 (CST)
A couple of years ago I was in an enormous store of old LP records looking for something or other. I came across an old LP of Samoan music for a couple of bucks and brought it home as a surprise for my Samoan GF. Her eyes lit up as she held up the record and examined it. Then she said, "But what do I *do* with it?"Hayford Peirce 14:41, 6 November 2007 (CST)
Ha! Ah, island life. BTW, I actually do remember when 8-track tapes were an improvement to the LP. :-)
Well, we were in Tucson, but wherever we were, it would be a question of *age* -- she'd never really seen a phonograph in operation. In any case, I just uploaded a new photo into Bolognese sauce and your template worked perfectly and easily. Thanks, and congratulations!

Keep in mind you don't even have to make the code to place an uploaded image into an article. The template on the image upload page creates it for you. Copy, paste. :-) Stephen Ewen 11:58, 7 November 2007 (CST)

Righto, I'll try to remember! Hayford Peirce 12:55, 7 November 2007 (CST)

Italian language

Hello, User:Hayford Peirce has pointed me your way. I imported the above from WP to put around my stub, which was the part of it that I wanted to preserve differently from WP. I then had to remove a lot of unused templates - but I haven't a clue about how to do that in the infobox. Please help! - Ro Thorpe 17:21, 6 November 2007 (CST)

Do you want the infobox template or no? If so, you have more importing to do, namely, template subpages from the source of the template, see the bottom of the page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_Language. Stephen Ewen 17:37, 6 November 2007 (CST)

Irish language .svg image

Thanks for re-uploading this. However, I have found through a test page - Irish language/test that it doesn't shrink the picture - we just get a big chunk of north-west Ireland. So still some gremlins... John Stephenson 01:19, 7 November 2007 (CST)

there's something wrong with my last article

Portuguese pork stew with clams (ameijoas con carne de porco à alentejana) has an extraneous metadata template line across the top of the text that I can't get rid of -- I musta done something wrong while creating the article, sigh. I think I'll just go back to chiseling letters into stones.... Hayford Peirce 12:55, 7 November 2007 (CST)

9/11

Update on 9-11 Attack: as you were involved with the discussion of the apparent bias in the 'immediate response' section, please see the Talk page and this edit - the old paragraph was put back in by Richard Jensen (Guiliani="brilliant" etc.). John Stephenson 03:26, 8 November 2007 (CST)

Telephone newspaper fork at Wikipedia

Stephen -- I was the opening (and closing) admin in the AfD at Wikipedia concerning the potential copyright issues in Citizendium forks - just wanted to thank you for adding your input. I've deleted all relevant material from the edit histories for the time being.

If you think to, please let me know how the license discussion here turns out, as I won't be able to monitor it at the present time. I'm sure the issue could arise again in the future.

On an unrelated note, this is the first encounter I've had with Citizendium, and it looks promising. Several months ago I cut way back on my time spent at Wikipedia, primarily over the same issues that seem to have led to the creation of this encyclopedia -- that there's no system in place to create articles which can be academically credible. The open source concept has created something great in Wikipedia, but its also been the source of its problems. It looks like the right balance may have been struck here.

Thanks again. Brendan R. Ross 00:22, 9 November 2007 (CST)

Hope to see you around! Stephen Ewen 23:22, 10 November 2007 (CST)

Defective gallery

President of the United States of America/Gallery appears to be in gross defective condition. Can you take a look? Thanks! Yi Zhe Wu 15:06, 10 November 2007 (CST)

Hey, that might be just great transformed into a Catalog along the line of Tennis/Catalogs/Famous players! Let me know if you wanna do it and what facts you think should be included about each president. We can adapt the tennis template for the president's gallery. Each president would have a thumb image like some of the tennis players have. What do you think? Stephen Ewen 23:21, 10 November 2007 (CST)
BTW, we can coordinate on getting the missing images if you want, by order of president or something. I'm positive we can fill each gap. Stephen Ewen 23:25, 10 November 2007 (CST)
I hope to have Commonist hacked in a week or so for use with CZ. We could test it for this. :-) Stephen Ewen 23:27, 10 November 2007 (CST)
Hey Stephen Ewen, thanks. But when I originally posted this request on your talk page, I was not worrying about missing images (they are just not yet uploaded yet), but rather a defective mechanism of {{mixed_gallery}}, as seen in this version, with all the space gaps and malformations. Was it a template error or anything else? Thanks! Yi Zhe Wu 09:09, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Edits to Tecum Umam

Hey Steve, thanks for your input, but I'm not sure moving the conclusion to the lead is really a good idea. For one, it makes the opening horribly redundant. But it also means that the article ends really abruptly, which is what I was trying to avoid by writing the conclusion. What are your thoughts? --Joe Quick 22:49, 10 November 2007 (CST)

Well, its redundant whether in the beginning or end, it's not really "encyclopedia" form to have a conclusion, its okay to end encyclopedia articles abruptly, and info about him being real or mythical is really important and I think needs to be in the lede. He-he, but I'm not gonna edit war about it.  :-D Stephen Ewen 22:57, 10 November 2007 (CST)
But don't you want us both to get kicked out for edit warring? Oops, was that a flamebait? Oh my...
You're right about putting the bit about whether he is real in the lede, of course, but it comes off as a little patronizing the way it's written if one hasn't already read the rest of the article. I guess I'll see what I can do about de-redundizing and un-patronating. --Joe Quick 23:07, 10 November 2007 (CST)

DSM criteria - Know you're busy - READ THIS!!!

