User talk:DesmondW

Hello! Camera-wiki.org is a wiki about cameras, photography, and their history. If you're interested in contributing to it, that's great — welcome!

The next thing to do might be to read some of the Help pages, to get an idea of how to edit pages. Or, if you already know how, just jump in and edit the wiki page that prompted you to register. Maybe you'd like to write something about yourself and your cameras on your User page. Generally, text in the wiki should be in English (though you may find the odd word or phrase of other languages in some articles, where it's relevant).

We have had a problem recently with accounts being created by spammers, to put advertising into the wiki. To combat this, new accounts are blocked if they aren't used fairly soon (within a day or two after being created); and of course an account is blocked immediately if it becomes clear it was created for spamming or vandalism. So please at least write a short reply here to reassure the admins that you're not one of the spammers; otherwise, your account may be blocked.

Cheers! -- Hoarier 07:22, 5 January 2012 (PST)

Thank you for your welcome message. My knowledge is primarily Leica R cameras and, to a lesser extent, Olympus M having owned and worked with each over many years.DesmondW 08:22, 5 January 2012 (PST)

Then you are most welcome here. You're free either to tinker with existing material or to add more.

As you've probably noticed, an awful lot of stuff here is not from direct observation or any cited reliable source, but instead from an uncited reliable source, bulletin-board chitchat, vague memories of something read somewhere, etc. Let's do better than this -- please cite your sources wherever appropriate. If you don't understand how to do this, then just try your best and somebody else (perhaps me) will come to your aid. -- Hoarier 16:23, 5 January 2012 (PST)

Thank you for your message. I see that the Leicaflex article is quite comprehensive (mostly similar to the main Wiki page) but the R3, R4-R7, R8-R9, are hardly mentioned. I have just written the main Wiki R4-R7 article, merged & edited the R8-R9 article, and added to the R3 article. How can I help here?DesmondW 01:27, 6 January 2012 (PST)

Hi Desmond. First, thanks for offering your knowledge to camera-wiki.org (which has no relation to Wikipedia, aside from being based on the same software platform). Considering the historical importance of Leica as a brand, our wiki has rather uneven Leica coverage, and I welcome any additions you might offer. In this wiki, sometimes related cameras are all described in a single article. But, if there is sufficient reason to break them out into individual pages (e.g. a significant change in design or features), then creating and linking to a new page is perfectly valid. Our Flickr pool may already provide good illustrations—or, if you have your own, we'd be grateful if you would add them there. --Vox 18:06, 6 January 2012 (PST)

I'd like to elaborate on this. Camera-Wiki.org (CW) does indeed share the software ("Wikimedia" "MediaWiki") that underlies Wikipedia (WP). But the resemblances don't end there. There are several, and one is particularly important: In either, when you contribute text, you both (i) release it according to a copyleft license and (ii) declare that either (a) it really is yours to release in this way or (b) it is not yours but is licensed properly for such a re-release. The "(b)" part of (ii) is a bit complicated, but it's only very rarely applicable here in CW (and unusual in WP too), so we can skip it and say much more simply "You are declaring that you wrote the material yourself".

Again, your additions of your own material -- either from cited sources or (a big difference from WP) from direct observation -- would be welcome here at CW. Hoarier 21:05, 6 January 2012 (PST) ... amended 22:43, 7 January 2012 (PST)

Ah -- I look more closely and see that in WP you (legitimately) copied material from a separate WP article that had itself been (illegitimately) copied to some spammer's blog, and that Coren's bot drew the wrong inferences. False alarm. Whew, that's a relief. Happy editing! -- Hoarier 21:24, 6 January 2012 (PST)

Thank you for all your comments, as you know I am an absolute beginner here and no expert on Wikipedia. I am still not clear: do you accept copies of Wikipedia articles or must they be original? I enjoy writing for one site but not keen about re-writing for another.DesmondW 06:12, 7 January 2012 (PST)

Unfortunately no, one can't copy WP material and paste it here. Or vice versa. (This was possible in the past, given certain conditions that I won't go into now, and this is the reason why you'll sometimes see signs that it has happened; but it is possible no longer.) Text at WP is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; by contrast, text here is released under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3. The two licenses are different. ¶ Now, if you contributed a paragraph or three to WP, then you are the copyright holder. You posted it to WP thereby releasing it via CC; you as copyright holder are also free to post it to CW thereby releasing it by GFDL. (And of course the reverse is possible: if you post something here, you can post something it there.) NB the two encyclopedias also have other, copyright-irrelevant differences, notably that although you can write something here that derives from your own careful observation you cannot do so at WP. -- Hoarier 08:25, 7 January 2012 (PST) .... amended 16:49, 7 January 2012 (PST)

Understood. The Leica R4-R7 article on WP is all my own work and I suggest that it be used here to replace the several bitty articles, but including the excellent photograph in the R4 article. Redirects for R4, R4s, R5, RE, R6, R7, will then be needed. Would you please do this, my experience is limited? I will then gladly add other observations from my own experience as an R4 owner DesmondW 08:41, 7 January 2012 (PST)

I'm sorry if I seem to be introducing additional complexity (or just wasting your time), but I'd much rather not do the first (easy!) part of that. Please introduce the material here yourself, no matter how messily. (This way, anyone who checks the page histories will be able to see that you did it.) Once you've done that, I'll happily work on clearing up the resulting problems. -- Hoarier 16:49, 7 January 2012 (PST)