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Can anyone explain the sort order of media on Category pages? -- I have always assumed it was simply straight alpha, left to right then top to bottom. It uses the file name, except where there is a Default Sort entry or a pipe in the category entry in the file.
The last two are not where I expect. There appears to be nothing strange about their names, and no pipe in their category entry. So why are they out of order?
Something not right with the categorys atm. I've also seen pages showing up as red links in categories, even though they exist--DieBuche (talk) 14:56, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Found the problem. Both images use {{NYPL-image-full}}, which includes a DEFAULTSORT line, for some bizarre reason. Even more bizarre, the sortkey is "~{{PAGENAME}}", which means it is sorted by tilde, resulting in the strange sorting witnessed in those categories. User:Docu added this sort key with this diff, so I'll get him to explain why he felt such a change was appropriate. — Huntster (t@c)15:01, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
As an addendum, I've left a message on his talk page, but he's not been active since the 24th. Unless someone can say why having a DEFAULTSORT line in the template is at all useful, it may be most appropriate to remove it altogether. — Huntster (t@c)15:09, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
I should have looked for a DEFAULTSORT in template -- I've seen it before, but I'm glad it got the discussion going. As for "the back of a flooded category" it makes some sense, as these are probably less useful than most images. So I might suggest keeping it, if we don't think it confuses. I don't feel strongly either way. Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 16:14, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Aha. Would it not be more useful to do something like [[Category:Flooded category|~{{PAGENAME}}]], so it would not affect regular Categories of the Line? — Huntster (t@c)16:08, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
I got the impression that the NYPL images somewhat flooded Category:Mirror Lake (California). AFAIK, all images were uncategorized (by topic) before they were added there. One could put them into a separate subcategory, but I didn't find that particularly useful. In one way or the other, we should still try to find a way to put all these stereoscopic views to better use. As a sample, I made a gallery with one of the views available there. -- User:Docu at 11:32, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
As long as it is not a comment like "I like this pic!!!11" or "I loooove Justin <3" you may use the file talk. IMO many users here are also interested in photography and maybe they like any form of feedback or suggestions on their work on their talkpages. If you think, an image is realy good you may nominate it at COM:VI for valued images from a special topic, COM:QI for good quality work or COM:FP for outstanding works (dont know that sections, so hope I got it right). --Martin H. (talk) 14:56, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
You or someone else might add it to en:Infante_Juan,_Count_of_Barcelona, es:Juan de Borbón, and the 15 other Wikipages about him. A person wanting illustrations for an article or book might take it. There are many possibilities.
Is there a page giving the policy for external links -- what can be used and what kind are improper? A search in Help on External Links seems to just return a list of Help pages that happen to have an external links section. Jcorelis (talk) 16:49, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Don't think we currently have a policy on this. What is the factual situation that concerns you? — Cheers, JackLee–talk–17:16, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Per Jacklee - it does depend what you are concerned about. Largely external links are unnecessary on Commons but a few are around and may be useful. --Herbytalk thyme17:40, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Just wondering about things like: Is it ok to put links from the image of an art object to some web site (like a museum or some other archive than Commons) with more information about it? or: If a Commons image has a link to a commercial site (how to define?), can it be complained about? (I don't have any specific images I'm concerned about, these are just examples of the type of thing I was wondering if policy addressed.) Jcorelis (talk) 19:17, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Good point. I suppose it also shows that we are still leading Wikipedia in regards to illustrations. Imagine if we would have had to delete the images just because they didn't create one yet. -- User:Docu at 12:21, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Category:Aerial lifts contains a Subcategory + Pages + Media, but in all items there are pictures (in Media also some drawings). What is the meaning of Page and Media or rather, what is the difference to Subcategory? Or is this creative overcategorization? There are subcategories for Gondola lifts and Chairlifts, but not for Aerial tramway, which are in a Page (and I do not know how to move a picture into that page). Again, in Category:Gondola lifts there is a Page "Gondola lift" containing some pictures and Media with lots of pictures. And the pictures are scattered all over all categories. I tried to put some meaning into this, but failed fundamentally. Can someone please advise? --AHert (talk) 15:18, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Our categories are organized as a tree, so categories can themselves belong to categories; they then become subcategories. So if I go to Category:Red shoes and edit the page, I can add it to Category:Shoes and Category:Red clothing, and it will become a subcategory of those two categories.
Pages work exactly like Wikipedia articles. We usually call them "gallery pages" around here, because we mostly use them to hold media content in a more organized fashion. The examples in Category:Aerial lifts are quite bad, but see, for instance, Unified Combatant Command. Note how that page organizes media in a more readable format. These are also media that might be found in a number of different categories or subcategories, but the page Unified Combatant Command can organize them all into one place. These pages are also put into categories the same way subcategories are.
Finally we have the media, which is simply a huge alphabetical dump of all of the images and other media that have been categorized with the current category. It's unorganized and hard to wade through, but that's where pages come in. =)
Thanks for the help. I realized that reading and understanding is not the same. Are military people generally more used to a proper order? I understand the subcategories. And I see the pages in the Unified Combatant Command where you can open the page and add a map/a file to the gallery. But in Aerial lifts, I don't see how to open the page, and I am still at a loss how to add e.g. the "Aiguille" picture in the Media to the page "Aerial tramway". And first of all, the basic question: why do you create pages, if a subcategory would do the same job? --AHert (talk) 17:26, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
P.S. ... and is there any sense in putting a page "Gondola lift" into the (sub)category "Gondola lifts". Can I delete this page (not the pictures in it)? --AHert (talk) 17:33, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Category:Gondala lifts, and the gallery Gondala lifts are neither the same thing nor mutually exclusive, although they appear tobe for smaller topics. Categories are for organising, storing, and sorting files, galleries as the name suggests is for displaying them. Think of galleries as photo-articles, where images can be displayed in organised way, with themes and narrative, compare Art (which i'm rather proud of) with Category:Art.--KTo288 (talk) 18:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the teaching, I feel I understand it better now. But could somebody add on the PROJECT PAGE of COM:CAT that there may be galleries within a category which is explained in COM:G, and on the PROJECT PAGE of COM:G that the whole subjject takes place within a category (see COM:CAT). I may not have asked so many questions had I seen this before. --AHert (talk) 13:29, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
File uploader should be more specific about where missing information is in upload form.
While uploading a file in the "It is entirely my own work" path, I had forgotten to choose a license. When I did a "show preview", it caught the mistake and had a red warning box saying that I must enter the image source, author, and license. This warning box was placed above the image source box. The licensing box is not as prominent as it should be so I keep thinking that the warning was complaining about the image source field being incorrect. After a couple minutes of confusion, I realized my mistake that I hadn't chosen a license and it worked. I see no reason why the software should not place the warning directly above the missing field that is causing the form to be incomplete. These three different warnings should not be lumped together into one but each treated separately. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:37, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
You are surely right. There are historical reasons for why these three cases are lumped together in one error message (and also, why the error messages appear near the source field instead of just above the upload button, where they once were located). Given that there is a new upload wizard in the works that is supposed to replace our upload form in a few months, I will not invest any work in improving this. Well, maybe I'll fix the placement such that the messages appear above the upload button again. But that's it. Lupo08:25, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Another change? While I understand why they're done, it's still annoying to have to learn (or figure out how to revert to old style forms) every few months for the older contributors. I have no problem filling out an {{Information}} template, so only use the basic form, but even it has gotten issues added on occasion. Adam Cuerden (talk) 08:40, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, frankly said, I'm not sure whether the new upload wizard is intended to replace the current upload form, or whether the two will co-exist. Lupo08:59, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
It is awkward for your team: You have newbies having to learn the firm that you want to help - and experienced contriutors who know what they're doing, and have to balance the two. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:32, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
"My team"? I'm not part of the usability team (or any other team, that is)... :-) But yes, that's exactly the crux. Lupo20:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Copyright status of edited PD media
I'm the original author of this Kiev Metro map file:Kiev metro route map uk.svg and has released it to PD. Sometime I've found that the official site of Kiev Metro has used my map with moderate revision to it. (Click the link "Вiдкрити схему".) First thing first, I'm glad that my work is beneficial, that's the very reason I release my works to PD. But then comes my concern. Kiev Metro is a system still undergoing development. That means the map will be updated once new development completes. Supposedly the official wouldn't bother with PD statement and automatically claim the copyright of the updated map. Would it be the problem if I update the same map in Wikimedia under such circumstance? -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 12:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
"public domain" - everyone is allowed to do with it whatever (s)he likes ... aside claiming own copyright. But if they change your map they may publish the new file copyrighted. Maybe CC-license would have been "better" ... axpdeHello!13:00, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Specifically, the "SA" or "share-alike" clause is supposed to prevent people from claiming exclusive copyright over enhancements to originally freely-licensed media. I've actually found a few of my PD images being sold as T-shirts on Cafepress or Cafepress-like sites (such as File:Chinese-army Wuhan flag (1911-1928) 18 dots.svg, File:3enighed.svg, and one or two others that I don't remember right now), but I don't care too much, which is why I declared them to be PD... AnonMoos (talk) 17:00, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
I *think* the question was more about taking information back and adding it to his own image, not complaining about the Kiev authorities using his image (which PD allows, with no restrictions at all, which the original author seems to be aware of). I would think it would be highly unlikely, if you are following the same presentation as your map already has, that the additional information would be considered copyright by them. The copyright in a map is more on the presentation itself, the actual outlines chosen, that sort of thing. I don't think the list of metro station names could be considered to have a database copyright either. You *might* want to note on your image page that the Kiev Metro has made use of this image, just in case someone things you copied it from them ;-) Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:25, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
I've made many requests in the Graphics Lab on files that need altering or creating/SVGfying(mostly flags and roundels), and those that have helped me have always done an excellent job, however I'd like to be able to start doing it myself when possible. The problem is, I'm having difficulty doing it right. How I understand it, you view the file, and click on the tab at the bottom that says "Edit this file using an external application", but I can't download it, it always comes as a PHP file(giving me the option of choosing an application, but when I click on inkscape nothing happens). I have downloaded the latest version of Inkscape, and am using the latest version of the Opera web browser. I went to the "setup instructions" area on MediaWiki, and it says to "configure your browser so that the MIME type application/x-external-editor is associated with your helper application", and for Opera to do it via Tools→Preferences→Advanced→Downloads, but when I went to here in my browser, it doesn't have the MIME "application/x-external-editor" available in it's list. Can someone who also uses Opera help me with this problem? I'm willing to download Firefox in the end if I have to, and try it that way, but I'd really prefer not to, I don't like Firefox that much. Fry1989 (talk) 19:20, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
You don't have to use the external editor link. Right-click on the link directly below the image & choose save as...You can edit the resulting file with a Vector apllication, a free one is w:Inkscape--DieBuche (talk) 19:31, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Ah, thanks so much :D, just one other question (inkscape virgin). If I wanna change the colour of say, a roundel, do I use the "fill bounded area" icon the looks like a paint can? Because I just tried it, and I still get a little bit of an outline, which is undesirable. Do you know what I mean?
