User talk:Travb/Archive 4

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[edit] User:Rjensen

Can you please give me some help? You, and some other users have been having trouble with Rjensen and now he's causing more problems. See User_talk:Markles#Rjensen.—Mark Adler (markles) 13:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requests for comment

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ta bu shi da yu 2 You may be interested in this. Cheers, JYolkowski // talk 22:32, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm disappointed that you would support this witch hunt after the very reasonable attempts to explain to you why the letter from Time Magazine is insufficient, including not only references to existing policies, but also a legal analysis of the letter. Fair use is a slippery slope that must be eschewed in favor of images licsensed under the GFDL. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Trödel (talkcontribs). sorry 'bout forgetting my sig Trödeltalk 19:05, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another intervention

Would you care if I removed Operation Brother Sam because the U.S. only prepared to intervene in Brazil, but did not actually get involved. And also the Italian elections, because that involved aid. CJK 02:01, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your inquiry CJK. Go ahead and do what you want with the page, I don't have any feelings about it one way or another anymore. I am too busy with other projects right now to be concerned. I only ask that you stop asking. I would rather not know what you are doing on that page. I just say your latest edits and I disagree with them, but I am not going to expend massive amounts of energy fighting you. Travb 03:55, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] hello

Are you up late or up extra early? Thanks for the good legal reference. I also agree that the people should cool off for a bit, and the legal aspects handled by a team from Time and a team from Wikipedia. I just wish there was more discussion before the deletion. I want to get back to my geography template work. Where are you located? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 05:03, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yes

Don't worry about mentioning my name of course: it makes me feel like a celebrity. I do wish you hadn't deleted all of what i wrote on plausible deniability's necessarily being impartially immoral, though: I can't remember all of the argument. I don't know if i want to rethink it.--Tyler Nash 06:54, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "McCarthyism"

What, exactly, is it about the worst excesses of what is held to be among the worst and ignoble chauvinist indulgences of mankind, namely staunch anti-communism, which precipitates the abandonment of all rational discernment among what is a necessarily wide assortment of individuals and interests?

I have little hope left for this site and have been inactive as of late but came upon the Richard Pipes talk page recently and this nugget of insight:

"Not that it matters, but the author of this misleading article, Sam Tanenhaus, wrote a book praising one of the McCarthy witchhunters[6]. This tells me that he is probably a right wing ideologue like Pipes."[1]

Whittaker Chambers, the "McCarthy witchhunter" which you apparently allude to, was at the forefront of messy political and legal disputes pertaining to the identity and activities of communists years before Tailgunner Joe had his say on such questions. This alone should justify caution in the unnecessary and unhelpful slur of interrelated events, but the point should be further emphasized. I own a copy of that biography in question (though regrettably it is not in my possession at the moment), and so I know for a fact that Tanenhaus characterizes McCarthy as a demagogue (as well an ineffective and counterproductive anti-communist) and that Chambers is portrayed as being at best wary of McCarthy, in contrast to the enthusiasm of fellow National Review honchos William Buckley, Jr. and L. Brent Bozell. There is much here that you apparently have not caught on to, or simply have not allowed yourself to. --TJive 20:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

TJive, your words are so convoluded, I still have no idea what you are trying to say. Basically my point was on the Talk:Richard Pipes page was that even though it isn't important Sam Tanenhaus wrote a book which I incorrectly characterized as praising Whittaker Chambers. I was showing that this shows his own political bias.
But Tanenhaus political bias is ultimately not important. I despise people on both the right and the left who feel that if a person on other side said something, it is simply disregarded because of the person who said it. That is why I downplayed Tanenhaus book, and instead focused on his incorrect statment in the Boston Globe.
TJive, you are making a mountain out of a mole hill.
I stand corrected. My apologies about the mischaracterizing the Tanenhaus book which I have never read.Travb 20:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I would allow that I engaged in a frustrated tirade were I not very specifically responding to a comment of your own - on its merits - rather than sufficing for polemics such as I hinted towards at the beginning of my comment; I apologize if this struck you as harsh.
Rather than allow this to be your only (and perhaps only fleeting) of either the author or subject, why not spare some time to read it? --TJive 21:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
"I am still intersted, what does this mean?"
I am referring to the inability and unwillingness of many left partisans to distinguish between various adherents of anti-communism, or often to even recognize the legitimacy or imperative of such a principle to begin with. In this case, you still seem to be under the impression that the book pertains to, or that Chambers was a participant in, "McCarthyism". That was precisely what I was speaking about.
The "Ellen woman" was likely Ellen Schrecker, whose views are colored by this tradition. --TJive 16:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Deletion of warnings

This diff shows that you are incorrect - Pathoschild removed the warnings. As this is an AOL IP, even a month-old warning is 100% irrelevant to whoever's computer has flitted through the IP at this point. I also don't appreciate the charge of vandalism; try to assume some good faith. (ESkog)(Talk) 23:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Please note that I have responded on my talk page; see "Would like you opinion on this please". You may respond on either page as you prefer. // Pathoschild (admin / talk) 23:47, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AUC Edits

Travb, I have noticed a couple of things about your newest (and very good, by themselves) AUC edits. Please see the article's talk page. Juancarlos2004 02:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] History of Somalia

Do have a better link to the article? So long as it's published, it's fine, but you simply linked to a livejournal (not the best source) that reproduces it; we have no way of knowing that the reproduction is an accurate one.

Yom 22:05, 2 April 2006 (UTC)



[edit] Vandalism?

In the past, I have accused others of vandalism and have been chastized for calling editing, "vandalism". My edits were not vandlism. Please refrain from calling my edits such, because it is offensive to me, and does not meet the defintion of "vandalism".Travb 14:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant no harm, I saw that it was removed, and looks alot like some of the vandalism I've seen.--Dp462090 | Talk | Contrib | 14:56, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use This

Travb doesn't like over zealous Wikipedia Cops deleting articles prematurely.

USA Noles1984 16:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)



[edit] blogs & spam

  1. Wikipedia:Reliable sources isn't quite policy, but it does have the operative language regarding blogs as sources (and hence as external links in general) that most of us seem to agree with.
  2. "people like jpgordon"? Gosh.

--jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 03:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use this (2)

No you don't know me... I found your user name in an administrators talk page where stuff you had posted was deleted or a candidate for deletion... I believe new administrators get an authoritarian power thing going and are all too willing to delete without discussion. Bastards! USA Noles1984

[edit] election of 1900

hopeless case. Anything you put will be challenged by one editor who will revert everything until it matches what he wants to say. Look at other articles in this predicament. Thanks Hmains 16:37, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] United States presidential election, 1900

Hi, sorry you're having ongoing frustrations. However, I think that it's getting to you a bit and you're reacting too personally. I did say stick to the facts, but you've put a section on the talk page for the article headed with the name of the person you are having problems with. That is confrontational, and is bound to get the opposite reaction to the one you want, though I'm glad to see that you paid a compliment for Rjensen's good contributions. Let's assume he/she does have some genuine concerns. Somebody else wouldn't maybe, but the fact is that he (I'll say he) does. He says the tone is totally POV. Well, I don't think there's any smoke without fire, and the way to meet someone in those circumstances is to tone down what you say and let the facts speak. For example:

:Misleading Philippine War claims by the Republicans

OK, in the circumstances I don't think you're going to get away with the heading, unless you give a specific reference to it, with a footnote quoting the source and the text of the source as well for that specific statement. You could simply change it to "The Phillipine War", which makes it perfectly NPOV. The text should bring out all that's necessary.

:Conservatives ridiculed Bryan's eclectic platform.[citation needed] In order to give the impression that the Philippine war was winding down,[citation needed] the McKinley administration made misleading claims of reductions in the number of American troops in the Philippines.[citation needed]

I think in the current circumstances each of these points need to be nailed down. As it is we only have the fact of one soldier's words. Well fine, you can say this soldier stated such and such and no one can contest it, but it's the interpretation preceding it that is open to challenge. If you weren't be challenged then your references are fine, but as you are, it is your interest to be scrupulous about them! The footnotes can also have extracts of relevant text included in them, as footnotes often do in books, or the passages could be quoted on the talk page.

I suggest an initial way ahead would be to to quote a passage on the talk page, with source, and then put underneath the words you intend to put in the article using that source. That gives third parties a chance to judge and maybe help out. Laborious, I know, but that is the penalty of collaborative work.

Get back to me if you want to discuss things further. I will add it to my watchlist.

Tyrenius 00:31, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The above has been moved from your user page, where I put it by mistake. Since then I have been through the article and done an edit on it.

Tyrenius 16:39, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola

oops thanks for pointing that out ive reverted my error back now. It looks like the servers are out of synch because of the earlier problems because i got served a page with "tst" on it, once again apologies Benon 02:01, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Your right this guys is tricky, and thanks for the back up. I hope I didn't come accross as aggressive in our first meeting, allthough I might be a tad towards this guy, I just like getting things down right. It'll be nice being on the same side this time though. :)

-JoeFixit

[edit] Mensheviks and the Soviet collapse

[Moved from Talk:Mensheviks]

Are you Russian? My wife is Kazakstan/Ukrainian. I livd in Ukraine for 2 years. I would really be interested in your article

He, you could learn all of the above (except for the Collier's bit) in any "Soviet History 101" class 30-50 years ago :)
I do know a few things about modern history, though, e.g., see "my" articles re: Arvo Tuominen or Arthur Conolly. On the Russian end of the spectrum, I have done Leon Trotsky, Russian Constituent Assembly, etc. Lately, I have been spending most of my WP time on genre authors like S.P. Meek.Ahasuerus 16:27, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, you didnt answer my question, but you don't sound like a Russian. I was just impressed how you shot out all those dates, probably by memory--that means you are very well versed on the subject.
I am an American, although my family roots go back to Central and Eastern Europe. The fact that I know entirely too much European history is only tangentially related, though :)
It's sad that WP has all of three lines on E. Phillips Oppenheim and nothing on Howard Wandrei or William F. Temple :-(
I will take you word on the names, that, (Except for the first one) as far as I am concerned, you got out of the phone book :)
happy editing.Travb 18:54, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Wandrei was a genre artist and writer in the 1930s. I wrote a short article about his older brother, Donald Wandrei, a while back, but haven't had a chance to do Howard. Temple was a major British writer of the 1950s and 1960s (mostly SF), now largely forgotten. Ahasuerus 20:12, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Got it! Point your browser of choice to http://www.norfacad.pvt.k12.va.us/fac_staff/~rezelman/research.htm , search for "Collier" and check out the cover of the October 27, 1951 issue :) Ahasuerus 04:58, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I have posted an alternative proposal, see that page :) Ahasuerus 01:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] American empire clean up

I think the discussion site needs some reorganization and clean up. You have my permission to edit the headings and arguments if you want to clean it up, right now it looks a little too much like a conversation than an issue discussion. Not necessary, just a thought.Later,Mrdthree 20:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I will archive the discussion. Please don't delete anything.Travb 23:09, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jew

Moved from: Talk:Paul_Wolfowitz#Jew

Paul wolfowitz's religion was deleted for this reason:

"why is the fact that he's a jew or of judaism in this template? should not be here... this an anti-zionist crusade?"

I think the reason is bizarre, but i won't fight something so peity. If anyone else wants to revert it, be my guest.

signed. Travb 15:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

This argument has been going on as far back as I can remeber. My stance has always been that we should NOT mention his religion unless we have verrifiable proof that he is a practicising Jew. His ethinc background is mentioned in the body of the article. But I have yet to see any evidence relating to his active religous practices. If this evidence can be found then I think that the statement about his religion becomes valid and important with regards to his opinions and beliefs. Mutt 18:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't believe it should be there either, it seems an unusual precedent to set. --Zleitzen 18:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I think the whole argument is silly, I don't care either way. If I was actually famous and people listed me as "mormon", for example, (and I was), I would care less. Why do some of the Jewish faith care?
I agree with Mutt though, we should use verifiable sources though. clowns like the guy above seem to have a persecution complex, and see anti-semetics in their own shadow. I can only laugh at this. Travb 15:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I have to agree with your sentiments on this one Travb. I really don’t understand why mentioning that someone is Jewish is anti-Semitic. Is it anti-Christian to mention Bush’s faith? Is it anti-Islamic to mention Bin Laden’s? Is it anti-Buddhist to mention the Dalai Lama’s? So why is there some sort of special sensitivity when it comes to Judaism? Our job here is to produce a complete encyclopaedic study of the subject. Surely therefore where there is verifiable evidence we should mention that someone is a Jew. And in fact not mentioning it would indicate that we thought that there was something wrong with being a Jew and would therefore be anti-Semitic. Mutt 19:41, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I am glad no one was offended. you were test subjects. I am going to ask User:172 his opinion. This is the guy who encouraged me to justifiably get banned for what I see as the wrong reason. Travb 21:22, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Getting justifiably blocked
I guess I am a little sore about the whole issue because of my comments which I assume another person of Jewish faith/background took as an attack on his faith, which could't be further from the truth.[2] I agree I should have been booted for those comments, of saying someone was denying their own history, which I was, but not because I used the "J" word. I could have left out the holocaust and still made the same point. In retrospect I wish I did. I still would have been justifiably booted, but at least people would have understood the point I was making better, without getting hung up on the word holocaust. This user seemed to miss the point of my comments enirely:[3]
"For those of us whose families were annihilated by the Nazi genocide, no attack can be more extreme; and when such an attack is lodged for reasons as trivial as a Wikipedia edit war, the impact of the attack only serves to trivialize the Holocaust. Although I have had some disputes with CJK myself, I will not feel comfortable editing Wikipedia today unless TravB is blocked for at least 24 hours for violating Wikipedia:No personal attacks in the most extreme way any individual can violate it."[4] (emphasize my own)

[edit] Downplaying other genocides
In addition, I have noticed that some people of Jewish background deny or downplay other genocides, such as the Armenian genocide. Take for example The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, by Guenter Lewy.
I read a criticism somewhere, that some other authors of Jewish background do the same thing. Why? Is it taboo even to ask why? Are there more people of jewish background that do this? Are there an equal number of non-jews who do this? Or am I seeing patterns that do not exist? Is it wrong to even ask such questions?
Why don't Americans study about the Japanese slaughtering the Chinese in World War 2, or Pol Pot in Cambodia or the Armenian Genocide, or the Rwanda genocide, or the East Timor genocide?
I suspect because with the first genocide, there is not a large number of Chinese in America. In addition, Japan is a cold war ally. Pol Pot is taught in school, but not in the way that the Holocuast is taught.
I suspect with the last three, it is because we had a part in culpability in those genocides. We supported Turkey while they massacred the Kurds, and therefore did not want to bring up "sensitive" issues which would embarrass our allies.
With Rwanda and East Timor, Americans either looked the other way and actively attempted to stop efforts to stop the genocide (Rwanada and East Timor), or we actively encouraged the genocide (East Timor.)
Further to this, since we’re mentioning the unmentionable here, I am curious as to why the term Holocaust is used exclusively to refer to Hitler’s extermination of the Jews. Hitler of course began by rounding up and executing the Communists, who were followed by trade unionists, Romany, Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholics and the mentally and physically handicapped, and yet these victims seem to be largely forgotten. Is there a reason that these victims so rarely warrant a mention? Mutt 21:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I think because the vast majority of those killed were Jews. The average layperson looks at history only in general terms, without much refinement, as it is taught in our American schools:
  • Communism bad, capatilism good.
  • Africa is poor with lots of wars.
  • America is always a beacon of freedom and democracy.
  • Government is bad and backwards, free enterprise is good.
  • European history was a lot of wars with each other.
  • Holocaust is the Jews.
There are movies about the Homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses persecution in the Holocaust. I think most people who have a higher education would know that Romany (gypsies), Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholics were killed, including a lot of people who have a highschool education.
Are you from Europe Mutt? You used the term "Romany" which my wife, who is from Ukraine uses. Travb 21:55, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes I am from Europe and as such am fascinated and concerned by your comment about American schools. Obviously my own knowledge of the American educational system is pretty much limited to what I’ve learned from Dead Poets Society and episodes of Buffy but your comments do seem to mirror criticisms of the American media as laid out by people such as Robert McChesney and Edward Herman. So I was wandering why you thought it was that the U.S. has developed this black/white, good/evil, dualistic view of the world?
On the Romany issue I think that that is the generally preferred term as gypsy is now days considered derogatory. Mutt 10:53, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleting the word Jew
In addition, I have noticed on some of the pages that I watch in the past, such as the Paul Wolfowitz page, that certain people go around and edit out any mention of the word "Jew" or "Jewish" in bibliograph articles. Not being of the Jewish faith myself, I guess I see the whole endevour as silly. Why do some people do this?
If I was Mormon or Jehovah's witness, I would not "hide my light under a bushel" as it says in the bible (new or old testament I can't remember). I just don't understand what I see as a persecution complex, it seems like there is a lot of negative energy and any mention of the word "Jew" or "holocuast" make otherwise rational people of Jewish background irrational. Why? Is it taboo even to ask why?
I hope that by even talking about this, I do not get in trouble, that someone else writes: I will not feel comfortable editing Wikipedia today unless TravB is blocked for at least 24 hours for violating Wikipedia:No personal attacks in the most extreme way any individual can violate it..
It seems like talking about Blacks in America. If anyone suggests something that is out of the mainstream, they are labeled "racists", just as throughout American history those who were on the far left were labled "communist" or those on the far right were labeled "facists".
These questions bother me. I in no way want to offend, just talk.Travb 23:59, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Travb 23:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The template does not belong in the article. Wolfowitz is notable as a U.S. and now World Bank policymaker, not as a major figure in Jewish history. The fact that he is a Jew is only relevant in the part of the article discussing his personal background (e.g., the part of the article that mentions the fact that his father was a Polish Jew who fled from persecution in Europe). 172 | Talk 22:08, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Waterboarding

Re:[5] see Wikipedia:verifiable. I did not find your contributions very funny, they were actually, in my opinion, rather juvenile.

