Nyc2cents

Wikipedia and copyright

Hello Nyc2cents, and welcome to Wikipedia. All or some of your addition(s) to Thomas H. Stix have been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.

• You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and cite the source using an inline citation. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
• Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
• Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
• If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. However, there are steps that must be taken to verify that license before you do. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
• In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
• Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Wikipedia project or article, you can, but please follow the steps in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 14:37, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 28 December

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Thomas H. Stix page, your edit caused a cite error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:18, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

More may be found here.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:38, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

December 2016

Your addition to Thomas H. Stix has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 21:56, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Also, you appear to have a conflict of interest, so please read about what you need to do in order to edit an article about your father.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:38, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

It's all right for you to use this information because you provided an independent reliable source. But it is recommended that you disclose your conflict of interest.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 14:59, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Biography problems

Hi, it seems you have stumbled into a few difficulties in editing Thomas H. Stix. Not knowing the rules, you violated one about copyright and one about conflict of interest. We are strict about rules, and these are among the more sensitive areas. One of my fellow watchers gave you what I think are rather harsh reprimands, for reasons that we needn't go into here. If you're not completely discouraged, I figure this can be straightened out. As with many problems, doing it in person is easier. As it happens, there's a meeting of Wikipedians in Manhattan a week from Sunday, with special sessions to help newbies do things properly. I will be one of the coaches. If it's convenient, you can click Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wikipedia Day 2017 to learn about it. If the instructions for signing up are confusing, just go to the hotel in the morning. All are welcome. You can answer below my words; I'm watching your talkpage. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:53, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you!! I have even tried to hire someone from Craigslist to do this as it the rules seem unnecessarily non-user friendly. Very unfortunately I am out of town on Sunday, but if there is a list of people I could hire, I would pay a fee to have it done properly. I have reliable sources such as Princeton University Office of Communications press release (on the occasion of his death) and NYTimes obituary and other obituaries.

Any links to finding someone to help me is greatly appreciated! Thank you. Susan Stix Fisher

Hee-hee; still more rule violations. Or rather, going against precedent and custom, which is even harder to know than the things we codify, which already are so many that nobody understands any large fraction of them. No real problem thanks to other rules, such as WP:AGF and WP:Don't bite the newbies. To the point, WP:COI makes it difficult to write for pay. Everybody's an amateur, and anyone smart enough to do the work for you also knows about these rules, so they're usually one kind of crook or another if they say yes. There are exceptions but that's not a good route.

The same page that tells about the big meetup next Sunday, also lists future, smaller ones. You should attend one or another of those. Lower on that page, there's a list of people who say we intend to be there. They may be able to help if you ask on their talk page. I have occasionally gone to a public library for a semiprivate meeting with someone for whom our public meetings are impractical. However, I expect my current mild illness to continue all or most the week, so no, not me.

So, second best for sources that are on the Web is to supply links to them. NYTimes is already linked in the article's reference list but the Princeton link fails to get me anywhere. Since you don't know how to format them properly, you should put the links in the article's Discussion Page rather than the article itself. For sources that are on paper, much is possible but it's less easy. Oh, and due to WP:COI you shouldn't put anything directly into the article.

Oof, I'm getting tired and it's almost time for me to sneeze a few times and lie down. Oh, notice that I added a colon at the beginning of each paragraph you wrote. This causes the to be indented. You should indent all your talk page replies, so they can be distinguished from what your correspondents said. And when you've finished writing, add four tildes. ~~~~ This signs with your username. And now I'll add four tildes and quit for awhile. Jim.henderson (talk) 23:36, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

if you have problems

please let me know on my user talk page DGG ( talk ) 00:06, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Last night at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/2017-02 WikiWednesday David was right to refer you to me even though he understands the relevant issues better than I do. In his high wikipolitical position he has reason to be wary of article content controversies, and I like withdrawing to a quiet corner for serious technical talk with a smart sexy woman, so it all works out.