Stephen...thanks for you input on this. Check my response]]. :)

Blessings... --Michael J. Formica 08:23, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Question about a picture I took

Stephen, I went to the National Gallery of Art yesterday, and I went to an exhibit for Edward Hopper (the guy who did the "Nighthawks" painting). In the actual exhibit, I stealthily took a picture painted by Hopper of himself. I say "stealthily" because the exhibit said no photography. Under what conditions would I be allowed to use the photo? --Robert W King 10:42, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Email me the photo to see, this is easier to deal with on concrete terms. Stephen Ewen 12:42, 11 November 2007 (CST)
On it's way. --Robert W King 12:43, 11 November 2007 (CST)
I know we're all busy in various capacities but I was wondering if you had an update on this... I had sent it to your gmail address, thinking not to send you the same attachments twice. --Robert W King 20:55, 13 November 2007 (CST)
Not yet. Still thinkin'. Stephen Ewen 20:57, 13 November 2007 (CST)

On a seperate note

I've thought about it, and The upload_wizard.png graphic is one of the worst I've seen in a long itme. Can I make something new?--Robert W King 20:29, 11 November 2007 (CST)

By all means, please do. You can redesign layout, etc, too! Stephen Ewen 20:40, 11 November 2007 (CST)
Gif format, with transparency
png format, just for you (even though I abhor it.)

Let me know what you think of either of these. The transparency doesn't apparently work. Dunno why, will figure out later, but let me know otherwise. --Robert W King 23:54, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Ah, crap, someone apparently killed the Wizard for now. I don't know why. :-( Images look cool! Stephen Ewen 00:32, 12 November 2007 (CST)
Yipee! It's back. :-) See the Wizard now. Stephen Ewen 01:15, 12 November 2007 (CST)
Dead again. Must be a cache issue. Stephen Ewen 01:36, 12 November 2007 (CST)
I think I might know what the problem is; I painted the background white, instead of erasing it, therefore there's no area that it knows to calculate alpha transparency, which means I'd have to go in there and erase pixels again. --Robert W King 08:09, 12 November 2007 (CST)

Thanks

Stephen - I appreciate the tidy up you did on my 'User Page'. You now have my email too. aladin Aladin 08:52, 13 November 2007 (CST)

Waldo article approval

I saw your note about this. I just checked with the Visual Arts Workgroup. There are only 3 Editors. One, Mons. Petit, has not contributed since Aug. One has *never* contributed. The third made one contribution back in April. So I don't think this approval project will go very far.... Hayford Peirce 16:53, 13 November 2007 (CST)

That's what they said about Symphony. Sometime ya just gotta prod with an email. Stephen Ewen 16:55, 13 November 2007 (CST)
Well, I s'pose.... What do I say? "The Waldo Peirce article is apparently finished, has a lot of references, etc., and some people feel that it is now ready for the approval process. Since [O Exalted] you are one of the Visual Arts editors, I wonder if you would have to the kindness to etc. etc...." Something like that? Hayford Peirce 17:02, 13 November 2007 (CST)
I've emailed one editor; the two others don't have email links, so I've left messages on their Discussion pages. Hayford Peirce 11:23, 14 November 2007 (CST)


Advertisements on CZ

Can the Constabulary please delete this article? -- http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Robert_E._Kelley_%28business%29 Thanks. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 18:26, 13 November 2007 (CST)

It does not meet (low) standard for constabulary action, in my view. 1) The poster does not appear to have any connection with the author; 2) The subject, a prof at Carnegie Mellen, has acheived some notoriety, in my view. So this is not merely self-promotion. Stephen Ewen 13:29, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Some suggested changes to MediaWiki namespace meessages

  • MediaWiki:Ipbreason-dropdown -- you may wish to remove "Abusing multiple accounts", since, as I understand it, multiple accounts are not permitted.
  • MediaWiki:Logouttext -- implies you can edit while logged out/anonymously; you might change it to: "<strong>You are now logged out.</strong><br /> You can continue to read Citizendium without logging in, or you can [[Special:Userlogin|log in again]]. Note that some pages may continue to be displayed as if you were still logged in, until you clear your browser cache."
  • MediaWiki:noarticletextanon -- implies you can edit a page without logging in; you might change it to: "There is currently no text in this page, you can [[Special:Search/{{PAGENAME}}|search for this page title]] in other pages or [[Special:Userlogin|log in]] in order to edit this page."
  • MediaWiki:Newarticletext -- links to Help:Contents(via "[[{{MediaWiki:helppage}}|help page]]") rather than the more specific CZ:How_to_start_a_new_article
  • MediaWiki:Prefs-help-email -- implies providing an email address is optional, when, as I understand it, an email address is required; you might change it to: "E-mail address is required, in order to help verify your identity and allow other Citizens to contact you privately."
  • MediaWiki:Prefs-help-realname -- implies that real names are optional; you might change it to: "Real name is required, and should be the same as your username."
  • MediaWiki:Tooltip-pt-anonlogin & MediaWiki:Tooltip-pt-login -- imply pages can be edited by non-logged in users; you might change them to: "In order to edit pages, you must have an account."
  • MediaWiki:Welcomecreation -- may need to be expanded with the standard CZ welcome message; maybe something from MediaWiki:Whitelistedittext.
  • MediaWiki:requestaccount-loginnotice -- should be blanked, as it's redundant with the line that appears above it on Special:Userlogin, "Don't have an account? Get one now.", which links to the same place.

