User talk:DovidBenAvraham

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Wikipedia and copyright
Hello DovidBenAvraham. All or some of your addition(s) to Retrospect (software) has had to be removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.


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It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 16:54, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest
Hello, DovidBenAvraham. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places, or things you have written about in the article Retrospect (software), you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic, and it is important when editing Wikipedia articles that such connections be completely transparent. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, we ask that you please:


 * avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your family, friends, school, company, club, or organization, as well as any competing companies' projects or products;
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In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Please take a few moments to read and review Wikipedia's policies regarding conflicts of interest, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. Thank you. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 13:42, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

October 2016
I have removed your recent additions to the article, as the material appears to have been copied from the copyright web pages http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1306619&start=40 and https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1307101&start=40. Both of these are marked as © 2016 Condé Nast. All rights reserved and © Ars Technica 1998-2016. Please don't add any further copyright material to this wiki. You risk being blocked from editing. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 13:09, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

There is nothing inherently wrong with works being copyrighted, as long as they are freely licensed to allow Wikipedia to use the work. 80.221.159.67 (talk) 03:20, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Retrospect (software)
You have edited this article recently quite a lot, but also introduced multiple issues to it:


 * MOS
 * Overly detailed
 * Primary sources

Please note that Wikipedia is not for exhaustive logs of software updates. I was about to borderline nominate the article for deletion, but I'll give the article some time if the issues are fixed.

Earwig's Copyvio Detector came up with a result of 39,4% for the article. Unlikely to be a violation so far, but I'd be cautious. 80.221.159.67 (talk) 03:25, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I'll deal here with the "Primary sources" and "Overly detailed" issues. Please remember that, per this section on Diannaa's talk page, I have no connection with Retrospect Inc. other than as a long-time, fairly-satisfied software customer.


 * It helps here to know a bit about the recent history of Retrospect, which I've learned from the few articles about it (see the links in the article) and reading between the lines—because Retrospect Inc. won't discuss it publicly. EMC shut down its Insignia division—that included the Retrospect product—in 2007.  EMC re-hired some of the Retrospect engineers in 2008 and put them into its newly-acquired Iomega division.  Those engineers went against Iomega management and developed a greatly enhanced Retrospect Macintosh version 8 with a changed UI.  The new version was shipped in 2009 in a hurry without sufficient testing, and Retrospect Macintosh customer satisfaction slipped because of the changed UI and many bugs.  The new version of Retrospect was apparently canceled, and Retrospect was not officially revived until 2011 as Retrospect Mac 9—which was mostly a bug-fixed Retrospect Mac 8 with a few new features.


 * As a result of this, the WP article on Retrospect that existed in early October 2016 was only a couple of 4-line paragraphs followed by 4 one-line paragraphs, summarized the program as it existed in 2006, and was written in 2009. When I tried to enhance the article, I ran into the fact that there are no modern secondary sources other than one short Macworld review by Stuart Gripman; there are only the primary-source Retrospect Mac User's Guides that are 250+ pages long.  In enhancing the article, I've essentially tried to create a secondary source that is longer than that review but much shorter than the User's Guide.  At 7 screen pages, exclusive of the references, I think I've done reasonably well.  Retrospect is much more sophisticated than Time Machine, whose WP article is only 2.5 pages exclusive of references.  My intention is not to create a condensed version of the Mac Version 13 User's Guide, but to explain the basic concepts of Retrospect's many features well enough to allow a potential user to decide whether Retrospect will fulfill his/her requirements.


 * That's why I decided to adopt a historical approach. After enhancing the original article as the "Concepts prior to Retrospect Macintosh 8" section, I added sections outlining the most-major new features of each release from "Retrospect Macintosh 8" through "Retrospect Macintosh 13 and Retrospect Windows 11".  Looking at these, I can now see that some of the paragraphs that begin with the word "Improved" or "Faster" could be considered "exhaustive logs of software updates"; however some of those paragraphs also describe Retrospect features not discussed previously.


 * I also agree that the "The line columns show ..." sentences in each of the 6 doubly-indented paragraphs following the "All-new, customizable [administrator] interface" paragraph in the "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section are overly detailed, and should be left to the User's Guide. The same is true for all sentences following the first sentence in the "Custom reporting" paragraph later in that same section.


 * Please respond here if these changes would solve the "Overly detailed" issue. As I've said in my third paragraph above, I can't do much about the "Primary sources" issue because there essentially are no secondary sources.


 * DovidBenAvraham (talk) 08:11, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I have now done the deletions I talked about, plus a few others. They reduced the size of the article from about 7.2 screen pages down to about 6.2 screen pages.  That's about the most I can do as far as the "Overly detailed" issue is concerned, without cutting real meat instead of fat from the article.  However, see below on the "Original research" issue.
 * DovidBenAvraham (talk) 02:51, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I'll deal here with the "MOS" issue. I'm puzzled, because I got 98% on the New York State 3-Year English Regents' Exam and I've never been accused of not writing correct American English.  The only thing I can think of is that you may be bothered by what you think of as excessive capitalization of certain words in the article.  This is actually a case of Retrospect-specific technical language.  I have put in the following bolded paragraph as the second un-indented one in the "Concepts prior to Retrospect Macintosh 8" section: "Ever since the software was first released, its UI has made the first letters of certain words upper-case to indicate a specific Retrospect meaning. The remainder of this article preserves that convention."  Don't feel embarrassed by your reaction to the Retrospect technical terminology; over many years a lot of people have reacted badly to it.
 * DovidBenAvraham (talk) 03:55, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * [DBA moved this up in the section to the original "MOS" discussion and indented it for clarity] As for the Manual of Style issue, with that I was primarily referring to pseudo-lists like  and indentation. 80.221.159.67 (talk) 05:17, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I've now changed the bulleted lists to WP-style. Thanks. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 04:56, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

I am concerned if this is original research or closely paraphrased from a primary source, both which are against Wikipedia's policies. If no reliable and third-party sources exist for a subject, it should not usually have an article.

I think the article needs significant improvements, especially regarding to adding third-party sources. If it's not overly detailed, then it may be Very long. In that comparison, I think Time Machine has enough detail to be interesting for majority of readers. Another comparison would be Adobe Creative Suite, with summarized changes.

