User talk:John Simkin

Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include (but are not limited to) links to personal web sites, links to web sites with which you are affiliated, and links that exist to attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policies for further explanations of links that are considered appropriate. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Demiurge 21:01, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying that in my biography I should not provide links to the websites I have produced? By the way, who am I talking to. Why do you hide behind a false name? What is your academic background? (John Simkin).


 * John, it's better to leave a message of Demiurge and keep it on the right heading, because it appears like you were responding to my welcome, and the original poster isn't even aware of your response, since this is a severely flawed (or failed) site. As you already are noticed, Wikipedia is very pathetic with external links and will label everything spam which is not government approved mainstream propaganda. Just like any critism will be removed and eventually gets people banned. I've already been censored four times on my user page and after a couple of flame fights on political subjects, it was clear that this place is ruled by bullies and that is literally impossible to deviate from the mainstream media disinformation. ( User:GabrielF/ConspiracyNoticeboard. Notice that the Clinton conspiracy was allowed to stay. Also notice that MONGO works for the Department of Homeland Security. )


 * As far my identity goes, I prefer to keep to use an alias given my political activitism; the nature of the internet is such that an alias is prefered and the only way to seperate activism from a private life. Academic background: BSc, four years clinical research, four years webmaster large e-commerce site.


 * I recommend that you use your media contacts to fight against being labeled as an unreliable site, because you already noticed that they immediately removed your defense and are not even willing to discuss anything which goes against the hivemind. Dr Debug (Talk) 11:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Welcome
No matter what they say, Spartacus is still 100,000 times more reliable than Wikipedia ;)

Are you (Dr. Debug) saying that in my biography I should not provide links to the websites I have produced? By the way, who am I talking to. Why do you hide behind a false name? What is your academic background? (John Simkin).

Demiurge: Thank you for your advice (I am still not sure if I am posting this in the right place).

I was keen to talk to Dr. Debug about his comments. It seems very strange as his own page provides links to his own website (Demopedia). That site makes full use of information from my Spartacus website. No problem with that as this is acknowledged. It just seems strange he should take me to task for promoting my own work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dr_Debug

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/User:DrDebug

I am also unable to contact him via his website.

I do intend to use my media contacts to expose the activities of the NeoCon cabal that is running the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee. Please send me any information you have on this to: johnsimkin1945@hotmail.com

John Simkin


 * You first need to read the introduction. The singature of person writing it, is at the end of the discussion. So you were talking to me, DrDebug, the whole time. The only exception is Demiurge who called you a spammer. That was not me. I'll email, I think that is easier. Dr Debug (Talk) 08:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Welcome!

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West Ham United articles
Please do not add promotional material to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising. You are, however, encouraged to add appropriate content to the encyclopedia. If you feel the material in question should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. - Nzd   (talk)  20:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

What I did was to place a link to my page showing photographs of Ted Fenton. I would have thought this was a useful service to Wikipedia visitors.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WHfentonT.htm

The page also has has a link back to Wikipedia as well as other pages on Ted Fenton. I would have thought you should be concerned that the original entry is a slight rewrite of the entry found in Tony Hogg's "Who's Who of West Ham United". Are you responsible for writing this entry? Are you concerned that I have a picture of Tony's book on my page?


 * While the placing of these links is technically an infraction of External links, they do add to the articles, and I have added them back myself (one had already been put back by User:Catchpole). Charles Matthews 17:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Review post
I've just stumbled upon your post on Wikipedia Review quite accidentally. If you were really interested, you could have asked me..

My premise for removing the links was this;

I checked your edit history and all you seemed to be doing was adding links to your own site without contributing any actual content.

Your site contains no copyright information, or if it does, this isn't listed on the individual pages or on the site map. I thought it unlikely that you actually owned the copyright on the photographs. You have said yourself that you have accumulated them over the years. Just to be clear, are you saying that you do own the copyright on them? the fieryangel talked about the issues with copyright on old works and the same rules apply here. Do you know who took those photographs?

Apart from the photographs, there isn't much else on the pages except adverts for Amazon, in particular for the Tony Hogg book you mentioned, which is already linked to on every page I've been creating (I'll get to that in a moment). I suspected this was the reason for the link additions. It's a fairly common practice for spammers to drum up ad revenue using Wikipedia in this way and I assumed this was another case of that. At the end of the day, Wikipedia is all about the majority view. Other people disagreed with me, your links have been reinstated, and I'm absolutely OK with that. It would be nice if you contributed something other than just your own links to the pages though.

