Talk:Malcolm H. Stern

Entry status

I understand the article mirrors the Finding Aid at the American Jewish Archives.

I have been given permission from Gary Mokotoff, who was involved in the collection, to create this entry based upon this finding aid and other resources that are going to be collected to make this Wikipedia page a solid accepted entry.

If I can fix the entry in the next few hours and get it up to Wikipedia standards in an original format, I would appreciate if the Bot would not delete the page. It is a work in progress. Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 22:17, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Please see last section for most current response. Thanks. Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 06:08, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedy deleted as an unambiguous copyright infringement, because... I am actively editing the entry -- am adding citations and more and more content from various sources. Apologies, I should have worked on the draft offline first before uploading. The original entry was from the finding aid of his papers, but I have quoted from that and cited from that, am making the entry fuller and was only using that as a starting point. My mistake. Please advise. I will make this a full entry tonight. Thanks in advance. --BrillLyle (talk) 23:17, 12 April 2015 (UTC)]]]

:Update: I am going to take this page's contents off this page to work on it and will delete any uncited content that might be considered copyrighted infringement. I will, however, leave quotes in that are cited adequately, which the bot might see as being copyrighted. So this is very problematic, as I am being diligent here in not using unsourced content. I am going to spend at least a few hours adding content and citations to make this a good Wikipedia entry. Please respond and/or contact me if possible before deleting the placeholder. This subject is very important and notable within both regular and Jewish genealogical circles -- and should have a good entry. Which is what I am trying to do. Thanks -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 01:03, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=Template%3AHangon+preload+G12&editintro=&preloadtitle=Contested+deletion&section=new&title=Talk%3AMalcolm+H.+Stern&create=Contest+this+speedy+deletion and place your reason there. Good luck! BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:54, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Please see last section for most current response. Thanks. Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 06:08, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedy deleted as an unambiguous copyright infringement, because...

I have made significant efforts -- after my botched initial edits -- to not copy verbatim biographical descriptive text from the Finding Aid on Rabbi Stern. Additionally, if you look at the Finding Aid link closely, it includes a biography of the Rabbi that is available in multiple places online in a verbatim form.

Again, I have made significant efforts to not paste this biography here and walk away.

I have added significant amounts of content, citations, and works and publications in order to make this entry reflective of this notable person.

If you run the Bot to check for copyright, it is going to pull up similar words because the facts of Rabbi Stern's life are not different from his Finding Aid biography to this entry. That said, I have found citations (like from the New York Times, etc.) for much of the information in order to verify the facts and support the entry here on Wikipedia.

I feel that the Bot and this tag of copyright is unfair, as this entry on Wikipedia now has so much additional content that I have found that did not exist in the Finding Aid.

Any overlapping information I have put in quotes and pointed to the Finding Aid as a the legitimate source that it is.

I appreciate the diligence shown here by editors in an effort to reduce copyright infringement; however, if you actually read and compare the information, I believe there is not problem with copyright now.

Thanks. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 06:06, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

It still needs more work, there are still sequence of 20 words or more identical to the stated source. I expect 5 consecutive words or less to be the same. If you keep fixing then this can be kept. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:04, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

I will work on the entry, but I disagree with this assessment. Much about Rabbi Stern's life is fact-based so the phrases of his activity and work are not going to change, no matter how much I wordsmith it away from the original source (which I have fully cited, by the way). The issue I am having with this unnecessary hyper vigilance stems from the fact that HE (the subject of this article) wrote the Finding Aid summary himself, a Finding Aid which I have fully cited -- and is fair use anyway, isn't it?!? If you rely on the Bot versus actually reading the article and analyzing how much new fully sourced information it contains then this copyright issue is not a problem, in my opinion. Beyond that, I am feeling really hassled by this threat of speedy deletion. Adding an article under these conditions has been a very negative experience. Regardless of this Bot's analysis, this entry is not violating copyright. I think I am being pretty patient (though getting less so) with this process but I totally disagree with the assessment here. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Nobody means to upset you. We should always WP:Assume good faith, and I do. As a former journalism professor, I know how hard it is for a writer to make shifts away from original text to paraphrase to actually saying something in your own words. The best thing to do is always use quotation marks if you run across a string of words that you really can't change. Anyway, I fully expect this article to be retained. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 18:31, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi BeenAroundAWhile (talk). I made a mistake in that I trusted material I was given was original, and then stupidly (which I will never EVER do again) used that material as the basis for the new page. I deleted the majority of the original content and rewrote the article. However, many of the events in the Rabbi's life are factual, so the Bot still flagged the copyright issue. But the initial copyright info no longer appears on the page. I was told by the Wikipedia IRC Help folks to avoid using quotes -- so those sections were also rewritten. Quotes are now minimal in the article. See comments in section below. I believe this issue is now resolved. Thanks for your help.-- Best, Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 18:45, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedy deleted as an unambiguous copyright infringement, because this text is being rewritten and paraphrased, and there is a discussion on the article's Talk page about this procedure. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 18:35, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello BeenAroundAWhile (talk), this page was reviewed yesterday by Huon (talk) from the Wikipedia IRC Help channel, a senior Wikipedia editor, who said that this issue was resolved. He removed the notices. Best to you -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 18:42, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Copyvio blanking