I am not watching this page, please direct comments to my talk page or the Waterboarding talk page.

Signed:Travb 00:16, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I can't find a good cite -- maybe it was something I heard on Limbaugh? Googling on waterboarding "fraternity prank" does return 130+ hits, though. Ewlyahoocom 05:08, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] article instead of cat

If you make an article out of the referenced material you listed at talk, I think it would be a very useful article. And since you can largely paste your work from cat's talk, not a single effort you spent on that would be wasted. Regards, --Irpen 05:19, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply

I'm sorry Travb, but I think we have too many categories as there is. Perhaps an article would be better. I don't know much about whether Reagan did or did not predict the collapse of the USSR, so I do not feel comfortable getting involved.

As for friends--I thought you knew that I have no friends;). Except possibly TDC, and you have already asked him. CJK 19:42, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Peacock

Here's the page I was referring to: Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms. All the best. —thames 23:46, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wolfowitz

It's not a matter of "hiding" his Jewish faith. The matter boils down to the central task of an encyclopedia-- circumscribing facts for relevance. Wolfowitz is not primarily notable as a Jew. He is notable as an American policymaker. In other words, institutional affiliations (like deputy Defense Secretary and World Bank chief) matter more in his article than his religious affiliation. As for your question about the Holocaust, I disagree with the claim that Jews downplay atrocities not related to the Holocaust. The Holocaust is better known because it affected a relatively modern, industrialized region of the world. In the same sense, Americans know more about (say) what happened in the former Yugoslavia than (say) the civil war in the Congo. 172 | Talk 22:37, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Election promise

Re: your request. Fair enough. Thanks. Ellsworth 21:40, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re Thanks

Thanks for work on Category:Organizations and people who predicted the collapse of the USSR. Travb 22:28, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

My pleasure. It might not be a topic to categorize, but I hope few would argue against it being an article. It might attract some non-neutral contributors, but I guess you already know that. Best wishes, David Kernow 23:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Smedley Butler infobox

Travb, I see that you removed the Medal of Honor image from the Smedley Butler infobox, with the comment — "removed medal image doesnt look good at all." I would appreciate a discussion before you make such a deletion. I have been working with Looper5920 on the Marine Corps portal and USMC-related articles, especially creating articles for Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipients. Including the Medal of Honor image in their infoboxes is the standard for these articles to immediately identify their Medal of Honor status. —ERcheck @ 23:54, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the response. The Military person infobox template has one place for an image. I'm working within the consistency bounds of this infobox. I appreciate your flexibility with respect to the Medal of Honor image. I've uploaded a different image - without the dark background. What do you think? An improvement?ERcheck @ 01:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I deliberately want it smaller than the person's image - as the Medal of Honor is important, but isn't everything about the person. I've experimented with different sizes, and think 60px is too small; the current one is 75px; perhaps 90px. I do want it a bit smaller than the photo. —ERcheck @ 01:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
    • I do prefer it in the image box, as it is immediately seen; when a person is working on a small screen, such as a laptop, the Honors portion of the info box may require a scroll down. —ERcheck @ 01:41, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
    • See Hershel W. Williams - this is a 90px. —ERcheck @ 01:42, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
      • I like Hershel's better. But it is your call. I really don't care, and I obviously care less than you do. Far be it from me to stiffle your artistic flair ;-) .Travb 01:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
      • I'll go with the 90px then. I do prefer it in the image box. It is "buried" in the awards section. Also, I've used it as a placeholder in the image box for the few that I've not yet been able to get a good photo for. I appreciate the discussion. Thanks. —ERcheck @ 01:51, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Vandalism

This is your only warning. Your recent vandalism to User:Ed g2s and User talk:Ed g2s is an obvious violation of WP:POINT. Do not vandalize pages (user or otherwise) to make a point. The admin was following established procedure and acting in accordance with United States law, and international statutes. The next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. +Hexagon1 (talk) 14:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

You have been blocked for continuing to violate WP:POINT after being warned not to. Angr (tc) 15:37, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
I apologize, I did not edit User:Ed g2s page again, as I was warned. I do acknowledge that I owe User:Ed g2s an apology. If my apologizing first is what it will take to settle this problem we have, so be it: I apologize for interfering in User:Ed g2s work. I apologize for my strong words. Travb 15:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
The block was for listing WikiProject:Fair use for deletion. I think you should take this time to cool off a bit. ed g2stalk 15:51, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thank you for pointing that our User:ed_g2s. Best wishes.Travb 15:53, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Angr, I made a mistake, and I am sorry. I was asked not to vandalize userpages again, and I did not. Instead I instigated a deletion of WikiProject:Fair use, for which I apologize for. I took the completly wrong path to doing this, and I am sorry. I did not edit Ed g2 user page again, once I was warned. You are right, I should not have insitgated the WikiProject:Fair use deletion.Travb 17:28, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk page blanking

Please don't blank your talk page, you cannot remove any warnings/blockings. -- 9cds(talk) 17:31, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I have restored this section, and I say it again, you may not remove warnings/blockings. If you want to change Wikipedia, being a vandal is not the right way to do so. Or start your own encyclopedia. +Hexagon1 (talk) 07:38, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] If paternal wikipedians such as yourself

If paternal wikipedians such as yourself would just leave me alone there would be no problem

RE: I have restored this section, and I say it again, you may not remove warnings/blockings. If you want to change Wikipedia, being a vandal is not the right way to do so. Or start your own encyclopedia. +Hexagon1 (talk) 07:38, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

In the past week, I have had about 6 wikipedians, including yourself, modify my own talk page. First there was User:ed_g2s who deleted thousands of images without bothering to ask the author of the image about this. He kept changing my talk page, repeatedly.

Then there was User:9cds who revert my page after I kept the warning on my page.

Then there was Tony, who didn't like what I was writing about the hypocricy of wikipedians.

Then there was you, whose bias is obvious and who simply wants to make my life uncomfortable because of your disagreement with my views. Your actions, and the actions of others, reminded how post Soviet companies, who fall out of disfavor with the authorities, suddenly get inspected by the local fire marshal, the tax collector, etc. Dissent is always praised in countries like this, by people like yourself, but dissent in your own country and on wikipedia, is frowned down upon, and even crushed. Your hypocricy is incredible but sadly common.

And for the record. I created a fourth archive of messages here:

User_talk:Travb/Archive_4 with all of the warning messages you state that I am deleting. Tony reverted my page, protected it, and deleted all of my work which I had done, I am still in the process of rebuilding my page to the way it was. Please don't freak out if I decide to archive your important message. Need I remind you that the rules allow even outcasts such as myself to archive my own messages.

I await a self-righteous response condeming me for even suggesting that you are a hypocrite, and how you are only following the rules and admonishing me to do the same. Typical, very typical.

Signed:Travb 15:33, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your message

I received your note and I believe forming a "group" is ultimately a pointless exercise. If administrators delete items and hold themselves out as having the training sufficient to determine copyright laws (i.e., acting like attorneys), they would be stopped sooner or later by the appropriate officials. There are people empowered to put a stop to such activity, and this will not be accomplished by any ad hoc Wikipedia cabal. I have raised the quandry in one forum and done what I can to let folks know that this may be a problem. How people conduct themselves is out of my control. Jtmichcock 18:54, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

they would be stopped sooner or later by the appropriate officials I am sorry I did not make myself clear, they are not doing anything illegal, they are simply interpreting fair use law in a restrictive manner, with no legal training. Spending several weeks talking to this group, the heads of this group are "law and order" types, who simply are intoxicated with the authority and power they have. It is typical on most web blogs.
There are people empowered to put a stop to such activity
Who?
and this will not be accomplished by any ad hoc Wikipedia cabal.
It is this ad hoc Wikipedia cabal. Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use which is the center. I simply want to create a group of like minded individuals who feel the same way about copyright.
I have raised the quandry in one forum and done what I can to let folks know that this may be a problem. How people conduct themselves is out of my control.
I understand your frustration and feeling of hopelessness. I have been there, a million times. i am sorry you are not interested in helping, but I respect your decision.
Signed:Travb 19:04, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
As the person who started Wikiproject Fair Use, I should probably say that 1. there is no cabal, 2. everybody on there is usually trying to do what they think is the correct thing. The goal is and was to try and improve Wikipedia's fair use so that all media claimed under fair use would have no possibility of getting us into hot water. I'm sure you will agree that's a good goal. The implementation is not always perfect, but that's how any policy goes, especially one which refers to a notoriously vague piece of U.S. copyright law.
I disagreed with the TIME magazine issue because it was completely out of policy and the people who defended it didn't seem to care, and many of those who participated in it were very rude to others in the process. But that's a problem with implementation, it is not a problem with the idea of a robust fair use policy itself.
All I'm saying is that one should be able to assume a little good faith here. Most of the people at WPFU do not agree with each other anyway, which makes it one disfunctional cabal if it ever was one! --Fastfission 20:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, there is no cabal. I was simply using the words of Jtmichcock , who probably doesnt think there is a cabal either.Travb 21:09, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


I think there's some misperception about my position: I questioned whether or not it is appropriate for non-lawyers to be citing case law and federal statutes in support of their "fair use" positions. If an ad hoc volunteer group that organizes on the basis that their interpretation of fair use should be regarded as superior to another ad hoc volunteer groups position, then both groups are wrong. It would be the same as if the two groups organized on the basis of answering questions about what the statute of limitations for a particular offense is or whether a particular act constitutes tortious conduct. Both groups are providing legal advice and, unless you are a lawyer, you shouldn't do that. Nor should you be supplying medical advice or psychiatric assistance. Watching the squabbling over whether X is fair use or not is like watching kids in the park arguing. It's all rather pointless since the grown-ups out there will inevitably have to address these issues.

Oddly, I was just working on the intricacies of an application to the USPTO right before writing this. This stuff is for professionals. Jtmichcock 21:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Are you a lawyer? You could help. I am a 2L now.Travb 02:00, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Fair use criteria

4 October 2005 adds:

The material must contribute significantly to the article (e.g. identify the subject of an article, or specifically illustrate relevant points or sections within the text) and must not serve a purely decorative purpose.

Policy tag added 5 January 2006

The user who added this policy tag, in response to this question "I am wondering how you determined if this was policy, and what procedures you followed." said: "I honestly don't recall, except that I am quite certain I had a conversation with Jimbo on the topic. In any case, it *is* policy, as any experienced Wikipedian with any sense at all can tell you."
Signed:Travb 03:20, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, I did. Copyright law is not negotiable and is not subject to a poll. Neither is the fundamental policy of the Wikimedia Foundation, insofar as that is set down in its corporate charter and cannot easily be changed. Rather than seeking to challenge, on procedural grounds, how those policies became policies, perhaps you should instead seek to find substantial grounds why they should not be policy. On Wikipedia, challenges to policy or practice based on procedural grounds is called "wikilawyering" and is generally frowned upon. Kelly Martin (talk) 04:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I am questioning how this policy was made, as per Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. According to what you wrote, it appears it was made (maybe) based on a single converstaion with Jimbo.Travb 05:08, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
In other words, you are wikilawyering. I would advise you to desist from such practices, as they only serve to annoy people and make them not like you. However, if you wish to determine which alternative of those listed in that amusing little page, it's most likely the second, with a smattering of the third. I've been doing copyright management issues on Wikipedia for nearly a year now, and that combined with years of study of copyright law (mainly United States law) and significant experience as an editor and administrator qualifies me to recognize when settled procedure and practice exists with sufficient general agreement so as to allow the codification of the same. The fact that it has stood as codified policy for four months without substantial objection should tell you something. Kelly Martin (talk) 05:22, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Why do you have such disdain for me asking you a question about how this wikipedia page become policy? I have been nothing but civil to you. I don't understand. I am not quoting you out of context, I am only trying to understand wikipedia policy.
Attaching a phrase to my question "wikilawyering" does not answer the question. In my experience, clever labels for a person or action are usually stumbling blocks to understanding. I would appreciate if you refrain from such phrases in the future, because it only causes friction. I am sure we could both come up with several terms for our differing views, many of them maybe unflattering.
Is the "amusing page" you are refering to the Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines? If so, I am sorry but I don't understand your statment: "it's most likely the second, with a smattering of the third." What are you refering to? I am excited to learn how this page became policy, and I look forward to your response. In fact, I am interested in how all of these policies become policies, what is the procedure?
Although your resume is interesting, I am actually interested to know the process of how wikipages became policy. Since you have been with wikipedia for a long time, maybe you can explain this to me.
Wikipedia:How to create policy#How to propose a new policy is the page I meant to post, I don't see "conversation with Jimbo on the topic" there. I am honestly confused. Travb 05:43, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Policy is like sausage: nobody really wants to know what goes into making it. How this particular policy came to be is not really relevant, and I must admit I doubt your good faith in asking the question, since it is known to me that you disagree with this particular policy (as is evident from looking elsewhere on this page). The point is, it is generally accepted policy, and if you wish to challenge it you must seek to do so on its substance. I will not facilitate attempts to challenge it on procedural grounds, which (given your prior history on Wikipedia and your current behavior) seems to be the most likely motivation behind your inquiry at this time. Kelly Martin (talk) 13:56, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, despite your doubt of my good faith, I still believe that you are pursing this with good faith. Despite your clever analogy, "Policy is like sausage: nobody really wants to know what goes into making it." I will ask you a third time how this suggestion became policy.
I doubt your good faith in asking the question, since it is known to me that you disagree with this particular policy (as is evident from looking elsewhere on this page).
Correct me if I am wrong, but good faith is not attached to the agreement or disagreement of current wikipedia policy.
Good faith instead is assuming that a person acted in the best interest of wikipedia, and that they have your personal best interest in mind. If this is in fact the definition of good faith, then I most definatly am asking you in good faith. I believe that you do have the best interest of wikipedia in mind, and that you do have my best interest in mind in protecting wikipedia.
With all due respect, I feel that a minority administrators, with no legal background, are enforcing their view of fair use on others. I do not include you in this list. Again, I feel you have wikipedia's best interest in mind. What you may feel is in wikipedia's best interst, may differ from what I feel is in wikipedia's best interest, but I do not doubt your good faith.
I sent you this email as a feeler only. One of many ways to clarify wikipedia policy. Unless you can demonstrate otherwise, it appears that you and Jimbo (assuming good faith) decided that the fair use policy was policy, without any of the regular procedures to make a policy a policy. Assuming good faith, I am assuming that your discussion to Jimbo did happen.
I did assume good faith with another user and copyright, and that user, as I learned this week, abused the authority he was given, and ignored Jimbo's full instructions, causing a major firestorm of controversy, and a RfC.
Assuming good faith, I assume that you did in fact talk to Jimbo, and that Jimbo did direct you to make this policy.
I could ask Jimbo myself to clarify current wikipedia policy, or it would be great if you could provide me with the conversation. I find the most transparent policy is always the best and that many of the problems that we have had with copyright violations could have been avoided with a transparent policy.
Again: I sent you this email as a feeler only. One of many ways to clarify wikipedia policy. Your message on my wikipage forced my hand. This is one avenue of many which I am pursuing, or may not pursue.
I may disagree with your definition of copyright, as you may disagree with mine, but that does not mean that we can reach a consensus, nor does it mean that we can come to an agreement on what wikipolicy should be. We both have the best interest of wikipedia in mind. Thank you for assuming good faith.
The point is, it is generally accepted policy, and if you wish to challenge it you must seek to do so on its substance'
I need to understand how it became policy and why it became policy. In otherwords, I need to know what the "substance" is. Right now I am simply studying the current policy from you, because you seem very intellegent and very involved with wikipedia's inner workings. I may be satisfied completly with the answer you give me. Again, if you teach me how this suggestion became policy, I may be satisfied with the answer you give me, and realize that the current policy is in wikipedias best interst too.
Again: Despite your clever analogy, "Policy is like sausage: nobody really wants to know what goes into making it." I will ask you a third time how this suggestion became policy.
Thanks for your time and your continued work on wikipedia.
Signed: Travb 15:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Given that I am a major proponent of the current policies regarding the use of unlicensed media within Wikipedia, and that you have already stated that you are "building a case against them", I see no reason why I should treat further with you on the topic at all. You see, normally on Wikipedia we prefer a collaborative process toward such matters, but you seem fixated on using an adversarial one. That's your choice, but I see no interest in assisting you in preparing what is bound to be a disruption in Wikipedia.
Your suggestion that providing you with the procedural history of the current policy will somehow help you to understand its substance seems rather questionable to me. The policy is pretty clear and I believe the discussion around it provides a pretty clear rationale why it is how it is. The problems we have with the policy is not that it's unclear or unsupported, but simply that it is both (a) more restrictive that strictly required by US law and (b) bothersome to lazy people. The first objection is already answered in the supporting discussion to the policy, if I am not mistaken, and the second is not reasonable grounds to disregard policy which enjoys substantial community support. Now, what exactly is your objection to our unlicensed media use policy? Perhaps I can help explain how our policy is better than whatever you have in mind. Kelly Martin (talk) 00:19, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changes to Fair use