I appreciate your efforts on attempting to improve the article. 80.221.159.67 (talk) 09:03, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * There is no original research in the article, except that I got the "The line columns show ..." sentences—which I am about to delete—from looking at my own running "Retrospect backup server" because it was easier than finding screen shots of them in 250+ pages of the Retrospect Macintosh 13 User's Guide. I have tried to avoid close paraphrasing, but—as this says—that is difficult to do in an technical article. As for Time Machine, whose link BTW you should have written as "Time Machine (macOS)|Time Machine" inside the double square brackets to make it go to the article you wanted, take a look at the indented paragraph after the first paragraph in the "Overview" in that article.  In brief, Retrospect is all the things that the first sentence in the indented paragraph says TM is not.  Most Retrospect administrators employ it for multiple users on a LAN as either an archival utility or for offline storage; that is why it has a lot of features that take pages to describe.  And, if you want third-party sources to verify that Retrospect Macintosh versions 9 through 13 have the features briefly described in the article, please use the search box in the upper-right corner of this Retrospect user forum—where you can find posts discussing all of the features (and their bugs) including a number of posts by me under my real name that are alluded to in the "Documentation" section of the article.
 * DovidBenAvraham (talk) 20:56, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Thinking further, I've started wondering about whether some Retrospect problems mentioned in the second paragraph in the "Documentation" section of the article may be "Original research". Problem (2) with the How-To Video Tutorials is definitely not "Original research".  As a result of a post that I wrote in early March 2016, a thread in the Retrospect user forums became wildly popular (962 views as of early this morning) because I was the first person who had dealt with the problem that "certain tricky key concepts, such as how to do 'seeding' in 'Changing paths Cloud Mac', go by so quickly that many users have not been able to grasp them without multiple viewings."  However I'm not so sure about problem (1).  If—in the course of researching the WP article—I noticed an obvious massive discrepancy between two sections in the Retrospect Mac 13 User's Guide discussing the "Dashboard", does that constitute "Synthesis of published material"?  I'm also not so sure about problem (3).  If—in the course of trying to figure out in mid-September 2016 how the newly-announced Retrospect Mac 13.5 handled Dropbox—I noticed an obvious missing UI step in the "Cloud Backup - How to Set Up Dropbox for Cloud Backup" Retrospect Knowledge Base article, does that constitute "Synthesis of published material"?  If both of them do, then deleting them would cut the article by another 0.3 screen pages.
 * DovidBenAvraham (talk) 04:48, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Oh joy, today I found another third-party secondary source: A 2012 review of Retrospect Mac 10 in the 29-year-old highly-respected "Apple news for the rest of us" online publication TidBITS.com. Its first paragraph says Retrospect is "primarily used for backup by small and medium-sized businesses with mixed-platform networks", which I have now quoted (with a footnote) in the first sentence of the WP article.  Its second paragraph contains an excellent explanation of why the "Instant Scan technology" feature added in Retrospect Mac 10 is of real benefit to "larger networks, or installations with very large amounts of data to back up"; I have now also footnoted that source in the appropriate paragraph of the "Retrospect Macintosh 10 and Retrospect Windows 8" section of the WP article.  The same author also wrote a TidBITS article in 2016 on Retrospect Mac 13; it merely repeats Retrospect Inc.'s announcement of new "Cloud Backup" and "Performance-Optimized Grooming" features, so I won't bother to footnote it in the WP article—I'm awaiting a further TidBITS review that will really dig into the practical usefulness of those two features.
 * DovidBenAvraham (talk) 03:56, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I was eventually able to revise the article so that a full 50% (13 out of 26) of references are to third-party secondary sources, because I belatedly found 3 reviews of Retrospect on the venerable and respected TitBITS.com. Those reviews, although not as detailed as the corresponding Retrospect Mac User's Guides, contained information that was detailed enough to serve as substitutes for those UGs as references in the WP article.

Sorry, I've lost you a long time ago. I don't understand the insides of Retrospect, and I have never used the software. Your questions are more fitted to the article talk page or Help desk? I'll also point you to WP:RS and WP:IAR. Good luck to you. 80.221.159.67 (talk) 05:15, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Yesterday I posted my questions about whether I have done original research in the "Documentation" section to Help desk. As yet I have seen no answers.
 * DovidBenAvraham (talk) 04:06, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Still no answers to "Original research question. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 04:56, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Revisiting the issue
Hi, it's "me" again.

Since tagging the article in October 2016 (~10 months ago), there's not been substantial improvement to the issues listed but quite the opposite.

Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Describing every element of the software in detail (their locations, what they're named, not just the core features of the software and what its intended for) is indiscrimate, but maybe also dubious on copyright. Large amounts of sections are based on one or few (primary) sources. Most of the article is still in list format instead of prose.


 * The article does not describe "every element of the software in detail". If the Finnish editor wants to see that, he/she should try reading http://download.retrospect.com/docs/mac/v14/user_guide/Retrospect_Mac_User_Guide-EN.pdf, which contains 238 pages preceding the Release Notes.  The only section of the article that might be accused of that is "Retrospect Macintosh 8", but that greatly condenses a discussion whose overview in the User's Guide runs from the bottom of page 18 through the top of page 21 plus from the bottom of page 29 through all of page 34—although the latter UG pages include some concepts that the article discusses in "Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7".  I've condensed those 7 UG pages to 1.25 screen pages, and I'm mighty proud of it.  If the Finnish editor wants to know why I made the effort, he/she should read the second paragraph in the Talk page's "Retrospect Windows 'backup server' GUI" section—and think about "confused the heck out of many Retrospect installation administrators" and why I felt "Retrospect Macintosh 8" needed just enough detail to counter that.  It's true that I've re-inserted the "The line columns show ..." sentences in each of the 6 doubly-indented paragraphs following the "All-new, customizable [administrator] interface" paragraph in the "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section, but all except one of those sentences was less than one line long—and IMHO they make it clearer "what it [the GUI] is intended for".


 * The article has expanded from 7.5 to 10 pages—exclusive of References—since October 2016, but most of that expansion resulted from: (1) expansion of the prose lead section—as requested by another editor, (2) further expansion of "Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7"—which is totally prose except for 3 tiny bulleted items at the beginning, (3) addition of the new "Retrospect Windows 7" section, (4) substantial prose expansion of "Retrospect Macintosh 10 and Retrospect Windows 8", (5) addition of the new "Retrospect Macintosh 14 and Retrospect Windows 12" section, and (6) further expansion of "Documentation"—which is prose divided into 3 big bulleted items corresponding to types of problems outlined in the first paragraph of the section.


 * As for "dubious on copyright", I haven't heard a peep from User talk:Diannaa since October 2016. As for "Large amounts of sections are based on one or few (primary) sources", 17 out of the 33 references in the article as of today are to third-party sources—which was a major effort of Googling considering the scarcity of recent reviews of Retrospect.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 22:15, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

If you are being paid to edit on Wikipedia, you must disclose your paid relationship per Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use before editing any further or you may be blocked from editing here.


 * I am not and have never been an employee or contractor of Retrospect Inc., or of its predecessor corporations. I have paid for every new major release of the Retrospect software I have ever used, either at the new-purchase price or at the upgrade price, including most recently in spring 2017 for Retrospect Macintosh 14. I'm a 76-year-old retiree who looked at the Retrospect(software) article in early October 2016, saw that it was truly a stub that IIRC was at best current as of 2005, and decided to expand it in hopes of getting other people to buy it—so that Retrospect Inc. could stay in business and add new bug-fixes and features I could use. That expansion has proved to be much more extensive than I expected, for reasons I'll discuss above.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 20:47, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm going to bring up the article to attention of other contributors. I'm not sure yet how or what will be done about it, but I'll try to find out. 2001:2003:54FA:2F79:0:0:0:1 (talk) 18:06, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

For comparison:


 * Before (3 October 2016)
 * Then (23 October 2016)
 * Now (20 August 2017)

2001:2003:54FA:2F79:0:0:0:1 (talk) 18:26, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

for the recent cleanups. 2001:2003:54FA:2751:0:0:0:1 (talk) 02:18, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Notice of Conflict of interest noticeboard discussion
There is currently a discussion at Conflict of interest/Noticeboard regarding a possible conflict of interest incident with which you may be involved. Thank you. 2001:2003:54FA:2F79:0:0:0:1 (talk) 18:19, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Retrospect
Dear DovidBenAvraham, as a WP user I have perfect right to edit any article at any time, anywhere on Wikipedia. The edits your making to the Retrospect article are completely ignoring the consensus that has been built up around what needs to be done to create an article that conforms to WP:MOS. The Lede and History section needed a copyedit, which I did, taking out all these pseudo statements, the "" dashes, which are not standard and don't conform to WP:MOS, put several links to other articles on WP (as the Lede and History section are under-linked), which explain what the tech is, and made some general fixes. That is all. Please don't put the dodgy language back, which is from the manual. As somebody that has written more than 500+ articles, I know how to create a good article. Let the work be completed, and you can create another article somewhere else. scope_creep (talk) 20:40, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * First of all, you probably should read about "Dashes" in the MOS yourself. That gives an example of using the em-dash "We read them in chronological order: Descartes, Locke, Hume—but not his Treatise (it is too complex)—and Kant."  It is exactly the way I use the em-dash.  The only thing I might be guilty of in that respect is using the standard combination for em-dash on my Mac keyboard, instead of using the Special characters->Symbols—>fifth-character-from-left-in-fourth-row on the WP editing bar.  But it seems to work, although I admit I probably use em-dashes—grammatically correctly—more than most writers.  Second, BTW, some of the links you put in—such as the one to Dantz Development Corporation—don't work (BTW, this sentence and following in the post used the em-dash from the WP editing bar).  Third, would you kindly specify what you mean by "dodgy language"?  If you're referring to Retrospect terms such as Media Set, what would be your term for a set of disks or tapes that is treated as a single user-visible entity for the destination for a Backup run?  Dantz started using the term Backup Set in the late 1980s, and they still use it in Retrospect Windows.  However they decided in 2008 to change it for Retrospect Mac; one backup app (I think it's Arq) actually uses Backup Set as the term for a set of disks that is treated as a single user-visible entity for the input to a backup run.  I define any Retrospect term before I use it, which is more than you can say for the writer of the NetBackup article, and after the revision I will only be using four (Source, Media Set, Member, and Grooming).  I await your suggestions for substitute terms that are industry-standard, but I don't intend to hold my breath while waiting—because there aren't any.  DovidBenAvraham (talk) 21:51, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry, your right on that. scope_creep (talk) 00:48, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * By "right on that", did you just mean the m-dash—or did you also mean using the Retrospect terms for the four concepts? BTW Arq doesn't use Backup Set as the term for a set of disks that is treated as a single user-visible entity for the input to a backup run; it is (based on some quick Googling) Mozy, Norton, Symantec, iBackup, and CommVault that do.  Veeam uses Backup Set in the Retrospect Windows sense of a single user-visible entity for the destination for a Backup run; CrashPlan uses Backup Set as the term for a combination(!) of the two.