Despite my great respect for the judgement of Huon, I have blanked this page and listed it at WP:CP, where I hope that expert eyes will review it. I'm puzzled as to why that was not done much sooner, but no matter. Although much of the original copyright violation has been removed here, parts have not – or perhaps were removed and subsequently re-added. A couple of examples:

Our article	The source
In 1989, Stern testified before Congress, successfully arguing that the position of Archivist of the United States should be awarded to a scholar and "not an administrator".	In 1989 Stern testified before Congress, arguing that the position of Archivist of the United States should be awarded to a scholar and not an administrator.
In 1990, out of concern about restricted access to the former Soviet archives, Stern served on a special commission of the U.S. National Archives, working to prepare four American genealogists for a genealogical mission to Russia.	In 1990 he served on a special commission of the National Archives and Records Administration to prepare four American genealogists for a mission to Russia.

The sentence structure is the same, as are most of the words; in my opinion, they are unacceptably close to the source.

If the "Ten Commandments for Genealogists" were written by Stern, who died in 1994, they must be presumed to be in copyright unless there is convincing evidence that he released them into the public domain. So they cannot be reproduced here. As always, if I'm wrong here I expect to be told so. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:58, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I can't believe you are going to (a) put a huge notice on this article and (b) reopen this issue. I would be happy to try to rewrite the two sentences you object to but also, these are facts about his life, which makes it very difficult to wordsmith. I object to the over-zealousness of the treatment of this article by Wikipedia editors. It seems really outrageous. I am happy to fix the issues listed but couldn't it be dealt with via the talk page, versus putting a huge warning at the top of the page. I don't see this warning on any of the pages I read on Wikipedia -- the reason Huon adjusted this was due to an error on my part, and I was diligent in addressing the now resolved error. I'm pretty upset about this approach to fixing an entry. It seems to me to be way extreme over something that can be handled in a more positive way. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 18:10, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I can't believe you have removed the content of this article. Really?!? This is really unacceptable. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 18:12, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree that Justlettersandnumbers could have handled this better. The recommendations at Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Instructions indicate that text-based copyright violation tagging and blanking should be limited to the portion of the page that is contested, and the documentation for the {{copyvio}} template says explicitly that it should not be used to blank the entire page in the case of a suspected blatant copyright violation. This does not appear to be one of those cases, and a less heavy-handed approach would be more appropriate. —Tim Pierce (talk) 19:33, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Tim, I really appreciate your comment. I would really like to address the sentence(s) in question -- but am concerned the article will go away or I will get in trouble for trying to restore article. I think this is an article that is a good addition to Wikipedia. Also, although I think meant in a nice way, Justlettersandnumbers wrote me a note on my talk page that maybe I have done this on other pages I have edited. I am now concerned he will look at my other contributions and blank those pages too. I don't get this at all. I thought he was an Admin and he isn't even an Admin. And he did this. Very disappointed and discouraged at this point. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 19:44, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure that I could have handled things better, here as in most of the rest of my life. Tim Pierce, what exactly would you have done in this case? The copyvio was foundational: the article should have either been deleted as G12 (as clearly instructed at WP:SCV in such cases); blanked and listed at WP:CP; or all body text from the http://americanjewisharchives.org source completely removed and then rewritten from scratch. What is not an option is copy-editing the existing tainted text to make it look more original; as the bot notice ungrammatically tells us, "Note that simply modified or rephrased text is still an infringement—to remove the copyrighted contents you will need to completely remove them and then write totally new text to replace it". Yes, of course, if I'd had 30 or 40 minutes to spare (I didn't) I could have gone through the history and checked for copying from each of the sources edit by edit; and yes, of course that still needs to be done. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:35, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

How about trusting that an actual Admin, Huon, had addressed this issue. That you were re-opening an issue that was closed. If you had issues with two sentences, maybe don't blank the whole article, bring it to the talk page. I removed the entire contents of the finding aid. You don't know the history here. You didn't take the time to inform yourself. You just blanked the page. Very rude. I don't appreciate you also going over my other contributions. I think you should step away and focus on something else now. - Erika

ADDITIONALLY, since you didn't take the time to read the history, you would've realized I already DID this. You had issues with two short bullets, which have been helpfully edited by an Admin from the IRC channel. There should be no further issues with this page. But please leave me alone. - Erika

Justlettersandnumbers I strongly, strongly disagree that the problem with this article is "foundational." There are two or three sentences from the duplication detector that are genuinely problematic: those would justify tagging the individual passages as {{copyvio}}. The remaining phrases, like "the genealogist for the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati" or "Stern died in New York City of a heart attack", are not real issues. —Tim Pierce (talk) 20:55, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Tim Pierce, perhaps you misunderstand? By "foundational" we mean "from the creation of the article". Specifically, this initial version is, with a few very minor modifications, a direct copy-paste from here, complete with curly apostrophes (often a give-away). That means that there is no clean version to revert to. The options in that situation are those that I have outlined above. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:31, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

You do realize this foundational issue was acknowledge and addressed and resolved?!? Or are you being purposefully obtuse? BrillLyle (talk) 22:43, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Photograph

Would it not be useful and interesting to add malcolm's picture, perhaps one from http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/fajf/about.php I knew him and liked him and his warm smile. --Mr. Posen (talk) 16:07, 26 January 2019 (UTC)