That's a male 16 to 24 years old, says Bob Sandelman, a restaurant researcher. A core of young men eat fast food 20 times a month, he says. With the Enormous Omelet Sandwich, "Burger King is going 180 degrees away from politically correct food," he says. Many young males "like that attitude and couldn't care less about nutrition." They just want to fill up — cheap
Please read the entire article before making blanket declarations challenging fact.
Thanks for adding the citation.
I don't see how reading the "whole article" would have informed me any more - the sentence you quoted was not in the article, and still isn't. It was in a citation attributed to a different paragraph, which didn't mention the target age in any way. Adding a fact tag is a request for verification for a specific point, not "a blanket statement challenging fact".
But thanks anyway.Yobmod (talk) 10:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
X in fiction articles
I noticed you on my watch list editing a few [X in fiction] type articles, and just in case you might be interested, I wanted to let you know about Wikipedia:WikiProject Popular Culture. Although that project seems to have a broader scope than the select few articles you've been improving, you might find yourself interested enough to join in some of our discussion and perhaps even consider joining the WikiProject. Regardless, thanks for the contribs and happy editing. --NickPenguin(contribs)14:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hola. I checked your talk page history and wanted to thank you for starting the above article, which in my arrogant opinion was an impressive newcomer's effort and a good catch, and can be a valuable addition. Also thank you for sticking around after you met our local speciality, treating new articles like crap. (Sigh.)
I wish I could add that I will begin improving it immediately, but right now I'm as erratic as a ferret on amphetamines and couldn't guarantee that I would stick to schedule. I'll still step in if there's an attempt to get it deleted, and will endeavour to answer any questions you might have. --Kizor18:21, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the vote of confidence! I was a little nervous about my first action under this account being the creation of a suspected sockpuppet page, and I tried to be as thorough and careful as I could be, but apparently for some it still isn't quite enough. In the meantime, it seems Cupidcobra has gotten the hint, though I'm afraid that if the case expires, he might start again ... I believe that invoking Checkuser is the next step, but I think I might catch even more flack for it if I'm the one to push things forward.
Also, I want to reiterate that I'm impressed by your contributions to Sexism in India, and your determination to not let information go to waste, even if it's from as biased a source as Cupidcobra. My initial inclination was that the article should be deleted, but you've shown me that the much harder road of all-inclusive consensus can be worth taking. It's too bad Cupidcobra isn't seeing it that way. Murmurer (talk) 22:04, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, members and friends of WP:LGBT! I'm not one to be writing newsletters, but I miss our cruise director, Miss Julie, and our project is drifting along with a few leaking plugs in the bottom of the boat. Hey, it happens. Every group we join goes through changes. If Wikipedia weren't so interesting it wouldn't also be so frustrating sometimes. And vice versa. More than one Wikiproject has tumbleweeds blowing through it, but this is one that can't afford to let that happen. Even if you pop in to the talk page of the project, you can let us know you're still around.
WP:LGBT's Role in HIV / AIDS articles
It wouldn't be a proper gay community without a li'l bit o' drama! That's right. If we aren't arguing about something, then we should be asking if we're still queer. Maybe that's for the best, since we know we're still kicking. Our most recent topic is how far the role of our project should go in dipping our toes into HIV/AIDS articles. The main AIDS article was delisted as a Featured Article last month, sadly. (Sending a swift kick to WP:Medicine.) A spirited discussion is available for your entertainment on the WP:LGBT talk page about just how much of HIV and AIDS should we take on. As ever, we'll take your opinions under advisement. We're going to have to, because it doesn't seem to have been settled.
Is Pride POV?
We have a pretty cool sidebar that identifies core LGBT articles. Its symbol is the iconic gay pride flag, much like other Wikiprojects have iconic symbols denoting the topic is a core subject in a series of articles. However, a question recently arose asking if the symbol itself is not neutral. Should a pride flag show up at the top of the article on Conversion therapy? How else would anyone know the article is about queer issues? Is there another symbol that is as widely recognized and that includes all our many splintered facets? At what point do we stop asking ourselves all these questions and just go have a mint julep on the verandah and stop caring?
