User talk:Hsmom

frisbee

Please provide this site with an entry for frisbee. Thank you for your attention in this matter. --Huey gunna getcha 17:57, 28 March 2007 (EDT)

Aw, I wanted frisbee. :-( -- Rob Pommer_{Rob Pommer} 17:59, 28 March 2007 (EDT)

I'll get right on that. --Hsmom 20:03, 28 March 2007 (EDT)

Handy Hints

Here are a few examples of handy techniques. To make more sense of them, click on "edit" to see the code that produced these examples.

How to strike out text: Put <s> in front of the text, then </s> at the end of the text.

• Example: How to <s>strike out</s> text.
• Result: How to strike out text.

How to add references/citations: Put <ref> Title of Reference [URL of reference] </ref> The title can be put after the URL also, but it looks nicer in the reference section when it is put before the URL. The title will not be seen with the text, it will only appear in the references section if there is one.

• Example: <ref>Conservapedia Main Page [http://www.conservapedia.com]</ref>
• Result: (See the References section below.)

How to add a reference section at the end of an article: Put == References == to create the heading. Then on the next line put <references/>. Every page that includes citations should have a references section at the bottom.

• Example:

== References ==

<references/>

• Result: See below, at the bottom of the page.

• Result: (See the References section below.)

How to add a request for a citation:

• Add {{fact}} after the section that needs a citation.

Fan mail

I like your approach and your comments. I was neither homeschooled nor have I homeschooled my kids, but I was drawn to this site because I was intrigued by the idea of its being a resource where high-school-age kids could learn by writing articles, and by the idea of a resource aimed at that age group. The site has, um, multiple facets and that doesn't seem to be its most conspicuous facet, but I think it's still there, and I try to write with that audience at least partly in mind. Dpbsmith 09:54, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, you're cool :) (what he said, plus more) Human 22:55, 12 May 2007 (EDT)

Billy Sunday

Tooting my own horn... Billy Sunday was on the requested articles list, so I wrote it, and I found the topic quite interesting and think the article came out well. Since you'd said you enjoyed Mother's Day, I thought I'd mention this one, too. Dpbsmith 08:00, 18 June 2007 (EDT)

Theory of evolution

If you want to help with the references, please write it and paste it in my talk page. I will improve the article with your name in the summary.

--User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 18:31, 22 June 2007 (EDT)

Engineer

Please see: Engineer --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 09:24, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

Feminism

Feminism has been unlocked. DanH 21:46, 30 March 2008 (EDT)

Invitation to join Wikiproject:News

Hsmom, since you have suggested grammar fixes to news items in the past, you are invited to sign up as a member of Wikiproject:News. Review the Guidelines.
Your grammar suggestions have been very helpful. I think they would be more helpful if you made grammar fixes to the articles BEFORE they're posted to the Main page. --DeanS^talk 17:56, 29 August 2008 (EDT)

May I just say...

...that I find all of your edits on Talk:Main Page to be absolutely lovely and helpful. They are probably the most informed, level-headed and intelligent suggestions and viewpoints I've seen on here for a while. Many of the tenets you seem to promote in your posts have gotten me blocked here many times, however, but keep up the good work:) Harbinger 13:13, 27 September 2008 (EDT)

Scabies article & Plagiarism

I could be wrong, but wouldn't the CDC info. on health issues be considered public domain? There's no copyright information on the website as far as I can see, so it should be fine to copy the information word-for-word as long as it is noted that is how the information was obtained and a link provided to the CDC page. Jinxmchue 22:31, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

Oh, yep. Here we go: Public domain: "Two examples of material in the public domain are United States government works (technically the copyright is held collectively by the American public)..." The CDC would fall under that. Jinxmchue 22:33, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

This covers other edits you have made (e.g. Tourette syndrome article). Jinxmchue 22:36, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

It was not at all clear in the article that the entire thing had been copied word-for-word from the CDC site. If you are quoting long sections of text, you need to show that with quotation marks or other formatting to make it clear which parts are quoted and which parts are original. While the CDC site was named as a source, it was not indicated that the CDC page had been lifted word-for-word. In addition, a good article will draw upon several sources. Also, just because a site doesn't have a copyright notation does not mean it is in the public domain (although I agree that government works are probably public domain). Bottom line - would you accept this kind of work from a student? I wouldn't. It's dishonest. --Hsmom 22:39, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

