User talk:Aholladay

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Hello Aholladay! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! — Grandmasterka Getting Started Wikipedia Tutorial • The five pillars of Wikipedia How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Fair use • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Build consensus • Resolving disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Pages needing attention • Peer review Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

[edit] Signing edit summaries

Just a note that you don't need to sign your edit summaries with ~~~~ (and it doesn't produce your signature in edit summaries anyway). You only need to sign your comments on discussion pages (like this one). Thanks for editing! Hut 8.5 17:53, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lightning and giraffes

Thank you for your last month's addition to the article on giraffes, explaining how they're more likely to be struck by lightning. As well, thank you for providing the exact source for where you got the information.

What you did wrong was that you copied the information practically verbatim from an external website; this is a copyright violation. I have rewritten that section (and deleted some superfluous information). Please don't copy word-for-word again. DS (talk) 15:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, it was from your own website? That's different, then. Here's the canned answer for how to deal with that:

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate your contributions, but for legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted.

You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words.

If the external website belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text — which means allowing other people to modify it — then you must include on the external site the statement "I, (name), am the author of this article, (article name), and I release its content under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 and later."

You might want to look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for more details, or ask a question here. You can also leave a message on my talk page. DS (talk) 01:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Modified releases

Unfortunately, your proposal that the release be Wikipedia-specific is... hm, what's a less harsh way of saying "unacceptable"?

The thing is, content on Wikipedia is specifically and explicitly allowed to be copied by other websites (as long as they specify its origin and mention that it's available to be copied for free by other websites as long as they specify its origin and etc). As such, limited licenses (how can we say that something is free for non-commercial use if it's an integral part of an article that can get copied onto a website that's ad-sponsored?) are incompatible with use on Wikipedia.

I'm really sorry. DS (talk) 15:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lighting and giraffes

There are a number of reasons why I reverted your recent edit to the article Giraffe. First, it verged on original research. Secondly, I'm not sure your website qualifies as a reliable source under Wikipedia terms. Thirdly, the fact that you referenced your own website creates an obvious conflict of interest. And finally, I'm not sure the information is all that encyclopedic. If you wish to see the information included in the article, I would recommend raising it on the article's talk page, to see how others feel about this. Aecis^Brievenbus 23:23, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• Some of those criticisms are a little... iffy, I think. More to the point, however, I've already incorporated the key data into the article, worded differently. For instance, the fact that they are vulnerable to lightning has nothing to do with their evolution. DS (talk) 03:05, 29 December 2007 (UTC)