User talk:Russavia/Archive 29

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Blocked

I have removed your editing rights as it is evident that you are unable to participate without creating unacceptable levels of disruption. I'm sure you know the drill about appeals and I will also put the block up at ANI for discussion. I'm sure that some kind soul will transfer any comments you might have to that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

User:The Devil's Advocate

User:The Devil's Advocate; you are talking too much sense. Please stop :) Russavia (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Blocked

I have removed your editing rights as it is evident that you are unable to participate without creating unacceptable levels of disruption. I'm sure you know the drill about appeals and I will also put the block up at ANI for discussion. I'm sure that some kind soul will transfer any comments you might have to that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

User:The Devil's Advocate

User:The Devil's Advocate; you are talking too much sense. Please stop :) Russavia (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Blocked

I have removed your editing rights as it is evident that you are unable to participate without creating unacceptable levels of disruption. I'm sure you know the drill about appeals and I will also put the block up at ANI for discussion. I'm sure that some kind soul will transfer any comments you might have to that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

User:The Devil's Advocate

User:The Devil's Advocate; you are talking too much sense. Please stop :) Russavia (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Blocked

I have removed your editing rights as it is evident that you are unable to participate without creating unacceptable levels of disruption. I'm sure you know the drill about appeals and I will also put the block up at ANI for discussion. I'm sure that some kind soul will transfer any comments you might have to that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

User:The Devil's Advocate

User:The Devil's Advocate; you are talking too much sense. Please stop :) Russavia (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Blocked

I have removed your editing rights as it is evident that you are unable to participate without creating unacceptable levels of disruption. I'm sure you know the drill about appeals and I will also put the block up at ANI for discussion. I'm sure that some kind soul will transfer any comments you might have to that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

User:The Devil's Advocate

User:The Devil's Advocate; you are talking too much sense. Please stop :) Russavia (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Blocked

I have removed your editing rights as it is evident that you are unable to participate without creating unacceptable levels of disruption. I'm sure you know the drill about appeals and I will also put the block up at ANI for discussion. I'm sure that some kind soul will transfer any comments you might have to that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

User:The Devil's Advocate

User:The Devil's Advocate; you are talking too much sense. Please stop :) Russavia (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Blocked

I have removed your editing rights as it is evident that you are unable to participate without creating unacceptable levels of disruption. I'm sure you know the drill about appeals and I will also put the block up at ANI for discussion. I'm sure that some kind soul will transfer any comments you might have to that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

User:The Devil's Advocate

User:The Devil's Advocate; you are talking too much sense. Please stop :) Russavia (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Blocked

I have removed your editing rights as it is evident that you are unable to participate without creating unacceptable levels of disruption. I'm sure you know the drill about appeals and I will also put the block up at ANI for discussion. I'm sure that some kind soul will transfer any comments you might have to that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

User:The Devil's Advocate

User:The Devil's Advocate; you are talking too much sense. Please stop :) Russavia (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Blocked

I have removed your editing rights as it is evident that you are unable to participate without creating unacceptable levels of disruption. I'm sure you know the drill about appeals and I will also put the block up at ANI for discussion. I'm sure that some kind soul will transfer any comments you might have to that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

User:The Devil's Advocate

User:The Devil's Advocate; you are talking too much sense. Please stop :) Russavia (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Apologies

I would like to take this quick moment to apologise to a long list of people, for it appears that almost everyone I've ever sent or received email to/from has received an invite from me to join twitter -- I gave it access to gmail and now I have gone from inadvertently trolling the interwebz to inadvertently spamming the interwebz. I just keep going from strength to strength don't I. Soz, Russavia (talk) 00:16, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

User:Simfan34, I noticed that you have written an article on Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus; fantastic stuff! And glad to see an image I've uploaded is part of that article. Just letting you know that you might like to substitute the photo in the infobox (and at DYK) with File:Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Minister of Health, Ethiopia, speaking at the London Summit on Family Planning (7556214304) (cropped).jpg. Russavia (talk) 10:12, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Comment on The Signpost "In Brief"

I will note that in the "In Brief" section of the Signpost this week, User:The ed17 states:

due to Russavia's refusal to give a definitive positive or negative answer when asked in multiple locations if he inspired the image's creation.

