Futureobservatory

Welcome!

Hello, Futureobservatory, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  gidonb 14:36, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Image Tagging for Image:Image220wiki.JPG

Thanks for uploading Image:Image220wiki.JPG. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided source information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

• Wikipedia:Image use policy
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 13:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Identity

Hello Futureobservatory, I'm guessing you're David Mercer based on your recent edits. Unfortunately, without some sort of proof of this, we can't use things from your site, as you could just be someone impersonating David Mercer. Can you offer some sort of proof so that we can use your sites pictures? We'd also have to cut out a lot of what you added to the Tigray region article, as it's just what you said word for word and not in encyclopedic style.

Regards,

Yom 16:23, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, but I rely on a friend to run my website for me. She has now added a link to wikipedia to the main pages. Hopefully that will provide the proof you are looking for. The link is to www.futureobservatory.org [[1]]. The website is mine, and all material on it is my copyright or is in the public domain (which my various publishers have checked for me).

Thanks for your help.

David Mercer (Futureobservatory)

Image Tagging for Image:Image240wiki.JPG

Thanks for uploading Image:Image240wiki.JPG. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided source information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

• Wikipedia:Image use policy
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 09:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

From what I can tell your images are needed, & all it takes to accept your kind donations is to provide: the source of your images (e.g., did you take these photos?), & the license they have been donated to Wikipedia under. Please remember that if they are your own creation, we can only use them if you share them under a Free license. The links above will explain more. -- llywrch 18:15, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

All the images were taken by me and consequently I hold the copyright to them. I will happily share them under a Free license.

David Mercer Futureobservatory

Linking to your own site

Please do not add commercial links (or links to your own private websites) to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. You are, however, encouraged to add content instead of links to the encyclopedia. See the welcome page to learn more. Thanks. —Ruud 16:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The intention of the links to my own website is two fold. The first is to demonstrate the viability and the second is to allow the reader to explore the wider contxt if they want to. As the information linked is in the public domain there is no commercial benefir and - where I have already been internationally recognised for my work and am now retired - there is no intentention of personal promotionFutureobservatory

Image Tagging for Image:Image236wiki.JPG

Thanks for uploading Image:Image236wiki.JPG. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided source information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

• Wikipedia:Image use policy
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 12:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Please stopy copying content of websites

... even if you wrote the original content. If you can provide a proof that you're the original author, ok (And even then, I'd discourage adding links to your own site). A few of your recent edits are copyright violations (I looked mostly at Marketing Research and Simple random sample.

These are additions from my own website and thence from my books. As such copyright is not a problem - where short quotations of other authors for use in research or scholarship/teaching is acceptable. Futureobservatory

Looking through a bit of your other edits - you have some useful contributions but please stop adding so much links to your website! Wikipedia is not a link farm to boost your pagerank! Flammifer 13:33, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The intention of the links to my own website is two fold. The first is to demonstrate the viability and the second is to allow the reader to explore the wider contxt if they want to. As the information linked is in the public domain there is no commercial benefir and - where I have already been internationally recognised for my work and am now retired - there is no intentention of personal promotion Futureobservatory

Then see WP:NOR.Geni 01:43, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that applies. I believe the material on his website is taken from published works of his, so it can be used. Yom 05:46, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, but I rely on a friend to run my website for me. As Yom has indicated, the website is mine, and all material on it is my copyright or is in the public domain (which my various publishers have checked for me). As proof of the availability of this material on Wikipedia, my friend has now added a link to wikipedia to the main pages. Hopefully that will provide the proof you are looking for. The link is to www.futureobservatory.org [[2]].

Thanks for your help.

David Mercer (Futureobservatory)

Marking edits minor

I noticed that this edit that you made yesterday to the market share article was marked minor. I reviewed your contribs history and this seems not to be an isolated incident. Please review Help:Minor edit, which defines a minor edit to be a small typo correction or formatting adjustment. Any edit that changes the content or meaning of an article (such as adding an entire new section or paragraph or changing many words) should not be marked minor, even if you do not consider it a particularly important addition to the article. Marking an edit minor may "hide" the edit from users who are watching the page for major edits, which is bad faith editing if you are making more than an incidental change. Please be more frugal with the minor button in the future. -- Tyler 11:45, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

(I second that, I've seen it in quite a few of your edits. it's not systematic, though, so I suspend judgement for now as to whether it's done in bad faith. Flammifer 12:26, 29 April 2006 (UTC) )