To remove any copyright issues with the above, I hereby release, and grant unlimited, worldwide permissions to anyone for any copyright claims I may have in the above text, i.e. I put my part in the public domain. (Some of it is derivative of MediaWiki defaults, which may have other licenses.)

I posted this to you as you were the most recent (after Larry, who I assumed was already plenty busy), person to edit the MediaWiki namespace. If this message would be be better sent to someone else, please pass it on to them, or let me know, and I will. Thanks for your attention. -- JesseWeinstein 03:04, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Hey, thanks Jesse, this is great! I will work my way through these tomorrow.  :-) Stephen Ewen 03:30, 14 November 2007 (CST)
Glad to be of service. Oddly enough, I like this kind of detailed fixes. JesseWeinstein 03:37, 14 November 2007 (CST)
I like how lots of little fixes add up to big. :-) Stephen Ewen 13:26, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Found another one: MediaWiki:Ipboptions is the list of lengths pre-set for blocking; since current policy says that all blocks are indefinite , that page should be changed to: "infinite:infinite". -- JesseWeinstein 04:08, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Culture + Magic

Stephen: with your anthropology and critical theory hat please drop by at Culture as well as Magic both of which I have made a stub start at; you would be most welcome even to make a token appearance on the talk pages therein. aladin Aladin 07:09, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Image Category "Game"

You know, it might benefit us to have some kind of "game" where a random image is presented and below there's either a textfield or a choice of radio buttons to place an image into a category. Sometimes if you present an ill task as "entertainment" it may get done more often. --Robert W King 22:18, 15 November 2007 (CST)

(also you may need to adjust the time on your talk page to reflect daylight savings.)

After a co-worker showed me http://www.freerice.com/ today and I spent 10-15 playing, I think you are on to something! Any idea how to make this? Clock fixed. Stephen Ewen 22:27, 15 November 2007 (CST)
I think part of the code is already written on the "random page", we'd need to tailor that to bring up images. Then, we integrate that into a template that brings up all the interface stuff. After that, it's a matter of figuring out the "submit" action to write the data. Also we'd have to determine if there are set categories (biology, chemistry, like we have for workgroups) or if we want to just include any freeform categories (might be bad.) Also, perhaps we could use "tags" much in the way flickr does as opposed to "categories". I'm not sure what the trade off would be.
--Robert W King 22:30, 15 November 2007 (CST)

test

--Robert W King 21:08, 16 November 2007 (CST)

That upload wizard is coming along pretty nicely.

One little problem though: you misspelled "flickr" in the text that people are supposed to copy into the edit box. And I'm not allowed to edit that text. :-( --Joe Quick 02:09, 17 November 2007 (CST)

Thanks! I'll fix it. BTW, let me know if you'd like to take on getting a section or two of it humming. We can get you developers rights for that for a while, I'm sure. Stephen Ewen 01:16, 17 November 2007 (CST)

Series of "articles"?

Is User:Arnold Reisman pasting a book or something? --Robert W King 16:25, 17 November 2007 (CST)

Sheesh. Thanks for the alert. Stephen Ewen 16:31, 17 November 2007 (CST)
There's a couple of them, I just don't know what they're supposed to be... --Robert W King 16:33, 17 November 2007 (CST)
Weird title, too -- I saw this a while ago but thought I'd let someone else find it also.... Hayford Peirce 16:45, 17 November 2007 (CST)
IF they're supposed to be legitimate articles then they're in real need of editing, but if they're something else then it's out of my hands. Strangely when I asked that question on a talk page, Mr. Reisman undid my question. --Robert W King 16:47, 17 November 2007 (CST)
Yeah, this should be monitored. This article Einstein_the_Savior_Turkey_the_Safe_Haven apart from the weird title looks to be a complete mess and resembles a propaganda article... Hendra 22:51, 17 November 2007 (CST)
In any case, I had already restored Robert's question. Hayford Peirce 16:55, 17 November 2007 (CST)


Hi Stephen, I noticed this recently. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Logo400grbeta.png

This is my fault as I have been pretty lazy with my picture uploads and have gone with GDFL for everything. But in this case I probably should have chosen something else. I don't even know what the parent licence is for the logo. Shoudl we go through and change all these now or just wait until we know for sure what CZ is going? Chris Day (talk) 17:25, 17 November 2007 (CST)

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