Changes to Wikipedia:Fair use criteria with out a required consensus* (emphasized text):

Fair use images should only be used in the article namespace. Used outside article space, they are often enough not covered under the fair use doctrine. Added by 11 January 2006

Required consensus:

"A policy is similar to a guideline, only more official and less likely to have exceptions. As with guidelines, amendments should generally be discussed on their talk pages, but are sometimes forked out if large in scope. One should not generally edit policy without seeking consensus first." [6]
Signed:Travb 03:27, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:List of policies

Added 27 January 2006

The cases in which you can declare an image "fair use" are quite narrow. You must specify the exact use of the image, and only use the image in that one context.[7]

Signed: Travb 03:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright

No, I don't want to join your campaign. First, I think that it is very sensible for Wikipedia to abide by copyright law. Second, I think that campaigns against other editors are a very bad idea and if you pursue it, you will rightly be banned from Wikipedia. Third, I think Ta bu is a solid editor, who I generally agree with and think acts in good faith, calling it as he sees it, so that if I disagree with him, I do so without acrimony. Grace Note 05:47, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I have to asy i partly agree with you are saying. As i see it is apparent that thses anons and editors do not want to take under consideration copyright law in the first place and have diecided to disregard the fair use def in favor of theier onw image policy, which they say is fair use. Apparenlty wikipedia should just move foraward and state if an image is not alowed under an apprpate cc, gdfl, or free licens then it shuld not be used, and that all images should be reomved, rather then their selctive interpertation. What is even mor dissapointing is that their rolling over is not helping the cause of fair use either, only to restrict the proper use of image even further. The most arises in the fact that users that have little or no background are able to make ploicy and approve of policy as their is rarely an announcment to the communty as a whole that their is a debate on any policy. Also the fact that wikipead policy is poorly written, full of loopholes, badly enforced, and frequelny contradicts it's self, i even see that they cited part of ther policy above that contradicts it's self. Instead of allowing the users to define their own policy, which has yet to be proven a good thing, maybe jimmy should stop traveling on the money we donte to him and either seek out real lagal council that will writ up real policy. But i dount that will happen. I dont know what you know about fair use, but you might what to check out these sites that i examine in my dealings [8], [9], [10], [11] (note one of the things that this site talks about is alo not applied here "necessary to analyze each scenario on a case-by-case basis", [12], [13], [14], and [15]. You also might want to send a line to the EFF, they might be intrested in the dealings concering this. Anyway, good luck, anf fight the good fight. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 06:33, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I say this as an ally, and not to be an ass, but you may want to do spell check. I type often fast, and make a lot of spelling errors too. I find that spelling nazis love to point out these spelling errors, as if this somehow lessens the impact and underlying logic of my message. spelling errors = irrational person. stupid logic, but often we are not talking about rational people.
As I was telling another user yesterday, and as I have stated before, that wikipedia is faced with the difficult position of interpreting fair use law which is meant to ambigous and vague. If I recall my reading on this, the legislators of the law wanted to make fair use vague, to not restrict its use. The problem is that this causes a lot of overbearing wikipedians to interpret fair use their own way: in the stricktest possible way imaginable--in otherwords, no or little fair use. Thank you for the sites, I need to prepare for summer school, so I may be absent more than I was yesterday, but I will look at your sites. I already contacted an organization like http://www.eff.org/ EFF, (it may have been EFF I have to check my email) and they stated "punted the ball" they were not interested in helping me, and so they recommended another organization. I was flustered at that point, as I often get when arguing this issue because I am up against some of the most powerful wikipedians on wikipedia, and I had temporarily given up the fair use battle.
I am familar with: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/index.html, and have sited it often in my battles. I will look at the wealth of information. I already have a wikisite about fair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Travb/Fair_use, which I plan to expand and greatly develop once I am unbooted.
I think that we need to contact a lawyer from one of these organizations that would be willing to work pro bono on this, as a hobby of sorts. I doubt this would happen, because of the legal consequences of this, but we can sure try. You seem to have a lot of legal resources, would you like to contact some of those organizations you mentioned? I will do the same as my schedule permits in the next couple of days.Travb 13:26, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Since you didn't respond to my email...

Are you unblocked? I didn't see anything in the logs. Syrthiss 16:30, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Not a prob. Syrthiss 17:41, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hey there

I didn't hear back from you through email and I've recently seen your posting in a number of places. I would appreciate it if you'd correct the false statements you're making about me. I have never blocked you as you can see in your block log here. Secondly, I did not "forgive" anyone for a 3RR violation as many people have tried fruitlessly to explain to you. Third, I did, in fact, respond to your email at the earliest time available. I don't know whether you felt I should be responding that early in the morning or simply didn't like my response, but either way, claiming I did not respond is certainly false at this point.

I never said that you blocked me. I said admin C did. You are admin B. Please reread the table, it is confusing at times, and I attempt to keep admin A admin B admin C and admin D seperate.
Please re-read the table, you used Admin B.
Secondly, I did not "forgive" anyone for a 3RR violation as many people have tried fruitlessly to explain to you.
What word would you like to use instead: "dismissed"? What is a correct verb which we both could agree on.Travb 19:02, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Neither actually, the 3RR violation was noted, but because no disruption was occuring at the time I reviewed it, the editor wasn't blocked. Happens all the time.
claiming I did not respond is certainly false at this point You did not respond. I did not accuse you of ignoring my email, I only stated that you did not respond. I have not gotten your email yet, so I will check me email.Travb 19:02, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
UPDATE: Hi, I got your email. It was in the bulk mail folder. I dont know why. Thanks for the email.Travb 19:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Glad you found it; my junk email filter does bizarre things like that at times - I think Wikipedia email as the subject often triggers it.

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. I'm sorry that you don't understand why disruptions, like the ones you're causing, are blockable offenses. It does appear, however, that your apology was less than sincere. I certainly hope you decide to take a breather and try to work with the community, instead of against it. You'd be surprised how many rational and thoughtful people you can find if you give it a chance. .:.Jareth.:. babelfish 18:39, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you don't understand why disruptions, like the ones you're causing, are blockable offenses. Unless you are an admin. You forgot that part, which answers your question.
No actually, disruptions in any form are blockable. Trying to force your opinion regardless of community feeling is a disruption; admins have been de-sysop'd for behavior like this before.
It does appear, however, that your apology was less than sincere.
Thanks, please have good faith. My apology is insincere but other admins apologies are sincere? That makes sense to me. That is the fundamental problem when admins can use their best judgement to enforce rules: unevenly enforced rules and possibly favoritism.
We assume good faith until all evidence points to the contrary. The admin agreed his behavior was incorrect, fixed the problem, apologized and did not continue the behavior. You do not agree your behavior was a problem, have not attempted a resolution, and continue to escalate the issue. See the difference?
Did you recieve and read my e-mail? If so, why didn't you respond?
Have a cup of tea, or a hot bath and come back feeling refreshed; as you said, its the internet and just not worth getting so worked up over. Travb 18:51, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, its white tea with pear actually. I appreciate your concern, but I'm highly relaxed and enjoying my day off actually. .:.Jareth.:. babelfish 20:07, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Please see the explanation on the board as to why comments were moved. Its mostly about convention here, but there's a reason for doing so as the conversation was becoming confusing. They've actually even come up with a word for it here; its called refactoring. Regardless, since its causing further problems, I'll ask Phil to stop. .:.Jareth.:. babelfish 20:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I believe the majority of the problem is that you have removed others comments every time you've attempted to move your comments back, and, in making some of your comments have removed others comments or signatures. Phil is attempting to restore everyone's comments and factor the comments according to convention. Please stop removing comments made by others as this can be considered vandalism; in light of you recent behavior, this is likely to be very quickly considered disruption and I'd hate to see you get blocked again. .:.Jareth.:. babelfish 20:20, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Damn, if I was an admin, I could simply apologize and get a free pass. Once again, Phil starts the disuprtive abuse, and you defend him. No suprise there. Travb 21:19, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Please respond on the admin page, I would rather have a equal treatment in one place, then a different attitude here then on the admin page (saying I am lying).Travb 21:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
You are lying or you didn't bother to correct you repeatedly incorrect assumptions before someone deleted the attack again; six of one, half dozen of another. Phil refactored your comments per the community accepted guidelines and restored comments that you were deleting, a fact which you seem to conveniently ignore. It seems this behavior is common, in both cases I've dealt with you, you ignore all facts presented to you and continue to claim admin abuse; you'll find this doesn't generally get you very far. Given that two cases where you "restored" your comments also deleted lines from within another person's post and these deleted lines were far from the comments you were moving its hard to imagine any other than a deliberate action on your part. I'm sorry you choose to ignore the counsel of the many people who've tried to reason with you; I'm not going to discuss things with you further. You've been advised many times what avenues of dispute resolution are available to you. I suggest you take them or stop harassing others. .:.Jareth.:. babelfish 21:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Why do I have to continue to remind the admins about good faith? Please, stop calling me a liar because I disagree with you. WHO BEGAN TO MOVE AROUND MY COMMENTS? WHO BEGAN THE REVERT WAR? I reverted his changes, he has been known to delete comments of mine in the past. See 3RR#User:Philwelch. In addition, as I mentioned to Phil, it is not exactly the wisest thing to do, to move around a person's comments in the middle of a heated debate. I am arguing with a person who told someone that: "Who the fuck asked you to come to my talk page? I really like being lectured by clueless newbies. Go find yourself a better hobby" Etc. Do I really need to go through the laundry list? Despite his history you continue to forgive his un-admin behavior.
If you want an apology, here is an apology: I am sorry for assuming that Phil was starting another revert war. I am sorry if I reverted back to my comments, deleting his comments and Kellys. I am sorry for my ignorance of refactoring, I had been severely chastized before for doing the same thing by another admin, and I mistakely thought that this was incorrect and bad policy. As I mentioned to Phil, which he (typically) ignored: I had already cut and pasted all of the comments and I was planning on restoring them to the page. CHECK THE ADMIN HISTORY. Your "facts" are a set of conclusions based on your own bias, selective in nature. You are not an impartial observer here, so quit prentending to be one.
I have now apologized twice for my own mistakes. In one case I added a huge banner to the top of my infamous table. I have yet to hear one apology from you. Instead I hear self-righteous condemnation, with selective manipulation of facts, and an un-admin attitude, continually calling me a liar, with a complete lack of good faith.
Any more comments, please direct them to the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, and stop "harrasing" me here. I do not want to talk to you here any longer. Any more comments you make, will be moved to the Admin board. I would just love to get in a 3RR with you, and report you too. The irony would be sweet.Travb 16:02, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] You have mail

I just sent you e-mail explaining that I don't necessarily see my e-mail just because I'm online. I've also unprotected your talk page, because your block has expired and it's inappropriate for the talk page of a non-blocked user to be protected. I'm assuming good faith that you won't use your talk page (or any other page) for angry rants any more. Angr (tc) 18:42, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Well check the admin board. You need to catch up to current events. I would like to be the first one to warn you.Travb 18:49, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Don't fight

Wikipedia is not a battleground. Wanting to get others to violate 3RR is a bad thing. You may have legitimate points, but you're actually hurting your case with combative behavior. Calm down, and remember- this is an encyclopedia, not a forum. Friday (talk) 16:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I responded here. Thanks for your comments.Travb 16:47, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Full response

I've offered a full response finally at you gun-barrel page, don't know if you care. CJK 22:10, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hex1

I'm sorry, Travb but the author can quite frankly do whatever he wants with the rights, it is irrelevant as the second he pressed the Save page button he licenced it under by-nc-sa 2.0. I am not picking on you, I am doing my best to try help you understand, I'm not a "copyright cop", neither am I an administrator. If the licence is deemed as a derivative work, therefore illegal then the use on users' is not on. If it is a parody - therefore they themselves are fair-using it, then it's not on either (in both cases the copyright is Wikimedia's), and if it is in-fact an original work then it's licenced under the by-nc-sa 2.0, a licence we can-not use. I am going to remove the logo from my talk, adding it and gloating when the discussion is far from over is very premature. PS: I'm OK with archiving the warnings, as long you link the archive visibly from your talk. PS2: If he re-licenced the images the situation would be different, but I'm not sure how and if he can do that based on US law. +Hexagon1 (talk) 01:16, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cheers

Thanks for your work on and interest in Wikipedia... don't let these arguments about fair use get you down. +sj + 14:48, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Answer

Answer to question possed to Mr. Trey Stone:

If you guessed Osama Bin Ladin and William Blum, you are wrong.

In this case I am talking about Emilio Aguinaldo, leader of the Philippine independence movement when the US invaded the Philippines and began the Philippine-American War. Aguinaldo publically supported the Democratic Presidental canidate William Jennings Bryan during the United States presidential election, 1900 war. He was roundly criticized by US conservatives for this support.

Signed:Travb (talk) 00:10, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] If anyone knows

If anyone knows, friend or foe alike, how I can make my tables on the side reamin on the right side, and allow me to wrap the text around it, please let me know or make the changes. Thanks in advance.Travb (talk) 04:58, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

User talk:Travb/Suing phone companies for handing over phone records

User:Travb/Why Gun-Barrel Democracy Doesn't Work

User:Travb/Fair use Please see the User talk:Travb/Fair use talk page for how to help.

This user finds copyright paranoia disruptive.


Travb says, "Just say 'No' to Paternal Copyright vigilantes who delete content prematurely."


This image was one of
thousands of deleted images because of a Paternal Copyright vigilante.
vig•i•lan•te (n)
One who takes or advocates the taking of law enforcement into one's own hands.

Wikipedia:

Vigilantism is...vilified when it gives way to criminal behavior on the part of the vigilante.


How I feel when dealing with
Copyright vigilantes:
AAAAAAAAA!

Copywrong

Copy protection

Copyright Act
See if you get this joke...


1 * 2 * 3 * 4

I have decided that I won't post any more copyvios and that I won't engage in fair use activism.

I believe wikipedia is overly conservative on its fair use policy. My efforts were never to harm the wiki, I love wikipedia and find it the best website on the internet. My misguided efforts were just to bring policies in line with fair use laws, which are very confusing even for federal appellate courts to decide. Fair use laws are meant to be vague in the first place, and appear, on their face, to contradict GNU Free Documentation License. Again, I will not argue fair use again. Please see this link about my good intentions.

For those who I offended this past month, I am sorry. My greatest joy comes from debating ideas, but sometimes I take these debates too far.

I want to focus completly on editing articles such as Predictions of Soviet collapse, and will avoid fair use policy. Anyone who wishes can check my edits to make sure that they conform to current wikipedia fair use guidelines here. If they do not, I would be happy to rewrite them to conform to wikipedia policy. I want the best for wikipedia.

As my edits below show, I am a serious editor who has contributed a lot of work to wikipedia. I would like to continue to do this.

I love wikipedia and fully subscribe to Jimbo Wales vision of Wikipedia, and would like to continue be a small part of this vision:

"Wikipedia goal is to create a free, democratic, reliable encyclopedia—actually, the largest encyclopedia in history, in terms of both breadth and depth. This is an ambitious goal, and will probably take many years to achieve!"[16]

"Finally, we should never forget as a community that we are the vanguard of a knowledge revolution that will transform the world. We are the leading edge innovators and leaders of what is becoming a global movement to free knowledge from proprietary constraints. 100 years from now, the idea of a proprietary textbook or encyclopedia will sound as quaint and remote as we now think of the use of leeches in medical science." -[17]

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004[18]

"Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal." -[19]

[edit] When to archive

Why are you archiving things that happened a few seconds ago. You can archive old issues but don't archive current ones until they are settled. Also remove the uncivil link to ed on this page. it just takes away from your goal. Also use The preview button when editing. you don't need an edit a second. are you trying to bump old edits off the history page?--E-Bod 05:13, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Calling ed a Vigilante will not convince him your are right.--E-Bod 05:16, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I am not trying to convince an ideologue that I am right. As I think (?) Stalin argued, an ideology can not be reasoned with, he can only be shot. I am simply voicing my opinion about how misguided he is and how he is pathetically abusing the little authority he has. I am trying to raise awareness of his, and TSBY's abuse.
As I quoted to him on his talk page:
“All men who hold position do not abuse its privileges, and the man who serves...humbly and faithfully never will, for the moment he yielded to the temptation so to do, that moment would he cease to serve [his fellow wikipedians]; but there are many, alas! who sadly misuse the functions of their office, and prostitute every power and privilege to the gratification of self and the injury and embarrassment of their fellow men. It is dangerous to put some men into power. They swell up and become so distended with the ideas of their greatness and importance, that we are forcibly reminded of so many inflated toy balloons, which the slightest prick of a pin would burst and ruin forever. A very small office and a very little authority is sufficient to intoxicate some men and render them entirely unfit for duty.”
(removed personal attack) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ed_g2s (talkcontribs).
In addition, there is an unwritten rule on the internet that you never, ever apologize for a mistake and never, ever admit you are wrong. removed personal attack. Just for the record, I hate this unwritten rule and apologize and write mea culpas fairly often.
Signed:Travb (talk) 06:02, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Please refrain from voicing your personal opinion of another user as these are often considered personal attacks. ed g2stalk 13:09, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Non-commercial only and By Permission Only Images to be deleted

This post by Jimbo has nothing to do with what Ed is doing. This is talking about correctly labeling Non-commercial_use_only_images and Images_used_with_permission. If you are going to defend Ed, get a e-mail from the benevolent dictator on point.