For the love of all that is holy, no Kool Aid jokes. However, an editor involved in pioneering San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk's article has included a section about the late supervisor's support of Jim Jones and the People's Temple. While it may be accurate, there is a Request for Comment regarding how much emphasis the section places on Milk's support in light of his overall political influence on the city, and indeed the rest of the United States. Milk's article is a sad one in more ways than one. It lacks the detail and heart that honors its subject. Anyone want to do a barter with me? I'll bring Harvey Milk to featured status (give me a month or two so I can read stuff), if you do something of equal value to WP:LGBT?? Make me an offer...
Queer Studies is offensive!
The established branch of study known as Queer studies was brought up as an category for deletion because an editor was offended by the use of "queer" in the title. It was overwhelmingly rejected mostly by the usernames I see here on our Wikiproject page. (A clue that I know you are out there, hiding...biding your time...) So, I wish I could congratulate you, but now I'm all confused by my sympathy for the editor who was offended. So, if you're reading this, Moni has a short memory and can't remember your username. Don't be put off by our demonstrative pushiness. Join us. We can always use involved editors.
What can you do to help the project out? Be a wiki-fairy, on many levels. There are all kinds of articles that need help. Why, just this morning I removed those ugly wikify and cleanup tags from four articles at random. If you can put [[ ]] around stuff, you can clean up articles. There's a list of articles that need attention at the top of the WP:LGBT talk page. Or you can start with the Lambda Literary Awards, where the goddess of my altar received a pioneering award, and was "reduced to rubble" by Katherine V. Forrest's wonderful speech. The 20th ceremony of the Lambda Literary Awards, which celebrates LGBT literature, took place in West Hollywood on May 29th [1]. The page needs to be updated with the new winners, to be found on the official website [2].
Why on earth would someone want to delete material about homosexuality? 'Tis truly a mystery. But these embattled articles have some random evil gnomes removing information that places these folks under our queer umbrella. Help us keep an eye out for the deletions. Take a peek at the articles, familiarize yourselves with the info, and be handy with the undo function in the article history. If tempers flare, take it to the Hall monitors and let them sort it out. Best solution is to make sure your sources are immaculate.
This month's Wiki stars
This is what I get for opening my big fat mouth and suggesting the newsletter should be revived. Here I am writing it. So, to pat self on back (*cough*) Mulholland Dr. became a featured article in May. This is A Good Thing since it is my personal declaration that there is no such thing as lesbian porn. I don't care what Benjiboi says about the video collection at goodvibes. Instead, we have hot women who connect on a deep, personal, soul-touching level, so this film should qualify as some of the skankiest porn available for lesbians. Plus, it's completely confusing and surreal! D'you think Laura Harring would care that the article is featured? I don't think so either... (Call me, Laura!)
Compulsive hoarding of templates
Once I saw a harrowing episode of Animal Planet's Animal Cops where this guy had, like, 250 cats in his house and it freaked me right out. I'm drawing a parallel between 250 cats and, well...three, really, templates in articles involving LGBT issues. Can we stick to one, maybe? In the aforementioned Harvey Milk's article there's a core LGBT template, a link to the LGBT portal, and a sidebar for LGBT rights. Jiminy! You'd think we weren't the folk to set industrial grey carpeting and track lighting in vogue. An LGBT footer was designed to link to articles of interest that aren't the aforementioned core articles. What do you think, can we have either an LGBT template for core articles, a footer for LGBT articles that are high profile but not core, or an LGBT rights template? As ever, anything's up for discussion on the WP:LGBT talk page.
It's June, Pride month. Wear sunscreen, stay hydrated, get a designated driver, then go half-dressed in the streets find a girlfriend or boyfriend, or some homo who's standing there looking lonely and kiss 'em up real good. Remember, it all started 39 years ago when a bunch of drag queens just got fed the f*ck up by the cops raiding the bar and dragging them all out to the pokey again. Rock on, queens! Enjoy your celebrations. My town's is in October, and 200 people attend. I miss Denver.
It looks like we've picked up a lot of talent lately. We have no doubt you'll be making your indelible mark on LGBT knowledge as we know it, here at Wikipedia.
In the immortal words of Miss Julie, "May all your Wiki days be bright, and may your Love Boat never turn into a Poseidon."