We mainly discussed your father's biography. Some of the advice I gave contradicted what I said above, weeks ago when I was sick and less informed. Now I am able to gather that you ran into two problems: Excessively long quotation and pulling rank. You were treated somewhat too roughly, I think, as the well-meaning editors who volunteer to police such problems often become overloaded and run out of time and patience. Quotations should be short. Summarize, with citation which the reader can click to read the whole thing.

Also, in an edit summary, you identified yourself as the subject's daughter. This could be taken as claiming expertise, which doesn't work in Wikipedia. WP:EXPERT is difficult because any editor with an account can claim to be anyone, and we generally don't have a way to verify qualifications, ancestry or even identity. David and I know you're a real human, having had the pleasure of meeting you, but most newcomers don't actually meet other editors. So, identifying yourself in connection with a particular edit can't help you. A relationship to a biographical subject ought indeed be disclosed. The place for that is your own editor WP:USERPAGE where you give a little information about who you are and what you hope to accomplish. No need for your real name, home country and other details that are not relevant to what you're editing even though David and I have said much more. Fellow editors can use this information to understand where you're coming from. They can also look in your edit record to see what you've been writing about. Oh wow, two sentences each ending in a proposition, which is the wrong thing to end with. So, yes, write a short Wikiautobiography. You can click on my signature to see that I've written too much about myself.

We briefly discussed Lithium (medication). Ignorant of psychopharmacology, I was surprised to see how short is the paragraph about suicide. Anyway because it is at least somewhat controversial I suggest putting that topic on a back burner. Your father's accomplishments are not apparently controversial; you merely made some minor mistakes for which you were treated insensitively. That's more easily corrected. Who knows, maybe it will again give me the pleasure of dealing personally with you. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:19, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

checking back

Looking at the article, which has now been worked on a little by an excellent editor here, I wonder if there is anything further I can help you with. I apologize for not following up further at the time. DGG ( talk ) 14:44, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

To Jim, at least I think this is going to you. I must admit this system of talking through the user page talk tab is in itself less than opaque. Thank you VERY much, and it was a complete pleasure to talk with you and David, as well as daunting look over the edge to see the mechanics of Wikipedia editing. I just put together all the information I hope to include, on the Talk Page of my father's bio, and am not following your prescription of meting it out just a couple sentences at a time. As I started that process it became quite difficult to figure out what to put in and what to save for a later date. We will see, that might have to be Plan B. If there are other Wiki events, such as the one at the hotel, I would like to attend for a little while--to the degree that they don't get into the technical "weeds." Once again, to you and to David, thank you for taking time to talk with me.

The monthly chapter meeting tends to be very insiderish even though it attracts newcomers. A few meetings like last month's Wikipedia Day are so big, we can break out a beginner class or even a few. We will have a similarly big event at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/ArtAndFeminism 2017 in March. A few times per month we have smaller ones at libraries and elsewhere that start with a lecture for beginners and go on to writing with coaching by us old-timers, such as Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/AfroCrowd/Schomburg Black Power and Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Action=History next weekend. Those have a topical theme but no requirement that anyone stick to it. That's where you should be. If I'm not there to coach, others more qualified probably are.

Your Talk Page is public. Anyone with Web access can read it, even without an account, but they seldom will unless they are using their account to watch it. It lacks privacy and that makes it better than E-mail because it invites strangers to butt in. I am among your watchers. David, however, is probably too busy to watch your page. His high Wikirank and reputation for helpfulness bring him many pleas of "Help, help, help!" thus major drains on his time.

Talk:Thomas H. Stix, the biography's talk page, is where to communicate with all editors who take an interest in that article. As it happens, a few have improved the article since last time you edited it, as seen in [this Diff]. No need to keep watch on all their talk pages; they likely have many concerns that don't concern you.

And don't fuss if your work is suddenly and brusquely undone with little explanation. That's impolite, but that's life especially in a male-dominated business. Go more slowly, ask for explanations in the article talk page, don't let on that you've noticed they're a bunch of fools who don't know the topic as you do, and try again. Sometimes a gentler, humbler change gets by. Or sometimes not. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard. You can learn those things pretty quickly, but learning whether it's impossible is likely to take longer. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:49, 18 February 2017 (UTC)