The reason I have not given a definitive answer is numerous.

1. There has not been an ounce of good faith shown towards me? Even Newyorkbrad's initial topic ban was based upon a notion of non-existent disputes on Commons which he was unable to link to (but which he obviously assumed was a dispute by reading Jayen466's posts on Wikipediocracy).
2. The people who have asked have not been extending good faith towards myself, so why should I answer such queries? This goes to most things on this project; when there is no good faith extended, why should I answer such questions?
3. I am now topic banned on this project, and hence am unable to discuss the images in question? Basically I am not able to defend myself on this project; this has occurred in another area where I am actively portrayed as a racist because of another article I created, but am unable to defend myself against such things.
4. For anyone familiar with the subject and the notions of copyright will know why it was suggested.

If anyone who wants to assume good faith wants to ask these questions of me, then please go ahead. I will also response to Spartaz' assumption of bad faith in relation to my "can of worms" comment -- again, anyone who thinks logically and is able to look into the future will understand why this comment was made.

So, ye of good faith, fire away and ask any questions you like. Russavia (talk) 03:07, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

User:Newyorkbrad I need to ask you a question, and I need you to be honest and transparent (I don't expect much honesty and transparency around here these days, so perhaps this will be a welcome change). You stated when you imposed the Jimmy topic ban that it was because of disputes between the two of us. When asked about this, you stated it was common knowledge of these disputes and called my questioning of your assertion "disingenuous". When asked to present those disagreements, you suggested to search on Commons for them. Which I presented at User_talk:Russavia/Archive_27#Special_BLP_enforcement_restriction. The first was asking Jimmy for OTRS permission for an image he uploaded (which I, myself, confirmed by way of OTRS that it was a copyright violation). The second was granting Jimmy the file mover right (hardly something one would do with someone they are in dispute with...and for which I privately got berated for by numerous Commonists). The third was encouraging Jimmy to lend moral support to making problematic images on Commons easier to report. Just where is the dispute? But most importantly, you are being given grief at User_talk:Newyorkbrad#Regarding_Wikipediocracy. I do not believe you are a regular poster there (if at all), but you yourself have admitted on numerous occasions that you do read it, and given that you have been unable to show me just where the disputes are, can you please confirm that you saw a post by Jayen466 on that site, in which he linked to a discussion on Commons and on his en.wp talk page, and somehow came to the conclusion that it was a dispute, rather than simply a discussion. If this is not the case, given that you have stated that these disagreements on Commons are common knowledge, can you please provide specific links to Commons which contain these so-called disputes. I only hope that they aren't any of the 3 cases that I have presented, as there isn't a single dispute amongst them. Russavia (talk) 06:07, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I've protected your talk page for one month. Once that protection expires, if you continue to use your talk page to do the same sort of stuff for which you were blocked in the first place, I will amend your block by indefinitely revoking your TP access. Enough is enough. AGK [•] 06:12, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Problematic issues on this project

• that since the 17 April 2013 John C. Cooke has been the head of state of the Provisional Government of Free Vietnam. - BLP violation with a possibility of creating real world harm removed
• that it is possible for a computer-generated image of a ship to be deemed non-replaceable and therefore in conformity with the WP:NFCC - image which never complied with NFCC (computer generated images are ALWAYS replaceable!) deleted and replaced with a freely licenced image in article.
• The_Masked_Avengers'_prank_on_Sarah_Palin#Conversation contains a long transcript which is copyrighted. A good article on this project should never contain long copyrighted transcripts like this; especially when there is an external link. They are not allowed under the NFCC, and hence it's a copyright violation in its current state
• File:Sharp Billboard (Nicolson Road, Lahore)-c.JPG clear derivative work of a copyrighted work = copyvio
• File:June 12 2004-billboards of lahore-beauty girl-c.JPG clear derivative work of a copyrighted work = copyvio
• File:NDP-SC Logo.PNG - wow, a 9 year old copyright violation. And we say Commons is borken.

