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Commons:Village pump/Archive/2008/11

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Older discussions

Media of the day

Summary: MOTD is broken, and the best way to fix one aspect of it involves making sure the monthly listings used in the POTD localisation/caption translating process also suggests localising MOTD. All other parts of POTD should stay exactly the same, and the code should default to its current behaviour unless specifically told to use the new functionality, to make it backwards compatible. It should be relatively easy to make the archives return to displaying just POTD once the month has passed.

Full explanation: Media of the day (COM:MOTD) is... frankly, broken. It's on a one-year repeat of sounds and video chosen three or so years ago mainly by Raul618 or whatever the number is. Changing these without breaking MOTD is almost impossible, because MOTD does not give any way to find out what languages have captions for which day, meaning that any changes risk breaking things for all languages but English, or, at best, English and the few other languages the person checks.

What I propose we do instead is fuse the translation and selection aspect with the monthly n COM:POTD pages, setting up the code in such a way that the MOTD intrusions disappear from such pages once the month is finished. Keeping the main page caption-translation projects together is a sensible move that will assure MOTD is localised, whereas I don't think - I can't tell for sure because of the problem mentioned above - that the current MOTD ever got translated into more than three or four languages at best.

Obviously, the code changes will need to be done in such a way that they do not break the functionality of any POTD archives. I believe this is thoroughly possible, indeed, even easy

Here's how I see it working: The monthly listings, e.g. Template:Potd/2008-12, should, for each day, give the proposed POTD, and the proposed MOTD, and allow both to be selected and localised. However, once the month is passed - easily determined by comparing the year and month number to the current year and month numbers - the archive should revert to displaying only pictures, to minimise the impact. MOTD can be archived elsewhere, but the localisation needs to be central, or it won't actually happen.

This leads to the last problem: Selecting MOTD. We will need to set up a selection prcess eventually, but the current set of MOTDs was largely whatever people wanted to add three years ago, and, desite it breaking foreign-language captions, it has been free to edit for some time. Having the choices be done in the open would be an improvement on this, and would encourage the initial community building that would allow a more targeted project. Alternatively, we could set up a project to select the sounds - say, a suggestion and seconded by one other person - and springboard off this to other sound-related projects. Adam Cuerden

Proposal: Remove big Commons logo from the MonoBook skin background

The following discussion is closed, and will be archived soon.

16/15/7 for keeping current background. I see no consensus to change, and many people pointing out that this is a bike shed. I will shortly add an option to the Gadgets tab of Special:Preferences to restore the "classic Monobook" background.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 05:34, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

 
Hey, you! Attention! Look at the big red dot!

Based on discussion above, I'd like to file a formal proposal to restore the Commons background image to normal.

Specifically, I'm proposing to revert the CSS change made in mid-September by Bastique which replaced the normal MonoBook skin background image with a huge Commons logo.

A number of concerns regarding the new background have been voiced, including that

  1. it's distracting on short pages (see attached screenshot) while being almost invisible (and thus pointless) on longer pages;
  2. its use of near-white colors means its appearance can vary enormously on different monitors — on some it's washed out, on others it can be really glaring;
  3. it's twice the file size of the old image, slowing down page loads (albeit slightly); and that
  4. it simply looks ugly.

The new background was boldly added by Bastique, apparently with minimal discussion. Since I'm not an admin on Commons, and thus cannot edit the site CSS, I'm unable to implement the usual next step in the usual bold, revert, discuss cycle: therefore, I'm skipping directly to the discussion step. At this point, I am simply proposing that the change be reverted, given that prior discussion clearly shows it to be controversial, and the status quo ante restored. I am not suggesting that the old default MonoBook background is ideal, merely that it's better than what we have now. This proposal is not intended in any way to raise prejudice against future attempts to improve the background, although, given the reactions to the last change, I would suggest that any such change in the future be discussed before implementation.

Comments are welcome below. Although I've organized this proposal in the form of a poll, I'd like to remind participants that Commons is not a democracy, and that this is not a vote, but merely an attempt to gauge the overall consensus of the community. Remember that the quality of your arguments counts as much as quantity here.

Also remember that, in the end, this is a very minor issue. Anyone who hasn't read "Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is?" is well advised to do so. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 08:13, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

General discussion

Support return to default background

  1.   Support, see arguments presented above. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 08:13, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  2.   Support, I agree with Ilmari Karonen and I consider his points 1 and 4 as the most important. I support either returning to the old background or a new background which will be less coloured, which will not draw attention so much (like the current huge image) and which will be blurred. --Pabouk (talk) 12:30, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  3.   Support Image is loud and distracting. -Nard the Bard 13:38, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  4.   Support New background does not look good, and if you don't like the old background you can change it in your monobook. /Ö 14:13, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  5.   Support Let's return to the status quo ante by removing the contentious background (bad design; uglification of Commons) and then have a discussion of various alternatives. If you're a logged-in registered user, then of course you could jump through hoops to fix the background to your satisfaction - but this is the background we're shoving in the faces of casual visitors, potential contributors, interested media, not to mention descending angry hordes from wikis who've had their treasured images deleted here.... oh, and by the way, it's ugly in its intrusiveness and the varying impact on different pages is horribly disconcerting in terms of consistent branding. Something more gentle, unobtrusive, soothing and calming would be nice instead! Man vyi (talk) 16:43, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  6.   Support Normally I can hardly see it, but at glancing angles or on a different computer it is very ugly. Those who want it, can put it in their monobook. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  7.   Support Thankfully I use Classic rather than Monobook. --Carnildo (talk) 22:20, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  8.   Support Not a big deal for me, but I slightly prefer it as it was, and I think users who really like the big ass logo can just add it in their monobook, if that is what they want. -- Slaunger (talk) 22:28, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  9.   Support - Because the new background is ugly. Erik Baas (talk) 00:37, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  10.   Support Just get rid of it. OhanaUnitedTalk page 03:55, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  11.   Support Frankly, it's not very effective at summarising the commons logo, because only small, non-representative bits are ever seen. It took me ages to figure out what it was supposed to be. Adam Cuerden (talk) 05:55, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  12.   Support Large, practically white, and rarely (or surprisingly) seen; altered unilaterally and defended illogically and dictatorially. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:19, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  13.   Support Whenever I see it, I think it must be a bug of some sort until I remember that this is actually supposed to be a feature. I'd rather have no background image at all. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 18:03, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  14.   Support The actual background appears to be quite controversal. Hence we should undo this bold move and seek wide consensus before changing it again. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:24, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
  15.   Support I restored the original with CSS ages ago, but this background is unfair to anons who cannot. Sarregouset (Talk) 19:15, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Oppose return to default background

  1.   Keep - I like the "big ass logo". The file is, iirc, about 16kb, and anyone with a connection where file sizes like that are an issue will
    1. Have it cached
    2. Not be using commons as we host images which would take hours to download.
    I like it because it makes commons look different. Yes, you're right, it doesn't stand out on a lot of pages, which is why I don't see what everyone is complaining about. Yes, on small pages, you see a red dot, and then you think, ohhh, so THAT'S what it is. It makes me happy in my pants. Serra Paylin 08! -mattbuck (Talk) 12:44, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
    Oh, and as Sterkebak said, if you don't like it, change your monobook - it's not difficult, and it keeps Commons looking just that bit different so new people have an extra reminder that this is not Wikipedia. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:02, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  2.   keep this background if you don't like it. Change your monobook. Sterkebaktalk 13:56, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  3.   Keep It's not great, but it's slightly better than what we had before. I could also live with no background image at all; in an ideal world, we would have a better logo, which would lead to a better background image. The whole "change your monobook" argument isn't very convincing: it works both ways (and has been used by both sides). Pruneautalk 15:05, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  4.   Keep Gives commons his own look. [[ Forrester ]] 15:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  5.   Keep Me like, per Mattbucks's arguments to be specific. /Lokal_Profil 15:59, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  6. On the grounds that the colour of the bikeshed does not matter at all let's please keep the current background. My personal thanks to Ilmari Karonen for (finally) a productive attempt to resolve this "issue"  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 16:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  7.   Keep Life is better in colour ;) --Skyluke ★ | @it.wk 17:54, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  8.   Keep per Forrester. Yarl ✉ 21:32, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  9.   Support I like this logo. --Swift (talk) 06:18, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  10.   Keep - Rjd0060 (talk) 14:43, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  11.   Keep - MBisanz talk 14:44, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  12.   Keep per Forrester. --Kjetil_r 16:41, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  13.   Keep per above, and per this fuss is not justified and some people are just using this discussion to vent their non-specific admin-hate for whatever reason . --Dschwen (talk) 17:28, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
  14.    Support It's a good background! --Mr. Mario (talk) 15:18, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  15.   Keep --Slomox (talk) 20:51, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
  16.   Keep -- Makes it more interesting.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 01:53, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Neutral

  1.   Neutral It is downright ugly, ugly and ugly, but I hardly see it. Suggest to set the default to what the majority prefers. --Foroa (talk) 14:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  2.   Neutral, see Parkinson's Law of Triviality. Multichill (talk) 15:57, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  3.   Neutral I don't care much for the current background, but I'd rather see some alternatives then switch to the default. I like the idea of this site having it's own visual identity. J.smith (talk) 16:28, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  4.   Neutral I like J.smith arguments. So I would like to vote NO to both backgrounds. --Jarekt (talk) 17:56, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  5.   Neutral The irony of the Commons using a non-free image as mere, inconsequential decoration is not lost on me; surely, however, there are more meaningful and productive uses of our time? Эlcobbola talk 20:09, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  6.   Neutral I don't give a ____ about the background since I don't really see it (I'll let you think about what word fits the blank spaces. ;) ). Bidgee (talk) 06:20, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  7.   Neutral Merciful heavens, don't you people have anything better to do than worry about this? —Angr 21:43, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is closed, and will be archived soon.

Sopraintendenza ai Beni Culturali dell'Etruria meridionale

By OTRS Ticket#: 2008111010014047 Soprintendenza asks "who have to pay for pictures made into our museum?" (some museum located in Tuscany). According italian law ("decreto Urbani") you must pay something to local soprintendenza in order to take pictures into museums. So we must delete a lot of images which are listed in the OTRS, that's nothing to deal with. --Vituzzu (talk) 13:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I have just asked a more precise list of images to be deleted--Vituzzu (talk) 13:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
At http://www. tinyurl .com/stupiditalianlaw you can find an automatic translation of our guideline--Vituzzu (talk) 13:30, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, but is it a copyright law? Seems to me it's a violation of EU Harmonisation to put further restrictions on public domain works. In other words Commons doesn't care about their museum rules. -Nard the Bard 16:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
    • I'm with Nard here. They may have a civil case (though not a copyright case) against someone for violating museum policy if they illegally photographed in the museum, but no case against the reproduction of the image. They don't have that case if the image was not obtained by photographing illegally in the museum: for example, if they themselves originally published the photos. If the work is itself in the public domain, and if it's a 2-dimensional work then they do not have a copyright claim on the work, nor on non-creative reproductions of the work, at least not under U.S. law. - Jmabel ! talk 17:37, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Italy has signed a treaty harmonising copyrights. 70 years pma is the maximum amount of copyright allowed under this treaty (and the minimum as well, at least for works passing the threshold of originality). They can't add anything onto that. -Nard the Bard 21:02, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Either Italy claims a fee for reproduction rights, and it this does not concern copyright. Either Italy claims a copyright over the artworks on its territory, and this is just impossible. Its negates the very concept of public domain. It's contrary to both international and European law. FOP laws are a wholly different matter because it's an exception to copyright that every country has the right to allow to a greater or lesser extent. It's perfectly compatible with the Berne Convention. Finally, some of the artworks that were already deleted are actually covered by PD-Art, which by the new Commons policy we accept even if the country of origin doesn't recognize it. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 10:05, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
No, none of the ones deleted were covered by PD-art as they were not 2D. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:46, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Image:Paris Helen Villa Giulia.jpg is a mirror case, by all means analogous to a coin. Though the object is 3D indeed, we usually consider the representation is 2D. I thought there were more of them but that's the only one where I would consider PD-Art, my mistake. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 14:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
The Berne treaty can't help us. The Berne treaty sets a minimum of 50 years pma. But under Berne, countries can protect works longer : 100 years like Mexico, or why not 1000 or 10000 years ? Teofilo (talk) 15:17, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't see anywhere in the Berne Convention that copyright can be held by someone who isn't related in any way to the author. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 20:29, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
One of the weaknesses of Berne is that it never says who qualifies for the quality of "author", so that the American law, which does not give the copyright to the real author but to the author's boss in what it calls "work for hire", is not formally in contradiction with Berne : see Nicolas Bouche, « Le principe de territorialité de la propriété intellectuelle », Harmattan, 2002, ISBN 9782747531689 (p. 497, note 1902 &) p. 508 : la convention de Berne ne donne aucune définition quant à la qualité d'auteur. Teofilo (talk) 22:06, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
  • The Italian Wikipedia has this statement : La maggior parte delle opere d'arte (bidimensionali o tridimensionali) situate permanentemente in Italia il cui autore è morto da almeno 70 anni a partire dal 1 gennaio dell'anno corrente, nonostante siano per il diritto d'autore nel pubblico dominio, sono protette dalla legislazione sui beni culturali (codice Urbani). Devono quindi essere caricate solo immagini a bassa risoluzione (inferiore a 640 x 480 pixel), occorre indicare l'ente preposto alla protezione del bene e lo status del copyright relativo alla riproduzione fotografica. {{Soprintendenza|Ente|Tag copyright}} Attenzione: le immagini presenti su Commons di opere d'arte situate permanentemente in Italia non possono essere visualizzate su Wikipedia in lingua italiana. : it:Wikipedia:Copyright immagini#Opere d'arte italiane. I don't know what we can do. Non Italian citizens of the EU might petition their own governments, their European MPs, and the European Commission in Brussels asking to condemn Italy for failing to implement the European legislation on copyright harmonization ? Teofilo (talk) 15:10, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Does it apply to pictures taken before the legislation was enacted (before 2004?) Teofilo (talk) 16:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
This is not a copyright restriction, from the sounds of it. I don't see any reason (according to Commons policy) why they should be deleted. The Foundation seems to want to defend the public domain in cases like this, but obviously I don't speak for them -- which is why it is probably a better question for them (especially if there was a specific request). The Italian wikipedia obviously may have their own rules for this, which makes sense. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Here the list of images to be deleted, that's italian law and it has to be applied on all photos taken in Italy or by Italian citizens:

Speedy deletion of these image will demonstrate our good will, after that I'll try to obtain a formal authorisation--Vituzzu (talk) 17:48, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The wording of article 108 is "riproduzioni di beni culturali " (reproduction of cultural goods) , so it seems to concern all forms of publications made after the law was enacted. So the date which matters is the publication date, not the date when the photo was made. Teofilo (talk) 05:57, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
@Teofilo: I'll write this to the Soprintendenza
@Nard the Bard: Please, can you examplain me how a discussion will prevent the author of these images to be sentenced to pay 52€ (with an increasing) per image?--Vituzzu (talk) 19:25, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
@Nard the Bard: I don't think that *any judge in the World* would consider a Wikimedia Commons policy overruling a national law. I do agree with you when you say that Italy has international obligations on this matter, but as long as a judge doesn't recognise that the Urbani Code is conflicting with any international treaty or any EC rule or directive, the law still has effect. In order to prevent a cause, we are *kindly but firmly* suggesting to delete these images, wait for us to get the authorization via OTRS, then resume it with the appropriate OTRS ticket. -- Sannita - not just another it.wiki sysop 19:50, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Are these images violations of Italian law? Maybe. Are these images copyright violations? No. Don't start tagging images for speedy deletion. Multichill (talk) 20:04, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Not maybe: that's italian law and that's what autorities said. On the other hand does "copyright violation" mean "law infrangiment"? And for what reason images in UK fall in the public domain after 100 year and not 70 as in the other country? If I'll upload a picture, taken in UK, whose author died 80 years ago wont it be speedly deleted?--Vituzzu (talk) 20:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Soprintendenza <-- Here our template for these image: is not a free license at all--Vituzzu (talk) 20:32, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
The copyright is owned by the photographers. I know this is technical, but by "free" we are referring to the copyright specifically, and not any other rights such as trademark, insignia, or this cultural heritage right. See Commons:Non-copyright restrictions. The copyright has been licensed appropriately, and so they are "free" per our definition. The UK has a 70 p.m.a. copyright term, like the rest of Europe. Not sure why that was brought up... if the author died 80 years ago it is PD and we would keep them. It is upon the uploaders to determine legality... if they feel fine uploading them despite the local law, we typically keep the pictures, but the responsibility is upon the uploaders. See Commons:General disclaimer. If you think the Wikimedia Foundation may be directly liable in some way, then it would be best to get them involved. I'm personally not sure how to do that. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:01, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
These are not copyright violations. They are not candidates for deletion per policy, most especially not speedy deletion. They may be restricted by a further right given in Italian law, but that is only within the borders of Italy, and not subject to any international agreements like copyright is -- I doubt that any judge outside of Italy would rule for damages. In general, we keep images which may be illegal per specific laws of individual countries (like swastikas in Germany), as the rights of users in other countries would be unfairly restrained. If the uploaders (i.e. copyright owners) want to delete to avoid liability, that is different. Like I said, I think this is a question for the Foundation... such a perpetual right basically makes a mockery of the public domain. That said, the Foundation may well want to set some sort of policy for them. I just think it is a little above Commons to make that determination -- maybe the Foundation will want to delete them, but I also don't think it is correct to assume that the Foundation is automatically subject to Italy's laws. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:31, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Italian laws (as all laws in the World) are applied to:
  • All actions made by italian citizens
  • All actions made on italian territory
  • All actions made against italian legal subjects
These images falls under point one and two. For the same idea of "they're free for what concerns commons" we can keep copyright violation...responsabilities belongs to uploaders?--Vituzzu (talk) 21:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Just to clarify the situation: the Italian Law on cultural heritage (I hope I can find an English translation somewhere), at Art. 108, states that if you want to reproduce a work of art custodied by a public subject you need to pay for it, unless it's for personal use, to study it, or if you're a public body (State, region, etc.) with valorisation aim. This means that Wikimedia would have to pay to host them, and most reusers would have to pay to use them. Of course this is not copyright, the authors, their heirs, and the photographer will not receive any money per this law, but still these images cannot be considered free, as they're not free of charge. Does anyone want to make a class action at the European Court? I'll be happy to join, but at the moment I myself believe that the images are not free. --Cruccone (talk) 09:03, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
My colleague Senpai, who has followed a bit more the case with Firenze, points out that while the servers are located in the US, Italian users may be at risk, particularly who uploads the pictures, since they should have sought permission in advance to upload the picture, or those who bona fide download the pictures (there are no tags saying caution this may be illegal). WMF or the authors could be asked to pay a fee or a fine. Anyway, it's not clear at all how the law can be enforced outside Italy. --Cruccone (talk) 09:03, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Commons does not respect European copyright on recent photos of old 2-dimensional works of art. That is at least copyright. This Italian law goes beyond that. I think that commons should disregard it, with the exception that uploaders can request to remove their association with the upload. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 10:51, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
If you see Commons:Non-copyright restrictions#References, there is the statement Some media may be subject to restrictions other than copyright in some jurisdictions, but are still considered free work. Commons covers usage in all countries, not just Italy. The alternative is to wipe out all images depicting Italian cultural heritage from Commons (and thus, pretty much Wikipedia), depriving everyone the world over from them. Perhaps Wikimedia (and uploaders) can claim the purpose is to "study" them, which is basically true, and are thus exempt from the payments. Local re-users need to be aware of their laws, as Wikimedia can't know them all. That said, a warning template for Italian re-users would probably be a good idea, and obviously if an uploader believes themselves at risk that should be a valid reason for deletion, if requested by that uploader. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:24, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps we should see this otherwise : Delete all, and undelete only after each individual uploader has sent an E-mail saying "please undelete, I am ready to face all legal consequences". The Undeleting person should not be an ordinary admin, but an agent of the Wikimedia foundation with the full understanding of the President/director/board/legal councel of the Foundation. Teofilo (talk) 17:47, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

From a government that wants to sell all its cultural heritage to some dubious private companies, nothing else had to be expected. Commons should not demonstrate any „good will“ here, since this would be a betrayal of everything we believe in. This Italian policy is ridiculous, against all international treaties and against European law. If Italian government offices chose to actually sue Wikimedia, the Foundation should take this to the courts and stand up until international courts decide. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 14:48, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

But actually we have the problem that the uploader of some of this images is italian. He risk a personal claim by the "Soprintendenza ai beni culturali".--Senpai (talk) 14:56, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Per Teofilo.
I never said "this law is right, I agree with it" but we are not italian supreme court and our opinions as no legal value. An uploader must be free to decide if to be sentenced (and then to take this to the courts) but now we have to delete these images. --Vituzzu (talk) 18:42, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Ignore the demand quietly. This is not an issue of copyright but of "property release", even though Italy regulates this issue in its copyright law. We never accede demands over property release, no matter where, because we believe that ownership or stewardship do not give the right to restrict the use of reproductions. Only creative authorship does. The situation of Italian contributors is unfortunate but not of our concern. If your images might be problematic under your or some other law it might be recommended to upload them under an accound that can't be traced to you. But we should not delete images because of these claims. --h-stt !? 18:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The Sopraintendenza is fully entitled to ask for the deletion of all these pictures, and the Italian act (which Cruccone already quoted) is fully valid and effective. It is a national act, issued by a sovereign state, which precisely says who owns the rights on such pictures and how. It would be a political approach, indeed, to base this discussion upon personal preferences about legal systems ruling across the world, so better to keep on facts; and a fact is that the one who can decide what to do with that pictures is the Sopraintendenza. You don't need me to tell you that - given Italian legal habits - it was very very very kind of them to kindly ask us and not directly call tribunal, as they could (and perhaps had to). Now you could tell everywhere that Italy does not respect international agreements, and that would be very far from being false; I could add that Sopraintendenza does not want to hurt us and kindly asks us instead of directly suing us, and that is very far from being a frequent case. But whatever might we tell, on one side there is an act that says whose material we are talking about, and on the other side a governmental institution is (more than correctly: correctly and friendly) asking us to respect the law. We cannot ignore the demand, simply because a legal trouble would be is behind the corner in this case: we wouldn't have solved the case, we would have merely complicated it. When a state considers that a web site is out of the law, the subsequent problems do concern the users. Do I need to cite concrete cases? No, you are already very well informed about this. But I'm not concluding that we don't share a common experience in sister projects so if we get into trouble and you don't, you actually aren't wikikind just the same; I'm not concluding this, or not yet, at least.
It is astonishing, honestly, to consider that this community time ago hurried up to delete what was completely legal to have (PD-Italy), because uncomfortable with Italian law; we lost a huge amount of perfectly legal images (have you ever heard of a complaint regarding it.wiki's PD-Italy?) which cannot be shared through this Project because of this "cautious" interpretation and the deletionist rush. And now this same community, not another one, this same "cautious" community, strongly resists to wipe away asap such highly dangerous material for the same personal uncomfortable feeling of a few. Now, would you describe it as normal? --g (talk) 19:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Of course the sopraintendenza is entitled to demand deletion under Italian law, but we are not forced to comply with her demand because Wikimedia is not bound by Italian law but ultimately only by US law in the specific form of that state of Florida. Would we comply with a demand from say from Saudi Arabia over an image showing a woman without a headscarf or from Japan over an image showing pubic hair? No we would not. So there is no need to comply to the demand of the sopraintendenza. We comply with almost all copyright laws in the world (not with all - we host a King James Bible which enjoys perpetual copyright in the UK) because copyright is fundamental for the project but we ignore non-copyright laws, particularly "property release" issues. --h-stt !? 20:06, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Italian users cannot simply ignore. Reasons above. This time, please, read them.
Do they need to really get into trouble or there is way to cooperate? --g (talk) 21:03, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
under an accound that can't be traced to you.??????? This is not legal!! Can we do an illegal action if we can't be punished for it? Sounds as absurd as this law. If violations perxist Commons and the whole wikipedia could be obscured by italian authorities. If you're so sure that this is not a problem (and that you had not to respect italian law in this case) why don't you deleted these images and them you'll upload it using your account? As I have already said italian law is applied to all actions made in Italy, by italian cizitens or towards italian legal subjects (for example if I kill a german citizen in France I can be sentence according german, french and italian law, of course by only one of them.). --Vituzzu (talk) 22:32, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
If an uploader themselves wants to delete to avoid any liability problems -- that would be quite different. Nothing should force them to face unexpected legal consequences over an upload. But displaying a swastika is illegal in Germany; should we delete any such image uploaded by a German user pre-emptively just in case it might have been illegal? In this case, we have absolutely no idea if 1) the photo was taken before the law was enacted, 2) if they had permission, 3) if they have already paid the fee, 4) if they don't wish it deleted anyways, 5) if they are not an Italian resident/citizen and are thus not subject to the law, or any number of other reasons. Additionally, all of Wikimedia's sites are educational in nature, and if the note above is correct it appears as if the purpose of "studying" these objects -- which we are -- would mean Wikimedia's use is exempted, and therefore such restrictions would then only apply to third-party re-users. Deleting these images wholesale would be a gross injustice. If the Wikimedia Foundation themselves could be liable, then this discussion should be held elsewhere, as they would have to decide how to deal with it (and obviously, if they determine the images should be deleted, then we would). Adding a template noting the legal situation in Italy would probably be a good idea to warn third-party users who want to use it in Italy (and could help it-wiki police these images, if they so desired), but they are perfectly free to use in all other countries. But if it is determined that Commons cannot host these images, then you are talking about deleting every single photo which contains an Italian cultural heritage artifact, not just the small list in this request. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Law regards images depicting artworks which are kept in Italian public museums. No matter who shot the picture, when (retro-active law), where, how, or why. No difference. No exemptions for cultural or educational or informative uses. It is a gross injustice. We all sadly agree it is. In fact, all what was said about this matter wasn't said because Italians wanted to present this act as anything desirable. But we cannot meccanically react by passion, better we put a bit of wise considerations between their action and our reaction. The matter, indeed, isn't simple at all, because whatever we might do today, in reaction to the Sopraintendenza's message, can have consequences which will influence the future.
  1. Let's imagine that we do what required by the act and the Sopraintendenza, and we pay for the pictures: we would recognize with facts an act that we don't want at all to recognize. We would give the act an extraordinary victory: "Wikipedia paid, so everybody has to pay". This would be said by those who support this law. And we don't want to let a similar principle to be backed by such a passive acceptation of ours.
  2. Let's imagine, instead, that we ignore the message (or that we use "tricks" like the suggested one, of uploading in anonimity or similar): it would be considered like any other copyviol, for Italian law, so the first judge who urgently needs his name on the newspapers (abroad, we have additional serious problems with national press too), would order police to block the visibility of the site which continues violating the governmental rights. This site here on archive.org (randomly selected) has been concretely closed and "defaced" by police for copyviol reasons (and note that a site is closed by police before the last judge can say it really had or hadn't to be closed), but there is no need to deal with servers in Florida: Italian ISPs would be simply ordered to redirect Italian users looking for domain wikipedia.org to a similar page (sounds like already heard of, uh?). This for a few hundreds euros. And, again, this would give another extraordinary victory to the act: "we blocked Wikipedia, we can block anything else".
  3. Let's imagine that we delete the pictures: it would merely be a friendly response to a friendly request, because we are cautious and prudent and we are not troublemakers, this having nothing to do with the law. We wouldn't be confirming the validity of the act, we wouldn't be denying it, we would only be careful people who, while giving free contents, don't breach laws, don't infringe anyone's rights and don't need to be interested into particular national regulations.
So which is the most useful/less damaging response, the one which doesn't cause us any trouble but doesn't at the same time give material application to that foolish law? I believe it is to delete all these pictures. Better to let the act become useless, without giving it effectiveness. If we give it effectiveness today, this would be a point of no return, we would have to do it always. And no one could ever be able to say one day: "let's cancel this act, it's never been used".
When pictures are not in use, in fact, because we don't actually need to use them, there is no reason for a price: a price for something that I would never buy would make no sense. I don't pay for anything I don't need to have. And if you can't say a price, an eventual right upon something that can't even have a price, would be worth nothing, would have no value. Wouldn't be a "right". It is in the interest of the museums to have their artworks known throughout the planet, so that someone can eventually decide to physically go and personally admire them on site; it is not a cultural urgent need to use art pictures like freely hosted advertisings for a museum. The formal reason for the act should be, instead, that if you can't see the pictures you are presumed to be forced to visit the museum; and if you can't go and pay on site, you pay from remote just because of the usage of the pictures. Crazy, I believe; crazy and useless. But there is so much art in other countries that should be better known; if for a while Italy will loose its longstanding supremacy, that won't be a heavy damage.
We are facing a friendly request, by now; I would keep on friendly relationships as long as possible.
In Italy the situation of the free Internet is quite severe: our parliament is currently working upon the project of an act which would dramatically interfere with freedom of expression, and by now it can't be excluded that it will have consequences on wikiprojects too, given that there is a strong risk that an "Editor in chief" ought to be named for every and any site (no matter if the server is abroad, law regards what Italians do wherever they do it). We don't have fair use, we formally comply with EU's regulations but practically we don't, acts are under development to contract the realm of public domain and copyleft and to tighten their borders, instruments are being refined to put further limits to freedom of expression. This one about art pictures, currently is one among the lightest questions on the ground. For us. --g (talk) 12:18, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Praefcke and H-stt have said the right things. Strongkeep. We also do'nt accept the Greek claims:

nor we do the Egyptian

Let's remember Jimbo's # 5 http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/08/jimbos_problems_1.html (Free the Art).

