User talk:Tanya Bendis

Wikipedia and copyright
Hello Tanya Bendis, and welcome to Wikipedia. Your addition to Mystic Ballet 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.


 * You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and a cited source. You can read about this at Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
 * Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
 * Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Copyrights. You may also want to review Copy-paste.
 * If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. However, there are steps that must be taken to verify that license before you do. See Donating copyrighted materials.
 * In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
 * Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied without attribution. If you want to copy from another Wikipedia project or article, you can, but please follow the steps in Copying within Wikipedia.

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. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 03:44, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Is there a phone number or email that I could directly contact in order to clear this issue. Goran Subotic does not want to make the website as Public Domain or free text, which is what I believe the issue is here. A majority of this writing is actually by me, and the rest was sent to me by Mr. Subotic to include from the website. The ballet's phone number is 860.536.3671 and my phone number is 650.787.6648. He would like to see the current and correct information on the wikipedia page rather than outdated information.

I understand that it is hard to trust this, and that is why I would prefer to contact this issue directly. Otherwise how do I give you "Donating the rights" when I don't physically have anything to send, and I cannot make the website public domain...

To be clear
You can't copy the official website's content onto Wikipedia. Not only is that not allowed for a whole bunch of copyright-related reasons (how do we know for sure that you're really affiliated with the ballet? I'm not saying you would lie, but "HONEST, I WORK FOR THEM AND I'M TOTALLY ALLOWED TO COPY CONTENT FROM THEIR WEBSITE ONTO WIKIPEDIA" would be setting a really bad precedent), it's really, really inappropriate for tone reasons.

Think of a politician you really dislike. Would you trust what the Wikipedia article about that politician said, if you knew that the article had been written by the politician('s staff)? DS (talk) 19:44, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Is there a phone number or email that I could directly contact in order to clear this issue. Goran Subotic does not want to make the website as Public Domain or free text, which is what I believe the issue is here. A majority of this writing is actually by me, and the rest was sent to me by Mr. Subotic to include from the website. The ballet's phone number is 860.536.3671 and my phone number is 650.787.6648. He would like to see the current and correct information on the wikipedia page rather than outdated information.

I understand that it is hard to trust this, and that is why I would prefer to contact this issue directly. Otherwise how do I give you "Donating the rights" when I don't physically have anything to send, and I cannot make the website public domain...

Another option, I rewrite everything per se in paraphrase and repost? And anything from the website would be directly quoted from there. It is also a ballet company not a political campaign. A non-profit arts organization, so I don't see the analogy of giving an opinionated side to politics. I stated the performances that were performed and a biography of the director.


 * Unfortunately there is no phone hotline. Many editors have enabled email addresses (when you look at their user pages or user talk pages you'll see an "Email this user" link in the sidebar), but it's generally preferred to keep discussions public and on the wiki, for example here on this talk page.
 * There are two issues regarding the content: Firstly, copyright. The Mystic Ballet website says, "© 2014 Mystic Ballet, All Rights Reserved." If that's correct, someone in a position to enter legally binding agreements on Mystic Ballet's behalf would have to release the rights, either by adding a note to that web page or by sending a confirmation email to permissions-en@wikimedia.org that states the content is irrevocably released under a free license that allows everybody to re-use and modify it for any purpose, including commercial purposes. If the copyright holder is not willing to release the content under such a free license (or into the public domain), Wikipedia cannot have that content. Thoroughly rewriting it in your own words would be a way around the copyright issue.
 * The second issue is whether Wikipedia should have that content in the first place, even if copyright were not an issue. Wikipedia content should be a summary of what reliable third-party sources such as newspapers or reputable magazines have reported on a subject, and we should cite those sources so our readers can verify for themselves that the summary is accurate. Whether the content is approved by the representatives of the subject, however, is irrelevant. And with statements such as "Mystic Ballet is now a major CT-based organization providing high-quality artistic entertainment" or "Mystic Ballet has brought wonder and delight to close to a quarter of a million spectators on four continents", I'd say an unduly promotional tone is a major issue here. Their "About us" page is written to promote the ballet; an encyclopedia article should neutrally provide verifiable information. That's an entirely different purpose, and it's the reason "about us" pages don't make good encyclopedia articles even if there no copyright issues. Thus my suggestion would be not to bother with releasing the Mystic Ballet website under a free license but rather to dig up the reviews you mentioned and to summarize what those said. The references, however, will need some work; currently they don't provide enough information to help our readers look up the sources. Take for example "Von Elrich Muller, dance critic for NortseeZietung, Germany" - that's probably the Nordsee-Zeitung, and I would assume the author's name is Erich Müller, but my attempts to find that specific review in their online archive have failed, and without a publication date there's no chance to look up the relevant article in a library archive. If we can locate those references and if they cover the Mystic Ballet in some detail (as opposed to, say, reviews of specific performances that don't provide information on the Mystic Ballet itself), we can write expand the Wikipedia article ballet by summarizing what those sources say. Huon (talk) 00:36, 19 March 2015 (UTC)