User talk:LaraLove

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[edit] Adoption

Hello Laralove. My name is Zazzer and i am willing to adopt you, if you so wish. Contact me with a yes or no! -- Cheers! :) Zazzer 01:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Per your request

I have adopted you! ... but are you sure you need it? You seem to be okay, but if you do haev any questions, concerns or problems, please do let me know. Happy editing! Neil (not Proto ►) 22:47, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Neil! I have formatting down (for the most part... lots of looking at other pages for help... you'd probably be surprised to know how long it takes me to do some edits), but I have a few questions about bringing info in. For example, I'm wanting to vastly expand the articles for Goodfellow Air Force Base and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and I want to create a page for Forsyth Medical Center. There's tons of great information on each of their websites, but I'm not sure what's the right way to pull it. I see the notice about Copyrights and I have these flashbacks to elementary school and the plagiarism warnings! I know to cite my sources, but is that enough? Do I have to reword everything or can I just pull paragraphs and bullet lists as long as I give credit to the site? I know I can't just copy a page as it, but how much alteration is necessary? So that's what I most want help with... How to pull information and the best way to organize it. Lara Taylor 05:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, yes. And I have issues with images. Not only do they never show up when I try to add them to an article, but I'm not sure what images are okay to use considering Copyrights. Lara Taylor 19:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay. An organisation's own website is suitable for facts. Things like number of employees, date it was founded and by who, the basic history of the place, what it actually does, and so on. For further information, independent sources are best (see Wikipedia:Attribution for the policy in full, and the section WP:ATT#Using_questionable_or_self-published_sources in particular) ... it boils down to any facts that are even remotely questionable should be referenced from somwhere other than the organisation's own website. If you are using information from their site in the text, of course it has to be referenced, but it shouldn't be just cut and pasted. The policy (written by cleverer people than me!) says "In order to avoid copyright violation .. articles must consist mostly of original prose. However, the ideas, facts, and arguments must have been published already by a reliable source. So you need to write it in your own words, but you can use quotes (like "John Smith said that " ..... ").

Now, for images, the rules are getting very strict. Basically, images need to be free. This means they cannot be copyrighted by someone else. Certain images, such as those taken more than 100 years ago, or those taken by NASA or the US Government, are free for us to use. It's laid down in fairly easy to read terms at Wikipedia:Image use policy. There is a full list of what tag to put on an image at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags/All - for example, if you want to use an image you didn;t take yourself for Goodfellow Air Force Base, you will want to look at Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags/All#USA_federal_government_images. It is always best to use images that you have taken yourself however, as these are always free (providing you are happy to freely release them to Wikipedia!). Neil (not Proto ►) 22:15, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Well, a little clarification (I'm blonde) just to be sure. Is "original prose" achieved by rewording what's already out there? If so, I'm gold on editing these pages. Also, I read up on public domain and was wondering if "Works of the United States Government ... are excluded from copyright law and may therefore be considered to be in the public domain." means that information on a government site, like that of Goodfellow Air Force Base, would be considered public domain? I'm guessing no, but figured I might as well ask. Lara Taylor 04:00, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, reword (but always reference!) Information on the site on Goodfellow may be public domain, but it is best to reword (we want brilliant prose!) and again, reference reference reference.

I've also had a look at the Emerson Radio article as you asked ... looks very good indeed, well done! I tidied up the products paragraph for you, but only fiddly cosmetic stuff. Neil (not Proto ►) 09:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Business and Economics

Welcome! We need all the help we can get. Very glad you added your name to the list!!

I noticed from your user page you have a background in HR - is this the psych side or the financial side? As I've been going through articles needing assessment I'm beginning to see a number of articles on psych topics that have been tagged as B&E, but have little or no content explaining why they are related - any interest in helping out? I've started a running list of such articles here.

Egfrank 15:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I guess that is the psych end. Thanks so much for taking an interest. The tagging didn't surprise me. What concerns me is that the article says nothing about attribution theory in business proper. I seem to recall a fairly rich literature using attribution theory to explain things like employee evaluations, who gets credit on a team,corporate learning, how organizations learn from experience, how they percieve their relationship to the market, how they percieve successes and failures, perceptions of senior management responsibility, etc ... Egfrank 16:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)