Wikipedia talk:Questia

Notification of other language versions of Wikipedia and the sister projects

Once again (after Credo reference and High beam) - why such accounts were given at the en:WP and not at Meta? Or is it only a gift not for all authors but for the en:WP-authors? Marcus Cyron (talk) 02:16, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

+1 -jkb- (talk) 10:19, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

+1. When the HighBeam Research accounts were distributed, I spread the word to fr.wp, he.wp, ar.wp, es.wp, and ru.wp. I have notified the German community, resulting in some applications following suit. It is possible to deliver a standard message by bot to the general discussion pages in all wikis by meta:Global message delivery. Could you please use this in order to reach every Wikimedia community as soon as possible so that every user has a fair chance to apply? After all, we are not one community, most users do not regularly follow events in English Wikipedia. – Thanks.--Aschmidt (talk) 12:04, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems to be possible. The last night a bot made the announcements. -jkb- (talk) 05:53, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I also +1 it, (hope you'll allow me to slightly change your comment)– "why such accounts were given at the en:WP and not also at Meta" Best Tito Dutta ✉ 17:51, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

@-jkb-: Which projects were the announcements posted to? I am sysop on German Wikiversity, and we did not receive a post, neither did we get one on German Wikinews, nor on German Wikipedia proper. Perhaps still to come. Thanks, anyway, for getting the bots running in the first place!--Aschmidt (talk) 22:08, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I've just been pointed to de:WP:FZW which is the equivalent to the English village pump... I've added de:WP:Kurier to this list on Meta-Wiki as well as other German projects announcement pages. – Again, thanks for notifying the other language projects!--Aschmidt (talk) 00:31, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

You seem to feel that global promotion has improved the justice of the equation. And I really don't want to turn a win-win situation (free resources for all editors) into a proxy for a much larger systemic bias debate, but I do want to respond to some of the points you raised. So I'm going to share my thoughts, but I really do want to stay focused on what we're accomplishing not just where we're managing it from.

First some background. There are currently 4 research partnerships: Credo, HighBeam, Questia, and JSTOR. In the case of HighBeam and Questia, I contacted those organizations myself, in my capacity as a volunteer, and arranged donations with no involvement from the Foundation except for an email saying they were fine with it. In the case of Credo, they actually contacted the Foundation; in the case of JSTOR, English Wikipedia volunteer requests directed towards the Foundation led the WMF to contact JSTOR. So, it's a mixed bag of volunteer/Foundation-mediated/and mixed circumstances. For the record, I am not speaking for the Foundation. I will say that my brief interactions with them on these issues led me to think they wanted these partnerships to mainly be community driven.

Now, why English Wikipedia? Don't take anything I say here as anything but my own, personal, informal opinion. There are a few reasons. For one, as mentioned above, two of the four partnerships were initiated by English Wikipedia volunteers, and a 3rd was motivated by them. It's somewhat natural for a project to be hosted where it originated. Second, the sources are in English, and although there are English speakers in many places besides North America and the UK, a fair majority of English speakers in our projects contribute to English Wikipedia. Third, along those lines, English Wikipedia is just a convenient, pragmatic place to host these signups. Meta, though politically and geographically neutral, is not ideal for anyone; it's just equally inconvenient for everyone. So, if we have to pick one place to host a project, provided we promote it everywhere anyway, then the site with the greatest majority of English speakers is just a practical (though not politically ideal) place in this case.

Still you raise a very fair point, and I believe in the future Meta might turn out to be a better place to host these partnerships. I welcome your thoughts on my response. But let's try to keep this in the immediate context of 'great resources for all editors for free' rather than bogging ourselves down in far messier issues that are only tangentially related to the opportunity we have before us. Cheers! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 15:32, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Ocaasi, many thanks for your work in getting all of this rolling. It's really been groundbreaking work. I guess there will be some who are upset with how it's implemented, but that can be improved over time, as it's needed. Far more importantly, this is an exceptional opportunity for a lot of editors. Thank you, First Light (talk) 16:09, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Ocaasi, from me, too! I think this all shows that we have quite a problem communicating, and that communities in different language versions of Wikipedia mix very little indeed. However, as you can see from the impact after you had the bot announce the Questia project on many platforms there was an enourmous interest in getting access even from users who do not regularly follow what is going on in English Wikipedia. So, Meta would in future be the right place, I think. I've just given a hint to the German Wikipedia community here for your reply, and, again, keep up the good work!--Aschmidt (talk) 17:31, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Removing names from the application list

I signed up yesterday, but today I see my name (together with many others) is removed from the application list. What does that signify ? Iselilja (talk) 12:36, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I see your name still there at #211. There have been a lot of signups since yesterday in that case. First Light (talk) 15:02, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Ahhh, I see that there was an addition/typo which temporarily caused over a hundred names to be removed by mistake. This edit[1] fixed it be adding an extra { that another editor left out by mistake. First Light (talk) 15:08, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Iselilja (talk) 15:10, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Status update?

Any idea when/if round two accounts will be distributed? Thanks - and thanks for setting this possibility up. Tvoz/talk 19:15, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Come and join The Wikipedia Library

The Wikipedia Library is an open research hub, a place for organizing our amazing community of research and reference experts to collaborate and help improve the encyclopedia.

