User talk:Joseph Petrik

I work at the University of Waterloo's David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science as a communications officer. I've been asked to update existing pages of faculty members at the school as well as to create new wiki pages for notable faculty who do not have entries.

I am employed by the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, but I do not work for these faculty members.

Joseph Petrik Joseph Petrik (talk) 17:16, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Welcome!
Hello, Joseph Petrik, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
 * Introduction and Getting started
 * Contributing to Wikipedia
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page and How to develop articles
 * How to create your first article
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You may also want to take the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit The Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 21:43, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

September 2017
Hello, I'm Zackmann08. Thank you for your recent contributions to Ian Goldberg. I noticed that when you added the image to the infobox, you added it as a thumbnail. In the future, please do not use thumbnails when adding images to an infobox (see WP:INFOBOXIMAGE). What does this mean? Well in the infobox, when you specify the image you wish to use, instead of doing it like this:

SomeImage.jpg

Instead just supply the name of the image. So in this case you can simply do:

SomeImage.jpg.

There will then be a separate parameter for the image caption such as Some image caption. Please note that this is a generic form message I am leaving on your page because you recently added a thumbnail to an infobox. The specific parameters for the image and caption may be different for the infobox you are using! Please consult the Template page for the infobox being used to see better documentation. Thanks! Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 21:43, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Ihab Ilyas (computer scientist) has been accepted
 Ihab Ilyas (computer scientist), which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created. The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on the article's talk page. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article. You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. . Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia! SwisterTwister  talk  05:15, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the  [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk&action=edit&section=new&nosummary=1&preload=Template:AfC_talk/HD_preload&preloadparams%5B%5D=Ihab_Ilyas_(computer_scientist) help desk] .
 * If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider.

Managing a conflict of interest
Hello, Joseph Petrik. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:


 * avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
 * propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the edit COI template);
 * disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see );
 * avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see );
 * do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you for your declaration at the top of your user talk page though! Kj cheetham (talk) 23:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I just took Gordon Cormack's picture. It's not really a contribution per se so much as a recent picture to go with his Wikipedia profile. Joseph Petrik (talk) 23:29, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * All edits here are contributions. The top of your talk pages says you've been asked to update existing pages of faculty members at the school - I assume that's part of your job? If so, please do read Paid-contribution disclosure as it's a requirement to make the proper declarations for paid editing. I'd also recommend disclosing it on the talk page of any article you edit that's related to your workplace, for the sake of transparency. Thanks. -Kj cheetham (talk) 23:43, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I took a photo of Gord the other week, as he retired on December 31, 2023 and he did not have a recent photo. He liked one picture in particular -- the one I uploaded -- so I asked him if he's like me to add it to his Wikipedia profile, as it did not have one.
 * I do work at the Cheriton School of Computer Science -- full disclosure -- but in this instance it was a favour to recently retired faculty member rather than my being paid to create or update his Wikipedia profile. Joseph Petrik (talk) 23:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your response. Given edits to his article were outside your paid work, don't need to do the paid contributions template, but it is still a potential COI so I've taken the liberty of adding a template to Talk:Gordon Cormack for you, linked back to here. I think that'll be sufficient as a disclosure! Hope that's okay. -Kj cheetham (talk) 23:56, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's great. Joseph Petrik (talk) 23:58, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Do give me a shout on my talk page if I can ever assist in the future in any case and/or ask at WP:TEAHOUSE if you ever get stuck with anything on here, as quite a few things aren't obvious! -Kj cheetham (talk) 00:02, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The ins and outs of Wikipedia page editing is most definitively not obvious, at least to me. I appreciate any help I can get.
 * Thanks for cleaning up the info box. The first one I added -- a generic one -- wasn't ideal for a researcher. Joseph Petrik (talk) 00:08, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Happy to help where I can! I'm still learning things and I've been doing this for a few years with more edits than I should admit. :) -Kj cheetham (talk) 00:12, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I noticed that someone created a Wikipedia entry for Craig S. Kaplan, one of the professors at Waterloo's Cheriton School of Computer Science.
 * Craig S. Kaplan
 * The entry is very good and it's mostly about his recent work on discovering a shape known as an einstein, an aperidoic monotile (Aperiodic tiling) — a single shape that tiles an infinite plane without overlaps or gap in a pattern that can never be made to repeat. The discovery was covered extensively last year in various news media. I took photo of Craig a few months ago in a recently renovated lab at the university which has the tile design on the wall, as TIME magazine had picked the shape as one of its best inventions of 2023.
 * https://uwaterloo.ca/news/new-shape-makes-times-best-inventions-2023-list
 * Would it be appropriate to add this photo of Craig to his info box? It nicely ties together both the researcher and his research. Joseph Petrik (talk) 16:13, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think that would be a good idea. Strictly you should also add a tag to the article talk page saying you're a connector contributor, but I can do that for you if you'd like?
 * I should also note if you ever need my attention in the future it's best to ping me (see Template:Reply to), as although I'm watching your talk page right now, I don't intend to keep watching it forever. :) Often I only watch talk pages for 7 days. Alternatively if you leave a message on my talk page I'll notice it. -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:12, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help.
 * I've added the photo I took to Professor Kaplan's Wikipedia profile. Can you please add a tag that I'm a connected contributor? I am employed as the communications officer at Waterloo's Cheriton School of Computer Science, but I was not paid explicitly to take the photo. Joseph Petrik (talk) 18:29, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This seems unhelpfully pedantic to me. It is common for people to upload freely licensed pictures of their acquaintances without posting banners on every page where those pictures appear. The banners seem unnecessary and frankly unhelpfully distracting to readers. I expect most readers who bother to try to figure out what the supposed "conflict" is and then wind up finding nothing more than a photo credit will feel like they wasted their time. Personally I think being explicit in the edit summary is more than sufficient (e.g. "add a photograph I took of my friend John Smith"). If anyone wants to be super duper extra careful about disclosure, I'd say make a single explicit talk page discussion message about it, and eventually after a few years it can be archived off the page without any issue. –jacobolus (t) 03:41, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Kj cheetham Actually let me be more explicit. I think adding these banners is actively harmful and insisting on including them is self-indulgent. Anything that is a banner at the top of a talk page is demanding that every reader who wants to discuss the article needs to pay attention to it for the full future history of the article. Putting a banner at the top of the pages is a way of repeatedly forcing something into every reader's conscious attention. Putting an unusual banner that people are not used to seeing and learning to skim past makes the statement "LOOK AT THIS. THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THIS DISCUSSION PAGE AND YOU SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT IT." Whether the creator of one particular image on the article happened to be an acquaintance of the subject is far, far, FAR, FAR, FAR down the list of important things to know about the article or the discussion page. This kind of distraction causes a significant and inappropriate cognitive burden, far disproportionate to any benefit obtained from transparency. If there is going to be a disclosure about this, as I said I think the most appropriate and proportionate place to put it is in an edit summary. A slightly overzealous but also acceptable place is in a discussion comment, on par with every other discussion topic many of which are likely much more important. If we're going to insist on putting this in a banner, we might as well just make every discussion topic its own banner, and do our discussion back and forth in the form of dueling eyesore banners rather than sentences. –jacobolus (t) 09:14, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * One last quick follow-up: the above is probably a bit more dramatic than I will intend in the future. I've got some personal stuff going on off-wiki that has me in a somewhat agitated mood. All the best everyone. –jacobolus (t) 09:30, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I should also add, thank you for your contributions! -Kj cheetham (talk) 23:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

January 2024
Hi Joseph Petrik! I noticed that you recently marked an edit as minor that may not have been. "Minor edit" has a very specific definition on Wikipedia—it refers only to superficial edits that could never be the subject of a dispute, such as typo corrections or reverting obvious vandalism. Any edit that changes the meaning of an article is not a minor edit, even if it only concerns a single word. Thank you. Kj cheetham (talk) 23:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't think I did anything on that Wikipedia page apart from adding Gord's photo in a scientist info box. I don't see how that changes the meaning of an article, but if it does I'll no longer do this.
 * Noob here. No malice. Just trying to make Wikipedia better by adding a photo to an existing person profile. Joseph Petrik (talk) 23:34, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Pretty much any visual changes beyond fixing spelling mistakes, minor formatting, or reverting vandalism isn't a minor change. I wouldn't worry, but it's something to be aware of for future edits. -Kj cheetham (talk) 23:38, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Noted and logged as Captain Kirk says. :–) Joseph Petrik (talk) 23:43, 12 January 2024 (UTC)