Douglian30

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ANI discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 20:48, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for informing me. I am formulating a response, which I will probably post as a reply to the original query. BTW, I'm not sure that "fan" is quite right, but I guess it was a polite way of putting it! Douglian30 (talk) 16:55, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

The discussion seems to have disappeared from the ANI. What is its present status? I have nearly completed a overall review of the circumstances, which I should be ready to submit tomorrow. How should I proceed? Douglian30 (talk) 14:03, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

You don't have to do anything; the discussion was archived. — Diannaa (talk) 22:11, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia and copyright

Hello Douglian30! Your additions to British Nutrition Foundation have been removed in whole or in part, as they appear to have added copyrighted content without evidence that the source material is in the public domain or has been released by its owner or legal agent under a suitably free and compatible copyright license. (To request such a release, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission.) While we appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from sources to avoid copyright and plagiarism issues.

• 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 cite the source using an inline citation. You can read about this at Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify the information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
• We have strict guidelines on the usage of copyrighted images. Fair use images must meet all ten of the non-free content criteria in order to be used in articles, or they will be deleted. To be used on Wikipedia, all other images must be made available under a free and open copyright license that allows commercial and derivative reuse.
• If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a legally designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. Understand, though, that unlike many other sites, where a person can license their content for use there and retain non-free ownership, that is not possible at Wikipedia. Rather, the release of content must be irrevocable, to the world, into either the public domain (PD) or under a suitably free and compatible copyright license. Please see Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
• Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Wikipedia project or article, you must follow the copyright attribution steps described at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. See also Help:Translation#License requirements.

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, please ask them here on this page, or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you. — Diannaa (talk) 22:08, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Please would you explain how my sentence "As a charity largely funded by corporate donations from food industry organisations, the BNF maintains its independence through advisory and scientific committees, an Editorial Advisory Board, educational working groups and a register of interests for Board members and senior managers." might appear to be copyrighted material? This is an abstract, not an extract. It would be bad abstracting practice to change noun phrases used by the author to introduce the underlying portions of text as this might inadvertently change or generalise the meaning, particularly in this case where specific administrative bodies and functions are being described in the source document. Furthermore, as clearly stated, BNF were informed of the proposed text and have not raised any comments about copyright violation (or any other) issue. The sentence is central to the NPOV of the article, balancing current BNF governance with the historic criticism. Douglian30 (talk) 09:48, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

That's not what I removed. The content I removed was "Under its Memorandum and Articles of Association, the Board may comprise no more than 12 Trustees. Trustees are appointed by the Board and serve for a term of three years, with each Trustee able to serve for a maximum of nine years; membership of the Board is weighted towards the scientific academic community." It's identical to material found in this pdf. — Diannaa (talk) 01:50, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I owe you two apologies, the first obviously rising from your reply, which shows I had managed to get confused between what was removed and what remained (partly because it was removed from History). The removed part was a direct quote and this should have indicated by double quotes or a BlockQuote. The second apology is that yesterday I was not able to send you a rather crucial afterthought concerning the copyright status of the source document.

As the annual report of a charity, the source document is publically available through the Charity Commission's website. Here it states that "All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated". The website link, like the Wikipedia article, says that "It is interoperable with Creative Commons' Attribution 4.0 licence". (From the comments attached to this statement in the Wikipedia article, it seems a little work is needed here.) In relation to the current discussion, does this not mean that the material can be reproduced in a Wikipedia article if the appropriate attributions are made? This raises some questions about which source (the charity or the Charity Commission) to use and what information needs to be in the citation. General requirements are stated, for example on the UK National Archives website, but the translation of these into practical references is not obvious (to me, at least!). And I haven't been able to find any Wikipedia help documentation on this. I can do further work on this (as a retired Information Scientist), but will await your comments first (in case I am as wrong on this aspect as on the deletion!). Douglian30 (talk) 11:49, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Can you please provide a link as to where you found a copy of the annual report at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/charity-commission? I can't find it. The copy I found is at the organisation's website, which is marked as copyright.

You are correct that the Open Government License is a compatible license and we can copy text from such content, as long as the required attribution is provided. There's a template at Template:OGL-attribution that can be added as part of the citation. I find the template awkward to use so I usually add it manually: Here is an example.

There's more information on This topic at Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Copying material from free sources. — Diannaa (talk) 13:32, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the website is marked Copyright, but if you speed-read the report, you will find that the document is not. The links to the BNF annual reports are on the webpage at https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/251681/accounts-and-annual-returns. Access to individual reports uses a long search URL. That is one aspect of my querying which copy of the report should be linked to, since that at the BNF site, the document originator, is a straightforward URL, whereas that at the notional copyright holder is a complicated link (and takes the reader to a place they might expect). Now looking at your example (for which, thanks), I see another reason, the OGL logo looks rather ugly and obtrusive! Also, if material is extracted from the (official or otherwise) printed report, there is no copyright notification (unless I've missed it). Any further comment would come from the cynicism of old-age! Douglian30 (talk) 16:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

This is the link we should use, which clearly shows that the annual report is present on the Charity Commission website and is therefore released under the OGL.

Everything is fixed up now. Thanks for your patience. — Diannaa (talk) 19:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC)