Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Michael Totten

Michael Totten
The article was proposed for deletion with the reason:
 * Article should be recreated from scratch because it is created from start with disrespect of the WQ:LOQ : Several sections are over 250/275 words length, but even worse several sections seem to contain almost the full text of the source, which as far as I know, is not allowed according to fair use policy. The total disrespect towards the continuing existence of this kind of quotes, the lack of any response or any action is unacceptable. -- Mdd (talk) 19:12, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Now the prod-nomination was removed this morning 03:48, January 25, 2017 by Illegitimate Barrister with the comment i will try to trim some sections. Next in two hours more than 50 edits are made, while the article length stayed the same.

This kind of (feint??) action can not solve the problem here, that this article is build on copyright violations. This started the first day, 11 december 2015, with the 6th (of the 395) edit where a 1100 word blog post was completely copy/pasted here, see. Later at least 5 or more of sections seem to contain more than 50% of the blog-posts. This kind of article history is unacceptable, and there is one simple solution: Recreate from scratch respecting WQ:LOQ. — Mdd (talk) 14:37, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Vote closes: 15:00, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep: I'm currently in the process of trimming the article down. If you're worried about past revisions containing copyrighted material, as an admin/sysop you can make them inaccessible. That's what happened with this page. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs) 02:45, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Let me start by explaining the problem. Limits on quotations gives the following clues when citing from blogs like in this lemma:
 * Length of quotes Inappropriately lengthy quotes will be trimmed or discarded, with a maximum of 250 words per quote...
 * Spoken-word (speeches, standup comedy, interviews, etc.) Five quotes maximum for any work not in the public domain.
 * Books A recommended maximum of five lines of prose or eight lines of poetry for every ten pages of a book not in the public domain. This is equal to about 1.25% of the total content of a book.
 * Also there are more general guidelines in What Wikiquote is not such as Wikiquote is not a textbook, Wikiquote is not a place for public domain documents, Wikiquote is not a personal website, Wikiquote is not a collection of your personal quotes. And there are Fair use guidelines, such as the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. The main problem here is, that the lemma from scratch is not in line with the specific WQ:LOQ guidelines, several of the general guidelines, and the fair use guideline.
 * There is a simple two-step solution here:
 * Adopt and apply a fair interpretation of WQ:LOQ guidelines. For example with a 1100 words blog-post: don't quote more then 250 words in maximum five quotes. Then about 20% of the text is quoted.
 * Solve the problems in the lemma (where you are practically the sole contributor) in four steps: Move the article to the sub-userspace User:Illegitimate Barrister/Michael Totten; delete the redirect; trim the larger sections from blogspost under 250 words; and copy-paste it back to the Michael Totten lemma.
 * Now in the example you gave of Nguyen Khanh first 43 good edits were made, and the next 34 edits contained copyright violations. In this case (with 5 good edits and 390 contained copyright violations, and you practically being the sole contributor), recreations is fair solution. -- Mdd (talk) 12:12, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I've managed to reduce the size of the article by almost 10,000 bytes thus far. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs) 08:45, 29 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Just as in the Nguyen Khanh lemma (where Illegitimate Barrister referred to in his first comment) I labeled the lemma as, because at least 7 sections (with 500 to over 1000 words) still contain more than 50 to 80% of the original blog-posts of (1000 to 2000 words). On the Nguyen Khanh lemma, see Talk:Nguyen Khanh, a really-trimmed version was proposed, and I hope this is possible here as well. -- Mdd (talk) 12:42, 1 February 2017 (UTC)


 * @Mdd: Illegitimate Barrister's only concern seems to be his own edit count. I think the solution may be to impose a limit and only allow him to add quotes that are actually quoted in secondary sources, not stuff he reads in blogs and then imports wholesale to Wikiquote. ~ DanielTom (talk) 12:50, 1 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep only if the page can be brought into copyright compliance. Totten seems like a notable and interesting person.  But the page was a mess--very off-putting.  I'd say remove anything from blog posts, and limit it to published pieces.   But short pieces should have just a short quote.  You provide the link so interested readers can go read the whole thing (don't provide that here). DougHill (talk) 23:47, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete. In cases of egregious copyright violation, the best course of action is blow it up and start over. Comparing the above mentioned proportions to our unofficial guideline of 1¼% for written works, an excess of more than an order of magnitude is clearly egregious. (The article creator does not appear to recognize the magnitude of the problem: More than 200 edits "trimming" the article over the course of a week, between the time it was first prod and the time it was blanked as a copyvio, reduced its size by a mere 10%. Mass quantities of pointless edits like these insult the intelligence of those who raise legitimate issues here.) The massive bloat in this article also displayed a complete disregard for principles of Quotability. As I wrote in endorsing the original proposal to delete, "This is not WikiReblog or a mirror site." ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:35, 2 February 2017 (UTC)