Noting progress on these: I deleted the "Masked Avengers" transcript (with a note on the article's talk page), and deleted the following three images as well; but then was advised to restore the Sharp and Lahore images, since Pakistan apparently has liberal freedom of panorama laws. -Pete (talk) 22:10, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Pete, you are right in that Pakistan does have FOP, however, in the case of billboards, the words "permanently situated" will definitely come into play; billboards are inherently transitory in nature. They aren't permanently displayed. This is something that needs to be looked at. It is my opinion that they are not permanently displayed, and hence the Pakistani FOP laws do not apply in this case -- I should note that this opinion is based in part on Commons:COM:PRP. Russavia (talk) 21:38, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I nominated those two at FFD: Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2013 August 14 and Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2013 August 14. (In hindsight, they probably both should have gone in "possibly unfree files.") Thanks for the analysis. -Pete (talk) 20:39, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

• Democratic Republic of the Congo–Russia relations - translated copyvio of this. Revert back to this to remove the copyvio. English Wikipedia community advised of copyright violation at 1.44pm, 19 August 2013.

Done. Seems fairly straight forward. — Richard BB 15:09, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

• Russia–United Arab Emirates relations - translated copyvio of this. Revert back to this to remove another massive copyvio.

Done. — Richard BB 15:11, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

• Russia–Zimbabwe relations - translated copyvio of this. Revert back to this to remove copyvio.

Done. — Richard BB 15:13, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

• Russia–South Africa relations - translated copyvio of this. Revert back to this to remove the copyvio].

Done. — Richard BB 15:15, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

• Nigeria–Russia relations - translated copyvio of [1]. Revert back to this to remove the copyvio. English Wikipedia community advised of copyright violation at 8.16pm, 20 August 2013.

Done. Thanks, keep 'em coming! — Richard BB 15:16, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

* Sandor Earl - WOOF! I dunno about others but I think that a BLP being referred to on multiple occasions by their unofficial team-given nickname of Princess throughout the article would be a bad BLP violation. It's a shame that I am having to bring this to the attention of this community given Earl's high profile in the Australian media at the moment.

• • WP:BLP violation still exists at Sandor_Earl#Career_Start_.26_Charity:_2008-2011

Fixed. — Richard BB 15:37, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

• File:Tim_Fischer_aboard_train.JPG is a NFCC violation, as it is not the subject of critical commentary. There is another photo available in the article, and in the gallery section below.
• File:Nbowen.jpg is a NFCC violation as File:Lionel Bowen.jpg is in the gallery section below and is freely licenced.
• File:John McEwen 1969.jpg no longer complies with NFCC as File:Sir John McEwen.jpg and File:Sir John McEwen (2).jpg now exists. Replace the image in articles before deletion
• File:Frankcrean.jpg is in use on Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and Whitlam_Government#The_economy and do not comply with the NFCC in any way, shape or form
• File:Adrian Fulford web.jpg is claimed to be under a free licence, but a search of ICC archives [2] shows no evidence of this. Can be replaced in usage by File:Adrian Fulford (cropped).jpg which is freely licenced
• Gibraltar_National_Day#Declaration -- no evidence of this declaration being under a free licence, and it's use in the article is arbitrary.
• File:Prime_Minister_Tony_Abbott.jpg -- no EXIF, very low resolution and an uploader with a history of bad images indicates this is a copyvio. It would be appreciated that this is dealt with before it is propagated throughout other projects by way of Commons.
• File:The Hon Julie Bishop Minister for Foreign Affairs.jpg -- taken from juliebishop.com.au and is not a work of the Australian government as this shows and this shows Replaced in usage with a freely licenced photo
• File:Oliver Tambo.jpg is a copyright violation, given that it no longer satisfies the NFCC now that File:Oliver Tambo (1981).jpg exists. In fact, it has failed the NFCC since 2008 when File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-T0515-008, Berlin, Besuch ANC-Delegation, Axen, Tambo.jpg was uploaded to Commons.