WMF Utilities
Hi DovidBenAvraham. This utility, which is provided by the WMF labs, at turns google book refs into proper WP refs. To make it work, pop in a GBook url at the top, click the Load and a ref pops out. Examing Some locations, which I only discovered myself, are using it for years:
 * 1) Coauthors dont work. First name, last name are standard.
 * 2) Hit the today button to get an access-date in the ref.
 * 3) Page numbers. If it is a single page, which it mostly is, get rid of the dash.
 * 4) Click make citation, at the bottom left, for citation.
 * 5) Copy to WP, and you are left with a much better ref.

Worth a look. To find it, type in: Google Book cite. scope_creep (talk) 21:02, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks scope_creep, I really appreciate that, and tried it. However the citation it came up with—which you also came up with—is for a 2009 version of the Joe Kissell book with a slightly different title (the utility must have done some kind of database lookup, which is why it took so long). In the process of trying to re-Google my original books.google.com URL to get the precise page number which it appeared I needed, I discovered (on page 4 of the search results) that somebody associated with the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences has put up a 2007 version of the book—with the same slightly different title—as a .PDF. I decided to use that version as a ref instead because it is freely searchable (I may use it as a ref for other things in the article), and let Harvard's lawyers sort it out (I assume the person who put it up, in a collection of rather outdated software manuals, had gotten faculty clearance). DovidBenAvraham (talk) 01:50, 22 September 2017 (UTC)


 * It is certainly possible I grabbed the wrong url. I don't think I even looked at it, at the moment. scope_creep (talk) 05:51, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * No, I re-copied the Google Books URL—that I had found a week or so ago—directly into the into the WMF utility from the source code.  I got the same 2009 result, a Google Books URL with a "Snippet view" that would not be satisfactory as a ref. for a WP article.  What I was experiencing was that Google Books "server" would not permit me more than a certain number of views of the paragraphs I consider applicable to the definition of "client-server backup".  So I did a search, and was lucky and persistent enough to find an old version of Joe Kissell's book for which someone at Harvard had placed the unprotected .PDF on a publicly-viewable website.  Since Kissell has been writing updated versions of the same book for over 10 years, I'm fine with it.  It looks as if the WMF facility, using a database(s) I can't even guess at, tries to find a freely-viewable equivalent of a document in Google Books.  Thanks again.  DovidBenAvraham (talk) 08:04, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Recent "Retrospect (software)" and "Backup"-related
Hi DovidBenAvraham. I hope to find you working on other articles on Wikipedia. I enjoyed the cut and thrust. Scope creep (talk) 12:13, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Please assume good faith
I am foregoing a template message here only because of our long history of interaction. Your suggestion that I might try to "conceal discussion" was completely uncalled for - particularly since in the very same paragraph, you unhelpfully directed Volunteers to a point in the discussion that cuts about half of it off. You need to knock off the insults and insinuations, and take it for granted that I neither have it out for you or am trying to game the system. JohnInDC (talk) 22:58, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

November 2018
Your addition to Backup has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images&mdash;you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously and persistent violators of our copyright policy will be blocked from editing. See Copying text from other sources for more information. &#91;Username Needed&#93; 15:20, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Copied from User_talk:Username_Needed:

I am totally mystified by your reversion for copyright violation on 15:19, 29 November 2018‎ (UTC) of my edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Backup&diff=871184475&oldid=871052458

I wrote this edit early this morning, as a combination of material that was currently in the subsection, material that had been in the subsection until it was deleted by JohnInDC yesterday https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Backup&diff=871018545&oldid=870983323 , and material that I wrote from scratch this morning. AFAICT the subsection was previously basically unchanged since around 2008; much of it appears to have been written based on the notes of a 1997 University of Wisconsin lecture by Nina Boss. If there's a copyright violation, it's likely to be related to that lecture note material—which Ms. Boss may have copied from Oracle Corp.'s 1997 documentation.

Please tell me—or have your bot tell me—where the copyright violation lies, so that I can fix it. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 16:36, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

DovidBenAvraham (talk) 03:10, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Diff'd in, here's User:Username_Needed's 29 November reversion—summarized "Copyvio - pls revdel."—of my 29 November edit: 

Also diff'd in, here's User:Username_Needed's 30 November reversion—summarized "SelfRev- misidentification."—of his/her 29 November reversion: 

Do you see any explanations here? DovidBenAvraham (talk) 02:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I had misidentified an edit as a copyvio when the actual material was elsewhere. Sorry for the confusion. &#91;Username Needed&#93; 09:40, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Copied from User_talk:Username_Needed:

What does "elsewhere" mean? In the "Backup" article, but not in the "Live data" subsection? In some other article? Last night I ran Earwig's Copyvio Detector on id 871184475, which is the article after my edit and before your reversion; it got a highest 15.3% probability in the "Enterprise client-server backup" section lead—for which it flagged a properly-quotemarked and ref'd quotation from the late James Pond's (dubbed Pondini by Macintosh users) authoritative Apple Time Machine blog—but no probability in the "Live data" subsection. This morning I ran the same detector on id 871052458, which is the article after your reversion; it got a highest 16.7% probability in the "Live data" subsection—for which it flagged the 1997 Univ. of Wisconsin lecture notes. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 13:06, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I was using User:Crow's copypartol tool, which has quite a complicated interface, and I misread it. I have no idea if there ever was any copyvio, whether it has been removed and whether it is still in the revs. &#91;Username Needed&#93; 14:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I just used that CopyPatrol tool to discover a "copyright violation", but it's in the reverse direction!  is dated 10 April 2013, which by internal evidence is almost 5 years after the existing material I edited in the "Live data" subsection was written.  If you use View History for the WP article, and go back to a version before that date, it will become pretty obvious that Sr. Damicelli copied at least that subsection of the WP article without AFAICT crediting Wikipedia.  Whether you legally can, or want to, do anything about that "copyright violation" is up to you. In any case, it seems obvious that advancing from Earwig's Copyvio Detector to User:Crow's CopyPatrol tool imposes additional responsibility on you to use the tool with wisdom. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 16:46, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

DovidBenAvraham (talk) 17:02, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

In apparent reaction to a message I (perhaps naively) left on his voicemail the other day, Sr. Damicelli has now removed the copyright-violating material from the current version of his blog—but here it is captured on the Wayback Machine on 18 May 2014. It is visibly obviously a subset of the WP "Backup" article just before the date of his blog post, which he dated 10 April 2013. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 07:52, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It doesn't violate copyright. He can use it freely.  See WP:Copyrights.  Probably all he needed to do was to add an attribution somewhere on his blog page - if that.  I wonder - is this better, or worse, than making a mistake with an unfamiliar copyvio tool?  JohnInDC (talk) 11:56, 12 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Except I didn't say in my voicemail message that Sr. Damicelli should delete the copied WP text. I just stated that there appeared to be a copyright violation, and gave my phone number.  By no particular coincidence, yesterday I took a fast look at the appropriate WP article on copyright.  I think you're correct that adding an attribution would have been sufficient, probably accompanied by adding back those few citations that were in the WP article as of 10 April 2013.  But then that wouldn't have showed off Sr. Damicelli's consultative brilliance to the same extent.  Should I have just said nothing?