I wasn't claiming that his edits were in bad faith, only that the practice is often used in bath faith editing. If he wants his contributions to appear more legitimate, he should stop doing this. Sorry if I wasn't clear initially. -- Tyler 20:13, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry. I am still building my understanding of Wikipedia etiquette. I won't repeat this Futureobservatory

Image Tagging for Image:Image241wiki.JPG

Thanks for uploading Image:Image241wiki.JPG. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided source information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

• Wikipedia:Image use policy
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 10:55, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Image Tagging for Image:Image244wiki.JPG

Thanks for uploading Image:Image244wiki.JPG. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided source information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

• Wikipedia:Image use policy
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 09:25, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Image Tagging for Image:Image245wiki.JPG

Thanks for uploading Image:Image245wiki.JPG. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided source information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

• Wikipedia:Image use policy
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 10:31, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Proof that you are David Mercer?

Hello,

You have been asked on Talk:Tigray Region for proof that you are actually David Mercer, so that we can trust that there's no copyright violations in the edits you're making. Though I believe you when you say you're the guy behing http://futureobservatory.dyndns.org, some proof would be nice (not to mention preventing your edits from being reversed en masse for breach of copyright). For example, putting a blurb about wikipedia on that website. Flammifer 03:05, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello, since the above message has been posted, you have once again copied text from a book by David Mercer onto Adverising Media Selection. I repeat: if you are David Mercer, please try to provide some kind of proof, or your edits will be treated as copyright breaches and reverted.

In fact, even if you are David mercer, publishing this here may still be breach of copyright, depending of the contract with your publisher. Please at least answer this. Flammifer 07:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, but I rely on a friend to run my website for me. As Yom has indicated, the website is mine, and all material on it is my copyright or is in the public domain (which my various publishers have checked for me). As proof of the availability of this material on Wikipedia, my friend has now added a link to wikipedia to the main pages. Hopefully that will provide the proof you are looking for. The link is to www.futureobservatory.org [[3]].

David Mercer (Futureobservatory)

Customer Service material

Thanks for the material, which apply to several undeveloped topics in the Proposed Outline. I'll work them into the article, unless you get to it first. CSReader 13:24, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Copyright violations

Hello, I have filed a Wikipedia:Request for Comment at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Futureobservatory, concerning the copyright status of the text you copy. You have until now refused to provide proof that these were not breaches of copyright. Flammifer 04:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I don't want to sound too harsh here, I only opted for a RfC becaue nothing else seemed to work.

As far as I can tell there are three possibilities:

1. You are not David Mercer, you are some kid that's pretending to be him. I find that extremely unlikely, but having some nice solid proof would be much better.
2. You are David Mercer, but you do not have the right to release some of your material under the GFDL, because of a contract with your publisher. I find this quite likely, at least for some of your material.
3. You are David Mercer, and have the full rights to put your works under the GFDL. In which case there is no problem, and it'd be nice to know it as soon as possible.

In any case, it's probably better for you to discuss a bit with wikipedians what's ok and no ok to write. Not that it's wrong to be bold in the first place :) Flammifer 05:01, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, but I rely on a friend to run my website for me. As Yom has indicated, the website is mine, and all material on it is my copyright or is in the public domain (which my various publishers have checked for me). As proof of the availability of this material on Wikipedia, my friend has now added a link to wikipedia to the main pages. Hopefully that will provide the proof you are looking for. The link is to www.futureobservatory.org [[4]].

Thanks for your help.

David Mercer (Futureobservatory)

strange edits

This user has been making some pretty strange edits, adding huge amounts of text and adding links to his own website. It doesn't seem quite right, someone should look into it. S Sepp 12:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, see the Request for Comment above, which he's been completely ignoring up to now (And he has been "editing" wikipedia (i.e. pasting copies of his website) since, so he isn't on holidays. Yo, Futureobservatory, you there? flammifer^talk 12:51, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

As Yom has indicated, the website is mine, and all material on it is my copyright or is in the public domain (which my various publishers have checked for me). As proof of the availability of this material on Wikipedia, my friend has now added a link to wikipedia to the main pages. Hopefully that will provide the proof you are looking for. The link is to www.futureobservatory.org [[5]].

Thanks for your help.