Oh, I agree, but I think there is a better fix than simply removing the information completely. Seems like overkill. Jinxmchue 22:42, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

I'll see what I can do with them. I need a project anyway. Jinxmchue 22:44, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

Well, the better fix would be to either quote the entire thing with proper attribution (which is still not ideal, IMHO), or re-write each of the articles. If you have time, go for it. I'm somewhat concerned, however, that there may be more medical articles that have been plagiarized. --Hsmom 22:48, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

Take a look at the scabies article now. As long as the medical articles are categorized, it should be easy to check them all. Other than that, I don't know if there's a way to check which pages link to websites like the CDC. But like I said, I needed a project, so I'll do this. Cheers and God bless! Jinxmchue 23:00, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

Hmmm. Taking the info from another site and rephrasing it sentence-by-sentence doesn't really improve things. It certainly wouldn't fly in a decent high school class. If the article includes only information from one other site, I think it's better to just go ahead and quote it, making it clear that it is quoted (by using quotation marks, etc.) and properly citing the source. Then it's clear that you are not trying to pass someone else's work off as your own. Ideally a minimum of information will be quoted, with the reader being encouraged to read the rest of the original information at the original source. You might enjoy this lovely article about plagarism. --Hsmom 01:02, 6 October 2008 (EDT)

Do you think it'd be a good idea to create a template to flag articles suspected of (or known to be) plagiarism? Corry 23:12, 6 October 2008 (EDT)

Yes, after thinking about it a bit, I think that such a template would indeed be helpful. Of course, ideally the article would be fixed, but people don't always have the time to completely re-write an article when they notice it has been plagiarized, so using the template would be a quick option. I assume that would then generate a list of articles with suspected plagiarism? That would be useful too. --Hsmom 23:40, 6 October 2008 (EDT)

Mex

Thanks. --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 09:32, 6 October 2008 (EDT)

Citations

This was placed in the reason line when you inserted the "fact" template in Elephant: Could we at least get a credible citation for this? 'Cause it's word-for-word from another site. Which would be plagiarism. Which is deceitful and morally wrong. I agree with you that plagarism is morally wrong, but I've also noticed you placed a lot of similar lines in articles that you've identified as plagarism without even telling us where they came from at all. If it is plagarism, show us the source so it can be removed. Karajou 10:33, 7 October 2008 (EDT)

In most of the cases I've found (and I'm beginning to suspect there are a horrifying number of plagiarized articles here), I've re-written the article to include the source, to provide proper attribution, and to minimize the amount of material lifted from any one source. In this particular case however, I Googled the sentence from the article and found an abundance of sites which included the sentence word-for-word. The first several sites I reviewed were not credible sources and thus were not appropriate to cite. I did not have time to review all of the potential sources and determine whether there was a credible one or not. I hope that whoever put this sentence in the article in the first place did indeed get it from a credible site - hopefully they have this article on their watchlist and will provide the source. If not, someone else will have to either find a source or remove the sentence. --Hsmom 10:50, 7 October 2008 (EDT)

If you see something that is plagarised, and it's clear that it is, immediately remove it. Go to the talk page, explain what you did and provide the source where it came from. The point I made above is that anyone just cannot say that such-and-such is plagarized without stating the source; all that would be is "my word against your's". If the article is public domain and has no attribution tag at the bottom or a statement such as "text incorporated from...", cite that on the talk page as well. Karajou 12:11, 7 October 2008 (EDT)

<edit conflict>Thanks - I'll try to promptly remove any plagiarism I find, and I'll be careful about noting the source in my edit comments. Frankly, I often don't have time to discuss each one in detail on the talk page - I've added the notes below that should cover most situations, and I'll try to make the edit comments clear. One question - what is to be done about images that have no information about their source? I've come across several articles with pictures taken from another site without attribution, but I'm not sure how to address this. Shouldn't all images include the source and some kind of statement as to their copyright status?--Hsmom 00:18, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

There are a few things here that you're possibly unaware of for the moment. The first thing is that all intellectual property created by indivuduals working directly for the U.S. government is public-domain; we can use them here as per this page: [3]. But they have to be attributed as to where it came from, and the tag below has to be used on the page with the main source placed within it. Another reason this public domain stuff is here (such as the several bird articles your deleted) is to provide a guide for the editor to make improvements and/or additions that are just not in the original.