 * As far as "making a mistake with an unfamiliar copyvio tool", I've replied to Username Needed's complaint of having been insulted here. I didn't mention my temporary decision to quit editing Wikipedia for at least 3 months, made before Username Needed reverted his/her reversion.  Thank the Lord I didn't hit anyone rolling across that lawn in 1956.  DovidBenAvraham (talk) 12:55, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, you should have said nothing. Because you don’t know what you are doing, you left a misleading message on a private party’s voicemail claiming a “copyright violation“ on material which with only the most minor of adjustments, he is fully entitled to use, and caused him to take an action that he didn’t need to take.   The effect of your dispute here is now rippling outside of Wikipedia.   You are making things worse, not better.  JohnInDC (talk) 13:12, 12 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I'll concede that Username Needed's intestinal fortitude may be the equal of that of Luke Skywalker or Lara Croft. But that concession means we would have to find another reason for the 18-hour delay in reverting his/her reversion, and the further 7-day delay in providing an explanation that proved to be inadequate.  I hereby propose that, in searching for copyright violations in a great many WP articles, Username Needed is stretching himself/herself too thin.  IMHO Username Needed has admitted above that he/she should do less WP editing, and do it more thoroughly.


 * If JohnInDC works his way through the links in the Wayback Machine version of Sr. Damicelli's Web page, he will find this page that also includes an 18 April 2013 article entitled "Viruses, Trojans and Malware in general". A Google search on the phrase that consists of the first 6 words of that article led me to this page which—in an updated version—still exists on Cisco's website.  Truly "The wicked flee when no man pursueth ...", but someone connected with Cisco—which may have insisted on his/her adding more than an attribution—seems to have pursued the Los Angeles County consultant about that part of the Web page.  DovidBenAvraham (talk) 18:35, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Revision of Talk page comments
An edit like, which you made to Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems, is improper. See REDACT. You should self-revert. I'm not going to compound the problem by reverting your edits to your own comments. JohnInDC (talk) 17:24, 14 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The edit I made to my 04:27, 14 December 2018 (UTC) comment was the preliminary to a new comment I intend to make dealing with Hut 8.5's complaints in his/her 07:57, 14 December 2018 (UTC) comment. My comment will say that Hut 8.5 misunderstood my "wall of text" comment in several ways, one of which was that I am advocating the formation of an official WP Copyvio Detection Squad.  My originally initial-uppercasing that phrase, rather than putting the phrase in quotes, was a joke that apparently went over Hut 8.5's head.  My forthcoming comment will say that the "WP copyvio detection squad" already exists as a de-facto group, and that Hut 8.5 and Username_Needed are members of the group—a point which I preliminarily made by lower-casing and putting in quotes the phrase and by adding "which is my term ...".  Other than that, my only other substantive edits to my 04:27, 14 December 2018 (UTC) comment were adding "(at least more often ...)" and "(which CopyPatrol will detect a lot of)" as parenthetical clarifications, and deleting "Having added ..., and having started edits ...,,"—which I realized were unnecessary clauses that contributed to the "wall of text" impression Hut 8.5 complained of.  Hut 8.5 is the only reader who has substantively discussed that post, and he has complained about it and misunderstood it; what's wrong with my improving it to meet his/her objections?


 * In furtherance of that, the new comment I intend to make will recap the entire section in a much-shorter fashion than my "wall of text" comment, and will emphasize my recent realization that the primary cause of the "bungle" was the current deficiencies—deficiencies that will cause future problems for the "squad"—of CopyPatrol rather than the way Username_Needed used the facility. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 19:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't care about your explanations. They don't matter.  If you misfire on a Talk page, add a new comment.  Don't revise history.  (Oh and PS.  Don't take this as an invitation to drag that sad discussion on even further.)  JohnInDC (talk) 19:05, 14 December 2018 (UTC)


 * If you want to revert my edits to my comment, please feel free to do so. However please be aware that your doing so will simply result in my making my forthcoming comment longer, by causing me to add a new paragraph saying "When I wrote this in my 04:27, 14 December 2018 (UTC) comment I should have omitted it as superfluous or added that".  Don't worry, I fully intend to deal with the switch from the ... Squad to the "... squad".  I think the result will be better if you leave my revisions intact, because as I said above they are innocuous.  DovidBenAvraham (talk) 19:22, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I moved some material
Hello DovidBenAvraham. I hope you don't mind, but I've moved some material from Talk:Ronny Lee to your sandbox (User:DovidBenAvraham/sandbox). It's not appropriate to collect diffs on an unrelated topic on an article talk page. That's what user sandboxes are for. Cheers, — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 14:04, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Backup
Hi DovidBenAvraham, thanks for working with me on the article. Just a comment on the section you added back here, the issue I have is that it introduces a bunch of terms that have not been used or explained (and maybe don't need to be?) such as 'granularities', 'restorable objects', 'crash-consistent' and 'logical objects'. Is there a simpler way of saying this so that the average reader can make sense of it? Does it need to be there in this particular article? Thanks Melcous (talk) 04:08, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Personal request (Pi314m)
The wisest person of all time taught that a Chut HaMeShuLash (the latter can mean triple strength) will not quickly be undone. (source: KoHeLes/Proverbs, 4:12). Your "being a third-generation Reformed Jew" is MeShuLash. These words are to ask forgiveness regarding aggravation you felt attributable to my actions. Pi314m (talk) 19:46, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

"Concocted"
As I have pointed out several times, the policy is WP:RS. The Wikipedia sourcing trifecta: reliable, independent and secondary. We make limited exceptions (e.g. we commonly use an About page for a founding date for a website) but we do not write whole articles mainly from primary and affiliated sources. The second problem you have is what Wikipedia is not: Wikipedia is not a manual or a marketing brochure. You are now into WP:IDHT territory on this. The solution is extremely simple: find reliable independent secondary sources, or the material will be removed. If there are no reliable independent secondary sources than it is not Wikipedia content, it is something else - perhaps for Wikibooks or some related project. You should also be aware that "explaining" policy to admins, based on your limited editing history, is arrogant and rude. At least have the courtesy to frame it as your opinion, because it absolutely is not the case that your self-serving interpretation is the One True Interpretation Of Policy&trade;. Keep chanting the mantra: reliable, independent, secondary. Not press releases (they aren't independent). Not knowledge bases (they aren't secondary or independent). Not forums (they aren't reliable). If you don't understand whether a particular source meets the requirements you can ask at WP:RSN. Guy (help!) 07:06, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks (upcoming New Year 5780)
Thanks for the good wishes for "the coming New Year." Your "volunteered as a 'tenth man'" fits what some call a genetically Jewish pattern: Hebrew word "Chessed." I found "The Glittering World of Chessed" (ISBN 978-1-4226-2252-0) to be of interest, and perhaps you might also, even though we seem to see things differently in some areas. Pi314m (talk) 05:12, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

MfD nomination of User:DovidBenAvraham/sandbox
User:DovidBenAvraham/sandbox, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:DovidBenAvraham/sandbox and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes ( ~ ). You are free to edit the content of User:DovidBenAvraham/sandbox during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Guy (help!) 17:31, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

October 2019
You have been blocked indefinitely from editing for disruptive editing after a community discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&oldid=923640399. If you think there are good reasons for being unblocked, please read the guide to appealing blocks, then add the following text below the block notice on your talk page:. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:37, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Some helpful tips
, while certainly not obligated, I wanted to reach out to you via your Talk page following your block, which, while notionally indefinite, is not permanent. This means that, in theory, the block, could be as little a few days, a few weeks, or it could last for months—or longer.

While I don't know the whole history, it seems that you might be misunderstanding Wikipedia's core purpose (WP:5P)—that is, it is, at its core, an encyclopedia. Each article should be, at most, a page or two (single-spaced, 10 pt. font), although some articles do go longer and then they're candidates for splitting. Make sure you read WP:HTRIVIA, as I think this goes to the core of what, who is an administrator of Wikipedia, was trying to get at when he suggested you migrate and develop your content into a wikibook over at Wikibooks. I think that was a good, and reasonable, approach. You would also want to review WP:CIR and absorb what it is saying, and avoid the tendency to edit in a substantial way on topics where you may be over-estimating your level of competency/proficiency.