The Italian WP is free to ban this pictures but at Commons we shouldn't accept such Pseudo-Copyright which makes large parts of the heritage of mankind (Italian is one of the most heritage rich countries) unavailable. Public Domain means: not-protected by copyright and free for all. --Historiograf (talk) 12:41, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, if you really cared about heritages and free for all material, PD-Italy (which is an immense historical documentary heritage that we widely use in it.wiki without the least trouble, even about living persons who complained for other reasons) had to be here; but it has been deleted because it seemed dangerous to keep it. This material doesn't even seem dangerous, it IS dangerous, no uncertainty it is. Maybe I'm missing something. Ah, Jimbo's statement, to be precise, also contained this strange sentence "I wouldn't encourage you to break the law", which perhaps means something else from what it says, because apparently it says not to break the law. --g (talk) 14:18, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Dangerous to your starfleet, Commander, not to this battle station. This law does not appear to represent a danger for anyone outside of Italian jurisdiction or for anonymous uploaders within Italy. I would be willing to consider deletion requests from Italian uploaders who fear that they are in danger. Haukurth (talk) 15:21, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
As I have already said it doesn't mind which is you nationality, all the national laws are applied to all actions made in a certain State, to all action made by a certain State's citizens and to all actions made towards a certain State's legal subjects (people, companies...): may you exemplain me why this doesn't mind to commons? I'll soon obscure on it.wiki this image but this wont be enough to prevent our uploaders to be "at risk". And didn't you realised that an uploader, knowning that on commons he is not protected from legal issues, will soon let commons? I'm thinking to let commons for that reason: uploaders are not protected at all against this kind of issues. --Vituzzu (talk) 12:59, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
As many people have pointed out before, it does not matter whether the Italian government applies Italian law as long as the person or organization infringing on the specific law is outside of Italy. If the Soprintendenza should decide to sue the WMF, this would go to a US court which would apply US law. It is in fact dangerous for uploaders from Italy, those can be sued under Italian law. But, as also pointed out many times on several project pages, Commons is not responsible for protecting its uploaders from liability that they might have created themselves. If you upload anything, you should inform yourself about the consequences before you upload it. If you don't, this is none of our concern, as long as it does not make Commons vulnerable to any lawsuit etc.. Regarding the issue that these images cannot be used on it-wp: It happens sometimes, that some images are OK for Commons, but not OK for other Wikimedia projects which are bound by local law. There are also many images which cannot be used on de-wp, for example. This probably applies to a lot of Wikimedia projects. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 16:15, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
as long as it does not make Commons vulnerable to any lawsuit: well... this is exactly what we are talking about, Vituzzu was asked in OTRS who is going to pay for those images and we tried to give here details about the context of the request and possible consequences of any possible answer. Given the comments we received, Vituzzu should say them: "call WMF's lawyers". WMF wouldn't pay, I guess, so the violation would cause troubles to WMF, to Commons and to it.wiki. Start thinking what happens if upload.wikimedia.org becomes unreacheable from Italy. Start thinking what happens if police doesn't know the difference and obscures it.wiki or the Commons, or both, instead. Please don't say again it would be an injustice, or a gross one. We know it is, but it would happen.
Be honest: wouldn't it be simpler to delete these images, letting Vituzzu and other colleagues call them back to see if we can get a sort of license (what they already are working on - in case they succed, it would solve the problem for many more images than those we are discussing about today)? In the meanwhile, create a fair template about these pictures and, after this, responsibility will effectively personally fall on those who are sure enough that they can re-upload them at their own risk; is Common's vulnerabilty really a priority for you, like it.wiki's one is for us? Well, actually we are not in a different situation. Any project which hosts these images is at risk, the same one, by now.
At the moment, deletion would be a sort of proof of good faith from our side, at no cost and at no risk, and would allow negotiations to proceed. If the images are not deleted, I don't believe there will be a way to ask for anything. But if our friends succed, then a project (WMF, Commons, it.wiki, one of them) will obtain what we all need, leaving users out of troubles.
If however they are deleted and an agreement can't be reached just the same, those of you who can say "they'll never get me", can always upload them again. This time in their name, this time leaving WMF, Commons and sister projects far from troubles: the uploader had been warned, he did it at his own risk, any complaint or claim will be redirected to the individual uploaders, which is how I presume you said Commons wants to work. All the cost of this would then be a few days without those images, which would be a small step to separate the responsibilities of the projects from those of the uploaders; a sort of "legal reboot" after which responsibilities will really be of the uploaders and not of the projects as now. Is it really a heavy sacrifice to stay a few days without those images and eventually upload them again? --g (talk) 18:49, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Is there a Great Firewall of Italy which makes it possible for the Italian authorities to block access to a particular website on a country-wide basis? And would they really try to take such an action over this? This all sounds very unlikely to me. Haukurth (talk) 19:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
This is a list (.rtf) of foreign sites (they were 517, a few weeks ago) that cannot be seen from Italy just because they legitimately receive bets in their countries (i.e. you probably can see William Hill, I am instead redirected here by my ISP); this only because bets in Italy are under a monopoly hold by the state, so the state is the only one subject which can receive money from bets. --g (talk) 19:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Out of curiosity - can you access it through here? Anyway, it would be interestingly crazy if the Italian authorities were to block Wikipedia over photographs of antiquities. Such a block would highlight the injustice of these laws. But really, how likely is it that they would do that? Does your ISP allow you to access the Pirate Bay? Haukurth (talk) 21:15, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I can see it via proxy (and I can see Pirate Bay again, but it was made unreacheable August 10th 2008 with a same technique - see it.wikinews and Pirate Bay itself). In the case I hope I'll never to assist to, I wonder if open proxies will be unblocked on WP to allow us to work... :-|
How likely? Let's say that I recalled the bets' case because it is a case of money, and a case in which the state says that you have to pay the state, via one of its administrative agencies, for something you legitimately want to do; hence the analogy. There the principle is that if you want to bet, you must bet with the state or you can't bet at all; here, if you want to see the images, you must pay the state for them or you can't see them at all. No penal code applies in either case, just civil code; but it has effects on the net. Let's say that it is possible, concretely possible.
About negotiations, I didn't answer before, waiting for someone of those who are involved to say something more precise. Of course the goal is to obtain a license for as much material as possible. On the other side, the museums will have to work hard, to justify such a licensing in front of the act and in front of the government. So, it's a matter of mutual efforts in quite hard conditions. Knock on wood... --g (talk) 22:09, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your informative replies. Haukurth (talk) 23:33, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not thrilled about a temporary deletion - these images are in use on multiple wikis and it's a hassle to remove all the links and then restore them all again. What terms, exactly, are you trying to negotiate? Haukurth (talk) 19:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes it is. Deletion of own reproductions of PD works is a sacrifice. What will next? Greece with a similar legislation? See http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/blog/?p=120 --134.130.68.200 19:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, is a sacrifice, but is very danger to keep them on the servers. I'm speaking about things that I know because I'm Italian. I think these images have to be deleted. Fale (talk) 21:37, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand how can someone believe that the WMF cannot be sued outside the US: this is wrong! Don't you believe me? so, what about this? That case brought ina French Court under French law. Luckily, it was dismissed, but we may not be so lucky in Italy. Please note that it was the Wikimedia Foundation to be sued, not the users. If the images are not going to be deleted the WMF should find some good avvocati... --Jaqen (talk) 22:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC) On the French case: see also Florence Devouard's announcement in Foundation-l. --Jaqen (talk) 23:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Has the legal advisor of the foundation, Mike Godwin, been asked about this? What does he say? What's the rationale of article 108 of the Codice Urbani? It seems it aims at covering the costs the Soprintendenza is facing when it allows you to make reproductions (1 b), c)) and risks to the goods (4). If that is the rationale of the article, it would be unlawful to ask fees from museum visitors taking photos with their private cameras. Or is the rationale of the article funding of the Soprintendenza?
Is Cruccone right, that reusers too would have to pay fees? If that is true, this would indeed make the images unfree. Copyright means the right to copy and if you have to pay fees for publishing copies, it's not free.
If only the creator of the image has to pay fees to the Soprintendenza that would make it free. Whether or not the creator paid his fees is only relevant to the creator and not to reusers. So they don't face restrictions. --Slomox (talk) 23:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
The true rationale is that the state needs money, so it tries to sell whatever it can sell... However, from a legal point of view it is funding the museums. In part there is something of serious in art.108, because in Italy many movies and TV fictions are shot inside historical buildings, museums, gardens, and after the shooting things remain in terrible conditions, whith heavy damages and usually not even a word in the titles of where it was made. If you read it this way, part of the article makes sense. But this article has to be enforced the same way for the single picture you take while visiting it as a normal visitor, and this is the crazy side of the act.
Images are unfree. Substancially because at the moment art. 108 says that there is a sort of "fair use", in fact reproductions are free (nothing to pay) for individuals for private use or education, or for public subjects to "give value" to the reproduced artworks. It is a sort of "NC", a no-commercial exemption. This for the "canons". But there is a "but": anyone (the ones exempted from the canon and all the other ones) has to rembourse the museum for the expenses. This is where you can say nothing of meaningful, because simply you cannot resist at any level the request of re-pay expenses and in particular you can't contest their cost. Expenses are indicated with a forfait, the museum itself says which they were, you have no reasonable way to contest a fee unless you sit down with a platoon of advisors and analyse the museum's balances and see if it's true that the fee is really a remboursement of expenses or a silly random number.
I said "at the moment" because in last March a proposal was presented to modify the act in a manner by which the non-commercial condition of the free reproduction would be more explicitely stated (here is Marco Scialdone's blog on the topic - Scialdone is a lawyer working in Italy to abolish the so-called "panorama rights", another creative legal invention which ought to prevent you from taking a picture of buildings...). So, if this amendment modifies the act, the non commercial licensing would be even more clear.
Apart from this, let's take a look at how art.108 is given concrete application: for each and any photograph you want to take in a museum, you have to ask for a permission (concession) before taking the picture. No concession, no pictures. The City Council of Cremona - the first I found - explicitely says that each concession is given for one and only one reproduction, and it is forbidden to transfer the concession to anyone else (Article 11). Also, the concession can be revoked at any time, perhaps no need of explicite reason from the concessor. Not only: any use of the images will have to be previously authorised (the use, the shoot was authorised before), each time that you use a picture, by the City Council. Not yet enough: any image you will have finally been able to reproduce, has to be accompanied by a text written by the museums' manager. Here are some official indications for Florence, Pistoia and Prato. (I'm very sorry these links are only in Italian, I hope you can babelfish something)
In Italy it works more or less like in France and here too hosting providers must remove illegal content when notified it exists: if WMF is requested to remove some materials, it has to remove them; in case it doesn't obey, WMF's responsibility will be direct. We are talking about a removal request received via OTRS.
This is why I say delete them and create a good template, so that any further violations will be at the sole responsibilities of the uploaders. It is the only way to keep Commons out of trouble --151.49.90.105 01:22, 18 November 2008 (UTC) g (talk) - not logged in

No! AndreasPraefcke, Historiograf and Jastow had written all what's to say. It's impossible, that we accept such behaviour. @ Gianfranco: we shuld'nt keep Commons out of trouble. on the contrary! We shpuld stand it. One time. The first time. We are powerfull! We should go the way and change this (in my eyes criminal and unculture) opinion in Italy. Marcus Cyron (talk) 04:31, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

You are free to fight your fight and I would appreciate it if you had success. But Commons is a repository and not a lobby group. We cannot host images if it is illegal, even if we don't like the laws. --Slomox (talk) 05:21, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I doubt you'll be able to convince people here, ask the WMF for their views on the matter. Haukurth (talk) 11:38, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Regardless of all other issues mentioned above, why is the list of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali dell'Etruria meridionale so short? We have loads of pictures of objects from Italian museum. Are all other Soprintendenze going to present us with their own list? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 08:52, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

They have a map of their territory, a list of museums, and a list of archeological sites on their website. Teofilo (talk) 10:29, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
@Marcus: your courage have to be appreciated... but is NOT a great idea go against the Italian laws because, as we have noticed before, in Italy is very easy to loose a trial and than is better not to go to a judge. In this case the law is very clear: the images of the art in the biggest part of the public Italian museum are under copyright. Fale (talk) 14:50, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
No, that is not clear at all. I have not read the Italian law, but from the discussion here it seems that there is just some kind of entrance fee surcharge for people making photos of objects in Italian museums. Something like that does not affect copyright. And I do not see how it could affect images that were made before that law came into effect. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 14:57, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
The wording of article 108 is "riproduzioni di beni culturali " (reproduction of cultural goods) , so it seems to concern all forms of publications made after the law was enacted. The date which matters is the publication date, not the date when the photo was made. Teofilo (talk) 05:57, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
No, this is not copyright. Copyright is an internationally recognized right governed by lots of treaties; copyright owners can sue in most any jurisdiction. This is an Italy-only law. When particular images are illegal or otherwise restricted in single countries, typically on Commons we keep those anyways, since we are trying to serve all countries (and conversely, when only copyright-free in one country, they are not much use on commons -- may as well have them only on that one wiki). There are lots and lots and lots of cases like this (including some cultural heritage stuff). With copyrighted images, there always exists the possibility we could have someone take and uploaded a non-copyrighted or freely-licensed alternative, so there is a chance to have a "better" image -- but that opportunity does not exist with any of these other laws (which generally do not affect our definition of "free"). These images do not violate Commons policy directly. If the WMF could actually be forced to be legally involved, then they really should be consulted (and I'm not sure that discussing here does that). I'm sure we'd all love to speak for them, but we can't. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:40, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

The problem is not with this Sovraintendenza alone

I am one among the uploaders of some of the disputed images, and I just asked for a quick delete. As correctly stated, the responsability of the uploads, here, falls upon the uploader. The fact that Wikimedia only heard from Rome and Florence merely depends from the fact that the Sovraintendenze of these two towns (not by chance, being those of two towns that make a lot of profits from selling royalties on their cultural heritage) moved faster, but the others will without any doubt follow suit, soon or late. As a rule, I stopped uploading images of museum objects whenever a "no photographs" rule is clearly stated, although I may shoot some undercover images for my personal use (study and historical research). I only upload here those images of museums where photographing is allowed (I always ask first), reserving the right to delete them all in case anyone objected, as in the current case.

In the past, I tryed to BUY a permission to photograph in museums, but it is simply impossible. They do not even know how to do, or if they know, the person who should look after it is not "at the moment" in the office. What they can do, is SELLING me the one-use only images that THEY shot, which are obviously copyrighted by them. This is the same as putting a copyright on public-domain, publicly owned artworks, which is against the Berne Convention, yet this was quite the intention of the law. And I cannot afford to test it in court, as it should be done.

The law was not intended to help Sovraintendenze to collect money, but to grant monopoly on the reproduction to a few publishers, such as Electa, which is owned by Mondadori, which is owned by famed Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi. Got it, now?

So forget about "leniency". Sovraintendenzas have been slow in moving against Wikimedia foundation for the mere fact that they are being starved by the Government, who would rather get rid of them at all, in order to sell anything the can sell, and they have too few people at work to follow the matter. Fullstop. Two days ago the newspapers published the new project from our Rumsfeld-Cheney-style government concerning the Cultural heritage: managers should be hired to make as much money from it that is possible. Today "Repubblica" dubs it "Macdonald art".

The matter has been discussed for years in the Italian wikipedia. The answers to us in the past was that WikiCommmons is a mere repository of images, not a lobby or political group, and that we should therefore take the personal responsability for the images we had submitted them. Which is OK to me.

The point is that Sovraintendenzas rule not only on what is contained into museums, but also on whole monuments, including the outside part. For instance, the entire Colosseum: inside, AND outside. Fullstop. If you can read Italian, please read here: http://www.fotografi.org/arte_musei_beni_culturali.htm

Therefore there is no alternative, Wikimedia foundation should either take at last a POLITICAL stand on the matter, or accept the fact that under the Italian law all these images MUST be deleted. Fullstop again. Yes, we could allow foreign citizens only to photograph in Italy and upload, since the risk of an International trial in their case is currently rather unthinkable. But in case (in the future) the McDonald new managers at Sovraintendenzas should decide to have all of the images of Colosseo deleted, I think they would consider that suing the Wikimedia foundation would be the simplest and most logical way. This is what was done in the past to prevent multiple contributors to publish unwanted contents: suing the website. And have a thought on it: the fact that they wrote to Wikimedia Foundation rather than to individual uploaders is a clear hint of the strategy that they would most likely follow, should they decide to go to court.

Best wishes. Giovanni Dall'Orto --User:G.dallorto (talk) 15:11, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Post scriptum: once the path is settled... I am finding it increasingly difficult to take pictures inside churches around Italy, by now. Recently, I could no longer take pictures inside Milan's cathedral, after they licensed a franchise to exploit images of what stays inside the Duomo itself. Not to mention the fact that in Venice not only you are not allowed to photograph inside most churches, but you have to actually pay merely to be allowed in. Things are getting worse and worse...

If a court case can somehow be brought against the WMF over this I expect they would be willing to fight it. But I'm not the WMF, please ask the WMF. Commons policy and precedent indicate that we will keep these images. If you, as an uploader, specify which of your uploads you are concerned about, then perhaps we could make some accommodations on those. Haukurth (talk) 19:01, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
If we decide to delete, consider that there are images like this which are used on at least ten thousand pages around wikimedia's projects (you can check by yourself). The problem is not just Southern Etruria's Soprintendenza, it is about every single cultural site or object situated in Italian territory. My personal opinion is Wikimedia and Commons should fight against these claims by single countries, demonstrating how culture belongs to mankind, not to a government. Otherwise what are we doing here? Waiting thge next country forbidding to upload pictures in free licence? This could be the beginning of a domino efffect--Sailko (talk) 20:07, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
A short update here --User:G.dallorto (talk) 19:55, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Could someone create system messages for translations of the upload forms?

I have made translations to finnish of upload forms. Translations are here. Could someone create the system messages needed? I have described on the subpage, what system messages you must create. --Joku Janne (talk) 19:10, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

  Done [1] --Kjetil_r 20:23, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. --Joku Janne (talk) 20:33, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Another thing to do: Make the left toolbar link point to Commons:Upload/fi. --Joku Janne (talk) 20:59, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Sure. --Kjetil_r 22:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Now I suggest making a link from fi:Toiminnot:Tallenna to Commons:Upload/fi ;-) --Kjetil_r 22:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
I've made a few tweaks to the Commons:Upload/fi page. BTW, a lot of the links on the page don't really work yet; apparently there's some delay before the changes to the relevant MediaWiki messages take effect. I don't really know where it comes from or how long it takes before things start working, though. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:46, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Now every other upload forms work except the own works -form and the fifinland50- form. In the own works the default license selector (MediaWiki:Licenses) appears and some unknown instruction appears above the form. In the fifinland50 the default instruction (MediaWiki:Uploadtext) appears above the form and the default license selector appears. I hope that these two forms start to work. --Joku Janne (talk) 08:32, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

In the system message for own works in finnish there is a error. The text after the ”Askel 2. Auta muita löytämään tiedosto.” should go like this:

  • Vaihda kohdenimi joksikin kuvaavaksi. Älä käytä sattumanvaraisia nimiä, kuten IMAGE1234.jpg.
  • Kirjoita mahdollisimman kuvaava yhteenveto tiedostollesi. Näin helpotat muita löytämään tiedoston. Muista, että hakukoneet etsivät kuvia tekstin perusteella, eivät pikseleiden.
  • Käytä CommonSense- työkalua etsiäksesi sopivia luokkia tiedostolle.
  • Jos kyseessä on ulkona otettu valokuva, lisää sille koordinaatit.

--Joku Janne (talk) 16:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

  Done. In the future, please make protected edit requests on the talk page.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 05:19, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Display of .gif images in Wikipedia articles

Hello,

I have created a number of illustrations for specific articles, mostly simplified maps and schematic drawings. I used .gif format because I know how to use it, it makes a small file, and it makes a crisper image than .jpg. Until recently Wikipedia did a good job of resizing .gif files

Suddenly, a few days ago, before my eyes, all my.gif files started to show up out of focus when displayed in articles, unless the picture was displayed at exactly the same pixel width as the uploaded image. For the article I was working on, [2], I made a quick fix. I went back and uploaded each image again, using the pixel width I wanted for the article. If anybody changes that, the images will won't work.

Did you guys change something in the picture display software?

My options seem to be

  • 1. Learn to make .svg files. Can somebody teach me? My computer can't even open them.
  • 2. Convert all my uploaded images to .jpg
  • 3. Make .gif files at exactly the pixel width I plan to use for display. (Most users expect to see a bigger picture when they click on a thumbnail.)

Any ideas? HowardMorland (talk) 03:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why, but the image re-sizing was eliminated for GIF images. Adobe Illustrator or Inkspace are two programs you can look into for making SVGs. --J.smith (talk) 04:21, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Can the decision be reversed?HowardMorland (talk) 04:30, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
It wasn't a decision made by the community... it was done by the developers. It may have been done for server load or other technical issues. I agree - I hope that it gets reversed. It has an even bigger impact on animated GIF images. --J.smith (talk) 04:38, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
If rendering works for PNG files, use this format. It has the same advantages as GIF files over JPEG. Sv1xv (talk) 05:29, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I believe the excessive server load was caused by scaling animated GIFs. Like said, save the your images in PNG format and you will be fine. If the software you are using does not support PNG, it should be very easy to find a program which can load a GIF image and save it in PNG format — no information is lost in conversion. Whether the scaling of GIFs will be enabled again in future, I have no idea. – Sadalmelik ☎ 07:58, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Looked at your diagrams. These are a real case for Inkscape. There will be a learning curve- but once you are into it, it will be so much easier/faster than doing gifs. The ships will be drawn as one object, which you can then clone and rotate. Each ship will be stored on its own layer, so you can move and rotate all of them if you like to represent the scenario 15 minutes later. Finding documentation is not easy, but go to Inkscape Site and look halfway down the page for official tutorials. These will probably give you the clues you need to convert from Photoshop, for instance Advanced. -ClemRutter (talk) 11:47, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Many things can be done by hand in SVG, see category:Manually coded SVG for examples (note the file sizes). If HowardMorland can run Firefox, he can use that to open .svg files. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 12:23, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
SVG can be edited with Notepad (or any other simple text editor); see also WikiBooks. - Erik Baas (talk) 14:05, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If animated GIFs are not distinguished from non-animated GIFs, then there are going to be problems, since many thousands of images of certain kinds were uploaded as GIFs in order to evade some of the big problems with PNG thumbnailing... AnonMoos (talk) 15:37, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I was able to ask one of the Devs yesterday about why the scaling was turned off... apparently some of the huge GIF-animations were causing the scaler to take up huge amounts of resources. Just turning it off was a quick and dirty fix to keep the servers up and running - a more complete solution should be coming down the pike eventually. --J.smith (talk) 16:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
I have tried uploading one of my .gif images as an identical .png image. The scaling works as well as the .gif scaling did before, so this seems to be a solution. Good thing I haven't uploaded many .gif files. HowardMorland (talk) 03:13, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, a longstanding complaint has been that automatically-rescaled PNG images are output in a very unoptimized form (even if the input PNG is optimized), which causes unnecessarily large file sizes for PNG thumbnails. AnonMoos (talk) 23:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Ridiculous categorization

In Category:Alphabets, there are dozens of images that have no connection to alphabets or even writing at all. Is it the result of a known software error, or vandalism? -- Hämbörger (talk) 20:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it's due to bots trying to categorise images and failing miserably. Commonsense is a program, so therefore lacks common sense. More to the point, it has to take its information from the title and description, since it can't interpret the images the way humans can. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:12, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Looks indeed like BotMultichill is running a bit crazy :-((. Lycaon (talk) 21:14, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Notice the {{Check categories}} tag? It adds the image to a category for humans to manually check to make sure the categories make sense. --J.smith (talk) 16:07, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
So now tere are only 2 files in Special:UncategorizedFiles but hundreds in the wrong categories. What's the point in bots categorizing and humans un-categorizing again? -- Hämbörger (talk) 08:29, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
More like 200.000. Multichill (talk) 16:09, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I think that the point is that these images would have been better categorized upon upload and the original task that the bot did was to mark the images which needed the attention of a real person to categorize as the uploader didn't. -- carol (talk) 20:18, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Is there not some way at least of hindering such categorisation of images into categories that really shouldn't have individual files in at all? Such as Category:Categories by country, Category:Categories by city, Category:People by country, Category:People by city, etc... I've done some clearing out of Category:Literature by language and Category:Writers by language, but it should be an unnecessary task. Man vyi (talk) 09:05, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
The images ending up in too general categories is caused by two things:
  1. Overcategorization filter was mallfunctioning : For example Category:Categories by country + subcats are crowded because the mallfunctioning overcategorization filter
  2. No Commonscat links : For example Category:People by city is crowded because the subcategories of en:Category:People by city are not linked to Category:People by city by country
I fixed the filters and i'm now rescanning several categories. Multichill (talk) 13:41, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Man vyi (talk) 14:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
And Category:Categories for discussion shouldn't be cluttered up with files either. Man vyi (talk) 14:35, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Where can I find the procedure to close such discussions or CFD's ? I tried with the {{delh}} and {{subst:delf}} templates, but no cleanup is happening. --Foroa (talk) 15:28, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
The bot is not working for archiving DRs either. Bryan has been informed, but no response yet. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:11, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

November 17

Can't find the place to request this - can an admin delete the first revision of Image:Oakland Ferry at Jack London.JPG, which was uploaded in error by me (it's not even close to the right pic ;) Thanks. Skier Dude (talk) 00:10, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Where can I find information about "Share Alike 2.0 Unported license"?

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ I would think. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:33, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
I suspect some typing mistake might have been made. I know about a 3.0 unported Creative Commons license, but I never heard about a "2.0 unported" license. Teofilo (talk) 12:41, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

J.League media guidelines what?

User:K.F. just marked a bunch of football related images for deletion because of a "violation" of some league policy. ViperSnake151 (talk) 16:00, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like that applies only to media outlets which sign a contract with them. Wouldn't be a reason for deletion anyways unless requested by the uploader (that would be a contractual situation between the "accredited media" and the league). Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:25, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Reverted all the nominations, obviously not copyright violations. Multichill (talk) 11:00, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree that these aren't the cases of explicit violation, and let me explain about the J.League guideline before I nominate these for regular deletion. There is a statement on each ticket of the League games that says "You cannot bring any kind of recording devices into venue, unless explicitly permitted." This can be considered as the agreement between audience and the League. So the photographers of these images must have explicit contract, or otherwise they brought cameras to stadia against the agreement above. In any way, I guess the photos about J.League events and figures are incompatible with any acceptable licenses for wikimedia commons. In jawp, there held nominations on this kind of images twice, both of which result in deletion ([3],[4]). --K.F. (talk) 17:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
That is between the uploader and the league; that does not affect copyright at all (which belongs to the photographer). If the authors feel OK in uploading them, and they license their copyright appropriately, then Commons will keep them. See Commons:Image casebook#Museum_and_interior_photography for a similar case. jp-wiki can certainly have their own policies, but they are fine per Commons policy and there is no reason to delete them. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:31, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
We care about copyright, don't about these kind of agreements. You might want to take a look at #Sopraintendenza ai Beni Culturali dell'Etruria meridionale too. Multichill (talk) 19:42, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
OK, I see the Commons are not responsible to house rules. I'll stop worrying about them bringing some legal risk to the Commons. Thank you. --K.F. (talk) 04:56, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Uploading confusion

I have some images that I would like to upload, and have permission from the owners of the images. However, the owners of the images(belongs to a company) don't know the name of the photographer. Would I choose the "from somewhere else" option when uploading? After that, I wouldn't be sure about the licensing and authors.

Heysuk (talk)

If the images are corporate-owned you can use the name of the company as the "author". Have the images been previously published? If so, mark the images with {{OTRSPending}} and have them send a letter of permission to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org. Example permission letters can be found here: Commons:Email_templates. --J.smith (talk) 19:26, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I.e. under the "work-for-hire" provisions of copyright law. AnonMoos (talk) 06:00, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Do you have permission from the copyright holders to release the images so that anyone can use them for any purposes? This includes commercial purposes. If you do, then you need to ask the copyright holders whether they want to release the images into the public domain or under a specific free license, such as the CC-BY-SA license. When you've cleared that up, the rest will be easy. Haukurth (talk) 19:28, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I would like to add the corporate logos to the company boxes of a couple of Wikipedia entries. Do I need to gain permission to do so from the companies involved? If the logos are copyrighted, can they still be uploaded? LegalTech (talk) 19:08, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia (only?) survey

Why is not the survey conducted also here? And why there is no choice of Commons as home wiki? Why it is so wiki-and article-centric? Too little interest in people who spend most of their time working in the background on sister projects... :-( --Miaow Miaow (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I know. So for the question From your point of view, what is currently the best way to gain reputation in the Wikipedia community? I put "Be a complete idiot and go shouting at other projects demanding they comply with you because you happen to be big. Well, I can delete your featured pictures, so fuck you." To be honest, that's probably a bad thing. -mattbuck (Talk) 01:43, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Well that's hardly productive. A better idea might be to contact those who were involved in drafting the survey at the Foundation and beginning a dialogue concerning these issues, and work towards a Wikimedia survey which might address such issues. I hope to begin a conversation with Sue shortly about related concerns. I suspect a rational post to foundation-l might be welcome. I may do so myself if the issue isn't brought up by someone else.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 03:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Choices of editing styles are too limited. I primarily do administrative stuff, having stuff deleted, fixing histories and sourcing, fixing categories, etc, but I am not an administrator -Nard the Bard 03:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I have sent some critical remarks to those conducting the survey already yesterday, but no response so far. Maybe they have too much comments to deal with... :-) I am very disappointed the survey page contains no "internal" link to Meta with some background info about the survey and no section for general comments in its end. It would be really nice if someone more fluent in en: and with better diplomacy skills than me addressed directly the Foundation. --Miaow Miaow (talk) 13:03, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Considering the volume of responses, and the general level of activity for them right now (the survey isn't happening in a vacuum) I find that unsurprising.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 18:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I filled in the survey. On many places it is possible to give comments in the field "Other". I think it is good that more people working predominantly in Wikimedia Commons fill in the survey so they see that their survey is somewhat "unbalanced". --Wouter (talk) 20:31, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It is, deliberately, a Wikipedia survey -- that's why it's not featured in the sitenotices of other Wikimedia projects. We hope to survey other projects in the future, but I don't think there can be a "one size fits all" solution.--Eloquence (talk) 01:59, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Nor would that be desirable depending on the information your looking for. J.smith (talk) 16:46, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Chinese writing

It seems like that you people think that there are many ways to write in Chinese. However, there are only two ways to write in Chinese; Simplified (zh-hans) and Traditional (zh-hant). I think you guys should really fix that. --Mr. Mario (talk) 23:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

If you're complaining about the existence of Wikipedias such as cdo:, wuu:, and zh-min-nan: , then you really need to go to http://meta.wikimedia.org/ to do so, because we at Commons can't do anything about them (and 99% of the people here don't care anyway)... AnonMoos (talk) 11:35, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

October 31

Just checking -- this image can never be free?

Just checking -- this image -- w:Image:Screenshot from the video of the USS Cole bombing.jpg is not free, without regard to being shown as evidence at the alleged videographer's Guantanamo military commission? The videographer's intellectual property rights remain, even if the product is considered a war crime?

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 02:05, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

The copyright on a photograph is not affected by the legality of it's creation. Or at least, I cannot think of a counterexample.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 02:20, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 19:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the standing Commons policy on photographs of anonymous street graffiti is that it can be affected (though I don't think that precedent would apply to this particular case...) AnonMoos (talk) 11:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Missing images in database

At least 19 individual image files in Cyrillic alphabet and Early Cyrillic appear to be broken for some time.

I can replace 16 from my originals, but three were created by another editor.

Does anyone know what happened? How many images in the database have been permanently lost, hundreds, thousands, or an unknown number? How do we identify them? Is there an effort to recover them from backups, from their creators' originals, or from mirror sites?

Am I to understand that my efforts in creating files for the commons will always be in danger of being lost permanently? This appears to be a newsworthy failure, and a very serious threat to confidence in the Wikimedia projects. —Michael Z. 2008-10-24 21:26 z

A lot of the Cyrillic images seem to be on the missing images list. Multichill (talk) 22:26, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
What is this list? —Michael Z. 2008-10-25 00:21 z
List of images which are in the database, but not or corrupted on disk. Quite a lot of images went MIA as you can see :( Multichill (talk) 00:27, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone know when and why these images disappeared? Is this something that happens regularly? Is there no backup?
I've had three hard drives fail without warning in my office this year—it has to be planned for. Is this project with thousands of contributors operating on the “hope the inevitable never happens” theory? —Michael Z. 2008-10-25 16:13 z
The backup was erased too, if I remember correctly. Human error. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 16:25, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Where are the details? I have a link to one incident, but it has a different list of lost files. Is there a list of incidents? Has the cause been identified and steps taken to prevent a reoccurrence? —Michael Z. 2008-10-25 17:56 z
My understanding is that there was only one incident, but it was difficult to check what images had disappeared. The current list should be authoritative.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 18:05, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Where are the details? The Sept 5 incident report says that exactly 496 images were lost, and doesn't mention any difficulty checking. The other list, with no explanation, shows over 1,500 missing images.
Is there any documentation of this large list, the causes of missing images, and the steps taken to prevent a reoccurence, or is it all “if I remember correctly” and “my understanding,” and everybody's just pretending it can't happen again? Is there a backup somewhere which can't be destroyed by the backup process? —Michael Z. 2008-10-25 18:32 z

Fortunately th:user:Octahedron80 uploaded the three other broken image files in Cyrillic alphabet. --Ukko-wc (talk) 13:12, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've gone through the email list archive linked above, and found relevant discussion in September under the subject “Massive image loss”[5] and October in two threads under “More image loss”[6]

I don't understand the technical explanations, but it appears that a developer made a mistake and lost 3000 images, recovered all but 496, and many of those were replaced by members of that list since. But later it was discovered that the scope of the loss was larger, and a list of over 1,500 missing images was generated.

It appears that the particular set of circumstances which caused this loss has been changed so it won't recur again. It appears that a safe set of backup snapshots will be regularly generated after some ZFS server setup is complete, but not yet.

It is unclear whether the list of missing files is complete, or whether the loss was caused by the one incident. I don't know whether actions are still being taken to recover the remainder.

Unfortunately, it also appears that an undetermined number of image pages were permanently deleted because they had missing image files. I don't know if they have been identified.

I am disappointed that a problem which affects many Wiki projects for nearly two months is being kept close to the developers' chests. Why not post an announcement and systematically canvas image contributors to re-upload their files?

This looks like a serious failure to me:

  1. data and its backup were lost
  2. recovery has been partial
  3. there is no systematic recovery effort
  4. basic information about this not being reported to Wikimedia's users
  5. information about the scope of the problem and its current status isn't available anywhere

I'll consider re-uploading my lost images, and making any more image contributions, after these issues are addressed. Frankly, I'm now concerned about making any contributions at all, and about the safety of the hundreds or thousands of hours of work I've put into Wikimedia projects up to this point. —Michael Z. 2008-10-25 19:05 z

I agree. Something official should have been stated somewhere on Commons. Even if "official" is a bit misleading here, something authoritative should have been stated. If this happens again, the effect on morale would be devastating. Carcharoth (Commons) (talk) 16:43, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I think there may be communication issues in both directions. I doubt Tim Starling or any of the other server admins read this page very often, so if you want your (quite legitimate) complaints to have any chance of actually improving things, you should probably contact them directly. Or post on the relevant mailing list. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:52, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I tried to contact him on en.wikipedia recently. --Ukko-wc (talk) 23:13, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you're simply not aware that there was an official announcement. It was made immediately following the incident, and there was discussion here and on mailing lists regarding it. There have since been further announcements of subsequent developments. You can say that "a problem which affects many Wiki projects for nearly two months is being kept close to the developers' chests" but that doesn't make it true.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 23:32, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Were announcements made on the affected Wikipedias and other projects, or on uploader's talk pages? I'm not accusing anyone of keeping secrets, but there's no effective communication. I'm going on and on about it here, but still no one knows the current status of this very serious problem (I don't think that asking individuals to join an email list or write personal requests to a developer are appropriate venues for something affecting thousands of images). And as I write this, someone is posting deletion notifications to my talk page, so it appears that the “official announcement” just didn't do the trick. —Michael Z. 2008-10-27 06:31 z
We have used the best communication methods we have available. If you want something better, please propose it or implement it. Tim Starling is not responsible for notifying every contributor - he made a notification to the appropriate mailing list. That notification was spread by interested users, including to this page about 3 or 4 weeks ago. Apathy from contributors is not his fault, nor anyone else's - we cannot force people to listen.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 17:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Apathy?? For most contributors, Commons is a depository, which they seldom need to visit. That is why it does not work to notify commons accounts (I am talking in general now, of license problems and things like that). Typical contributors look in here only when they upload. Users that take images from here may not even own an account here. Commons needs to reach out more, and warn people on their home acounts. And also, how about instructing a bot similar to the commons delinker, to leave messages on talk pages of articles with threatened images ahead of deletion? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 18:32, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
It's been seven weeks since the accident happened. I have some proposals on what to do now.
  1. Post a prominent note at the top of Commons:Deletion requests asking admins not to delete corrupt images, because this will cause irretrievable loss.
  2. Create a page to keep track of the current status of this problem, and ask the mailing list members who are working on this to update it.
  3. Post an announcement with a link to that page which will show up at the top of all registered editors' pages, until they hit “dismiss”.
  4. Identify uploaders of the broken images and ask them to re-upload.
I don't know exactly how to do any of these things. If no one else can do any of these, then I will gradually start working down the list myself. —Michael Z. 2008-10-27 23:54 z
@Mike.lifeguard: I just did not find any information what to do now. Am I right that this list is still up-to-date, and that the authors of the images should be informed to upload lost images again if possible? At least for de.wikipedia most of the images are still broken, and I would try to encourage people to upload them again before they are deleted or removed from articles. --Ukko-wc (talk) 19:05, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
No, there's a newer list (which was announced by Tim in the same message as the earlier one, so I'm not sure why the older one is making the rounds). Also, I recently went through the list and recovered what I could from the Internet Archive: those images are here. Note that some of those may be older revisions. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:15, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Pieter, please feel free to implement that bot idea - it sounds quite useful. You may wish to contact Melancholie, who is working on something similar. However, I think adding a diplomatically-worded note to the watchlist notice is perhaps a good idea; I will do that now.

Michael, deleting the images will not cause a loss any more irretrievable than is already the case. Thumbnails for the images still exist, only the full-resolution files were lost. Thus, it is less likely that anyone will remove the images from the pages where they are used. That said, all admins should be aware that images on that list should not be deleted. Nominations of images for such reasons as "corrupted file" should be checked against the most current list of lost images.

