Talk:John Robert Mills

Discussion held during review at Articles for Creation

• Thanks for helpful advice Robert. Amended as suggested. Moonbouncer54, 23 September 2016 (GMT)

Sorry but JR MIlls is NOT the first to bounce a signal from the moon. In 1946, an American team (File:1946-01-31 Radar makes Round Trip To Moon.ogv) and a month later Zoltán Lajos Bay (http://web.archive.org/web/20040729193558/http://www.tungsram.hu/tungsram/downloads/tungsram/tu_short_history_1896-1996.pdf) were the first! The title has to be changedPierre cb (talk) 13:58, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

• Pierre. Thanks for your knowledge. Is it acceptable to add 'British' before scientist ?

• The title of the article should be John Robert Mills, nothing else. It is in the text of the introduction that you can talk about his achivements and in further sections. Pierre cb (talk) 15:20, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

• Pierre. Thank you for assistance by showing use of 'gallery'. A much improved layout. I have tweaked it to 'gallery mode=packed heights=200px'. Thanks again.

• Happy to help. Pierre cb (talk) 22:53, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Discussion of copyright

• jcc (tea and biscuits). Please note that full permission has been granted to use the text on the page: http://cayley.co.uk/john-robert-mills/

The text below has been added to the web page

"Copyright Permission for Wikipedia

The text of this page is available for modification and reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).

In particular, CCC Trading Ltd gives permission for the use of text contained on this page to be used by Moonbouncer54 on the Wikipedia page relating to John Robert Mills. For verification please contact the site owner of CCC Trading Ltd (T/a Cayley Chemicals), Philip Mills by email: cayley@btinternet.com"

Therefore please remove the tag for deletion

Moonbouncer54 (talk) 17:23, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Please note that text has been added at the bottom of the page on http://cayley.co.uk/john-robert-mills/ giving permission for the use of text within that page. There is therefore no copyright violation.

There is no such statement there. The statement in the "Acknowledgment" section of that page, regarding the Crown copyright, applies only to the pictures. As for the text, there is only a statement thanking an author for writing an article that was published elsewhere. This is not even close to being a statement that the original author has released his work into the public domain. The only thing that I do see is the statement at the very bottom of that page, in which Cayley Chemicals claim copyright in the contents of the entire web site, including the section on the subject here. If in fact the material here has been copied from that source, a copyright violation does exist. NewYorkActuary (talk) 18:28, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Follow-up I just noticed the posting on the Talk page, regarding the licensing statement appearing on the web page. But I don't see that statement on the web page (I just checked a minute ago). Besides, if the text had been written by the author who is identified on that page, I fail to see how Cayleigh Chemicals could be granting licenses for that other author's work. NewYorkActuary (talk) 18:37, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Sorry that the statement wasn't showing in the public domain on the website. The cache has been cleared and the statement is now available to be viewed Moonbouncer54 (talk) 09:31, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

"Response I don't think there is any copyright infringement for the following reasons:

• John Robert Mills died in 1998. Shortly after his death an article was put together as the basis of an obituary and for publication in the IEE magazine. The article was a combined effort between John Mills's two sons and a work colleague, Ken Slater. Ken slater has since died.
• John Mills's two sons are directors of CCC Trading Ltd (http://cayley.co.uk) and as such have re-published the article on their website
• The almost identical text has been used on all published material (Obituary, IEE article, Website and Wikipedia draft) because all have been written by the same team, albeit one has since died.
• There is, on the website (http://cayley.co.uk/john-robert-mills/), a permission statement at the bottom of the page that reads: "The text of this page is available for modification and reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). In particular, CCC Trading Ltd gives permission for the use of text contained on this page to be used by Moonbouncer54 on the Wikipedia page relating to John Robert Mills. For verification please contact the site owner of CCC Trading Ltd (T/a Cayley Chemicals), Philip Mills by email: cayley@btinternet.com" This over-rides the footer copyright.
• So far as pictures are concerned, these are reproduced under the Open Govenment Licence V3 (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/)

We are of course willing to make any changes necessary to satisfy your requirements to approve the Wikipedia article but would appreciate any advice as to what we should do. Or, in light of the above, may we re-submit for consideration without further modification. Thanks. Moonbouncer54 (talk) 09:26, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Great work there, but the copyright statement cannot be "CC-BY-SA 3.0 for Wikipedia", it has to be this text is "CC-BY-SA 3.0 for every use, full stop". Almost there :) jcc (tea and biscuits) 09:40, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Now done. User:NewYorkActuary, any thoughts? jcc (tea and biscuits) 10:36, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

• @Moonbouncer54 and Jcc: There are still some questions that need to be resolved. But first I note that, although we reviewers are expected to be alert to copyright issues, we do not hold ourselves out as experts in copyright law. In particular, I am unsure as to whether the license that now appears on the Cayley Chemicals page really does satisfy Wikipedia's requirements. Its second paragraph, with its specific references to Moonbouncer54 and Wikipedia, might be seen as a limitation on the license and, as such, might not be acceptable here. If you believe that it does satisfy Wikipedia's requirements, you should confirm this by asking at the Talk page of WP:Copyrights.

But even if the language is acceptable, there is still the important question of whether Cayley Chemicals is in any position to be granting licenses in the first place. I don't doubt that you (Moonbouncer54) and your brother played a substantial role in crafting Kenneth Slater's article in Physics World, nor do I doubt that you are directors of Cayley Chemicals. But Cayley Chemicals is a legal entity that is distinct from you and your brother (and from Mr. Slater) and I doubt very much that it possesses your personal legal rights. Also, you are quite mistaken in your apparent belief that Mr. Slater's copyright expired when he died. It didn't. But I also see a more basic question -- did you, your brother, and Mr. Slater ever possess copyright in the Physics World article? I myself have been the author of papers published by my professional organization, and my donation to that organization was not limited to my time and skill -- I also waived any claim I might otherwise have had to copyright in the material that I wrote. I looked on the web page for Physics World and found that they most certainly do assert copyright in its published material, and I saw nothing that made any exception for any particular contributors or types of contributions. And that brings me back to my original point -- I don't see how Cayley Chemicals is in any position to be granting a license.

Two more points. First, distinct from the question of copyright violation is the question of verbatim copying. We require that verbatim copying be attributed to the source, even if that source is in the public domain. In some cases, we even have templates for this (ses, for example, {{EB1911}}). In the instant case, there would need to be an attribution along the lines of "This article incorporates text taken from the July 1998 issue of Physics World, a copyrighted publication of the Institute of Physics." Such an attribution would, of course, focus attention on the copyright issue.

As for my second point, I'll be brief but I'll be happy to discuss in whatever detail you wish. All of this discussion about copyright has distracted us from the fact that no reviewer has yet opined on the question of whether the article passes the criteria for "notability". Moonbouncer54, I mean no disrespect to your father, but it is fair to summarize the article as saying that he spent a lifetime working in a particular technical field, rose to levels of administration in that field, and published a few papers during that time. But this same summary applies to thousands upon thousands of other people who have worked in technical fields. Even if the submission were to be re-written so as to remove all copyright concerns, the underlying question of notability would still need to be addressed. NewYorkActuary (talk) 20:22, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Response to NewYorkActuary

a) On the subject of copyright I think the conclusion is to rewrite the text, thus avoiding issues.

b) Regarding notability, while I clearly believe the criteria has been passed not because he simply "worked in a particular technical field, rose to levels of administration in that field, and published a few papers" but because of the contribution his work made which was of national military importance. Its about what his work achieved, not simply about the work itself. But clearly it is for others to take a view on this and come to their own conclusion.

Moonbouncer54 (talk) 21:29, 31 October 2016 (UTC)