I argue that like TSBY, Ed is taking authority which he does not have, or abusing the little authority he has been given, and imposing his misguided & deterimental view on wikipedia.

I am curious E-Bod where do you stand on the Time magazine fair use issue? Diplomats have their place in this world, to control the bewildering herd, but I hate how you never truly know where they stand, and can sometimes be deviously deceptive.

Just a couple of days ago an admin was trying to be a diplomat with me here, and on the admin board he was calling me a liar.Travb (talk) 06:12, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative

yonoframe can noframese this image as an alternative. noframe can even edit the image and add an orange circle to the bottom to make it more like the other logo while still being free. This way we may not have a great image but at least the FU Police won't bother us.

Image:User_browser_firefox.png was used as a Free alternative to Image:Firefox-logo.png for userspace. It may be a crummy logo and it may offend the people at FireFox to see their logo remased but at least the FU Police Will stop bothering you.

And as far as you question about my position. I am in favor of the FU police taking everything with a grain of salt. Their are no Absolutes in the world and if the organization explicitly states that they want us to use their image under certain conditions then we shouldn't add extra rules to regulate ourselves if nobody will benefit. You may be interested in reading Image_talk:User_browser_firefox.png--E-Bod 23:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Have an Opinon

I made Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use_criteria/Amendment#Removin_Fair_use_images_from_userspace

tell me what you think--E-Bod 23:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Response from Rc

Unfortunately this issue is becoming increasingly convoluted. While for the time being I absolutely support the use of my image on Wikipedia userpages, I'm reluctant to give up all rights to it (as Wikipedia apparently demands, which I think is rather unreasonable under the circumstances) for obvious reasons.

The problem is that it's a matter of Wikipedia policy, not legality necessarily - if it was the latter I'm sure people could put up a good fight, but there's no guarantee at all that Wikipedia's separate policy will be bent or changed. What I mean is that, even without any input from me, I think people could make a good argument justifying putting the Uncyc logo on their userpages under fair use; but it seems WP's policies deny that, which undercuts copyright law proper. That said, I certainly hope the recent backlash against the removal of images prompts people to reconsider WP's usage guidelines. Perhaps there's hope for the potato (its name is Sophia, by the way) yet.

I have to note/warn however that there are considerations - which I didn't know about until after this whole issue flared up - that may change the matter completely in the future and which I can't really talk about now (yeah, I hate it when people say that too). --Rcmurphy 18:31, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I have been running around as of late, no time for wikipedia, but I will respond to you fully later--thanks for the reponse and giving me permission to use sophia on my page.Travb (talk) 23:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I found a userBox you might like

I Just found this userbox and i though you might like it

{{User:Mistress Selina Kyle/User Copyright}}

Template:User_copyright

It called it copyright paranoia instead of Paternal Copyright vigilantes and links to a more appropriate article. I hope you like it. I haven't gotten a response from Jimbo yet but he has edited his talk page since and one user commented that The quote from Jimbo is irrelevant to the image I was talking about. I am still awaiting a response form Jimbo. I have looked over some of Jimbo's records and he tends to use his powers to let issues cool down.--E-Bod 00:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

You rock man, you are the secret weapon in my fight against "copyright paranoia", the shock AND the awe, the WMD. Thanks. I haven't spent much time online, but when I can and do, I will address all of the issues and wonderful work you have done.
I would like to find a lawyer who can do some pro-bono work. I am a 3L now (3rd year law student) and will have an international copyright/intellectual property (IP) class next semster and shall be taking the bar next summer. So, although my understanding of IP rights is all self-taught, soon I will have substantive courses on the matter.
I see wikipedia the way Jimbo states he does--as a tool in the forefront for the freeing of all information of mankind. I am happy to be a very, very small part of this process.
Anyway, I need to go do some work on the other computer.Travb (talk) 05:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your edits to WP:FUC

I see you've come through with your threat to make a procedural objection to the policy status of WP:FUC. I warned you that such an attempt would be unsuccessful. You are treading a very dangerous path, and if you continue it it is quite likely that you will find yourself banned from Wikipedia. Kelly Martin (talk) 12:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Please refrain from threating me. You have been uncivil to me from the very beginning. Questioning the unilateral way you make policy will not get me banned. I asked you three times to back up how this page became policy. [20] You ignored me with clever analogies about sausages. Don't ever threaten me again. Travb (talk) 12:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Wow. That was a big giant step toward being banned. Your methods leave a great deal to be desired, if your goal is to change Wikipedia's unlicensed media policy. Just what are your intentions at this point? Your behavior leaves me perplexed. Kelly Martin (talk) 12:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Again, I have been civil to you from the beginning. You have not. Then when I directly questions 'your authority, you threaten to ban me. I have put up with your uncivil behavior from the beginning, and not said a thing, but when you begin to threat me, I am sorry but I got flustered.
I find it incredibly interesting that 5 to 10 minutes after talking to you, I get a message about being civil and about my signature. Am I supposed to be impressed? Or will you convince me this is just all coincidence?
You spoke a lot about consensus and how wikipedia is built on consensus [21], but yet there was no consensus on how the current fair use went from being a guideline to a policy.
Now that I have your attention: I will ask you a fourth time how this suggestion became policy.
Signed: Travb (talk) 12:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not threatening to ban you. I am warning you that the inevitable consequences of your current course of conduct includes being banned. As a former Arbitrator, I suspect I have a good idea of what sort of behaviours tend to lead to being banned. Since I am not currently an Arbitrator, I lack the authority to ban you, although I would probably have a great deal of informal influence on any decision to ban you, should the question actually arise.
As per my previous comments on the matter, I decline to treat with you on this matter; you are clearly adversarial to a policy which I believe to be Wikipedia's best interest, and as I previously stated, I will not assist you in perpetuating a disruption on Wikipedia. If you wish to discuss any substantive objections you have with the current policy, I will be glad to discuss them; however, you should by now realize that WP:FUC is now settled policy, and that attempts to unseat it as such grounded in procedural maneuvering will inevitably fail. Kelly Martin (talk) 13:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Fifth time: How this suggestion became policy?
I have been in two very nasty disputes with two people who interpret fair use rather strictly, in both cases neither of them had any consensus nor any clear mandate from Jimbo.
Added to your lexicon of clever sayings about saugages, I suggest: wikivigilantism. Where one person decides to make a certain policy decision with no clear consensus or no direction from Jimbo. When this person is questioned about how this policy decision came about, they offer nothing of any substance.
In all three of these cases, youself and the two others, if the person would have simply gotten a clear mandate from Jimbo or a consensus, most wikipedians, including myself, would have followed.
When you write: attempts to unseat it as such grounded in procedural maneuvering will inevitably fail I have no illusions that I will be hounded for my decision to de-policy the fair use criteria, and that it will meet with near universal disdain. Those who interpret copyright and fair use strictly are much better organized (there are bigger societal factors, but I will not address them here). I still hold out hope that by my actions, more people will realize that those who interpret fair use law are as ignorant of the law as the rest of us. I hold out the smallest hope, a mere glimmer of hope that miraculously my procedural questioning will succeed.
I have yet to meet a copyright lawyer on wikipedia. All I have met are laypeople, like us, who interpret fair use in a way that is completly inconsistent. And may I please remind you:
There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general rules and varying court decisions. That's because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit the definition of fair use. They wanted it--like free speech--to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation. --What Is Fair Use? Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources [22]
As I suggested on another fair use page, I suggest that wikipedia stop calling their interpretation of fair use, fair use, and get rid of the word: instead wikipedia can change the term to wikipedia policy.
Fifth time: How this suggestion became policy?
Signed:Travb (talk) 13:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Finally! A substantive objection! You have made this process so much more difficult than it needed to be. As it happens, I agree with you: the policy is badly named. I have long objected to the use of the term "fair use" to refer to media whose use on Wikipedia is permitted only under this policy. My personal preference is "unlicensed media" and the policy should, in my opinion, be called the "unlicensed media use policy". (Media used on Wikipedia under a claim that the use falls within the ambit of § 107's exclusion on the exclusive rights of the copyright owner are not licensed.) It is my belief that the term leads people, such as yourself, to incorrectly conclude that the policy is intended to be an interpretation of § 107; it is not and never has been. However, I have not yet been successful in building consensus for that change, although I have made substantial progress in doing so, and I think consensus for that change will probably form within the next six months. Ironically, your actions may have made it more difficult for that change to take place.
Wikipedia's "fair use" policy is not intended to mirror the law exactly. Rather, it is the result of the conflict of two core principles: first, that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and, second, that Wikipedia content should be broadly reusable. Wikipedia strongly prefers to avoid the use of media which are not licensed to all comers under terms which permit broad reuse, such as the GFDL. The use of media not licensed in this manner, and especially of unlicensed media, makes Wikipedia content nonreusable. A "fair use" claim that works for Wikipedia may not work for someone reusing our content. On the other hand, sometimes "fair use" content is required to fulfill our core mission of creating a quality encyclopedia. The "fair use" policy strikes what the community feels is an acceptable balance between these two core principles. Further, because of our strong preference toward freely licensed content, we choose to interpret § 107 narrowly.
Now, it seems to me that you have substantially alienated a potential ally, and a very powerful one at that. Perhaps you need to reflect on your methods, as they have been remarkably ineffective. Instead of helping to resolve what you feel is a problem, you have instead put yourself in the position where you are broadly disdained by the community and unlikely to be able to have any influence at all. I hope you take something away from this incident, since if you do not you will certainly not make a good attorney.
Finally, Wikipedia does have attorneys assisting us in developing these policies; we have both US and European attorneys with copyright experience assisting us. It is quite true that there are a great many people on Wikipedia who do not understand copyright law, yet seem to feel that they do. This is an area of great frustration for those of us who do. However, they are not nearly so bad as those who do understand copyright law, yet apply it inappropriately to the circumstances because they are ignorant of Wikipedia's core principles.
With regards, Kelly Martin (talk) 14:22, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Now, it seems to me that you have substantially alienated a potential ally, and a very powerful one at that.
I am sorry, but I do not see you as an ally, nor do you see me as an ally. And excuse me, but this stamtent makes you seem rather arogant, along with your continued belittling of me. You seem intoxicated by the little bit of power you have been given here on wikipedia.
I have found in life that those who brag the most about their power, usually have the least power. They are also the most insecure.
Seventh time: How has this suggestion became policy? Answer my question and you can go back to exerting your "power" on others. Travb (talk) 14:30, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
It is certainly true that neither of us sees the other as an ally. That is the result of your approach to attempting to alter policy. Had you taken a different, more collaborative approach, the outcome may have been different. However, your adversarial, combative style has burned too many bridges to make anyone want to treat with you. You have made your bed; you must now lie in it. Kelly Martin (talk) 15:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Eighth time: How has this suggestion became policy? signed:Travb (talk) 15:13, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


Hee hee, this is fun to watch!--BradPatrick 15:56, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Careful what you say, Kelly is powerful. Travb (talk) 15:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Civility

Please refrain from making personal attacks like the one above. They accomplish nothing and indeed tend to make things worse. Thanks, Mackensen (talk) 12:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] your .sig

G'day Trav,

I see you've worked out how to include images in signatures. Good show. A lot of us had a tendency to add purdy pictures to our sigs while newbies (mine was a defaced Federation Flag); I suppose it's a natural stage of growing as a Wikipedian, or something. You may have noticed that not many old-timers have them, however: this is because, sooner or later, someone pops up on their talkpage to explain that using images in sigs is obnoxious and (because of the extra server load; much like using templates) selfish.

So, um. Hi. That "someone" is me, this time around. How would you like me to phrase my request? fuddlemark (befuddle me!) 13:01, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Trav. fuddlemark (befuddle me!) 15:03, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AmiDaniel

Possibly. But that requires a man and I don't use that off-ramp if you know what I mean. Noles1984 13:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

LOL Travb (talk) 15:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cop Userbox

You wrote: This is what I love about wikipedia, everyone can tweak someone else's great idea. Here is my newer version of your wikicop: Travb says, "Just say 'No' to Paternal Copyright vigilantes who delete content prematurely." Click the link. Funny

Most excellent tweaking. I made mine in a hurry cause I was pissed. I'm real sure that power goes to Adms' heads... that they become delighted with busting people's work. They're way to picky with copyright. It has to be beyond exact or they kick it. --Chuck, 50, F***ed up, and morally bankrupt Noles1984 13:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for compliment.
You sound marginalized, even more marginalized than me. That is not good for your cause. As I wrote here:
Attacks make me feel even more under seige, and even more margianized. As a result, I become even more radical, and even more margianalized. It is a vicious circle.
I am arguing with some one about policy right now. I will watch your page, and you are welcome to watch mine. We need to get organized, like the law and order types are now. If you need any help in a debate or with an issue, let me know.
The large majority of the people here don't care about copyright one way or another.
Then there are the two vocal opponents on either side. Our oponnents are more vocal,organized and dedicated to pushing their policies. We need to start writing policy too, and questioning ammendments to current policy. There is a small group of people who support us. Maybe we could start gathering at one wikipolicy page, or create our own user page. My last user page was speedily deleted because it was too controversial. The next one needs to be toned down immensely. What do you think?
Signed:Travb (talk) 14:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Referenced material"?

Hi. I suggest that if you were adding well-referenced content to the actual encyclopedia, I wouldn't be reverting any of your edits. But you're using policy and project pages as some kind of soapbox for your beliefs about intellectual property. I still have some belief that you could raise the issues that concern you in a way that could lead to fruitful discussion; but your behaviour over the past couple of weeks when it comes to this stuff just makes it harder for experienced editors to take your message seriously. Wikipedia isn't going to drop out of the Free culture movement because you edited out a policy tag from a policy page. Jkelly 15:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Response on your user talk page.Travb (talk) 15:31, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia isn't going to drop out of the Free culture movement because you edited out a policy tag from a policy page.
Russians say a pessimist is an informed optomist. I have no delusions about anything that I do, please don't treat me like I am some starry eyed 18 year old, fresh out of high school.Travb (talk) 15:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Apologies if I was overly brusque, and especially for anything that could be understood as condescension. I get the impression that you're fundamentally opposed to Wikipedia being as freely-licensed and reusable as possible. It's not clear to me how to have a conversation about that without making the suggestion that this is misguided. Jkelly 17:15, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Givent this edit of yours, I am no longer so comfortable offering the above apology, and suspect that I have been overly generous in assuming any kind of good faith on your part. Jkelly 17:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About the above

Man, I don't know what to say. You're out on the frontlines on this. Currently I'm trying to finish article(s) before the cops deem them abandoned or come up with some other excuse to remove them. I also need to upload a photo from a book and see how they pounce on that. I'll follow what's going on here with great interest. Noles1984 19:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I am working with some other wikipedians. Please bookmark User:Travb/Fair use for the talk page. I would like to get some rough consensus from like minded other wikipedians on how to proceed. It would be nice if someone takes a real leadership role on all of this, because I am a poor leader. Travb (talk) 22:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blocked

You have been blocked for continued insertion of copyrighted material into Wikipedia after you were caught doing it and after you promised you'd never do it again. This is very serious business and we simply can't have a legal liability of this magnitude around. More info will be posted on WP:AN as soon as we finish assembling our case, complete with diffs of the copyvio material you inserted and the websites you stole it from. --Cyde↔Weys 02:38, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Can't say that I'm surprised, this person has been nothing but hostile, and blatantly unfit for the wikipedia community--Petral 02:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
User:Cyde What promise? I never made any promise. What copyrighted material? Obviously if you had some present dispute, which you do not, you would post this, instead obviously you are fishing for evidence to use against me.
I was booted for 24 hours in October 2005 when i was a new user[block log], for making a point about fair use. I have had absolutly no complaints about my edits since then, and have not been booted since then.
I have uploaded few images in the past three months, except for some on Colombia which I never attached to a page, and all have which been deleted by bots.
The only disagreements I had about copyright since the one in October 2005 have been two:
  1. one was with User:Ed g2s (dozens of other users should be booted along with me for disagreeing with ed, and I finally agreed to remove the image.) and
  2. one was with TSBY about Time magazine covers, in which TSBY won, and there was no reversion war at all.
What this really comes down to is that I dared to question User:Kelly_Martin and I made fun of her for being "powerful" and "arrogrant" after she threatened to boot me for questioning how she unilaterally decided what was policy. See the full long discussion above.[23] [24]
You are creating the evidence to fit the crime, because I had the audacity to questions User:Kelly_Martin. Is there any precedent to what you are doing? No arbitration, not even a warning for god sakes. And you boot me indefenitly. The decision has already been made by admins, without allowing me to defend myself and the accusations against me.
02:35, 26 May 2006 Cyde blocked "Travb (contribs)" with an expiry time of indefinite (Continual and large-scale posting of copyrighted material) [See block log]
You use the word "we" who is behind this boot? 7 months since I had any problems before.Travb (talk) 02:52, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, the User:Petral sockpuppet is back I see, going to start vandalizing and reverting what I write here too? Anyone have any doubts this guy is a sockpuppet, look at his user history, and his edit history, which has been completly against me, this sockpuppet was created to delete two of my new pages, and has not edited since then. During the argument, he deleted my entries on 3RR and several admin pages, as his talk page shows. Some wikipedian has used this user account to attack me repeatedly. Travb (talk) 05:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
It would appear that Cyde was incorrect on one point: I can find no evidence that TravB promised to discontinue recklessly endangering our project. In fact, Travb claims that Wikipedia should act as some kind of martyr in a holy goal to abolish copyright[25]. He seems completely unwilling to recognize that our goal is not to liberate the knowledge of the world by illegal actions, but rather by making proprietary content obsolete. We made a substantial mistake in ever allowing him to continue editing as demonstrated by his continued overt copyright violations. Thus far I've only checked a tiny fraction of his edits. We have much work to do undoing the damage done here. --Gmaxwell 17:46, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reversions by User:Gmaxwell

User:Gmaxwell, please refrain from deleting the comments on my own talk page.

If your rationalizations do not stand up to a tiny bit of rigourous scrutinty, simply admit it.

Please don't break wikipedia rules, especially when you have gotten me booted for alleged breaking of wikipedia rules. This is arguably hypocritical. Please see 3RR. Travb (talk) 22:08, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Let me make this crystal clear to you. You are only being allowed to continue to edit this page to explain how we were mistaken. Not to troll. If you continue to post pages of text rather than responding to simple questions your edits will be reverted and this page will be protected. --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Smoke and mirrors

First of all, thank you User:Gmaxwell for admitting that user User:Cyde was completly wrong in stating this: You have been blocked for continued insertion of copyrighted material into Wikipedia...after you promised you'd never do it again.

There are two allegations which User:Cyde made:

  1. insertion of copyrighted material into Wikipedia after you were caught doing it.
  2. insertion of copyrighted material into Wikipedia....after you promised you'd never do it again.

Number two has been shown to be false, by your own admission. Number one will also be shown to be false too, but with a little more detail. I will go through each of my alleged copyright violations, each and everyone.

First let me address the emotional slander of User:Gmaxwell, sentence by sentence.

[edit] Witch hunt

In fact, Travb claims that Wikipedia should act as some kind of martyr in a holy goal to abolish copyright

These are your words not mine. The reality is completely different. I feel that untrained people such as yourself, who have no legal understanding whatsoever should not force there misconstrued paternal views of copyright on others, with the ridiculous claim that they are "protecting" Wikipedia. I have repeatedly argued that Wikipedia should follow the law of the United States of America. This means following copyright law, but also the fair use exception.

I love wikipedia and the last thing I would want is some frivolous law suit to close it down. I want what is best for wikipedia too. The problem is what you see as the best for wikipedia and what I see as the best for wikipedia is radically different. You believe conducting a witch hunt, going through hundreds of a persons edits, spanning over 8 months, and scrutinizing every single word, and deleting large portions of sourced and researched text is helping wikipedia. The reason that those six "obvious" copyright violations were so easy to spot was because I cited them, as per Wikipedia:Citing sources. (I will cover this more in depth later.)

Because I love wikipedia, I have consistently followed the rules and guidelines of wikipedia and attempted to stay within those strict guidelines. Yes, in the process I have made mistakes, and I have learned from those mistakes, and not repeated them again.

That is why I have remained completly off the radar since I was booted 8 months ago in October 2005 for adding copyrighted material, trying to prove a point. Only when I offended one of the powerful and arrogant, User:Kelly_Martin (See message above) and dare to question her unilateral policy decision, did the full wraith of the admins come down upon me.

You are not an attorney so stop pretending to be one. No one supports your outrageous view that copying articles from commercial information sources into wikipedia is 'fair use', especially when you copy the entire article and provide no attribution. I provided a diff link to substantiate my claim about your behavior, you may disagree with my analysis if you like, but it would be more productive if you'd say more than "these are your words not mine". I am not interested in hearing your arguments that copying whole articles from other sites is 'fair use' and I seriously doubt anyone else is either.--Gmaxwell 21:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Which ones did you cite? None of the first six appear to include links. That wouldn't excuse your copyright violation, I'm just questioning the accuracy of your claim. I found them simply because you had so many, I only checked 70 pages not hundreds. Each of the violations I found using google and I didn't search for single words, I searched for whole paragraphs. --Gmaxwell 21:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Kelly Martin had absolutely zero involvement with you showing up on the radar this time around. When *I* saw you screaming about our established fair use practices I checked your blocklog and saw you'd been blocked previously for copyvio. I then read the discussion on your talk page at the time and it seemed clear to me that you intended to continue... so I asked people to check your edits. Once additional copyright violations were found you were blocked. It didn't take much time to find a whole lot more. Although you claim to have consistently followed our policy, this is in fact incorrect because you continued to paste in whole copyrighted articles from the internet. Even your limited attempts to paraphrase (where you bothered to make them) would have been considered insufficient from our perspective. --Gmaxwell 21:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I also need to know what text books, if any, you copied content from. Thanks. --Gmaxwell 21:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
You are not an attorney so stop pretending to be one.
I never claimed to be an attorney. The only person who is pushing their (arguably ignorant) view of the law on the other person is you, not me.
Your throwing about the fact that you're in law school and claiming that everyone else involved knows less than you (some of whom actually are attorneys but know better than to go around giving legal advice). Effectively you are claiming yourself to be a legal expert in your tirades. And where have I imposed an arguably ignorant view of the law on anyone? --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I have never claimed to be an attorney I have mentioned that I am in lawschool, yes.
claiming that everyone else involved knows less than you I do not claim that everyone knows more than me. I repeatedly state cases on point, and they are ignored.
some of whom actually are attorneys but know better than to go around giving legal advice
Really, since this is not unsubstantiated, this statment is meaningless. Again, I am not an attorney, and I am not giving legal advice.
Effectively you are claiming yourself to be a legal expert in your tirades.
This is an assumption on your part. I never claimed to be a legal expert.
And where have I imposed an arguably ignorant view of the law on anyone?
Again, the only person who is pushing their (arguably ignorant) view of the law on the other person is you, not me.Travb (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
...especially when you copy the entire article and provide no attribution.
Careful when you make blanket statments, because generalities almost always have exceptions as I will show below.Travb (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I do not claim that you've only copied articles, only that you've done it numerous times after being blocked over it. --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
See below, on a case by case basis.Travb (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
No one supports your outrageous view that copying articles from commercial information sources into wikipedia is 'fair use'
Another blank generality, based on faulty assumptions. First of all, I do not believe that copying articles from commercial information sources into wikipedia is 'fair use', nor have I ever stated that, for criticizing me for "pretending" to be an "attorney" you sure make a lot of blanket statments about fair use law.
I do? Where? If you don't think that copying these texts into wikipedia is permitted, then why did you do it? I only brought up fair use because you did "This means following copyright law, but also the fair use exception". --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
You are pushing your view of copyright and fair use on me.Travb (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
If you don't think that copying these texts into wikipedia is permitted, then why did you do it?
Please do not put words in my mouth.Travb (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I provided a diff link to substantiate my claim about your behavior, you may disagree with my analysis if you like, but it would be more productive if you'd say more than "these are your words not mine".
Sorry, I don't follow. --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Neither do I at this point, he he Travb (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Where have I stated: "Wikipedia should act as some kind of martyr in a holy goal to abolish copyright". No where. This is your own angry and skewed interpretation of my own words.Travb (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I am not interested in hearing your arguments that copying whole articles from other sites is 'fair use' and I seriously doubt anyone else is either.
Where did you find this quote. I believe I said it, but would like to see where. Again, please do not put words in my moouth: "Wikipedia should act as some kind of martyr in a holy goal to abolish copyright"
Do you disagree that with my interpertation? Explain your position if I got it wrong. --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I believe that a small minority of copyright vigelentes are pushing their own interpretation of fair use and copyright, with no real understanding of what they are doing. I want to work within the law of the US. I do not want to threaten wikipedia, because I love wikipedia. Clear enough? Travb (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
See the full explanation (below). Again, please do not make blanket statments about how everyone else feels, because simplistic blanket statments can almost always be proven wrong.
Kelly Martin had absolutely zero involvement with you showing up on the radar this time around.
Who is the "we" that Cyde describes? Can you tell me this? Are you an admin User:Gmaxwell has there been any discussion about this on the chat boards?
About a half dozen other admins. --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
It may be a complete coincidence that the same day that the same day that Kelly martin threatened to ban me, and I mocked her, i got banned. I don't know. In my expereince, the admins are very protective of what they tell others, because this knowledge is power. Particularly those with the sam temperment as Kelly Martin and TSBY. I asked nine times how this fair use policy became fair use, and have been ignored nine times with clever analogies. Cyde will probably be just as protective of his information. If Kelly Martin had nothing to do with this ban, I will publically apologize to Kelly Martin here.
"When *I* saw you screaming about our established fair use practices I checked your blocklog and saw you'd been blocked previously for copyvio. I then read the discussion on your talk page at the time and it seemed clear to me that you intended to continue... so I asked people to check your edits. Once additional copyright violations were found you were blocked."
Ah, this makes sense. I PUBLICLY APOLOGIZE TO KELLY MARTIN FOR ACCUSING HER OF INSTIGATING THIS BAN. If you could please add it to her user site, I would appreciate it.
I'll tell her. --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I first got involved with copyright violations when the User:Duk slapped a copyright violation on WSI. User:TDC was using copyright to push his own POV against an anon. Well, User:Tony Sideway thankfully intervened, and we quickly got the copyright violation tag removed. The irony of all this was this, the anon decided to dig into User:TDCs past edits and found that he was a complete hypocite, that he had been warned, repeatedly, about copyright violations, and that he had cut and pasted many articles.
In the months after this, I will search the edits of you and the other copyright policemen and I will show without a doubt, that you are hypocrites. That the same alleged copyright violations that you accuse me of, you are guilty of as well.
Bwhah. Good luck with that one. --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Although you claim to have consistently followed our policy, this is in fact incorrect because you continued to paste in whole copyrighted articles from the internet. Even your limited attempts to paraphrase (where you bothered to make them) would have been considered insufficient from our perspective.
See my edits below.
Just because some of your edits are okay doesn't mean all of them are.
Even your limited attempts to paraphrase (where you bothered to make them) would have been considered insufficient from our perspective.
As TSBY wrote, "Then I urge admins to excercise common sense, and in this case follow WP:IAR and delete the dratted image."[26] The problem, as TSBY has shown with not allowing a 46 kb image, stating that it was too large,[27] is what measuring stick are you using? Fair use law is vague on purpose:
There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general rules and varying court decisions. That's because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit the definition of fair use. They wanted it--like free speech--to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation. From "What Is Fair Use?." Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources. URL accessed on 2006-05-25. (Deleted by JKelly from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use page[28])
Signed:Travb (talk) 21:53, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Incorrect. If you create orignal representations of ideas then the work is clearly not encombered by the copyrights of others. Since the goal of Wikipedia is to create a Free Encyclopedia our policy requires that editors actually write the articles, not merely copy them from elsewhere. --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Which part is incorrect? Please explain.
Since the goal of Wikipedia is to create a Free Encyclopedia our policy requires that editors actually write the articles, not merely copy them from elsewhere.
Then why is their a fair use page on wikipedia. Signed:Travb (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My contributions

Many of the article that I have built, such as Smedley Butler have been praised after I radically rewrote them.

The Lodge Committee and the Philippine-American War is probably the most sourced article on wikipedia, with 59 and 34 footnotes respectively, and in the case of the Lodge Committee four dozen sources (most of them out of copyright, and which I added to wikisource BTW).

I have expanded and created all of the footnotes for Plan Colombia (43 footnotes now) , Colombian Armed Conflict (28 footnotes now), Business Plot (22 footnotes now) to the point that they are unrecognizable from their original state, and started or radically updated several articles, all of them sourced exhastively, with mutliple sources, such as La_Violencia, Santa Marta Massacre, Plausible deniability, Church Committee, American Empire (34 footnotes now), Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, Torture manuals etc.

I pride myself in coming into an article and exhastively researching the material, making it a truly encyclopdic article, shining examples of what wikipedia should be. I notice that when I start working on articles, the quality of the article increases in future edits. For example, people begin sourcing their edits as per Wikipedia:Verifiability.

Signed:Travb (talk) 22:01, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] George Orwell roles over in his grave

"We have much work to do undoing the damage done here."

I added cited content to wikipedia, creating several new articles and adding to hundreds more, and you systematically go through and delete all of this content, and you say that I am "damaging" wikipedia? That is straight out a book from George Orwell. It reminds me of the irrational war saying: "We must destroy the city to protect the city".

And a large number of these articles may now need to be deleted simply because you were too lazy to write them yourself rather then copy them off the web. Countless hours of other people's time may have been wasted refining text that we ultimately can not use. If you don't understand, fine. But don't expect me to waste my time trying to drill it into your head. Forget the legalities, taking credit for the work of others is simply unethical, and this makes your attempt to claim a moral high ground on this matter all the more repugnant. --Gmaxwell 21:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
too lazy to write them yourself rather then copy them off the web May I have to remind you not to call me lazy? Anyone who has read any of my work would definatly not call me lazy, I don't think Lodge Committee which took me several months to write using over three dozen sources would be the work of someone lazy. I bet you have never written anything this exhastvely researched.
And for the record, I have wrote and contributed hundreds of articles.
I am not taking the credit for others. I am writing high quality research work, exhastively researched. Maybe some of the best researched articles on wikipedia. You forgot to mention in all of your "moral" banter that the reason why it was so easy for you to find those alleged copyright violations was because I cited all of my sources as is expected per Wikipedia:Verifiability.
If you don't understand, fine.
I understand completely. Our view of Wikipedia is radically different:
  1. You see me adding exhasitvely researched work to wikipedia as "damage", and
  2. I see you deleting of hundreds of hours of my work as "damage", in otherwords, "We must destroy the city to protect the city".
I personally think your definition of "damage" is Orwellen but we will simply agree to disagree on this point.
signed:Travb (talk) 21:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Seems you didn't notice my inline responses above. As far as I can tell, you didn't cite a single one of those sources, and I certantly didn't use your citations if you did provide them. As far as I can tell you have been doing a lot of copying of other people's high quality work along with the writing that you have done. Deleting hundreds of hours of your work? Get over it. "www.google.com search subject ctrl-c ctrl-v" is not hundreds of hours of work. --Gmaxwell 21:33, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
User:Gmaxwell, you make a lot of blanket statments. I was waiting for a statment such as this, which is so patently false, which I will prove below.
As far as I can tell you have been doing a lot of copying of other people's high quality work along with the writing that you have done. Deleting hundreds of hours of your work?
You obviously did not read any of the links I provided above. I will let others decide what quality work is. Your personal opinion is irrelevant. As I mentioned above, I doubt you, or most wikipedians have written articles with 58 footnotes, such as Lodge Committee, taking months to compile, write and compose. If you do have an article of such caliber, I would love to see it, but I think this challenge will remain ignored, as many of my points are ignored.
Signed:Travb (talk) 22:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The alleged copyright violations

Please keep in mind the statment of User:Gmaxwell above:

As far as I can tell, you didn't cite a single one of those sources, and I certantly didn't use your citations if you did provide them.
especially when you copy the entire article and provide no attribution.

I am awaiting a public apolgy from User:Gmaxwell, as soon as I write this section. (It is difficult to write this section when User:Gmaxwell reverts comments, on my own talk page.)[29]

I will show that:

  1. User:Gmaxwell "evidence" is incredibly selective, User:Gmaxwell selectivly chooses the most damaging edit, and ignores all subsequent edits, often only five minutes later, which radically modify the original edit.

After showing this, I will show that

  1. User:Gmaxwell does not understand wikipedia policy, let alone fair use and copyright law.

In the upcoming months, I will show that User:Gmaxwell and other wikipedians who attempt to enforce their version of copyright law are as guilty, if not more guilty of copyright violations and should, in the spirit of fairness, be banned indefinetly too.