I understand that you are upset at this situation, however some rationality and care with both words and actions is prudent always, and in this context in particular. Thanks for your calm.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 01:29, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Mike, some of that is incorrect. My missing uploads are also missing their thumbnails (e.g., in infoboxes in w:en:Ksi (Cyrillic letter) and w:en:Izhitsa), and editors have been posting deletion requests for them on Commons, with the reason “corrupt image” (see user talk:Mzajac). If an image is deleted here, then it may be removed from articles in an unknown number of Wiki projects, untraceably I suppose. This cannot be undone. —Michael Z. 2008-10-28 23:36 z
Thumbnailing is probably a different issue, but I will try to grab Tim for a moment.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 00:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
It seems that while thumbs were unaffected, if the thumb got purged for any reason, it'd not be replaced as there's no file. So I will update the watchlist notice.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 00:15, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. —Michael Z. 2008-10-29 01:00 z

Okay, there's now a tracking category for these images at Category:Images affected by the September 2008 image loss bug. All of the images from the 2008-10-19 report that are still broken should be there, except for the ones listed as "size mismatch" (those seem to be more complicated). I've also reuploaded all the ones I could managed to recover from archive.org. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:53, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! This category will help very much. --Ukko-wc (talk) 08:15, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
One note -- the message on the watchlist page links to the 2008-10-10 list of images, not the 2008-10-19 list... that should probably be fixed. Another note, I randomly noticed that Image:Narmername.png is a missing image, and Image:Narmer.png was previously deleted as a duplicate -- can an admin retrieve the image that way? Not sure if there is any way to trawl through deletion logs looking for links to some of these missing images, but that may nab a few more if so. Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:13, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
Another way to recover some files is to look for files transferred from the different wikipedias. Even if they were deleted there, admins on the respective projects still should have access to the files (unless they were deleted before a certain date which I don't remember right now, three years ago or so). I have already recovered some files from the German wikipedia, and I've seen other files which were originally transferred from the English, Dutch, Italian, French and Japanese wikipedias. --Rosenzweig δ 00:29, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I recovered some more, all recoverable images from de.wp should now be restored. A lot of images were transferred from the English wikipedia, anybody reading this who is an admin there please try to recover the files. Regards --Rosenzweig δ 16:33, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
It might be a good idea to add this helpful hint to the description of the category. --Ukko-wc (talk) 21:27, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Mayflower

Now that Mayflower's index is well over a year old, hasn't been updated for a long time and doesn't seem like it's ever going to be - can we delink it from Special:Search now? Or do some people still find it useful? TangoTango hasn't edited any wiki since May and hasn't responded to any requests to update it this year, so.. is it still 'Recommended'? Nanonic (talk) 00:19, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I think default MediaWiki search is good enough this days. There was attempt to improve it even more in Google style but unfortunately reverted in SVN because of some problems.
So we could retire Mayflower. Anyway it have problems with non-Latin scripts since beginning.
EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
Given time and commitment by wikimedia, I will look into the possibility of building a language-indepednant search for commons. I think that would be a real improvement. -- Duesentrieb ⇌ 20:46, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I think what we really need is for it to be forked, maintained and extensionised. Any takers?... --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 07:01, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I still can't understand the point to re-engineering Mayflower. It provided image search possibility in times when MediaWiki search was bad. From my point of view, MediaWiki search is good enough for images now.
Last experiments with MediaWiki search interface looked very promising (see http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Code/MediaWiki&offset=42496&limit=500), so may be we need to direct scare resources to this direction?
EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:10, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
I think we can remove the link. If the database is more than a year old... It has 1.000.000 image's les than mediawiki search. And the mediawiki search is better than before. Sterkebaktalk 17:53, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

This is too bad. From an interface and output perspective mayflower is still much better than the internal search. Rather than removing it, we should update the database. :( --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:25, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I really like the Mayflower search. It is a shame that it isn't self-updating. I think all that would need to be done is to point it at the tool-server's dump instead of it's own private dump. Oh, and a port to unicode to fix the issues with nonlatin characters. I wish I knew enough to take it over. --J.smith (talk) 20:25, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Do we know how to update the db it uses? I like the UI too. (I'm delighted with the improvements with the MW search but more ways are better) ++Lar: t/c 02:29, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
What I want is a cross between Mayflower and Catscan. My specifications are:
  • Should be able to scan for category intersections at a specified level, and also category NON-intersections (ie in A but not B, to level X).
  • Should be able to give results as either plain links or thumbnails
  • Doesn't go to the new page in current window, even when you open it in a new tab (as mayflower does currently, very annoyingly).
I feel that this combined tool would be very useful. -mattbuck (Talk) 02:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible to re-use DB of MediaWiki search? Indexing Commons DB dumps and re-indexing them againg means more storage requirements and servers load. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:01, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/Image:KurtGerstein.jpg

I don't understand this deletion as this portrait was an original drawing (on paper) and not a Derivative work of a photo. There is a serious misunderstanding here. -- Perky (talk) 09:04, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Well I was against deleting too but eventually the uploader was persuaded he did violate the rights of the photo and made a new drawing. It's kind of hard to keep figthing it if even the uploader gives in. -Nard the Bard 13:35, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Too right, about this case. But it might be useful for the futur to clarify this point, in the legal sense of course : How a portrait drawned by an artist can be a Derivative work of a photo and therefor deleted for copyviolation ?!? -- Perky (talk) 14:25, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
If the artist is too young to have met with the model (who died many years ago) it is fair to assume that the artist copied a photo. (Or the picture has nothing to do with what the model actually looked like, and such a picture would have no encyclopaedic value). Teofilo (talk) 15:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Is Derivative work ? , on a legal field, of course. -- Perky (talk) 15:22, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't think so, because the photographer assume his work. -- Perky (talk) 15:24, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
It would be, except that Spain has freedom of panorama, which means this particular situation (photos of public sculpture) is OK. See Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Dalí.Rinoceronte.JPG. We do delete photos of copyrighted statues which are located in countries which do not have this provision in their copyright law. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:46, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
The U.S. Copyright Office, in Circular 14, explicitly mentions Drawing (based on a photograph) as an example of a derivative work. In this case, the expression seen in the photograph must be present in the drawing. Based on a Google cache of the drawing here, and a link to the original photo in question here, the expression particular to that photograph is still present in the drawing. The angle of the face and body, the details of the lapel, the shadows on the face and shirt, the exact facial expression, etc. to me shows that the drawing is of this photograph in particular. That would seem make it derivative, and the copyright owner of the photo (in this case probably the German government) would have the right to prevent exploitation of the drawing as well. The artist does own a part of the copyright of the drawing, but not all of it. Interesting cases might be derivative works made when the German photo was public domain (Germany had a 25-year-from-publication term on photos, so it would have become PD by 1970 or so, but the copyright was retroactively restored to 70 years p.m.a. in 1995), but I don't think this is one of them. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:46, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for the explaination. As you may know, the law in France is different and more protector of the person (author). Sincerely. -- Perky (talk) 20:08, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't it protect the author of the photograph as well? Pretty sure derivative works are the same way there. If the drawing was made with permission, that may be different, but from what I see from a translation of the French law, Article L 122-4 says Any complete or partial performance or reproduction made without the consent of the author or of his successors in title or assigns shall be unlawful. The same shall apply to translation, adaptation or transformation, arrangement or reproduction by any technique or process whatsoever. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:43, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I think this is a direct port of the Berne Convention to the french law. I don't really know what Perky means by the 'french copyright law being more protective'; Are you referring to the right the author has to remove his artwork (also known as 'droit de retrait' in french)? Are you referring to the privacy rights the drawn /photographied persons have? Still, the France has signed the Berne convention and must apply it, Derivated works entering in this scope. To talk about his DR, we don't know who the original author is, Of course, there are websites hosting the photograph, still, they probably don't own any rights to it, basically we are forced to delete this picture from Commons the same way we delete orphans pictures that are not old enough...Esby (talk) 08:32, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I am talking of the qualification of original work with "a definite artistic character" which is the essence of the Droit d'Auteur in France, not about Any complete or partial performance or reproduction which is (i agree) a derivated work. In other words, and artist create an original work, as long as it is not a art forgery. To make it short the easy and old fashion way. ;-) About the larger protection in France (droit moral), an exemple : a territorial right extend to all authors whathever their nationality or the origin of the work : Art L. 111-4 Code de la propriété intellectuelle. It has been judge that the coloration of John Huston 's film was an altération of his original work and could not be done without the autorisation of the heirs, altought the same opération was done legaly in the US, because of the copyright law. Cass. 1ère civ., 28 mai 1991, JCP 1991,II, 21731, note A. Françon. Sincerely. -- Perky (talk) 09:41, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
A "work with a definite artistic character" is basically the en:threshold of originality, i.e. the dividing line between copyrightable and non-copyrightable works -- there are differences between the two countries in that area, but it is not all that big. The drawing is protected certainly, but it is also a reproduction/adaptation/transformation of the photograph. The colorization issue you mention is actually more about the "moral rights", which is separate from the copyright. You are correct that the U.S. has far less protection in that area. If Huston owned the copyright he could have prevented the colorization (since that is most certainly a derivative work), but as he does not own the U.S. copyright then he could not. Moral rights are usually specified as part of the overall copyright law, but the right is separate. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:49, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Right, and thanks a lot. By the way, i'am impress that you found Legifrance in english, because i find that website quite awkward to consult...in french. ;-) -- Perky (talk) 08:10, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

November 2

Pope and Hawking

Would others like to comment on the importance of photograph 2 in this series of 6 photographs? Does anyone have experience in having a photograph released from the Vatican to Commons? http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Vatican-October-31-British-professor-Stephen-Hawking-Pope-Benedict-XVI/photo//081031/photos_ts/2008_10_31t141054_450x340_us_pope_hawking//s:/nm/us_pope_hawking;_ylt=AsC90Yb5bXnPLLKnfWju_bSGWo14#photoViewer=/081031/ids_photos_wl/r1025343356.jpg

From the POV of a secular scientist: This pope has the reputation of being a very conservative theologian. Nevertheless, it does not look like even he seeks to put Galileo back into the category of heretic (I am not even sure how that would be done). I am not sure if I was previously aware of "theistic evolution." I guess it is a bit reassuring that the catholic church is willing to recognize at least some of the progress that has been made by science and scientists (albeit sometimes a few hundred years late).
From the POV of a Christian Apologist: This looks like something out of the Book of Revelation.
From a hopeful and Catholic POV: Is this the most important conversion since the Apostle Paul?
From the Commons POV: How do we get a license to the copyright of the photo? Doug youvan (talk) 03:56, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

The image is credited as "Osservatore Romano/Reuters". I don't see any chance for a free license. --Túrelio (talk) 08:43, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Túrelio, Thanks - From your contributions to Commons, it is very clear that you do know about things like this! So, could others comment on whether one of us, with some artistic ability, is allowed to upload a hand-drawn image that shows this Osservatore Romano/Reuters image in a semi-photo-realistic fashion? Doug youvan (talk) 11:34, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
In case the image was originally taken by Vatican press staff, another possibility might be to ask them directly if they would be willing to provide a version in a sufficient resolution/size under a "controlled" free license such as CC-BY-SA or similar. But if the image actually belongs the Osservatore Romano (photo archive[7]), there is little chance as the conditions for paid use are rather strict [8], and we at Commons aren't even media. --Túrelio (talk) 12:45, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Such an illustration would be a derivative work and thus subject to the same licensing restrictions as the original image, while being less encyclopedic as well. Powers (talk) 21:06, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Commons:Featured sounds

I've begun to set up a sound project here. The English wikipedia now has 75 featured sounds, 60 of which were gotten since July. It seemed time to bring the idea over to Commons.

I need volunteers to help out with a test phase for the project.

The candidacy page, currently based on Featured sounds, is COM:FSC. Join in!

It is proposed that this will eventually combine with the Featured picture nominations page. Adam Cuerden (talk) 06:52, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Why does commons hate contributors of sound and video?

QI, VI, and FP all exclude videos and sounds. Neither have any recognition system in place. This arbitrary exclusion - there is, after all, no reason sounds couldn't be included in VI, or why FP couldn't be Featured media instead - means that people., like me, who work in sounds, pretty much get a big slap in the face.

I really think this is inappropriate and unfair. Can we do something about this? Adam Cuerden (talk) 07:07, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes you can set up a valuation system for sounds and/or video :-). IMO this calls for a new system with likely a new public. Lycaon (talk) 07:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but that really isn't a good answer, because there's a strong benefit to having things in the same place. It encourages participation and pulls people into the project, particularly in the early stages. If we made FP into Featured media, then, after a while, split ift off again, people would know that such things were wanted and encouraged. If we made a new project, but told them they must be kept in their own ghetto, then how would people ever find them? You'd end up with an incestuous project isolated from all active commons communities.
I'm going to have to insist on integration, at least into VI, the duplication of which would be pointless. Adam Cuerden (talk) 07:21, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree Valued Sounds (and Video) could be a valuable and relevant addition to Commons. But not as an integrated part of VI as there is a mismatch between names, logos, templates, criteria and instructions. Adjusted tagging logos, templates, guidelines and instructions could be developed (quite easily I think), and VS could be launched as a paralled subproject to VI under a new top-level project, which could be called Valued Media. I am unsure whether we have enough qualified contributors and reviewers for VS to be meaningful, but it is worth a try. For this to succeed I think it should be planned and a launch date be set and a substantial amount of promotion be done beforehand to give it a boost from the start and exceed the critical mass for the process to get going. See Commons talk:Valued image candidates for more details. -- Slaunger (talk) 12:03, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Works for me. Sorry if I ranted a bit, I'm kind of used to en-wiki, where getting things done can feel like pulling teeth =) Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
That's one reason many of us are here. We're mellow; please join us.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 18:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I just wish that Valued Images weren't almost exclusively oriented towards photographs (as it currently is -- on page Commons:Valued image criteria under point #3 there's absolutely nothing as to how a non-photographic image can qualify, only an apparently somewhat token mention under point #4...) AnonMoos (talk) 11:40, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it is a misconception that VI is almost exclusively oriented towards photographs. These are several examples of VIs of scans, litographs and other non-photographis images. There is a current ongoing MVR where I argue a historic scheme of a plant species is better than a photograph, so I do not understand what the problem is... -- Slaunger (talk) 13:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Scans are photographs taken flatly; what I was referring to is that there seems to be very little room in the VI process for diagrams, charts, and abstract graphics (symbols etc.) made from scratch without digitizing a photograph, or attempting to look photorealistic in any way. The only current non-photographic VI candidates are labelled figurative drawings (a very small subset of all non-photographic images). There certainly don't seem to be any detailed criteria by which images which are non-photograph-based and not detailed figurative drawings can be evaluated for valueableness... AnonMoos (talk) 15:18, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Ah, OK. Well, I think that mostly reflects that there have not been so many nominations of this kind (do nominate some). I do not see any obvious things in the guidelines which would leave us clueless as to how to evaluate such types of images. And if we do, well, we will just make the relevant additions. No big deal. -- Slaunger (talk) 18:23, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
However, there's something of a "chicken-and-egg" effect, as someone considering submitting non-photographic-based images might be somewhat discouraged by not seeing many images of this type which have been previously approved, and no very detailed criteria set down beforehand against which the such an image would be judged... AnonMoos (talk) 22:42, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I think sounds are different than images. So I think keeping VI for images is a good approach. But just as en:wp has featured sounds, so could Commons. If someone wants to to to the effort of setting up the process (or perhaps first just trying to see if there is enough interest to make a go of it) I'm all for it. Sounds like a great idea. Adam: this subject line could stand to be a bit more mellow though... that's not how you get things done here. which as a soon to be admin, is an important thing to keep in mind. ++Lar: t/c 01:32, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

What about having a Valued Media (FM and QM also) for sounds and videos but it excludes photographs/images? Bidgee (talk) 02:03, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Video is a special case. It's not really a sound or an image; it often includes sounds (but sometimes has no audio) and its pictures are not static. Putting video in with sound isn't really much better than putting it with images. I'm not really sure what to do on this one - the featured media thing seems a bit neglected (the media of the day files seem to be arbitrarily selected long before time with no apparent discussion), but then there aren't that many people to work on it, and it is quite different from images. I haven't uploaded any audio here myself but do try to make people aware that Commons isn't just about images, and have started uploading videos lately (which often include audio). I think turning 'media of the day' into something more formal, like 'featured media' might be a good idea. But would you get enough new uploads to produce a new featured media file every day? The standards would have to be pretty high, otherwise it wouldn't be worth doing. Richard001 (talk) 08:52, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
As I have stated on Commons talk:Valued image candidates I think Valued Media is a good idea as a top-level container for several subprojects:
  • Valued images (existing)
  • Valued image sets (existing)
  • Valued sound (proposed here)
  • Valued sound sets (I think this could be meaningful, consider e.g. a set of all letters of the alphabet pronounced in a certain language or dialect)
  • Valued video (why not)
It may be possible to develop a set of common criteria for all media classes from Commons:Valued image criteria and then have additional media specific critera. -- Slaunger (talk) 18:23, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Useful non-artistic objects from Belarus ?

Hi! I would like to add some photos of practical nature to Commons. Before I do so, I'd like to ask if I could classify these as my own work, based on idea " Photographs or videos you have created of: ... * useful or non-artistic objects (tools, dinner plates, etc.)".

So, I'd like to share photos from Belarus of

  • WiFi card (so I or somebody else could explain the usage of it & getting LAN/ WLAN connection in Belarus)
  • plastic coin for Minsk metro
  • road views (clarification of different highway + road classes + road conditions) like cows on the highway ... :)

Can these be considered as my own work or how they should be classified? Are they objects documentation of which would not violate any 3rd party rights? Any ideas? --Paju (talk) 23:28, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that metro token could be classified under {{PD-BY-exempt}}, so it'll be Commons:Derivative works. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:00, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure this would be eligible for copyright though, and the logo on it is definitely PD-BY-exempt as a state symbol. -Nard the Bard 17:29, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
As far as I know this is not logo of metro (should be letter M located on back side). And I highly doubt that state-owned companies can't copyright/trademark their logos. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:56, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

November 3

France FOP and right of "quotation"

Hi, I've taken a picture of the 3rd floor of Eiffel tower + its antenna, at night.

Since taken at night, the picture shows part of lighting scheme of Eiffel Tower, which is copyrighted. I know I can't upload a picture whom main subject is Eiffel Tower at night, but I was wondering what you think of a picture showing part of Eiffel Tower at night ? I think the "right of quotation" (droit de citation) could be used here, because it allows anyone to quote any copyrighted material to some extent (maybe < 5% ?? I don't have faintest idea). Since my picture shows the 3rd floor only, and one side amongst the four, part of copyrighted material showed is minor... but I'm pretty much sure I missed something... it would be too easy.

Can someone (I guess french) tell ? Thanks. Benh (talk) 21:13, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Template talk:Pink CC

Hello,

As we would need someone external to our conversation, could someone relatively aware of licensing review our talk about {{Pink CC}} on Template talk:Pink CC ? The template author states that the template is intended to classify the included works under Category:CC-BY-SA-3.0 but according to what the template is telling and linking to, it should be Category:CC-BY-3.0.

Thanks in advance. Diti (talk to the penguin) 22:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

It's a bad idea to make redundant license tags. It can break bots, etc. Anyway, this license clearly puts the images under CC-BY and not CC-BY-SA, just by wording I'm seeing. If the intent was CC-BY-SA then they wording would need to be changed. J.smith (talk) 22:26, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I don't think you can change this license to CC-By-Sa. A new tag would need to be created. J.smith (talk) 23:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Can we just redirect this to {{Cc-by-3.0}}? It is a duplicate tag, and in general I don't like those. I could see adding some parameters to the cc-by tags I guess. Was that why this duplicate tag was created? Not a fan of the color either since it looks a bit like a warning tag. It is also odd that the text For higher resolution non-free versions of this file, please contact xxxx appears if you specify a fourth argument; is that really a general need? If it is kept, it should be made into a wrapper tag in my opinion which just includes the standard cc-by-3.0 tag, as (again) I don't like duplicate tags since they complicate bots, translation efforts, etc. As for the category, yes, it must be changed. It can't be both, and the text of the license (and most importantly the license link) is a cc-by license, not cc-by-sa, so the category needs to be switched. Whatever the original intent was, the documentation page is not the license. If authors want CC-BY-SA, create a new tag (preferably one that wraps {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}} instead of duplicating it), unless all authors using this tag want the change. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't really understand the color. Any message like "for a better version..." could just be handled in the "additional info" part of the upload form. J.smith (talk) 04:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

November 4

Ettal Abbey

Just for information, in case this needs to be fixed. I noticed that there are at least two categories in commons with photos for Ettal Abbey:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kloster_Ettal http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ettal_Abbey — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kengosse (talk • contribs) 01:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kengosse, everything is fine there, Kloster Ettal (your first link) is a gallery where a selection of images is listed, the Category:Ettal Abbey is a category where every image related to the Ettal Abbey appears if it is categorized. Galleries and Categories are competing in some ways, but both have their pros and cons. Please also note, that the gallery Kloster Ettal is also categorized to the category Ettal Abbey, you can see this at the bottom of the gallery. --Martin H. (talk) 02:21, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Copyrightability of academic degrees

I want to initiate a discussion about whether you believe that academic degrees can be copyrightable at all, and specifically whether they can be copyrightable by the issuing university (in any country). Do you know any law (in any country) that could be seen as granting copyright to degrees? Do you know any university (in any country) that regards its degrees as copyrighted material? NSK Nikolaos S. Karastathis (talk) 03:36, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Degrees would need to qualify the same way as any other document. Blank forms are frequently ineligible for copyright protection, but it's possible that the seal or graphical elements are. We would be best to take this on a case-by-case basis. I know this has come up in DR before, and the image was kept. --J.smith (talk) 04:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Commons-bg.png

Is there any way to make it larger, more washed out, and more obscured? ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:57, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it needs to be more visible. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:12, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I think the problem is that the visibility is highly variable. On long pages like this, it's almost invisible, but on short pages with only a line or two of text, it really jumps out at you. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:05, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
It doesn't help that the image uses nearly-white colors: the appearance of such colors varies greatly across monitors. --Carnildo (talk) 20:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I think the problem is it's twice the filesize of the old image & over four times as tall, and you can barely make out what it is even the 0.00001% of the time it isn't obscured by content. That and as far as I can tell it's just another unilateral change by an admin that has nothing to do with consensus and has no oversight. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:23, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

You're complaining that the file is SIXTEEN kilobytes? It's 16kb which you download ONCE because from then on it's in your temporary internet files. -mattbuck (Talk) 20:32, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I have re-opened a deletion request for this file at Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Commons-bg.png. I hate this file, please show the admins the community does have a voice. -Nard the Bard 21:21, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Speedy kept - Don't open a DR just to complain that you don't like the background. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:43, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm sure you just forgot to include suggestions on what we should do instead (like Bastique), and that you didn't just dismiss our opinions because you're a self-serving admin. You aren't so crass and obtuse an administrator as to deem normal users' actions "irrelevant", like some admins. ¦ Reisio (talk) 03:34, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
It was already being discussed at Village Pump; and it was a bad faith deletion request. Let me state again, whether we use the image as a background has nothing to do with the merits of keeping the image and making it a deletion request was out of order. Your sarcasm is crass and obtuse and unconstructive. Bastique demandez 15:44, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
There was no direction given "on what we should do instead" at that discussion either. My sarcasm pales in comparison to an administrator calling several users' collective opinion "irrelevant" and blocking their pursuits without so much as attempting to explain why or what should be done instead. If such a response had been given to my face, that would have been the end of his participation in the discussion. Is there a single virtuous administrator who sees this travesty? SPEAK. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:57, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
This is a good place to have this discussion, DR is not. Even if the file ends up getting removed from use as the background, there isn't really any need to delete it.
In any event, lets see some alternatives. Just whining about it is not very useful. As Reisio is requesting, I can upload a ligheter version of the file. Another idea is a few very stylized polaroids strewn about. Make them about the same lightness as the current background. I'll throw a few ideas together tonight and upload them. J.smith (talk) 22:44, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Sure there is, the file is unfree, if we're not going to use it as a logo we should delete it. -Nard the Bard 21:16, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Side note - you should be able to set your own background in your monobook file.[9] J.smith (talk) 22:48, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
…and I can replace every last bit of content on this site with userContent.css, but I'm not going to do that, either. ¦ Reisio (talk) 03:34, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
One has nothing to do wit the other Bastique demandez 15:44, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
They clearly do to me; can you say how they do not, or would you prefer just saying something that makes no sense, and then not explaining at all, as you apparently have become accustomed to doing? ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:17, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Can we please have some maturity? If you don't like the skin, you can change it. If you don't know how, please ask for help. POINTy deletion requests and name-calling are unhelpful at best and disruptive at worst. Continuing in that vein will be bad for the project.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 16:00, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Not nearly as bad for the project as administrators doing whatever they please without being held accountable — instead lecturing people on how they are immature. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:08, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Please remove this default background image. Those that like this kind of stuff, can put it in their .css-files or skins. I have now seen on a different computer how distracting this strange thing can look like. Get rid of it. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 16:44, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
What exactly would you prefer? It makes commons look slightly different, which IMO is a good thing. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:06, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
I rather think it quite obvious that those of us not taking your position would prefer the way things were before. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Taking account

Discussion
Previous Current
  For   Against   For   Against
Admins 8 3 3 0
Users 1 4 0 5
Totals 9 7 3 5
Overall total For Against
12 12

Note the distinct bias admins have in favor of an action one of their number has taken — in contrast to the clear preference of regular users… and even with this obvious bias, the tally leaves us tied up, without consensus.

Add on top of that the bias of a lack of consensus over an action that was made without consensus in the first place, & that this is at least the second time this matter has come up here — and both times an admin unilaterally blocked a deletion request, without offering an explanation or suggesting an alternative means of resolution.

This is not a good situation.

Why should anyone spend their time contributing to a cause which is controlled by a governing body made up of those so obviously disinterested in others' opinions, focused instead on remaining a conformant part of the club rather than just doing their job? ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:07, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Luckily this isn't a democracy.
Contrary to your claim, all I and others have been doing is suggesting appropriate means of appeal. Your statement can be translated as "Very appropriate solutions have been provided, but I don't like them." The correct course of action is, as always, to pursue as much as one can, civil and constructive dialogue to resolve the issue. Note that that would not include POINTy deletion requests, nor large tabaulations to decry the cabal's horrid and entrenched bias against the righteous non-administrators(!)
You might consider starting a new section with an appropriately-worded request to implement an alternative.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 02:07, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Since you are apparently incapable of comprehending the English language (or just avoiding the issue), let us examine this further for the benefit of others who might take you at your word:

"Luckily this isn't a democracy."

Everything is a democracy — sometimes those in charge just don't realize it until they're handed their walking papers.

"…If you don't like the skin, you can change it."

As I have already alluded to, and as Dori, an admin, has said in the previous discussion (which you also "participated" in):
"…telling people to fix the annoyance by changing their stylesheet is no substitute for not annoying them in the first place."

"…POINTy deletion requests…are unhelpful at best and disruptive at worst.…"

Again, as has already been stated by myself at least three times:
No person taking this stance in the previous discussion or this one has once offered an ALTERNATIVE to a deletion request.

How about it, what's the alternative? You people close deletion requests without explanations. You ask us what we want, even though it's plainly obvious, and then when we reply in plain language, you never respond, not even to say "hahah, we can do whatever we like", which is apparently the case.

So we can't make a deletion request, and talking with you has so far proven pointless.

What are we supposed to do? What's the alternative? What would you have us do?

I'll take any answer — anything other than the same boilerplate drivel you've said before. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:15, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I've already provided the alternative course: Produce some alternatives and start a dialogue for a replacement. We need to stop arguing about the argument. I tried to put some alternatives together but none of them looked good. Do you have any ideas for a replacement? J.smith (talk) 03:00, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
You must be as vision impaired or disconnected as these other guys. As is ridiculously, painfully and even textually obvious at this point and since the outset, my alternative is the way it was — i.e. the reversal of the change to use this image. To make something else clear: my question "What's the alternative?" is not a request for an alternative to the current Commons-bg.png (to which — in case you have forgotten since my last sentence — the answer IS OBVIOUS), but a request for an alternative route for users to go about reversing this annoying change, since the dictatorial admins involved block deletion requests and offer no useful explanations or suggestions.
What we need is for admins to not make changes without consensus, ignore user consensus to revert such changes, and ignore and oppress users who want admins to respect consensus… or at least for such admins to admit they don't care about user consensus, so people can feel more confident in abandoning a hopeless totalitarian project.
I await an answer from one of the three admins:
What are we supposed to do? What's the alternative? What would you have us do?
I'll take any answer — anything other than the same boilerplate drivel you've said before. ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Sigh... okay, fine. You want a concrete proposal? Here's your concrete proposal. I can't believe I just wasted half an hour of my life on this. Now both of you please get your asses over there and let's settle this thing, okay? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 08:17, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

That is clearly not something I have asked for, indeed having already supplied data proving what regular users want… but it might just accomplish the same thing, and it's clear none of these illogical cowards will ever respond to me here, so good enough. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:14, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Access to my account

I asked for a rename of my account User:Miho_NL to User:Miho, both global owned by me. This was done (see http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3AChanging_username%2FCurrent_requests&diff=15544016&oldid=15520918) but as a result of this my account iho_NL is now permenantly blocked. Email with User:Giggy resulted in this anwser:

Hi Miho,

My understanding is that as part of a new feature of the renaming system, the Miho_NL account has been locked out. Nobody can access it, nobody can create it, or anything like that. It's blocked by the system.

I don't know of any way you can get access back. You might want to ask on the village pump or on some bureaucrats' talk pages to see if they do. Sorry...

So here I am in the village pump... Does somebody know how I get acces back on this Miho_NL account? Maybe by renaming this one and then creating a new one? Miho (talk) 19:05, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

You want to undo the rename? I think that would need to be requested in the same place. If you just want to have both accounts then you'll need to file an usurpation request. I have no idea who does it here... :( Sorry. On English wikipedia it's done here: en:Wikipedia:Changing username/Usurpations. I think the Bureaucrats have the tools to usurp. J.smith (talk) 16:41, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't want to undo the rename. Indeed I would like to have both accounts. I'll check some more. Thanks. Miho (talk) 10:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

October 30

Hidden cats after file transfer

After transfering images from wikipedia.hu using the Magnus-tool, my uploads are tagged as if author information and description are missing, which is not the case. They are put in the Category:Media lacking a description and Category:Media lacking author information. See e.g. Image:004a Bp.VIII.Népszínház u.19.jpg

How can I remove these tags or, even better, avoid them? Fransvannes (talk) 08:32, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I see Ö has already fixed that image. The problem was the extra "{{Információ}}" template, which — since it did not, indeed, contain any description or author information — caused the image to be categorized as lacking them. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:53, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Kiitos, hyvä Ilmari! Fransvannes (talk) 20:06, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

The Change We Need.jpg

Are such images free? The template for this text can be found on http://cooltext.com/
--D-Kuru (talk) 18:14, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks like PD-ineligible to me. --Carnildo (talk) 19:51, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Deletion per request of author

I am becoming increasingly fed up with TOL and am interested in having all of my images deleted from Commons ... I seem to recall that can't be done because the images are already licensed & CC-by-sa can't be taken back, but I just wanted to run that by here to make sure. I suspect I will no longer be uploading anything to Wikimedia until TOL can be brought into line with the rest of Commons. It's been fun while it's lasted. Cheers! --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 01:01, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Er, and just in case it is possible, I'm not saying I actually want to do that yet... I'll give it a night or several to dwell upon it. Thanks! --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 02:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Just a suggestion, but maybe before going in that direction, look into photographing different things? That may make it easier on you. :) Good luck on whatever decision you make.Mitch32(UP) 02:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
The CC licences are non-revocable, but we're usually willing to be reasonable about things if the uploader is as well, and there are reasonable substitutes. -mattbuck (Talk) 03:05, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Can anyone help with stopping or halting User:BotBln's edits? He is undoing the hard work of others rather than attempting to fix it or discuss it, even though much of the work he is undoing is part of the consensus discussion we had last summer. Specifically, the issue relating to whether or not photographs of plants should be categorised by nativity or by location of the photo. Ornamental plants categories was the result to provide for location by photos. Even though I still feel that is a less than adequate result, I've been abiding by that. Everyday it seems I have to wake up and revert BotBln's edits to my photos, but I know I am missing countless others from other editors. He is one of two users which are the sole reasons why I am increasingly thinking about leaving Commons behind, and it's bothersome to get the feeling that they can act without any regard to Commons practice. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 12:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Images that exist but don't exist?

Someone asked me on my talk page what was hapening with these two pictures: Image:Fibersensing.JPG and Image:Audolici.JPG. The images seem to exist but the description page does not. Maybe this is something very obvious, but I have no idea what is going on there. Any ideas? Known bug? Patrícia msg 13:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

See bugzilla:15430. Lupo 14:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, Lupo. Since they only have a bit over fifteen thousnad bugs to address, I reckon this will be fixed quickly. Patrícia msg 14:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Request renaming/move an image

I erroneously uploaded an image to [[Image:Getimage.jpg]] but it should be named something like [[JohnEFriesCarrollCollege.jpg]]. I am new to Wikimedia commons and do not know how to move or rename an image. Help?--Paulmcdonald (talk) 15:21, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Please see Commons:FAQ#How can I rename/move an image or other media file? --Pabouk (talk) 16:03, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Will there be action taken on my deletion requests?

On Oct 18, I posted two deletion requests here. I understand that admins here have been held up by the mass deletion and recovery of images on Commons, and that there may be a backlog in acting on deletion requests. However, I just want to be sure these are not forgotten. Maybe an admin could just confirm, very briefly, below that my requests will eventually be acted on. Thanks.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 16:15, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I can assure you that the images won't be forgotten. It just takes some time (sometimes a large bit more time) to be able to answer the del request. You asked for deletion, because you don't think that they are {{PD-old}}. Maybe an admin searches on different wikipedian projects to find somebody who knows his images or has a source link for them. All the asking, searching, etc. can take a lot of time. Not mentioned that the people still discuss.
However, some discussions on Commons:Deletion requests/2008/10/01 are still not closed. I think you just have to wait.
--D-Kuru (talk) 17:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Filesize

I'm trying to upload a piece of music in ogg format, wich is PD, but the upload keeps being in process for many minutes and end with an error message. The file is of 1,96 MB. Is Commons capable to manage files of such size, or do I need to split it in smaller pieces? Belgrano (talk) 19:26, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

That's way below the filesize limit. Multichill (talk) 19:44, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
The problem has been solved. It was an issue of my own conection, not of the site Belgrano (talk) 18:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

November 5

Concert video screen photos

What is our policy on photos of individuals on concert video screens? howcheng {chat} 19:20, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

  • Usually deleted as a copyvio unless covered by COM:DM. I personally believe such works are not "fixed" and thus not protected but that usually runs against consensus in the delreqs. -Nard the Bard 12:33, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
They will typically be fixed on a computer disc, and normal copyright thus applies. If they count as a cable broadcast, fixing is not necessary. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:20, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

November 6

Sigh

Do people even try when they re-use our content? I mean, I didn't take this photo only uploaded it, and Jimmy Buffett's tour of Pearl Harbor has nothing to do with that story. -Nard the Bard 18:49, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

The answer to your question is "no". At least they provided the source, even if they got it wrong. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:05, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Commons, Wikipedia and Adblock+/Filterset G with Mozilla browsers

I recently experienced that some images on Wikipedia or Commons weren't displayed on my computer, but were visible on other computers. I found that a combination of Firefox, Adblock+ and Filterset G blocked some images due to their name. So I dropped a note on Filterset G forum and asked to except any Wikimedia project from filtering.

If you are running an adblock software on your browser and expirience similar effects, check your filter rules and inform the software's manufacturer.