Can you reccomment one? Basically what I wanna do is take the colour from one image, and then put it onto another. How would I do that? Fry1989 (talk) 20:16, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, the way I would do it is to download both files, as Pieter explained, and then, with the dropper tool selected in Inkscape, hover over the part with the desired colour and use Ctrl+C to copy it to the clipboard. Then, open the other file, and open the "Fill and Stroke" window. I think it's accessible by menus, but I normally just use Ctrl+Shift+F. Then, you just need to paste the code into the appropriate box, which should be easy enough to spot, as it's the one in a format similar to this: 097f8dff. Simply highlight it and hit Ctrl+V to paste, and the colour should change. Alternatively, if the file you want to take the colour from is not an SVG, just copy the image from the page using right-click and "Copy", and paste it into the SVG you're editing. Then, do the same as before, but make sure to delete the image from the SVG before saving. Hope that's not too confusing! NikNakstalk - gallery - wikipedia20:48, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
I am new to this, both as a contributor and as a user. I have been searching for some time to find out the answer to two questions:
1. How do I give credit to the author of an image? I need some examples. I am looking for an unobtrusive way to do it. For example, if I'm using an image for a background, where do I put the attribution? Can I put it in the ALT tag or the TITLE tag or both? And what is the format to be used? I can't seem to find an example anywhere.
2. What do I do about my own images on my own webpages? Am I required to attribute myself? And how do I let my visitors know that they can use my images on their own site?
[ I'm so new, I don't know how to sign this, so I'll do it two ways, and hope one of them is OK! ]
Hello! I'm glad you found a good place to ask these questions. As for your first question, you can see COM:REUSE. Essentially the credit line would preferably be near the photo itself in text. But I am not a lawyer and you'll have to read fine print of whatever license that is assigned to the image you're trying to reuse. If it is a Creative Commons license you might read the FAQ on their website. You are not required to attribute yourself for images you yourself own the rights to. However, to let other people know your images can be reused, you might want to put a note at the bottom of your website detailing the status of your images. You may wish to use a CC marker if that's the license you're going with. Killiondude (talk) 05:00, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Thank you, Killiondude! - This is stuff I spent a long time searching for. I wonder why it's not more easily found? Other users must have the same problems! Prof611 (talk) 10:10, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
The subcategories of the category Category:Flags by aspect ratio have a technical mistake in the name. According to the section 4 of the FIAV code, [1] first is the width and second the length. Then, is not Flags with an aspect ratio of 3:2, the correct is Flags with an aspect ratio of 2:3. Regards. --Xavigivax (talk) 14:19, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Nah, they're correct. First, for aspect ration Width:Height is the standard format (16:9, 4:3) etc. And what they call the length is probably meant to be the height.--DieBuche (talk) 17:15, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
If you use the term aspect ratio then the ratio of x to y is correct, but the thing is flags don't seem to use this convention. The first line of w:Flags#Shapes_and_designs reads Flags are usually rectangular in shape (often in the ratio 2:3, 1:2, or 3:5) i.e y to x, note the term aspect ratio is not used.KTo288 (talk) 21:41, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I guess we should rename the cats then. And maybe put a little disclaimer on the parent one that aspectratio != ratio--DieBuche (talk) 05:53, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Please, read the world convention to inform the aspect of a flag:
Sec. 4 FLAG PROPORTIONS
Flag proportions are indicated by a ratio. The first figure corresponds to the width of the flag,
which is defined as the side normally attached to the pole or staff. The second figure corresponds
to the length of the flag. A flag with a width of 3 units and a length of 5 units is written either 3:5 or
3x5. --Xavigivax (talk) 07:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I think we agree now on a rename, but to do so in such a way that will technically satisfy the FIAV codes, and for us layman who normally encounter ratios in the x:y form. Any suggestions?--KTo288 (talk) 13:17, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm not at all certain the categories are useful -- some (many?) flags don't have a specific ratio including the USA national flag. But, I suspect we'll keep it, so how about "proportions":
Perhaps I'm a little over top in favor of consistency -- hence my thinking that using numerical proportions throughout is better. I don't however, feel strongly about it and certainly agree that "square" will be clearer to some users. As for avoiding jargon in the others, how about using
The USA flag has the proportions 10:19. Technically are not square flags, are 1:1 flag. If you say "square flag" for 1:1, the others only could say "landscape flags"... 2:3 and 2x3, both are correct. Can I help you to resolve this and rename the categories? --Xavigivax (talk) 15:24, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Technically, there is no legally specified proportion for USA civilian flags. 10:19 is required only for flags purchased by the military. Civilian flags are not available in that proportion smaller than a casket flag, 5 x 9.5 feet. Available smaller sizes are, among others 2x3, 3x5, and 4x6. Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 15:19, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
May 27
Categories
Is it gremlins at play or technicians at work? but categories and subcategories seem to be displaying a bit strangely today.KTo288 (talk) 13:45, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Where have number of images and subcats, previosly displayed next to a category's name all gone? They were very helpful! And from today I don't see them any more! I feel as if I'd be a year back, when there was no this feature. By the way, I never used HotCat, scripts etc. Cmapm (talk) 18:37, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
The word 'category' prefixes the category name, which seems somewhat redundant when they all fall under the heading 'subcategory'. Also they previously showed the number of files and subcategories within the files, they no longer do this which is a little annoying.Mtaylor848 (talk) 19:01, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Same thing here. I tried deactivating HotCat altogether but that didn't work, I could only still see the prefix 'category' instead of the '+' sign to view subcats. --Santosga (talk) 20:59, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm not really sure if Ö's link applies to the all the issues raised above (most of it is above my head), but I agree that the Category prefixes are pointless and the removal of the file and subcat numbers is terribly annoying. What needs to be done to fix this? --Skeezix1000 (talk) 23:07, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I've never used HotCat, so I can't remove it; however, I still have "Category:" appearing, and I don't have the numbers of files and subcategories available. Nyttend (talk) 00:08, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Same here, never used 'hotcat', and all the important category content (number of subcats, pages, files) info has gone. Please bring it back! - MPF (talk) 01:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Back to normal, when the "new" system appeared of displaying the number of cats and files I complained that it was ugly, now I've gotten used to it, I complain when it dissappears, oh well I guess that's life.KTo288 (talk) 08:26, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
I don't use HotCat (tried it once, it suggested several irrelevant and ignored some that were relevant). I just want to know how many files are in a subcat. Consider a category such as Category:Railways Junctions Diagram 1914. Under that, there are 160+ files, each placed in three or more subcategories of that main cat. Today I have noticed that every one of these subcategories now shows only how many subcategories that it has; previously, it would also show the number of files (something like "(2 C, 12 F)" if I remember right). The number of files was a very useful feature: it helped me to judge when it would be apprpriate to split a large cat, or merge two smaller ones. Why has it gone? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:05, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I am not sure I get your point : at my end I do have both cats and files counts (eg, « Hampshire RJD 1914 (1 C, 4 F) »).
As for HotCats, it seems there is a misunderstanding : HotCats is a tool to help you add categories, it dies not suggest anything aside from auto-completing what you type in. Perhaps you confuse it with CommonSense ?
After the recent situation, many of us involved got together, and tried, as a community, to sit down and rework this policy into something consistent with the values, scope, and standards of Commons. We believe that it is now nearly ready to open to the community to vote upon. We would appreciate anyone who'd like to look it over and comment on it before we seek its approval, and make an announcement in the site notice. Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:14, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Thank you to everyone whose worked on this, however you may wish to hold of putting it to a vote until you've put a "please help translate this into languages as possible" request at the top of the page and linked to it from the other language village pumps. In the past changes to scope and things have been resented for being too anglo-centric.--KTo288 (talk) 03:32, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I would also like to thank all of the editors who have worked together on this collaborative effort over the last three weeks. I feel like the guidelines are ready for community input, however I feel there are significant legal issues that should not be addressed without professional legal guidance and final approval from the Board of Trustees. - Stillwaterising (talk) 19:15, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Stillwater, legal guidance is always available from the Foundation (and as far as I know Mike has provided all of the input he had to offer), but it is the community approval that matters. Please continue to raise specific legal issues on the discussion page there; however it seems to me that most of the issues you are raising are quite general, and apply just as much to Commons policy now as they would to a new policy. That discussion can be had independent of the discussion about the current proposal. I don't see novel legal issues as the bottleneck to consensus, but rather agreeing on a process and wording that people feel confident will improve the project. --SJ+15:13, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Here is a strange case of a file where the thumbnail (chinese text) shows something totally different to the file itself. Can somebody correct this ? Best wishes Cholo Aleman (talk) 10:00, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
user had replaced the old image. A purge fixed the thumbnail problem. I reverted it to the original version though. Amada44 (talk) 10:10, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Since today, a preview does not show any interwiki links anymore (only in the source code). Maybe, someone wants to fix that. --Mattes (talk) 11:23, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Still does't work (continue in German) Ich kann nicht alle Gadgets aufzählen, weil es zu lange dauert. Ich wollte gerade einen Bildschirmabzug machen, aber das ist zu kompliziert, weil ich mind. 5 Abzüge machen muß und die hochladen müßte. Vermutlich liegt es wieder einmal an meinem Classic-Skin, von dem ich mich so ungern trenne. Fakt ist jedoch, daß ich in den Präferenzen seit mind. einer Woche nichts geändert habe. --Mattes (talk) 18:46, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
I know this is probably the wrong forum to be trying to figure this out, but I wasn't alerted to the fact that all user pages were going to be deleted with this new format change. Is there anywhere I can find my old page and save a sh*t-load of time trying to reconstruct the old one?Paradise coyote (talk) 20:56, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Unless one of the few people with such privileges actually hard-deleted material from the database (unlikely), you never had a non-empty Commons user page before you put up the complaint about "deletion". (I'm an admin, I'd see if it had been deleted any other way.) I'm guessing Wnt is right about what's going on here. - Jmabel ! talk05:18, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have followed up that this was in fact the explanation. He's pretty new to Wikimedia projects. I also added two small paragraphs to w:Help:Navigation to explain in general how the URLs and namespaces work, which I didn't see explained elsewhere. Wnt (talk) 01:14, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Trouble understanding uploading and licences
Sorry for being an incompetent donkey, but.. Well, being new and all, I have no idea what to do. I can't figure out how to upload a photograph of a statue. It isn't entirely my own work, but I can figure out what other category it should go under. And what licence do I use? And is this even the correct place to ask things like this? Sorry once again. Anton Larsson (talk) 19:35, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
If its your photograph of an existing image then what you have created is a derivative work. You can give the source as own, and choose a license of your choice, with the original author of the work placed in the description. However not all statues can be uploaded to commons, check Commons:Freedom of panorama to see if there is FOP in the country you took the picture in.--KTo288 (talk) 20:17, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
a Photograph of a statue isnt a derivative work, the only question is as you have already pointed is whether FOP permits the photograph. Gnangarra00:16, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
A photograph of a statue copies essential elements of the statue, so I'd call it a derivative work. So does US law, and I believe some FOP laws describe it as a permissible derivative work.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:52, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
I've recently got a flattr account and would like to use it for my Commons contributions. I was thinking about adding a link to the "thing" page on flattr to the image descriptions. Before doing this, though, I wanted to hear whether the community would find that acceptable – what are your thoughts on this? --AlexanderKlink (talk) 08:41, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Are you talking like a voluntary donation button for yourself? I'm uncertain, want to see what others think. Dcoetzee (talk) 13:19, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Hmong language template
Hi! I started Template:Hmn by copying and pasting the ES template.
But like how ES says:
Español: Libro
I want the HMN template to say: Hmoob: Text
But so far it says:
Hmoob: Text
That's not the reason. Mediawiki works with a mix of codes from the different ISO 639 versions. The real reason is, that there's no Hmong Wikimedia project so far and thus the code 'hmn' is not known to the parser function "{{#language: }}. This parser function is used to return the native name of a language by its language code. If there's no Mediawiki project for the language the code isn't in the internal table and instead of the native name the code itself will be shown. But DieBuche fixed this by hardcoding the template. --Slomox (talk) 11:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Category:Aerial lifts
According to en:Aerial lifts, the types of aerial lift include (a) aerial tramways, (b) gondola lifts, (c) etc. etc.. On Commons, there is a redirect Category:Aerial tramway to Aerial lifts. The result is that there is no category:Aerial tramway and all and every gondola, aerial tramway and whatever else is put into Category:Gondola lifts. Can we delete the redirect and introduce a subcategory:Aerial tramways (or revert the redirect to its original subcategory)? I would then spend some time in sorting the mess. --AHert (talk) 16:55, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Can you identify all the different types of aerial lifts and explain what they are? That will help us decide what the category structure should be. — Cheers, JackLee–talk–17:05, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I was overtaken. Sorry about the "s", but look at en:Aerial lift which gives an overview of the types. More detailed information is in the various articles (some of which may need a bit of restructuring). The en:ropeway conveyor (Category:Freight cableways) for some reason is always treated separately, although they basically are a monocable or bicable gondola lift and were at the origin of all modern aerial lift/cable transport. The term "aerial lift" makes sense only if one takes it as subcategory of "Cable Transport", otherwise it could also include transportation by aircraft and the various modern overhead installations were goods are suspended from rails (not cables or ropes) and moved originally by ropes, later by electrical motors and today again sometimes by ropes. The "aerial tramways" are presently scattered all over the place, some in gondola lifts, others in Category:cableways by country or in some other subcat and I get mad in searching for a nice picture. I think, putting a subcategory "aerial tramways" into Category:Aerial lifts would help a lot. --AHert (talk) 18:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
It looks like SJu started re-organizing it in March 2010, but didn't follow through. Somehow this broke the previous structures where most images could be found through Category:Cableways.
Category:Aerial lifts seems to have taken the place you intend to use for "aerial tramways", so logically, you would have rename it. Anyways, please avoid adding categories to images such as File:Kriens Talstation.JPG as it's already in a category for the specific installation.
I have done some reorganization in the meantime: Aerial lifts is (and was) the parent Cat for different types as (the new Cat) Aerial tramways, gondola lifts, Funitels, chairlifts, just the same as in en:Aerial Lift it is the general term for the other types. There should be another subCat for the "pulsed group gondola lifts", but I am not yet sure about the best name. I did in fact put "Kriens Talstation" also in Cat:Gondola lifts, as I want to create a gallery there showing different stations. My general problem having pictures in the lowest Cat is that it is a perfect way of hiding them. I remember having seen pictures and went mad after looking for them in vain for hours. The other day I spent almost an hour just searching for a photo of a very big aerial tramway and gave up. Today I found it by chance in a category about Matterhorn, but not related to anything aerial. Since both Cat:Freight cableways and Cat:Ropeway conveyor (in singular) had pictures of the same installation, some here and some there, and since there is absolutely no difference in meaning between these two, I put the pictures in other categories, most of them in Ropeway conveyors, and eliminated Cat:Freight cableways into a redirect. I am sure this makes life much easier. I tried to create a gallery in Category:Ropeway conveyor to put these pictures in proper groups, but in spite of re-re-reading COM:G, I still don't know HOW TO CREATE A GALLERY. I inserted a gallery-tag in Cat:Ropeway conveyors which provides a nice line of pictures on that category page (ahead of the Media), but it does not create a separate gallery page. May be I am the only ignorant in a world of knowledgeable people. --AHert (talk) 20:22, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Duh. Sorry! I certainly should have thought of that, I was thrown by "East Prussia". Anyway, I'll add the "Germany" category, and if someone thinks something else should also be there, go for it. - Jmabel ! talk15:32, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
We run into this problem often with cities that were changing countries often. I usually include images only in the country category which was in possession of the area at the time of the photograph, except in cases when the picture was taken in the time of transition. Ideally this picture would be in the "by location" category which is linked to both countries and "by year" category which is linking to Germany only. --Jarekt (talk) 17:18, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
But the Federal Republic of Germany (which Category:Germany and its subcategories de facto refer to) isn't the same state as the German Empire. The FRG is just the legal successor of the Empire.
It doesn't seem right to me to put it into Category:Libraries in Germany. On the other side Category:Libraries in Russia is not very meaningful either, cause the library was destroyed before Königsberg became Russian Kaliningrad.
Would pictures, derivatives or representations of British Army cap badges and or other recognition badges like parachute wings fall under PD-UK-Gov --Jim Sweeney (talk) 17:35, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm finding it hard to imagine a way in which they wouldn't (the underlying badges not the photographs, naturally)... The Army definitely uses crown copyright, and, so long as the army made them officially, one wonders how they cannot be PD-UK-Gov so long as they fitted the time conditions mentioned there (even if we take them as artistic rather than functional pieces). Jarry1250 (talk) 08:41, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Army badges come out of the heraldic tradition. As a general rule, heraldic blazons -- the written description of a symbol in heraldry -- are not copyrightable. Individual instances -- drawings or the actual patches -- are. So, you can draw an army badge and post it here with no problems. You cannot, however, simply photograph an existing badge (unless old), or copy an existing drawing. see Commons:Coats of Arms. Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 13:26, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
National Cancer Institute image
I've uploaded an derivative work (File:Inherited breast cancer es.svg) of this image. It comes from the National Cancer Institute (a part of the US government's National Institutes of Health) so I think that its license may be PD-USGov; however, I'm not pretty sure so I would thank you further checkings. Thank you in advance, --Retama (talk) 19:23, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
This user has uploaded several works of art by various artists, and tagged the files as her own work. Her work was photographing the works of art, the works themselves are from other artists (please see her talk page to better understand what I mean). Problem is, file descriptions give no hint of who are these artists and therefore if it is OK to use these files in commons. Could someone more savvy than me please check? Thanks --Santosga (talk) 21:48, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Hard to say. All look probably first half of 20th century, so while there is a chance of PD, we can't know without author info. None of these look like they'd be a great loss. - Jmabel ! talk21:53, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Anyone understand why File:Clermont County Courthouse Addition.jpg doesn't show? If you click all the way through to the underlying source image, it's there. (Not a particularly good photo, but worth fixing if possible, I presume.) - Jmabel ! talk
I just wanted to drop a note about Sikuli. Its a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots). The homepage is here with a quick intro video.
Interesting about it is, that it can search for visual content. Maybe someone can use it to create a super bot ;-) Amada44 (talk) 09:19, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
New features
Is there a way to stop these bloody new features coming back all the time. I keep rejecting them, but in time they reappear. I know my way around the layout and don't want to have to learn to navigate an new layout that serves no purpose other than to move things around needlessly.Mtaylor848 (talk) 11:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
I feel you man. Just set your skin to monobook, and your upload form to "old logic". I'm afraid there's no way to stop the higher ups from trying to change things. I even nominated the new background logo for deletion but they refused to let the vote go to full term. Interestingly, there were many more delete votes than not :)) -Nard the Bard14:08, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
At the top of the skin should be a "take me back" link that should get you out of the new skin. TheDJ (talk) 14:22, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Nard, you're still going on about the Commons logo background? That was put in 2 years ago or something... -mattbuck (Talk) 14:23, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
yes, and I cringe every time I have to see it. The preferences tab for some reason show it even though the rest of Commons does not. -Nard the Bard15:26, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Never mind, it is just a new color shade for the bikeshed. People hate few things more than change. --Dschwen (talk) 15:42, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Indeed, whine, whine whine, whine. It's been 2 years. get a life already. Or leave the project if it is such a big issue for you that you cannot let it go. TheDJ (talk) 15:48, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
copyright for digital restoration of PD image
I'm trying to clarify the status of File:SHouston 2.jpg. This is a derivative of File:SHouston.jpg, a public domain image. The restored version has a license tag of Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, released by the editor who did the restoration. I'm using this in an article on en.wp which has been nominated for Featured Article status, and the image licensing has been called into question. Are these types of derivatives PD because the original was PD, or does the restorer get a new copyright due to the effort (s)he put into the work? Thanks for any clarification! Karanacs (talk) 16:16, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Judging from the differences, I would say the restorer (in this case, where there is a substantial difference between the original and the restored one) gets a new copyright (derivative work); which means his licensing is valid. Kameraad Pjotr16:26, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I disagree. The measure isn't "difference", but impartation of original authorship. In the United States, sweat of the brow is generally not considered sufficient to generate a new copyright (e.g. per Bridgeman). While I can certainly appreciate the hard work that went into the restoration (sweat of the brow), I see no original authorship in the act of merely removing splotches. Consider also, for example, the Sistine Chapel ceiling restoration; the appearance has changed significantly ("substantial difference"), yet there's no reasonable expectation that people who conducted the restoration now hold a copyright on Michelangelo's work. Эlcobbolatalk16:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
The courts are interested in creative choices, and I see a lot of them. That's not a simple copy of anything; at some points, that required some very creative choices about what the final output should look like. I've seen some of the images of the Sistine Chapel restoration, and would argue that they very well could claim a copyright on the restored Sistine Chapel. If they don't want to make the case, I'm not going to argue it for them, but, yes, I think they could claim a copyright on the restored Sistine Chapel. Not only that, there is a difference between removing layers of grime, how carefully, and redrawing lost pixels.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:06, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not aware of "creative choices" being a genuine term; if you could provide jurisprudence using that verbiage, I'd love to see it. Choice of camera location, lighting, filters, etc. seem to be "creative choices" in the reproduction of artwork, yet Bridgeman still considered such derivatives to be mere sweat of the brow. There's no original authorship in fixing contrast and replacing white spots with color mimicking that of the surrounding areas. The Sistine Chapel restoration, by the way, was far more than removing grime; it also involved restoration of damaged areas in ways analogous to the restoration at hand. That the chapel restoration could be copyrighted is utterly absurd. Copyright exists whether it is actively claimed or not; shall we tag the ceiling images as derivatives lacking permission? Эlcobbolatalk02:52, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
"Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. 1 M. Nimmer & D. Nimmer, Copyright 2.01[A], [B] (1990) (hereinafter Nimmer). To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice." Feist v. Rural. "Copyright exists whether it is actively claimed or not" treats it as if copyright were real and could be measured in the lab. Copyright is a social-legal construct, and the restorers of the Sistine Chapel have decided not to claim a copyright. Given that a court would quite possibly disagree with a claim of copyright, and nobody seems to worry that they may have a copyright, it doesn't really exist. The copyright on SHouston 2 is more tangible, as it's being asserted. I don't see any value in challenging the copyright on SHouston 2.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:39, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Something need not be tangible to exist. The right to vote cannot be held in a lab, yet surely suffrage exists. Copyright is a legal protection granted to certain intellectual property - protection that exists until it expires or is explicitly waived. It does not have to be claimed; copyrights are not like trademarks. The value in challenging the CC-by-SA license is that it's copyfraud. With that license, if a reuser fails to credit Oldag07 or to use a compatible license, they are in violation of the license (i.e. infringing). This is a public domain work; that we would seek to add attribution and share-alike provisions is disingenuous at best. Эlcobbolatalk14:23, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
If this discussion of specks on an image ends with Commons being the only site on the Internet to ban itself the images from the Sistine Chapel, it is time to put the Village pump up for deletion. Wnt (talk) 20:58, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Problem solved. I released the image into the public domain. Though this is a discussion that should continue. We are walking on a strange legal ground and I am interested in seeing how it turns out. Oldag07 (talk) 19:51, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Non-notable people clearly identifiable in images with notable people
Is there any policy regarding the use of images that show a non-notable person, for example in the background of a photograph of a notable person? I've noticed several such photographs being used, and an example is File:Patrick Swayze 2006.jpg which shows another man standing behind Patrick Swayze. Obviously he was doing his job, and was probably aware of photographers, but is it ok that he unwittingly becomes part of a picture of Swayze that is well used? (global file usage shows it's used in many different language versions) Or does this mean that anyone who ventures out in public where photographs are being taken could potentially find themselves on Wikipedia? Thanks Rossrs (talk) 07:51, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
This question raises a point that I'm still a bit fuzzy about, so I look forward to more knowledgeable editors expressing their views on it. Do photographs on the Commons have to comply with both the law of the place where they are taken and Florida law (where the servers are located), or only Florida law? I know, for example, that photographs marked "public domain" must be in the public domain both in the place where they are taken and in the US. This is a copyright rule; does a similar rule apply to other non-copyright legal requirements, such as laws against prohibited material (think Nazi symbols and R- or X-rated photographs) and privacy laws? Judging from previous discussions on this page the answer appears to be "no", but correct me if I'm wrong. If only Florida law applies, then why the dual-jurisdiction rule for public domain photographs? — Cheers, JackLee–talk–10:41, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
The reasoning is that under the Berne convention, countries honor each others' copyright rules within certain limits -- therefore, US law requires that an image be PD or licensed under both US law and the law of the originating country. If that were not true, then an artist or writer would have to follow the copyright rules in every country in order to be protected in every country (patents work that way, but not copyrights). To put this another way, nothing can be PD in the USA unless it is PD in its country of origin. (There are some cases that are exceptions to this rule, mostly where the work was published in the USA with permission but without the required notice).
Content rules, on the other hand, are country by country. The only important restriction on content in the USA is on child pornography (that's a very broad statement and makes me a little nervous, please correct me if I'm missing something). Photographs taken without permission in a private setting may be problematic, but there aren't specific laws. Everything else is permitted. So, Commons can host an image that might be illegal under various national laws. Many of those have specific templates. Someone reusing an image always has to pay attention to local law. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 21:11, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
No, not at all. The Berne Convention says nothing about countries honoring each other's copyright rules. It says that for works eligible for copyright published in other Berne Convention countries, the country must treat them as if they were published in their own country. Many works that are copyright in the US are out of copyright in the EU, and many works copyright in the EU are out of copyright in the US. The EU usually (but not always, at least in the case of Germany) has the rule of the shorter term, where works that are out of copyright in the US are out of copyright in the EU (but not Germany), but the US does not; with the exception of the URAA, whether or not a work is PD in its home country is irrelevant to its state under US law.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:59, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Okaaay, let me see if I've got this straight:
Non-copyright restrictions: These do not apply to Commons material. Therefore if, say, the laws of country X state that one may not photograph a person without that person's permission, the photographer can nonetheless upload the photograph to the Commons. However, other people who seek to use the photograph will have to do so at their own risk. If a user from country X decides to use the photograph in an advertisement, for example, she might have legal action taken against her by the person featured in the photograph without permission.
Copyright restrictions: Sorry, Prosfilaes, I'm not following your explanation. So if an image is to be marked PD here at the Commons, must it be PD both in the country where it was taken and in the US?
An image marked as PD here at Commons must be PD both where it was taken and in the US. That has nothing to do with US law, that's just a Commons thing.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:23, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I see. So the policy is not based on compliance with US copyright law or the Berne Convention. I assume that my summary of the position on non-copyright restrictions is correct? If so, that answers the original question posed by Rossrs. — Cheers, JackLee–talk–15:38, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Why does Wikimedia Commons follow this restrictive policy? It hasn't been adopted by other projects — for example, Wikisource serves the King James Version of the Bible (including a high-resolution image[2]), even though that presumably will still be under English copyright long after the Second Coming has come and gone. Wnt (talk) 04:43, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Under para. 13(1) of Schedule 1 to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988] "[t]he rights conferred on universities and colleges by the [1775 c. 53.] Copyright Act 1775 shall continue to subsist until the end of the period of 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the new copyright provisions come into force and shall then expire". Therefore, the King James Version of the Bible will enter the public domain in 2039. Hopefully this date does not have any wider significance... :-) — Cheers, JackLee–talk–09:07, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
← I have to notice that the English Wikipedia does not employ local uploads for files under non-free content doctrines, but also for images that are in public domain in the US but not in the source country. If a non-american author publishes a work before 1923, and his lifetime goes beyond 1940, the work may not be uploaded in Commons, but may be uploaded locally in that project (see Template:PD-US-1923-abroad) Belgrano (talk) 06:00, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with English Wikipedia's copyright policies as I don't often upload files there. But I do realize that they differ from the Commons' policies. I don't know why this is the case. Could this be because the English Wikipedia's servers are located somewhere other than Florida? Or is it just a matter of there being a consensus among a different set of editors (for instance, fair-use uploads are permitted)? — Cheers, JackLee–talk–09:07, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
The setups themselves are very similar. Largely, yes, it's a consensus thing: the English Wikipedia hosts any file it is legal for it to host in line with the whole "encyclopedia" thing; when Commons was started AFAIK the editors at that time decided on a stricter stance in order to better further Commons' own aims of free educational media for all. Jarry1250 (talk) 13:35, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Auto submit broken?
Is anyone else having a problem with auto submit? Like when you use the "No source" or "Nominate for deletion" links in the toolbar? It worked great for me until a few days ago. Now they usually leave me at the Edit page, especially the new windows that open. I am running Firefox 3.6.3 on Windows Vista (not Windows 7). Thanks. Wknight94talk16:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
It's a problem with the authentication mechanism used, and it's indeed cookie-related. I'll tackle it in a couple of days... Lupo19:00, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Welcome safesubst: !
Tho it's been here for a month or three ([3][4][5]) there is a new function that allows "Must be substituted"-templates to not break when not substituted.
In other words, if we have a {{snippet}} like this:
With that both {{snippet}} and {{subst:snippet}} will show:
bar
Tho it might take a while before properly used across Commons (hint: Bot maybe ?) this is going to ease up some stuff here and there. Since I think most templates were either topped with a {{Must be substituted}}-warning (which only avoides the problem). Or an additional "subst"-parameter was introduced making the need to subst a template like this: {{subst:mytemplate|subst=subst:}} which isn't nice, takes more typing, and often caused ugly errors when forgotten.
I'm not certain I understand. Am I correct in saying that safesubst: is a way of ensuring that a template is always substituted -- because it is built into the template? And works even if the user adds an extra, redundant, subst:? If so, then this note needs speak only to people who write and maintain templates and I'd suggest you say so in the header. Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 11:34, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
You missed the point there. While this is a bug on mediawiki side, the files definetly need to be renamed since it is impossible to embedd them ( )--DieBuche (talk) 22:43, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Done, renamed. The strange thing is though, that because redirects have been created, the original names seem to work in some places but not others.e.g.
I've recently started moving images on Commons to give them new names, more in keeping with other related files. I notice every time I move an image a redirect is created. Is there anyway to stop this? It's just I would quite like to upload new files over the previous names but it won't let me upload a file over the redirect. For example, I recently moved File:Binstead Hillrise Avenue bus stop 2.JPG to File:Binstead Hillrise Avenue bus stops.JPG as it shows both bus stops and fits in with the naming of other images showing two bus stops. However, I would now like to upload a second image of just the one bus stop in the same location, and the best name for this would be "File:Binstead Hillrise Avenue bus stop 2.JPG", now a redirect.
For now I've tagged the redirect for speedy deletion, but I'm not sure if that's worked or not as there is no deletion template shown after I've saved the page. Hope that makes sense... Thanks, Editor5807speak17:51, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Hi, why did you first move a file from xxx2 to xxx and then want to upload an other file with xxx2 ? For me it doesn't make sense. Instead you should upload the new one as xxx2. A solution now can be upload as xxx_2 or similar. Redirect for files? I learned these days that it should stay for different reasons, using outside of WP for example. Anyway the "speedy" stays in the redirect, so a admin has to decide to delete or not. NobbiP18:28, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
If you look carefully it was not moved from "xxx2" to "xxx", but actually to "xxxs", to correct the error (there was more than one bus stop). In reply to Editor5807, only administrators have the right to "suppress the redirect" when moving files, as it involves deletion. Arriva436talk/contribs11:45, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
CC-BY-2.0 is still a valid license, yes?
User:Amadscientist appears to be under the impression, for reasons that I can't quite understand, that CC-BY-2.0 is not a valid license for Commons (even though we have zillions of images under that license). On these grounds, Amadscientist has nominated at least two images for deletion (Commons:Deletion requests/File:Meg Whitman.jpg, Commons:Deletion requests/File:Megwhitmanheadshot.jpg) and has also asked at least one author of CC-BY-2.0 works to re-release them as CC-BY-3.0 (see the first deletion discussion), and the author appears to be justifiably annoyed about such fuss. Since I do not understand Amadscientist's reasoning, might I ask one of our resident license experts to look at the deletion nominations and help explain the apparent misunderstanding to Amadscientist? Thanks, Sandstein (talk) 13:26, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
I'll accept any decision by the community, but this village pump discussion gives the impression that I am completely off base and without merit. I suggest that members in this discussion refamiliarise themselves with Wikicommons Policy on accepted CC licenses, uploading from flicker and the difficulty as well as Creative Commons licensing in general. There have been may links to lists that do not prove the acceptability of the old license. Just saying "Your right" or you "already explained it" means nothing to the general community and even less to me obviously as I did not agree with it in the deletion discussion.
Things at both Wikipedia and Wikimedia are sometimes done incorrectly. The current Ebay logo does not fit Fair Use standards but now it cannot be altered. It is a massive image of a copyrighted logo generated in an open source scalable vector drawing. Am I misunderstanding that as well?--Amadscientist (talk) 23:16, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
I will not make any further changes on the license attribution or information, debate or discussion of any of these images. The Meg Whitman Jpeg from flicker was NOT visualy varified correctly and the Attibution goes furhter than indicated by the author. He does not request his location in the attribution and it appears that members are failing to understand what "Attribution as required/disignated by author" means. They may also be misunderstanding something themselves. Guidelines DO indeed state that Flickr owner must agree to change in license treatment on Wikimedia. I believe I have not misunderstood anypart of this situation, nor wrong about licensing. I believe I have proven the point that visual varification was not done correctly on at least one image. The original Wikipedia Noticeboard discussion was closed on the basis that the accusations of my misunderstanding or treatment of the article was NOT out of line or innappropriate based on the fact that the Meg Whitman file WAS under a license not accepted by commons and none of my changes are incorrect, and I am working within policy, guidelines and the spirti of Wiki. Sorry if this has created a mess, but I defend all my actions as justifiable (Edit; Even with no merit to some things here there are problems, but I accept that I had a misunderstanding).--Amadscientist (talk) 23:46, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
If older versions of Creative Commons were unacceptable for Commons, we wouldn't have this, this, or this template. If an author wants to use an outdated license, that's them. I would like to ask you for some sources that would support you. Especially "Guidelines DO indeed state that Flickr owner must agree to change in license treatment on Wikimedia". ZooFari23:51, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Again, all the templates and lists that are here are not proof or justification for for ignoring all the rules, guidelines and instructions. I am not making this up out of thin air. More important is the lack of concern or mention of what was proven. No effort has been made to alter the incorrect information on the upload.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:37, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
And that is because I AM completely wrong about that. I mistook the better practices EXAMPLE as the only two CC licenses accepted on Wikimedia Commons from "first steps", and when following links became even further confused by the emphasis placed on the two examples CC-by-3.0 and CC-by-sa-3.0, which appear to be the more freeier of all the CC licenses. That much I now understand and where I went wrong.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:12, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I'm glad that this situation has been resolved. Yes, 3.0 is preferrable to older versions of the license, but there's nothing wrong with them. Now, since you obviously had problems understanding what the examples were trying to communicate, it is very possible that others have had the same problem. I would suggest that you go to that talk page, explain where you were led astray, and see about finding a clearer way to get the message across to our contributors, so we can hopefully avoid a repeat of this. (of course, I'm not exactly sure which help page you had a problem with. Eh?) — Huntster (t@c)04:23, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Inserting raw data in picture description
Dearest wikimedians,
On the French Wikipedia, many articles on chemicals are currently providing tables of physical properties such as solubility, heat capacity or vapor pressure. These tables are disgraceful and useless in this form (example 1). We'd like to substitute them with graphs, which look really nicer (example 2). I'm writing to ask if it's acceptable for us to start massive uploading of physical properties SVG graphs, with the original raw data in the description page as a source. This would allow everybody to re-use the data without having to search them in the Handbook of chemistry or any other chemistry database, for which the access is often charged. Yours sincerely, Tachymètre (talk) 21:02, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Would it be possible to upload them without text that requires translation (e.g. the name of the substance), and to add such text at the Wikipedia level, so that other Wikipedias can reuse these graphs? Sandstein (talk) 21:09, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) An interesting idea of Sandstein. A graph actually must bear a title and axis labels in a given language to be scientifically valid. But uploading it in every language would be really time consuming, even when restraining to major languages. Maybe could we look after a template which would generate the title and axis labels directly in the article. The SVG graph would have blank spaces for them to fit in. It would require extreme precision and strict uniformisation of the SVGs. If it isn't feasible, we could simply upload them in english, which is the international language in chemistry.
Pieter Kuiper → I'm pretty new to Gnumeric... For what I know, original data are lost when creating the SVG (we only keep the XY position of each nodes of the curve). What do you mean by “shortening the SVG” ? Tachymètre (talk) 21:29, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
A good way is to write the SVG code with a text editor. Using straight lines for connecting the points is easy, but one can also use smoother curves. As an example, this was done in File:Sine one period.svg. At the end of the source code, it is easy to see the function values at pi/2 etcetera. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 21:54, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
I fear that writing code with a text editor is too difficult for non-expert people. Same thing for extracting the data. What about creating a tool on the wikimedia servers, which would automatically generate a SVG graph in the way you describe, and which would also extract the data of any graph on demand, without requiring the user to know XML? Tachymètre (talk) 22:17, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
I didn't know about that page. I've checked it fast, but it doesn't seem that any of the tools listed here allows SVG graph creation. I'll have a closer look this evening, but I think that inserting the raw data (just like this) would still be the most convenient solution. Tachymètre (talk) 06:03, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
I think the upload should be possible even with the raw data. Perhaps it would be interesting to find a form of internationalisation of the description. --Mbdortmund (talk) 21:26, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Copyrighted image within freely licensed one
Is it possible to upload an image to Wikimedia which contains a non-free logo, but with the explicit permission from the copyright owner to use that logo within the whole image, which in turn is released under a free license (GFDL)?
I've uploaded the object in question for explanation purposes: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gldt.png
The copyrighted part is the Red Hat logo, and I have explicit permission from Red Hat, Inc. to use it in the GLDT project (which falls under the GFDL). The only condition is that I don't publish the logo separately.
I can go through OTRS or any other necessary steps to prove that the shown emails are genuine.
De minimis obviously doesn't apply since it's not "included incidentally", although it's a minor part and not the main focus of the image.
On the other hand Red Hat is explicitly OK with letting me use their logo within a free image. -- 23:34, 6 June 2010 User:Bryonak
If the restriction is trademark-based, just add Template:Trademark to the image, and there should be no problem. If the restriction is copyright-based, there may be a problem... AnonMoos (talk) 11:37, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
June 7
National Gallery, London
There are a lot of beautiful hi-res semi-downloadable artworks at the National Gallery website. The idea is to transfer most of them to Commons. Doing this one by one takes ages (see my uploads). So we came to another question. How can I write a file upload bot? Where should I start? I think I can feed it by hand, but it should do everything else automatically.
Hi, a few years ago I collected a number of (pictures of) paintings by a South African painter which are mostly in the public domain. The pictures came from various blogs and galleries, but I am having a hard time tracking the original sources down, since, for instance, a gallery might remove a page with the paintings on them once an auction has been held. In many cases the paintings are signed and dated, so the PD-ness of them is clear. How can I best go about uploading these "source-less" paintings? Anrie (talk) 07:46, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
the paintings are signed and dated --> In South Africa, what you need is the painter's death year, or the date when the work was published or performed (any idea what "published" or "performed" means for a painting in South African law ?) not the year when the painting was painted. (Paintings and photographs are two separate items in South African law). Brigemann vs Corel might not apply in South Africa, so you should check when the photograph was taken: that might be difficult if you don't know the source. See also what is said about 1996 at the bottom of Template:PD-South-Africa. (See also User:Dcoetzee/NPG legal threat as an example of the troubles one might have with recent photographs of old PD paintings). Teofilo (talk) 08:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
AFAIK, Brigemann vs Corel does apply in SA, although I'll have to double check. The artist, JH Pierneef, died in 1957, so his works are PD, since "copyright exists for the life of the author plus fifty years following death". Anrie (talk) 08:44, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
If unpublished/unperformed, the pictures were not PD in their home county on January 1st 1996 (because 1957+1+50=2008). So at the very least, if you insist in uploading them, you should tag the pictures with {{Not-PD-US-URAA}}. Teofilo (talk) 09:05, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
The file was surely copied from somewhere, the source and author information that a polish wikipedia user created it in 2005 is nonsense. But also just because another website hosts it, does not mean that that website is the copyright holder. The file is missing a source and an author, Ill tag it with {{No source since}}. --Martin H. (talk) 14:55, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Thomas Eakins died in 1916 and everything he ever created is now in the public domain.
Sometime in the late 20s/early 30s (definitely before 1933) art historian Lloyd Goodrich went to see Eakins's widow to write a book about Eakins. While there, Goodrich sketched several Eakins works. Some of the works he sketched later disappeared.
Goodrich died in 1987. His sketches were never copyrighted and (to the best of my knowledge) never published
Goodrich later gave William Innes Homer copies of his sketches. Homer has offered to let me scan them.