Huh? I included links to edits where you started a new article with purely copyright violating content. That you went on to make a derrived work isn't especially interesting to me.
Lets start with a single article[30], where did you indicate the source of this copied text? Oh and please us preview, I've edit conflicted multiple times on almost every single edit because you're editing 4+ times to make a single comment and merging this is becoming a pain.--Gmaxwell 22:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
That you went on to make a derrived work isn't especially interesting to me.
Why not?
Lets start with a single article[31], where did you indicate the source of this copied text?
I will cover every single allegation below.Travb (talk) 22:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] The wikipages

[edit] The "Obvious copyvio"

From: User:Gmaxwell/trouble

  • 2 from 3
  • 4 from 5
  • 6 from 7
  • 8 from 9 (large chunks, not the whole text)
  • 10 from 11 (there were several other timeline articles which I didn't check, I didn't expect them to be copyvio too)

[edit] Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola

  • 2 from 3
    Please see the full history page here.[32] There have been over 50 edits to this page.
    The original: 01:50, 10 April 2006, which User:Gmaxwell cites.
    Notice that from the beginning, I put the article I was citing in quotes "". It was cited and put in subsections: 01:51, 10 April 2006, ONE minute later.
    Eight minutes later, at 01:59, 10 April 2006 I added two more footnotes. For the next three and a half hours, I rewrote the entire article, adding 8 sources and a table, finishing at 04:54, 10 April 2006.
    At the end of this three and a half hours, only 24 isolated words remained from the same from the alleged copyvio edit.[33] The entire article was rewritten. User:Gmaxwell added a copyvio tag to this article for 24 isolated words, 4 of them "Coca Cola".
Original Final Wikipedia edit
Shortly after the return of Tuborquia, Bebidas Y Alimentos Manager

Mosquera began threatening to destroy the union. Specifically, Mosquera announced in public that he had given an order to the paramilitaries to carry out the task of destroying the union. In addition, Mosquera, in the presence of paramilitary forces, told a member of the local SINALTRAINAL executive board that he would "sweep away the union."

In 1996 Ariosto became the new plant manager of Bebidas y Alimentos, a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia. According to the plaintiff's complaint, Ariosto Mosquera publicly announced that he had given an order to the paramilitaries to carry out the task of destroying the Coca-Cola bottling union. Mosquera, in the presence of paramilitary forces...told a member of the local Sinaltrainal executive board that he would "sweep away the union".
On December 5, 1996, at 9:00 in the morning, two paramilitaries approached Isidro Gil, who was then involved in negotiations on behalf of the union with Bebidas y Alimentos,as he stood in the entrance of the Bebidas y Alimentos plant. They asked him if he was in fact Isidro Gil. Isidro Gil responded, "what for?" The paramilitaries stated that they needed to go into the plant to talk to someone inside. Isidro Gil proceeded to open the door and the two paramilitaries then shot him to death inside the plant. That same night, these same paramilitaries went to the local union hall of SINALTRAINAL and started a fire therein. On December 5, 1996, at 9:00 in the morning, two paramilitaries approached Isidro Gil, who was then involved in negotiations on behalf of the union with Bebidas y Alimentos a Colombian Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia, as he stood in the entrance of the Bebidas y Alimentos plant. They asked him if he was in fact Isidro GilIsidro Gil proceeded to open the door and the two paramilitaries then shot him to death inside the plant. That same night, these same paramilitaries went to the local union hall of Sinaltrainal and started a fire...
On December 7, 1996 at 8:00 a.m., the paramilitaries appeared at the Bebidas y Alimentos plant as threatened. They assembled the workers and told them that Bebidas y Alimentos did not want the union at the plant. The paramilitaries explained that the workers had the option of either resigning from the union or leaving Carepa altogether lest they be killed. The paramilitaries then proceeded to direct the workers into the manager's office to sign resignation forms which were prepared by Defendant Bebidas y Alimentos itself. As a result of the threats of the paramilitaries, workers resigned en masse from SINALTRAINAL. A copy of one of the resignation forms signed by a Bebidas y Alimentos worker is attached hereto as Exhibit C. Two days after Gil's murder the paramilitaries appeared at the Coca-Cola bottling plant. They assembled the workers and told them that Coca-Cola bottling did not want the union at the plant. The paramilitaries explained that the workers had the option of either resigning from the union or leaving Carepa altogether otherwise they would be killed. The paramilitaries then proceeded to direct the workers into the manager’s office to sign resignation forms which were prepared by the manager of Coca-Cola bottling plant Ariosto Mosquera. As a result of the threats of the paramilitaries, workers resigned en masse from Sinaltrainal union.
In fear for their life, fourteen SINALTRAINAL members, including the remainder of the local SINALTRAINAL executive board, fled Carepa after this meeting on December 7, 1996. As a result of the flight of these individuals and the resignation of the other workers from the union, the local SINALTRAINAL union in Carepa was destroyed. This union has never returned to Carepa. In fear for their lives...the remainder of the local Sinaltrainal executive board, fled Carepa after this meeting on December 7, 1996. As a result of the flight of these individuals and the resignation of the other workers from the union, the local Sinaltrainal union in Carepa was destroyed. This union has never returned to Carepa.

All three paragraphs were cited:[34]

Mooney, Green, Gleason Baker, Gibson & Saindon Law office (2001). "Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola plaintiff's complaint." Mooney, Green, Gleason Baker, Gibson & Saindon Law office. URL accessed on April 9, 2006. [PDF file]

Conclusion: user:Gmaxwell states: "Several paragraphs of text remain largely or totally unchanged from the work TravB copied..."

This is true.

"...without attribution from this site."

This is clearly untrue. See notes 2 to 5.

In addition there were two paragraphs before, and four short paragraphs after, including a table, which were all cited, and which will all be deleted.

[edit] Haiti-Santo_Domingo_Independence_Society

  • 4 from 5
    Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society
    User:Gmaxwell is 100% correct, this is a copyright violation, I posted this on the 9th of October 2005 and I have already been punished for this . See my block log[35]:

    04:00, 24 October 2005 Gamaliel blocked "Travb (contribs)" with an expiry time of 24 hours (persistent copyright violations despite repeated warnings - see also WP:POINT)

    On October 24, 2005 I was blocked for 24 hours for "persistent copyright violations" (i.e. I was testing how wikipedia percieves copyright, I didn't even know about WP:POINT at the time, and it was unfortunatly my first introduction to the concept. I think I should have been booted, and despite being booted one more time for WP:POINT I think this is a good rule). After this I was no longer booted for copyright violations.
    October 9, 2005 I was a brand-new wikiuser, and I was still trying to understand what was copyright, and what was not. Just 9 days before, I had my first wikiedit:

    03:24, 30 September 2005 (hist) (diff) William Francis Buckley (→CIA response)

    THANK YOU User:Gmaxwell for catching this, it needs to be deleted.

[edit] Hughes-Ryan Act

6 from 7

Revision as of 15:17, 4 October 2005. Two sentences. Please see the talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hughes-Ryan_Act. User:TDC wikistalked me to this page, because I was arguing so forecefully that the anon's edits to WSI were Fair Use (I mentioned this above). He added a Copyright violation tag to my edits.[36] I then rewrote the two sentences.

In addition. I am under the understanding that milnet is a military site, free of copyright. I later added the footnotes, citing were I found it from.

And again, if this is a copyright violation, it was done before 24 October 2005, (15:17, 4 October 2005 --I had only been editing wikipedia for 5 days) therefore it has already been addressed and I was already punished for this.

[edit] The Saint Patrick's Day Four

  • 8 from 9 (large chunks, not the whole text)

This page was created the first day I started wikipedia, on 22:26, 30 September 2005. Not to repeat myself, but if this is a copyright violation, it was done before 24 October 2005, therefore it has already been addressed and I was already punished for this. I did not cite this page.

Original[37] Wikiedit
The following month the four were tried for criminal mischief. Nine of the 12 jurors voted to acquit them, and after 20 hours of deliberation, the judge declared a mistrial. At such declaration, the crowded courtroom gave the four a standing ovation. The district attorney said that he would not prosecute them again, expecting that another jury would yield the same verdict.

A year later, however, the U.S. government decided to retry the four peace activists, this time on the more serious charges of conspiracy. Technically, they are charged with conspiracy to impede "by force, intimidation, and threat" an officer of the United States, and three lesser charges.

On March 17, 2003, four peace activists in Ithaca, New York, poured their own blood on the walls, posters, windows, and a US flag at a military recruiting center in order to try to stop the invasion of Iraq.

The following month the four were tried for criminal mischief. Nine of the twelve jurors voted to acquit them, and after 20 hours of deliberation, the judge declared a mistrial. At such declaration the crowded courtroom gave the Four a standing ovation. The district attorney said that he would not re-prosecute them, expecting that another jury would yield the same verdict.

A year later, however, the U.S. government decided to retry the four peace activists, this time on the more serious charges of conspiracy. Technically, they are charged with conspiracy to impede "by force, intimidation and threat" an officer of the United States and three lesser charges.

Conclusion: The two paragraphs should be deleted or rewritten. This is a copyright violation, and it probably does not fall under fair use, because it is a substatial part of the article.

[edit] Timeline of labor issues and events

  • 10 from 11 (there were several other timeline articles which I didn't check, I didn't expect them to be copyvio too)

Conclusion: This is a copyright violation. One of the other timelines User:Gmaxwell is talking about is from the US government, discussing the US interventions in other countries. Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad See external links. Since it is from the US government, it is not copyrighted. You can delete this as a copyright violation too: Timeline of Philippine-American War

What is interesting is User:Gmaxwell did not add a copyright violation tag to Timeline of labor issues and events, why not?

[edit] The "PD source Maybe"

(PD=Public Domain)

From: User:Gmaxwell/trouble

User:Gmaxwell wrote: "Still, the source wasn't cited. Lame."

All of these are PD.

Sourced in footnote one [38]:

1 ↑ Guarding the Railroad, Taming the Cossacks The U.S. Army in Russia, 1918 - 1920, Smith, Gibson Bell

Sourced in footnote one United_States_Senate_Committee_on_the_Philippines:

1 ↑ The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration The original information compiled on this wikisite is free of copyright. See Copyright and U.S. Government works

Sourced in external links:

1 ↑ The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration The original information compiled on this wikisite is free of copyright. See Copyright and U.S. Government works


Sourced in footnote one United_States_Senate_Committee_on_the_Philippines


Conclusion: I would ask for an apology, and ask User:Gmaxwell to remove this statment: "Still, the source wasn't cited. Lame." but I have noticed that User:Gmaxwell is trapped by the internet unwritten rule that he is never wrong. He would rather go through elaborate justifications then admit to that he is wrong (See how he tries to justify his reversions).

Also, this critism from a person who, to my knowledge, has never made a footnote in his entire time on wikipedia, he has been too busy making reversions, deleting articles, and adding his pictures to wikipedia.

[edit] Who copied who?

From: User:Gmaxwell/trouble

20 or 21

I copied from that site, on my 11th day on Wikipedia. Go ahead and delete everything after this edit. All 9 footnotes, etc. See the page now: Costa Rica Civil War

[edit] Response

[edit] Haiti-Santo_Domingo_Independence_Society Response

You're welcome. Although you were blocked for other edits (Shihan Doversola) Haiti-Santo_Domingo_Independence_Society had been missed by the blocking admin it seems, or it would have been deleted already. I suggest you start going through your contribs and finding all other instances where you've copied some website or textbook into Wikipedia. --Gmaxwell 00:55, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

It appears like you do not care whether I have a inuse tag, among other rules like deleting a users comments on their own talk page.
I removed your 5 screen fulls of ranting once and explained why. You keep accusing me of removing things, but perhaps you are being confused by your constant refactoring? It confuses me. --Gmaxwell 01:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Number 1 True or false, did you or did you not revert my edit? Simple question. There should be no "but" in your response. You either said it or you didn't.
I've already answered this. --Gmaxwell 01:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
True or false. You have not answered this, and I will continue to ask you until i get an answer.Travb (talk) 02:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
The question below is identical. --Gmaxwell 02:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Is this statment true or not:
Number 2 Sorry to edit this section, but I didn't revert your edit, I conflicted and missed it while merging.
True or untrue?
Of course it's true. I accidently removed the area below that section because you are making more than 13 edits for every one edit of mine and refactoring the page.. and I botched the merge. I restored it right away. You later accused me of removing things once more, I pointed out that it was accidental and quickly restored. I've now explained this to you at least twice. Please don't ask again. --Gmaxwell 01:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. You answered one of three questions. Two more to go. You actually stated: (Reverted ranting by Travb. You claimed that in all cases when you copyed from the web that you cited the source. Show me. Lets start with that.) [39] Only later did you state: Sorry to edit this section, but I didn't revert your edit, I conflicted and missed it while merging.
No there are two seperate cases. I've now writen here three times that I removed your pages of ranting. But I did not intentional revert the later comment that you accused me of, I'd killed it in a merge and restored it in my next edit before you'd even noticed... but that didn't stop you of later making wild accusations. --Gmaxwell 02:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
So you did revert the later comment? Yes or no.Travb (talk) 02:19, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or no. --Gmaxwell 02:50, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
You avoiding the question.Travb (talk) 05:27, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Is this statment true or not:
Number 3 No, you'd already commented on that, you were making that claim that I was doing it again here [40] but as you've since seen I fixed it in my next edit without your complaint.
True or untrue?
See above. --Gmaxwell 01:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
True or untrue.
Do you like being infuriating? Yes it's true, its the same answer I gave above. --Gmaxwell 02:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Good. Thanks for answering my question.Travb (talk) 02:19, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Three questions. It will take you less than 10 seconds to answer all three.
Also, you ignored my comments on please remove the copyright violation on Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola. I think I deserve an apology.
I replied to your claims. Showing an example of the standing violation, you said you'd reply to my reply later. --Gmaxwell 01:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Please remove Haiti-Santo_Domingo_Independence_Society from your list, since I have already been punished for this.
1) No you haven't as I explained, 2) It's still copyright violation. Why would I remove it? --Gmaxwell 01:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Remove it from your list, because I have already been punished for this copyright violation.Travb (talk) 02:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
You're not in a position to make demands. --Gmaxwell 02:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
PS, I didn't know you were a professional photographer User:Gmaxwell.
Thats not shocking, because I'm not. --Gmaxwell 04:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I suggest you start going through your contribs and finding all other instances where you've copied some website or textbook into Wikipedia.
Thanks for the suggestion. The majority of my later edits are all sourced, so it is easy for you to delete them. I citied some of them above. I was incorrect to state that all of my edits were sourced, obviously some of my earlier work was not.
Signed:Travb (talk) 01:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Are they falsely sourced like the Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola article? (see my pre-existing reply below). --Gmaxwell 01:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Falsely sourced? This is interesting.
Um. It appears that you've scrambled this page so bad that even you can't understand it.... As I said above see my pre-existing reply below. --Gmaxwell 02:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
No reply? Too busy cooking up nonsense claims about me?--Gmaxwell 02:50, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply to TravB's claims WRT Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola

TravB spins a nice sounding story, but it falls apart when you look at the facts. The most recent revision before I put the copyvio notice on the article is here [41]. Several paragraphs of text remain largely or totally unchanged from the work TravB copied without attribution from this site.

On December 5, 1996, at 9:00 in the morning, (content elided) local union hall of Sinaltrainal and started a fire...[42]"

As you can see, this text is copied directly and completely from his never-named source document. He did however provide a citation, but it's a link to a site which contains none of the text he copied. Generally we frown on adding source links to documents which were not actually used as a source, but the use of a false source link to imply that the text was written by TravB rather than copied, can not be tolerated.

Even if none of the exact source text remained (an untrue statement, even by TravB's limited admission,... great swaths remain), the edit history shows this entire article is a derived work from the article TravB shamelessly copied without any credit provided to the actual author, and is accordingly against our policy. --Gmaxwell 23:30, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I will address this in depth later.Travb (talk) 23:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I made a mistake, I apologize, I was looking at the wrong edit. There are three paragraphs, and two sentences which were attributed, which are largely copied from the site.Travb (talk) 15:09, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hughes-Ryan Act response

Um. "I am under the understanding that milnet is a military site, free of copyright." You've got to be kidding me. Did you even read any of the pages you copied from there? Not only is it obviously not a military site, there are clear copyright notices on the site! "Prior punishment" would be immaterial even if it were true (again this was a violation which had been previously undetected), as you so helpfully admitted before, you never agreed to discontinue... and until a short bit ago you were insisting that none of these edits were copyright violations. What matters is your continued violation and your unsupportable position that it's acceptable to just copy articles from the internet if only to revise them with later edits. --Gmaxwell 01:35, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

You've got to be kidding me. Did you even read any of the pages you copied from there?
My mistake, I am not mixing up another page. Actually, looking at the page, look at note 2:
Information is from CIA site, Center for the Study of Intelligence, which is a US governmental organization. Therefore the original information compiled on this wikisite is free of copyright. See Copyright and U.S. Government works
This is actually what I was refering to.
"Prior punishment" would be immaterial even if it were true (again this was a violation which had been previously undetected
I was a new user, who had been editing for 5 days, as i mentioned, and I did not know the confines of copyright violation. Instead of putting pages up for deletion, reverting pages, and adding my own photos, I actually wrote articles when I first started. Once I was booted for 24 hours, I attempted to cite everything.
as you so helpfully admitted before, you never agreed to discontinue...
So you are assuming bad faith. That because I did not disagree to discontinue, I was therefore determined to continue copyright violations.
and until a short bit ago you were insisting that none of these edits were copyright violations.
I was wrong. I will discuss copyright violations later, and citing your sources.
What matters is your continued violation and your unsupportable position that it's acceptable to just copy articles from the internet if only to revise them with later edits.
I will cover this in depth later.
Please keep in mind that we are talking about two sentences. Which were later modified when this was brought up to me. It is instructive to see that User:Gmaxwell did not add a copyright violation to this page.
This eariler episode with User:TDC shows there are two ways of dealing with copyright violations:
  1. User:Gmaxwell way, of simply deleting hundreds of articles, or
  2. the way that User:TDC and I handled the article, I rewrote the article, and now it is a very large article.
User:Gmaxwell writes very little content on wikipedia, and instead spends a good amount of time deleting other people's work. Thanks to User:Gmaxwell, some of my well researched articles will meet this fate. I will discuss in detail fair use and attributing an author's sources here later: #User:Gmaxwell understanding of wikipedia policy, fair use, and copyright law
Signed:Travb (talk) 15:07, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Understanding of wikipedia policy, fair use, and copyright law

[edit] User:Gmaxwell

Not that this makes a difference one way or the other, because I am the one on trial, not User:Gmaxwell, but please keep in mind that User:Gmaxwell, to my knowledge, has never written a single article, he has never created a footnote. I have now gone through about 2000 of his edits, the majority of his edits consist of minor changes on wikipages, adding his own photos, comments on others user page, and deleting material. This is the person who is judging everyone of my edits I have ever written. As mentioned above, I have contributed hundreds of pages of information to wikipedia, the vast majority of it was sourced and cited, and some of it was praised.