Regards --Eva K. tell me about it 22:44, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I remember a problem a while back with image thumbnails with /ad/ in the directory structure. I think the adblock people added wikipedia to the exceptions list at that time. I wonder if it was removed? J.smith (talk) 17:17, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

New contest similar to Commons:Picture of the Year

I am hoping to organize a new contest similar to Commons:Picture of the Year, for photos from Commons:Photo scavenger hunts to be held in several museums, with the participation of non-Wikimedian photographers. Any suggestions on how to set up a process for Wikimedians to judge the best of these types of photos would be appreciated.--Pharos (talk) 23:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

November 7

The old and better upload form

Is there a possibility how to return to the old (and better I thinkr) upload form or use it? The new version is not practical at all especially if I want to upload more pictures in one category etc. I dont think that it was a good idea and work. --Nolanus ✉ (C | E) 10:50, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

The old uploadform is avvailable here, you may also chose it from Commons:Upload in the line "Already have an {{Information}} template ready? (For instance, generated by the Flinfo tool?) Use the basic upload form." in the options for "experienced users". Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 10:56, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanx! If there where obligation to use the new form, it would be nearly unpossible for me to upload new images. --Nolanus ✉ (C | E) 11:21, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

The new uploadform has many advantages, especially for new users, but if you're uploading lots of images with similar description/categories the older is more functional for cut&paste. Personally I normally use Commonist for larger uploads. Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 11:33, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't mine the new form. I do find it easier and if I have similar descriptions I just hit the back button on the browser and upload the new image. Bidgee (talk) 12:00, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

There's an option on the Gadgets tab of Special:Preferences to always use the old form.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 17:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Additional guidelines for quality/featured/of the day pictures

I think we need to add 2 or 3 new chapters on Commons:Image guidelines#Quality and featured photographic images.

  1. The licensing information must be thorough and meet some reliability standards. For example if the picture is from Flickr, we should check if the flickr uploader has not changed his mind and decided to distribute his picture with a copyright. Keeping such pictures is OK, because we believe that a license is irrevokable, but such copyright worries should be counted as drawbacks when judging if an image qualifies for quality/featured/of the day.
  2. Additional criteria regarding the "freeness" of the image : don't use an image involving personality rights/trademarks as a "picture of the day". Don't nominate Freedom of panorama pictures : these are still copyrighted and are not "free works", strictly speaking ; they can't be used worldwide. (today's picture shows a guitarist : his personality rights involve that he may disagree to be used to brand a Wikimedia project.)
  3. The image must meet the goals of the Wikimedia foundation to promote knowledge. A nice picture showing a mysterious item should be discarded from quality/featured/of the day until information is provided telling what is on the picture. This is especially true when it is believed that the information could be easily found by making a few researches in a library. (this is not necessary if a Wikipedia article in some language, containing the information, is linked to the picture).[Animals and plants : provide the latin name. Buildings : provide the architect's name and the completion year Teofilo (talk) 12:28, 7 November 2008 (UTC)]

Teofilo (talk) 11:56, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

RE 2. that would take out a lot of images on Commons. Most buildings, public spaces, limited art works (Only in Countries that cover art works) that are on Commons are covered by FOP and to limit images by removing FOP images (Say FOP images taken in Australia can be used world-wide since the image was taken in Australia so the Australian law apply) would just be silly. Images of people is debatable but I do see your point with that issue. Bidgee (talk) 12:09, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Old buildings are not covered by FOP. Teofilo (talk) 12:28, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I know. I'm talking about buildings that are covered by FOP (Such as Image:Darwin Airport Met Office.jpg). Bidgee (talk) 12:39, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Official Star Wars images under free licences? Have Lucasarts gone mad?

I have been checking the Category:Star Wars to mark any evident copyright violation that may have lurked in there, but I found something really weird. There are many images of people dressed like the characters, including perfect matches of the costumes of Chewacca, Chango Fett or the clone troopers, wich come from flickr. The flickr accounts mirrors the content of the site "The official Star Wars blog".

And even more weird, everything seems to be in order. The official Star Wars blog is indeed an official part of the Star Wars franchise (it is currently under the "starwars.com" domain, even if the links in the images here are outdated, and the official site has a link to it in the main page), and the flickr account seems to be indeed run by the blog itself, as it is linked from the blog main page. Wich means we have perfectly legal images of Chewacca to make derivative works about or use commercially.

Well, well, is this whole thing about the blog and the flickr account some kind of elaborate hoax I can not understand? Or are this things for real, and Lucasarts has really lost interest in keeping the sole copyright of their millions of dollars worth characters as to let anyone do as pleased with them? Belgrano (talk) 13:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

  • Not sure if it's "legit"...the licensing may not actually be approved by the people who control the intellectual property of the franchise. But as for making Chewbacca free, I'm not sure the licensing is valid from the perspective of free licensing. They are attempting to make a particular image free while retaining full rights to the intellectual property of the characters...but free licensing includes the right to make derivative works...which would theoretically include making films while dressed up like the photo or drawing comics of the photos, which I'm sure they would not be happy about. -Nard the Bard 14:09, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
    • It may be possible that the blog is not run by a skilled profesional with expertise in copyright and legal stuff, but just by a simple nerd hired by the staff that released the images under free licences not being aware of what was he doing or the consequences of it. Of course, in theory not knowing that would not be an excuse, and free licenses would be irrevocable... in theory. In the real world, who would really want to try to go against the armies of clone-lawyers of a multinational empire stating that the characters they own and use in top 1 sales movies, animated movies, videogames, toys and stuff are free because of the mistake of a mr. nobody?

It is highly unlikely that Lucas have knowingly released these images under a free licence, not least because they have recently litigated in the UK to protect the rights in the same characters. They failed in the UK (see the 2008 Lucasfilm case), but they may well have a better chance of success in the US courts. Also relevant is Commons:Deletion requests/Star Wars images. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:50, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Categorization help needed!

Hi people, i could use some help with the images in Category:Media needing category review and Category:Media needing categories requiring human attention.

Thank you, Multichill (talk) 14:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I'll do a few. -Nard the Bard 14:15, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Regarding Category:Media needing categories as of 23 June 2008 - we desperately need a Chinese language speaker to review these images. Right now these are the oldest uncategorized images. J.smith (talk) 16:36, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
What about this? 1964 - and now. Categorize or not? Mutter Erde (talk) 17:12, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
For images containing a lot of non latin characters, it would help indeed if some files would be split in Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, ... categories. How clever can a bot be ? I stumble frequently on sets of such images with a strange category name, without the faintest idea how to tackle this. --Foroa (talk) 17:28, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I've done a handful. MartinD (talk) 14:11, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Ok, somewhat restructured it.
  1. A new uncategorized category gets created every night and starts in Category:Media needing categories in use in galleries
  2. A bot categorizes all files which are in use in galleries and moves the category to Category:Media needing categories to be checked by a bot
  3. Another bot uses CommonsSense to find categories and moves the category to Category:Media needing categories requiring human attention
I almost cleared the backlog for images in use in galleries. CommonsSense categorization is backlogged, but wil get at least 55.000 more images categorized. Multichill (talk) 15:13, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

GFDL version 1.3!

It's out folks! How exciting is that! This article explains a bit about what was changed. {{GFDL-1.3}} has been created by user:Kanonkas for use with images and the full text has been copied to commons under the name of Commons:GNU Free Documentation License 1.3. Eventually, if we decide to adopt 1.3 as a project, the text of Commons:GNU Free Documentation License would be replaced by the 1.3 one. I'm all for switching to 1.3 and depreciating 1.2 where possible. --J.smith (talk) 21:50, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Unless I misremember we are under "GFDL 1.2 or later" which means we are now under "GFDL 1.3". The main change is a swithc from GFDL to a GFDL cc-by-sa dual licensing (which is allowed under GFDL 1.3). For more info see http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34002 /Lokal_Profil 15:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
We are only under 1.3 if, we, as a community decide to exercise that "or later" part. On the other hand, if someone wants to re-use an image under 1.2, they could use it under 1.3 if they want. J.smith (talk) 16:26, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Since we now can switch to dual license, I think we should. GFDL 1.2 or later and CC-BY-SA. Why limit our compatibility with existing content by switching exclusively to 1.3? -Nard the Bard 20:05, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
1.2 is more restrictive then it needs to be.... switching to 1.3 would being us in line with CC-by-sa compatibility. J.smith (talk) 17:02, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Sorry to spoil the party but that decision isn't up to us here and now. Think WMF will do a referendum or something and then everything under "GFDL 1.2 or later" (text and images) will be dual licensed. And anything under "GFDL 1.2 only" will probably get nuked. /Lokal_Profil 01:58, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Animation categories alert

Since yesterday GIFs are not scaled anymore, even when they are only used in thumbnails (Server admin log). Background seems to be problems with the scaling of large animations on the servers. Well, it has a serious tradoff: Category pages that collect these animations may now well be multiple Megabytes big.

(Do not follow this link!) Category:Animations of vibrations and waves, for example, now has a pure download size of 36 MByte. The amount of memory your browser has to use to display all 74 animations is accordingly manifold. I do not know the numbers, but my computer maxed out after using up all of its 2 Gigabytes of memory and disk cache combined.

So, if you do not have some really serious amounts of memory in your computer, prepare to be clogged... --Hk kng (talk) 19:24, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I just clicked that link and with my 1.5G of memory it loaded fine. Do I need to hard-refresh it to make it happen? MBisanz talk 19:29, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
No problem here, with a computer with 2GB of already-overtaxed memory. Are you sure it isn't something with your computer that's causing the problem? --Carnildo (talk) 20:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Obviously what happens depends on the computer configuration. Maybe things differ when the system has to start to swap. I have 750 MiBs of real memory, and then one GiB of swap space. Interestingly, as I was just now able to observe, the amount of memory the system monitor sees as assigned to the browser first maxed out at around 700 MB, then dropping again to 300 MB (after the scaling for screen rendering being done?) But at the same time total memory consumption got up to 1500 MB and stayed there. Still, even if my computer turns out to be badly configured, a download of 36 MB just to look at some thumbnails is a heavy load. --Hk kng (talk) 20:37, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Umm... using Google Chrome I clocked the memory usage on that page at 700megs. That really is a problem for usability. I hope it gets fixed. J.smith (talk) 06:59, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

November 8

Nominating gone wrong

Hi, I attempted to nominate Image:Kelvingrove Gall and Mus Glasgow.jpg The instructions didnt match up right so I tried to just wing it some way, this didnt work so I tried to fix it up manually... still wrong. Please take a look at my recent contribs ~ R.T.G 02:07, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I edited all the stuff to match other noms and a tag has been auto-added to the image page but it hasnt appeared on the list, sorry ~ R.T.G 02:24, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Seems to showed up now xD ~ R.T.G 02:25, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Thumbnail not up to date

I have made two corrections at Image:Daylight Saving Time 3.svg but the thumbnail (also in the article de:Sommerzeit) was not actualized. It seems to be a software bug because I force-reloaded the two pages. Debianux (talk) 17:04, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow... I have no idea. I tried to re-upload it to force the system to create a new thumbnail, but it doesn't seem to have worked. Can an admin delete the file and re-upload it please? Maybe that will get it to make a new thumbnail? --J.smith (talk) 19:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
The idea is not bad but the problem is that Werneuchen uploaded the file and it seems that he is not active any more. Debianux (talk) 20:00, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I do not see the problem. The new version has a better font. I see it in category:time and also in de:Sommerzeit. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:02, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I have been having the exact same issues with Image:Flag of Chinese Taipei for Olympic games.svg that is being described above. The thumb and the main image are still the old version, but when I click on it, the new version is present. User:Zscout370 (Return fire) 20:10, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
@Pieter Kuiper: I do not understand what you are talking about: I did not change the font! Debianux (talk) 20:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
You are right! But in the thumbnails on Image:Daylight Saving Time 3.svg the 8 November 20:41 version is rendered in a different font. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 21:13, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Really? I do not see any difference. Also all versions specify font-family:Verdana. Debianux (talk) 22:45, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Now all the thumbnails have the same font. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 11:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

There were apparently some recent issues with the thumbnail handler on Commons. It should be fixed now, but recently reuploaded images may need purging to get the thumbs to update. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Super, now it works. Debianux (talk) 11:21, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Tennis "free of charge"

Hi, I'm an editor on tennis articles on wikipedia, and today I've come across the official picture of the players of the year-end tennis championships, the Tennis Masters Cup, on the event's official website. Under the official picture is the following mention : Media may use this photo free of charge. Please credit Quentin Shih. (see it here). Does that mean by any chance we can upload this photo on Commons and use it ? --Oxford St. (talk) 21:03, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not free. "Media" most likely refers to newspapers and news websites only. Also, it does not state whether the image can be used to make derivatives. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:35, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Heavy-handed administrator

I had requested Commons:Undeletion requests/Current requests#Unesco photos of Buddhist statues destroyed by the taliban. Now the same administrator (SterkeBak) who had deleted the files, immediately closed the undeletion request. I request that a different administrator have a look at it. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 23:53, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

It's already been re-opened, and I've explained why SterkeBak's closure was inappropriate. I think the next step is to take a look at the written permission, and evaluate whether the images' copyright is actually owned by the UN. The other possibility is that the images are PD. So, the situation now is that someone needs to do some research.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 00:33, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

November 9

Images moved from German Wikipedia

The following images need review because they may be deleted unnecessarily.

This old photograph was copied from the German Wikipedia, but some of the information relating to copyright and sourcing was not copied. See de:Image:1852 Friedrich August.JPG on the German Wikipedia. The same image appears at http://www.royaltyguide.nl/images-families/oldenburg/oldenburgdukes/1852%20Friedrich%20August-03.JPG Would it be safe to tag the image as {{PD-old}} and not worry about the source?

I am also worried about:

for similar reasons. If the images are acceptable because of their apparent age, then their pages should be edited to indicate this. The years in the image names are (I believe) the year of birth rather than the year that the photograph was taken. -- Eastmain (talk) 04:23, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

The year in these images' names do not show the year, in which they were taken. It's the year, when the people shown were born. Syrcro (talk) 10:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

The gallery tool fails from displaying thumbnails

Is it a bug (where should I report this bug ?) or a feature (should I wait for some time ? How long ?) Teofilo (talk) 16:05, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if there is a bug here or not, since I don't know what the tool is supposed to do :D If it is, then you can report the bug on JIRA.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 16:08, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
This is the same tool which is used in the "gallery" tab on user pages. But I wonder if the bug comes from the tool itself or the Commons' servers. Teofilo (talk) 16:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Username policy proposed policy needing consensus

Well I believe it's finished, and now we need consensus to have it as a policy. I'm asking people to vote under the below poll with a support, oppose or a neutral vote with your reason, please review the proposed policy before casting your vote. --Kanonkas(talk) 16:26, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Village pump doesnt seem like the best place for a vote, maybe you could move it to something like Commons:Username policy/vote? Multichill (talk) 18:48, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Per Foroa's reason I agree this needs to be more multi-language friendly, and as such this poll is now closed. Thanks for your opinions. --Kanonkas(talk) 23:03, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Support

Oppose

  1. strong oppose - There is no way to precisely define what a offensive username is. There are about 10 sysops @ de.WP who have user names which refer to a gods name. Every orthodox Moslem, Jew or Christian should be offended by these user names. (see Ten Commandments, Commandment 1, 2, 3 - depends on your way to count them). Do you want to block user with names like w:de:User:lustiger Seth? A User with a Username with no know meaning 18:44, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  2. Oppose for reasons adequately explained on the proposal's talk page.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:07, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  3. Oppose Per above: it is not broken, don't try to fix it. Lycaon (talk) 22:41, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  4. Oppose Defining formal censoring rules in a multi-language context is next to impossible. --Foroa (talk) 22:49, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
  5. Oppose I do not think that we need yet another policy to handle disruptions or promotional material. And I do not see any problems with random characters sequences as user names. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:49, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
  6. Oppose. Instruction creep and a solution looking for a problem. We need not reference a policy to explain the inappropriateness of obviously disruptive user names (e.g. User:Acroterion rapes babies). Less black and white concerns may (and ought to be) discussed at forums such as COM:AN on a case by case basis. The proposed policy cannot adequately foresee or address linguistic issues, is susceptible to wiki-lawyering and erodes reliance on common sense. Эlcobbola talk 22:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Neutral

Insignia

Forgive me for raising this old subject once again, but I need a clear more-or-less authoritative statement of the Commons' policy towards uploading insignia. Some users (I included) have recently uploaded emblems of Israeli municipalities. Another user claimed they should be deleted as their use is very restricted by the Israeli law. He compared these emblems to trademarks which are usually not accepted to the Commons. The Israeli law does not recognize these emblems as trademarks, but it does limit their use significantly. I doubt if these restrictions are any different from the laws and common practice in most other countries. Furthermore, these restrictions are hardly ever enforced in Israel, except in cases of fraud or misleading conduct. There is one problematic issue - it is unclear whether these emblems are copyright protected, and if so, who holds the copyrights. The Israeli law is not clear about this issue. So, to some it all up, what's the policy towards insignia? In what way is it different from the policy towards trademarks? What's the policy in case the law is unclear about the copyright issue? Thanks, Drork (talk) 09:54, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The policy is based on the copyright... if that is OK, then we generally accept it, unless simply hosting it (and showing it as an example on the associated wikipedia article) would somehow be a direct violation of these other laws (which is not the case with trademarks, and the usual insignia laws). See Commons:Non-copyright restrictions. However, many logos and insignia are still covered by copyright, so these will still be deleted. If the copyright status is unclear, well... so is their Commons status. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
In traditional European-based heraldry, coats of arms are specified by textual descriptions or "blazons", and many possible depictions of the blazon might be acceptable as renderings of a particular coat of arms. So if you create a new artistic rendering of a coat of arms from scratch, based on the textual description, then you own copyright to your own personal depiction of the coat of arms. However, if insignia are treated more like corporate logos than traditional coats of arms (with only one fixed visual rendering considered correct, instead of multiple possible visual interpretations of a textual description), then the copyright situation is quite different. In either case, emblem images downloaded from a government website can only be re-uploaded here if the laws of the country allow this, or appropriate permissions have been obtained... AnonMoos (talk)

Nominate for deletion

I just tried to use the "Nominate for deletion" link in the toolbox on the left for the first time. Great work. I put a lengthy text in the box "Why do you want to nominate this image for deletion?" and got an error "nfd_getUploader: Cannot find uploader ... exiting" and my lengthy description was lost. Great, really great. What's the reason? Who's responsible for the "Nominate for deletion" code? --Slomox (talk) 15:00, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Many people have worked on it. If you get no response here, you might try leaving a note on the script's talk page, or contacting someone who has done work on the script in the past.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 17:15, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Flickr question

The answer to this is probably out there in Commons manuals, but I'm not a big Flickr or Commons user and I want to be sure of what I do : as a tennis articles editor on wikipedia, I have tried to find some useful free licensed pics on Flickr. I have come across a gallery of potentially interesting pictures, but Copyrighted, and have decided to ask the author if he would agree to release them under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. The user sent me back an e-mail saying he was OK with us re-using the pictures, and asking what he should do.

So my question is, what should I ask him to do ? Must I tell him he should change each picture's license to CC-BY or CC-BY-SA ? Should he send me the filled Declaration of content for all enquiries from Commons:Email templates ? Is there anything else that should be done ?

Thanks, --Oxford St. (talk) 01:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Asking him to change his copyright to the aforementioned ones are all you need.Mitch32(UP) 03:06, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps he is a beginner on Flickr and needs help on how to use it. Perhaps you should show him where the menu is located, where he can change a picture's licensing from "copyrighted" to "CC-BY-SA". Teofilo (talk) 12:05, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, since I've been persuaded, I will say that all you have to is either - look in his "profile" and find his e-mail OR get a Flickr account and send a message. One thing though, unless you order a Flickr PRO account, you can only send a total of 10 messages (rip-off that I cannot solve). The rest is this: Tell him to switch them into the Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0 Unported license, which will make anything allowed on Commons, as long as proper attribution is done, and that in the long run, will be reviewed, once uploaded on Wikimedia Commons and then is usuable ANYWHERE on Wikimedia Foundation Projects, including Commons.Mitch32(UP) 21:48, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Pictures and portraits

I know this question is only tangencially related to Commons, but it would help me a lot. Is there any site in internet more or less like Commons but, rather than aiming to be a repository of all kinds of free media, aims to be a repository of all portraits and paintings ever made? Such a site would be an invaluable help. It's frustrating to seek a good painting of a national procer or a historical event, and not being able to upload it because 70 years from author's death haven't passed yet... but it's even more frustrating not being able to upload it because hardly anyone in internet ever bothers to credit the author of paintings they reproduce, and so I can't be sure if what I found is acceptable here or not. Belgrano (talk) 02:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Not sure exactly what you want, but this Wikipedia page gives a lot of "free sites" for Wikimedia Commons usage. It is located here. It should be of help to you though.Mitch32(UP) 21:51, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Uploading-Error

Hello, I tried to upload this file - but I got the error-message "MIME-Typ „application/x-php“ is not allowed". file does recognize the file correct as "Eduard_Moerike.jpg: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01" and all graphic programs can load it. What to do? -- MichaelSchoenitzer (talk)

Upload succeeded after opening and saving the file with PSP, see Image:Eduard Moerike.jpg; don't know why, though... P.S.: I did not fill the fields of the "Information" template, please do so yourself. - Erik Baas (talk) 15:31, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Sounds like a bug (or excessive caution) in MediaWiki's MIME type sniffing. I suspect it's because the original file happens to contain the three-byte string "<?=", a typical feature of PHP code, close to its beginning (at offset 366). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:03, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:Bande dessinée

Why is the warning on Category:Bande dessinée not to upload copyrighted materials in Spanish? Could a French speaker take a crack at it? It seems that would be more useful. -Nard the Bard 16:50, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, maybe French and Belgian users are likely to know that there is no FOP in their home countries (and generally have no idea what FOP is), while people from spanish speaking countries might more easily mistakenly imagine that the FOP people enjoy in Spain exists also in France and in Belgium.
Technically, I could make the Spanish into French translation, but morally I am afraid I can't because I am not sure I agree with all that. If I were to write a policy concerning French and Belgian comics, my policy would be "delete everything". Teofilo (talk) 15:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Categories for protein structures

Back in February, there was a discussion to upload protein structure images to Wikicommons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2008Feb#uploading_collection_of_protein_structures I have downloaded the PDB image files from EBI and would like to upload them to Wikicommons. I need help in determining the best way to categorize these images. I currently have the image files sorted by species with their taxonomy ID.

I see in Category:Biology it contains subcategories called "Images from...". I'm thinking of creating a new subcategory: "Images from EBI" and within that create subcategories by species name and Taxonomy ID. For example, Homo sapiens [TaxId: 9606]. Let me know if this is acceptable or other suggestions. Donabel SDSU (talk) 18:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, the English Wikipedia uses its own Protein structure category. If you give it a parent category, you may be fine using Category:Protein structures under Category:Proteins. On the other hand, you could just place them in the Proteins, but some category organization may be better for the parent category.Mitch32(UP) 21:43, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

November 10

Parades & fan art question

My attention has recently been called to Commons:Fan art, which I previously had not been familiar with. Does this, indeed, mean that when photographing a parade for Commons use, one has to avoid any images in which any person is wearing a costume that identifiably makes reference to a character from a copyrighted work? Or is there a bit more of a balance (e.g. it would be OK if the copyrightable elements were incidental to the image)? Or what? Very unclear. See Commons:Deletion requests/Fremont Solstice Parade images with Batman character: given Commons:Fan art, I now suspect that the images involved may violate Commons policy, but I'm wondering if it would also be a problem if someone costumed like that showed up in a crowd shot, because it would affect how I shoot in the future. - Jmabel ! talk 17:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Also, a further question. Based on Commons:Fan art, aren't images like Image:Pippi.svg completely counter to policy? - Jmabel ! talk 17:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

De minimis will often apply, but in general these things fall under the category of derivative works, and so are copyvios. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
There is a wider problem, affecting many of commons images of parade floats, see Commons:Deletion requests/Image:NaginWetDreamBlancoCenterfold.jpg. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 18:58, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I think the result at Commons:Deletion requests/Image:NaginWetDreamBlancoCenterfold.jpg (deletion) and the broader implications represent a terrible direction for Commons. I don't think there is any precedent (at least in the U.S.) for any objection to people photographing, and publishing photographs of parades. Sometimes I feel like we have implicitly adopted a mission for Commons of attempting to create a maximal case for the legal rights of authors, one far greater than has ever been sustained in law. I don't think that should be our goal, or even one of our goals. Open source should not be the enemy of reasonable, legally protected use. I feel like I'm waiting for the day where all images of clothed people are removed on the basis that some court might decide someday that clothing patterns can be copyrighted.
I think the Solstice Parade issue is reasonable, and my images may well have violated policy. But I think a decision that would essentially say we can't have images of any non-trivially decorated parade floats since 1923 is ridiculous. - Jmabel ! talk 22:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Well spoken! And that decision to delete was way too fast. What happened to 7 days of discussion? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 22:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
What was exactly the content of the image in that closed deletion request? Is it available somewhere else? (like at Flickr, for example) Belgrano (talk) 00:01, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
It was an image of a float with a papiermaché (sp?) guy in a bed with a hard-on in his underpants. Not a Disney character or a cartoon figure that I am aware of. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 00:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Text was:Krewe du Vieux Carre float in den (warehouse), New Orleans before the first New Orleans Mardi Gras parade after Hurricane Katrina, satirizing local conditions. This float, for the Subkrewe "Tokin" entitled "Wet Dream" shows breaking levee, and sexual satiric images of mayor Ray Nagan and governor Kathleen Blanco. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 00:27, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Float was a caricature of a local politician with sexual double entendre, a little more blatant than average but not uncommon for Mardi Gras floats. However no one mentioned any of that as being relevent to the reason for deletion. -- Infrogmation (talk) 00:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Floats at parades

Relevent to a point brought up above, I have started a discussion at Commons_talk:Licensing#Floats. Please contribute; I think we are in need of a policy. -- Infrogmation (talk) 00:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

We have a policy. :) We need a clarification, perhaps. --J.smith (talk) 04:10, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

November 11

Thumbnail of specific size not generating

 

Currently having trouble getting the 100px thumbnail of Image:Norrköping vapen.svg to generate. I've tried all of the normal tricks but http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/thumb.php?w=100&f=Norrk%C3%B6ping_vapen.svg remains imageless. Other sizes (e.g. 99px, 101px) works fine but 100px which is the most common size where it's used in templates for some reason won't work. Does anyone know how to deal with these stubborn sizes? /Lokal_Profil 00:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Seems to work for me. I went to the image page, hit "purge" and then hit "Shift+Reload". --J.smith (talk) 03:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Good that the issue resolved itself, strange that it didn't work when I tried it. Thanks /Lokal_Profil 14:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Did you try purging? I think thats the key. --J.smith (talk) 19:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

City symbles

Please see deletion request Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Raanana_COA.jpg. Community response needed. Thanks, Yonidebest Ω Talk 13:55, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

PORNOGRAPHY CONTENT

Sorry for my bad English. I realized that some categories are including pornography. Some of these are called "art" or "educational", but if you just browse, for example the category "vagina", you will find different pictures that not belong to "art" or "educational" terms, but just pornography. If this keeps like that, wikimedia soon will be becoming a repository for free porn. Examples of other very, very inappropiate content:

So, please tell me if wikimedia is planning to become a porn-oriented source of multimedia. Because if so, you must put a warning in the front page of wikimedia.

I think you may be forgetting that Wikimedia Commons is not censored. Furthermore, we have well over three million media files; though your list seems intended to shock readers by it's sheer length, it is in reality a tiny subset of our images. I'm more concerned about those who would censor our content than the images you've listed here.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 03:42, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Commons will not become a hoster for porn images, but also a femal vagina or masturbation provides educational usefulness and is inside our scope. Also Commons is not censored. There are quite many users watching images like this critically and sometimes delete bad quality images from the categories like Category:Penis (see the {{Nopenis}} tag for example), so please be assured that this displeasing content is accepted here but will not dominate Commons. --Martin H. (talk) 03:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
It would be very surprising if you stumbled across all of these by accident. Were you by any chance specifically looking for sexual images? If so, it should be no surprise that you found them. - Jmabel ! talk 06:43, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I have to wonder whether people ever write to the Oxford English Dictionary demanding that they remove words like "shit" from the tome. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:41, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Make me wonder if anyone writes to get "Sex", "Nudity", "Penis" and "Vagina" removed. BTW I'm not being silly just sarcastic ;). Bidgee (talk) 14:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, there could be billions of media files, but if at least one is pornography, then THERE IS PORNOGRAPHY here.
If wikimedia commons is not censored, then it is legal to upload images like: "child pornography", "someone decapitating another one", etc. Hmmmm... I don't think this would be good. So maybe a little censorship would be nice.
Of course, not all these images were accident. I just found one by accident and the others I found looking if Wikimedia has more pornography than that one. That is why I wrote this comment.
Well, I have to wonder many things also, but what have to do with this?
There is a big difference between a word and an image.
Well, if Commons is displaying porn material, I think it is a good idea to create a warning in the page.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.68.4.71 (talk • contribs) 04:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
We have one, linked on every page, here is another link to it: Commons:General disclaimer. MBisanz talk 07:48, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Since you're adept at making distinctions, you'll note that there is a difference between censorship and complying with the law, I'm sure.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 16:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, I read the disclaimer and I don't see any warning about pornography.
Since you're adept at complying with the law, maybe you know that "Obscene material does not fall within the First Amendment’s protection of free speech". And that according to the U.S. Supreme Court: "Content providers should take steps to avoid providing such material to minors. One way to do this is to have a warning page where viewers must click on a statement certifying that they are over the age of 18 or 21 and will not hold the site responsible for violation of community standards."
So, if you are coherent with your speech, you must provide a warning about obscene material in this site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.69.209.90 (talk • contribs) 22:48 09/11/08 (UTC)
Commons is nothing else than a hoster. Diti (talk to the penguin) 16:46, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Uhh, yes we do, see COM:NOT:

Unless the image has possible personality rights issues or is possibly illegal in the United States, Commons will not censor or remove media that users find objectionable or offensive. But remember that the statement “Commons is not censored” is not a valid argument for keeping a file that falls outside the normal permitted Commons scope.

See, we DO warn you somewhere. ViperSnake151 (talk) 21:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Do we have a policy page saying which media require OTRS confirmation ?

Commons:OTRS is a technical "how to" page. What I am looking for is a page saying, case by case, which sort of media need a confirmation e-mail, and which sort of media are OK even without a confirmation E-mail. Teofilo (talk) 14:40, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I am not aware of a specific policy, but in my image patrolling, I usually weigh factors like how professional the image appears and if there is a published, public source, indicating the free license. If the public source indicates no license or a non-free license, then we need permission. If the image appears of a professional quality or has a professional watermark, than we probably should get permissions. And of course if the uploader says "I represent X and am releasing it", then we need permissions. More of a "feel" thing than a set policy afaik. MBisanz talk 15:00, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
What if the uploader is obviously a professional, but the pictures looks like a scan from an old magazine, rather than a high resolution pic made directly from the negative ? See Commons:Deletion requests/Image:James Edward Murphy.jpg. Teofilo (talk) 15:31, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I would suggest that image needs a permissions email on file with OTRS because it appears to be a scan of a magazine, which means it is unlikely that it is naturally "free". MBisanz talk 17:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I will look to see if I still have it in my mailbox. But I do think this is not necessary. Alan Light has numerous pictures on Commons, there even is a category for those at Category:Alan Light. Since this was not an image like those, to be sure I specifically asked him if he is the copyright holder. That seems sufficient to me. (It could of course be replaced bu this likely PD image from the same source). Garion96 (talk) 22:31, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
The best time to use confirmation via OTRS is if the image (or copyrighted subject of the image) has been published previously. I've proposed some changes to the wording of the OTRS page at Commons:OTRS/proposed changes and I think this wording helps clarify the situation a little bit. I'm still waiting for a bit more feedback before I make the change official, but I think the wording represents the intent of the OTRS team. --J.smith (talk) 19:11, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Second opinion requested concerning licensing incident

I was recently in Greenland and stopped by a town museum in a Greenlandic town. One of the exhibitions were a display of posters submitted by various architecture companies in a competition regarding renovation of a key building in the town. A project with a budget around 13 million Euro/ 15 million $. On one of the posters I noticed that this image of mine, which is dual licensed as GFDL and CC-BY-SA, was used in the poster as background information for illustrating the main creative idea in a proposal from an architecture company. The photo has a pretty prominent position in the middle of the poster, aligned in the first of two columns. I was not attributed on the poster, nor was the poster published under either GFDL or CC-BY-SA, which I understand is a requirement for proper use of the image in derivative works.

I was quite surprised to find this image on display in a commercial context without attribution and proper licensing in a remote town in Greenland. I had at no time received a request to reuse the image in such a context.

I took some photos of the poster to keep as documentation and got the contact details for the company responsible for the post. Back home in Denmark I wrote to the company, which is situated in France, explaining about my observations and complaining about what I perceived as improper use of my photo.

A series of emails followed and to summarize the current situation is this.

The company in France has done the following corrective actions

  • The company has apologized to me that they have used the photo in a context which I perceive as being in violation of the license conditions
  • The company has contacted the organizer of the competition asking them to add an adequate attribution on the poster. I have received a confirmation from the organizer stating that they intend to add it. The posters are on display for another week.

In addition the company claims the following

  • They were not aware the photo was licensed in any way.
  • The importance of my photograph is diminutive, as they did not win the competition.
  • The competition rules states that the submitted posters shall be anonymous. That is, attribution is not allowed.

I, on the other hand claim the following

  • The company should have know that the image is licensed as it is clearly indicated on the image page.
  • Being an architecture company it is expected that they are aware of and knowledgeable about basic licensing of media.
  • The company should have contacted me prior to publication to ask for permission to use it or negotiate a fee for reuse in this context. It was easy to contact me, as there is a link from the image page to my user page, where the talk page is available for such requests.
  • That the submissions were anonymous is a bad excuse for not attributing the creator. They had two possibilities: They could ask me prior to publication if it would be acceptable if I were not attributed, and they had the option not to use the image at all.
  • The fact that the company did not win the competition is irrelevant. The submission of the poster is done under the assumption that there is a certain chance that it will win. Otherwise they would not do it. The project budget is considerable, so the importance of reusing the image is not diminutive.
  • Photos of this character are not easily available in the public domain and they have a market value when used in such a commercial context, where the license conditions cannot be met. I have found material of similar topics and quality on the commercial site arc-pic.com. This site requires attribution even when a photo is bought for republication. The typical price level is about 100€ for a use like this.
  • Given the fact that the company did not ask up front for permission, I have proposed to settle the issue, if the company accepts to compensate me economically with a fee of 200€ of which I have stated that I will donate half the amount (100€) to the Wikimedia Foundation. That is, I will keep 100€ equivalent to the market value. I have proposed to send documentation for the donation or alternatively suggested that they undertake the donation, provided they send me documentation.