At the same time, I would also recommend you review WP:BRD because, while bold editing is encouraged, when your edits are reverted, we're supposed to take to the Talk pages. Feel free to establish an RfC if it helps publicize the discussion and build a stronger consensus of editors beyond just those who regularly edit a certain article.

As well, you will want to review the civility and block evasion policies, and do not attempt to edit logged out or by creating multiple accounts. One can have a second account when one's block has been lifted, provided you disclose the username of that second account and your rationale for having it on the userpages of both accounts. Please, please, please don't make the mistake of creating a second account as you will then be tagged a sockpuppet and make getting unblocked what would normally be a fairly straightforward process (i.e., by showing you intend to make a fresh start and change your editing behaviour, by adhering to WP:BRD and WP:CONSENSUS) a much more difficult process as block evasion will almost certainly demonstrate to the community that you cannot be trusted.

I know you mean well, you're very bright, you're well written and knowledgeable, but I think you just have a misunderstanding of Wikipedia's purpose, editing, civility, and consensus building policies above. I wouldn't be reaching out to you if I didn't see potential for you to do be a great editor.

All the best, --Doug Mehus (talk) 21:59, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

I tried an experiment on the Retrospect article over the night of 28-29 October 2019, and four hours ago it ended as I afraid it might. I added a paragraph describing a feature that is definitely unique to the application—the patent on it apparently expired on it only in 2016 (IANAL). The first reference in the paragraph is the text of the 1996 patent itself; I put in that ref to show the feature is unique to Retrospect. The second reference is the 2003 SC Magazine article that Guy himself added. The third reference is a 2018 article in TidBITS, which Guy tacitly acknowledged in the RSN is not a blog; that ref briefly describes an 2018 major improvement to the feature. The fourth reference is a 2019 review of the Windows variant of Retrospect on the IT Pro website of Dennis Publishing, which has published PC Pro (renamed to Alphr in 2015) since 1994; the ref is critical of Retrospect because "Agent-less backup for VMware and Hyper-V hosts is not supported so you'll have to load the client inside each VM and treat them as physical systems." My Edit Summary was "Proactive scripts are _unique_ to Retrospect—the patent expired in 2016, ref'd by SC Magazine, ; cite KissellTakeControl2.0 for Windows and Mac OS 9 clients; add KissellOnlineAppendixesBackupSoftware ref for backup server running on Mac/Windows".

On the afternoon of 29 October 2019 Guy reverted my edit. His Edit Summary was "Reverted good faith edits by DovidBenAvraham (talk): Promotional edits, primary sourceing, usual problems (TW)". Guy had previously said that mentioning a unique feature is not a promotional edit. It seems he also may consider a reference to a patent to be a primary source, but he could have carried through on that weird view by simply deleting the ref.

I think this experiment proves my agreeing to use WP:RFC, WP:PEERREVIEW, and/or WP:3O would be pointless. Guy's Edit Message didn't ask for Talk page discussion or mention any kind of ban, and he did the retroactive reversion 5 minutes after Doug Mehus's ANI comment—without any notice on my personal Talk page until 3 hours later. I evidently can't do any edits to this article—and probably any article—without Guy's prior permission based on his changeable standards. I'm therefore withdrawing my attempt to be a Wikipedia editor; please e-mail me if this situation ever changes. Nice knowing you all. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 22:07, 29 October 2019 (UTC)


 * In case you didn't see it and might be interested, I'm copying this comment here (with a few minor mods) from the WP:ANI discussion as it might help in case you decide to appeal your block...
 * You appear to be seeking "a written Wikipedia policy that says articles about application software can only mention features that are unique to that particular application". But Wikipedia does not, and can not, work like that. It is just not possible to prescribe precisely what specific details can be added to every possible category of article. Instead, policies and guidelines regarding what is appropriate to promotion, levels of detail, encyclopedic content, etc are more generalised. When there's a disagreement whether something constitutes promotion (or unencylopedic detail or whatever), it is decided by consensus guided by policies and guidelines, not literally dictated by policy. In fact, those policies and guidelines are decided by consensus in the first place. So if you want to include something in an article, and in that specific situation the consensus is against you, then it is incorrect to include it, simply because consensus is the ultimate decider. There doesn't need to be a specific prohibition against a specific kind of information in a specific class of article.
 * I'll just add that I see another example of your literalist approach to policy in your comment above, where you say "Guy had previously said that mentioning a unique feature is not a promotional edit". Nobody can categorically say that and policy on promotional editing can not apply like that. It's entirely possible for mention of a unique feature of something to be promotional, just as it is entirely possible for such a thing to not be promotional - it depends on the specific example and the circumstances. If there's a disagreement, it would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis by discussion and consensus. Anyway, I hope this might help. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:28, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

please advise that editor to file an unblock request himself
The above words are the core of the advice given to my request. For the record, the sentences read:
 * I believe that this is a request to unblock the indefinitely blocked editor User:DovidBenAvraham. Pi314m, please advise that editor to file an unblock request himself. Pi314m (talk) 10:07, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Given the circumstances, do I want to be unblocked?
OK, this at least shows I can make a comment on my own Talk page—even if nowhere else on Wikipedia.
 * , I received your e-mail message reply and your reply via your Talk page. It is possible for you to be unblocked, perhaps in a relatively short period of time, provide that you can show you've read and show that you've read the policies which I summarized for you at User talk:DovidBenAvraham in an effort to help you understood the core purpose of Wikipedia. You need to realize that anyone can edit, but when edits are challenged, you need to discuss via Talk pages, possibly with RfC or Peer Review processes. Also, you also need to realize that it's a general purpose encyclopedia, not book-length on every topic. Thus, some of the details you tried to add to Retrospect (software) were far too detailed and better suited for Wikibooks, which suggested.--Doug Mehus (talk) 01:10, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , consensus at ANI was that you are probably not the best person to help DovidBenAvraham. Any unblock request will, as you say, need to address the core problems identified there - WP:NOTTHEM  is critical here, as is the fact that an unblock request is not the place to relitigate a content dispute. Guy (help!) 09:09, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I've changed the section heading to a question, to which the short answer is: No, I don't think there would be any point to my being unblocked now.

First let's step back and take a dispassionate look at the Retrospect (software) article as it is now (as of 16:32, 29 October 2019 (UTC)). The article now is basically a 10-screen-line history of the development of the application, prefixed by a 6-screen-line summary of what the application did in 2003—prior to EMC's acquiring it and giving it enterprise capabilities! It's not encyclopedic about the software itself, with regards to "having comprehensive information or knowledge" and "containing descriptive information rather than only linguistic or lexical information; about facts and concepts, and not only a word or term". For example the article now omits the EMC-instituted key concept "Designed 'to fill the space between consumer backup products such as Time Machine and enterprise-grade software'", which was quoted in the lead of the 08:56, 27 October 2019 (UTC) version of the article—referenced by the same 2012 Macworld article that is still used as the third reference in the current version.

If I were unblocked, could I change that? The editor who now has primary control of the article said on his personal Talk page "Remove anything that's sourced to their own websites or to press releases", and later "It's really quite simple. Only include reliable independent secondary soruces [sic]. Don't include anything that independent commentators haven't thought significant enotgh [sic] to cover. Don't inlcude [sic] sources that are obviously based on press releases (aka churnalism). Don't include WP:HOWTO or other manual-like content." By 27 October 2019 I had:
 * Removed all first-party sources, except the announcement of the sale of Retrospect Inc. to SourceCentric—which WP allows as an ownership statement
 * Replaced explicit mention of features common to many consumer backup applications with reference to the Retrospect line in a table of such applications
 * Removed all press-release-based sources, except for one ChannelPro reference for 2 cloud-support features—I've now found a VAR reference for them
 * Created a RSN case that TidBITS is an independent secondary source, which the editor who now has primary control of the article didn't bother to contest
 * Removed all How-to content from the article by Fall 2017, although the first-party features links removed by 27 October 2019 were to "how-to" manuals

I quickly reverted my 27 October version to what is now the current version, because I knew the editor who now has primary control of the article would have done so in any case—which he agreed he would have. At 04:41, 29 October 2019‎ (UTC) I added an extra paragraph to the article's lead, briefly describing the Proactive Scripts feature which is unique to Retrospect. I referenced the 1996 patent to prove that it is unique, whereupon that editor reverted the edit because "Promotional edits, primary sourceing [sic], usual problems" That editor could have instead simply have removed the reference to the patent—which I didn't know would be considered a primary source, because the feature paragraph is also referenced by the same SC Magazine article (published by Haymarket Media Group) used currently for the 2003 features as well as a June 2019 IT Pro article (published by Dennis Publishing, which also publishes PC Pro). I admitted in the ANI to having promotional ambitions for the application, but I think those—so long as I don't violate actual rules—is a "thought crime" for which I've never been shown any WP prohibition—and which I share with any content article creator writing about e. g. futuristic German WWII weapons.

In short, if I were unblocked and again started to edit the Retrospect (software) article, I would undoubtedly be subjected to the same unpredictable strictures as before. My edits to other backup-related articles were mostly to correct out-of-dateness or blundering edits by others. Welcome—folks—to responsibility for all backup-related articles; try—if you want—to make them encyclopedic! Good luck; I'm going to get back into (open-source) application programming. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 06:30, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Returning
Hi I'm sorry to see you were blocked Dovid. I would like to see you back here to work on the many hundreds of thousands of other articles that need help. Your more than capable of doing the work. With the type of grammar your capable of producing and the research you can undertake, I think you would be able to create many dozens of new articles. Come back dude. Forget the backup articles. Focus on some new stuff.  scope_creep Talk  12:48, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , I would support Dovid being unblocked as well. It seems that his involvement in Retrospect (software) was too detailed, but that article, as Dovid rightly notes, does need improvements; I think he'd be right to be involved in that, but it should be through the talkpages. Doug Mehus T · C  16:22, 30 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you, and, but I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates me—as well as many other Wikipedia editors—to create articles.  I don't want to create "dozens of new articles"; I'm a firm believer in "write what you know".  I wrote an article in Fall 2015 about a notable friend who had died 5 months before.  In October 2016 I updated another article about a backup application I'd started using again 1.5 years before after using it for 15 out of the 20 previous years—an article which I immediately saw was an obsolete stub rather resembling the state to which it's been reverted.  That second task turned into a three-year effort, but I'm prepared to leave the article in the non-encyclopedic state its current principal editor has reduced it to.  IMHO he and both of you are what I think of as "interceptor pilot editors", determined to "shoot down" as many as possible of what you consider to be potential "enemy bomber" articles.


 * What we're dealing with here is a case where another "interceptor pilot editor" has insisted on "shooting the wings off" what is actually a "peaceful four-engine cargo plane" article, on the ostensible grounds that the feature listing in the article is "promotional". That feature listing, in my 08:56, 27 October 2019 version is only 20 screen lines longer than the 6-screen-line 2003 feature listing in the second paragraph of the current version of the article.  IMHO what makes my encyclopedic 26-screen-line feature listing appear promotional is that it is intentionally very compact; the articles on Backup Exec and NetBackup take twice to three times the number of screen lines to list what is only a moderate superset of Retrospect's features.  DovidBenAvraham (talk) 06:01, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
 * When I started here, I wrote an article, spent several days on it, and it was deleted, the wrong project. I created a bunch of articles on Scottish villages, which were easy to do. Then I started writing about German cryptographers. This was months, I think years probably, when I noticed there was a bias and lack of articles on German cryptographic folk during world war 2.  Then I started on medical biographies. Not in a 1000 years did I think I going to write dozens of bio articles on German military folk, German cryptographic machines and procedures or British doctors. For medical biographical work I struggle all the time, needing help. For the German stuff, translation is difficult. I'm not a German natural speaker, but I can read most of it and use the translations tools a lot. A good grasp of research, grammar and the capability is more important that being a expert in a particular, although that does help. There is lots of bio articles that really need work.   scope_creep Talk  09:02, 1 December 2019 (UTC)


 * I have absolutely no interest in editing HistoryPedia, and neither do most other people (although people with COIs are interested in editing BioPedia)—which is IMHO why the number of Wikipedia editors is decreasing year over year. Since 2016 what I've been creating is articles on enterprise client-server backup applications that are currently under continuing development.  That first of all creates two problems with references to application features.


 * The first problem is that we are not supposed to use any reference to a "blog", defined as "a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts)." Another "interceptor pilot editor" decided on his own that the 29-year-old Mac-oriented website TidBITS, which I had used for a number of features references, is a blog.  I countered that on RSN, pointing out that "... only 6 [sources, cut to 3 on 27 October] are of articles written in 2018....  The significance of 2018 is that it is the year after TidBITS sold off its business publishing mostly-Macintosh-oriented how-to books to one of its Contributing Editors—who still writes articles for the website. IMHO a website that for 14 years up through 2017 sold books it published is much more than a mere blog. The website to this day sells e-mailed subscriptions to its content, and offers an 30% discount on books published by the Contributing Editor's company."  You replied "The TidBITS site is more of a blog. It has that look and feel about it." To my response "I take the tenor of the replies to indicate tacit assent that TidBITS is not a blog in the reference-prohibited sense", the other "interceptor pilot editor" reacted "Well that's a remarkable bit of selective reading: you choose to interpret the replies in a way that gives you permission to reinsert the trivial crap back into the article."  I think his reaction proves there needs to be a fairer way, not based on a content dispute about a WP article, of determining whether a source is a "blog".  DovidBenAvraham (talk) 23:36, 1 December 2019 (UTC)


 * The second problem is that we are not supposed to use any reference to a first-party source for application features. I understand this is (by omission in the article listing allowable exceptions to the ban on first-party references) a current Wikipedia rule, so I eliminated all first-party references in my 08:56, 27 October 2019 version.  However I think there should be an exception for using a reference to a first-party source for an application feature, so long as the reference is to a user manual rather than a promotional article.  I base this on what I call the "The F**king Manual" phenomenon, which is the unwillingness of application users—well-known for half a century—to "Read TFM". The reason for that unwillingness is evident to anyone with sixth-form-level (U. S. twelfth-grade-level) literacy; user manuals are precisely-written and boring, as contrasted with promotional articles which are written to be interesting even when potential users skim over them.  As a matter of common sense, isn't any description of an application feature in a user manual likely to be accurate—why else would an application developer make the substantial effort to include that description when he/she "Writes TFM"?  The current principal editor of the Retrospect article will find that he needs that change in the Wikipedia rules six to nine months from now, when the "backup server" part of the application will have been rewritten (as publicly predicted by StorCentric top management) to run at least on Drobo hardware—and possibly (my educated guess) on other Linux-based brands of NAS.  The Retrospect article will then need to be revised to state this, but initially the only available references will be to first-party Retrospect user manuals—because the authors of any existing independent second-party Linux publications will not be able to look at an encyclopedic Wikipedia article that discusses the current features of even the Windows and Macintosh versions of the Retrospect "backup server".  Also, as I mentioned several times on the article Talk page—the latest time in the second paragraph of my 07:00, 21 October 2019 (UTC) comment here—sometimes the only source for a deficiency in an application—particularly between Mac and Windows variants—is a first-party Knowledge Base (user-manual) article.  DovidBenAvraham (talk) 05:39, 2 December 2019 (UTC)


 * According to this, I'd be obliged to give good reasons for my unblocking. Looking at the ANI, it seems there were four stated reasons I was blocked.  I think the first reason was out-of-date by the time it was mentioned in the ANI, the second reason was outright misrepresentation, the third reason should have been handled via article Talk page and RSN discussion that the complaining editor refused to have, and the fourth reason was an accusation of a "thought crime" that shouldn't matter so long as I don't violate the Wikipedia rules.  See if you find these arguments (minus the parenthesized sentences) convincing:


 * "I noticed an interesting comment of yours from 2016 [my emphasis], showing a basic misunderstanding of Wikipedia's sourcing principles: apparently you believed then, as now though with more frills, that if there are no secondary sources, that means you're justified in basing an article on primary sources." I pointed out in my 05:39, 2 December 2019 (UTC) comment in this section that in my 08:56, 27 October 2019 version of the Retrospect article I had eliminated all primary-source references. My 12:43, 27 October 2019 (UTC) comment in  my ANI that was the parent of the one that led to my being blocked linked to that version, but that link was studiously ignored in the subsidiary ANI.  (I've stated at the top of my 05:39, 2 December 2019 (UTC) comment in this section that I accept that first-party references are not currently allowed except in certain specific circumstances; the rest of that comment explains why IMHO references to software features in application user manuals should be an additional exception).  In short, this stated reason as to my belief about the legitimacy of first-party sources was out-of-date by 6 hours when it was cited in the subsidiary ANI which led to my being blocked.