It seems to me the daughter holds the copyright, as they are indeed still copyrighted, because they were not published. If you should find they were published somewhere without a notice, they are PD. Kameraad Pjotr10:28, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
I disagree. Ownership of copyright passes by will. The copyright could be owned by any of the three -- the sister, the daughter, or the estate of the son, any combination of them jointly, or some fourth party, depending on what his will says. If Goodrich died intestate (without a will -- very unlikely in a case like his), then it would depend on the state law of the state where he died. (This assumes he died resident in the United States. If he died while a resident of a European country (not the UK), then in most of them the rights would be shared out.) The daughter would be the place to start, though, or the sister, if you can find her. Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 20:37, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
A couple of developments: I did some searching and found that one of the sketches has been previously published in this book by William Innes Homer, page 32. Bill Homer is a friend of mine, so I'll see what he can tell me about the copyright holder. (I suspect the publisher did the leg-work, so I might have to ask them). I did some searching, and found what I think is the phone number for the daughter. So if need be, I can contact her too. Raul654 (talk) 01:49, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
This sort of thing is really messy. For the one above, first published in 1992 means it would be copyrighted until at least 2047 no matter what (and really I think 2058 for all of them due to 1987+70). When were the sketches given to your friend? The law which went into effect in 1978 requires a signed, written document for there to be copyright transfer, but before that it was a lot more nebulous -- sometimes the transfer of the original objects (or photographic negatives) were ruled to have transferred the copyright as well (but not always -- I think courts went very different ways on that). Did your friend ask permission from the heirs to publish it in 1992, or did he just assume it was OK, and if so has it gone without complaint from the original family? If copyright was not transferred, then it depends on Goodrich's will, at which point who knows. And it sounds like a second will is also possibly in the picture. Often frustrating for works that nobody really cares all that much about; it's a lot of hassle and a lot of uncertainty. The copyright still exists though; just a matter of who owns it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:36, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
When were the sketches given to your friend? - Goodrich gave copies of his sketches to Homer (in the 1970s, I think). I do not believe there was a transfer of copyright - simply one expert giving another copies of research documents, possibly with permission to publish them.
Did your friend ask permission from the heirs to publish it in 1992 or did he just assume it was OK, and if so has it gone without complaint from the original family - I am not sure.
If copyright was not transferred, then it depends on Goodrich's will, at which point who knows. - the copyright was definitely not transferred to Homer. Goodrich wrote a lot of books, so presumably his will dealt with copyright and future royalties and his family.
And it sounds like a second will is also possibly in the picture. - very possibly.
What I'm getting from this is that it's a mess, and the only way to sort it out is to ask the family directly. Is that about the gist of it? Raul654 (talk) 04:36, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
A better idea occurred to me. I'm going to contact Harvard University Press (the publishers Goodrich used for his last two books) and see what they can tell me. If they are still collecting royalties on his books, they have to be paying someone, and that someone is the person I need to contact. Raul654 (talk) 15:35, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
So I called one of Goodrich's later publishers, Harvard University Press. They told me that it was so long ago, they have no current records for the estate. So, I tried the late son's publisher, who gave me the number for the law firm handling the estate, who gave me the number of the son's attorney (who will hopefully be able to tell me who his father's executor was). I'm waiting for a call back. Raul654 (talk) 15:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Global Lives Project videos on Wikimedia Commons (everyday people & publicity rights)
Dearest fellow wikimedians,
I'm writing to ask if it's acceptable for me to begin posting raw video footage of daily life from around the world from the Global Lives Project to the Wikimedia Commons. There are two issues that I'd like to raise:
1) The current Wikimedia Commons upload page states that photos or videos should only be of "people that are either public figures or are taken at public events". The Global Lives Project footage is of everyday people, sometimes in public, but more frequently in their homes and workplaces. I am wondering if this means that our footage is not permissable.
2) As a community, the Global Lives Collective is currently discussing changing our license to CC-BY-SA — in large part because we want to put our footage into the Wikimedia Commons, but it is important as filmmakers that we respect our relationships with our on-screen participants (the people who we videotape) in our license. As such, we have studied Joi Ito's work on Free Souls and have developed a somewhat similar, though distinct, license notice for our site, pasted below. Before we decide within our community whether or not to adopt this license and post this notice to our site, I would like to have confirmation from the Wikimedia community that this will indeed allow for us to begin posting our video (and photos) to the Wikimedia Commons.
I would ask to have feedback on this as soon as possible so that we can begin uploading footage before Wikimania. Incidentally, I will be leading a workshop at Wikimania entitled "Bold Video?!"
In my view, "public figures or ... taken at public events" is to avoid issues of people taking pictures of private people in private places without their clear consent. The nature of this material is such that the subjects' consent is clear. I don't see any problem there. (No comment on the licensing issue.) - Jmabel ! talk05:26, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
I think that someone who is participating voluntarily in a filming for worldwide distribution is "at a public event", no matter where the camera is located. Wnt (talk) 15:41, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Prior to uploads I would create a new license template for globallives license and ask at Commons talk:Licensing for approval. I remember at some point reading discussions about some formal approval process to all new license templates. Does anybody remember what was the final verdict? Another issue is maximum file size limit which is (I think) 20 Mb, which might be quite small for the videos. --Jarekt (talk) 17:48, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
The current file size limit for direct uploads is 100MB. If we need to get larger files than that up, we'll probably be able to figure out a way to do it.--Eloquence (talk) 00:06, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I will work on making that template as soon as I hear from you Jarket about the verdict there. Thank you!! --Deharris (talk) 09:39, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
What is the point of licensing all material under both CC-BY-NC-SA and CC-BY-SA? Wouldn't the more permissive license alone suffice? --Dschwen (talk) 00:16, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Thank you all for your feedback! Re: reasoning for dual licenses, our work is already out under CC-BY-NC-SA and if we remove that license, we put existing derivative works in a bad situation. Also, we do want to keep our work available for use in the NC ecosystem, given that I believe it is still the most widely used CC license, and I think that it does have a number of valid use cases. Also, just FYI, I have posted a similar discussion thread on the Global Lives Project website. --Deharris (talk) 09:39, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
How to create a gallery page
In spite of re-re-reading COM:G, I still don't know HOW TO CREATE A GALLERY. I inserted a gallery-tag in Category:Ropeway conveyor which provided a nice line of pictures on that category page (ahead of the Media), but it did not create a separate gallery page. May be I am the only ignorant in a world of knowledgeable people? --AHert (talk) 16:25, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, galleries shouldn't be used on categories. First, create Ropeway conveyor, that is on the gallery namespace, then, insert the pictures you like from here, in the following format:
<gallery>
Image:Villa los navegantes.JPG|Villa Los Navegantes
Image:Tsunami_damage_in_Pichilemu,_Chile_(27_Feb._2010).jpg|An earthquake
</gallery>
Many Thanks. What I was missing were instructions like: Go to Search, put in "Ropeway conveyor", then click on the red gallery name, edit the page (marked as gallery page on the very top) by putting in the gallery tag and the pictures. OK, I did so, and obtained a nice page. Then I added the Cat:Ropeway conveyor, but the page is still not marked or listed on the category. What went wrong? --AHert (talk) 17:06, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
It was in singular, now someone created the Cat in plural + Redirect and you fixed the Cat doubled thereby. The gallery works now on the new Cat. Do the names of the Cat and the gallery page have to differ by the plural "s" (since it works now, but not before)? --AHert (talk) 19:15, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
are all different and any combination of them will work. Policy is that categories for objects should be plural, so "Category:Ropeway conveyors" is correct. The category redirect from the singular form is not usual, but won't hurt.
A gallery can have any name, but it is usual to follow the category name.
Thus, ordinarily you would have
With all your help, I am getting at it. In the meantime, I had the impression that the computer sometimes takes some time to show an edit, perhaps that is why I thought that the category on the gallery page was wrong. I will leave a note on the discussion of COM:G along my line above, so that another newcomer may find life easier. Many thanks. --AHert (talk) 20:08, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Empty categories
Now we have thousands of empty categories: [6]. Do we need them? I think that they should be deleted (if not category redirects).--Anatoliy (talk) 21:27, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Most of them are category redirects. Have we some list without them? Btw., some empty categories can be a part of systematic categorization and they shouldn't be deleted, see some empty subcategories of Category:Railway lines in the Czech Republic by number. Only mistaken, deserted or not promising empty categories should be deleted. How many they are? --ŠJů (talk) 22:28, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Quite a lot of those empty categories would appear to have been bot-created for the GeographBot project which will eventually upload 1.5 million images of Britain and Ireland. Clearly it will take some time to categorise all these images. Some are valid redirects within that project. A few might be incorrect or not needed, but please do not delete or even propose for deletion if you are not familiar with the project. Anatiomaros (talk) 17:49, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Indeed, some people prepare structures before massive downloading (minerals, Geograph). It would be nice to have a list that do not contain the redirected categories but the self-categorised categories too. Please hit the "search not in category" tab before deleting. --Foroa (talk) 18:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
22516 File size limit exceeded| 'convert' -depth 8 -resize 435 - '/mnt/thumbs/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Dührings_Haß.pdf/page1-435px-Dührings_Haß.pdf.jpg'". The original file is probably to large in resolution to create a thumbnail of it. TheDJ (talk) 14:53, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
OK - but then: is it usable in the commons?? Who can repair it? (It looks like a very interesting and more or less rare book.) Cholo Aleman (talk) 15:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
I'll try to take a look. I also opened a ticket, asking for a better presentation in the userinterface of this particular problem. TheDJ (talk) 23:32, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
This image can?
I found this photo on Flickr, but I don't know if I can upload it. Could anyone answer me if it is accepted in Communs? Truu (talk) 19:55, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
I'd say no: it's a photo of a poster with a (almost surely) copyrighted image, and there's no evidence that the Flickr uploader owns any copyright on that image. Also, Commons (unlike Wikipedia) does not allow uploads under fair use. -- IANEZZ (talk) 20:03, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
According to the BBC [7], surviving WW II archives of Bletchley Park shall be scanned and become available on line. These archives should be OK for Commons and Wikisource, as Crown Copyright for them has expired. SV1XV (talk) 04:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, Commons is on Fox News again.
"EXCLUSIVE: Shakeup at Wikipedia in Wake of Porn Purge". Those who are prone to RAEG at their monitors shouldn't read this. It may prove interesting for others, what with three or four factual errors in the lead and a similar approach in the rest of the text. Some mistakes are attributable to a particularly difficult choice of subject, but...