The company has not replied at all to my proposal for settlement despite several follow-up emails. Most recently, I have informed the company that I am initiating an investigation of the steps I need to undertake in order to raise my claims via a lawyer. I am hoping for a settlement though. I have also informed the company that I would post this thread here, and I have invited them to join the discussion, in case they feel I have omitted important details, or have anything to add.

I would like to hear the communitys opinion about this licensing incident.

  • What is your opinion about the claims put forward by them and me?
  • In case you find my claims reasonable, what is your advice concerning the next legal steps, in case the incident cannot be settled.
  • If I choose to pursue this issue with lawyers, what are my chances of having my claim confirmed?

On purpose, I have not revealed the particular town in Greenland, the name of the particular project or the name of the architecture company in France. I am still hoping to settle the issue with the company without involving lawyers. Thus, I do not want to expose these details in public.

-- Slaunger (talk) 20:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I assume they were using the CC-BY-SA terms, as it would be pretty hard to comply with the GFDL :-) To use the photo... I think they have to attribute your name, and note that the photo (and possibly the entire poster, if it is a derivative work) is licensed as CC-BY-SA. The license does not have a non-commercial restriction, so I don't see why they would have had to notify you. They may not have to attribute the author of the rest of the poster, but they would need to attribute the photo (they could just note that the photo author has nothing to do with the contest submission). Not attributing the photo (and making the license clear) turns it into a copyright violation... you can point them to this page. If they wanted to use it without attributing you, then yes, they should have gotten permission. If they are adding the attribution though... that would seem to solve most of the issues. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:47, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi Carl. Thank you for your comment. I agree, it could not be GFDL. They would have to use the CC-BY-SA terms. But as I understand the ShareAlike condition they would have to publish their poster under CC-BY-SA as well, as they build their work on my work. It is this lack of CC-BY-SA licensing of their derived work, which I perceive as the main problem. -- Slaunger (talk) 21:00, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
They may be able to argue the poster is a collective work, and not a derivative, since your photo was not altered -- you are getting into technicalities there which may differ by country, and I am surely not a good judge of Icelandic law :-) If it was me, I wouldn't push that point, but rather just the attribution and license notification. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:09, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
It is published in Greenland, where I guess Danish law applies;-) Do I understand you correctly that it is the attribution notice, which should include the licence name? I am a little bit confused by the text linked to from the CC-BY-SA license template to Creative Commons. Here the following text is shown:
Attribution Share Alike (by-sa)
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
I have the impression that the poster was new work based on my work. So what you are saying is, that since it is also based on other peoples work, and I can confirm that is the case, the new work is not a derivative work. Thus, it does not have to be published under CC-BY-SA? And, thus, if the attribution notice is fixed (or does not include cc-by-sa, but I did not ask for that either), the image has been used in accordance with cc-by-sa. Is that correct? -- Slaunger (talk) 21:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Whoops, Danish law, yeah :-) The attribution does need to include the license, yes, so others are aware they can use the image too. As for a collective work... that can be something like a magazine, which collects individual articles and photos (each of which can have their own copyright). CC-BY-SA does not force the license of the collective work... since you have given permission to distribute copies of the photo itself, which remains unchanged. It definitely extends to the creation of derivative works though; those must be CC-BY-SA or a similar license. See the full legal code; they make a distinction between an "adaptation" (derivative work) and a "collection" (collective work). Derivative works must also by CC-BY-SA or a similar license, but collective works do not need to be. A poster with a collection of photographs probably straddles that border... and I'm really not sure there. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi Carl. Thank you for further clarifying the license conditions. I was not aware of this distinction between adaptation and collection in the full license text of the CC-BY-SA. When I read through the full license text and compare it with the way the photograph has been used in the poster (it is used in unmodified form) it does seem to fit well with what is considered a collection by the CreativeCommons license, which means that the poster itself does not have to be licensed as CC-BY-SA itself. I had perceived it as a derivative work (adaptation) because the creative idea presented in the poster was derived from my (and other images) on the poster, but that falls into what is considered a collection. So, in summary, it is probably OK that the company has not published the poster under CC-BY-SA. However, they should have attributed me as the creator and mentioned the CC-BY-SA license as part of the attribution notice. Considering that they have initiated actions to actually fix the attribution shortly following my complaint, this should probably be considered excuseable. They have not mentioned CC-BY-SA on the attribution notice, on the other hand I have not asked them to add it, as I was unaware of this detail. So, open issues seems to have been resolved. A good learning experience, and it makes me reconsider if I still want to use the CC-BY-SA in future uploads.... I do not feel too comfortable about this collection thing... -- Slaunger (talk) 08:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
It's worth noting that this "collection thing" is pretty much all that lets Commons, Wikipedia and other GFDL-licensed projects use CC-BY-SA images at all. A Wikipedia article with images on it is considered (or at least asserted to be) a collection; if it were an adaptation, it could not include CC-BY-SA images without itself being licensed under CC-BY-SA, which (the "GFDL 1.3 hack" notwithstanding) is not generally compatible with the GFDL. (If and when Wikimedia chooses to exercise the GFDL 1.3 option of switching to CC-BY-SA, of course, the situation will be reversed — then we'll have to rely on the equivalent language in the GFDL to be able to use GFDL-licensed images on a CC-BY-SA wiki.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:41, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Good point. The company in question has by the way kindly offered me a fee of 150€ to settle this particular incident. An offer, which I have accepted. -- Slaunger (talk) 13:38, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Yep... the GFDL has a similar clause. I believe copyright, in general, only gives the author the ability to control derivative works anyways (that is typically one of the rights explicitly listed in copyright laws). The right of copying/distribution is the only thing preventing the inclusion in a collective work I think, so once that is allowed there is no real way to prevent inclusion anyways. I suppose a license could try ("allows distribution except inside non-free collective works") but that may cause it to not be considered "free" in the first place. I'm not sure that Commons would accept such a license. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:07, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

November 12

Guys, there seems to be some people fighting over one of the finest images in wikimedia: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:New_York_City_at_night_HDR.jpg See if you can do something about it...

flickr

is cc2.0 for http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/82535061/ appropriate? -- 78.52.26.82 15:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Unless the Flickr user is Ethan A Russell, no. The original is marked as "all rights reserved" on Russell's site here (third photograph on the bottom). Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Just looking at what he uploads and licenses under CC-By-2.0 (Andy Worhall, CD covers, etc) I wouldn't trust that he owns that particular image. --J.smith (talk) 19:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Double image template

Should we, and can we, get en:Template:Double image working on Commons? Maybe it does work and I have file paths wrong, see: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Doug_youvan#Image:GCMOON.JPG Doug youvan (talk) 17:44, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

  Done Pruneautalk 18:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

November 13

Commons:Project scope

"Files and other material which are not lawful for Commons to host on its servers in Florida will be deleted on sight even if they otherwise fall within Commons scope as set out above."Commons:Project_scope#Censorship
I've asked on the talk page but I didn't get any answere: What is not lawful for commons? Is there any page where I can read on my own what is not allowed on Commons?
thx --D-Kuru (talk) 17:45, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Child pornography? Multichill (talk) 18:01, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I can't imagine child pornography falling within scope... still, if something is in scope, I can't imagine it being illegal anywhere. Maybe more clarification is needed somewhere. How do you turn this on (talk) 18:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand what it is you want. The scope is quite clear, with reference to the laws of Florida. Are you expecting a page on Commons that lists every possible act that is unlawful under Florida law? A full list of everything that is not allowed under that head would simply mean reciting the law, and that is unlikely to be very useful. Or is there something specific you have in mind? Is there a specific type of image you want to upload? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 07:21, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I want to have a link to the law of Florida. I serched for The Law of Florida, but I don't know which part of the law is the right one. I'm not going to add every case which is not lawful for Commons, because as you said it wouldn't be very useful. A link and some cases should be enough.
If I don't know the law of Florida I can't include it in a decision if a picture is out of scope by law. I don't think about a special one and I'm not going to upload one which could be out of scope by law. It's just to add this information
--D-Kuru (talk) 12:41, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
The Foundation is not located in California ? Teofilo (talk) 12:47, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Maybe the Foundation is located there, but the severs are located in Florida. --D-Kuru (talk) 23:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Child porn is as in-scope as real pornography is, and we have plenty of pictures of that. The moral and legal issues surrounding child porn are the difference. Powers (talk) 13:01, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

The point of the "servers are in Florida" comment in COM:PS is really to allow us to delete images quickly in the event we are told by the WMF counsel that they are not permitted under the the applicable local law where the servers reside. Not only Florida state law may be relevant, but also US Federal law. Say, for example, an issue of child porn comes up. Regardless of how much "free speech" argument there may be that we should cover such things, if we are told the image is not legal for the WMF to host in Florida, then it will be deleted. The purpose is more to provide legal protection to the Foundation than to give practical guidance as to what may or may not be uploaded. That is very well covered in the rest of COM:PS I think. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:03, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

The document also specifies "Florida law" to exclude the laws of other countries. For example, the swastika is illegal to display in some areas. Speaking out against the government is illegal in some places. By defining what laws apply we solve all of those potential arguments. --J.smith (talk) 17:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
The law should be more than just providing "legal protection to the Foundation". We also could include instead that the Fundation is not responsible for the uploads.
If the law-clause is just added to allow speedy deleting for files which are not lawful you could also cancel it, because nowbody who knows the law of Florida knows Commons good enough to find the files which should get deleted in the mire of Commons. Who should tell us that some image is not lawful for Commons if (nearly) nobody knows the law of Florida.
I don't think that we should create a whole law book for Commons or Wikipedia, but maybe we should fix some issues. Not to forget that (to re-pick up the CP theme) Commons wouldn't get rid af a pedophils paradise-image. Because Commons is a sisterproject of Wikipedia, Wikipedia's image would get demaged too.
--D-Kuru (talk) 23:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Is there any page any page available
--D-Kuru (talk) 16:23, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Bot without a botflag

Can I run a bot without a botflag on Wikimedia Commons? It will transfer a few images from Wikipedias. (1-2 pictures a week or less) --Xxxx00 (talk) 08:36, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it'll not flood recent changes :-) So bot flag is not necessary. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:53, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Gallery of new files

Hi everyone, Why gallery of new files only shows 48 files per page? I think it should be like Recent changes page and it must have "options" so we can choose that it show how many files and from which date.   ■ MMXXtalk  08:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I think will be good idea to add this to bugzilla:. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:52, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Where exactly I must request or add this ?   ■ MMXXtalk  15:46, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Go to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ and click the "Enter a new bug report" link (which is also available in the menu on the left). You'll need to register an account if you don't already have one, which is a minor hassle. The bug report form has a lot of obscure-looking options, but don't worry about those too much: the defaults generally make sense, and if you get anything wrong, someone will usually fix it quickly. You may want to search the existing reports first to avoid wasting time filing a duplicate report, but it's not a big deal either.
When filing a bug report based on an on-wiki discussion, it's usually a good idea to post the bug number here afterwards so that others can easily find it. You can easily link to a particular bug like this: bugzilla:44. You may also want to leave a backlink to the original discussion on the bug report: you can do this either by pasting the URL or using wiki link syntax. (But don't try anything fancy like piped links, they don't work.) Note that wikilinks from bugzilla go to en.wikipedia by default; use a "commons:" prefix to link to pages on Commons. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:30, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Size of Commons

Please reply to my talk page (too). Thanks.

I've tried to look around really hard, but did not find any data about the size of Wikimedia Commons, as in bytes. Do we have any data on this?

Thanks. --grin ✎ 10:13, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Including or excluding all deleted copyvios/out of scope pictures/{{Badname}} and {{Duplicate}} images ?
--D-Kuru (talk) 11:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
According to a quick toolserver query, Commons currently has 3,484,354 files with a total of 2,512,152,872,379 bytes (about 2.3 TiB). Counting old revisions (including duplicates due to reverts etc.) adds 153,346,682,200 bytes (143 GiB) more, for a total of a little over 2.4 terabytes. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:24, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
And, just in case anyone is curious, here's a breakdown by MIME type:
Type Files Bytes
unknown/unknown 61 72,979,906
application/ogg 93,891 57,783,784,694
application/pdf 2,782 4,561,069,879
application/photoshop 15 25,832,881
application/postscript 1 39,749
application/vnd.ms-excel 5 255,488
application/x-B 1 1,202
application/xml 4 830,795
application/zip 103 15,084,555
audio/mid 4 2,448,008
audio/midi 1,096 10,959,039
audio/mp3 4 10,203,085
audio/mp4 1 2,701,800
audio/wav 4 5,095,842
image/gif 96,846 14,895,262,131
image/jpeg 2,677,664 2,296,663,626,937
image/jpeg2000 2 122,569
image/png 405,911 101,974,549,073
image/svg+xml 203,792 27,750,853,906
image/vnd.djvu 2,226 8,543,592,778
image/x-bmp 3 1,658,850
image/x-ms-bmp 184 163,432,084
image/x-xcf 55 75,811,789
text/plain 3 2,314,043
video/mp2p 1 6,539,264
video/mp4 3 14,512,261
video/x-msvideo 3 19,630,412
—Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:23, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Can we make this statistics on designated page and update it periodically? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:52, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Sure, why not? It's a somewhat slow but simple query. I'll see about writing a script that can update it, say, once a week. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:24, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

4 mp3 files are available on Commons? Since when they're in scope... --D-Kuru (talk) 16:28, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Dunno. Here's a file list for all types with less than 20 files each, so you can have a look yourself:
BTW, the 61 "unknown/unknown" files appear to be mostly misidentified .xcf files, though there are a few .djvu suffixes in there too. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:33, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Help remove and add a picture

I am having trouble changing a picture. Can someone please explain how to do this? I do not understand the HTML code language. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. You can email me at (email removed) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tcannaday (talk • contribs) 22:51, 13 November 2008 (UTC) (UTC)

Hi. I'm afraid you'll need to give us a bit more information on what you're trying to do - are you trying to upload a new version of a picture on commons? Are you trying to change an image linked from another wikimedia project? Or are you trying to add an image to a webpage you have elsewhere? Also, I removed your email address to prevent you being spammed. We tend to use talk pages here on commons. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:51, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Sainsra

Saisra A small Village In India. It Situated In Nagaour District In Rajasthan. Population OF Our Village Is Near 3 Thousand. Litrecy Percentage Of Our Village Is 70% For Male And 45% For Females. Our Village Have Senior Secondary School In Sanskrit. Most People Were Farmers. Some Of Males Work At Surat,Ahemdabad,Mumbai As well As other PArt Of India. Females Were House Wifes. Most Of People Were Teachers After Doing B.ED. Our Village HAve Some Of The Brilliant Students Like Baldev RAm Choudhary Doing M.A. From Jawahar Lal Nehru University New Delhi -- 07:54, 14 November 2008 60.254.62.143

Does this have some relationship with making images freely available? AnonMoos (talk) 08:23, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

en:Image:Rochellehudson.jpg

I could release this pic into the public domain when I add this description:

en:Rochelle Hudson in 1935, promoting Show Them No Mercy! (+ {{PD-US-not renewed}}, of course)

I don't think that an author is needed. Correct? Mutter Erde (talk) 11:36, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

If the author is unknown, you'll have no choice but to leave it blank. How do you turn this on (talk) 11:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Done. Image:Rochellehudson.jpg. Regards Mutter Erde (talk) 10:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Lecture at Output.jpg

There's something I don't understand about that DR. The uploader says is the author of the picture and apparently no-one asks for such a proof... but when he says he's the author of the picture we can see within the picture we need a proof of that! Why? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 11:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think anyone has questioned your claim that you own the copyright to both the photo and the slide shown in it. However, the comment you made on the deletion request page sounds like you may not fully understand what releasing an image under a free license (or, as in this case, into the public domain) means. I'm not sure if you actually read the license tag ({{PD-self}}) you chose when (re)uploading the image; in case you didn't, it says that you "grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law." This implies that, in particular, anyone is free to modify the image, put it on their own website or sell it for profit. Depending on local laws you may retain some "moral rights" to the image, such as the right to be acknowledged as its author, but even that is somewhat uncertain.
If that's okay with you, great! Just say so clearly, and I expect the image will be undeleted shortly. However, just saying that the image is "free to use for every wikipedia" is not enough: Commons is a repository of free content, and all files hosted here must be licensed in a way that conforms to the definition of free cultural works. In particular, it means that, if you want the image to be kept here on Commons (or on Wikipedia, for that matter), you have to allow everyone to reuse, modify and/or sell it. (You're free to require that you're to be attributed as the author, and that any modified version must be licensed under the same terms as the original image; you can do this by choosing a license such as {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}}. But that's about it.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't think you answer the right person, man! I am NOT the author of the picture, I just wondered why it got deleted. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 18:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Without seeing the image I have hard time following the arguments for and against deletion. However the author user:Yuri Landman Hypercustom claims to be the author of the picture and of some "illustration on screen" and he releases it under {{PD-Self}}. I am not sure why it was deleted. --Jarekt (talk) 16:48, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

European Commission Green Paper - Copyright in the Knowledge Economy

The European Commission published in July a "Green Paper - Copyright in the Knowledge Economy" (1) .

In §3.4. They talk about the possibility to adapt copyright law so that user-created contents would become easier, and they ask to send them feedback by 30 November 2008 at [some email address].

I thought it would be kind of cool if the foundation or the individual european chapters would use this opportunity to give them some hints of what a Wikipedia-friendly copyright law/directive should look like, or a few concrete examples of the worries we are having in present time with the current laws. In particular it should be stressed how laws in some country lacking a "fair use" restriction for pictures and/or without a "panorama freedom" are cumbersome. Non copyright issues like the ltalian law on cultural goods should also be mentioned.

(1) English ; Other languages are available here

Teofilo (talk) 15:19, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Also relevant for us is section 3.1.3, about orphan works. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 15:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
A member on the foundation list points out that people are already discussing this here : http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Groep_Groenboek (Dutch) & http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Groep_Groenboek/en (English). Teofilo (talk) 12:53, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

November 15

Newbie needs help uploading images

Hi there! I am new to the contributor end of the Wiki world and need some help. I have created some great vector images for a client that she would like released into the public domain. We created them together, I've saved them all in .svg format for uploading to the Commons and have descriptions of the files (though I think they may need a bit more, which I can do). I am not a tech newbie, but the way Wikipedia and the Commons work has me spinning my wheels. Would someone like to take the images I have and do all the uploading for me? Is that possible/allowable? I noticed that other images of the same subject (Mayan day signs) are all in .png and there is a request for vector versions. Ours would be a different set, of course, but in vector format. My client is very anxious to get these items up.

Thank you to anyone who can help me out...my user name is Ekwoman... -- 00:31, 15 November 2008 User:Ekwoman

Is there any specific problem which is not covered at Commons:First steps/Upload form and its linked pages, or resolved by using the basic upload form ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload?uploadformstyle=basic ) and/or possibly turning off Javascript in your browser? AnonMoos (talk) 14:43, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Clickable images

I was looking into creating clickable images in cases where numerous features of an image have their own galleries here, e.g. User:Wknight94/1. My question is where to put them. To make the clickable images most useful, they need to be quite large IMHO, like in User:Wknight94/1. But, in cases like Forum Romanum, having numerous large clickable images would make the gallery enormous. Should they be split into separate galleries like Clickable images of the Forum Romanum? Or should the clickable code be left in the image descriptions themselves, like in Image:Scale one to hundred no labels.svg, etc.? Or none of the above? —Wknight94 (talk) 00:55, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, If you have one or two "clickable" and can limit there size to 500px-600px then I don't see any problem including them in the gallery. --J.smith (talk) 02:23, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
As I scan Forum Romanum, I saw over a dozen that contain multiple subjects, each of which have their own galleries. That includes general forum pictures - like I experimented with - as well as maps of the forum. —Wknight94 (talk) 03:29, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Creative Commons licensing questions

Can an author require than an in-image credit be retained (i.e. not cropped out or otherwise removed), and/or can they require that Wikipedia credit them on the article-page itself, while staying within the CC-BY-(+/- SA) criteria? The conditions require modifications to be allowed, but requiring an in-image credit doesn't prevent image modification even though it may constrain it a bit. Can we accept such restrictions here, and (though not directly a Commons issue) do you think Wikipedia would allow submitters to require an in-article credit? Richard001 (talk) 05:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

In-image credits are generally discouraged here as watermarking... AnonMoos (talk) 14:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

COM:CFD

What can we do to resolve issues that have been hanging out for ages on COM:CFD? For example, Commons:Categories for discussion/Current requests/2008/01/Category:Historical buildings in the United States has been hanging out for over 10 months without anyone making a reasonable case for why we have this category, but no admin seems to have deemed the matter resolved. Similarly, I started Commons:Categories for discussion/Current requests/2008/09/Category:Pseudo-European Brooklyn over 2 months ago and not a single person has chimed in to even explain what the category is supposed to mean. Are we stuck with these bad categories indefinitely? Or what? - Jmabel ! talk 06:48, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

One of the problems with CFD is that it does not appear automatically on your watchlist. For each new month and each new CFD, there is a new subpage, so you have to open it to put it explicitely on your watchlist. I will issue a request on Commons_talk:CommonsProject_Architecture, some people are watching it. --Foroa (talk) 18:26, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


It looks like the "Pseudo-European Brooklyn" discussion page I referenced above has now been removed, but the category has not. That seems a very odd resolution. - Jmabel ! talk 05:50, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

copyvio?

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:DanceofLife.gif I really don't know if Mvnch images are pd or not by now. -- Drini 20:08, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Edvard Munch's paintings will become public domain in the beginning of 2015, according to the Norway copyright law. The image is a copyvio as derivative work from a copyrighted painting. --Joku Janne (talk) 20:21, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Deleted as a copyright violation, Joku Janne is right. --Kjetil_r 20:24, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

November 16

Categorizing protein structure images

I have ~50,000 protein structure images that I want to upload. Before I do that, I need to figure out the best way to categorize them. I want to use multiple categories as it's used in SCOP --( Structural Classification of Proteins). Here are some examples of protein images that I've uploaded so far. Within each sub-category are other categories based on Fold, Superfamily, Family and then the image file for the Protein Domain. Would this kind of categorizing be OK?

I also have a question regarding the same image file in different categories. Within the first category (All alpha proteins) and another category (All alpha and beta proteins) is the same image file PDB_2etn.jpg. For one, I had to change the filename to PDB_2etn-C.jpg so I can use the same image in a different category. I've noticed that wikicommons has recognized this image file as a duplicate. I did this because SCOP had this protein image in two different categories too. I need to know if creating duplicate image files is OK to do or does anyone have any suggestions on how I should categorize these kinds of proteins? Donabel SDSU (talk) 00:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Each image can exist in as many categories as you want! Just add multiple categories and the system keeps track of it for you. --J.smith (talk) 02:33, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Pictures of unknown authors

Is it true that images of unknown authors are {{PD-old}} after 70 years? Authordescription of an image: "Author=I don´t know. Photo is my possession, but I don´t know, who made it." If I own some picture is it OK to post them 70 years after they were taken (Even I may know the original author who didn't die less than 70 years ago - I guess that this person is the author, but I don't know)
--D-Kuru (talk) 12:42, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Your image would have to meet requirements of {{Anonymous-EU}} or {{Anonymous work}}. I suspect that {{Anonymous-EU}} will meet your circumstances. The distinction between anonymous author and unknown-to-me author is unclear to me for most images. There are few famous images of anonymous authors (see category:Stroop Report for example) but 99% of images I upload with no author came from sources that did not provide that information, either because the author was truly anonymous, because they did not know it at the time of the publication or because the book did not bother to list any authors of the photographs. Even more messy are sources that do not distinguish between the authors or collectors who are in physical possession of the photographs and frequently mix them together. --Jarekt (talk) 18:41, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
If the author is unknown. Is it important when the image was taken or when it was uploaded published (should meet the real world a bit better)?
--D-Kuru (talk) 18:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
The time the work was published is relevant for anonymous works.
But let me clearly state that unknown authors are not the same as anonymous authors. Anonymous authors are authors who didn't want their name known (and never changed their mind about that). If you just don't know the name, it is not anonymous and lifetime plus 70 years applies. (But of course, if you don't know the name, you don't know the date of death. So you can only upload the image, if there is no chance the author still lived 70 years ago. A picture published 1850 could be taken from a young boy who still lived 1938. [But there are some extra rules, for example Template:PD-1923]) --Slomox (talk) 18:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The Library of Congress American Memory

 
Example of file from the Library of Congress

I can imagine that you used to be questioned about this matter, but I need to know if I can upload some files from Library of Congress. Wikimedia has all ready some files from this page. I put here an examle. I all ready up load two files ([10] and [11]) from the page but I don´t know if they are ok. If the tow files are ok I want to up load a few more. But the license is different and the options does not show a proper option to choose like Public Domain that is in the example. I thanks your help in this matter and sorry about my English.--eliasjorge4 (talk) 01:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Many, but not all, LoC files are in the public domain, or are US Government works. The LoC disclaims being authoritative about copyright so it's up to you to evaluate it carefully. I strongly suggest you give links to where you got the image. Not just the Image URL itself but also links to the page where the image is described. Note also that your links are all not quite right, in that you're using pipes ("|") ... only do that for double brackets. For single bracket (external links) use a space instead. The Monterrey example image does not appear to be from the US Library of Congress given the link you give to the University of Texas. ++Lar: t/c 04:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, according to the rights page of the collection, the family of author (Robert Runyan, 1881-1968) donated the collection to the Center for American History at the University of Texas in 1986, who now claims copyright on the collection. If photos were published at the time (i.e. before 1923), then they would be in the public domain, and no copyright could be claimed. If they were unpublished during all that time... then they would still be under copyright. I don't see any way to determine that they were published, from the looks of it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:33, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank both of you guys and good luck.--eliasjorge4 (talk) 19:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

November 14

two nearly identical wikimedia logos

Image:Wikimedia-logo-small.png is nearly the same as Image:Wikimedia without text transparent.png but I think {{GFDL}} is the wrong license (since June 2005!). I have tagged them both as dupe/vva.

-- 85.182.126.153 08:03, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

They should all be {{Copyright by Wikimedia}}, whoever uploaded them. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:01, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Is there really much point in having nearly identical logos like this? How do you turn this on (talk) 17:28, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
No. They can all be safely replaced with the SVG version. --Slomox (talk) 17:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

My copyrighted photo (was Image:HEMA_Utrecht.jpg) with "public domain" license on wikimedia

To my surprise I found one of my photos here on commons, with a public domain license. I was never asked or informed about this. The photo must have been taken from my flickr photostream. It has been on wikimedia for quite some time, with the result that it can be found on several other websites, because people apparently thought it was free to use. Some sites I have found:

The problem is not only that the photo is (illegally) in use on wikipedia, but that the licensing policy of wikimedia has resulted in this photo spreading around to other places on internet. I know that this licensing policy is a deliberate choice of wikimedia, and so I am holding wikimedia also responsible for the spread of this photo.

I am waiting for a proposal from wikimedia to resolve the matter, including the spread of this photo to other websites. My guess is that you have dealt with similar situations before. A simple deletion of the photo from wikimedia is in this case not enough.

Furthermore I would like to urge you to change your policy with uploaded images and publish such images with a free license only if it has been indisputably established that such free license is valid. Your current policy apparently can lead to a widespread copyright infringement.

Taka (talk) 06:46, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

We could delete the phote here i assume. But it is impossible to remove it from the whole intenet. I would like to say also that Wikimedia is not responsible for spreading the image. The uploader is.
I think the only proposal we can do is to delete it locally, there is not more we can do. Commons is not responsible for the uploads. We check almost all uploads and when people say it is own work. Whe Assume Good Faith, image with a link get checkt for the licence. This person say's it is own work,it is impossible to check that. So there is nothing wrong with our policy Sterkebaktalk 08:06, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
I've tagged it as disputed and then as copyvio. Interestingly, 18 months ago it was checked by someone and found as "Flickr review not possible"[12] without any further consequences. Obviously we have to fine-tune that procedure. --Túrelio (talk) 08:28, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
It has been tagged as no source. But then the uploader say's it is own work. Sterkebaktalk 08:33, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
It is interesting that the uploader is being believed in such a situation. In this case the uploader felt pressed by the license policy on commons to choose an easy way out. It is not unlikely that this happens more often. Taka (talk) 09:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Not to be rude, but websites take submissions like this on faith from users. Flickr has files you've uploaded on faith they are yours. Flickr doesn't require you to prove your identity, an anonymous Yahoo account is all it takes. When copyright violations are pointed out on Commons they are quickly deleted. In this case nobody thought to follow through and delete the file. However, consider Commons has over 3 million files and only a few thousand active contributors, and of those only a few dozen who police images. -Nard the Bard 09:49, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Not to be rude, but when a license is changed to self, alarm bells should go off. If it's not the initial license the image is uploaded with, it's most likely not someone's own work. If it was, they would have used that license to begin with. - Dammit (talk) 10:17, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Other websites do not require a free license and do not promote themselves as a source of free media. My problem is not so much the presence of this photo on commons - I know it will be deleted quickly from commons in a case like this. The problem is that the image has been spread around from commons.
With all understanding for the task of the ones policing images here, it is a poor excuse that there are too few to do the job well. I am not sure if wikimedia realizes that the consequences of a copyright violation as in this case reaches beyond wikimedia itself. Wikimedia is not only a source for images for wikimedia projects, but also for totally unrelated websites. This is part of the goal of creating free content. That responsibility should in my opinion also be reflected in the control procedures. That may be a lot of work, but the goals of wikimedia are also not very modest. Taka (talk) 10:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Another part of the problem is the lack of an easily accessible image search engine - you upload an image instead of inputting search terms and it searches for instances of that image on the intertubes. Tineye goes some way to filling this hole, but it's registration only. MER-C 10:44, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
A big problem with current image search engines is that their databases are so incomplete. I just located a copy of the deleted image (by Googling for the title) and tried searching for it on both TinEye and GazoPa. No useful results either way. Does flickr have their own image similarity search? Doesn't look like they do. (For that matter, neither does Commons, unless you count the hash used to find exact duplicates. I wonder if anyone's ever tried to write a MediaWiki extension for that.) Of course, in this particular case a simple text search for the title would've been enough. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
We Assume good faith over here. So if someone uploads an image and marks it as "own work" we assume the user is telling the truth. Multichill (talk) 12:07, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
In this case, there were reasons not to trust the uploader. The uploader first mentioned Flickr as the source, but without specifying an exact location, so that the review-bot was unable to check whether the license was ok. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 12:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Which is fine, if someone had been paying attention to that image. But we're not gods, we can only see what is pointed to our attention. -Nard the Bard 17:16, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The revision history has now been deleted or made invisible. Here is the summary (to show that someone did take notice of the situation)

  • Revision as of 13:42, 21 March 2007 by user:Fbcnl. Image uploaded. As source was mentioned "flickr", as license "Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0".
  • Revision as of 12:03, 5 April 2007 by user:FlickreviewR. Added the text "This image was originally posted to Flickr at http://flickr.com/photos//. It was reviewed on 12:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC) by the automated bot FlickreviewR. The copyright status of the image was undeterminable by the bot, and requires human attention. If you are an administrator or a trusted user, you can review the image and remove the tag."
  • Revision as of 18:48, 8 April 2007 by user:MECU. "This media file is missing essential source information. The author and source of the file must be given, so that others can verify the copyright status. Unless the source is given, the file can be speedily deleted seven days after this template was added and the uploader was notified: (8 April 2007)."
  • Revision as of 18:08, 12 April 2007 by user:Thuresson. Removed the text added previously by FlickreviewR
  • Revision as of 14:37, 15 April 2007 by user:Fbcnl. Claims that it is his own work and changed the license to Public Domain. "This image has been (or is hereby) released into the public domain by its author, Fbcnl at the wikipedia project. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible: Fbcnl grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law."
  • Revision as of 13:10, 9 July 2007 by user:Onderwijsgek. Removed some hard returns.
  • Revision as of 08:22, 15 November 2008 by user:Túrelio. "The license tag of this image is uncertain or unverified and has been disputed....."
  • Revision as of 08:25, 15 November 2008 by user:Túrelio. "This media file may meet the criteria for speedy deletion....."

That is the last versio I got before it was deleted. Taka (talk) 18:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


Nard the Bard : "Which is fine, if someone had been paying attention to that image. But we're not gods, we can only see what is pointed to our attention."
Look if you are not gods and you admit yourselves that things here on commons are not controllable, then you should not give nor require a free license on uploaded images. Just use "wikimedia-only" licenses. Then eventual damage is limited to wikimedia projects. Now my photo is all over the internet. I am a bad searcher, but I have found five other sites that use this photo, thinking that it is in the public domain. There has been no effort, nor intention to do something about that from here.
I am aware that this (wikimedia-only licensing) will not be met with great enthusiasm here, but if you can not control your business, then you should not pretend you can. I hope you realize that "we are not gods" is a very poor excuse for mistakes made by a system of which you apparently are aware of that is not functioning. Taka (talk) 20:39, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
While I can understand that you are annoyed, it's a bit unfair to complain about the people who here at the commons try to catch most such cases. Complain to the uploder, he's the one who cheated you, and he's the one who claimed it was his image and that it was PD. He could've done the same at Flickr, too (we catch enough of these Flickrvios regularly). The Flickr operators will take down content if problems are pointed out to them, but they don't have volunteers who try to limit such abuses of the system. Here at the Commons, you've got both: us volunteers, and the operator of the site. There are copyright violations on both Flickr and at the Commons. In both cases, the problem is lying uploaders, not the system. And in both cases, you can only hold the uploader responsible, not the service provider. Lupo 20:52, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
There is a problem here, and Taka makes a sensible suggestion. The problem is that Commons requires derivatives and commercial use allowed, and that wikipedia contributers that want to illustrate there articles often cannot find such images. That is the cause of the cheating. Allowing a licence "wikimedia only" would fix that. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 21:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Take the "wikimedia-only" license proposal up with the WMF Board. It won't fly. The problem is not licenses, it's lying uploaders who don't give a shit, amplified by the sheer mass of uploads we get and the painfully twisted supervision processes here: when you find a suspicious image or even an obvious copyvio, you have to actually prove that it is not free to get it deleted. It should be the other way 'round: any suspicious image should be deleted unless the uploader makes a really good case for it being indeed free. Lupo 21:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
I am sure that admins here do their best. I complain about the system, not about (individual) admins. It is the system that requires a free license. I understand that that things are not fully controllable, and there seems to be agreement about that. The system is flawed, and even if you admins try to make the best of it, there is no way to control it all. That is why I think that those free licenses are a very bad idea.
Yes. I know that you are all doing your best. But in doing so, please do not overlook the damage you are doing to others. All I do is to suggest a major improvement to the system: get rid of the free licenses and use wikimedia-only licenses. I am doing my best to make photos, but not to have them put in the public domain by a wikimedia project. It is not realistic to point just to the uploader, because it is the project as a whole that asks for media with free licenses. And that is what you get, but sometimes illegally.
But just for the effort: can somebody please give me personal information about the uploader. Name, address, telephone, social security number etc, so that I would be able to take legal action against this person.
Taka (talk) 21:20, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
We don't have access to that information. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
"We" here meaning normal Commons users and administrators, that is. CheckUsers have access to some of that information, and system administrators (technically) to all of it. However, Wikimedia's privacy policy says that "Wikimedia will not sell or share private information, such as email addresses, with third parties, unless you agree to release this information, or it is required by law to release the information" (emphasis mine). Thus, if you wish to obtain this information, I believe (disclaimer: IANAL) you'll need to first initiate legal action against the pseudonymous user in question, and then have the Wikimedia Foundation served with a subpoena to obtain their contact information. Your lawyer should be able to advise you in more detail about the best way to proceed here. Either that, or you may try to e-mail the user and see if they respond; if they do, you'll have their e-mail address. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the system doesn't record the "Name, address, telephone or social security number" so not even checkusers or system admins have access to it. The only thing that we might be able to provide (given subpoena, etc) is the IP address and maybe the e-mail address, if the user registered with one. --J.smith (talk) 02:31, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

As the image in question was from the Netherlands, Commons-user:Fbcnl might or might not be identical with nl-User carrying the same name, nl:Gebruiker:Fbcnl, who was recently active on :nl. --Túrelio (talk) 09:04, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I have received 2 independent messages with the name (and a bit more info) of the uploader. Thanks (although I still am of the opinion that the issue is more a matter of the system than of persons). Taka (talk) 12:33, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Responsibility of the uploader?