DYK for Pricasso

Alex Shih^Talk 00:02, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

File:Air-to-air photo of a Sukhoi Superjet 100 (RA-97004) over Italy.jpg

I had added this picture you uploaded to Sukhoi Superjet 100 and it became an FP here. It is also an FP at Commons and DE wiki. But recently there is a repeated attempt to remove it from there. One came from a sock, another from a new account. Only one revert has a valid claim "it was not supported by any solid evidence".

So I would like to double check with you to ensure whether this photo is a verified depiction of the subject as in the article before starting a discussion on the article talk page. I have no reason to doubt; as it comes from their official Flicker stream. Jee 03:07, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Biman interior

Hi Russavia!

Can you please upload this picture from http://www.samchuiphotos.com? Biman Bangladesh Airlines lacks good quality interior pictures. As I am quite inexperienced in uploading images, I'd be very happy if you did so. Thanks! - Ahnaaf (talk) 11:26, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Hey Ahnaaf, unfortunately Sam does not freely licence his photos, so getting that is unlikely. I will see what other interior photos I can find, and perhaps I can get some freely licenced. I guess you are after the 777s in particular? Also, Commons:Category:Last passenger flight of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 might be of interest to you. Russavia (talk) 12:12, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

No problem mate, thanks for trying. Since Biman retired the DC-10s, I am preferring the 777s interior. Thanks! - Ahnaaf (talk) 05:04, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

User:Ahnaaf, after looking around for numerous photos as per your request, I contacted a photographer on Flickr and asked him to relicence his photos for usage on our projects. He kindly obliged, and there are around 1,700 photos from Bangladesh in his stream, including a heap of photos from Zia Int' Airport. I am currently uploading the entire stream to Commons, and have a heap of categorisation work to do with them, but you might like to take a look at Commons:Category:Photographs by Faisal Akram; it is full of photos of Biman, Bangladesh Air Force, United Airways, etc, etc. I hope these are of some use; unfortunately I am indefinitely blocked on this project so am unable to do anything about usage of relevant images. I will contact Faisal and see if he has any interior photos of the 777 as well. Cheers, Russavia (talk) 06:30, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Re:Biman interior

Hi Russavia, thanks for adding those images from Flickr! Please try to add some Biman interior pictures thanks. - Ahnaaf (talk) 05:55, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 photos of aircraft involved in search

A local photographer here in YPPH has kindly emailed to me 3 photos of some of the aircraft involved in the search for MH370 -- there is one for the USN P-8 Poseidon and 2 for the Chinese PLAAF aircraft. You can find the photos in Commons:Category:2014 at Perth Airport. These photos are appearing here on Wikipedia before they hit airliners.net, so it is nice of Darren to do this for us; please get them into use as you see fit. Russavia (talk) 11:14, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

@Lynbarn: in reference to Talk:Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370#Photo_of_IL-76_assigned_to_MH370_search, it is at YPPH, not Pearce. Russavia (talk) 23:42, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jmoralesjr9/Archive

@Tiptoety: and @Atama: you might be interested on some information on Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jmoralesjr9/Archive.

• Jjensenmike -- this is http://neworganizing.com/profile/Mike-Jensen
• Jmoralesjr9 -- this is http://neworganizing.com/profile/Jose-Morales
• Carteroni -- this is Allie Carter (http://neworganizing.com/content/blog/victory-for-the-freejudith-campaign-the-twitter-petition-that-could)
• Ninasin -- this is http://neworganizing.com/profile/Cristina-Sinclaire

You both might want to go back and relook at this case. And perhaps pass it up the chain to Legal.

This was covered in part by @Peteforsyth: on his blog here Russavia (talk) 13:23, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Unusual edit -- did the New York Times change a story without a note?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Resolved as Jimmy has self-reverted. Russavia (talk) 05:27, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

---

I came across an edit on English Wikipedia article for Berkut which was done by Jimbo Wales (talk · contribs).[3] The article is basically just a quote from the New York Times, but when checking the referenced article,[4] I can't find the quote, nor even reference to what is asserted in the article. The linked article was snapshotted 3 times on 28 January 2014 by the Wayback Machine,[5] but again the quote is not contained in any of these snapshotted articles. The Kyiv Post does have a reference to the article,[6] but when one clicks on their link it goes to the article which doesn't contain the quote. I can also find no reference on the NY Times website to this article using varying quotes.