[edit] Sourcing

As far as I can tell, you didn't cite a single one of those sources, and I certantly didn't use your citations if you did provide them.

...especially when you copy the entire article and provide no attribution.

User:Gmaxwell sites five web pages as obvious copyright violations, four of which, were in created the first two weeks I joined wikipedia.

  • Haiti-Santo_Domingo_Independence_Society first month on wikipedia

Of this five, I cited two.

User:Gmaxwell sites five PD (public domain) pages, stating incorrectly: "Still, the source wasn't cited. Lame."

All five of these sources were cited.

So of the 11 pages that User:Gmaxwell cites, 7 of them, over half, have been cited.

Of those pages I created after learning fully about the limits of fair use and copyright, being booted for 24 hours in late October: 6 of the 7 articles are cited, the one exception being Timeline of labor issues and events.

To say that I do not source articles is absurd. Here is another example, (notice how there is no comment about my exhastive work on wikipedia above):

Predictions of Soviet collapse I built myself and quickly a large group of wikipedians got involved. I estimate that around 25 of the 32 footnotes are my own. I should be judged on my work in the past 6 months, not work from my first two months on wikipedia, especially the work I did before I was punished for copyright violations.

User:Gmaxwell and User:Cyde assume that because I did not reference 4 articles in my first month on wikipedia and two articles since then, all of my edits are now suspect. That is simply absurd. I am sure there are other examples of strict copyright violations. I acknowlege this. But the question is, should I be banned completely from Wikipedia for these isolated mistakes, when my work is judge as a whole? I will list all of my watch list below, and the contributions that I have made.

[edit] Wikipedia policy

[edit] Fair use

[edit] Copyright law

(more later)


[edit] Comments

Re:Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola Please see the full history page here.[43] Signed:Travb (talk) 22:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Huh? As far as I can tell you never linked to the site providing the text you copied, you never credited its author. Don't just throw infinite quantities of information at me please. If you can't find it, how would you expect anyone else to find it. There are other pages (as I mentioned above) where you made far fewer edits and it's quite a bit more clear. --Gmaxwell 22:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Please refrain from reverting comments on my own talk page, because (I believe) this is against wikipedia policy. Also please give me time to write my reponse. I will add an inuse tag to both sections, please abid by this.
You can answer my question in the mean time. You wrote: That you went on to make a derrived work isn't especially interesting to me. Why does it not matter that "[I] went on to make a derrived work?" Travb (talk) 22:31, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
That you went on to make a derrived work isn't especially interesting to me.Why does it not matter that "[I] went on to make a derrived work?"
Many reasons.. Because we don't permit the copyright violation, what you did later isn't material since you have a pattern of inserting copyrighted content without authority. Furthermore, as you should be aware, the original copyright holder preserves an interest in derived works, although perhaps that point is getting too deep into the legal side which I have no desire to debate you on. --Gmaxwell 22:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Please refrain from reverting comments on my own talk page, because (I believe) this is against wikipedia policy. Also please give me time to write my reponse. I will add an inuse tag to both sections, please abid by this.
Sorry to edit this section, but I didn't revert your edit, I conflicted and missed it while merging because you edited in multiple sections. I restored it in the next edit in the history and made it clear what happened.--Gmaxwell 22:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
You wrote at 22:31, 26 May 2006:
"Sorry to edit this section, but I didn't revert your edit, I conflicted and missed it while merging because you edited in multiple sections."
This is not the case:
22:03, 26 May 2006 Gmaxwell (Reverted ranting by Travb. You claimed that in all cases when you copyed from the web that you cited the source. Show me. Lets start with that.)[44] (Emphasize my own).
Again. Please refrain from reverting comments on my own talk page, because (I believe) this is against wikipedia policy. Further, please be honest in your edits, when you revert an edit, do not then deny reverting the edit. I am trying to assume good faith but it is hard when you do this.Travb (talk) 22:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Many reasons.. Because we don't permit the copyright violation, what you did later isn't material since you have a pattern of inserting copyrighted content without authority.
I will address this fully in the next section.
Again, please do not:
  1. revert the edits on my own talk page,
  2. abide by the inuse tag,
  3. be honest in your edits,
  4. please do not call me a "liar", and (This is incorrect)
  5. also please follow Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages
You are an admin, and are looked up to by others to follow the rules. Thank you.
Signed:Travb (talk) 22:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
No, you'd already commented on that, you were making that claim that I was doing it again here [45] but as you've since seen I fixed it in my next edit without your complaint. Sorry to steal the thunder out from under your allegations...--Gmaxwell 23:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
If people think things like that... look up to me, thats their own mistake. I object to your constant refactoring, because it makes it difficult to tell what you've written and what you just moved around. Did I call you a liar? until this edit the only person to use the word on this page is you... perhaps you were just lying? ;) --Gmaxwell 23:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
You asked me a direct question "in the meantime" in the section you were editing. Had you put it in a new section I would not have had to edit the same section you were in... nor if you would just use preview would we have a problem. I am trying to avoid edit conflicting with you, but you make it hard esp with your constant refactoring. --Gmaxwell 23:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps we have a simple misunderstanding, but when you make claims which are demonstratively false such as your claim that you always cited the sources of your copyright violations... It becomes hard for me to justify allowing you to rant and rant. --Gmaxwell 23:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Simple true or false question

You stated originally:

Sorry to edit this section, but I didn't revert your edit, I conflicted and missed it while merging.

True or false, did you or did you not revert my edit? Simple question.

I object to your constant refactoring, because it makes it difficult to tell what you've written and what you just moved around.

Take that up with user:Jareth another admin who defended User:Philwelch for doing the same thing to me during a heated argument.

You asked me a direct question "in the meantime" in the section you were editing. I was refering to the question above. I trust you will not ignore the inuse tag again. Thank you for your cooperation, and sorry for the confusion.

Perhaps we have a simple misunderstanding, but when you make claims which are demonstratively false such as your claim that you always cited the sources of your copyright violations... It becomes hard for me to justify allowing you to rant and rant.

There is no misunderstanding, I am attempting to defend myself from your claims of alleged copyright violation. You can call them anything you want: rants, bluster, bombast, diatribe, fustian, harangue, oration, philippic, raving, rhapsody, rhetoric, rodomontade, tirade, vociferation (oh p.s., this is cut and pasted from Thesaurus.com so you may want to slap a copyright violation tag on my user page). I am simply trying to defend myself from your allegations, point by point on my OWN talk page.

Perhaps we have a simple misunderstanding

No, you are reverting my own edits on my own talk page, then denying that you do it. Then, when I clearly show that you are doing it. You obsefecate (confuse) the denial.

I did it once, and explained why I did it. You accused me of it again, falsely. What a stupid argument! --Gmaxwell 23:36, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Again, let me remind you that you are an admin, and that people look up to you. Reverting a user's talk page, then denying that you did it, may not be seen by many as good admin behavior, and may put into question some of your other actions, such as say, banning another wikiuser for copyright violations. Again: You stated originally: Sorry to edit this section, but I didn't revert your edit, I conflicted and missed it while merging. True or false, did you or did you not revert my edit? Simple question. There should be no "but" in your response. You either said it or you didn't.

Signed:Travb (talk) 23:31, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Another true or false question

No, you'd already commented on that, you were making that claim that I was doing it again here [46] but as you've since seen I fixed it in my next edit without your complaint.

You state that:

you were making that claim that I was doing it again here [47]
I was warning you sternly to stop editing my user page.
but as you've since seen I fixed it in my next edit without your complaint.
This is not true. You state that you: fixed it in my next edit without your complaint.
The very next edit is from me:[48] stating: (When logic fails, start a revert war) After 8 edits, you had your "next edit".

The reality is that you DID NOT:

fixed it in my next edit without your complaint.

...as clearly seen in this edit: [49] You added a few comments about to my comments.

Once again, let me remind you that you are an admin, and that people may look up to you to uphold wikipedia policy. Reverting a user's talk page, then denying that you did it, then stating you changed it in the next edit, combining two edits 8 edits apart, when this is not true, may not be seen by many as good admin behavior, and may put into question some of your other actions, such as say, banning another wikiuser for copyright violations.

Signed:Travb (talk) 23:49, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bye Bye

Sorry, I can't continue talking with you. Your use of multiple edits to make a single comment and your refactoring of the talk page with almost every edit you make has made it impossible for me to follow you replies. I'm sorry. Perhaps I'll return later once you've had a chance to work out your ideas. ... But I'm not sure, I think I'm just being trolled. --Gmaxwell 23:36, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Way to duck the question. Looks like I am not the only one on trial here am I admin? I will enjoy going through all of your years of edits, and arguing that you should be indefinatly booted too. Can anyone reading this report User:Gmaxwell to the WP:AN board? I can't because User:Gmaxwell had me booted. I don't think his behavior here is the way that an admin should act. I will email some admins that I know.
Signed:Travb (talk) 23:41, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Uh, dear, Gmaxwell is not an admin. Kelly Martin (talk) 05:09, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Ha, ha. I was wrong again, not the first time today. My apologies User:Gmaxwell. User:Gmaxwell didn't deny it either. This one is my favorite quote:
Let me make this crystal clear to you. You are only being allowed to continue to edit this page to explain how we were mistaken. Not to troll. If you continue to post pages of text rather than responding to simple questions your edits will be reverted and this page will be protected. --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Ha ha.
I suspected so just recently...I was going through all of his edits, and I suspected that he probably was not, I was going to check the admin list.
Also, if he was, my page would have been protected long ago. LOL.
Actually, I did deny it. I told you that you were foolish to think so, you didn't want to listen. In any case that doesn't have a lot to do with your page not being protected up until now. Removing my comments and inserting misleading statments are the kind of thing that will justify it though.[50] --Gmaxwell 05:42, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh? where? Or is this similar to the revert that you never made.Travb (talk) 05:44, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I love it! The cardinal rule on the web is never, ever admit you are wrong! User:Gmaxwell reverts my edits, and then denies it, and it is my fault. (See[User_talk:Travb#.5B.5BUser:Gmaxwell.5D.5D_editing_practices])
User:Gmaxwell states that "I told you that you were foolish to think [I was an admin], you didn't want to listen." and when I call him on it, he blames me for making a mistake:
Last block, although I can't find it in the current page text anymore due to the extensive refactoring you performed. --Gmaxwell 06:12, 27 May 2006 (UTC) From: [51] emphasis my own.
Ha ha. Travb (talk) 14:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Did you get my apology User talk:Kelly Martin? You were right, of course, I got booted. I guess I have been in a very self-destructive mood as of late, and I just destroyed my wikipedia account. :( Ah well, more time to focus on school.Travb (talk) 05:13, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing policy

I Have noticed you have made a lot of edits to Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use and have been reverted. Don't change the policy page just because you disagree with it. regardless of how it was created it is still the policy now. I looked over your edits myself and they were not helpful. The Fair use Policy is not as much a legal issue as it is an Ideology issue. Legally we may be able to have a much more lenient Fair use Policy, However One of the goals of Wikipedia is to use as much free stuff as possible and avoid things with restrictive copyrights. It is hard for us to argue against this. The best thing I can use as an argument is that there is no free alternative. --E-Bod 20:55, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


This Fallowing coment was adresed to me E-Bod on Jimbo's Talk page And i I have found it really usefull

:You are missing the bigger picture. Images that only Wikipedia have permission to use is not compatable with the GFDL license Wikipedia is released under. We simply can not accept content that is more restrictive than GFDL with regards to who can use it for what (that's my understanding anyway). Aparently (properly used) fair use content can be compatable with GFDL to some extent, but not always wich is why we have a fairly strict fair use policy too. Your permission wold make the image legaly free to use on Wikipedia, sure, but Wikipedia is not a project to build a great website, it's a project to make free content available to anyone, this Wiki is just the tool we use to make this content, and in that context it makes no sense to add content that can only be use on the Wikipedia website, and I don't see why it would be worth complicating our license situation by starting allowing it either. --Sherool (talk) 21:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Copied by --E-Bod 20:55, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

If you want to make a good argument about fare use you must address the issues reaised in the above coment that was adressed to me--E-Bod 20:55, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you E-Bod, as I always promise, I will address your concerns point by point later. Thank you for the suggestions and moral support. I know that I will lose this battle, the decision has already been made, and I have made to many powerful (and sometimes arogant) enemies because of my often uncivil tone and debate style. I simply want to show that I want the best for wikipedia too, and should never had been banned for my hard work and dedication trying to make wikipedia in Jimbo's words, "Wikipedia goal is to create a free, democratic, reliable encyclopedia—actually, the largest encyclopedia in history, in terms of both breadth and depth. This is an ambitious goal, and will probably take many years to achieve!" Signed:Travb (talk) 21:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Thank you E-Bod:
Aparently (properly used) fair use content can be compatable with GFDL to some extent, but not always wich is why we have a fairly strict fair use policy too.
The concept of fair use, which is premited on wikipedia, and the GFDL license, which User talk:Sherool sites appear to contradict each other. Ask User talk:Sherool to explain this contradiction, because I cannot understand why wikipedia permits fair use if all items are supposed to be under the GFDL license. If some of these users had there way, there would be no fair use on wikipedia. This would settle the issue, but millions of hours of work would be lost, and wikipedia would look radically different.
Don't change the policy page just because you disagree with it. regardless of how it was created it is still the policy now.
There seems to be some confusion. There are actually two pages which I modified. I begin to work on Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use at the encouragement of Kelly Martin, and others, who felt like I should start building a consensus, and stop my other tactics (The irony is because of these actions, I came to the attention of Gmaxwell, and then Gmaxwell decided to dig around my thousands of edits, and I got booted)
  1. Was policy, Wikipedia talk:Fair use which magically became policy by User:Kelly_Martin's one edit in Januarary, and
  2. One was a page, Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use which is not policy.
On Wikipedia talk:Fair use I removed the policy tag because User:Kelly_Martin ignored my question about how this page became policy, she still has ignored my questions, 9 times after I asked it.
The other page, Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use was not policy. I added a fact tag, tweaked the page, and added the very first reference to the page, which was reverted twice by User:Jkelly, and User:Ed g2s, who began this latest fight about copyright by deleting the Unencyclopedia image, and still, to my knowledge has not explained where he gets the authority or background based on policy to erase images from user talk pages.
The Fair use Policy is not as much a legal issue as it is an Ideology issue.
AMEN I could't say it better myself.
Legally we may be able to have a much more lenient Fair use Policy, However One of the goals of Wikipedia is to use as much free stuff as possible and avoid things with restrictive copyrights. It is hard for us to argue against this. The best thing I can use as an argument is that there is no free alternative.
Yes, I agree. The problem is when users such as User:TDC begin to use copyright restrictions to push their own POV.
Another issue is quoting a source. This is still permitted on wikipedia, but users like GMaxwell appear to have a problem with this. I find it much more authoritive to quote someone and reference it within the article. This opens me up to attacks by users such as GMaxwell.
In addition, there are websites, such as commondreams.org, which post full articles on their web pages with a disclaimer
I find the current interpretations of fair use by a select few copyright vigelantes, and what the vision of what wikipedia can become, according to Jimbo, in direct contradiction. (i.e. the jargon doesn't match the reality)
It appears that you have fought the good fight, and have given up, resigning yourself to the idea that: The best thing I can use as an argument is that there is no free alternative. I argue you should think about this more, because there is more than one alternative, there are actually several.Travb (talk) 19:56, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing practices: in use tag.

Please discontinue harassing me about your silly in use tag. We would not have a problem if you would 1) preview rather than making 5.7 edits per every one of one, and 2) discontinue refactoring between every edit. Your complaints are all the more offensive because they are bogus. For example, here you chide me for not abiding by your tag [52] yet my edit was not to a tagged section [53].--Gmaxwell 02:08, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

How many times have you ignored the tag?Travb (talk) 02:22, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing practices: Reversions

22:03, 26 May 2006 Gmaxwell (Reverted ranting by Travb. You claimed that in all cases when you copyed from the web that you cited the source. Show me. Lets start with that.)[54]

Then Gmaxwell stated:

Sorry to edit this section, but I didn't revert your edit, I conflicted and missed it while merging because you edited in multiple sections. I restored it in the next edit in the history and made it clear what happened.--Gmaxwell 22:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC) [55]

Then Gmaxwell stated:

...you were making that claim that I was doing it again here [56] but as you've since seen I fixed it in my next edit without your complaint. Sorry to steal the thunder out from under your allegations...--Gmaxwell 23:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

To get http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Travb&diff=next&oldid=55329138 Gmaxwell combined eight edits, making it appear like he had reverted back the edit. This is not the case, as the history page clearly shows:

(cur) (last) 22:19, 26 May 2006 Gmaxwell (reply)
(cur) (last) 22:16, 26 May 2006 Travb (→The alleged copyright violations)
(cur) (last) 22:14, 26 May 2006 Travb (→The alleged copyright violations)
(cur) (last) 22:14, 26 May 2006 Travb (→The alleged copyright violations)
(cur) (last) 22:13, 26 May 2006 Travb (→The alleged copyright violations)
(cur) (last) 22:11, 26 May 2006 Travb (→The alleged copyright violations - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ATravb&diff=55326064&oldid=55325793)
(cur) (last) 22:08, 26 May 2006 Travb (→Smoke and mirrors - ==Revertions by User:Gmaxwell==)
(cur) (last) 22:04, 26 May 2006 Travb (When logic fails, start a revert war)
(cur) (last) 22:03, 26 May 2006 Gmaxwell (Reverted ranting by Travb. You claimed that in all cases when you copyed from the web that you cited the source. Show me. Lets start with that.)

Gmaxwell combined 22:03, 26 May 2006 with 22:19, 26 May 2006 Gmaxwell to be able to claim that he reverted back the edit. This is clearly not the case. As seen by the actual edit:[57]


Then Gmaxwell admitted he deleted the section:

I removed your 5 screen fulls of ranting once and explained why. You keep accusing me of removing things, but perhaps you are being confused by your constant refactoring? It confuses me. --Gmaxwell 01:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

More deletions by reversion by User:Gmaxwell:

Please correct any of these deletions in your own, User:Gmaxwell explanation. Unlike yourself User:Gmaxwell, I can admit when I am wrong.

Signed:Travb (talk) 15:21, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deragatory language to me

[edit] User:Gmaxwell explanation

22:03, 26 May 2006 Gmaxwell (Reverted ranting by Travb. You claimed that in all cases when you copyed from the web that you cited the source. Show me. Lets start with that.)[58]

Then Gmaxwell stated[59]:

Let me make this crystal clear to you. You are only being allowed to continue to edit this page to explain how we were mistaken. Not to troll. If you continue to post pages of text rather than responding to simple questions your edits will be reverted and this page will be protected. --Gmaxwell 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Ah, the inevitable threat. I am explaining the edit history when you claim that you never reverted my edits. If you would have simply admitted that you were mistaken or wrong, as I have numerous times, then I would have dropped it.Travb (talk) 03:09, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

15 minutes later Gmaxwell removed another comment while merging [60] but the change was accidental and he amended it right away [61].

Then 11 of his edits later[62]TravB added to the section Gmaxwell had removed and restored text to:

Please refrain from reverting comments on my own talk page

To which gmaxwell replied:

Sorry to edit this section, but I didn't revert your edit, I conflicted and missed it while merging because you edited in multiple sections. I restored it in the next edit in the history and made it clear what happened.--Gmaxwell 22:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC) [63]

Then Gmaxwell stated:

...you were making that claim that I was doing it again here [64] but as you've since seen I fixed it in my next edit without your complaint. Sorry to steal the thunder out from under your allegations...--Gmaxwell 23:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

To get http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Travb&diff=next&oldid=55329138 Gmaxwell combined eight edits, making it appear like he had reverted back the edit. This is not the case, as the history page clearly shows:

Gmaxwell combined 22:03, 26 May 2006 with 22:19, 26 May 2006 Gmaxwell to be able to claim that he reverted back the edit. This is clearly not the case. As seen by the actual edit:[65]

Signed:Travb (talk) 02:32, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm beginning to think you're just really a jerk. :( I've amended your timeline so that it is complete. --Gmaxwell 02:48, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
It appears that I was wrong, you never called me a liar. Sorry for saying this. My mistake.Travb (talk) 03:08, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kind of losing urgency

Thanks to Kelly Martin, I found out that you (User:Gmaxwell) are not an admin. Since then, this whole experience has lost urgency.

I also suspect User:Gmaxwell emailed me today, but I have no proof. If I am wrong, my apologies.

I figured what is good for the goose, is good for the gander. I went through about one thousand of your edits, in which you probably added a grand total of...(drum roll)...one page of text. Most of your edits are deletions, adding your photos, and reverting text, so there is not much there either. You can't be accused of copyright violations yourself when you add nothing to wikipedia.

Signed:Travb (talk) 05:39, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

After a goods night sleep, I decided to come back. This is fun. I hope that if User:Gmaxwell is elected to be an admin, that other users will find this page, and see the way that User:Gmaxwell acts.Travb (talk) 14:19, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reversion by Jareth

Do not delete what I write Jareth, I find it ironic that you accuse me of attacking other editors when you have repeatedly called me a liar. I was simply defending myself against accusations of User:Gmaxwell. Your continued bias and hypocricy is still very evident. Travb (talk) 18:11, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Jareth wrote:

"You are lying or you didn't bother to correct you repeatedly incorrect assumptions before someone deleted the attack again" User_talk:Travb/Archive_4#Hey_there
"I have no problem with his discussion of policies, I do have a problem with the continued disruption, attacks and lying."[66]

Signed: Travb (talk) 18:18, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Uhm, but you did lie. Repeatedly. Perhaps factually-challenged would make you feel better? .:.Jareth.:. babelfish 01:17, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Instead of dillusional would you prefer the term "reality challenged?" I already covered all of your baseless accusations one by one (see archive 4). Have a nice hot tea and calm down.Travb (talk) 01:59, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My Watchlist

*‎ Denotes articles which I started. **‎ Denotes articles which I contributed immenesly too.

A Test of the News*
Albert J. Beveridge
Alexander Marinesko
Alliance for Progress*
Allied Intervention in Russia*
American Anti-Imperialist League
American Empire**
American Expeditionary Force Siberia
Andrei Amalrik
Anti-imperialists
Army Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program*
Bell Trade Act*
Business Plot**
CIA and Contra's cocaine trafficking in the US*
Campaign promise
Central Intelligence Agency**
Charles Allen Culbertson
Chemical warfare
Chicken George**
Church Committee**
Church report
Commonwealth v. Pullis*
Costa Rica Civil War*
Dark Alliance
DeLima v. Bidwell
Decree 900
Duck Hook*
Duck test
Dugway Proving Ground
Dupont
Edward Atkinson
Edén Pastora Gómez
Election promise
Elwell Stephen Otis

Emmanuel Todd
Enemy Nations*
Estate of Rodriquez v. Drummond Co.
Eugene Hale
Foreign interference with elections in democratic countries
Fort Detrick
General order
George Frisbie Hoar
George Kennan (explorer)
Guenter Lewy
Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society
Henry Cabot Lodge
History of United States overseas expansion
History of the Panama Canal**
Igbaras, Iloilo
Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad*
Insular Cases
Italian general election, 1948
J. Franklin Bell**
Jacob H. Smith*
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
José Figueres Ferrer**
Julian Codman
Julius C. Burrows
Józef Rotblat
KUBARK

Kerry Committee report*
Klaus Mehnert
Knute Nelson
La Violencia*
Labor Unions: International comparisons*
Labor unions in the United States
Leahy Law*
Lieber Code
Little Brown Brother
Littleton Waller**
Lodge Committee*
Luzon
Marinduque
Massacre at Dolores
Michel Garder*
Nicaragua v. United States
No Gun Ri incident
North Russia Campaign
Occidental Petroleum
Oil profits
Operation PBFORTUNE
Operation Whitecoat*
Palace of Justice**
Patriotic Union Party
Paul Nitze
Philippine-American War
Philippine independence
Pinkerton National Detective Agency

Plan Cobra*
Plausible deniability**
Predictions of Soviet collapse*
Problems of Communism (journal)*
Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War*
Richard Pipes**
Santa Marta Massacre**
Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola*
Smedley Butler**
Taft-Hartley Act
Team B*
The Saint Patrick's Day Four*
Thomas MacDonald Patterson
Thousand Days War*
Timeline of Labor unions in the United States*
Timeline of Philippine-American War*
Timeline of labor issues and events*
Torture manuals*
Treaty of Paris (1898)
U.S.-Colombia relations*
U.S. Senate Committee on the Philippines*
U.S. presidential election, 1900**
US aid
Water cure
What's the Matter with Kansas?**
William Crozier
William P. Yarborough**

[edit] Saddened

I'm honestly saddened to see that your combativeness and conflict-seeking behavior has gone this far. I hope you can learn to see the error of your ways and learn that picking a fight with everyone you see is not the way to get things accomplished. — Philwelch t 02:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, how touching. I can sense your cynicism.
Every person I have had a disagreement with is coming back to rub it in my face. You still have that pukey self-righteous tone, I see.
I found out that what you said was not true, Philwelch, you did know Jareth before.
See Philwelch started a revert war with me, and his associate Jareth, bailed him out. Philwelch claimed not to know Jareth, but that was false.
You stated on the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR:
I've already blocked myself for 24 hours—I had no idea Jaroth would unblock me, and I don't even know him. — Phil Welch (t) (c) 22:19, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
This is not true: [67][68] Phil does know Jareth, despite what he said. Phil has worked with Jareth before.
I guess you could always use the "I don't recall" defense. That works for politicans.
I mentioned you above, BTW. I would have contacted you personally, but, you know, I have been booted.Travb (talk) 05:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, I spammed his talk page like, twice, since both times I was scanning down a list of names of people who voted or commented on something and invited them back to comment. Don't you think if I actually knew him I would have spelled his name right? (Jaroth vs. Jareth?) But that's beside the point. The point now is, instead of apologizing and attempting to mend fences, you're remaining on the attack, which has already proven to be a futile behavior. Even now you have learned nothing. — Philwelch t 08:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
The point is that you stated you didn't know him. Spin it anyway you want.Travb (talk) 13:57, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a him :P Please stop with the continued personal attacks against editors before someone has to protect your talk page. .:.Jareth.:. babelfish 01:17, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Let the issue cool. Leave the talk page youself.

The fallowing thing I wrote for you on Friday. I lost Internet access so I have not taken into consioeration anything you have said recently.

(if you leave this talk page yourelf you can come back latter. if you get bolced it will be hard to get unbloced.)

In simple turms My advise to you is to leave wikipidia voluntarily for a whle and returen after the issue cools down. After you returen when you write articles Please read the sources. Put them down and write the article and thene cite the soudre. Don’t try to copy the soce and edit into you own words. Start with the information in your head and write from there. Remember to Cite evertyin. New information is vital to wikipidia but we can’t copy and past. You have to read the source. Put it down and write in your own words. If it was really phrased the best it coulb be phased at the souce then fellow editors will rephrase the content without seeingthe source. Copy and pating is not acceptable on Wikipedia. I am only agaist people who ecnofce this policy withot taking into conseraton spealicl cases. Such as when permission is given. However I still understand why even that is not alloed. Sory I can’t spell check I might lose internet again.--E-Bod 19:00, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Wow! I just realized you were Blocked Indefinitely. I reviewed the exhibits on User:Gmaxwell/trouble. While I Hope it is still possible for you to reform their was nothing anybody could do but to block you for your actions. It is one thing to say something is unjust and to work within the system to fix it. It is another thing to outright violate Policy.
I'm Sorry to have encouraged your behavior. I should not have edged you on. I was trying to argue my points that the Fair Use Policy should take into special considerations. While I don't think anybody doubts that you wanted your edits to be helpful the result was bad copyright violations. That I do not approve of.
If you were ever to be unblocked you could be a very valuable member of Wikipedia if you could remain Cool (always) and instead of copying the content to Wikipedia you just rephrased into your own words and included proper citations. You should not request to be unblocked for a long time. Mabel in a year or 2 you might want to return and request to be unblocked but Let this issue cool down. You are easily offended and even if you are provoked it does not justify your actions.
It appears you were trying to add the copyrighted content and then edit it to be more like your own words. If you are studying to be a layer you must be able to create work without copying. I recommend for you next article you edit after you request to be unblocked in a year that you read one source. Put the source down and without looking at it summarize what it says. And add a reference to the bottom of the page. Then go to the next source. Read it. Put it down and write more and add a citation. You are trying to copy and edit into you own words. If you start from the Copyrighted work you contributes can't be accepted.
I hope you get unblocked latter but Don't Even Look at Wikipedia for a few weeks. Maybe wait a month. I see you are enjoying yourself on other Wikis. Just remember to stay civil on Uncyclopedia too. Although people will assume you are joking anyway over there. Lighten Up. Remember Anything on Wikipedia is solely for entertainment. Wikipedia is Only Helpful for recreational knowledge. Whenever anybody reads a Wikipedia article they always assume that somebody has tried to put in misinformation. Student’s aren’t allowed to Cite Wikipedia. Wikipedia Is the most helpful for Findong other Sources in the link secion and Gaining recriaon knowledge that should alws go thogh a common sice checkl. I have seen small fact vandalism such as dates tthat can be changed and is raly picked up--E-Bod 19:00, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Hey E-Bod, thanks for your comments, all of the accusations by the user is covered later. I almost always citied all of my sources. Thanks for comments.Travb (talk) 01:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MfD Result Notice

The subpage of yours, Why Gun-Barrel Democracy Doesn't Work, has been deleted per the MfD debate, Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Travb/Why Gun-Barrel Democracy Doesn't Work. My apologies, as I'd personally rather it were kept, but I constrained to enforce consensus. Best wishes, Xoloz 04:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your vote, I appreciate that a lot. The classic writer Walter Lippmann calls these people the "braying herd". I read somewhere recently that democracy often can have really detrimental results.
I was actually going to expand the article further, adding other viewpoints, before I got booted.Travb (talk) 14:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Geting back to writing articles

Hi Travb, Its been quite a while since we butted heads at WSI over copyvios, I see your indefinitely banned now.

Even though we've never been on friendly terms I know you are a serious editor and hope you can put aside the copyvio/fair-use activism and return to writing articles.

PS. I sent you a couple of emails.

--Duk 16:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

TDC using wikipedia as a weapon, and that argument on WSI started my entire interest in copyvios, clear back in October 2005, my first month here. I wrote Jimbo a long letter asking him about fair use policy. I recieved no response from Jimbo, but I was encouraged by a user to help write policy. Travb (talk) 17:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unblocked

I discussed with Cyde regarding his indefinite block of you, but he hasn't responded. So I've unblocked you (based on your promise not to post any more copyvios or argue over fair use, and your apology). --Duk 17:11, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Duk, I will not abuse your trust. It you are ever elected for super-admin, or whatever comes after admin, you have my vote. :)
I will keep a low profile for several months and not rock the boat at all--avoiding conflict with others at all costs. Regarding fair use, it is a taboo subject forever.
I archived everything here: 4, if this is a problem for anyone, please let me know.Travb (talk) 17:22, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I find it sad that for you to come back your had to give up your voice in the fair use issue. Know that there are some of us out there that agree with you in many ways (maybe not in all). It is really sad what wikipedia is going to end up been if people like you are blocked. Cjrs 79 22:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Cjrs 79, I saw you were one of the only people who signed up for my fair use page before it got deleted (one of two articles that have been deleted in the past month--and one of probably 6 articles I made which will be deleted this month). I am really fine with this arrangement right now. Talk to User:Noles1984, he has some of the same POV and has not agreed to stop.Travb (talk) 01:35, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree that the issuaton is verry sad, However fair use is not worth the the time and stress so you should feel your responsibily to push this issue has been lifted. Consider this the gift of an indefinate Wikibreak that will allow you to set asside the Fair use Stress becose your obligaions have been lifted. Enough other users will take up your fight. However i don't see the harm in writing one essay on the matter with Template:Essay. If the essay is on your userspace and you only talk on that page then i see no distrupton to wikipidia. However due to you promis you shoul get the goahad of another Admin before you start such a page. Other users can refine or comment on you essay and if it is properly taed it shouldn't end up deleted as long as it is specifically about wikipidia philosophy. If you were to creat such an essay it is a good idea to link to see also and contra (Oposing views). It would also be a great way to call ateention to secific issues at hand. I would serch through the existing esssays first and i might creat one myself being you may be unable to write one yourself--E-Bod 01:46, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Image copyright issues for dummies Explains our Copyright Policy. However I am really sorry for bringing up this soar issue. If you need to say someting but aren't allowed to say it on Wikipidia you can allway say it off wikipiida using E-mail E-mail me--E-Bod 01:57, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments and suggestions, I have lost interest in this for now. The whole ordeal soured me a little bit to wikipedia. But if I do decide to look at this again, I will get admin permission first, and use some of your really excellent ideas. Travb (talk) 01:32, 3 June 2006 (UTC)