To make this section about Commons operations or policies, does anyone know what the article could be referring to when it mentions "thousands of images on Wikimedia’s servers that could be considered child pornography"? I've never seen Larry Sanger, Fox News or any editor refer to such a trove of obscenity before, and it seems like the kind of thing that'd attract attention. Still, I hardly ever visit Commons, so I might have missed it. --Kizor (talk) 12:26, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Note that this report, just like the other ones, mentions Wikipedia and not Commons. No one out there cares for Commons, it's solely Wikipedia which is of interest. --The Evil IP address (talk) 13:11, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Those images have been the subject of heated discussion within the community since their existence was revealed exclusively by FoxNews.com on April 27 > "exclusively" ? Let me laugh ! How pretentious they are ! As if they were the first one to speak about the existence of porn files on Commons ! They are so arrogant ! --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk...13:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Must be a slow newsday, the self importance is just so Fox. There's no way to Jimbo could win really, he feared that he and the project were going to be smeared as a porn mongerer, now he's being smeared as a spineless weakling caring only about the money the sponsors might have withheld. He could of played the role of the fearless foe of censorship and small mindedness and be hammered for that, but doing what he did hasn't stopped Fox, and he's lost our trust in the process. As to 1000s of image of child porn sure we have if you count things like the images at Pederasty.KTo288 (talk) 14:01, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Yeah that accusation of children pornography is a scandal. They don't make any nuance (for FoxNews, nudity=porn and art=porn as well) and they're not even able to give real examples to show they're right ! --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk...14:10, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I think the most entertaining thing about this story for me was the idea that without Jimbo, Wikipedia will descend into utter chaos. Or as one commenter put it we've "lost our moral head and will self-destruct." Dcoetzee (talk) 19:31, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
They're a patriarchial organisation, I guess its hard for such organisations to imagine how there can be order and common purpose without a clear leader and heirarchy.KTo288 (talk) 06:58, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
I think there's prophetic truth in the statement "we've lost our moral head and will self-destruct." I would like to change that to "we may self-destruct" if we don't let go of our resentments and unify behind our educational objectives. - Stillwaterising (talk) 07:27, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Good; does that mean you'll stop trying to strip our collection to the point it could hardly support a 6th grade sex ed class, much less the sophisticated works on nude photography and the Advanced Joy of Sex that are well within our ambit?--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:17, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Sooner or later organisations lose their founders, those that thrive and survive are those with strong constitutions (written or not) and cultures. It may be a case of rose tinted glasses, but I thought we were doing pretty well with working to consensus, assuming good faith, and service through the provision of free educational material. Maybe its because I joined the community after thw wikimedia projects first bloom, but Jimbo has never been my leader or moral head, rather it has been the community itself and its, our, shared ethos.KTo288 (talk) 09:54, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
If by "shared ethos" you mean the ethos of single white American males who blithely ignore anyone else's ethos. Kaldari (talk) 06:38, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Believe it or not, this clearly is not an American project (e.g. [8], very much the same on fr). The fact that you obviously don't follow the discussions in other language versions doesn't change that.Nemissimo (talk) 13:25, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Let me try to summarize.
Like most people, I haven't followed this debacle all the way through. A certain amount of confusion prevails. To aggrandize elucidation of these last few earth-shattering days, I'll write down my grasp as if explaining to an outsider. READ AND REVIEW PLZ!!1 your feedback would be appreciated.
Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia who hasn't been on good terms with the project for a good long while, publicly accuses Wikimedia Commons of hosting child pornography. He informs the FBI.
Staff and/or volunteers of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the Wikipedias of various languages and other related projects, and editors of Wikimedia Commons, a central repository of images and other media files, vehemently deny the allegations and point out that they would bring down the hammer the moment they were proven wrong. I fully believe that they would.
At the time, Commons hosts Category:Pedophilia and Category:Lolicon. The former features some logos, graffiti and warning signs, a Russian/Japanese (?) drawing of a boy posing obscenely, and the work of the early 20th century artist Martin Van Maele, from what I gather to be his magnum opus of massively screwed up erotica, namely a smattering of illustrations of kids being winged in the wang or another disgusting euphemism of your choice. The latter is the Japanese cartoon subset of the noble field of kidfucking; I don't remember or want to remember what it had, most likely, I don't know, half a dozen to a dozen shots of panties. While this is extremely unpleasant, it is not illegal, and bad taste isn't considered a reason for deletion. If it were, this worldwide project would be pulled in so many different directions that it'd save time to blow the place up and go home.
I'm guessing that sexual content on Commons is a perennial issue, low-key with occasional flare-ups, and in no real danger of blowing out of control, despite the need for a template that says "We appreciate your contribution of a picture of your cock, but we've got plenty, really." I'm also guessing that business goes on pretty much as usual, but the attention invigorates debate. Editors gather to draft new rules in the grand Wikimedia tradition of having a big argument, with a whole lot of bureaucracy and nitpicking. It'd be flattering to say that this is a way to inhibit sudden changes so that they can be properly evaluated and stability is preserved , but the truth is that we're not very good at this.
Fox News picks up Larry Sanger's accusation and runs with it. It continues to do so for the remaining steps.
Category:Nude children comes up repeatedly. Nothing is directly stated about it, but the implications are as subtle as an anvil to the head. (Honestly, though, should we be raising eyebrows at some of Stratz's photography? If not, this is hilarious. Featured are kids on the beach, kids undergoing medical treatment, newborns, what looks like a pretty good cross-section of Renaissance art and sculpture, Greek urns, etc.)
Jimbo Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation, does his part to uphold the other grand Wikimedia tradition of doing what needs to be done and bother the rules. He dictates a few rules, deletes some images, and encourages others to perform a mass deletion of sexual content. This doesn't take off at all. In the process he acts like a whale penis in various ways, not all of which are necessary.
Jimbo gives the explanation that Commons is about to be smeared by major media outlets, and it's good PR to delete possibly objectionable content swiftly and sift through it later, restoring what's reasonable. (Deleted content on Wikimedia is hidden from the sight of casual users, but not removed from Wikimedia entirely except in the direst of cases.) A large backlash forms agains the whale penis - related acts, including not saying so in the first place and generally acting like a guy who runs around a communal project with hearing protectors and a sledgehammer.
Now, Wikimedia uses a number of roles and permission levels to keep the more volatile tools and actions in the hands of those who can be trusted not to blow up anything too important. This has included a legacy clause that Jimbo Wales, as Glorious Founder, can do whatever he likes. He used this to perform the deletions. As the debate (debacle?) on Commons focuses on him and a frankly staggering number of editors think that the founder clause has become more trouble than it's worth, Jimbo gives up his rights to special actions, while retaining his rights to view everything, noting that they're necessary to his work as chairman. He gives the reason of steering the discussion away from this side-track. I believe that other users then make sure that Jimbo does not retain the right of giving himself back all rights.
Few people outside Commons notice any of this, I don't know if most do here. Undeletion requests are busier and noisier than usual for a few days as deleted content starts creeping back. Category:Pedophilia looks the same, Category:Lolicon is emptier. Jimbo's work as chairman is unaffected, though he can't intervene as easily.
There are a great many factual errors in your text above which could have been avoided if you'd actually taken the time to carefully research your writing, but they are mostly niggling things and I'm tired of correcting stuff. E.g. Jimmy is not board chair and hasn't been for many years. It's not clear to me why you bothered writing this, so I can't see why it would be worth correcting.
You did manage to get a lot of the overall shape right: The exact make-up and composition of sexual content is a perennial low level issue. Overall nothing has changed. We did get some cleanup done that would have happened eventually. Life goes on. --Gmaxwell (talk) 02:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
FOX News is a joke. They say that Wikimedia is "thrown into chaos" with "nobody in charge" because it lost its chairman emeritus. Except Jimbo Wales isn't lost; he's just resolved voluntarily not to wade into administrative tasks personally which he is not doing on a routine basis. He's still the founder; he's still a major supporter; he helps get the word out; he has his own opinions; and he will always be appreciated deeply as the founder of Wikipedia even by those of us who were furious about some of the deletions. And if you want the latest accurate information about Jimbo Wales and Wikipedia, then read the Weekly World News — ask on 4chan — send a tweet about it — but for God's sake don't believe the Falangist propaganda you read in that trash-hole. You could no more separate Republicans from the hatred of freedom and truth and the Earth and beauty, or the love of torture and war and mass-destruction and starving oil-soaked New Orleansians, than you could separate the Sun from its light. It is their essence and it is theirs for ever. Wnt (talk) 23:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Well, that's a rather inappropriate post. I, personally, quite enjoy freedom and truth, Earth and beauty, and I'm not a not a fan of war and mass-destruction and pollution. I'm also a Republican, and would be rather unhappy if I were called anything else (except, perhaps, Libertarian). Strangely enough, I have no problem with torturing somepeople if necessary. — Huntster (t@c)23:44, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Well, perhaps some small amount of hyperbole was used; but I do feel that the Republican leadership compels an amoral platform that even their Senators and Representatives sometimes would oppose—if allowed—, and that Republican voters are just the people that they are tricking today. That, of course, is all quite irrelevant here, but I wouldn't trust Fox News to do anything for a free educational project but to attack its principles, principals, and principal in any way it can. Wnt (talk) 00:05, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
copyright question - related to flickr
I started a copyright discussion with someone who uploaded a lot of images from flickr into Category:Geddel Vieira Lima and turned out to be the assistant of the Brazilian minister Geddel Vieira Lima and I just want to be sure. So please listen and maybe you can help me in finding the right decision. All is about one image, but most images in the category are similar stuff.
when I saw the uploads the first time, the license on flickr was All Rights reserved (no prove for that, but I remember). So I asked the uploader to add the missing license [9]
in turn the license on Flickr was changed to CC-by-nc-sa and the request was removed from the image.
as CC-by-nc-sa is still not sufficient for commons, I again asked the uploader to give a permission [10].
in turn the license on Flickr again was changed, this time to CC-by. Which is sufficient for commons.
Thus if the situation has been that in the very beginning, the upload would have been totally ok. By changing the license on Flickr, the uploader even proved that he has access to the fotos or contact to the owner (user on flickr is named Geddel Vieira Lima, but usually ministers don't upload their own photos :-)) and he also was willing to upload the high resolution image.
So I would say that the upload is ok and everything is fine now.
The uploader seems not to be the photographer. Changing the permissions on flickr might cut the creator's rights, if he had any at all, but that is no a problem of Commons, but of flickr. From my POV there isn't even a need to ask the uploader for the necessary mail to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org.
Agree? Is there a need to do Flickr Review in this case? Can I have a second opinion on the images in the category? thanks --Herzi Pinki (talk) 22:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, someone should review the license to archive that they are free. Emailing OTRS would be nice, but not necessary in this case in my view as well. -Nard the Bard22:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
The Flickr community guidelines say that "Flickr accounts are intended for personal use, for our members to share photos and video that they themselves have created". That Flickr account should be open under the photographer's name ("Artist: Fabio di Castro" according to EXIF metadata), not the model's name. The presence of "Copyright: Reporter Fotografico-DRT_2014" in the EXIF (I wonder what this DRT number is?) seems to mean that the picture is not free. Perhaps the figures after the artist's name are his telephone number. Teofilo (talk) 14:55, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I run into this website: [11]. It looks like identical clone to Wikimedia Commons. I do not know the purpose of this website but it is so similar that it might be confused with Commons and might be used for harvesting passwords. --Jarekt (talk) 16:07, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
bks-tv.ru is the site of the ISP «Брянские Кабельные Сети». Probably it's a sort of proxy for faster Wikipedia/Commons access. Trycatch (talk) 16:33, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
See Jarekts edit above, he edited via that page, it works like an open Proxy and I'll therefore block it for all editing for the moment. --Martin H. (talk) 17:35, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Cross on Map
Hi could anyone tell me what the cross means next to the names on the map of Homer's Greece in the article on Homer? Thanks.