We are working together towards 5 big goals:

Connect editors with their local library and freely accessible resources

Partner to provide free access to paywalled publications, databases, universities, and libraries

Build relationships among our community of editors, libraries, and librarians

Facilitate research for Wikipedians, helping editors to find and use sources

Promote broader open access in publishing and research

Sign up to receive announcements and news about resource donations and partnerships: Sign up
Come and create your profile, and see how we can leverage your talent, expertise, and dedication: Join in

Introduce yourself  :-)

-Hope to see you there, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:59, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Notification of expiration

My Questia account expired, but I wasn't given any notification and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. Do I get in the back of the queue? I had a research project saved, and because I had no notice, I can't even access it to see what the books were so I can get them elsewhere. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:36, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

• If you previously had access to Questia and the account has expired, you can reapply. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:01, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library seeks renewal (please comment)

The Wikipedia Library has grown from a collection of donations to paywalled sources into a broad open research portal for our community. New partnerships have been formed, new pilot programs started, new connections made with our library experts and likeminded institutions. We have tried to bring people together in a new sense of purpose and community about the importance of facilitating research in an open and collaborative way. Here's what we've done so far:

• Increased access to sources: 1500 editors signed up for 3700 free accounts, individually worth over $500,000, with usage increases of those references between 400-600%
• Deep networking: Built relationships with Credo, HighBeam, Questia, JSTOR, Cochrane, LexisNexis, EBSCO, New York Times, and OCLC
• New pilot projects: Started the Wikipedia Visiting Scholar project to empower university-affiliated Wikipedia researchers
• Developed community: Created portal connecting 250 newsletter recipients, 30 library members, 3 volunteer coordinators, and 2 part-time contractors
• Tech scoped: Spec'd out a reference tool for linking to full-text sources and established a basis for OAuth integration
• Broad outreach: Wrote a feature article for Library Journal's The Digital Shift; presenting at the American Library Association annual meeting

We've proposed a 6 month renewal request to continue and deepen this work and would appreciate your comments, concerns, thoughts, questions, or endorsements.

Cheers, Jake Ocaasi ^{t | c} 12:34, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Need section telling approved users how to access their Questia account

We need a section clearly telling approved users how to begin to access Questia. I'm supposedly approved, but can't find a way to begin.Pete unseth (talk) 00:03, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

@Pete unseth: sorry for the late reply. We have that info under technical support: Wikipedia:Questia/Support. Please let me know if you have any other issues. Cheers, Jake Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:06, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Non-renewal

I am not sure when my account expires, but I don't want to renew it. It does not offer what I require, so it is better to make somebody else happy with the account. The Banner talk 23:46, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Can I re-apply now?

I've got a Not done, as I didn't have an e-mail account set up. And now I have. So, is it allowed for me to re-apply? --Мурад 97 (talk) 21:23, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

New reference tool

There is a new Visual Editor reference feature in development called Citoid. It is designed to "auto-fill" references using a URL or DOI. We would really appreciate you testing whether TWL partners' references work in Citoid. Sharing your results will help the developers fix bugs and improve the system. If you have a few minutes, please visit the testing page for simple instructions on how to try this new tool. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:52, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

nenewal accounts

Is there anyway to use the renewed access with with your old account (which was already provided through Wikipedia)? The main problem is that registering a new account requires a new email address (it doesn't take the old one already existing in their database), meaning for each renewal an editor has to create another (artificial) email account, which is a bit awkward.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:18, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

"Renewal" is actually new activation requiring yet another email address, unlike regular Questia renewals

Not the first person to mention this, but want to highlight how absurd this situation is.

This email address is already in use by another account. Please provide a different email address to use with this promotional membership.

Every single email address is yet another vector for:

• invasions of privacy
• spam
• viruses
• phising

Questia most certainly has a renewal process for existing paid accounts, one NOT requiring a new email address every year. Someone is simply not trying hard enough to use Questia's available tools for account renewal.

Why are Wikipedia Library donor account holders treated in such a fashion? Hint: Questia is using "promotional account" type for Wikipedia Library donor account holders. That type of account is one-time use only.

Suggestion: Questia treat Wikipedia Library donor account holders as first-class citizens. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 18:24, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

@Paulscrawl: This is interesting, I wasn't aware of this. I'm sending Questia an update today so I'll feed this back to them. I agree that it seems silly to have to keep signing up with a new email. Sam Walton (talk) 15:09, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 and ChrisGualtieri: Any updates on this? I would like to just reactivate my membership rather than register for a new account. I particularly don't want to lose "project" details stored within my existing (expired) Questia account. The registration code provided in the e-mail does not work on the "reactivate" form. I can also confirm that they don't allow a new registration using the old e-mail address. Please advise. Thanks!--Cpt.a.haddock (talk) (please ping when replying) 16:47, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I never got any additional information about renewing and existing account. Last I was told was that the system they have requires new sign ups and that it could not be extended because Wikipedia was using a promotional account. Editors are not supposed to go directly to Questia about this due to the Wikipedia Library handling the matter, but I will send a message to the other Library members about this since it has not been resolved. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:48, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer, but...

I noted next to my approved application on the project page, that once I got into the registration I decided I don't need this. The information requested to register is enough for identity theft. There is no reason in the world they need to know a person's full name, home address, and other things. I don't feel comfortable at all with that kind of very personal information gathering. And I wish Wikipedia had taken that into consideration when establishing the partnership. It comes down to the question of what you are willing to sacrifice in order to have online access to (in many cases) public domain publications. So, thanks for the opportunity, but no thanks. — Maile (talk) 23:30, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Maile. We agree that you shouldn't be required to provide a full address and are discussing with Questia whether we can avoid this. In the mean time, please use the WMF address (149 New Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA, 94105) on the form if you still wish to sign up. Sam Walton (talk) 15:01, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Samwalton9 I just used the WMF address to sign up. Thank you for this. — Maile (talk) 20:18, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Problems

Hello

I'm trying to extract a few pages from a Questia book to a PDF file. However, I am getting Chinese characters at the top and bottom of my document. Also, the URLs gets cut off in the document. Is there a better way to extract pages from Questia? --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:15, 23 November 2015 (UTC)