Above is stated that the uploader holds responsibility for his uploads. However, I can find no such statement in the upload form here. There is just some information about allowed licenses and "freedoms" that the media on commons require, followed by a "Please only upload files that either are in the public domain in the source country (author died more than 70 years ago) and in the U.S., or that are explicitly covered by a license which grants the Four Freedoms."

The upload form suggest that every upload to commons will be reviewed. The plea to only upload files with the specified freedoms, holds no warning for the uploader - it is more like "please make it easy for us reviewers, and don't upload too many files that we have to delete". Because "If you do not provide suitable license and source information, your upload will be deleted without further notice. Thank you for your understanding."

The upload form does not make the uploader responsible. Taka (talk) 13:49, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

You keep saying the system is at fault - what changes would you want to see? How should the system differ? Keep in mind the realities of an all-volunteer environment. --J.smith (talk) 16:37, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Taka already explained that the cause of false licenses is the requirements here of "derivative and commercial use allowed" licenses. Introducing a wikimedia license would eliminate most of the problem. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 16:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
And that would change the basic principles of Wikimedia. Commons can't just decide to do that. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:18, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Why not when other wikipedias have there own local rules? And I believe that basic principles might change if wikimedia (or more likely Flickr) were sued and found liable for false declarations of "commercial use allowed". /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 17:29, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
It would also make commons a rather pointless project. We're not here to provide image hosting for other projects, that's incidental. We're here to provide free images to anyone who wants them. Wikimedia only makes that pointless. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:25, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
  • How are they not responsible? Where do we put up a big sign that says "lol, upload copyright violations, please"? Because if they lie about the source or license of their work, they are responsible for that. Nothing Commons does can make them not responsible for their stupidity. -Nard the Bard 16:41, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't know. I was trying to formulate my complaint to the uploader. Then I came to the point that he, as uploader, is responsible for violation of copyrights when uploading a file to commons. For the formulation, I thought it would be nice to point out the exact text that he had agreed to with the upload. To my surprise there are only instructions on the upload form. No warnings, no agreements, nothing that indicates that the uploader will be held responsible in person for violations of copyright.
The uploader is basically anonymous and knows that he is. All you have is an email and an IP-number. That may or may not be enough to identify a person - but such an identification surely is specialist work which is only done when it is very serious. I know it is often possible to get an identification from bits and pieces (as in this case). Wikimedia however does not require that people identify themselves before violating copyrights.
Stupidity? Well, if you are a daily visitor to commons, then you know all that stuff about licenses. But the wikipedia presents itself as "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit". A normal person probably knows a bit about copyright, but the information on the upload form must be totally confusing. Imagine someone who wants to upload an image, being confronted with
  • the freedom to use and perform the work. Perform an image? Nah, does not apply.
  • The freedom to study the work and apply the information. Study an image? Apply the information? This is not about the image.
At that point many occasional uploaders will be lost - you know how people treat EULA's - ,just upload the file, pick a random license from the list and leave it to the admins to figure out if it is okay. There's a warning in red that the file will be deleted without notice if you do something wrong with the upload. And there is that line in bold "everything you find on the web is copyrighted and not permitted here" Well. Fine, just upload something, and see if it isn't deleted. If it isn't deleted, then it must be okay.
You see, people are not interested in licenses, they just want to have an image to go with the article they are working on.
I highly doubt if the text of the upload form has been tested with a random sample of "anyones" who are invited to edit the wikipedia. To give you an example of this stupidity of people, you might want to read this question. Someone wants to put his own photo into an article, but just can not figure out how. The person can find the button "Edit this page" in a wikipedia article, but he is then lost. There is indeed nothing in there to add your own photo. However, there is a certain logic in expecting that it is possible to upload an image directly into an article. The person never figured out how to add his photo. See here: "and I'd upload it to Wikipedia's Creswell Crags page if I only knew how to. "
You do not realize how complicated it is to work with wikipedia. People are so happy that they have found the upload page, so happy that they technically succeed in uploading an image, that they are only vaguely interested in licenses and lose their interest after a few lines which they do not understand. You know how people behave with unknown things: they just try something, if that does not work they try something else and then they give up, or if it is really important they ask someone or look in the documentation. In this specific case this person picks a random license from the list, gets a message that that is not good enough, then he picks another license and then it works.
So there I was, trying to formulate my complaint. What can I say? The upload form did not tell him that he is responsible in person for copyright violations. The upload form suggests that if he uploads something that violates copyright, it will be deleted. And indeed that happens often. But not always.
I am open to suggestions for the formulation of how this person should have known that he is in person responsible for copyright violations while uploading a file to commons.


Taka (talk) 21:21, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
A person is always responsible for their own actions, whether on Commons or anywhere else. Why would you assume otherwise? Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:56, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Totally agree with you Clindberg. A copyvio in most cases (Some are just a misunderstanding or even didn't have any idea for what ever reason) is like shoplifting. Uploading images here is like driving a car, Always take due care and you're responsible for your own actions. Bidgee (talk) 08:27, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

When you upload to commons you are publishing. If your upload is in violation of the law then it is you who are in violation of the law. This is true no matter what notices we do or do not put up. If there is is something clear and brief that we could add which would reduce confusion then I'm all for it, but you need to start recommending language and stop complaining. --Gmaxwell (talk) 06:01, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

"A person is always responsible for their own actions, whether on Commons or anywhere else. Why would you assume otherwise?"
Why wouldn't that count for an organization as well then? Wikimedia has been offering my copyrighted photo for download to the world as public domain for about 20 months. What makes wikimedia not responsible for this? The uploader is not even able to remove his own upload from the servers. After uploading the uploader no longer has any special control over the uploaded file. After uploading, the file is controlled by wikimedia.
"When you upload to commons you are publishing'""
The problem is that this is not stated anywhere. It is suggested that everything uploaded is only published after a check has been performed on the validity of the upload.
"you need to start recommending language and stop complaining"
I am not complaining, I am explaining. I am telling you the story of what has gone wrong and how this could have happened with the current way wikimedia works. I am telling you the story of how I try to get compensation. If you are serious about the impact of the wikimedia projects, that should interest you.
Wikimedia puts all responsibility on the uploader. I am doing some effort to follow that line. In doing so, I meet different difficulties. That should be valuable information for wikimedia, because only then wikimedia can take steps to repair it.
I can do a suggestion if you wish: stop the upload process here until you have fixed it. Get the wikimedia lawyer to help you fix it. I am not a lawyer, and English is not my first language. I find it quite brutal that you want the victim of a copyright violation to fix things which should have been fixed long ago.
Taka (talk) 08:48, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Commons and Wikimedia can't monitor every single file uploaded. We try to but it's not possible. Wikimedia didn't upload the image but only unknowingly hosted the file therefore Wikimedia can't claim responsibility (Flickr, Imageshack ect have the very same issues with copyrighted images).
As I've said it's impossible to check every upload on Wikimedia's servers.
Yes the uploader is the one who is responsible for the uploaded files.
Why stop valid uploads when only 2% if that are copyvios? Bidgee (talk) 10:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


See Commons:General disclaimer. The Foundation provides the platform but not the content. If people disrespect copyright, there is not much else we can do but delete them (and go over their other uploads with a much more critical eye, which was also done). For that matter, there is no 100% guarantee that the Flickr originals come from the author who claims them there. People there do sometimes upload images which are not theirs, and license them as CC-BY or other. We have your word this is your image, but that is not truly verifiable either. There is no reason to doubt it -- but we have the same situation with people who upload here, until (as in this case) we have reasons to doubt them. It is quite unfortunate it was not caught earlier -- it came close, but those edits look mainly to be admins bulk-processing images in administrative categories instead of keeping track of the image in particular. People forget source and license information all the time, so it is not unusual to have uploaders replace "no source" tags with self-authored information, as it is the uploader's responsibility to get that right. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Please take Taka serious. He has suffered damage due to Commons spreading his image. His point is valid. And he makes his point in a very calm way. I wouldn't stay that calm after a discussion of 30 kB with no results. I would be quite angry.
Of course it is true, that Commons is not responsible in a legal way. But still responsible in some way. If a child leaves a roller skate lying around and the father steps onto it, falls and breaks his arm, that's an accident. In 999 out of 1000 times the father will see the roller skate, won't step on it, won't fall after stepping on it or won't break his arm after falling. Just like 999 out of 1000 Commons images most likely are fine and free. But in 1 out of 1000 times the father will break his arm. Even if the father sues his child no court would find the child guilty. It's just a mishap. But Commons is not a child, but better be compared with a skating rink operator with 3 million visitors. The operator should tell his personnel to take care not to leave roller skates lying around. It is obvious to everybody that Commons _does_ host copyvios. If my "999 out of 1000" example is true, there are 3000. Perhaps its ten times less or ten times more, I don't know exactly. Our problem is to find those copyvios. We should try to apply additional measures to better detect likely candidates for copyvios.
The image in question _was_ indeed tagged with a copyvio candidate template (failed flickrreview), but it was removed by Thuresson without provided reason. Then the uploader removed the "no source since" template without giving a reason or a source. It would be good, if we had a bot, that checks for such illegitimate removal of templates. If we don't have volunteers to program a bot, the foundation should hire more developers or invite bids to do the programming job. At least it shouldn't be possible to remove tags that easy without anybody noticing it. It would have been possible to avoid this case. The image was tagged lacking needed information in April 2007. But the tag was not handled appropriately.
Clarifying legal responsability and mentioning the facts, that you can be sued, if you upload copyrigthed content, and that the Foundation will provide your personal informations if required by jurisdiction, too would help.
Failed flickrreview should automatically lead to a deletion request, if no human user takes approprate action in an indicated time frame.
And I think, it would be reasonable, if we'd provide a way to help victims whose works were illegitimately spread by Commons. We could allow users to make requests for image removal. If the request is valid, a person with access to an official Wikimedia e-mail address would send out official e-mails to all sites which were found to host the illegitimate Commons image, informing them, that Commons wrongly hosted the image, and requesting to delete the image (of course too noting, that Commons has no rights on the image and is requesting on behalf of the owner of the rights, and that the owner could sue them if they go on to host the image.). We have some responsibility and we shouldn't leave them alone. If a private person like Taka writes to those reusers, telling them they are not allowed to use that picture they got from Commons, the reusers most likely will not be impressed. A recall from Commons directly will most likely have more success. --Slomox (talk) 20:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Of course the percentage of dodgy images is much higher than 0.1%. I clicked the random file button something like 10 times before I came upon Image:ESCUDO PZA.jpg. That license sure looks bogus to me. Anyway, yes, Taka makes some good points. It's very difficult to design an upload system that effectively deters bogus licenses and it's very difficult to effectively patrol every image. The difference between us and almost everyone else is that we try. Haukurth (talk) 19:44, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
There have been results -- we immediately removed the image. I can definitely understand his frustration, and he's not entirely wrong. We probably could add some more warning-style text to the upload screen (and I thought something more like that used to be there). This is however a volunteer effort, and none of us can speak for the Foundation (especially on email that goes out with their name on it), so other options are limited. From what it looks like to me, the Flickr review failed, so a "no source" tag was put on the image, as is appropriate. That leads directly to deletion if not corrected. Thuresson most likely removed the Flickr info because that template put it in a Flickr-related administrative category, which I assume he was processing, so once the no-source tag was added that file had been dealt with and could be removed from the Flickr category (and he moved on to the next image in the category). After that, no one was watching. The uploader then changed the license, claimed own work, and removed the "no source" tag. If he was in fact also the author... that is perfectly legitimate. Someone would have had to do a search on Flickr, hoping that the image there was documented enough to be able to find it via a text search, to show otherwise -- and that can take a certain amount of time. We often do such searches, but we have to focus on an image to research first, which never really happened here. For a counterexample, see Commons:Undeletion_requests/Current_requests#Bryce_Hospital: That is a Flickr user who licensed a photo CC-BY-SA-NC, but then uploaded a lower-resolution version here under the GFDL, which is absolutely legitimate. Unfortunately the Flickr processes we have in place noted that as a copyright violation, and it was deleted -- which quite legitimately made him angry too, as we were wasting his efforts to help this project. The situation was compounded by the fact it got renamed here by someone else, so the uploader in the history was different, and it appeared to have a later upload date than the Flickr version. This user may be forced to remove the Flickr reference URLs from his image in order to protect it from our processes -- which would be exactly the edit pattern shown on this image here. How can we tell the difference, without human research? I'm not an admin and not constantly around deletion requests, but this particular pattern is pretty rare to me -- it probably doesn't make sense to try and write a bot to detect it, since it is likely a rare situation and it will have false positives, and if we accidentally delete the latter we increasingly anger legitimate contributors. Honestly, we try to balance it, but there are limits. If there are ideas on how to implement a process which would turn up a good number (and a high percentage) of copyvios, then we probably would try to implement it.
If it helps any, one of the violating user's later uploads up for deletion (though it looks like that one may legitimately be his) has his name on it. Searching for that name apparently leads to a myspace page here.
Lastly... be a bit careful with "illegal". The changed license obviously (now) was a fraudulent copyright claim, but after that, hosting the image would quite likely be legal under fair use (at least in the U.S.), and the same may be true of the external uses (though most of those look like Dutch sites, and I don't know how flexible Dutch copyright law is there). Obviously we don't host those here per policy, but legality is a different issue. Flickr users also can change their licenses -- if the Flickr image really was cc-by-sa at the time (impossible to verify now), the situation could be different too. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:59, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Unidentified American actors of 1941. Please help

These American actors have starred in Citizen Kane (trailer, 1941). Please help to identify them. Possible names: en:Harry Shannon, en:Erskine Sanford, en:William Alland, en:Gus Schilling, Philip van Zandt. Full credits here. Regards Mutter Erde (talk) 15:33, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Reference desk may be a better place to try. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:34, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Where is the Wikipedia Reference desk? Please tell me Mutter Erde (talk) 17:47, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reference Desk - try either miscellaneous or entertainment desks. -mattbuck (Talk) 18:40, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Done. I asked the entertainment section. Thanks and regards Mutter Erde (talk) 19:13, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Adding geographic coordinates

I few months ago I asked whether anyone could direct me to a program that would give me geographic coordinated for a particular location of a picture. I received several suggestions, but could not get those programs to work properly. No doubt my fault, as my technical capabilities are extremely limited. However, I have found a suitable programme, at www.geosetter.de, to give credit where credit is due.

I intend to add coordinates to my pics, using the Location dec-template. I think I can remenber of most of my pics where I have talen them, within a radius of about 1 km, which I trust will be exact enough.

One question: would you prefer to have them with decimal points or with minutes and seconds. In orther word, would you like the Amsterdam Central Station at 52.552115424/13.41136694, or at N52°22'41.59" E4°54'2.74"? Best regards, MartinD (talk) 18:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I prefer minutes and seconds, because {{Location}} has a “Google Earth” link! :-) I'm also not sure if {{Location dec}} can take the “heading” attribute. --Kjetil_r 20:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
It can. Lupo 20:40, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers. I think I would prefer minutes and seconds as well, so I'll use the Location-template. One more question, about that template, if I may: I understand the attribute "region:XX-YYY_scale:_heading:" is mandatory. Do I understand correctly that, to use the above example for the Netherlands this would be NL, and NH for the province of North Holland, and that standing in front of the station the headeing would be NNE (northnortheast)? But what the "scale" attribute do? Can I just use the value "10000" in the example on the talk page as a standard value? Best regards, MartinD (talk) 21:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not mandatory. We don't really care about region or scale. Heading is useful if known, but not essential. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your answer. I'll start experimenting.;) Best regards, MartinD (talk) 09:27, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

One kilometer is not very precise. I would be wary of geotagging anything you couldn't place within, at most, 100 meters. Powers (talk) 23:48, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree generally. I try to get my stuff accurate to the metre, or better. Lining up landmarks can give you an idea sometimes. My exceptions to this are
  1. Aerial photographs - generally very hard to tell exactly where these are from.
  2. Maps - if there's an arrow, centre the map there, otherwise pick some convenient place. eg a map of a city would put the geotag in the city centre, regardless of whether the "city centre" is actually the centre of the city.
-mattbuck (Talk) 01:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that maps should not be geocoded on Commons. Powers (talk) 14:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

A related question: Is {{Location}} supposed to be placed on top or below {{Information}}? I always place it on top (because User:Dschwen/Coordinate conversion helper does), but I notice that many users put it below. --Kjetil_r 01:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I go for below, on the basis that coordinates aren't that much use to people without a map, and so a description is more important. -mattbuck (Talk) 01:32, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

@ Power: so far I think I have been able to get the location correct to within 100 meter or so. I really think that this is accurate enough for pics on Commons, as they are used to illustrate Wikipedia articles. I don't think that geotagging mistakes of a handful of meters are dangerous in the Netherlands (where most of my pics are taken), as there is little danger of falling off cliffs.;) Of course, I will supply a description, as I always have done. Best regards, MartinD (talk) 20:14, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Try to get it as accurate as possible. After all you cannot possibly know what future applications the coordinates will have. With Google/Live Maps you should be able to easily geocode to within 10m. 100m is unsatisfactory, this can easily be a whole city block! --Dschwen (talk) 20:36, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Even starting with only the slightest of knowledge about where a photo was taken (ie taken in area of city), you can often work it out by elevation changes, prominent buildings and the like. A 100m radius around a photo is absolutely huge. Sure there are cases where it doesn't matter - the middle of a field for instance - but in cities, you really want to be more accurate. 100ths a second is what I aim for. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:00, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

In most cases done so far I did manage to get it correct to within 10 metres or so. Image:Westeinder Plassen.jpg for instance: I'm pretty sure I've got it "spot on", if that is the correct expression, as I took it from the top of the Aalsmeer water tower. In some cases the pic was taken along a hiking trail which wasn't on the map, so I had to work from memory, for instance in Image:Pionierspad.jpg. But in such cases I think the exact spot isn't really essential since that picture is meant to convey a general impression of the landscape. I'm afraid that this is the best I can do. Of course, if you think you can be more accurate, feel free to do so. From my contributions, I think you will be able to deduct whereabouts I live -south of Amsterdam. Should you be in the neigbourhood, let me know so we can meet up. Best regards, MartinD (talk) 13:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Bad names

I've not worked out quite how best to go about correcting an image name. Because the title of Image:Hans Holbein d. J. 045.jpg is wrong (it's not by Holbein), I have uploaded a duplicate Image:Edward VI, aged 6.jpg. I have replaced the image on English Wikipedia, but the task of replacing it on all the other Wikipedias, with all the rigmarole of foreign languages, seems to me unnecessarily daunting. Is there a quicker way to correct an image name? I have another that I want to do: Image:Maria de Medici portrait.jpg is not of Maria de' Medici but of Leonora di Toledo. Fortunately, it is not so ubiquitous, and can be totally removed from articles where necessary (I have already removed it from the Maria Wikipedia article and am going to start an article on Leonora—who is not the Eleonora di Toledo for whom we already have an article either). Qp10qp (talk) 17:40, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

You can tag with {{rename}} and a bot will do it for you, if you specify the target. See the documentation page for details. How do you turn this on (talk) 17:47, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I think what he needs is CommonsDelinker to universal replace them. -mattbuck (Talk) 18:05, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
A problem is that the new file, though better named, is much smaller than the original one! Lycaon (talk) 19:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
No it's bigger, surely. It's a much better scan. Image:Eleonora di Don Garzia di Toledo di Pietro de' Medici, by Alessandro Allori.jpg. Thanks for the help above. I have filled in a rename template giving a very similar title to the new version. I will replace the occurrences of the image on English Wikipedia, but hopefully the bot will kick in and right all the uses of the image on other Wikipedias. Qp10qp (talk) 19:24, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I think Lycaon is referring to Image:Edward VI, aged 6.jpg, which is (was) smaller than Image:Hans Holbein d. J. 045.jpg. But, since they seem to be otherwise identical, this is easily fixed (as I've done). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:40, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Erk, sorry. Many thanks. Like an idiot, I must have copied it at less than full resolution. Qp10qp (talk) 20:13, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
The proces using {{Rename}} takes forever. I labeled Image:Sten-Nordin.jpg a month ago, and it still has no new name. There was some activity, but uploading under a new name is probably much faster. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 18:32, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, this makes sense. The image may remain displayed in many Wikipedias, though, since it would take ages to replace them all with the new version by hand. So, is the quicker process to upload under a new name and then file the original for deletion as a duplicate? qp10qp (talk) 15:41, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Video problem

Hi! I've uploaded the video "Sts-126 launch.ogg", converted with ffmpeg2theora. The video works, but there's no preview image. Anyone know why? Thanks. Alessio Rolleri (talk) 23:23, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Only the audio works for me. I don't know much about OGG, but I hope that helps. --J.smith (talk) 19:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

November 18

Complaints for license violations

Do we have a template (or a portal) for complaints against websites (outside Wikimedia) that (ab)use images from Commons without attributing/crediting the author and mentioning the license (in non-PD images, of course)? --Túrelio (talk) 07:26, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't think there is. I know of a few sites (local in Wagga and overseas) and most have a hissy fit for me just to request that A: they pay a fee for no attribution (IE: they don't buy the copyright just the right not to attribute), B: attribute the photograph(s) or remove it. Bidgee (talk) 11:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
It's all up to the copyright owner what they want to do. The sad truth is that it's very difficult to enforce your rights when international boarders are involved. --J.smith (talk) 18:54, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your feedback. For two of the websites I found using my Commons-images without crediting me and mentioning the license (CC-BY-SA), the "owners" immediately corrected/added the crediting after I sent them an email. So far, so good. --Túrelio (talk) 07:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Want to upload Public Domain photo. How?

I have a photo of the front of a church taken from the church's website, and I phoned the pastor to ask if it was in the Public Domain. He told me yes. Can I now upload it to Commons? I tried, but the form kicks back that I am incorrect about attribution and licensing. I'm so frustrated, and I would appreciate any assistance. Thank you.Voiceperson (talk) 14:38, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Please use Commons:Email templates when asking permissions. You should choose It is from somewhere else menu item in Commons:Upload. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:39, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. I emailed the template, which asks to be returned to permissions-wikimediacommons.org. Since the party receiving the email template will return it to that address, I was wondering how I will know when to try and upload the photo. In other words, what do I do next? Again, assistance is very appreciated. Thank you.Voiceperson (talk) 19:36, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
The receiver address should be permissions-wikimedia@commons.org --Túrelio (talk) 22:39, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh, no! Yikes. I told the owner to use permissions-commonswikimedia.org because the notice in the template is "to permissions-commonswikimedia.org." Thank you for the helpful (and necessary) information. I will send a correction to the owner. I'm still wondering, though, WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT? I'd love to be able to put that photo with the article I wrote, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Cross_Church_(New_York_City) Voiceperson (talk) 14:00, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
I have never used OTRS but from the guide Commons:OTRS I understand it as follows:
  1. Negotiate the release of the image under one of the free licenses Commons:Choosing a license#Common free licenses (double licensing under GFDL and CC-BY-SA is recommended) with the copyright holder
  2. Upload the image with {{OTRS pending}} and the negotiated license included
  3. Take the e-mail template Commons:Email templates
  4. Insert the image link (URL) and the negotiated license into the template
  5. Ask the copyright holder to send the e-mail created from the template to OTRS
  6. Once OTRS receives the e-mail from the copyright holder, it will be processed by OTRS operators, the image copyright will be confirmed and you should receive a notification
Please correct me if I am wrong. --Pabouk (talk) 16:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Yup, thats how it goes! J.smith (talk) 19:01, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/Template:FoP-Israel

Please express your views in this discussion. It has developed beyond the original subject, and some principal issues have arisen, such as, do we want country-specific FOP templates, is citing from a law in a copyright template a good idea etc. I know it is a bit tiring to read a discussion like that, but we need to hear more opinions there. Thanks Drork (talk) 16:44, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


November 19

Google and LIFE magazine images

Google has announced the release of some archival photography and other graphical work from LIFE magazine. Some of the content currently available dates to the 1860s, with unreleased content from as far back as the 1750s. Surely, this is a potential resource for PD images. Is there a project which organizes the retrieval of documents from PD sources? I could only find Commons:Free media resources/Photography, and its related pages at Commons:Free media resources. Mindmatrix (talk) 03:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Fascinating. Time Inc. is claiming copyright over the entire collection though... not bothering to try and figure out what they actually own copyright to or not, so getting images from them may be difficult. The vast majority of the images there are not PD, so I would not consider it a "PD source". If images are truly being published now for the first time, then the copyright term is 70 pma (for works created by non-LIFE photographers) or 120 years from creation (if works for hire or anonymous). That would cover a large part of their collection. For images which were published before, it gets considerably trickier. See this chart if you want to try to figure it out :-) They appear to have photos from outside sources too... for example, this photo is a U.S. Government work by Farm Security Administration photographer Dorothea Lange, so no copyright can be claimed on it, and is also available from the Library of Congress. Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:37, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Do we have a template for US anonymous/for hire works created more than 120 years ago? I couldn't find one. Pruneautalk 12:28, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Commons main principle US+country of origin can mean that in the CoO in Europa there is the editio princeps rule (publication + 25) possible for unpublished works. But there is a lot of photos from old printed sources like http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?q=germany+source:life&imgurl=d629277018a0d774 and claiming a copyright on them is defintively in Europe and in the US Copyfraud --Historiograf (talk) 14:50, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Great collection but most are not PD. I agree with Historiograf about Copyfraud: it seems like Time claims copyrights to anonymous WWII Holocaust pictures like [13], [14] or [15] from Stroop Report. --Jarekt (talk) 17:59, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, one of the following conditions must be met:

  1. The work was created and first published before January 1, 1923
  2. The last surviving author died at least 70 years before January 1 of the current year

According to news reports, a large amount of the works in Google's LIFE archives has never been published, which means that the first condition cannot be met. However, where there is an author (such as this image) with a known year of death (1908 in this case), the image is in public domain, regardless of LIFE and Google's claims (in which case it is copyfraud). I also agree with Historiograf - LIFE/Google can not claim copyright on photos from old printed sources like those he linked to. Lastly, there are many photos of possibly great value to Wikipedia and/or other projects that were taken before 1888, in which case it also is public domain. So there are several hundred images there that can be uploaded to Commons. Mathias-S (talk) 17:18, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

It's hard to believe that things like http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=e2a157eae36c7162 were not published at the time. Dubious claims of copyright, indeed. So it's a mixed bag, and worth culling through. It's too bad they are not being forthcoming about what they do and don't have some sort of honest claim to. - Jmabel ! talk 05:00, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Uploading via CommonsHelper doesn't seem to be working

It's telling me to upload from a local version. Anyone know why it isn't working normally? Uploading a local version is a bitch, that's the only thing that makes it better than doing it without the bot. Richard001 (talk) 06:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

It's working okay now anyway. Richard001 (talk) 03:51, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Suppress display of the fundraiser banner gadget

This seems to have become broken just now. What's up? --NE2 (talk) 06:54, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Works fine for me. --Kanonkas(talk) 07:03, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Strange. It's still showing up for me, despite having the box checked. --NE2 (talk) 07:50, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Hold down shift and hit your browser's reload icon. It's likely your local cache hasn't been updated. You need to do the reload trick whenever you make a change to your personal style sheets. --J.smith (talk) 08:48, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I already tried that many times. --NE2 (talk) 09:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Fundraiser notice

Despite having the setting in my gadgets switched on, I still appear to be suffering with the big ugly banner at the top of every page. Does anyone know what could be causing this issue? Thanks, How do you turn this on (talk) 13:31, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Did you try to refresh browser cache? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it's still there though. How do you turn this on (talk) 15:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Try purging and let me know if it has gone away. I made a change to the gadget that hopefully fixes it. - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:48, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
It's gone, like magic! Thanks for fixing. Best wishes, How do you turn this on (talk) 15:54, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
No problem. The sysadmins have made an internal change to the way the fund-raising notice is shown, so it only took a minor change to fix. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:03, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks - that fixed it. --NE2 (talk) 23:23, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

MIME type statistics

OK, I finished the script I said I'd write above for generating statistics about the MIME type distribution of files on Commons. A nicely formatted table is now available at Commons:MIME type statistics, along with a subpage listing files with unusual MIME types (for anyone who'd like to take a closer look at them), and as soon as I add the entry to my crontab on the toolserver, both pages should get updated automatically once a week by MIMEStatBot.

So... what do you think? Any suggestions for improvement? (For example, should I add some categories to those pages?)

Oh, and does anyone object to me running the bot to update that page? Given that it'll only make two edits a week, I don't think it really needs a bot flag, does it? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:21, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Very nice. Looks like a good way to find corrupt images so we can deal with them. --J.smith (talk) 18:58, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
No need for a flag. Run the bot in the morning (UTC), toolserver isn't that busy then. Would also be nice to have this stats in a graph, maybe feed the data to something like RRDtool? Multichill (talk) 19:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Great! Thank you. I think we should also add link to Special:Statistics. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Per brion's suggestion on my talk page, I've modified the bot to also list the img_media_type field; this is mostly useful for telling audio and video Ogg files apart, but also allows a somewhat different way of sorting of the types. I've rerun the bot manually today; in the future, it should run every Sunday at 6:00 UTC. (As for graphs, one could certainly pull the data from the page history and graph it, once there's enough of it for a meaningful graph. I'm not sure if that needs to be automated, it sounds like something one might do once or twice a year.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

More about the problems with the Italian law about museums (discussed here)

If you can read Italian, please read the long "open letter" published today in "Repubblica" (a major newspaper) against the project to give Italian museums to "managers" in order to squeeze as much money from them as possible. http://benimmateriali.wordpress.com/2008/11/19/salvatore-settis-caro-bondi-no-al-supermanager/ SALVATORE SETTIS, Caro Bondi no al supermanager. Lettera aperta al ministro dei Beni culturali: la riforma dei musei va modificata.

I hope this might convince at least somebody that we are facing a real political problem. Best wishes --User:G.dallorto (talk) 19:51, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Giovanni, I don't know why it should be a political problem: the fact is that we will have Italian artistic heritage managed by a man who made his extraordinary professional experience in the fields of sugar production, gambling (Campione d'Italia's Casino), Mc Donald's, Lancôme, Berlusconi's Mondadori, British Telecom Italia, Oaktree Private Equity Fund, Chase Manhattan Bank, Biondi Finanziaria (Gruppo Fiat), Corriere della Sera, Versace, Sambonet, Kenwood Italia, Eric Salmon & Partners, American Chamber of Commerce and finally - and why not - Eni. An incredible career. But no art I can read in his cv. Well, you could say, let's presume good faith. Okay. Let's see him in action. By now in fact he merely said [16] that "promuovere la cultura italiana vuol dire promuovere le aziende italiane" (to promote Italian culture means to promote Italian companies). "Le imprese si avvicinano all'arte se sono responsabilizzate, dunque bisogna avvicinare il loro nome alle grandi opere artistiche che ha l'Italia" (shortly: we will bring private companies into the business). An auction will be soon started to open Pompeii to cinema, in the sense that films will be shot inside there (of course, Pink Floyd couldn't remain an exception). So you say it is a political problem. I don't know if it is a political thing, I believe instead we concretely have a huge problem, because art is becoming solely a matter of money. This I would like our friends who don't live in Italy could understand: our state is currently turning art into a matter of money, and this happens in the country ruled by the owner of Mediaset, which recently sued Youtube for 780,000,000 US$.
The sense of all my previous comments is: if you feel you are so brave that you can challenge this system, please do it in your own name, individually, not as a project, and bearing in mind that we need working projects as we can do nothing with unreacheable projects. And good luck. Sincerely I wish you good luck, and I hope one day I will be so strong that I can fight similar battles me too together with you. By now, concretely, I believe it is important to fight battles, but more important is to win wars, and projects are there for a long-term war. We need them for that. Projects are there to inoculate in the societies, little by little, free contents and free knowledge. This is, I presume, the war that projects are fighting to win. We are too weak to win certain battles, but we are strong enough to win our wars.
Whatever you'll decide, and please decide soon, always consider that your actions could have concrete consequences, and I wouldn't be glad to see it.wiki obscured because of a bunch of images while everyday we have to resist against well organised hyjacking attempts on conceptual contents in hundreds of articles by lobbies who always keep us on the border of a lawsuit and everyday we successfully go straight forward through an immensity of other problems. I wouldn't be quiet if it.wiki is obscured for these contested images while Commons kept itself comfortably safe refusing to distribute PD-Italy which in the real world has never ever been complained by anyone by any mean or bothered by any sort of trouble, not even within indirect circumstances. You made us work three times than usual on PD-It to keep Commons out of troubles, and we did it because you said you told us you felt uncomfortable with PD-It. Okay, we did it. Now I believe it's it.wiki's turn to ask for a comfortable safety to be able to continue its work. Commons enjoyed it in the past and when no risk at all was evident. Today the risk is well evident, the request is a request that comes from a governmental agency, and the advantage of resisting in these conditions is nothing if compared to the risks.
Whoever is planning to resist and fight, at any level, ought to take on himself the complete responsibility of eventual consequences regarding the projects. This is no joke, rest assured it isn't. Decide whatever you think it's better for the projects, possibly for all of them.
I deeply regret if I might seem unfriendly, this is not my intention at all, but please consider that if you don't turn asap the question into a matter of individual responsibilities, the risk is mostly upon it.wiki's back (and Commons itself is not safe) and perhaps it is not so evident in which kind of waters we are swimming. --g (talk) 00:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
Is there a reader's digest version of whats going on here? What is the impact on commons? --J.smith (talk) 06:08, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Digest version :

  • in 2004 the Italian lawmakers enacted a new law on cultural goods (meaning artworks in museums and archeological remains). The law creates some kind of tax on every reproduction of a cultural good, except in some cases like when the reproduction has an educational purpose.
  • as a consequence, the Italian Wikipedia created a new template it:Template:Soprintendenza which Italian Wikipedians use whenever they post a picture of a cultural good. The template says "use only small size (640*480) pictures" and "don't use the large size pictures from commons".
  • Until now it looked like a good compromise, not affecting non-Italian Wikipedias or Wikimedia Commons.
  • But the other day some Italian authorities from a specific Italian region said that Commons or the Commons users should pay the tax for museum and archeological artworks from their region.
  • "What the impact on commons?" That's what we all would like to know. Teofilo (talk) 13:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I see... that is problematic. It should not have any impact on Commons or it:Wikipedia directly (since were educational, depending on what they mean by that) but it might have an impact on re-users located in Italy. It might make sense to develop a template to inform re-users of the potential legal issues. Other then that, I think we are fine, right? --J.smith (talk) 19:08, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Chromium zhwiki.png

Does anybody can read this page? Maybe the photos are licenced under a CC licence or under GFDL. Should be included!
--D-Kuru (talk) 21:36, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

You don't need to read it. It's the Chinese Wikipedia main page from today. The images shown on the page are Image:Thierry_Henry_2008.jpg and Image:Jerry_Yang.jpg. GFDL and CC-BY. Then you have to add Google Chrome's licence and the Wikipedia logo copyright. Schönes Lizenz-Kuddelmuddel. --Slomox (talk) 02:20, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
I've added aome information, licenced etc. Should be OK now.
--D-Kuru (talk) 12:16, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually the text shown is GFDL too. And don't forget the Chrome graphical elements ;-) --Slomox (talk) 17:51, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
(I hope that) I didn't forget :-)
According to en:Google Chrome Google Chrome is licenced under the BSD licence. By a coincidence there is {{BSD}} available. I used {{Free screenshot|{{BSD}} {{GFDL}}}} for Chrome and Wikipedia and {{Copyright by Wikimedia}} for the logo. Below you find the licences for the left and the right image
Are the graphic elements licenced under a different licence than {{BSD}}?
--D-Kuru (talk) 23:46, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

November 20

Tweaking Images

I have several thoughts about Wikimedia images. I will post them one at a time. First thought:

I like to put lots of illustrations in Wikipedia articles. I write about technology and geography, and diagrams and maps are very useful. Pictures of things few people have seen, like nuclear bomb explosions, are more than just decoration. I often find images I need already uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. I can just include the link in the article. However, there are sometimes minor issues, such as aspect ratio of the image, bad color balance, blemishes, and the wrong zoom (I want only part of the picture).