We miss you, Miss Julie, as well as all the others who have graced our project and are on wiki-breaks or just got fed up with all the nuttiness and went to live their lives. Get your stupid houses built and hurry up and come back. --Moni3 (talk) 16:52, 9 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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I've rescinded the multiple nomination on this AFD and am now suggesting that it runs on this one particular article with a view to gauging community thoughts on individual phone articles. I'll then use that as a basis to decide how to approach the other ones. You may wish to change or add to your contributions here as the basis of the AFD is changed - this is a courtesy notice to allow you to do so if you wish. Exxolon (talk) 23:35, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Copyright law
Sorry, but I'm not convinced you have a very good grasp of copyright law. Please look up "substantial similarity." Furthermore, plagiarism is a distinct problem that overlaps copyright violation, but the two are not identical. Either one is unwelcome here. --Amble (talk) 16:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I understand enough that "substantial similarity", like "obscenity", is for the court to decide for each particular case. The changes i suggested would make the similarity non-substantial IMO. And unless you are an American judge, your opinion means no more than mine. Plagarism is allowed on wikipedia, as long as it is not breaching copyright, and the source is cited - hence copyvio is the problem needed tacklingYobmod (talk) 16:19, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Believable to those that actually read the guide-lines (Wikipedia:Plagiarism): "Material that is plagiarised but which does not violate copyright does not need to be removed from Wikipedia if it can be properly sourced." Yobmod (talk) 16:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't say that plagiarism is allowed, as you seem to believe. That would be absurd. It does say that plagiarism may sometimes be remedied without deletion. In this case, it's apparent that some of the material was plagiarized from offline sources that most of us don't have access to. Finding (let alone fixing) the full extent of the plagiarism would require a careful comparison of the text in question to every one of those sources. If you'd like to volunteer, be my guest. --Amble (talk) 17:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it does, read the article. If the copied work does not have copyright, plagariam has no legal meaning. Which is beside the point. You brought plagarism up, i was talking about copyright.Yobmod (talk) 17:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have read it, and it clearly states that all examples of plagiarism need to be corrected, even when the original sources are in the public domain. In the very sentence that you quoted, the operative clause is "if it can be properly sourced." Once it's properly sourced (if that's possible), it's no longer plagiarism. "Plagiarism is allowed on wikipedia" is absurd. --Amble (talk) 17:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Copying of uncopyrighted material is legal everywhere, including wikipedia. I can write out the whole text of Hamlet and it is plagarism, but not copyright infringment. I can even misrepresent it and sell it. It is also allowed without citing Shakespeare, although it is recomended to do so in wikipedia articles. A conditional clause appended onto a statement doesn't invalidate the statement, it just clarifies it.
Plagiarism of uncopyrighted material is obviously not a copyright violation, but it's still forbidden by Wikipedia policy. The conditional clause doesn't invalidate anything, but it does qualify the preceding. If an example of plagiarism can be properly attributed (so that it's no longer plagiarism) then it doesn't need to be removed. If it can't (so that it remains plagiarism) then it must be removed. Either way, plagiarism can't remain, because it's against our standards. I'm quite disappointed by the apparently widespread attitude that anything we probably won't get sued over is fine. Surely our standards are higher than that. --Amble (talk) 18:14, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And if you do in fact understand "substantial similarity" to some degree or another, why have you been insisting that only literal copying of every word is an infringement? Have you actually looked at any of the examples I gave, in the context you were responding to, where the copying was blatant? --Amble (talk) 16:29, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In the context i was responding to, i said the words should be re-arranged and replaced with synonyms. "Substantial" is a weasel word, put into the law to allow Judges to make their own decisions. If none of the original words remain, then it is not substantial. The copy-pasted text should of course be changed Yobmod (talk) 16:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Nonsense. Copyright infringement suits have been won against paraphrases that use none of the original words. --Amble (talk) 17:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
An unfortunate effect of a group less active than in the past is that our articles lose integrity. This one is at Good Article Review for that reason. The talk page is quite active as a result. You have the opportunity to help. This is the corest of our core articles, and it needs some attention because it gets a lot of controversial input from many sides. If you can spare any time to edit the article, please do what you can.
