User talk:Doncram

This is the Talk page of editor doncram. I don't log in here often; it is probably best to contact me at my Talk page in the English wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Doncram. --Doncram (talk) 18:09, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

RE:idea proposal comment

Hi, i answered your question in Easier table's description Discussion page. Dorivaldo de C. M. dos Santos (talk) 23:19, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

10 percent rule

[1] Me: "Ideally, 1 sentence should be the summation of 10 or more sentences in a critical work. Anything less starts to cross the line of what is fair use and what is not. "

You: " didn't you mean "anything more [than 10 percent] starts to cross the line"? "

When I said "anything less," it should be "less than 10 sentences." A summary of 1 sentence with 1 sentence is more likely to fall under plagiarism than a 1 sentence summary of 100 sentences. Now, it is not a hard and fast rule when it comes to larger summaries - a 500 word summary of 3000 words (2 pages summary of 12 pages) would have enough words that it could be unique. It is hard to uniquely summarize anything when there is little original work to base a sentence from. The unique part is difficult and the summary becomes near impossible the fewer words that exist. Ottava Rima (talk) 13:41, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

User:Ottava Rima, thank you for following up! I see what you mean, very well now. This rule about fair use is a great perspective, and is complementary to the 10% copyright rule-of-thumb. Please tell, though, where did you get this idea from and/or where else is this expressed? I would really like to use it and promote it, but I need more background. I haven't tried googling for it yet though.

Hmm, maybe I am overthinking, but here are some related other ideas:

1. And also, it seems to me that the rule is about plagiarizing too, i.e. it is likely one is plagiarizing (not giving adequate credit, as well as being potential violation of fair use copyright-wise) for words/ideas if one uses 10 sentences to summarize a 10 sentence critical review. Because the reader naturally expects a summary to be a condensation (a kind of original contribution) and would assume that the critical review is a summation of a much larger work, perhaps 100 sentences, with lots more detail and nuance and so on. A one sentence summary is more "original": the summarizer has contributed more by expressing the ideas pithily(sp?) and perhaps cleverly, in contrast to the original author who had to use 10 sentences to say the same thing. If instead the "summary" uses 10 sentences then it pretty much regurgitates the whole thing, so the reader is thinking the "summarizer" has made an original (and perhaps interesting) condensation, when in fact it is pretty much the whole thing, so the original author is being given short shrift. Giving the original author less credit than due is plagiarism. How much condensation is expected by the reader, in a given context, is an empirical question. Shrinking by a factor of 1 when 10 is expected: I think that is plagiarism. But shrinking by a factor of 1:4 when 1:5, on average, is expected, is not so bad. What is "fair use" is a different, legal question, where the reader's expected condensation factor may not matter.

2. If it is plagiarism, then that is not fair use, at least not in the normal English language meaning of "fair". (Does that match up with the legal definition of "fair use"?) If it is not fair use, it may or may not be plagiarism.

3. Wherever a same-sized summary differs from an exact quote it is probably introducing different meaning than intended. For any reasonably complex original passage, I believe that it is impossible to avoid new implications in any restatement of the same length. An original quote "The calico cat stepped on the lying dog" seems matter-of-fact in tone perhaps. If summarized as "A supine canine was super-ambulated by a mixed-coated feline", the reader thinks the summarizer is accurately representing the original author as pompous or deliberately roundabout or something, when that simply was not there before (i.e. something has been added). And they may wonder what "super-ambulated" and "mixed-coat" means, so some precision is lost. If exact original words are used (and not quoted) where no exact synonyms is available, as in "A canine animal was passed over by a walking calico cat" then it may be more accurate (exactly "calico" was what was said and presumably meant) but then it is failing to give credit to the original for its wording of the idea, and therefore is plagiarizing. "Animals interacted" is a true summary: it leaves out detail and does not suggest new detail. And it is a "good" summary if it conveys what is essential about the work for the purpose of the critical review (and if is approximately at the expected ratio of condensation).

I am trying to learn how to express myself, especially number 1 above, probably not doing too well. :( --Doncram (talk) 21:13, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Survey on content curation & review Inspire Campaign

Thanks for your participation in IdeaLab during the Inspire Campaign focused on improving content curation & review processes from February to March 2016. I'm interested in hearing your feedback about your participation during campaign, so if you're able, I invite you to complete this brief survey to describe how you contributed to the campaign and how you felt about participating.

Immediate results of the campaign can be found here. Please feel free to review them and let me know if you have any questions about the campaign or the survey. Thanks! I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 02:31, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

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Heritage site in Istrael

Hi Doncram

I think you have an interest in heritage sites in the United States, but not sure about other countries. In any event, I saw that w:List of World Heritage Sites in Israel does not have an entry for w:Avdat, which according to the article: Avdat was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in June 2005, but on 4 October 2009 the site suffered extensive damage … and was wondering if the classification was taken away. Ottawahitech (talk) 08:27, 23 September 2017 (UTC) please ping me