The easiest thing to do is to fix the picture the way I want it and upload it under a different name. Sometimes I fix the image and upload it back to the same filename. I did this with pictures of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs, both of which are used in many articles and user pages. A year later, no one has complained or reverted. (I took out scratches, adjusted contrast, and removed 3-ring binder holes.)

Is there a general rule of thumb for tweaking a picture you want to use in a particular way? I don't want to burden the servers by unnecessarily proliferating images on the Commons.

HowardMorland (talk) 00:41, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

My rule of thumb is that non-controversial changes that most users see as improvements can and should use the same filename. Changes like border, watermark, caption or "3-ring binder holes" removal are quite non controversial. Scratch removal and contrast adjustment are usually safe too although some people consider it alterations of historical images. Major croppings, or other significant changes usually warrant new filename. --Jarekt (talk) 04:37, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Automatic translation of templates

After this i started playing around with internationalization (i18n). I created a list (not complete yet) of templates which should probably be translated. Automatic localization is a cool feature and makes Commons probably better accessible for users who have a hard time understanding English. I created a generalised template ({{I18n template}}) and used {{1922 cyc}} as a proof of concept. {{1922 cyc}} contains the main stuff (like categories) and the subpages contain the actual text. See the template in German, French & Italian. {{I18n template}} contains fallback languages so for example if i try als, i get the German text. Is this something we like? Suggestions? Several templates ({{Attribution metadata from licensed image}}, {{Bad name}}, {{Duplicate}}, {{No permission since}} & {{Vector version available}}) already use this system, but don't use {{I18n template}}} yet. Multichill (talk) 14:44, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to focus on a trivial aspect of this, but how exactly does one get "internationalization" from "i8n"? (Not to mention the capital "eye" looks like a lowercase "ell"; I keep reading "I8n" as "laten".) Powers (talk) 14:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
Oops lost the 1, should be i18n. Multichill (talk) 15:12, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
  1. I should get credit for first implentations of this trick here :)
  2. For some templates, generic template can't be used because of parameters - for these cases the international template should call to the local template with params as in {{Duplicate}}. ערן (talk) 16:46, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
I still don't get it. =/ Powers (talk) 13:29, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
The 18 stands for the number of letters between the initial i and the final n in internationalization. See w:i18n. Pruneautalk 14:17, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be even better if only the part that is actually localized would be stored in the subpages? So only the line of text This image is taken from the 1922 Locomotive Cyclopedia of American Practice which is now in the public domain. See Copyright. The images on the left and on the right and the links to other language versions should be the same in all languages, shouldn't they? --Slomox (talk) 17:05, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
In Hebrew, Arabic and some other rtl languages the local templates should add some style properties (direction, text align), and the images on the right should be in left and the left in right :) ערן (talk) 17:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
That still could be adjusted in the template, but I guess that would mean much cobbling around with syntax. I see the point.
But another thing that occurred to me. When I localize a template, I still have to insert the localized template in the "/lang" template. Wouldn't it be possible to insert some #ifexist: syntax in the "/lang" template so it can look by itself, whether the localized templates exist? Or would massive use of ifexist melt down the servers? --Slomox (talk) 17:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
@ערן: {{Duplicate}} was borked (that's why i reverted you earlier), but i fixed it. All the language version still have to be checked. It now works with the general template.
@Slomox: I was think about maybe having a general layout template for some simple templates something like {{1922 cyc|Deze afbeelding komt uit de 1922 Locomotive Cyclopedia of American Practice en is nu publiek domein. Zie Auteursrecht.}} for {{1922 cyc/nl}}. This could be used for most languages, but no need to use it for all, would be very flexible. Multichill (talk) 17:51, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
Slomox, take a look at {{Lang links}}, Multichill (talk) 17:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
"Warning: Servers will melt, if you actually use this." I feared it. A magic word __GETFROMCHACHE__ or something like that, forcing the including pages to take the template text from cache instead of rerendering it, would be great for cases like this. --Slomox (talk) 19:10, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
We'll figure something out for that, probably something with a bot.
I've been testing some more and i think i have two good working examples : {{1922 cyc}} & {{Cc-by-1.0}}. The templates consist of:
  1. A base template which includes {{I18n template}}, categories and documentation
  2. A lang template for the different languages ( {{1922 cyc/lang}} & {{Cc-by-1.0/lang}} )
  3. A layout template for a standard layout ( {{1922 cyc/layout}} & {{Cc-by-1.0/layout}} )
  4. Language versions of the template which use the layout template ( {{1922 cyc/nl}} & {{Cc-by-1.0/nl}} )
  5. A documentation page with ready to paste code for new language versions ( {{1922 cyc/doc}} & {{Cc-by-1.0/doc}} )
It takes some initial work to convert a template into this structure, but after that it's very easy to create new language versions and all the language versions look the same. Multichill (talk) 23:03, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

After some more thinking, rtl languages can use the layout templates too, but the layout template should have in the table style "direction:{{{direction|ltr}}} and for rtl languages must specified "direction=rtl". ערן (talk) 09:34, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm already setting which language it is. Based on this information, the direction of the text can be figured out. Do we have a template to which i can feed a language and it tells me if it is ltr or rtl? Multichill (talk) 09:53, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
I've created such template: Template:LangDir. ערן (talk) 11:34, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
I modified it somewhat to be a wrapper around {{Rtl-lang}} and {{Lang}}. If it's one of the rtl langs it returns the first template, otherwise the second. Could you try and create Template:Cc-by-2.0/he? You can copy the code from Template:Cc-by-2.0/doc. I previewed it and the source contained <span lang="he" dir="rtl" style="white-space: nowrap;" xml:lang="he">. Multichill (talk) 16:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
It isn't enougth - Lang and rtl-lang use SPAN - but the whole table/div of the template should be rtl, because the image in rtl languages should in the right side. So the direction should be specified in Template:CC-Layout. ערן (talk) 17:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
Damn, will revert it tomorrow. Multichill (talk) 23:34, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Semi protection

Is there a scheme similar to semi-protection at en:wiki, a group of anon IPs keep on removing the deletion tag from Image:ATV Model.JPG despite the discussion not having running its course.KTo288 (talk) 15:28, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

  Done :). Regards --Herby talk thyme 15:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks.KTo288 (talk) 17:33, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Move files...?

Can files be moved - resp. can a filename be changed? I loaded a couple of animal files with a placeholder filename - after identification of the animal I would like to change the filename to a proper one. Any shortcut for that (except new upload and delete old file)?. Thx. --Nepenthes (talk) 18:25, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

No shortcuts really, not since the rename bot doesn't work very well. -mattbuck (Talk) 00:10, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Exact duplicates?

There is a tag for requesting the deletion of exact duplicates, and scaled down duplicate versions. It is my understanding that anyone who has a concern over an image that is not an exact duplicate has to follow a more involved process.

The image in question has been discussed on the Village pump before. A US Navy photographer, named Shane T. McCoy, shot a number of photos of the first 20 captives, when they arrived Guantanamo on January 11th 2002. These photos were published by the DoD at the time -- when the emotional tide of reaction to 9-11 drowned out concerns that the images may be showing violations of the Geneva Conventions. Since then the DoD has removed these images from all its sites. Various publications republish them, at various resolutions. And some publications credit wire services, rather than crediting Petty Officer McCoy and the US Navy.

The image that was recently nominated is one of several images McCoy took of bound and hog-tied captives, still wearing the black-out goggles and ear muffs that have been uploaded here. How long passed between when McCoy took the images? I dunno. I might only have been a few seconds, or maybe minutes. But the images differ in detail, as well as resolution. They are not exact duplicates.

I've asked the tagger why he or she applied a tag reserved for exact duplicates for a file that is not an exact duplicate. I hope they have a good reason. If the reason is that they didn't notice the files weren't exact duplicates was garden variety carelessness I hope they will be more careful in future.

For the record I believe these related images are important enough we should keep all of them.

The first time we discussed these images was when I asked for confirmation that I could ignore bogus claims they were wire service images when there was overwhelming reason to believe Petty Officer McCoy took them.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 20:42, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

New warning?

What is up with this new warning? The new warning states:

"By submitting text contributions, you irrevocably agree to release all rights to your text contributions under the terms of the GFDL. Any content in violation of its copyright will be deleted on sight."

I do not believe this is what the GFDL says. Contributors continue to exercise some rights under a GFDL. Specifically, I believe contributors retain the right to insist that their authorship be credited.

If contributors retain some rights under the GFDL the warning should not assert they release all rights.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 20:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

It should read "you irrevocably agree to release some of your rights to your text contributions" --J.smith (talk) 22:15, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
It's not a new warning. You do release all rights under the GFDL - and under the GFDL, you retain some of them. Perhaps it would be best to simply say "By submitting text contributions, you irrevocably license them under the GFDL..."
However, there is already some discussion on MediaWiki talk:Copyrightwarning, so please provide input there.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 00:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

November 21

Creative Commons license icons not copyleft?

Various faithful reproductions of Creative Commons licensing icons have been uploaded here (e.g. Image:Sampling.plus.svg) tagged as being under various versions of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The Creative Commons policy page, however, says "The ... buttons that describe a key term ... may only be used in the context of pointing to ... or to otherwise describe the ... license". These restrictions clearly don't fulfill the freedoms of copyleft, which means these images aren't complying with Commons:Licensing. Am I really the first to notice this? My apologies if this has been discussed previously; I couldn't find anything relevant. Garrett (talk) 02:11, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

That is a trademark policy... copyleft is part of a copyright license. If you use the images in violation of the above terms, it is not a copyright violation but would be a trademark violation (such a combination does, in fact, comply with Commons:Licensing). See Commons:Non-copyright restrictions. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:59, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Microphotographs of thin sections

Consider Image:Labeledstemforposter copy new.jpg, as an example of a genre (please ignore its specific licensing). Images like this result from a specific process: a three-dimensional piece of an organism is preserved, dehydrated, embedded in paraffin or polymer, and sliced into sequential thin sections. Each section is mounted on a microscope slide, stained with tissue stains, and covered with a thin glass cover slip.

A faithful representation of a public domain 2-dimensional artwork is itself not subject to copyright. My question is, does this same principle apply to microscopic thin sections? Here are what I believe to be salient points:

  1. Preparing these slides is a work of craft: a person selects the tissue, its orientation, and the staining regimen, and in many cases specific thin sections will be discarded because they are imperfect.
  2. Although the sections are not geometrically two-dimensional (nor are many paintings), they are normally viewed orthogonal to the slide, so they are effectively two-dimensional.
  3. To my knowledge, no manufacturer of microscopic thin sections claims copyright, and more important, I know of no evidence that a manufacturer has ever defended copyright against a photographer. My (likely imperfect) knowledge of this extends back to the 1970s, when I believe a declaration of copyright was necessary in the US.

It had been my sense that, were I to photograph a thin-section, I would own the copyright of the photograph and could license it as I wish. But now I'm wondering (concerned, actually) that the photos would be either in the public domain, or an infringement of an unstated copyright of the manufacturer.

Thoughts?--Curtis Clark (talk) 04:12, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd say (though IANAL) that such images should mostly be PD-ineligible, but this is a borderline area, and it's likely the different jurisdictions (or even different courts in the same jurisdiction) might draw the line differently. The creativity in most photographs (except those showing deliberately set scenes) is already somewhat tenuous, but most jurisdictions have found them copyrightable (although in some jurisdictions, like Finland, non-artistic photographs only receive limited protection). In general, scientific data per se is not copyrightable, and it's at least arguable that that's what these images are. But certainly one could conceivably produce microphotographic artworks, e.g. by preparing and choosing thin sections based on their artistic (rather than scientific) qualities, and such images might then be copyrightable.
A general test might be to ask oneself whether any other reasonably well executed microphotograph of the same subject using the same standard techniques would look essentially the same. If so, the image is probably not eligible for copyright. Incidentally, a similar problem occurs in deep-sky astrophotography, where it can also be hard to say exactly where the line between copyrightable photographs and uncopyrightable photometric data should be drawn. Fortunately, in that case, the problem is often easier to sidestep due to the plentiful supply of unquestionably public domain images from NASA. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 07:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
In answer to your question, not necessarily, which is what, I suppose makes it different from a photo of a painting. First, in many cases a field of view is chosen that does not encompass the entire specimen. Most often the field is chosen for "illustrative" purposes, which are both scientific and aesthetic. Second, the illumination is subject to many permutations (far more than would apply to an average painting). So in a sense, there is not a single faithful representation of a microscopic thin-section.--Curtis Clark (talk) 04:53, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
At some point there was a discussion about who holds copyrights to x-ray images. Many patients were uploading their own x-rays with statements like "it is my cancer - I own the copyrights" and some of them were being tagged as copyvos, since the technician who pressed the button would hold the copyrights. It was then suggested that the correct labeling is {{PD-ineligible}}. --Jarekt (talk) 15:26, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
That actually surprises me. If I photograph a hand in visible light, one could reasonably expect that I (or my employer, if work-for-hire in the US) would own copyright. Why is it different if I photograph in x-rays?--Curtis Clark (talk) 04:53, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
Generally because no creativity is (supposed to be) involved in the making of a medical X-ray image. The technician is simply following standard procedure for producing what will hopefully be as faithful a representation of the anatomical feature being imaged. In particular, with a traditional film-based process in diagnostic use, there's little if any way for the technician to even know in advance what will show up on the film before it's developed — all they can do is make a number of shots at standard angles and settings generally found to produce useful images, and hope for the best. With a modern fully digital setup that allows instant preview, things might be a bit different — but even then, the photographer is generally not trying to express their artistic impulses, but simply to produce the most diagnostically useful image of whatever it is they're photographing at a minimum number of X-ray exposures. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:44, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
"...there's little if any way for the technician to even know in advance what will show up on the film before it's developed..." Many years ago, I won a photography contest with a night photo of a streetlight through a tree in the rain. I used a several minute exposure on slow film. I really didn't have any more idea of what would show on the film than an xray technician would.--Curtis Clark (talk) 15:36, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
Presumably you could see the streetlight and the tree in advance, though, and have some idea what they might look like when photographed. The point of medical imaging, on the other hand, is to produce a visible image of something that is normally invisible. A better analogy might be sticking a camera into a dark tunnel or crawlspace that you can't directly see into and blindly taking a flash photo. I've done this a couple of times with a digital camera (easier than fetching a flashlight), but I wouldn't really consider the results to show any creative control: after all, I didn't know what I was photographing. All that said, MichaelMaggs's point below is worth noting: all this depends on local laws. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 09:51, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Okay, another analogy: photos taken solely with, or to include as a color channel, ultraviolet or infrared radiation. The reflectance characteristics of common objects are not always easy to predict (for example, UV-absorbing nectar guides on otherwise UV-reflecting flower petals), and yet such photos can be taken for aesthetic as well as scientific reasons.
And as far as creative control for your tunnel flashes, you chose the tunnel, you chose the tilt and azimuth of the camera, and presumably you'd choose which of the photos you'd upload to Commons.--Curtis Clark (talk) 04:00, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Be careful about generalization here. In the UK, x-rays images will normally attract copyright protection due to "the high level of skill, labour and judgement required to produce a good quality x-ray, particulary to show contrast beetwen bones and various soft tissues". (per The Law of Photography and Digital Images, Michalos QC, 2004). The analogy with visible light photographs is a good one: it is easier and requires less skill to snap a photo of a landmark than it does to create a medical x-ray, yet no-one would argue that the former lacks copyright protection. This issue is under discussion at Commons:Patient images. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:06, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Geo coordinates for a page

I have geocoded a few images but I'm not sure what template to use for a page (e.g. a category on a subject that has a fairly specific geographic location, like a building). Anyone have any suggestions? I can't see a {{Coord}} here (like on en.wiki) and the others lack documentation more often than not. Richard001 (talk) 08:07, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

There is a fundamental difference between the philosophy of en:wiki and commons, and {{Coord}} is deliberately not provided for categories of pages. The thought process is: commons geotags the position of the camera not the object- thus that even for a building you will have x different images with x different locations. See COM:NOT
The argument that you can give useful information by providing the average of all the camera locations carries no weight.
If you consider the way this data is interpreted on outside applications, you will see that this data is indeed redundant as all the images will be geotagged.
The argument that popping a location on a category when none of the images therein have been geotagged could be useful when volunteers start to geotag that category, can be dismissed as helpful but leading to abuse.
The available way is to use the {{w|Article in Englishwiki}} and checking that the en:wiki article is geotagged.
This response comes from personal research and doesn't necessarily relect the POV of the writer. Mmm -ClemRutter (talk) 09:16, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
Many images are not geotagged themselves, and for those that are why should someone have to go looking through images or looking at a Wikipedia article to find the exact location? I really can't see any argument for not using it. In fact it seems to me that you are just asserting that it's no use. The 'look on Wikipedia' argument fails because the subject of some pages don't have a Wikipedia article. Richard001 (talk) 03:30, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not really that familiar with geocoding on Commons, but I'd just like to mention that there does seem to exist a {{Object location}} template. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:47, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
You are right. And this Image:20080412-MarinaDelta-PLS601.jpg is an example of an image with both camera location and object location tags. Sv1xv (talk) 06:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
It's not that hard to find out where something is and geocode it, even if it's something you've never seen before, a quick google search often leads you in the right direction. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:33, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

GFDL from en.wikipedia

There are some images which tagged with {{GFDL-user-en}}. The licence says that it shoud be changed to {{GFDL-user-en-with-disclaimers}} or {{GFDL-user-en-no-disclaimers}}. Which licence should be chosen if the licence was just GFDL(-self)?
I would use that without disclaimers, because en:Template:GFDL says "Redirects to this template": "{{GFDL-no-disclaimers}}". The same with en:Template:GFDL-self "Redirects to this template": "{{GFDL-self-no-disclaimers}}"
--D-Kuru (talk) 10:06, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Could you show us an example? This would clarify things better.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 10:55, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm talink about MIMap-doton-Gibraltar.PNG. I moved it from en.wiki to commons some time ago. Because of the no-disclaimer vs. with disclaimer topic I had a look at all my uploaded files and asked the admins who deleted it on en.wiki. For MIMap-doton-Gibraltar.PNG I've asked Conscious on en.wiki which licence the correct one is/was. He told me that it was tagged with {{GFDL}}. I would use {{GFDL-user-en-no-disclaimers}}, because (as wrote above) on en.wiki {{GFDL-no-disclaimers}} redirects to en:GFDL.
I just asked if someone knows more than me or would use the with-disclaimers tag, because for some reason which this person may would like to explain. However, I hope that you have an idea
--D-Kuru (talk) 14:34, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
This is not quite correct. Originally the GFDL template had no disclaimers. Later someone added them. When they decided to remove them, they used bots to change all existing GFDL templates to GFDL-with-disclaimers, and then standardized GFDL without it. You'll have to look at the history of the template that was in use to determine what it said at the moment in time the file was uploaded. -Nard the Bard 15:45, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Watchilst wont have Bold letters

Whenever there is a new change in one of the pages I'm watching, the watchlist won't make it bold. (eg. Commons:Featured picture candidates/candidate list (diff; hist) . . (+76) . . Lycaon (Talk | contribs) (nom)) It's new but not bold. --Mr. Mario (talk) 15:31, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I can confirm this problem, but only on some pages (including those I've viewed in the last few days). --NE2 (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps similar problem

By the way, the little bright green boxes saying "updated since my last visit" in page history view have never worked correctly for me (most often, the most recent version of the page which I did look at is labelled with a bright green box...). AnonMoos (talk) 10:21, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Strangely, I don't seem to be getting either raised problem. Could it be a MonoBook or other skin issue?Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 10:46, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

It seems the problem is that the wl_notificationtimestamp field, which the bolding is based on, is updated through the job queue; if the queue is long, it can take a while before the update "registers". The real problem is that this is simply an ass-backwards design: rather than redundantly storing the last update timestamp in the watchlist of every user watching the page, MediaWiki should simply store the last visit timestamp in the watchlist and compare this with the update timestamps recorded in the page/revision/recentchanges tables. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 09:25, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Spiders

I have a photograph of a spider which is not in my Audobon's book of insects and spiders. It is similar to the one you have on file and I would like to have it identified. My photograph is slightly enhanced to bring out it's colors more vividly-and that's it. A lot of people around here call them "Barn Spiders", and my Audobon's book has a different looking spider that they call "Barn Spider." -- James Wood

The image in question is probably this: Image:Home pictures 139.jpg--Jarekt (talk) 02:47, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

November 22

List of Commons editors by number of edits?

I'm probably about to get told "this is not Wikipedia!", but do we have anything here remotely analogous to w:Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits? Could we make one? It's always fun to have a look at lists like that, and the comparison would be interesting too. Richard001 (talk) 05:03, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

There's this list, but it hasn't been updated since 31 May. Pruneautalk 18:17, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
And it looks nearly irrelevant, since it doesn't include picture uploads. I'm not sure it even includes edits in image space. - Jmabel ! talk 18:33, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

SELECT CONCAT('#User:', user_name, ' - '), user_editcount FROM user ORDER BY user_editcount DESC LIMIT 50;

  1. User:BotMultichill - 675192
  2. User:SieBot - 435602
  3. User:GerWsUpload - 233465
  4. User:G.dallorto - 185125
  5. User:Wikimedia Commons Welcome - 111386
  6. User:Filbot - 103388
  7. User:FlickreviewR - 93382
  8. User:RocketBot - 89099
  9. User:Infrogmation - 87374
  10. User:タチコマ robot - 86863
  11. User:Emijrpbot - 86409
  12. User:CommonsDelinker - 84047
  13. User:Orgullobot - 82549
  14. User:Siebrand - 81385
  15. User:BotMultichillT - 69362
  16. User:Ies - 67004
  17. User:File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske) - 62752
  18. User:Kurpfalzbilder.de - 60069
  19. User:GeorgHH - 59206
  20. User:Kilom691 - 58763
  21. User:Wst - 55840
  22. User:Gryffindor - 55408
  23. User:Man vyi - 51675
  24. User:AndreasPraefcke - 50991
  25. User:EugeneZelenko - 47405
  26. User:MakBot - 45967
  27. User:BryanBot - 45910
  28. User:DerbethBot - 41578
  29. User:CarolSpears - 41043
  30. User:DavepapeBot - 40607
  31. User:NilfaBot - 40294
  32. User:Juiced lemon - 37349
  33. User:Väsk - 35838
  34. User:Mattes - 35758
  35. User:Liné1 - 35439
  36. User:Morio - 35164
  37. User:Orchi - 34604
  38. User:BetacommandBot - 34231
  39. User:Rocket000 - 33915
  40. User:Olivier2 - 31966
  41. User:Sailko - 31553
  42. User:CommonsDelinkerHelper - 30416
  43. User:Quadell - 30052
  44. User:Flickr upload bot - 30000
  45. User:MB-one - 29852
  46. User:Jmabel - 28935
  47. User:Ronaldino - 27778
  48. User:Bibi Saint-Pol - 27439
  49. User:Deadstar - 26946
  50. User:Mac9 - 24974

Multichill (talk) 23:49, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Is it really necessary? This just makes things more competitous, not helping things.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 01:55, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
Here's something perhaps a bit more meaningful — a list of the 50 users with most uploads:
  1. User:GerWsUpload: 232178
  2. User:File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske): 59017
  3. User:DerbethBot: 40952
  4. User:SieBot: 35319
  5. User:Flickr upload bot: 28288
  6. User:Infrogmation: 21822
  7. User:MarcBot: 21277
  8. User:Red Rooster: 18598
  9. User:Sailko: 18198
  10. User:AndreasPraefcke: 16571
  11. User:Joergens.mi: 14484
  12. User:G.dallorto: 13774
  13. User:Jmabel: 13587
  14. User:BetacommandBot: 12677
  15. User:ArkyBot: 12617
  16. User:LoKiLeCh: 11562
  17. User:Rama: 11210
  18. User:File Upload Bot (Eloquence): 10631
  19. User:FlickrLickr: 10401
  20. User:Liftarn: 10285
  21. User:BotMultichill: 10166
  22. User:Immanuel Giel: 9805
  23. User:Gryffindor: 9738
  24. User:GerardM: 9693
  25. User:Tschubby: 9475
  26. User:Ies: 9434
  27. User:Rabe Socke: 8662
  28. User:FlickreviewR: 8476
  29. User:Paulis: 8351
  30. User:Amba: 8231
  31. User:Michiel1972: 8019
  32. User:663highland: 7815
  33. User:Dvortybot: 7426
  34. User:Geograv: 6694
  35. User:Ebyabe: 6606
  36. User:Västgöten: 6581
  37. User:Stahlkocher: 6326
  38. User:Thisisbossi: 6309
  39. User:Tsca.bot: 6188
  40. User:Cecil: 5924
  41. User:Dake: 5839
  42. User:SPUI: 5821
  43. User:EugeneZelenko: 5821
  44. User:BrokenSphere: 5710
  45. User:Maksim: 5636
  46. User:Dezidor: 5632
  47. User:Stan Shebs: 5599
  48. User:Atamari: 5518
  49. User:Haabet: 5493
  50. User:KENPEI: 5475
(The counts come from the image and oldimage tables. This means they include superseded revisions, reverts and old uploads made before the upload log was created, but don't include deleted image revisions.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:05, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

|

Yes preferrably, the uploads make more sense than total edits, because Commons isn't really much of editing.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 10:56, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't say that - that would negate the contribution of anyone who didn't upload. You can participate in many ways, from deletion discussions to uploading to categorizing, or any mix of these and other activities. A list of people by number of uploads would be interesting too (though there are issues there too, e.g. uploading via a bot). Edit counts aren't great for estimating the contribution that a person has made here, but are interesting nonetheless. Richard001 (talk) 23:31, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

If I wanted to upload a video from YouTube...

...and the uploader had said something like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0' or whatever on the infomation panel, would I be able to upload it? It's basically like Flickr, but there is no analogous process that I know of. Richard001 (talk) 06:26, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Even if the video is free, YouTube’s Terms prohibit downloading videos from it. --AVRS (talk) 12:53, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
I think that's pretty irrelevant really. Whether I download it from YouTube or get it from the uploader (e.g. via email) is just a technicality - the policy is clearly to prevent people from downloading "all rights reserved" videos. In any case, I could also do that latter, in which case my question remains. Richard001 (talk) 02:04, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
(ec) That should be basically irrelevant -- YouTube does not own the copyright; the YouTube uploader does (well, presumably does). YouTube has no systematic way of specifying a copyright license so there is no automated way to upload them (plus, they would need to be converted to Ogg Theora video first). I guess there is Help:Converting video to aid in that. Still, if the author makes plain on that page that it is licensed CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, I don't see why we wouldn't accept it. Obviously, make sure it appears to be authored by the uploader, and not ripped off of TV, or something like that -- any obvious copyvios will still be deleted. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:28, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
I generally agree: I haven't really read YouTube's terms of service, but in general, if you have a copy, and the owner of the copyright has given you a license to distribute said copy (which is what a CC license grant in the description amounts to), it doesn't really matter, as far as copyright law is concerned, exactly how you came by that copy. YouTube may have transcoded their copy, but, being an entirely mechanical and automated process, this gives them no copyright to it.
That said, it would still be preferable to try to ask the author for a high-quality original. YouTube does provide videos these days in somewhat higher quality than they used to, but the transcoding process still remains lossy. Working from the original is always better. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:56, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

If you download the work from YouTube you are in violation of their terms of service. They would argue that their ToS is a contract you enter in with them in exchange for allowing you to use the site. Copyright is not relevant there. As a result they could sue you and (potentially) win. I am not your attorney and you should not look to me for formal legal advice, but I believe it's obvious to all of us here that YouTube would most likely not perform such an idiotic good will destroying stunt as suing a user for performing an otherwise legal (and obviously ethical) act. I suspect that there would be many people willing to fund your defence should this exceptionally unlikely outcome occur. I expect the intended purpose of that requirement is to prevent institutionalized automatic copying (like adding a copy-from-youtube button to commons) which would dilute YouTube's effective monopoly position on its collection, and not because of copyright or other concerns.

In any case, your contract with YouTube is of no interest to us at commons. So long as the material has an acceptable copyright license (as is the creative commons attribution license which you mentioned) you may upload it here. I would strongly recommend you obtain the original video from the author: Not because I think you should worry about YouTube suing you but because, as Ilmari mentioned, YouTube's transcoding seriously degrades quality. The fact that doing so would pretty much eliminate any risk of litigation is merely a nice perk. --Gmaxwell (talk) 20:23, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

It requires a bit more effort on part of the uploader though. If they don't want to email me a copy of the original, which may be difficult if the file is large or their email attachability small (or if they don't have a copy anymore, etc.), I'll just upload an ogg version of the YouTube version. A lower quality version would also save on bandwidth. Isn't that important too? Richard001 (talk) 23:50, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:Reverses

Please tell me 2 good subcategories for this cat. Thanks Mutter Erde (talk) 21:56, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

It would help if the title category above existed, then we can give an answer.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 01:54, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
sorry, I have no idea (and speak not good enough English). Regards Mutter Erde (talk) 20:13, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, I mean can you created Category:Reverses? It would help us help you.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 20:53, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
I created it. But it will be hard to find more adequate categories. Reverse isn't a very specific classification and cannot have very specific categories ;-) --Slomox (talk) 21:18, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
YEP, looks good. Thanks. When this category has more than 100 pics I will give a note for some specification :-). Regards Mutter Erde (talk) 21:53, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
After re-reading it over, I think this is a little vague. Maybe get rid of the category for Category:Reverse side of documents? Reverses sounds very confusing, and could have a reader mistaken.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 10:54, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
en:Reverses can be anything, starting with the backsides from coins, medals, stamps, clothing, panels, banknotes, ... "Reverse side of documents", "Verso sides", "backsides of documents" are all better. --Foroa (talk) 11:45, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps a main "Reverse sides" (and possibly a complementary "Obverse sides") category, with subcategories for "Reverse sides of X" as required? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 09:31, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Let's wait and see what kind of reverses will be in this cat. A better place for the photographers might be Category:Trademarks of early photographers, perhaps renamed in Category:Trademarks of photographers. Mutter Erde (talk) 15:04, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

November 23

Uploading Images

Could someone give me some advice on uploading images? I'm a little lost with the copyright/licensing stuff :s

If you want to upload images you created yourself, I recommend the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 (cc-by-sa-3.0) license. If the images come from another source (an old book with expired copyright, an image published by the US Governmet etc), you have to use the appropriate license tag. You should read Commons:First steps/License selection and Commons:Copyright tags. Sv1xv (talk) 06:53, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Copyright status menu on upload

Mostly when I upload an image, a page of fields to enter and a pull down menu for the copyright status appears. Sometimes, however, I just get a single field with one template description with "x = " equations waiting to be filled on the right hand side. Since I don't know the copyright abbreviations, my answer gets me complaints from a bot. Anyone know why the easier set of fields doesn't always appear? (Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask.) N p holmes (talk) 08:05, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

The menu with fields relies on Javascript. If Javascript is not active, you will get the basic menu with the single text field. Perhaps you are using different browsers and one of them has Javascript deactivated? --Slomox (talk) 21:09, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Downloading 100 random images meeting certain criteria

As part of a university project, I am currently writing a program that will need to get a bunch of images from time to time. Basically what I need is "get (another) 100 random JPEG images from commons that are in the public domain". As I don't need a high resolution, I would like to download thumbnails only to save resources. I hope that this is not a problem for wikimedia.

Is there:

  • a) a certain recommended or easy way of doing this?
  • b) something I should do to minimize the load caused on wikimedia servers, like getting certain thumbnail sizes, getting full-size images and scaling down myself etc?
  • c) (sorry, forgot this first) a way to exclude any image that is in Category:Medicine or any of its subcategories? Some of the images there are way worse that what you can find on certain controversial shock sites.

