Talk:Ricky Ian Gordon

Poorly sourced
Where did this text come from? User:Pedant (talk) 01:51, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The "Recent Productions" section came directly from his official site:, making that part, at any rate, seemingly a copy violation. I do not know enough about copy vio to say that it is definitely a copy vio, since it is material copied from the subject of the article.JeanColumbia (talk) 22:01, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.rickyiangordon.com/bio.html. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:55, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Problematic text was restored later in 2011. I've removed it again, and sought further assistance at the BLP Noticeboard and left a note for Moonriddengirl. 76.248.151.159 (talk) 01:14, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Recent additions to the article introduced further additions from quoted sources, per WP:QUOTEFARM. Again, the result was both an extensive copyright concern and a press release in tone. 76.248.151.159 (talk) 02:36, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Where do I go to complain about 76.248.151.159 and what happened here today? I was responding to the request from Wikipedia which was and still is at the top of the article: "This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. (March 2011) This article's lead section may not adequately summarize key points of its contents. (March 2011) This biographical article is written like a résumé. (December 2008)"

I first saw this article yesterday. I'd probably read the name but I wasn't even familiar with Gordon till I came across the article when I was looking up something using findlink. I could see right away the article needed help, there were almost no links or sources and it was almost one giant paragraph. So since Wikipedia was asking for the above help with the article, I started looking things up and saw he's a major composer, now composing mostly operas, he deserves a good article. So I started adding links and sources and checking that the quotes were accurate (they were). It was obviously too wordy and needed editing, but I don't delete big contributions from other people, I know there's a lot of work behind people's contributions, so I started small and just started fixing obvious stuff and figured the most important thing would be to find the sources for the statements in the article. I also started to rearrange it so it was in chronological order and had some breaks so you could edit it more easily. I deleted a small paragraph that was redundant, I added a couple of sentences to some of the quotes to make them more complete, for example I added a part of a quote that made it clear a New York Times reviewer didn't like a production, just the music, which was not something a "press release" would contain, which is what 76.248.151.159 just called the article on another board. I intended to add a source for everything that was stated in the article. My point is if I kept working on the article it was going to be changed substantially (it had a lot of unnecessary stuff). But after spending hours on this and while still working on it most of the article suddenly disappeared, I thought I had done something inadvertently. I looked at the history and saw someone named 76.248.151.159 said there was a copyright violation, and I knew I hadn't violated anybody's copyright and that usually people who are only identified by numbers want to be super anonymous for some not so great reason so I saved the last version I had up. 76.248.151.159 later wrote to me "you restored mass copyright violation text after I offered a clear edit summary with explanation here." The "here" was posted by 76.248.151.159 7 minutes before I saved my last version, as if I had time to figure out what on earth was going on. Was I supposed to immediately recognize 76.248.151.159's authority? (does he/she have authority? what's with the number?) 76.248.151.159 also wrote it took him or her only a few minutes to suspect that the source for the article was a press release which supposedly I should have known. Well to tell the truth if that article was a press release it sure was a mess.

Anyway, I'd like to know where I go to complain about 76.248.151.159. I'd ask him but he told me not to write on his talk page, because I "don't get it" and "it would be for naught." So besides his insulting attitude after I'd wasted hours trying to fix this article per Wikipedia's request, I'd like to know a couple of things (sorry if this isn't the place for this but 76.248.151.159 told me to discuss anything further here)

-How come nobody did anything about this article until I started to fix it? If it was such an obvious press release and violated so many Wikipedia principles, shouldn't it have been deleted before? It had been that way for quite awhile.

-If there was something inherently wrong with the article that necessitated its deletion, why was there a notice at the top asking for citations and editing? Was I supposed to ignore that?

-Why was I told I had posted copyrighted material when I obviously didn't post it? I just rearranged it by putting it in chronological order, without changing it. Why wasn't that criticism aimed at the people who posted it before? That's not a minor thing, I'm donating my time, if I'm just going to be abused why should I do it?