 * "Reluctant to prevent any good-faith editor from contributing, but support block until DBA can show firm determination to stop wasting the time of other editors – see for example, 26 posts totalling almost 40k, all because somebody made a mistake." Here's the thread, which is IMHO easier to read than a diff that incorporates other section whose comments overlapped in time with the thread.  It shows that only my first 4 comments, totalling 1.6 screen pages, deal with the "mistake" of the editor who deleted my Backup article edit for copyright violation—a deletion he/she reverted within 18 hours based on my firm denial but didn't explain for 7 days.  The remaining 5.2 screen pages in the thread deal with my analysis of the reason that mistake was originally made, which was (and probably still is) because of systematic deficiencies in the features and editor use procedures of the CopyPatrol tool.  (I had to repeat that analysis a second time in a subsidiary section of the thread, because of an invalid analogy and a mis-characterization of my proposed solutions to the deficiencies.)  "When text is added to Wikipedia,a [CopyPatrol] bot compares the edit against a plagiarism detection service called Turnitin."  That expands Earwig's Copyvio Detector beyond "similar content elsewhere on the web using Google", which is what led to CopyPatrol's newly identifying a 5-year-old reverse copyright violation onto a consultant's Web page as if I had just made a forward copyright violation by copying from that Web page into the Backup article.  I identified one systematic software deficiency of CopyPatrol in that—at least in 2018—it didn't give the "first crawled" date of the Web page found in the Turnitin database, and another software deficiency in that it failed to give the "first added" date of the Wikipedia article.  With the aid of those two dates, which had I found from the Wayback Machine and View History respectively, I had determined in about 10 minutes that the Backup article had no substantial additions in April 2013 (2 years before I became a WP editor)—thus ruling out a forward copyright violation via enhanced CopyPatrol use procedures which I also specifically proposed in the analysis.  I feel that it is outright misrepresentation of my having called attention to a systematic deficiency in the features and use of a Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team tool to call it "wasting the time of other editors" who were already starting to use that tool.  DovidBenAvraham (talk) 22:00, 7 December 2019 (UTC)


 * "Accusing an editor of vandalism for what is, at most, a content dispute is already a personal attack; filing a lengthy ANI case in an attempt to win a content dispute goes beyond personal attacks and into the realm of forum-shopping or deliberate manipulation of the process." Since the Retrospect (software) content dispute was—to the extent that it didn't involve first-party sources—about the independence of my second-party sources, I previously did file an RSN about "an equally niche Mac specialist publisher" whose articles I had cited several times in the article.  The only RSN comment of the editor about which I later filed the parent ANI was "Well that's a remarkable bit of selective reading: you choose to interpret the replies in a way that gives you permission to reinsert the trivial crap back into the article."  Later, in his 07:10, 21 October 2019 (UTC) comment on the Retrospect article talk page, the only comment by the editor about which I later filed the parent ANI case to my description of recent edits was "Oh look, you bloated it out with unencyclopaedic marketing and HOWTO stuff again. I didn't expect that. Actually I did. Your monomaniacal focus on this is becoming rather wearing."  He never bothered to designate what stuff was "marketing" and "HOWTO".  As I said in my 09:16, 29 October 2019 (UTC) comment in the ANI, "I did so in desperation only because on 26 October 2019 [the parent ANI's subject editor] filed this (archived) Miscellany for deletion of my Sandbox."  In short, I had previously used the proper forums to deal with what should have been a content dispute; it was the parent ANI's subject editor who refused to use them.  DovidBenAvraham (talk) 06:25, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

"February 2024 tags" section in Talk page for Ronny Lee article
That section of the Talk page for the Ronny Lee article ends with Delta7264's statement "I added the section rewrite tag to the military piece because much of the section is speculative. Delta7264 (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2024 (UTC)". My wording may look as if it's speculative, but it's based on References in the article plus the application of date arithmetic I learned in a U.S. public elementary school by the age of 10.


 * "We can assume" != "we know"; "If Lee was drafted" != "Lee was drafted"; etc. Delta7264 (talk) 21:28, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Ronald Leventhal's death certificate—reference 49 in the article—says he was born on 2 March 1927. That means—as reference 4 in the article says—he would have turned 18 on 2 March 1945. The U.S. draft eligibility age was 18 in 1945, as it still was for me in 1959. 29 days from 2 March is a reasonable time for Ronny to have arrived in a U.S. Army training camp, and reference 6 says he would then have received 17 weeks of "Basic" and "Advanced Basic" training before being sent overseas as a "rifleman"—which is what reference 5 says was the most-needed Military Occupational Specialty in the spring of 1945.

Ronny never spoke to anyone of having been sent overseas, but references 1 and 2 in the article say his engineering education at the RCA Institutes of Technology was was funded by the G.I. Bill. So there's no real speculation in that section, just application of elementary-school logic and the timing of "Axis collapse and Allied victory (1944–1945)" in history of World War II. 100.38.46.54 (talk) 22:34, 25 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Underlining a false assertion doesn't make it true. Delta7264 (talk) 21:29, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Further support for Ronny's initial education at the RCA Institutes of Technology—per the next-to-last ¶ of the "Early years" section of the article—having been funded by the G. I. Bill is in the 4th ¶ of the "teacher and technical expert" section of the article. Reference 23 says his "guitar conversion kit" was being sold by Imperial Creations by May 1965. Ronny surely didn't get enough engineering knowledge at William Howard Taft High School (New York City) to develop this gadget, yet his further studies at New York University were from 1969 through 1971—per the 4th ¶ of the "teacher and technical expert" section. The obvious inference is that Ronny's studies after World War II were funded by the G. I. Bill, which "provided immediate financial rewards for practically all World War II veterans". Ronny must have been in the U.S. Army long enough to qualify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.38.46.54 (talk) 06:47, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry to rain on your parade, Delta7264, but after doing some digging (despite my back problem) I unearthed a paper bag labeled "RL Documents Used for Wikipedia (chronological sequence)". Here are the relevant quotes from references 2 and 4 of the article: "b New York, NY, Mar 2, 27. Educ: William Howard Taft High Sch. ; RCA Inst Technol, 47-49, NY Univ. 69-71; ... At age 16, appeared regularly as guitarist on radio sta.WNEW, New York;" "At sixteen he was acclaimed as an outstanding guitarist and was featured in a weekly radio show on station WNEW in New York City. As plans were being formulated for the show to appear on network radio, Ronny was drafted into the army shortly after his eighteenth birthday. After he was discharged from service he studied engineering under the GI Bill, during which time he played club dates and gave guitar instruction to a limited number of students.  Upon completion of his engineering studies, Ronny Lee made his decision to devote his full time to the field of music."
 * Leventhal, Ronald [listed in alphabetical sequence, last name first] (Ronny Lee) (1980). ASCAP Biographical Dictionary (4th ed.).
 * "Ronny Lee". Accordion and Guitar World. No. [should be Vol. 30, No 4] February 1966. Bedford Hills NY: Gerstner Publications. p. 14.