Janschejbal (talk) 14:59, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

If you go to Special:NewFiles, you can look at the last 48 or 96 images uploaded, which are often an interesting mish-mash of completely unrelated files. Otherwise, we have a random gallery function, but not a random image function at any easily user-accessible level, as far as I'm aware. It might be nice to have such a random image "special"... AnonMoos (talk) 20:03, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
You can add any namespace after the Random link; for example, Special:Random/Image will give you random images. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:02, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
However, "Special:Random/Image" only displays a single random image, at full description page resolution, and not a gallery of small thumbnails of 48 different random images (the way "Special:NewFiles" does with recently-uploaded images). It might be nice to have both functions... AnonMoos (talk) 12:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
True, but it's also a very handy trick for more than just this discussion. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:45, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

November 24

How compatable is jamendo.com...

...with Commons? [17] Its all cc, does that work here?—Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnnyMrNinja (talk • contribs) 07:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Basically, cc-by and cc-by-sa (free cc) are allowed here on Commons, nc and nd are not. --Jaqen (talk) 09:12, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
Basically, as he's put it, you can use them on Commons. Thanks for contributing, looks like a good site.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 10:49, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
As long as its not ND or NC, we don't care where you get it from...unless however it screams copyvio somehow. ViperSnake151 (talk) 15:36, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
Should be mentioned that it should be in Commons's project scope! Just an idea: I know Jamendo and you'll find a lot of music there which could also be used in Wikipedia articles to give some examples for a music genre.
--D-Kuru (talk) 22:18, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

New extension request

Hi, there is an extension which I believe will be very important to this project. Its called ImportFreeImages. It basically allows users to import properly licensed images or those which adhere to commons Flickr Images policy. I have talked to Brion on IRC and he would like to implement it after review and customisation which may take a few months but yes, the devs are interested in getting this extension to commons. Users can vote below if they would or wouldn't like this extension on commons.--Cometstyles 09:25, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Support

  1. Support - Really great idea, since it would speedy-up the process a bit.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 10:44, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
  2. Support of course! Such a great idea. However I believe images uploaded from this service should also be flickr approved by a flickr reviewer. --Kanonkas(talk) 14:08, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
  3. Support Sounds quite useful as described by Cometstyles (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 17:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
  4. Support. →Na·gy 18:07, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
  5. Support Can't think of any reason why not. How do you turn this on (talk) 18:20, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
  6. Of course we want this.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
  7. Yes, would be helpful. - Rjd0060 (talk) 22:49, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. I don't really mean oppose, but I prefer to vote "oppose" because I think what I have to say is important : Before releasing this extension, you must add a pop-up or other warning device telling the user : Are you confident that all the creative contents shown on the image were made by the Flickr uploader ? (Yes/No)

    If No, Are you confident that the creative contents (like sculptures, paintings, architectural works) not made by the Flickr uploader are available A) Because they have fallen into the public domain B) Because they are available through Freedom of panorama C) No, I believe that these contents might still be copyrighted by someone else.

    If the user answers "No-C" the operation is stopped, or the user is sent to some help page, explaining how to write E-mails to ask for permissions, or use COM:OTRS. If the user answers "No-B", the {{FOP}} template is added. Teofilo (talk) 00:46, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
    I'm quite sure it won't be implemented in exactly the way you describe, but I don't think anyone plans to allow this to be abused in the way you allude to.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 01:55, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Neutral

  1. Neutral - Possibly useful. Sv1xv (talk) 11:38, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

November 25

Previously deleted?

Does anyone recall if Image:HMS Hermes .jpg or a version of it as being previously deleted. I'm pretty sure that I've categorised a version of this image previously, and was all ready to tag it as a dupe. However there was no dupe in the categories where I expected them to be (having put them there myself). This file does not appear to have been renamed, and seems to date from the 23rd of November, and I suspect it as being an upload of a previously deleted image.KTo288 (talk) 00:25, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

It's on en-wiki (en: Image:HMS Hermes (R12) (Royal Navy aircraft carrier.jpg) as fair use. Looks like it comes from http://www.navyphotos.co.uk/hermes.htm. This is a scaled-down crop of the original; maybe that used to be on commons too. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:18, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, tagging it for deletion since its copyrighted. Know to nominate for deletion, if I come across it again.KTo288 (talk) 18:54, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Dimitri Kessel

Ive been informed that Dimitri Kessel's works (photographer for LIFE magazine) have been released into google's cache. Anybody know the copyright status of these works? Can we use them (upload them), and if so, under what tag(s)? Are they PD, GFDL, or what?--زرشک (talk) 01:31, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, I guess, they'll have the normal copyright status, that means copyrighted and unfree. At least the Dimitri Kessel ones and all other non-PD-old. But it still seems to be a really great repository! The main page at http://images.google.com/hosted/life for example presents many very old photos, for example from the American Civil War, which are most likely PD-old. --Slomox (talk) 02:23, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
I suppose this means that anything taken prior to 1923 from this repository would be PD? For example, this image is from the 1800s. Is it thus PD, or would it be non-free, as per the google copyright 2008 tag in the bottom?--زرشک (talk) 02:33, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, they are virtually certain to not be OK. Since they were presumably works for hire, LIFE would own the copyright, and so they would still be copyrighted by LIFE magazine... the only exceptions were photos which were published before 1964 but where LIFE forgot to renew them (possible but not likely). Anything being published for the first time (unless they are 120 years old, or 70 years after the death of the author) would also be under copyright I believe. The 1923 date is only for works published before then. As Kessel did not come to the U.S. until 1923 it seems, this would not be possible for his works. As for the image you mention... yes, that is apparently an engraving from 1800. LIFE slaps a copyright notice over everything in that collection (including works which it clearly did not author and therefore do not own the copyright), but for those cases we can use the provided info to determine copyright (hopefully). Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:48, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
As link above clears the situation it says "The vast majority (97 percent) of these images have never been seen by the public" For us first publication important for copyright issues .So i assume these image are unfree and they are Not eligible for commons --Mardetanha talk 07:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Not eligible, you wanted to say, I guess. --Slomox (talk) 18:51, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks Slomox --Mardetanha talk 20:37, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

For english-native speakers

 
Autofriedhof

What is the commonly used term for what is called in German de:Autofriedhof? In dictionaries I've found "car cemetery", "car dump", or "Wrecking yard"? I'm asking because we don't have a category for such images. --Túrelio (talk) 10:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Here is a Swedish example: Category:Kyrko mosse. It has categories Category:Junk yards and Category:Abandoned vehicles. Maybe one should create category:Abandoned junk yards. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 11:00, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Category:Junk yards (commonly "junkyards", one word) would be appropriate. Bastique demandez 16:56, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
The UK term is "breaker's yard".KTo288 (talk) 18:51, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
The UK term used by Thompsons Directory: "Car breakers and dismantlers" but I use "Car breakers". Discussing the other proposals: "car cemetery" was a 1980's colloquiallism, "car dump" I have heard but not common, anything with "yard" is wrong. "Yard" has a narrow specific meaning- approximating to an area enclosed by a masonry wall. "Junk" refers to manufactured goods of shoddy quality that are still saleable so this should be discounted. The only other possibility would be "Car scrapyards" which is used, but does break the yard rule. Over to you folks:-ClemRutter (talk) 23:16, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Here, "Car cemetery" is either archaic or used ironically. Junkyard is certainly acceptable, as is scrapyard.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 04:37, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 

Still confused, but on a higher level ;-). In between I've discovered that we also have Category:Car wreck. One day, we might try to make the cat terminology more consistent. But for the moment, I think I will mainly use Category:Junk yards and eventually add "meta-tags" so that others can find the terms they are accustomed to. Thanks for all your feedback! --Túrelio (talk) 07:23, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I would guess that "Car wreck" was intended more for accidents in situ... AnonMoos (talk) 15:20, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Road categorisation

Just trying to solicit opinion here, but when looking at a category for a road, should that category include stuff by the road but not actually on the road. I mean, consider Image:Portway jetty 2.jpg - this is by the A4 road. Should it be in the A4 category, or just categories for the city? -mattbuck (Talk) 22:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Interesting question, this seems to be a real borderline case. Do we cat the image or the camera. The camera was definitely on the A4, but the image does not show it. So the answer should be no. However, if I were illustrating an article on the A4 in Bristol, this is an image I should consider, so the answer becomes yes. In a similar circumstance, I have made the item a sub-category, then include the subcat in the category, so do we want >>Category:Portway jetty (Bristol)<<. But the question still remains- should >>Category:Portway jetty (Bristol)<< be tagged with A4 road? - ClemRutter (talk) 09:42, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Paintings from Lucas Suppin

Some paintings from Austrian painter de:Lucas Suppin are released under free licenses by his son, Marc Suppin, as you can see on Image:Selfportrait_Lucas_Suppin.jpg. Don't you think we need some kind of confirmation E-mail ? Marc Suppin has a website and a phone number on http://www.suppin.eu/English__.html ( http://www.suppin.eu/Kontakt.html ) Teofilo (talk) 20:18, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

If you think explicit permission is needed, you can always ask the uploader to send permission through OTRS. How do you turn this on (talk) 17:38, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

November 26

Abuse of CCbySA images

I recently came across an advertisement which had used my CCbySA image from commons details here. Isnt there any page here that can give me more help on the kind of action i can take maybe from previous such cases? ive been searching wikipedia, meta and commons looking for more help on such kinds of image theft which im sure is extremely common. Its especially common in India, and ive had more than 5 such images stolen (that i know of). I'm finally considering taking action to teach them a lesson i cant seem to find any online resources for guidance --PlaneMad 08:27, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

You wrote: "Using my image for a multi lakh rupee print campaign without so much as even asking my permission for it is unpardonable."
Well, the licence does not forbid commercial use, and it does not require that you would be informed. So the only thing missing is "Photo: PlaneMad". /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 08:35, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
However, a few days ago, a court in Germany condemned a company to pay 10,000 Euros to Getty Images for using 6 unlicensed images, and beyond the copyvio, the fee was doubled because they didn't credit the photographer.[18] That is common practice.
Anyway, (institutionalized) guidance to our contributors in regard to "abuse" of images from Commons by third parties is really lacking on Commons.--Túrelio (talk) 09:16, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
isnt the CCbySA license itself violated when the resulting advert is not released with a CCbySA license? commercial work is ok as long as the dereivative work is also under the CC license, isnt that right, or have i got things horribly wrong?--PlaneMad 10:22, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
The license also requires that the copyright license of the work (CC-BY-SA) be plainly noted as well. Without both that and the photographer credit, it becomes a full-blown copyright violation (not just a moral rights violation) per the CC-BY-SA terms, unless there is some sort of fair-use type of defense available to them. If they want to use the image under terms other than CC-BY-SA, then they most certainly need to ask for permission. Since their version is a derivative work, it should also be available under the CC-BY-SA license, if they are using it under those terms. This seems a clear-cut case; you could write them explaining that it is a copyright violation; they can either 1) attribute the author, and make the license apparent per the CC-BY-SA terms, 2) remove the image and use something else, or 3) come to separate terms with you. Companies often will respond, but who knows. Virtually none of us are lawyers though, especially not in India, so specific legal advice from here is kinda hard (and is not all that trustworthy ;-) ). Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:42, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
I always send a bill when these things happen. In Norway, I would have charged the equivalent of 30.000 rupees. --Kjetil_r 08:23, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

You cannot avoid commercial use but they have to act according the license: Attribution to you and putting the derivative work under the same license. --Historiograf (talk) 01:00, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


  • Wikimedia can't provide advice in prosecuting copyright violation claims. Much like medical advice, it's a sticky legal area. I would recommend consulting with a lawyer, or your local equivalent. Your right have been violated - this is way more serious then us bunch of yahoos can help you with. (I say that with all my love :)) --J.smith (talk) 07:02, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for all the reassuring responses. at least now i can fight back with confidence. this campaign ran for over a week in major newspapers and they had huge banners at the fair itself. I have written to Mudra and got a 'we are investigating the matter' reply after 3 days. i waited for 2 weeks, but still no word from them. planning to start a full on onslaught using blogs and twitter to damage their name. anyone have any good tips for an unconventional battle using social media? --PlaneMad 14:05, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
I would recommend not to do that as the company can sue you for defamation even though they did use your image without any attribution and failed to contact you to get a new license use the image. Email the company again and if that fails contact a lawyer. Bidgee (talk) 12:55, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

In which category does this photo fit?

I uploaded the photo Image:Tenerife_americas_beach_D.jpg and tried to find a category that describes the information part. I tried starting from the main category Information, but could not find anything that was right in my opinion. Where should I put it? Thanks. Wouter (talk) 09:23, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I would say Playa de las Américas should be enough. If have some more that kind of images, you can create a new category. You create a category as you create a gallery. You just have to place "Category:" in front of the name. (Categories should be named in english and in plura if possible: Not Automobiles would be the correct one instead of Autombile)
--D-Kuru (talk) 15:18, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I have more photos of this type of thing. How would you call it in English and if I make a new category to what category would that category belong? I am thinking of either Category:Signs in the Canary Islands or Category:Information graphics. Wouter (talk) 15:38, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I would prefer the first one even I'm bot user if the spelling is correct. I think it's Category:Signs on the Canary Islands.
--D-Kuru (talk) 11:36, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
In the Canary Islands, per Category:Doors in the Canary Islands etc. Man vyi (talk) 11:49, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

No thumbnail

The image Image:Fassade Alvaneu-Bad 89.jpg does not have a thumbnail (or probably not anymore). I tried to reupload the same file but it did not help. Should I upload the file under a different filename and add a deleting request to the above mentioned image? Or does anyone have a better idea? Thank you for your help, Debianux (talk) 12:56, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

 
seems fine to me --PlaneMad 13:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I do not see any thumbnail!? Are you joking? Purge did not help either. Debianux (talk) 13:28, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, I do see the thumbnails, for example under Versions on the image page. --Túrelio (talk) 14:14, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I can see the thumbnail on the right --PlaneMad 14:36, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
And why can I not see it? Debianux (talk) 20:58, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I found the failure: It was the ad blocker of my webbrowser that blocked the thumbnail of this image by mistake. Debianux (talk) 22:26, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

{{Self}}

A few minutes ago, {{Self}} was editted and something is wrong. For example, the following line: 

{{self|author=[[:zh:User:Example|Example]] at [http://zh.wikipedia.org zh.wikipedia]|GFDL|FAL}}
will only give:

{{self|author=[[:zh:User:PearlTsang|PearlTsang]] at [http://zh.wikipedia.org zh.wikipedia]|GFDL|FAL}}. please check it. Thank you.--[[User:Bencmq|bencmq]] ([[User talk:Bencmq|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 14:54, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Alno reverted his edit. Should be fixed now
--D-Kuru (talk) 15:14, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Works again, included all in nowiki tags. Multichill (talk) 19:51, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

November 27

Image:Stub controlli automatici.png

I need that someone delete the image "Image:Stub controlli automatici.png", cause I have some problem on italian wikipedia: the picture need to be loaded on italian wikipedia to be used by a wikiproject, but I can't cause it's a duplicate. So I need that someone change name at the picture or delete it. --Aushulz (talk) 02:58, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

  Done See Image:Gnome-multimedia-volume-control.svg for a replacement. Ciao. Michelet-密是力 (talk) 06:30, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Thak you :) --Aushulz (talk) 15:20, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

spelling mistake

Just a quick one, I would like to bring to someones attention that most of maps in the Category, Maps of New South Wales have got a spelling mistake, an example of the spelling mistake as seen below,

Image:Morree location map in New South Wales.PNG

"Morree" should be spelled Moree I dont know how to edit these sorts of things so im hoping someone will be able to.

Cheers Beaver (talk) 10:14, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

You could ask the uploader to fix the mistake in the original files, or you could save the images and fix them yourself using a graphics application, and reupload over the old ones. How do you turn this on (talk) 17:42, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
I've fixed it (Moree for now) but I'll get around fixing them all (I may remake a new map later on) and also the above image from showing (No point having it shown when it can be linked.) Bidgee (talk) 12:41, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

User:Cary Bass

 
Cary is a man, I'm certain too

I don't see any reason why User:Cary Bass should have sysop rights. It's a sockpuppet of User:Bastique and a just have a few edits adding the name to images. The user performed no log action. --~/w /Talk 13:32, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Have you asked her him? She's He's kind of an important person in the community and likely has a good reason. --J.smith (talk) 17:20, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Her?? Cary is a man, I'm certain. How do you turn this on (talk) 17:31, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, my mistake. --J.smith (talk) 17:45, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
I believe one of them is his account for when he acts at the WMF Volunteer Coordinator in an official capacity and the other is him editing as a regular editor. Not certain though. MBisanz talk 18:24, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, User:Cary Bass is for actions he takes as a staff member; User:Bastique is for actions taken as an admin elected from, by and for the community. IIRC, this is explained on the userpage(s).  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 19:22, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Commons greatest man, he is ultimate power, and needs that god forbid he needs into intervene. Nuff said.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 16:03, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
This whole thread (but especially the comment I am in reply to) is ... scary. Besides, Cary isn't all that... He puts his pants on one leg at a time (so I am told) just like everyone else. :) Collard just photoshopped that stuff about godlikeness in. (He forgot the halo though... I've seen it but it doesn't photograph well) ++Lar: t/c 18:29, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, state it more clearly and all are happy. --~/w /Talk 20:41, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Notification of uncategorized files

Hi guys, the pile of uncategorized files increases with about 500 files each day. I wrote a bot to notify users of uncategorized files they've uploaded:

  • If the user doesn't have a talk page: leave a welcome template
  • If the user talk page doesn't contain <!-- Uncategorized notification -->: leave {{Please link images}}
  • For every image: leave a line at the end of the list

See User talk:ELIZABETH SAN MARTIN#Please link images, User talk:Denion-IT#Please link images or other contributions for an examples. Any remarks/suggestions? I plan on running this bot once a day to work on yesterdays catch. Multichill (talk) 16:50, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Nice idea. Whenever I tag an image for having no categories, I make a point of informing the user. But a bot would ensure all users were informed, and would save the hassle of users having to do it. I'm not certain, but you would probably be better requesting the bot task on the RFA page. Best wishes, How do you turn this on (talk) 17:45, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

"nominal" size of SVG files

Is there a way to define the "nominal" pixel size an SVG file defaults to when it is uploaded to the commons?

or

Does that have to be set by how it is scaled in the source application that generated the SVG? Lestatdelc (talk) 18:31, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is set in the source application. I'm not that experienced with the actual script behind SVG, but I'm sure there is a way to modify in in a text editor.
For example: width="350px" height="455px" (from the source of Image:Western_Europe_March_1945.svg). --J.smith (talk) 18:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Layout of image description pages - User reverting to disorganized pages

In the early days on commons, there was no consistent layout of the image (description) pages. People just added text, hopefully some description, author information, some date, etc, ... and a license template.

Then came the description templates, allowing us to follow a systematic approach, and offering a guideline (i.e. a template) to fill in.

Last year, last months, new Upload Forms have been implemented, really encouraging users to use the templates (and the non-basic forms even fills in the right fills for us).

All upload forms also add ==Headers== in the created pages, to make things more well-organized. I.e. they add a ==Summary== or Description and ==Licensing:== header that even offers a nice link to Commons:Copyright_tags.

True, there exist localized versions of templates and headers, so things could still improve. (Although English is the basic language on commons).

However, a user is removing all those structural headings (and some other additions by the original uploader by the way). See [19], and hundreds of other recent edits of this user.

So, okay, commons can still improve on offering consistent description pages, there exists localizations, etc.., but last months, I've seen commons improving greatly on offering a more consistent approach to the uploaders and to the users looking up information. The upload forms have been greatly improved in inserting this "boilerplate" structural headers and template info. So removing that information again, seem like a first step in returning to where we left of years ago.

Anyone with other idea, because frankly, removing that boilerplate consistent information that's been nicely added in the upload forms lately, doesn't seem an appropriate thing to do... ? --LimoWreck (talk) 19:05, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree with removing those headings. Why put a heading in front of the information template? If a heading needs to be there, it should be put in the template. But actually I see no point in a heading at all. --Slomox (talk) 19:50, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Maybe headings are not very useful when all information is in templates. But if headings are needed it should not be in the template, since clicking [edit] for that heading will open the edit box for the protected template page, not for the image page where the template is used. /Ö 12:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
The "Summary" and "Licensing" headers made sense back when we didn't yet have {{Information}} and the other structured templates for the info on an image. Now that we do have these templates, the "Summary" heading is superfluous on image pages where they are used. I even sometimes place the license directly into the "Permission" field of the template, which often (unless the license templates are big) makes for a more compact layout. In that case, even the "Licensing" header isn't needed anymore. Lupo 20:29, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
In that case, it might make more sense to change the pages generated by the Upload Forms again, because that's the layout that is generated for all new uploads. (Though I doubt it makes sense to just remove them). I see great efforts being made on commons to make things as consistent and uniform as possible last months, so we should do the opposite on our own and make the same chaotic mishmash as it used to be, unless it would be the default uniform scheme proposed and generated by the forms. --LimoWreck (talk) 21:03, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
My main complaint about the new upload templates is that they dump everything you put in the template into the small Comment box under File history, making it impossible to just put in a simple two-line comment. Can that be fixed? There seems to be no way to edit the File history, so once all that junk is in the Comment box, it stays. HowardMorland (talk) 00:17, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Why would you remove a heading if it exists on the upload form? Either someone reconfigures the system so that it doesn't appear when uploading, or just leave it. I personally don't have a problem with it and it can remain. Gryffindor (talk) 02:37, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Section headers are fine. It is possible that more than one templates or other information blocks fall under each header. Summary may include Description and Location templates. Licensing may include 1-2 license tags plus special templates lice flickr and Insignia. Please keep this style with headers. Sv1xv (talk) 04:28, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

While reading this I am at a complete loss as to what the use is for the headers. This is not a claim that there is no use for them, just that I am unable to determine a use for them. Perhaps one of the users with the opinion that they should remain who took the time to express that opinion here could explain their use. -- carol (talk) 15:23, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Simple organization, I'd guess. A book doesn't need chapters and paragraphs, but it sure makes it easier to read. Not that we are dealing with anything so complicated as a book here. Most images the the sections are not needed, however, when you start getting longer image pages it becomes much nicer to have around. It's not hard to get two pages worth of templates, etc, on an image page. --J.smith (talk) 17:14, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
Then perhaps the expectation of an "image page" and what is considered to be an organized image page should be reviewed. The headings (which do not appear and are not available to paste for uploads when javascript is not enabled, btw) are "Image", "Summary" and "License"? I always liked the appearance of the license templates within the information template -- visual approval; however I also saw this used as a vulnerability and a way to delete manually uploaded Flickr images.
Uses of the headings allow clicking to that location on the page and linking to it -- so it emulates the divisions that were used for text (chapters, sections, etc) and for text makes it very nice and brings documentation into the modern age by allowing links directly to cited text. I am unable to determine a reason to paste a link directly to a license on an image page. Eg. Image:Temple_at_Aihole.JPG#filehistory and image retrieved from the current uploads which also does not contain a ==License== heading, heh.
So, bot uploads are different from javascript assisted uploads which are different from manual uploads and who knows what personal upload scripts are being used.
How many templates beyond the information template could conceivably be used on one image page? -- carol (talk) 17:40, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
Ah yeah, linking directly to a section is another nice advantage. I frequently use three templates other then {{Information}}. I (sometimes) use {{Location}} for cord-data, license tags and my own personal "info" template. Some images have QI, FI, PotD or VI templates. Or any combination. Some images have topic specific tags, such as NASA photos. Retouched images will have a {{Retouched}} tag. We have lots of junk. :D
If you don't like the JS upload form you can skip it with a simple setting in your preferences. As long as an image has the very basic requirements then the format of the page is less important. J.smith (talk) 17:53, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
I found that the ease of the javascript upload forms was negated by the amount of editing required. Having javascript disabled for my whole web experience has been somewhat informative and only a little debilitating. It is an experience that I recommend for anyone who has opinions about how web sites and pages should function.
One persons junk is another persons treasure; the determination of this is an individual preference. Location is somewhat new compared to the licenses, tokens of community approval and the source templates.(?) I have not yet seen a heading for "Location". How difficult would it be to (assuming that an updated set of headings was agreed on) change all of the methods of upload to at least suggest a standardized set of headings? In my mind and understanding, this task would be much more easily accomplished via template updating but this is against the current concensus (of one, J.smith) which seems to prefer the headings.... -- carol (talk) 18:20, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
I find them a little helpful still, even with the more standardized templates -- they can help direct your attention to the licensing aspects more quickly, can be used as named anchors in links, etc. There can be several templates in each section, so we generally want those grouped as well. While an Information template is the most common, you can have all of the featured image / quality image / valuable image templates, the {{Location}} stuff (which is a separate template, not a header), etc. Source templates like {{LOC-image}}, {{NARA-image}}, {{CDC-PHIL}}, and any of the others in Category:Source templates or Category:Marker templates, can add up. As for licensing, sometimes images are multi-licensed, or are PD for multiple reasons and have all applicable tags listed, plus there are tags like {{Trademarked}}, {{Insignia}}, {{Personality rights}}, {{Australian Commonwealth reserve}}, and others in Category:Restriction tags which I wouldn't be surprised to see multiply. Also, section headings will also be created for images transferred from wikipedias (preserving the old history) anyways. While not a big deal, it still seems like a decent idea to have a separate Licensing header. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

November 28

Using Categories

When trying to select a category for a new image upload, I never know what to do. I can't seem to find a full list of categories to choose from, so I find a similar image that someone else has uploaded and use its category. However, some images list several categories, and many similar images have very different categories.

Once I find a category, I can see its subcategories listed, but I have no way to navigate back toward the trunk of the tree. It would be nice to be able to do that.

Also, I wonder how useful the category system really is, because when I am looking for images already in the Commons, if I manage to find a plausible category to look in, I usually don't find anything appropriate. I have better luck looking in Wikimedia articles or galleries where someone has collected similar images, but those collections are usually very incomplete also.

I know the Library of Congress has a special division that catalogs everything that comes into the library. They are specially trained people who apply the same criteria to every item that comes in, so there is some rationality to the system. Wikimedia can't do that, but it seems like this system could be better. I know that part of my problem is that I don't understand it well enough to work with it. HowardMorland (talk) 16:17, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

It depends what you're categorising - using HotCat (preferences > gadgets) can be quite useful as you type in a few letters and it starts listing categories that start with those letters. It also makes it easier to add/remove categories. If you're categorising something and can't find relevant categories, maybe no one's created them yet. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:27, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
HotCat has a glitch (for me), it won't remove categories on Commons. Don't know why, but it seems to do that. Otherwise, it works fine.Mitch32(Want help? See here!) 16:31, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Due to some rules which the commons inherited from en.wikipedia, categories do not exist until there is an image that should go there and the uploader is required to create the category. This also might be a simplification of the inherited "rule" as there is also something about the second image uploaded and uploader is supposed to create the category and then (if the rule is applied in a way that would actually function) populate that category with any other image which should belong there.
These rules have been adhered to, maintained and sometimes aggressively and via software enforced since commons began in 2004, yet as you mentioned, images are managed differently at other similar sites and it seems to be an unnecessary limitation to manage images in the same way that in text linked articles are managed at any of the wikipedias. Requests that the software that is already here be used to perform the task of managing images has been in my limited experience here often difficult -- including big decisions made without concensus or even the presentation of a logic by users with access to the software but without the gumption to claim responsibility. I read on one user page once that asking for a concensus was kind of useless if the idea was very good and the suggestion to make an organizational change and present it when it was done. I await the presentation of some of the decisions I have seen made in the last year.
The category tree exists at the beginning of the tree and gets duplicated into smaller and smaller "branches". For so many image subjects that exist but are not here yet, if the category existed, it would be easier for the upload software to put the image there upon upload. At least, this is my opinion and the display of this happens everytime an image is uploaded and an existing category is suggested.
I have been using templates to that should make upload of plant species easier. Occassionally, I am needing to make a category for a species for which an image has not yet been uploaded here of. Via the template functionality (and somewhat against the inherited rules) the template is able to determine if an image exists in that category yet and if it doesn't, the category is automatically sub-categorized to Category:Species needing images.
Other categories which could exist safely without images would be the subcategory structure for every country and city that is already existing here as a category. Railroads and roads. Probably many of the other science categories. Please do not limit yourself to my suggestions in thinking of categories which should exist here but don't yet.
Another positive thing about creating the category tree even if the images are not here yet would be the pre-establishment of uniformity of naming and those stupid articles and prepositions "the" and "in" or "of" crap (excuse my opinion of these problems).
Another helpful software addition that would greatly assist the search engines goes back to early web stuff -- the meta-words. Categories and galleries both would be more easy to find for users and software uploads and the wiki search function if a way to include the meta-words were established and used. At wikipedia, the articles themselves contain these words -- it becomes obvious the difference between a text and an image when comparing the two different kind of wikis....
Anyways, to sum this up. Some rules were inherited that might not actually apply well here to the task that the commons is supposed to be performing. Those rules got things going here but in many ways interfer with the image wiki functioning well as an image hosting web location. If others could look at what the software can do and not look at the inherited rules for a while, I am certain that many other similar software functions could be found and perhaps utilized. -- carol (talk) 16:47, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Remove Metadata

I was testing a script to upload multiple images and need to remove the metadata information that is displayed. The protein images for idph, 1a3i and 1abz had put my username as the 'author' for the metadata. How can I edit to remove the metadata or have the author changed to: "Jawahar Swaminathan and MSD staff at the European Bioinformatics Institute". Thanks for the help! Donabel SDSU (talk) 18:48, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

You can modify the meta data in your software editing program of choice. Some programs might call it "Image properties" or "image details" or a number of different things. I've not found a good tool to just modify the meta-data, but I haven't really looked. I wouldn't be surprised if someone replied with a good open-source application. :D --J.smith (talk) 01:47, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I guess we have a page about it - Commons:Manipulating meta data - must be a common question! J.smith (talk) 01:49, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

November 29

Please not again!

I just went in to Category:Lake Albert, New South Wales to see what images I've uploaded as I've got some more images but only one image is showing with the rest gone (IE: Not there any more) the same goes for any other category I noticed. Please don't tell me that someone has accidentally deleted the images again! I don't have back-ups of most of my images due to have my HDD fail a few months ago in which the DVD back-up also failed on me. Bidgee (talk) 00:25, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be working again now. Bidgee (talk) 00:31, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Hidden categories for Village pump

While writing a different opinion/observation on this wikipage, I happened to notice that this page is subcategorized into two different hidden categories Category:FAL and Category:Self-published work. Is this intentional or is it a wikitypo? -- carol (talk) 18:23, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

It has to do with the templates transcluded in the "Self" section above. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:46, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
I suspected this, unfortunately everytime I scrolled to confirm this I was distracted by more recent posts -- maybe even my own. Now I suspect that if this is a problem it will be repaired. Thank you for your answer to my question. -- carol (talk) 19:54, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

The Google logo consists entirely of text, so it is in public domain. Why is the logo marked as a copyright violation? --Joku Janne (talk) 22:09, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

The text is 3D-like and colorful. --AVRS (talk) 22:50, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
The colors are irrelevant for copyright; that is a trademark/trade dress thing. Image:Google wordmark.svg is PD-textlogo for sure. So, basically the argument is whether the 3D effect qualifies for copyright or not... borderline at best I think, and should not be speedied at the very least. Some artistic effects used while creating otherwise uncopyrightable letters may cause the result to qualify for copyright (one of the Copyright Office circulars mentions painting across a striated surface to create an effect)... the question is if this is just a simple photoshop effect instead, which seems quite possible. I remember trying once and coming pretty close (and I am not very good with Photoshop to begin with). I would side with PD-textlogo on this one, as basic 3D effects like that are becoming common and simple (and can often be applied in one quick step). On the other hand, you could argue that Google tweaked it a lot and maybe hand-tuned the result (no way to be sure), and it crosses the line there. There will also be a tendency to err on the safe side with a high-profile logo like that :-) But it would probably be best as a regular deletion request; it is not an obvious copyvio so I don't think it should be speedied. It has been discussed before without much of a conclusion. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:14, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
Colors by themselves are do not necessarily go against Template:PD-textlogo, but graphic manipulations which allow significant scope for individual creativity and artistic expression (and so go beyond the relatively narrow "utilitarian" exemption of U.S. copyright law) are problematic (see further explanation at image deletion discussion page). AnonMoos (talk) 08:56, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Upload problem

Hi,

I've been trying to reupload the larger version of Image:Montekahuwalia.jpg, but keep getting errors. Could someone kindly do it on my behalf? Thanks, How do you turn this on (talk) 23:39, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Same with Image:Vijaymallya.jpg (needs this version uploaded). Cheers, How do you turn this on (talk) 00:18, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Also this for this image. Perhaps it's the large size it can't cope with? The error looks like this: "Upload warning The file is corrupt or has an incorrect extension. Please check the file and upload again." How do you turn this on (talk) 00:37, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
I just tried it with Image:Vijaymallya.jpg and I got the same issue. I'm going to try uploading some of my own images - one sec. --J.smith (talk) 00:56, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Already had this problem today at Commons:Forum#Unverständliche Warnung (in german): the metadata contains html, for Image:Montekahuwalia.jpg see More detail about Montek S. Ahluwalia - India Economic Summit 2008 on Flickr. You must delete this html code. Also the Flickr bot can not handle this images. --Martin H. (talk) 01:34, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

November 30

Logos

Most works of art are considered to be in the public domain or not checking if 70 years have passed since author's death or not. But what happens with logos of organization that don't belong to a specific individual but to an organization? Do I consider them to be anonymous works?

I know there is a diference between copyright and trademark, and that when a logo is made with just simple fonts and geometric shapes (such as with Image:Google wordmark.svg) then it is not protected by copyright while at the same time remains protected by trademark. But when the logo is not so simple, it would have both copyright and trademark protection... at least for some time. If I understand things right, copyright protection would last for a given time and then go into public domain, even if trademark still apllies, right?

Is my reasoning correct, or am I mistaken? And if copyright does expire for logos, apart from it's trademark protection status, under wich rationale do I check if it's expired or not? Belgrano (talk) 19:58, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

For trademarks used in the U.S., if they existed before 1923, then they're generally out of copyright in the form in which they existed before 1923 (that's why we have old Coca Cola and NY Yankees logos on Commons). For other countries it may be a little more complicated... AnonMoos (talk) 20:09, 30 November 2008 (UTC)


It's a bit complicated. Logos published before 1977 without a copyright notice are in the public domain. There are alot of other special cases. Cornell has a great chart. Works of corporate authorship first published after 2002 are protected for 95 years from publication. J.smith (talk) 22:08, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

December 1

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