Whilst the case of Mykhailo Gavrylyuk, the Euromaidan protester who was made to stand outside naked, is true,[7] the case of Yury Verbytsky is less clear; there being no clear firm evidence that Berkut was involved in his kidnapping, torture and death.[8]

One could assume that the NYT pulled their article, for whatever reason. It is in instances such as this that webcitation.org can come in handy, but even then if an organisation pulls an article one can assume that there were factual errors that made the article untenable to keep in print, and our projects should follow the lead and pull information from our articles. But in this instance, the information is still sitting in the article at the time I write this.[9] I did raise this on IRC in #wikipedia-en but nothing was done with it.

Major international events such as the protests in Ukraine and the resultant coup/revolution and accession/annexation of Crimea to/into Russia often see English Wikipedia articles reflecting what is in English-language media at the time, and as one can see from Jimmy's edit this can turn editors into unwitting quasi-propagandists. One really should be careful in using media sources on such issues, because the information is due to change at the drop of a hat, and sometimes people will not see these changes but the information is left in our articles.

But what makes this situation odd is that the NYT will usually notate corrections in articles, but in this case they haven't. In fact, it looks like the entire article has changed, yet whilst keeping a URL indicating another article. This is odd. Could someone please ask Jimmy if he may have used webcitation.org or still has a copy of the article available on his local machine. Or the information should be removed at this stage from the article for failing verification. Russavia (talk) 12:17, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

"As negotiations went on between opposition leaders and the president of Ukraine, a video surfaced of Berkut riot police officers stripping a protester naked." is found in [10] with a meta-tag. (Use "view source" to defeat the paywall) Collect (talk) 12:40, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

There is also this entry at newsdiffs.org. Tarc (talk) 12:43, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

No, that's not it. You will notice that Jimmy's edit is a direct quote[11]. I have no doubt that Jimmy did see such an article, because the Kyiv Post linked to it. But this is odd indeed. Russavia (talk) 12:50, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Tarc, this gives some insight. But it would appear that an entire article has been removed from the NYT website without explanation. What would our projects do when information like this changes? Russavia (talk) 12:50, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

The other issue is the POV issue of what was inserted in the article by @Jimbo Wales: (but which could have been made by anyone). Using long quotes should be discouraged on this project, not least because of the possible copyright issue. In this instance, the quote presents a real POV issue, in that the death of Verbytsky is now linked to our article as being the responsibility of Berkut (which made me look this up to begin with). The NYT times itself does not make this connection. It basically states that Berkut did this thing to Person A, and that this thing happened to Person B without saying who did so. The Person B information in the article presents a POV issue in that our article is stating that Berkut is responsible for Verbytsky's death.

It is likely, given the short timeframe that the information was available on the NYT website, that Jimmy saw the article on the NYT website, copypasted it into the article without really doing any further research on the issue at it relates to what was being inserted into the article. Whilst there is ultimately nothing wrong with this, apart from possible copyright issues, and is done on a widespread basis across this project, editors should stay mindful of what I presented above by hot topics in the media. Russavia (talk) 15:13, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

There are no copyright issues with a two sentence quote from a source. I invite you to point me to any real legal authority of any kind which would suggest otherwise. The correct diff to look at to understand my edit is this one. Per BLP I removed an unsourced negative claim and then found a proper source. That the New York Times later silently changed their story is problematic, of course.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:26, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: I honestly can't immediately point you to any real legal authority which would suggest a copyright violation, and to be honest it's because I haven't actually looked, but it's best to err on the side of caution. I said "possible copyright issues" for this exact reason that you pointed out, except I wonder if WP makes excessive use of copyrighted materials as "fair use" from a single source across the project, whether a publisher might have a case against Wikipedia. But regardless....

All I can do, is point to Wikipedia policy and guidelines.

Wikipedia:Copyright violations states: "However, copying material without the permission of the copyright holder from sources that are not public domain or compatibly licensed (unless it's a brief quotation used in accordance with Wikipedia's non-free content policy and guideline) is likely to be a copyright violation."