Now here's a relevant quote from the 4th ¶ of "World War II" section of the WP article Conscription in the United States : "After the Pearl Harbor attack the STSA [Selective Service and Training Act, per ¶2 of same section] was further amended (December 19, 1941), extending the term of service to the duration of the war plus six months and requiring the registration of all men 18 to 64 years of age. During World War II, 49 million men were registered, 36 million classified,[failed verification] and 10 million inducted.[31] 18 and 19 year olds were made liable for induction on November 13, 1942. By late 1942, the Selective Service System moved away from a national lottery to administrative selection by its more than 6,000 local boards."

So what's your alternative theory? Ronny, already a public figure by March 1945, somehow managed to avoid registration for the draft and also managed—without the GI Bill benefits only available to military veterans—to earn enough money to pay his tuition at RCA Institutes of Technology in 1947–1949? Please expound, unless you're only quarreling with my wording —which is what I think you're really doing in a pedantic manner. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.38.46.54 (talk) 02:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I scrolled this user talk and related items about DovidBenAvraham - given 100.38.46.54 is engaging in the first person, I assume that 100… is DovidBenAvraham evading a (well deserved) ban. I’m not engaging here on this further. You’re free to comply with administrator directives and get unbanned to submit your edits; I’ll see you on the Ronny Lee talk page. Delta7264 (talk) 11:53, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, of course I'm DovidBenAvraham; this is my talk page, to which I'm allowed to post— it's not evasion —despite being banned. You're not likely to see me on the Ronny Lee talk page, because IMHO my getting banned is the result of a fundamental Wikipedia problem with articles on commercial software—which I'll discuss in a separate section below.
 * Meanwhile, Delta7264, you can rejoice that I've accepted your suggestion on improvements to the "Early years" section of that article. I've specified these below, underneath the ¶ beginning "OK, here are a couple".  I can't post those improvements myself, so why don't you take 3 minutes of your no-doubt-valuable time to make them to the article?
 * BTW, your other tag beginning "This article is an autobiography or has been extensively edited" is absolutely correct. Maybe on the planet where you come from a talented teenager is routinely provided with a biographer, but that wasn't true in 1940s New York City.  Until 1962, when Mel Bay Publications hired Ronny to write a two-volume book on playing jazz guitar, Ronny was only famous locally.  Therefore any "about the author" blurbs from referenced magazine articles use information he supplied. 100.38.46.54 (talk) 19:25, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
 * DovidBenAvraham, see WP:PROXYING. Using your talk page to comment on or request edits to articles is a misuse of this talk page. Anyone who acted on such suggestion could run into trouble themselves. You would have to get unblocked first if you have something you want to contribute. MrOllie (talk) 19:44, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh come now, let's apply a little seichel to the question of my proposed edits to the "Early years" section of the Ronny Lee article. First, although the History of this Talk page shows I created the current section on 22 February 2024, @Delta7264 added comments to it on 26 February 2024.  Clearly his additions constitute both comments on the article and de-facto requests to edit it, so he too could run into trouble.  I'm not going to make any trouble for anyone who implements my proposed edits, because I think my proposed edits are a reasonable response to his "This section may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards" tagging of the article.  References 2 and 4 are not currently available on the Web, but I have printouts of the appropriate pages I can scan and send to whatever online address you designate. 100.38.46.54 (talk) 02:27, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There is nowhere you should send your references, because I'm not going to proxy for you and neither should anyone else. MrOllie (talk) 02:54, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

OK, here are a couple of improvements to the wording for the "Early Years" section of the Ronny Lee article:

First, revise the last sentence of the 3rd ¶ to read "As the show was being prepared to go on network radio, Lee turned eighteen and was drafted into the U.S. Army "shortly after his eighteenth birthday".[4]"

Second, revise the 4th ¶ to read: "Since that birthday was March 2, 1945, local draft board bureaucracy and train travel mean he would have arrived at a military camp around April 1, 1945. If Lee was placed into the Army ground forces to serve as a rifleman—the most needed Military Occupational Specialty,[5] he would then have received 17 weeks of training before being considered ready to report to a front-line unit.[6] By July 30, 1945, World War II had been over in Europe for nearly 3 months. After the first atomic bomb was successfully exploded at Alamogordo on July 16, and even more after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan on August 6 and 9, it was obvious that a U. S. land invasion of the main islands of Japan would not be necessary.[7]"

FYI, the Differences Between Revisions for the article includes: Revision as of 20:50, 11 October 2015 edit undo DovidBenAvraham (talk | contribs) →‎Early Years: Insert prgf. outlining why RL would have been unlikely to be sent overseas (he told me he wasn't). So in October 2015 I still remembered—6 months after Ronny's death—that he had told me he wasn't sent overseas. There's no usable written reference of that, but you can satisfy yourself it was a fact—or else he would have instead told me where he was sent.

I've now found support for "local draft board bureaucracy ... mean he would have arrived at a military camp around April 1, 1945" in my proposed revision to the fourth ¶ of the "Early years" section of the article. Pages 13–14 of MEDICAL DEPARTMENT, UNITED STATES ARMY PHYSICAL STANDARDS IN WORLD WAR II say

"Consequently, by the end of January 1944, examinations by local board physicians became very cursory in nature, except for special cases. Following thorough preinduction physical examinations at Army examination stations, those accepted were returned home to await call within 90 days. Then, they were delivered to induction stations by local boards for a less extensive physical inspection after which they were inducted. The procedure was thus almost a reversal of that previously in effect on this point.11 The 1944 procedure did not change materially for the remainder of the war."

So just change the first sentence of that proposed fourth ¶ revision to ""Since that birthday was March 2, 1945, local draft board bureaucracy means he would have arrived at a military camp around April 1, 1945." and add a ref to those pages at the end of the sentence.

In regard to the "It may need editing to conform to Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy." sentence in the tag added at the top of the article, IMHO anyone doing that editing will have a tough time finding any violations of NPOV. To reach that opinion, I classified—not use-counted—all the references:


 * About-the-author blurbs in magazine aricles (information probably supplied by Ronny Lee) = 6
 * ASCAP Biographical Dictionary entry (written by Ronny Lee) = 1
 * Historical WWII articles not written by Ronny Lee = 3
 * Book co-written by Ronny Lee = 1
 * Magazine articles ( not written by Ronny Lee) about his convention or seminar appearances or seminars = 5
 * Magazine or newspaper articles about Ronny Lee guitar performances = 6
 * Newspaper article about Ronny Lee's guitar studio-store and some of its customers = 1
 * Announcement listing Ronny Lee being on faculty of Kingsborough Community College = 1
 * Review of Ronny Lee book by someone other than himself = 1
 * Ronny Lee article about "musical old wives' tales" in trade publication = 1
 * Articles or handouts about Ronny Lee guitar-related inventions = 2
 * Specific Ronny Lee books teaching guitar playing or singing = 14
 * Ads about non-self-published Ronny Lee guitar books from their publishers = 3
 * Trade paper article about Ronny Lee's endorsement of a particular bass guitar and his switch to teaching = 1
 * Ronny Lee having recorded a music video at age 85 for a film about a former student = 1
 * Ronny Lee obituary by someone else and his death certificate = 2
 * Articles describing the guitar model the Gretsch Co. named for Ronny Lee before he quit performing = 3

It's important to understand Ronny's career arc. He learned to play from 1939 to about 1954, then became a performing musician and started a guitar studio which expanded into NYC's largest guitar store. Meanwhile he taught jazz guitar at a community college, taught at conventions, and was appointed guitar editor of Guitar World Magazine—for which he also wrote the Guitar Book Review column. He also started to arrange popular music for guitar, and wrote more than 40 books for various publishers. By 1964 Ronny was so occupied with writing that he began to close down his guitar store, switching to teaching students at his apartment. By 1974 he had started writing his own set of self-published guitar instruction books, based on learning principles that I suspect he was exposed to at New York University. Selling his self-published books—which he promoted at music-teacher conventions, plus student fees, kept him solvent therefter.

FYi, I asked Ronny a couple of years before he died why he hadn't created any video courses on playing guitar. He told me they wouldn't work, which I suspect was based on experiences with his "Instant Guitar" audio-cassette-based "programmed instruction" course.