David Mercer Futureobservatory

copyrighted material and links

Please stop pasting in large amounts of text from [6], and please limit the number of links you add to articles. If you continue with this behavior your will be blocked. --Fang Aili ^說嗎? 15:54, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

The text is from my own website, and is based on books that have sold around 100,000 copies; so it has been subjected to rigorous tests. I try to keep the hyperlinks to the minimum, but insert them so that readers may know the source and explore further if they wish. They all connect to my free website so there are no commercial considerations. Indeed, as Yom has indicated, the website is all mine, and all material on it is my copyright or is in the public domain (which my various publishers have checked for me). As proof of the availability of this material on Wikipedia, my friend who I rely on a friend to run my website has now added a link to wikipedia to the main pages. Hopefully that will provide the proof you are looking for. The link is to www.futureobservatory.org [[7]].

David Mercer (Futureobservatory)

I see the link on the main page. I don't think we'll need any further verification (or conflict resolution). You should probably inform the other interested users, though.

Yom 20:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I have removed material from Pricing strategies as it was copied directly from a website, from reading the above it might appear that it is your own website, but I would still be a little concerned about using this material, as the only copyright notice I could find on that website says "Copyright © 2005 Milton Keynes University of the Third Age Marshworth project & David Mercer". Martin 09:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about that error. This copyright must have 'drifted' from eslewhere on the server (which has 5,000+ pages and 30,000 links) which at an earlier time (but no longer) also held material from the local U3A - of which I was then chairman. All material I submit from this website to Wikipedia is my own copyright! Futureobservatory

warning

Please do not post copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. See Wikipedia:Copyrights. Copyright violations are unacceptable and persistent violators will be blocked. Your original contributions are welcome.

Don't add copyrighted material to Wikipedia, as you just did (adding the text from [this web site] to the article Charles Flint. You've been warned before on this and you will be blocked if you do it again. Herostratus 14:31, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Your edit to SALES TRAINING

Your recent edit to SALES TRAINING (diff) was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to recognize and repair vandalism to Wikipedia articles. If the bot reverted a legitimate edit, please accept my humble creator's apologies – if you bring it to the attention of the bot's owner, we may be able to improve its behavior. Click here for frequently asked questions about the bot and this warning. // AntiVandalBot 14:53, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Edits at Bill Gates

I reverted these manually. You can find out why at Talk:Bill Gates. Gazpacho 00:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Compaq

Very crypic, man. What 3 principles? Compaq was very diff org - why any need to compare to IBM. I'll revert if you don't improve it.

OK, I see, symptom of a cut and paste from your site. I've melded a bit more into the article, hope you're happy with what I've done... --Snori 20:09, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

IBM Token Ring

Goodness gracious me matey, what were you thinking? Please read Token Ring. Think about editing - but please think long and hard, and ensure that you make it better, more encyclopedic. --Snori 20:28, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry. It is often difficult to find whether a subject already exists.

David Mercer

Welcome again

It's taken me a while to come up to speed on the issues you encountered with your early contributions. Looking over your user page, it's pretty clear that Wikipedia needs to keep you on board. But you can't just paste your works without modification. I understand that when writing a book for publication, it's natural to project yourself into the book and to add "zest" to hold the reader's interest. The standard for an encyclopedia is different. The articles have to stick to what is verifiable and independent of one editor's interpretations.

Here are some followup edits that might illustrate what I mean: [8] [9] [10]

Also note that citation links do not belong in headings, but should follow the relevant text, and should have one pair of brackets. (double brackets are for links to Wikipedia articles).

Thanks

Many thanks for your kind help. I will do as you wish. Futureobservatory 10:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Signature

Hello. Please don't sign your edits to articles. Signatures are meant to be used on talk pages only. See Ownership of articles for more information. Thanks. Khatru2 21:40, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

OK will do.

David Mercer

Permissions confirmation

Your confirmation that you are David Mercer, and hold the copyright to your books, has been received in OTRS ticket 2006090810004712. To all concerned, it is hereby confirmed that Futureobservatory is David Mercer, and has the right to release the contents of his books under the GFDL.

Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia, and ask me if you have any questions about this. --Robth^Talk 19:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Foresight Network

The article Foresight Network has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Fails WP:ORG. I also considered speedying, as the article is pure advertisement and contains almost no informational content.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the Proposed Deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The Speedy Deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and Articles for Deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Ray^Talk 01:36, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

== Proposed deletion of Marketing & Non-Profit Organizations ==

The article Marketing & Non-Profit Organizations has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

long unreferenced WP:Essay-like article with an inappropriately style that has not been updated in many years

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Sadads (talk) 13:38, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of Long-range planning for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Long-range planning is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Long-range planning until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

Natg 19 (talk) 19:54, 23 March 2021 (UTC)