KudzuLou

Greetings...

Hello, KudzuLou, and welcome to Wikipedia!

To get started, click on the link that says "welcome".

I (and the rest of us here, too!) hope you like it here and decide to stay!

Happy editing! MBisanzBot (talk) 15:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

-Arnon Chaffin ^{Review me?} 14:48, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Greetings...

Hello, KudzuLou, and welcome to Wikipedia!

To get started, click on the green welcome.

I hope you like it here and decide to stay!

Happy editing! Laleena^{Talk to me} _{Contributions to Wikipedia} 21:46, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:TGOA-MGCA-Map.gif

Image Copyright problem

Thank you for uploading Image:TGOA-MGCA-Map.gif. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the image. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 18:22, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:TGOA-MGCA-Emblems.gif

Image Copyright problem

Thank you for uploading Image:TGOA-MGCA-Emblems.gif. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the image. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 19:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:TGOA-MGCA-Emblems.gif)

Thanks for uploading Image:TGOA-MGCA-Emblems.gif. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BetacommandBot (talk) 01:56, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:TGOA-MGCA-Logos.gif)

Thanks for uploading Image:TGOA-MGCA-Logos.gif. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 12:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Category for Educational Activities of Clubs

Since my response was delayed a few days due to the weekend, I have copied the entire thread here incase you missed my reply on my talk page' Dbiel ^(Talk) 11:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

You removed "Education" as a category from The Gardeners of America/Men's Garden Clubs of America. Is there another category that I can add to the article indicating that TGOA/MGCA engages in activities to educate the public about gardening and landscape topics? Thanks, Lou (talk) 20:06, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I have rechecked Category:Education and I am unable to find any category it would fit into. If you would like to do some more research yourself, I would start with Category:Horticultural organizations and see what additional categories are used by similar articles. Additionally you may want to post your question at Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance) or possibly Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories. I am still trying to learn the many features of Wikipedia myself.

But in any case, the article definately does not belong in the parent category Category:Education. Please remember that the primary purpose of categories is to group similar articles together. Dbiel ^(Talk) 01:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Notification: changes to "Mark my edits as minor by default" preference

Hello there. This is an automated message to tell you about the gradual phasing out of the preference entitled "Mark all edits minor by default", which you currently have (or very recently had) enabled.

On 13 March 2011, this preference was hidden from the user preferences screen as part of efforts to prevent its accidental misuse (consensus discussion). This had the effect of locking users in to their existing preference, which, in your case, was true. To complete the process, your preference will automatically be changed to false in the next few days. This does not require any intervention on your part and you will still be able to manually mark your edits as being 'minor'. The only thing that's changed is that you will no longer have them marked as minor by default.

For established users such as yourself there is a workaround available involving custom JavaScript. If you are familiar with the contents of WP:MINOR, and believe that it is still beneficial to the encyclopedia to have all your edits marked as such by default, then this discussion will give you the details you need to continue with this functionality indefinitely. If you have any problems, feel free to drop me a note.

Thank you for your understanding and happy editing :) Editing on behalf of User:Jarry1250, LivingBot (talk) 21:14, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Kudzu Image

Hi

I wanted to transfer this image: File:ManualCrown06-05-26b.jpg to commons. But there are a few things unclear. On the website it states: all rights reserved. You state that you are the webmaster and that the person who took the image released it into public domain. Would it be possible, to mark the image on the homepage as public domain? And who is the author? Would it be possible to upload more images of the same author to commons.wikimedia.org? Cheers, Amada44  ^{talk to me} 09:17, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the tardy response. I only check my page a few times a year! A new webmaster has taken over the Kudzu Coalition website, and he put "all rights reserved" on the web pages, even though we are a non-profit education organization. I'll have to speak to the new organization president to see how he wants to proceed on your suggestion to mark our images "public domain". I worked with the former head of the organization who took the photos, and I edited them for the Kudzu Coalition website, and posted them there. And I know he'd like them as widely distributed as possible. I'll be in touch as soon as I get a final answer for you. Lou (talk) 18:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

np, would be cool if commons could use the images. looking forward to hear from you. cheers, Amada44  ^{talk to me} 11:42, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I finally got the board of directors of the Kudzu Coalition to agree to remove the copyright notification from their website this month, although this change to the website hasn't gone through yet. However, I see that the image I had posted in the article on Kudzu has already been removed from the page. I tried following the links to resolve the issue, but I just ended up going in circles. This is very frustrating. It's too bad Wikipedia doesn't want to believe that we took the photos on our website and that we are freely offering them to the world, as I stated in the information I logged with the image. I give up; I don't plan to pursue this matter any further. This has left a very bad taste in my mouth, and I no longer want to do any work on Wikipedia. Thanks for trying to help. Lou (talk) 15:36, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

oh come on! relax. Your image was problematic (that is also why I wrote you) because of the following reasons: We don't know how the author is and on the source page there is a copyright notice. Solving it is quite easy though: On the source page they need to exchange the All rights reserved by: All images are licensed as CC-BY (choose a license from here: http://creativecommons.org/choose/ ) and then we can import all those image to commons. Or we need an email from name@kokudzu.com to Wikipedia:OTRS that wikipedia can use that image. hope this helps Amada44  ^{talk to me} 16:07, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Possibly unfree File:ManualCrown06-05-26b.jpg