Your accusation that all I have done is copy text from the Who's Who book is insulting; "a closer inspection" shows nothing of the sort. Wikipedia policies, and the law in general, are very clear about this:

"..copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate the concepts in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia."

It's a wonderful reference, which is why it's listed in the References section of every article I've been creating recently. Note that this citation contains an ISBN link, providing links to a multitude of outlets that you can buy the book from, not just Amazon. I've been using the book as the starting point to create stubs that will hopefully become detailed articles one day. Obviously there's a lot more information to be added. You could always give me a hand. Basically, I've been working through the appearance records and goal records pages and creating "bare-bones" articles for the red-links, cross-referencing the information in the book with that already on Wikipedia, the West Ham Player List, and latterly the West Ham Stats site, which as you mentioned is hard to come by (searching the player name and "west ham" will often bring it up within the first couple of pages).

I think this is worthwhile, which is why I've been putting the effort in, but if you really think the articles constitute copyright infringement, then there is a procedure for getting them removed. Where copyright infringement has occurred, as a Wikipedia editor, you have a responsibility to do something about it. The policy can be found at Copyright violations:

"If some of the content of a page really is an infringement, then the infringing content should be removed, and a note to that effect should be made on the talk page, along with the original source. If the author's permission is obtained later, the text can be restored.

''If all of the content of a page is a suspected copyright infringement, then the page should be listed on Copyright problems and the content of the page replaced by the standard notice which you can find there. If, after a week, the page still appears to be a copyright infringement, then it may be deleted following the procedures on the votes page.''"

If you suspect an article to be in breach of someone else’s copyright, you should list it there. "To request copyright examination before including questionable content on an article, see Requested copyright examinations. Remember to avoid copyright paranoia." If Wikipedia editors have infringed on your own copyright and you object to this, then you can request immediate removal. IANAL, but I understand that in some jurisdictions, if you know your copyrighted work is being used and you do nothing about it, you lose rights to the copyright.

As I've said, I don't think there's an issue with the text I've added because there isn't the literal copying you are suggesting, and Wikipedia's copyright policy specifically allows this kind of information extraction. Of course, Wikipedia wouldn't be the resource it is today without the great many published works that are referenced within the articles. Indeed, Wikipedia guidelines state that you should always make sure you do cite reliable sources, so that information remains factual and verifiable.

We obviously share the same goals in getting information about these players out there. Hopefully, we can work together at some point. If you could confirm the copyright status of those photographs, that would be great. I'm certainly not interested in "stealing" anything for Wikpedia, but if you do own the copyright and don't mind donating some, or if they are actually out of copyright and this can be confirmed, then they would certainly add to the articles.

Up the Irons. - Nzd   (talk)  15:33, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Nzd, sorry for the late reply to your comments about my West Ham website. I also apologise for my aggressive tone in my first posting about the removal of the Wikipedia link to my site. I am still a victim of my tough working-class childhood.

I created my Spartacus Educational in 1997. I was a history teacher who wanted to produce materials that my students could use when studying local history. The website was popular with students all over the world and so I decided to make it into a full-time job. This of course meant that I had to find a way of funding the website. As I was fully committed to the idea that this information should be available to everyone who wanted to use it I rejected the subscription model. Instead I sold advertising space on my site. For many years I ran the website at a loss. However, since the emergence of Google AdSense, it has been possible to make a living from a website.

I am unclear why I should be criticised for selling advertising space in order to keep information free. I am aware that Wikipedia does not carry advertising. However, is a site owned by a multimillionaire morally superior to one being produced by an educationalist?

In fact, my main intention has been to create materials that have little commercial value in book form. I have therefore concentrated on writing about the past from the perspective of those without power. Historians tend to call this approach: “history from below”.

I went to school in Dagenham and have been a supporter of West Ham for over 50 years. As I have created a website that provides me with a reasonable living, I decided to spend the next couple of years producing a comprehensive online history of West Ham. This will enable students to research the subject in some detail. When I was a teacher a lot of the students were unable to do GCSE coursework on the history of West Ham because of the shortage of materials online. Hopefully, my website will able to change that situation.

