zotmeister | Puzzle Zero: Masyu

Why does this sort of retarded crap always seem to happen to me? This puzzle may look familiar to you: It's the only pure Masyu I've ever published (as opposed to whatever The One Ring happens to count as), and it's one of only four puzzles I've ever published (and likely ever will) under the GNU Free Documentation License. I created it in order to have a meaningful sample puzzle for the Wikipedia article on Masyu, and it has served that purpose for five years now. It's there now, again, but check its history, and you'll see that in July, it and its solution were replaced. Now, I know what you're saying: those look like the same images to me, right? Well, they're the same puzzle, but the images are very much different. They are in a different format for starters - SVG instead of PNG - but that's not the real issue. Look at the attribution. It claims it was created by one "Life of Riley". And that it's es own work. And that it's in the public domain. Just so there's no ambiguity here: I composed that puzzle, and I did not surrender it to the public domain. It remains licensed by the GFDL. This is a copyright violation, and the proof lies on Wikipedia itself: my original is still there. I posted a polite (...) message on that user's talk page, the most forceful word I used being 'insist'. Given this same user made SVG versions of my Heyawake puzzle and solution but DID attribute and license those properly, I'm hoping this was just a stupid oversight and will be remedied in short order, but I'm not about to take any chances that may result in the sacrifice of my rights. If I lose one puzzle, who's to say about the rest... For someone more knowledgeable of Wikipedia policy than I am: I looked through the various copyright-violation-tagging methods available, but none seemed to be properly phrased for this situation. Could someone tell me how I should be marking Life of Riley's versions of my Masyu images to correctly demarcate them as license violations that need to be repaired or deleted (or, if you're an editor yourself, mark them for me)? It would mean a great deal to me. Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I'd be perfectly happy if all copies of this puzzle - legit or otherwise - disappeared from all Wikimedia properties. It doesn't need to be there. I certainly don't mind it being there - after all, I put it there in the first place - and I don't mind it being spread around and used for other purposes, just as its license reads. The problem is that it's my work, it means a lot to me on a personal and professional level, and this is essentially theft. If it's going to be exposed, then my name should be on it, for better or worse. I'm not happy I had to sign in to my Wikipedia account for the first time in four years in order to deal with this. I very much wanted to be DONE with Wikipedia. But if I don't defend this... - ZM UPDATE: The user has recognized es mistakes; e claims it was unintentional, and I have no reason to believe otherwise. However, e also claimed to have fixed them. E hasn't. A license tag was added to only one of the two images, and neither has yet to be properly attributed (note that this also means one of the files in question hasn't been changed at all). I pointed this out to em and reiterated my request. At least I know e's working with me on this. - ZM 2010-09-14 09:35 EDT P.S.: For those who just want to solve the puzzle but don't know the rules: it's a The One Ring where the white circles are angel dots, the black circles devil dots, and the rest of the grid cells plain dots. Or you can view the instructions on Nikoli.com.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I wish I had some insight or knowledge to help but if some jackass did that to me I'd want to get to the bottom of it too. Have you ever 'published' the puzzle anywhere else for corroboration purposes?

Not back when I first created it, no (obviously it's on my journal now), but as the original never left Wikipedia (and Wikipedia keeps great timestamp records), corroboration thankfully isn't an issue. In fact, the user replied admitting the error (although it isn't fixed yet); I've updated the entry with details. - ZM

I'm an admin on Wikipedia. Tell me what you want changed where, and I'll make the changes.

Mike

I thank you deeply for your offer. Right now, the current state of it is really weird, making me wonder if it was ever really fixed in the first place (as Life of Riley claimed to have done), so your help is especially desirable. At this moment, the images as linked to by the English Wikipedia's Masyu article show the proper license and attribution when clicked on. However, the images were duplicated for the German article on the puzzle, and the unsolved-puzzle image there when clicked on shows "public domain" as its license. (The solved version seems correct.) This is where it gets weird - if I click "Erstellen" on that file, I see code for a description that should be correct, implying the description was already fixed but that the article is linked to an older version of the file. I can't seem to find that older version anywhere apart from clicking the image in the article. Going to edit the article itself doesn't reveal anything to me in the code that would make it seem "frozen in time", so I have no idea how this is happening. My best guess is that the files' descriptions were simply changed to what they should be, in a manner that lets the old versions still be referenced (as is happening now on the German article). That should not be even possible, and what I want is for that to not be possible, on any language's Wikipedia. I have no idea what that would entail.

If you can't figure it out either, then what I would ask for is to have all four files ~~nuked from orbit~~ deleted entirely so that no further distribution of them with the wrong licensing is possible.

I don't know how much you can do given this affects a foreign-language Wikipedia, but whatever you can, or at least any insight you could provide as to how this is even occurring in the first place, would be greatly appreciated.
- ZM

Wow, I can't even delete this, and I thought I could delete anything. I will see if I can get it taken care of, somehow.

Mike

Thank you very much for whatever you can do (and already have done). - ZM

All fixed on the English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and the German Wikipedia, as far as I can tell. Note that I can't alter old versions, so there will remain an outdated version where Life of Riley claims authorship. But it will be buried fairly deep. Hope that helps.

Mike

It did help, tremendously. I was still seeing the old version from the German article, but seeing what you did, I was able to figure out how and why. Apparently the German Wikipedia, on using a file from the Commons, doesn't simply link to the current version of the file like the English Wikipedia does - instead, it generates a time stamp, and displays the image as it was when the article was last edited, even if the image changes in the interim. (This can be seen by visiting the German Masyu article, clicking either image, then looking at the URL.) I can see the advantages of that, but the disadvantage is painfully clear. What I just did was "edit" the German article, changing a whole lot of nothing, and that fixed it by changing that time stamp.

I was stuck on the misconception that there were four files here - two English and two German - but that's not the case: the German article was referencing the same files the English article was ("File" and "Datei" must get translated automatically), just older versions of them. The counterintuitive step of a degenerate edit (no actual change) was the last piece of the puzzle.

I can't state enough how much your effort meant to me here. Thank you. - ZM

Happy to help. Wikipedia is all about the transclusion, so it often helps to follow the links back to the original file and edit at the roots. Let me know if anything like this happens again.

As it turns out, I do have a question for you. Just my luck: my original PNG versions of these files were just nominated for deletion, citing deprecation. I'm still using the files on my user page, and more importantly, I thought the originals needed to stick around to maintain the attribution path for the license. Am I wrong, and if not, how (and where) do I proceed from here to keep everything intact? - ZM

I don't think you're wrong, though I also don't think it's necessary that the originals remain on the site to protect your copyrights. I have commented on the deletion page with "Keep" votes, nonetheless.

I'm sure the deletion notice got put up because I fixed the attribution.

That actually makes sense, sadly enough. Once again, thank you very much. - ZM

Puzzle Zero: Masyu

I'd be pissed too

Re: I'd be pissed too

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