Wikipedia:NFC#Text states: "Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea."

Your edit to the Berkut article neither illustrated a point, established context or attributed any point of view or idea, in either the letter or spirit of the NFC. What you inserted really should have been written without the need for a direct quote from the source. Whilst I didn't see the BLP issue that brought you to the article, and whilst removing BLP violations from our project is the right thing to do, I hope you can understand what I wrote above about becoming an unwitting quasi-propagandist in the process. If not, the quote from the New York Times is at Berkut_(special_police_force)#Specific_incidents which starts "Writing in Business Insider in February 2014, Harrison Jacobs noted: "The Berkut ... has had a long history of brutality, abuse, torture, and other measures in service of whatever political regime is in control of Ukraine." and which by inclusion in the quote directly links Berkut to the death of Verbytsky and is written as a matter of fact in this sense. (hence the POV issue).

A two sentence direct quote from the NYT whilst on the surface may not look like much, as you can see it presents other issues. I think you can now probably understand why using quotes should be used absolutely sparingly as part of regular prose in article, and only rely on non-free content as an absolute last-resort.

@Jimbo Wales:, but I seriously do thank you for putting the information in the article on Gavrylyuk, because it was an important moment in Euromaidan. Jimmy, I see the information is still in the article as inserted by yourself, so I have taken the liberty of collating some information on the Gavrylyuk incident and I make a suggestion to you to remove the New York Times quote in its entirety (the 27 Jan date is also wrong), and perhaps consider replacing it with this text (which I declare I have released into the public domain for reasons of copyright):

On 23 January 2014, protester and Zaporozhian Cossack, Mykhailo Gavrylyuk was arrested by Berkut officers. In temperatures approaching -15°C, Gavrylyuk was beaten with blows to his head and torso, after which he was stripped naked and forced to the ground. Whilst on the ground, Berkut officers put their feet on Gavrylyuk's head like an association football player would place their feet on a ball, and photographed themselves. A video was later uploaded to Youtube, and in scenes reminiscent of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal Berkut officers were shown to be posing for photographs with the naked Gavrylyuk. In a further attempt to humiliate him, the Berkut offices forced Gavrylyuk to hold an ice-axe and attempted to make him proclaim "I love Berkut". The video went viral and apart from making Gavrylyuk a symbol of Euromaidan, it also drew an apology from Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko. Gavrylyuk revealed at a press conference after the incident that the Berkut officers also cut a couple of strands of the traditional Cossack forelocks (oseledets) from his head.

You will also notice that I have used webcitation.org to snapshot the source, so that if the source material ever disappears it will still be available for easy verification by our readers. It adds a little extra time to editing, but it is well worth the effort as you can see.

Thanks for your reply here Jimmy, I appreciate it, and if you have any questions on the prose I've presented to you for insertion into the article, I'm happy to answer them for you. Russavia (talk) 20:06, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

If you'd like to see the article changed, you should change it yourself.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:09, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I suggest you look before you leap with a comment like that - most people on this page understand what "BLOCKED" means. Cheers. Collect (talk) 20:59, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Message for User:Alifazal -- James Mwakibolwa

@Alifazal: I noticed you have put some MONUSCO photos into use, great stuff. I also see that you are from Tanzania. Perhaps you might like to create the article for James Mwakibolwa. We have a photo of Mwakibolwa on Commons from MONUSCO, and it might make for an interesting WP:DYK -- we don't see many Tanzanian DYKs here on the project. Just giving you a heads up. Russavia (talk) 03:27, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Message for User:Philg88 -- Masikryong Ski Resort

@Philg88:, thanks for writing the above article, as you can see I had it at User_talk:Russavia#Article_work to create.

I see, however, that the article only uses one image. The photos in Commons:Category:Masikryong Ski Resort were kindly released under a CC licence by Uri Tours after a request by myself. I made mention of the Masikryong Ski Resort article as one possible use for their photos (i.e. encouraging article development). I am going to make contact with the, and show them this article, but I was hoping you might take on board some suggestions in relation to images in the article.