Pictures must be treated the same way; all should have a licence tag on it; all must identify exactly who created it, the year it was created; who or what entity owns it, and whether or not it's public domain. Because we have so many images on the site it would not be possible to go through and check every one. What you could do is to go to the image talk page, find out who uploaded it, and remind that person that the copyright or other is in question and corrections need to be made. See Fair use for further details, and you can also go to user:Karajou/tag template for more examples.

Copyright Details
License:	This work is in the Public Domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the U.S. Code
Source:	File available from the United States Federal Government [].

Here's some examples that I did with regard to some of your questions regarding proper attribution:

• Photos that are public domain and/or U.S. Government: [4][5][6][7][8]
• Articles from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, U.S. State Dept, Naval Historical Center: [9][10][11][12]

Response

If at all possible, can we have an expectation of you improving the articles after you remove the plagarism? You left this line in one: "According to the US Geological Survey, Double-crested Cormorants are seabirds." A line like that belongs in Dick and Jane, not here. Karajou 00:14, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

Well, I didn't want to leave absolutely nothing on the page. I understand that it's annoying when what appeared to be a very nice article is removed. However, once discovered, we cannot let plagiarism remain. I honestly don't have the time (or the background) to research a large number of seabirds and write articles about them. I understand that the stub that I've left is not ideal. However, it is accurate and includes a reference, in-text attribution, and quotation marks around the quoted material, which is more than can be said for what was there before. I didn't plagiarize the article in the first place, and I'm afraid I can't take responsibility to undertake a total re--write. Hopefully another editor will have the time and knowledge to do so. --Hsmom 00:27, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

It's just a minor pet-peeve; I've hated Dick and Jane since the second grade! Karajou 00:36, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

About my Plagiarism Edits

Plagiarism is the act of passing someone else's work off as your own. It is deceitful and thus morally wrong. I have been finding many pages which include plagiarism. In some cases, I will not have the time and/or the expertise to re-write the article, nor will I have the time to provide a detailed explanation on the article's talk page. Nonetheless, plagiarism should be removed promptly. Since I won't have the space to provide details about plagiarism in my edit summaries, I am providing further information here. In general, I will deal with plagiarism I find by:

• Removing the plagiarized material.
• Including the apparent source of the material in my edit summary.
• Including "see my talk page" in the edit summary (if there is room).

I consider the following situations to be plagiarism:

• Material that has apparently been copied word-for-word from another site, without attribution of any kind.
• Material that has apparently been copied word-for-word from another site, without quotation marks indicating which material is a direct quote. (Often, this includes articles which consist entirely of several paragraphs of information taken from a single source.)
• Articles consisting solely of large amounts of text copied from a single source.
• Material that has been paraphrased from another site without attribution.

Note that:

• When you copy information word-for-word from another source, you need to both indicate which text is quoted (by using quotation marks or setting it off from the rest of the text in blockquote form) and provide a citation using reference tags. Ideally, you would also provide in-text attribution (e.g. "according to so-and-so").
• A citation, quotation marks, and ideally in-text attribution need to be provided even if the document from which you are quoting is in the public domain. If you quote from a public-domain source, such as a US government agency's web site, you need to show where the quote came from. The reader needs to know where the information originally came from.
• If you paraphrase information from another source, you still need to provide a citation. Obscuring the source of the information by paraphrasing is not an appropriate way to get around the need for citations.
• Large sections of text should not be copied, even if a citation is provided and quotation marks are used. For example, it is not appropriate to create a Conservapedia article about a particular bird or animal by copying an entire article about the creature from another web site, even if you cite the web site as a source.

An online encyclopedia written as a wiki is not particularly useful if references are not cited. Students who use any wiki encyclopedia should not rely on it as a primary source for their work; at best it provides a starting point for further research. Because of this, it is especially important to cite sources. Students need to be able to follow up on what they read here, and to verify the information by reading the credible sources we provide. It is important for them to understand where the information came from - who did the study or wrote the opinion or what-have-you - so that they can bring into their understanding of the information any inherent bias or point of view the original authors may have. In addition, citing sources helps to minimize errors and helps readers to quickly identify information that may have changed or been updated since the article was written. --Hsmom 11:30, 10 October 2008 (EDT)