-Why should anyone post on Wikipedia? I tried to do what the article asked, provide some sources, and I ended up wasting hours of my time only to have the whole thing deleted and to have to read 76.248.151.159's insults about me posting copyrighted material when he could obviously see I didn't post it. If people only notice Wikipedia problems when you try to fix them, and then blame you for the problems, what's the point of trying to fix problem articles?

-If you are trying to fix a major problem and it takes a while what's to keep people from jumping all over it while you're doing it? By the time I was finished with that article, it was going to be substantially different, how about letting someone finish what they are obviously doing and then jump all over it if you want?

-At the worst here, it appears that this brouhaha is over maybe some people, obviously not me, posting information from Ricky Ian Gordon's own site, does anyone really think he would claim copyright infringement? There is now no information about this major composer on Wikipedia. How does this help Wikipedia, or the people who turn to Wikipedia for information? I say he's a major composer, and he is, but that's in the world of opera, which is a small world and new opera is an even smaller world. He does important work and deserves a good article, but he's not that well known, who is now going to write an article about him? (not me!) What would have been wrong with just fixing the article, which I was doing, rather than deleting the whole thing? If some part of it sounded like PR, just edit it, why delete the whole thing? In checking the info in the article, as far as I got, everything had sources, it was all factual.

Many Wikipedia articles are out of date and have dead links. I'll bet this is happening a lot. Seems like just the act of trying to fix an article attracts some special Wikipedia attention, whereas something could be wrong or a link could be broken or sources missing for years, but once you try to fix it people are all over it, which makes no sense. It doesn't matter if other sites are screwed up, but it really matters if Wikipedia is.Iful (talk) 13:07, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I'll take a stab at this. I do share your pain. I have myself spent hours editing articles only to have my work removed. It's frustrating and does make you want to not come back.


 * "why was there a notice at the top asking for citations and editing?" I don't know, and in my experience it's pointless to try to answer this one. No one is in charge here, so it's not like some senior editor placed that notice. Treat those notices as a hint that there is something wrong and do your own investigation. I often start by looking for copyright violations, so I can avoid exactly the issue you ran in to. And that's exactly what I did here. When I read somethiing that sounds like it came from a press release, I do a Google search to see if it came from some place other than WP. You'll notice my second edit here was to remove a section that was copied from elsewhere.


 * "Why was I told I had posted copyrighted material when I obviously didn't post it?" That's not what 76 was trying to say, and I'm sorry you interpreted it that way. This is the crux of the problem. The article as you found it, according to 76, and I have not verified this myself, was in large part copied from somewhere else. No amount of editing, putting in chronological order, and adding sources can change this fact. Your edited version then amounts to a derived work, which is still a copyright violation. As such, we can't use it here, and all your effort has been wasted. This is not 76's fault. I want to emphasize that I have not verified the copyright claim, but given that the very first section I checked was in violation, I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the article was too.


 * "Why should anyone post on Wikipedia?" Good question. I wonder this myself sometimes.


 * "If you are trying to fix a major problem and it takes a while what's to keep people from jumping all over it while you're doing it?" One way around this is to do your work in a sandbox. I have not done this myself. I think you just create a page in your user space. I'm sure there's a guide somewhere.


 * "At the worst here, it appears that this brouhaha is over maybe some people, obviously not me, posting information from Ricky Ian Gordon's own site, does anyone really think he would claim copyright infringement?" It doesn't matter whether Ian thinks it's a violation. Under the Berne convention everything produced in the US is copyright. If Ian licenses the content for use on WP, then it's not a violation. Otherwise it is. It doesn't matter whether Ian seeks an infringement claim or not. See Copyright violations. Wikipedia content is widely copied and it's important that it be properly licensed.


 * Finally, where to go to complain about 76? Probably WP:ANI. But they will want proof, with citations, that 76 has violated some WP policy, and want to know exactly what you want them to do about it. Given what I've seen here, I doubt you will get any sympathy from them. They will tell you to come back here and try to work out your differences.


 * I hope this helps. I don't want to get in the middle of a content dispute myself but if you find it too difficult to work with 76, I will try to help. Kendall-K1 (talk) 13:44, 23 June 2013 (UTC)