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:ManualCrown06-05-26b.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 15:10, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I have no idea what I'm supposed to do about this, and I see that the image is already "gone". I tried following the links you provided, and they were all dead ends. It's pretty frustrating when you've recorded a photograph with your own hands, and nobody at Wikipedia believes you. I've decided to cease being a Wikipedia contributor because this is all too weird. Lou (talk) 15:48, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

TGOA/MGCA

On my talk page you asked:

I need help understanding revisions you made to The_Gardeners_of_America/Men's_Garden_Clubs_of_America. I am the primary editor for that page. Specifically, what does the header you added mean where it says "This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source." The article is a description of an organization, and the best source of information about an organization is the organization itself. As a member of that organization, I gathered information from other members to write the article. So why are other "sources" necessary? Where would I look for such sources? Why would any other "source" care about our organization?

Also, you removed a section that included the organization's mission statement. All organizations have mission statements. The article as you have edited it now describes some of the activities of the organization without saying why those activities are being done. The explanation is in the mission statement, which you removed. This seems strange to me.

The other header states "Please help improve it by rewriting promotional content from a neutral point of view and removing any inappropriate external links". You'll have to explain to me which external links are "inappropriate", and why they are inappropriate. All of the external links were added because previous editors complained that I had not documented the article, and I added those links to the organization website for that purpose. So why are they inappropriate?

Regarding "one source", the answer is related to WP:Verifiability and WP:Notability. For purposes of verifiability, questions need to be raised any time the subject of an article is the only source of information in the article. The matter of notability is related -- for an article to be included in Wikipedia, there must be evidence that the article's subject has received nontrivial coverage published by reliable sources independent of the article topic. As it happens, I discovered the TGOA/MGCA article while creating the article garden club, where I cite a couple of third-party sources that mention the organization. Through internet searches, library research, and the TGOA's own documents, it should be possible to find books, magazine articles, newspaper features, etc., that tell about the organization. Obviously, it's necessary to use TGOA resources to compile a comprehensive article, but some independent sources are needed.

I removed the mission statement section because I found that it was copied verbatim from the TGOA website. For some insight into what's wrong with that, see WP:COPYVIO and WP:SOAP. If other parts of the article are copied from the TGOA website, they also need to be distilled into your own words, using nonpromotional language/tone appropriate for the encyclopedia.

The "headers" I added to the article are standard Wikipedia templates to identify issues with articles. Because these are standardized templates, not every word in the template may be specifically applicable to every article where it is used. External links are not an issue with this particular article, but promotional language/content is. --Orlady (talk) 19:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

After consulting TGOA/MGCA members and organization officials, I have revised the page according to their suggestions and your comments. I put back in the original "mission statement", which you removed, after making clear this was taken from the organization website. TGOA/MGCA is a non-profit organization that is required by the federal government to file a mission statement and other documentation every year to maintain its non-profit status. These filings are in the public domain. Therefore, the "mission statement" is public information that we believe is not subject to "copyright" law. As we stated before, every organization has a "mission statement" that is not considered proprietary information. I added a paragraph in my own words after the mission statement that interprets what the statement means. This text is a restatement (and substantial reduction in words) of the original text you took out, what we originally made a separate section and called the "objective" of the organization. I removed language that might be construed as "promotional" and replaced it with more objective wording. I also condensed the text to reduce white space, which considerably shortens the page length. I added links to newspaper and website citations of TGOA/MGCA that we believe can be fairly considered as "external sources"; e.g., the New York Times, our local newspaper, and a few websites not associated with TGOA/MGCA. The new links are in a new separate section to better separate external sources from non-independent sources. We hope that these changes are sufficient for you to remove the two negative banners you placed on the page (or you agree that I am now free to do so). Lou (talk) 21:55, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Not true. the organization holds the copyright whether or not they are required to file it in government docs, unless they have specifically released their copyright to someone else/entered it to the public domain/ have had the specific current wording for longer than the right to hold copyright and it has therefore passed into public domain. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:57, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, again. Today you removed a reference citation from the article with a note that indicated that the citation was a broken link. I appreciate your efforts to maintain a quality article, but want to let you know that there were two things wrong with that particular edit. First, the link works for me; I don't know why it appeared to you to be broken. Second, and more important, consistent with Wikipedia policy on verifiability, we should not remove reference citations from articles merely because a link has gone bad. The removal of a reference usually leaves some content unsourced -- and the reader has no idea where to look for the information. In this case, the source was an article in a print newspaper, so the URL isn't a necessity for verifiability; it should be possible to find the article in an archived paper copy of the newspaper. As a general rule, when you find a dead link, the best practice is to see if the content has moved to a different URL. Also, many times, it's possible to find -- and link to -- an archived version of the website. If you don't have to look for a new url or if your search is unsuccessful, tag the url with the template {{dead link}}. See Wikipedia:Link rot for more information on how Wikipedia handles dead URLs. Thanks for your work! --Orlady (talk) 14:56, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Notability

The requirement for a stand alone article is that there is significant coverage about the organization from third party sources, not merely trivial mentions that they are having a convention. If press releases of convention dates is all the coverage by third parties, then added back the convention schedule will still not satisfactorily address any of the concerns the party who nominated it for deletion. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:55, 25 December 2012 (UTC)