User talk:JohnThorne: Difference between revisions

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The Wikipedia tutorial is a good place to start learning about Wikipedia. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and discussion pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~ (the software will replace them with your signature and the date). Again, welcome! Dougweller (talk) 18:11, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

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Isaiah 45

Hi and thanks for your work! Note, the analysis of Verse 1 in this article came from a copyrighted web site, http://biblehub.com/commentaries/isaiah/45-1.htm so had to be removed. If I'm wrong, and that site actually took that content from somewhere else that was freely published, please let me know so it can be restored and proper attribution given. Thanks! Crow^Caw 23:29, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Crow: The analysis of Verse 1 is taken from several individual sources. The online texts can be viewed at Studylight.org and Sacred-Texts.com. Regarding these resources, it is stated in the main webpage of the latter:

This page indexes fifteen Biblical commentaries, all believed to be in the public domain in the US due to publication prior to 1923. All of the Bible references in these files are linked into the King James Version of the Bible at this site.

Therefore I believe that the citations doesn't infringe any copyrights. JohnThorne (talk) 23:50, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks for the reply. One thing we would need to confirm is the actual sources for the various commentaries. Using them as sources is perfectly fine, but if that content is added verbatim, each source needs to be attributed, even if Public Domain, so as to stay on the good side of our Plagiarism policy. I'll restore that content, but if you can identify the actual sources, that would be great. Thanks again! Crow^Caw 23:56, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
• (more) The detail for Ref 8 is exactly what would be needed for the others, if that level of detail can be gotten. Crow^Caw 00:02, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

@Crow: Very appreciate your review and advice. I'm trying to carefully attribute each statement to the original sources, including citation within citation, such as works of Xenophon, Herodotus, etc. by more modern authors. Will add more details to the references. Thanks again for checking. JohnThorne (talk) 00:04, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks again for the diligence, and again for your contributions! Crow^Caw 00:06, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Jewish Bible translations

Hi, John. Here is another website you might want to include in the external links section. One advantage of this site over the mechon-mamre site is the ability to view Rashi's commentary. Regards, -- -- -- 02:26, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

@--: Thank you for the suggestion. JohnThorne (talk) 17:39, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Bible chapter articles

Hi, I have been reviewing some articles you are writing on chapters from the Bible. Much of what you are putting in is very generic, applying to the whole Old Testament etc. It would be good to put some unique information about the content of the chapter in the lead section. This will make the articles more attractive to read, rather than telling people what they already know first up. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:22, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Nuzi texts

I've rewritten this. As it was, it presented only the Creationist view and was a violation of WP:NPOV. I've tried to use a neutral source which mentions the view that there are biblical parallels and the more mainstream view that "The appearance of Late Bronze Age parallels to certain marriage, inheritance, and family religious customs ill Genesis cannot be used as evidence that such stories preserve ancient traditions of the second millennium, since most of these customs continued into the first millennium bce when the Genesis narratives were written down. So the Nuzi texts have a limited, largely illustrative function." Remember, we are a mainstream encyclopedia. On the other hand, if you want to edit from this perspective, Conservapedia is Creationist and probably won't represent any other views. Doug Weller talk 10:33, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia and copyright

Hello JohnThorne, and welcome to Wikipedia. All or some of your addition(s) to Nuzi texts have been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.

• 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. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
• Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
• If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. However, there are steps that must be taken to verify that license before you do. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
• In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
• 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 can, but please follow the steps in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

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, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Doug Weller talk 12:52, 1 March 2017 (UTC)