• File:Masik Pass Ski Resort in North Korea (11945092343).jpg could perhaps be used at Masikryong_Ski_Resort#Local_environment
• File:Masikryong North Korea Ski Resort (12299641645).jpg could perhaps be used at Masikryong_Ski_Resort#Facilities
• As we can see from the category on Commons, the ski resort has ski-lifts but Masikryong_Ski_Resort#Controversy doesn't mention who did make the ski-lifts, such as File:Masikryong North Korea Ski Resort (12299601295).jpg. It might be beneficial to do a little research on this and add an appropriately captioned photo to that section.

When I discussed the relicencing with Uri Tours in a series of back-and-forth emails, I did mention to them that their images would be especially useful for North Korean articles, and I also asked them to keep me informed on hits to Flickr and whether they see any noticeable increase from their images being on Commons -- an aviation photographer who relicenced after my request noted a massive surge in traffic to his Flickr stream. I want to use Uri Tours a one part in a multi-faceted case study on why companies should make their images available under a CC-BY or CC-BY-SA licence.

But at the end of the day, it is editorial discretion on whether to include images or not, and with such a wide range of images available, and relevant to direct article content, we could probably be more liberal in our use of images on articles. Thoughts welcome. Russavia (talk) 21:16, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Russavia, and thanks for the ping. First of all, I didn't realise that you had plans to create the Masikryong article - I only search the main space when creating articles so my apologies if you had put any work into this.

On the specific points that you mention:

• I found the photos on Flickr before I found them on Commons (what a wonderful surprise to discover that they were CC-BYSA!) and picked the one that featured snow, a skilift and mountains as I thought that would be the most representative/appropriate. I'm no fan of flooding short paragraph articles like this one with pictures as it creates a lot of whitespace, but I don't see why there couldn't be a gallery of three or four images across the bottom rather than breaking up the text. Feel free to go ahead and add it as you see fit - [update] I now see that your are blocked so I can do it.

• While the original draft of the article included the name of the company that the Swiss government proscribed from selling ski lifts to the resort, I took it out because I considered a mention would be non-neutral –the deal was cancelled after all. From what I can see and based on my own experience of the sport, the lifts in use are way behind current state of the market technology [12] [13] — I also read a comment in a blog somewhere that they were made by a Chinese rather than a western company. As for other equipment, this snow groomer is made by an Italian company but (perhaps understandably given the sanctions) I cannot find a reference to back that up. However including the photo with a caption mentioning the groomer's origin would not breach any Wikipedia guidelines as far as I can see.

• I'm all for encouraging everyone in the world to release their copyrights under CC-BYSA and for Wikipedia to improve its coverage of North Korean topics. I plan to translate the Masikryong article into Chinese (as they are likely to be the largest slice of foreign visitors), which would no doubt please Uri Tours and by extension fire their enthusiasm for engaging with Wikipedia.

 Philg88 ^♦talk 05:58, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

@Philg88: Thanks for response. I'll leave it up to your discretion to include what photos you see fit in the article. In relation to the Husky photo, it would be ok to include this in the article with a caption denoting the make of the snow groomer. Whether it is a high value image for that article is up to you -- it could possibly go into an article on snow groomers -- that way you can get an internal link to the Masikryong article too. I would think that higher value images for the Masikryong article would be those which show the facilities, rather than the equipment. But all up to you.

It would be good to see the Masikryong article in other languages too, I might have a word to a couple of Korean editors and they might like to do the Korean version of it. In relation to Uri Tours, they are a US-based company, so I'm not too sure how much of their business they get from China. But it's just good to have a commercial company engage with us by releasing their materials. I will be dropping them a note in the coming days with a link to the Masikryong article so that they can see how their images are being used. I'll be sure to pass on any feedback to you which I may get back. Cheers, Russavia (talk) 05:36, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Russavia. I've added a gallery with four images rather than flood the article. I agree that the groomer isn't really apposite - it could be on any piste at any resort. I hope you can inspire a Korean language version, that would be great. Best,  Philg88 ^♦talk 05:59, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Great stuff @Philg88: look forward to seeing more DPRK articles from you in future too. Russavia (talk) 03:28, 2 May 2014 (UTC)