My plan is to produce a year by year account of the history of West Ham. So far, I have produced the first-draft of the first 12 years.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WestHamHistory.htm

The analysis of every season includes links to pages on individual players. So far, there are 62 biographies but by the time I have finished there will be over a 1,000.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WestHam.htm

I believe that it will become the most detailed account of the history of any football club on the web. I will not bother to add links to these pages at Wikipedia. Instead I leave it up to your good judgement to decide if Wikipedia visitors will benefit from such a link.

On the subject of links, I would highly recommend that you consider providing links to John Farley’s excellent website on West Ham.

http://www.westhamstats.info/westham.php?west=0

Unfortunately, John Farley’s pages do not rank very high in search-engines and his work is therefore being missed by West Ham fans.

I am using my site to give access to all the good sites on West Ham. These links appear on every one of my pages (including to Wikipedia).

I am hoping that this will be a collaborative effort. I will be posting messages on West Ham forums for fans to send me any information they have on early players. I am also hoping that relatives of the players will also contact me with information. This has happened with the rest of my website. Web surfers often do searches for relatives. As a result I have obtained a lot of material from the relatives of the people I have written about.

If you want to help me with this project I can be contacted at: johnsimkin1945@hotmail.com


 * Hi John, thanks for your message. The history section is looking good, those pages have obviously taken a lot of effort to produce. I'll go through and add links to the appropriate West Ham United F.C. by season pages. I have been using the stats site as a reference recently, and I'll be going back through my recent pages to see if there's anything else I can add from the info there. I certainly think it's a worthwhile site to link to. I have limited access to Wikipedia at the moment though, so it may take me a while to get through them. All the best. - Nzd   (talk)  12:13, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Up until fairly recently I was a history teacher. A lot of my students wanted to do Key Stage 3/GCSE coursework on the history of their football club. This was understandable as football dominated their lives. Any teacher knows that it is vital to tap into the interests of the student. If you do this successfully, you can turn the apathetic student into someone who is highly motivated. They can also learn a great deal about social history by studying football history. It also makes a good local history study, which is now a compulsory aspect of the National Curriculum. So also is the need to do in-depth studies.

Most students use the internet for their research. However, despite the large number of websites on the current activities of football clubs, there is very little on the history of football clubs.

Therefore, I have decided to create a detailed online history of West Ham. This will include biographies and photographs of individual players. I will also create sections on the history of football, rule changes, etc. that will be helpful to students studying West Ham and other clubs.

I will also be producing guidelines on how this material can be used for coursework. For example, suggested topics, advice on how to carry out your own research in local libraries, etc. West Ham’s early history was reported in great detail in the local press and these newspapers are available at the Newspaper Library at Collindale. The Newham Local Studies Library at Stratford is another great source of information on West Ham.

This project will take several years to complete. The first draft on the first ten years can be found here.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WestHamHistory.htm

It is an organic project and will be constantly have new material added.

So far I have produced 88 biographies. It will be over a 1,000 by the time I have finished. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WestHam.htm

I am very interested in getting into contact with the families of former West Ham players who are willing to be interviewed for the project.

I can be contacted here: johnsimkin1945@hotmail.com I am also interested in being put into contact with history teachers in the area who are willing to contribute ideas for the project.

These are the books I am currently using for my research. I would welcome any additional titles you think I should buy.

John Powles, Iron in the Blood: Thames Ironworks FC (2005) Kirk Blows and Tony Hogg, The Essential History of West Ham United (2000) Tony Hogg, 1895-2005: Who’s Who of West Ham United (2005) John Northcutt, The Definitive West Ham United (2003) John Northcutt & Roy Shoesmith, West Ham United: An Illustrated History (1994) The West Ham Collection (2003) Brian Belton, Founded on Iron (2003) Brian Belton, Days of Iron (1999) Dean Hayes, The Upton Parks Encyclopedia (1998) John Moynihan, The West Ham Story (1984) Dave Russell, Football and the English (1997) James Walvin, The People’s Game (1994) David Russell & Wray Vamplew, Encyclopedia of British Football (2002) Philip Gibbons, Association Football in Victorian England (2002) John Harding, For the Good of the Game: Official History of the Professional Footballers Association (1998) Phil Soar & Martin Tyler, Encycopedia of British Football (1983)

Margaret McMillan
Hello, please could you confirm whether your website content is availiable under a truly free license i.e. that it can be used commercially (the entire text of one of your articles was copied here ? Thanks Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 17:11, 21 July 2007 (UTC)