User talk:Academe

Welcome to my far from academic world
Being academic's just a job title. But deep down I'm a dross-loving Guardian reader in the UK time zone who needs patience – that's UTC in wikispeak...I think.

Academe 17:18, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Re: Help please
Hi Academe, when you type the four tildes and press save, they are automatically changed into a link to your userpage and the date and time you pressed the save button, so the tildes don't appear when you try to edit again, but your username and a timestamp do. You just need to find that and delete it like I have done here. Hope that helps explain, and just a reminder that signatures aren't placed in articles but your contributions are recorded in the article history. Cheers, mattbr 10:38, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That's OK. If you want to try things out on-wiki you can use the Sandbox or you can create a subpage in your userspace, such as User:Academe/Sandbox, where material will not appear in the encyclopaedia. Also remember that your username will appear in the history of articles you edit and all your edits are recorded in your contributions, so please don't sign your contributions to articles. Thanks, mattbr 22:52, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: Abbreviations
Kind of yes and no. The best place to find out these things is the Manual of style, but here's my take. Probably the best thing is to not abbreviate if you can as this is an encyclopaedia and a few extra characters won't harm anyone and it leaves no room for ambiguity. For example use $10 million, Professor Jolly and Doctor Who (notice the article is at the full title). For other (real) doctors I would use 'Dr.'. You will find that different editors will have different styles, so you are best sticking to the style already used in the article (see Manual of Style). Hope that helps, mattbr 18:08, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Help:Images and other uploaded files will help you with pics when you need them.
 * Regarding Cobra/COBRA, the former should take you to the snake article, and the latter should take you to Cobra (disambiguation) where there is a link to Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms. There is also a link to the disambiguation page at the top of the Cobra article, so you can still find the page. To answer your questions, I'm not sure I fully understand the first, could you explain further? The second, you should probably expand Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms or Civil Contingencies Committee depending on what information you are adding, and finally, Disambiguation should cover that. Hope that helps, mattbr 17:14, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, some degree of knowledge is assumed as people usually have some idea of what they are looking for (eg COBRA contains ministers and meets at a time of emergency), and the description after the link should provide enough information for reader to know that the link is the place they want to go without being too long (usually no more than one line). Feel free to change to description to make it more clear. On the link, do you mean my reply to the question? If so, I'll copy my reply across shortly. mattbr 08:27, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Re: Pix
Images are a bit complicated here, and unfortunately there are a number of hoops to jump through before they can be used, especially if they are not available under a free copyright licence. I assume both images are copyrighted? (This is going to be a yes unless it clearly states otherwise, so I'll assume they are.)

There shouldn't be a problem with the poster, and firstly you'll need to scale down the actual image to under 300px in width (any good image editing program should be able to do this, if you have Microsoft Office try Microsoft Office Picture Manager – if not let me know). Then go to Upload, select the promotional photo option and fill out the details in the boxes at the bottom. Give the file a descriptive name (such as 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat poster 2007.jpg'), and choose the poster option from the drop down box. Now with non-free content (as this poster will be), you will need to meet the Non-free content criteria, which means you will need to include a rationale as to why you are using it. The best way to do that is to use the Non-free media rationale template as described at Fair use rationale guideline and on the template description page. Fill out the template fields and put it in the summary box, then you can upload then use the image.

The one(s) of Mead are more tricky as Wikipedia doesn't allow any non-free images of living people which could be replaced by a freely licence image (whether one exists already or not). Could you describe the image before I go any further?

And on the resize thing, yes it should resize it and you can always click an image to take you to the description page. mattbr 22:23, 10 July 2007 (UTC)


 * This is where it gets a bit complicated. Unfortunately permission for use on Wikipedia is no good (they can be deleted without discussion ("speedily deleted") under speedy deletion criterion I3) as the material still has restricted use. The licences the site uses allows free use, including for commercial purposes, by anyone, providing the content is licence under the same licence and the source is acknowledged. This means that you, I, or anyone can take the whole of Wikipedia and sell the infomation under the same licence (the GFDL), acknowledging Wikipedia and make a profit (though don't forget it is free here!). There are a number of mirrors and forks of Wikipedia about. Copyrighted images are allowed if no free alternative could be made that provides substantially the same information, so for example single and album covers, film posters, logos and images of dead people are allowed because no freely licensed alternative could be made, but in the case of living people, anyone could go out, take a picture of that person and release it under a free licence, therefore any copyrighted image is potentially replaceable and fair use cannot be claimed. So the poster is fine, but any images of Mead with a non-free licence cannot be used (there are a very small number of situations where they can be used, but they mustn't be replaceable and general promotional shots are).
 * If you want, you could ask them to release an image under a licence Wikipedia can use (such as the GFDL, some Creative Commons licences such as cc-by-2.5, cc-by-sa, cc-by-sa-2.0 and cc-by-sa-2.5, or they can release it into the public domain), and there is information on this at Requesting copyright permission including some example letters. Don't forget to email the permission to the permissions address on that page if you are successful. Hope that explains, and good luck! mattbr 17:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Edits to Swindon
Good work on your continuing edits to this article. The information you've provided in some areas would also be usefully included in the Swindon Works and Midland & South Western Junction Railway articles as well as the possible creation of the long requested Swindon Town railway station article. Cheers Foxhill 17:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:47, 23 November 2015 (UTC)