DigiTaL-KRASH!!!

Sawasdee kap Digital-Krash,
First off all welcome to the Thai wikipedia. Unfortunately I cannot read Thai as I am a Farang. I do speak a bit of Thai though. Wikipedia is a project to create an online free encyclopedia in every language about every subject. I do not know if the "guidelines" have been translated in Thai yet, so I will give you a rough outline.

• Everybody can contribute to wikipedia by simply clicking the edit this page (แก้ไขหน้านี้) button. When you see a red link that means that no article has been written about the subject yet and you can start creating one.
• You cannot copy work from other webpages without permission (you can copy work from other wikipedias though). Facts are free of copyright so you can take all the facts and write your own story.
• You cannot copy pictures from other websites. The pictures must be free of copyright or you must have permission of the owner to use it in a unrestricted way.

These are about the only hard rules on wikipedia. Everybody is free to edit every article! Because over time more people will join the Thai version you will see more people starting to edit. Every page also has a talk page where you can discuss things forthermore we have some kind of gathering place, see here: พูดคุย:หน้าหลัก.
Offcourse people will help you in the beginning. Good luck Waerth 03:52, 6 ก.ย. 2004 (UTC)

Greetings from the other Farang here :-) I just want to stress the point that we are building an encyclopedia here, so articles on science and technology are of course very welcome. Science Fiction also has its place, but there is the thin line between an encylopedia and a fanzine (which wikipedia should not become). Biographies of SF authors, article on their major works or the sub-genres of SF are of course fully OK, however creating your own SF stories here is definitely out. As the thai wikipedia is still in its infancy there is still a lot of work to be done - there are already a few very short articles on some SF authors waiting to be enlarged. Sadly the only things I can do here so far are fixes in the wiki syntax (like a missing ]), and adding the interwiki links to other languages - I don't speak Thai yet. Ahoerstemeier 07:59, 6 ก.ย. 2004 (UTC)

็Hello Waerth and Ahoerstemeier,

Thank you for the useful details, I really feel your warm welcome and I am eager to write.

About the comment from Ahoerstemeier, that's exactly what I did in that Thai webboard, making articles about SF authors (at present I focus on Terry Pratchett, the author of Discworld series), and also in-depth discussion about the real finding in science and technology compared to the inventions or technologies used in the plot. Naturally, it turned out to be too documentary-like for some of those SF fans who only wanted to chat about films, not talking about "in-depth" thing, and I understand their feeling. So I think the best way is to make the real documentary writings and beginning to do my own website, until I found yours.I understand the context of this web and not intend to publish SF stories here (you can be sure), but I saw some photos of Thai Science Fiction book covers in here (done by some others) and would like to ask if bookcovers are counted as copyright objects, because, if it is not copyright I may scan somemore bookcovers and out those titles in. More data is available to me here (I'm living in the UK at the moment and will continue to live here for 1-2 years) and I think I can use this opportunity to utilize these data available here to do the work. DigiTaL-KARSH!!! 13:04, 6 ก.ย. 2004 (UTC)

Hi there, welcome to the club ;) --bact' 13:21, 6 ก.ย. 2004 (UTC)

That is funny are there any Thais on here whom actually live in Thailand? Or am I as a farang the only one whom actually lives in Thailand????? About the copyright issues I do not know about the Thai law. The Dutch law states that for a publication like wikipedia it is allowed if the covers are meant the support the article and are not the purpose of the article. Also it needs to be done in a small size and low resolution so it is difficult for somebody to print it out and use it. That is the Dutch law..... as for the Thai law ???????? Waerth 15:02, 6 ก.ย. 2004 (UTC)

Really? That's funny to think about.. ;) I guess Thais who live or study abroad tends to have more access to useful literature resources, that why.
I think I can remember Khun(Mr.) bact' name from somewhere (pantip.com board or vichagarn.com board), but I never know that most of Thais here are abroad. If thumbnail photos are ok, it would greatly help coz. readers would know which book we're talking about. Also, I can add a content in food science/food technology/food engineering/astrophysics , that's the thing I am likely to have some (quite basic) knowledges about. DigiTaL-KRASH!!! 21:10, 6 ก.ย. 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Khun DigiTaL-KRASH!!! Welcome to Thai Wikipedia. I am a Thailander living in Thailand anyway :) --Phisite 01:58, 7 ก.ย. 2004 (UTC)

Hi. Of course a biography of a famous SF artist is relevant enough for Wikipedia - even though the english WP does not have an article of him. But you don't need to ask for permission, just be bold and create the article. If others think it does not fit here it can be deleted later anyway, or reworked to make it fit. Same goes with other editing - just try, and if it fails to give the right results there's always a way to get back to the last good version as all old revisions are saved. There's also the "preview" button, as well as the sandbox which are very useful while learning how to edit.

The only thing I am not so much happy with are the en:fair use images - it's a speciality of the US copyright laws and thus does not need to apply in other countries. One picture illustrating the topic should be OK, labeling it clearly on the image description page as being copyrighted of course, but if you put thumbnails of all his works it might become a real copyright violation - but IANAL, I just try to be careful with copyright, but without being overly paranoid about it. But on the other hand - most Thai don't take copyright seriously anyway... Ahoerstemeier 08:36, 10 ก.ย. 2004 (UTC)

Hey Digital Krash, since we are both in BKK we can meet in an internetcafe somewhere so I can show you some things a bit if you like!? Waerth 10:43, 10 ก.ย. 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I'll try then. Thanks Ahoerstemeier. Waerth, I am in england at the moment, but I'll come back to Thailand after 2 years. :DigiTaL-KRASH!!! 13:03, 10 ก.ย. 2004 (UTC)