Soon after we were informed that Homosexuality is being scrutinized, we heard the same for one of our few Featured Articles. As a participant of the Featured Article process, I think this is actually a good thing. The standards for Featured Articles are getting higher with time. But as a member of this project, that means that a few of ours may be de-listed unless someone can swoop in and save them. This one has to do with the designation of homosexuality as a crime in Germany. Most of this article's sources are in German. If anyone has any particular skill in this area, please lend a hand!
I know you folks think I have much experience in a gay bathhouse, and I hate to disappoint you, but I actually do not. I seem like the sort of person who likes to stroll about in a towel. Shocking, no? It appears that Ashleyvh is single-handedly addressing all the problems with this article at its GA Review. While that's pretty impressive, it's also no doubt exhausting. Can anyone help out there?
In what I hope will counter the jolt of re-evaluating three Good or Featured Articles, José Sarria and Janet Jackson as gay icon passed as Good Articles, and Black Cat Bar (famous San Francisco oft-raided gay bar) is nominated, all by Otto4711. Rock on, man. You're a machine. Good luck with your nominations. What is it about women that make them gay icons? And are there lesbian icons that aren't lesbians? How about bisexual icons? Am I the only lesbian who reacts with soul-trembling fear at the sight of Angelina Jolie?
New WP:LGBT studies member Pinkkeith has done this cool thing. If you click on that link, you'll see all the articles, categories, templates, and miscellany up for deletion. They're usually there because they're not considered to be not notable. That can be a relative concept, and sometimes it has to be argued that topics pertaining to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues are notable.
It seems a recurring issue which articles to tag, and what to say about a topic that's tagged. Certainly, because an article falls under our scope doesn't necessarily make the person gay. Florida Governor Charlie Crist has been rumored to be gay in some newspaper accounts. Although we all know Fred Phelps is supergay, he won't admit it so instead he does the absolutely awfulest anti-gay things on the planet to deflect suspicion. NAMBLA, the red headed stepchild of the LGBT world, is tagged with an explanation we have yet to decide if we'll keep.
In the lurking I do around and about on Wiki, I've long been astounded at the forbearance Benjiboi has for the utterly insane. Perhaps not so much, since the message on Benji's talk page notes frequent absences due to homophobia and transphobia. But it takes some kind of ... something that I don't have to face the constant anti-gay POV Benji does.
Benjiboi is a a bit of a WikiFaerie, a WikiGnome and also a member of the Article Rescue Squadron in addition to being a LGBT project member. A few of Benjiboi's favorite links for making the wikiverse more fab are:
Becksguy didn’t start actively editing until May 2007. His most frequent tasks on Wiki include reverting vandalism to LGBT articles and creating new project-related articles. He comes from New York state, and to prove not all of us are teenagers (ha! I am so totally 15!) he's in his 60s and retired.
Becksguy considers his biggest triumph on Wikipedia so far was a DYK in December 2007 for the first-ever newspaper report on what became AIDS, in the New York Native. He's also helped save several project-related articles from deletion. His lowest moment here was getting involved in the discussion on a particular terrorism related article, thinking he could help calm the roiled waters on an extremely contentious subject with multiple edit wars and passionate editors.
Here at WP:LGBT, he creates and improves articles that present notable LGBT related subjects in a fair and balanced way, and tries to include more of the significant alternative sexuality related subjects without being an activist, and works to better source project-related articles.
On Wikipedia as a whole, he says, "I think we need to learn better what processes work for a massive collaborative project. Some of what worked well for a more informal small project doesn’t scale up well. Process is not as important when the participants know each other. We need to get more of the current members to be more active. If more members were energized, the project would be able to accomplish more. We should be, in effect, the smaller and included Wikipedia for LGBT related subjects. Overall, I wish we could focus more on content creation and improvement, and less on vandal fighting."
"A Supreme Court decision in 1958 reversed a 1956 ruling by a federal district court that U.S. postal authorities were correct in prohibiting the mailing of the Mattachine Society's ONE magazine. The lower court had ruled that ONE was not protected by the First Amendment because the magazine's contents 'may be vulgar, offensive, and indecent even though not regarded as such by a particular group ... because their own social or moral standards are far below those of the general community ... Social standards are fixed by and for the great majority and not by and for a hardened or weakened minority.'" - Michael Bronski in Pulp Friction, 2003
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