Is this legally CC-by... as it is primarily a reproduction of the artwork on the wall/curtain? RichFarmbrough, 22:06 9 June 2010 (GMT).
No, it is an illegal derivative work, unless the original work is released under a free license as well, which is very unlikely. Dcoetzee (talk) 05:41, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I don think that manual review process is fundamentally different in case of various web albums. So splitting guidelines, user groups looks overkill for me. Bots are different story, but from technical point of view.
Support. I'm sure that if we can trust users to review one type then they can also be trusted to review the other types. Therefore we only need one list of reviewers. If someone is "experts" in one area and can help contact users on Flickr/Panoramio/Picasa we could add an manual note.
I also think that it is a good idea to add some guidance etc. on one page. Process is very similar but ofcourse the "codes" are a bit different. --MGA73 (talk) 16:51, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
AFAIK my option to use the new features is on, although I am using the previous skin. However I no longer see the QPreview button when editing, which I am starting to miss. Did something change and do I now have to set up the QPreview on my own? BrokenSphere14:56, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
It had actually already been broken for a while. DieBuche recently switched the code to use other code. This code overwrites the default preview button with a livepreview button it seems. Alternatively, we could switch it to User:Js/ajaxPreview.js I guess, that would also add livediff code to it and options to determine the position of the livepreview and diff buttons. TheDJ (talk) 20:48, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Licensing old PD maps as Creative Commons attribution
Do we have a policy page forbidding this sort of behavior ? If not, is there anything I can do about the old PD maps seen in this user gallery ? Note also that the EXIF of File:Grenoble Tassin 1638.jpg mentions 2 people and a website as "copyright holder", although the "author" field is correctly filled with the old map maker's name.
I assume that uploader used wrong license because (s)he is uninformed not malicious. I do not think we have policy about it. That said I think that licenses of those images should be changed to PD-old. --Jarekt (talk) 13:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
If the uploader has made modifications to the map, which are major enough to be elligible for CR, he can of course though publish the modified versions under a license of his choice--DieBuche (talk) 15:41, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
in such a case I hope he publishes unmodified versions as well, since I am not sure I want to use old maps modified by someone to the point that he can claim enough creative input to warrant him copyrights. --Jarekt (talk) 13:54, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
As long as there is no policy page on this topic, I have no authority to go to the uploader's talk page and tell him to change anything. All I can tell him now, is "go on like that, everything is fine". Teofilo (talk) 07:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
As this seems to be a clear case, we need no policy here. He's not the copyright holder, since no substantial changes seem to be done, and as such he can't relicense it.--DieBuche (talk) 13:35, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree. If someone is using wrong license we do not need policy to tell them about it. We do not have policy about making a mess which has to be cleaned up by others either. Also Commons:Licensing policy might mention somewhere that is users should use correct license and w:Copyfraud is frown on. --Jarekt (talk) 13:42, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I have been putting a lot of effort to internationalise and format featured picture file pages; see my contribs for examples. Unfortunately, I am coming across user templates that I'm converting to the standard format due to lack of internationalisation. A user reverted from a perfectly cleaned up page [12] back to the unlocalized format of the user [13]. What upsets me is that the user's format is almost identical to the standard format ({{Information}}) except for the localisation part and an advertisement to the right. I feel that Featured picture file pages are special enough to be in good maintenance, and these templates are no help at all. There is a discussion above but I don't know if consensus is applicable for this situation. If these users want to stick to the master language of English, that's fine with me, but I feel sorry for those who can't read nothing on the file page but the one or two sentences provided in the small description box (and that's if their language is provided). Comments? ZooFari18:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
You not only changed the template, your edit also introduced strange rectangles after the language tags and you even changed the author line. As long as other templates are allowed, I don't see why this should not be true for featured pictures. -- aka18:38, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I apologize for the author line, but I did not see "strange" rectangles. Please be a little more specific. And what I think about FPs is a matter of opinion. ZooFari18:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
They appear in my Opera browser, but are not visable if I view the page in IE and Firefox. It is probably some sort of special space that at least this browser can not handle correctly. -- aka18:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC) PS: Screenshot
(edit conflict) Well those glitches are easily corrected. I would like a legitimate reason why you and other people prefer their own individual info boxes. It hasn't come clear to me, sorry if I'm sounding aggressive, BTW. The benefits of the standard one far exceed the customized ones. ZooFari19:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I concur with ZooFari. Image pages should be standardized, personal templates should be eradicated. An image page is not user-space, edits are fair game, the uploaders are not entitled to have their private non-standard templates on those pages if there are standard templates available for replacement. The image description pages are for the image users that come to commons. Quite a big effort went into internationalizing our userinterface. Subverting this by using inferior untranslated templates is a negative impact for the user experience. I assume that the author line was just a minor slip-up, and that ZooFari in general knows how to translate to standard templates. Simply reverting his action is thus not appropriate. --Dschwen (talk) 19:01, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I would like to put 2 more cents in the coin slot and say that Wikimedia Commons is improved by users. Templates like these, which are giving some authority to their authors, aren't allowing us to do so. It gets irritating after a while. ZooFari19:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
This was discussed above. I think you should rephrase the discussion to explain which templates an image submission must contain (and possibly what restrictions you'd place on formatting within those templates) rather than generally excluding all "user templates". Wnt (talk) 20:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Where above was that discussed, I cannot seem to find the section. At least to me it is perfectly clear what templates Zoofari is referring to: Templates that can easily be replaced with standard templates. Such as homebrew {{Information}} replacements. --Dschwen (talk) 20:09, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, at Commons:Village_pump#User_templates. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think even a homebrew information template would be just fine, provided that the standard information template also appears. It's best to keep any proposed regulation to the bare minimum that is logically necessary, then explain the logic, and that way it may be broadly accepted. Wnt (talk) 20:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
It wasnt discussed above. It was proposed above to start a discussion and to find better limits for custom user templates. I agree with Dschwen. This custom user information templates in any form are the first candidate to be removed from Commons. This was my first point and in opposition to license related templates there is not even a possible restriction that disallows us to edit and replace them. --Martin H. (talk) 23:38, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I find this a rather strange position, we have templates for NASA,FLICKR, for dozens of museums and other places which we have pilfered for images, but when it comes to our own contributors the people that make us unique we treat them like they are nothing and arent worthy of recognition. Well if you want to continue to build something unique you need to be unique and recognise that which you unique. Gnangarra04:50, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Those templates are standardized, because we as a group help maintain and translate them. They are from notable organizations, enough to justify unique templates for them. They are also created in a way to easily keep consistency, for example the flickr info template that helps keep Flickr file pages standardized. I doubt we could maintain templates for each individual user on Commons, and would create scattered mess if we allowed it. Flickr, Panoramio, and other album sites do not show customized features, and just because we are a wiki does not mean we should. We need to consider the cons that these user templates provide to our viewers. ZooFari05:08, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Just to check, is this current proposal at all related to Commons:Template standardization? I'm guessing not, but in either case I think your first stop needs to be to write an essay where you explain the things that require consistent templates, and which templates you actually need to have in a file description to easily accomplish them. Wnt (talk) 07:17, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Write an essay? Seriously? If we'd have to write essays now for everything we do, no matter how obvious the benefit is, nothing would get done on commons anymore. --Dschwen (talk) 11:54, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree with ZooFari, Martin H. and Dschwen home-brewed information templates are quite problematic and should be replaced with standatd ones. I would even retire all the information templates other than {{Information}} and {{Painting}} or rewrite them as extensions of the other two. I also agree that anybody is allowed to modify, improve and clean-up other people image descriptions without a need to write an essay about it first. --Jarekt (talk) 13:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
I second Jarekt. I am not against custom user templates to display user name, e-mail and stuff like this (which are discussed above) ; but clearly, {{Information}} is the one thing that should be mandatory. For standardisation sake, obviously ; but also because programs such as the mw:Extension:Add Media Wizard rely on these very templates to make user life easier (I suspect WP books too, but not sure). The least we can do is to provide these tools a minimal standard information template. Jean-Fred (talk) 14:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Part of what the multimedia usability project is looking into is not only new upload wizards (actively being worked on atm), but also things like putting all license, author, desc etc information directly into a database, instead of just in the wikipage text. That is a very long term goal however, since it is a complicated task to do (without breaking the current stuff). TheDJ (talk) 18:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, if you start a vote right now to make Template:Information mandatory, and that's all, I bet you'll get consensus. I mean, most of us who see it come up by default with our new uploads sort of had the impression it was mandatory before this. Would it be satisfactory to change Commons:User-specific galleries, templates and categories policy to include a new section, "Mandatory templates", with the text, "Template:Information, which is added to new file uploads by default, should not be removed from file descriptions." ? Wnt (talk) 20:11, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
That has to be a MediaWiki bug (and almost certainly unrelated to Docu's proposal). Let me take a look at the source and see if I can find what's causing it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, I found the cause: the condition on line 217 of SpecialNewimages.php doesn't pay attention to the browsing direction, and so thinks it's hit the end of the list when it's actually hit the beginning. The comment at the top of the file is pretty accurate though. I think just adding "|| $invertSort" to the condition should fix this particular issue (as well as it can be fixed without a full rewrite), but, alas, it still won't make the rest of the code any cleaner or saner. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:57, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I would like to know how I achieve a larger display of the images within a category view (example: Photographs within the Category:San Giovanni in Fiore). My user profile is set with the image size limit 1280 × 1024 but only for the files itself (the data set). Is there another option for the display in categories? In the category view, they still come up in a really small thumbnail view like a postal stamp. I do not want to / I cannot use monobook. I guess that is a matter of the system. I would like to suggest to display assigend files to categories in a larger size. The current size is really too tiny. --Mattes (talk) 22:57, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Under the My Preferences/Appearance tab, what do you have the thumbnail size set to? The default is 220 - maybe you need to bump it up to 250 or 300?? Tabercil (talk) 23:36, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
This feature apparently just works with images which are displayed within <gallery></gallery> or [[File:foo|thumb]] but not with images shown in category pages (assigned images). Maybe something can be done with the software ... ? --Mattes (talk) 06:17, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I hesitate to suggest this, because I personally don't like the idea of doing it – but have you thought about adjusting the general resolution of your screen? A major difficulty with suggesting that the thumbnail size be increased for everybody is that people with lower screen resolutions may complain that doing so makes the thumbnails too large for their screens. Of course, one way of resolving the problem may be for the techies to allow users to adjust their thumbnail size under "Preferences", in the same way that we can adjust the default image display size. — Cheers, JackLee–talk–10:20, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I wouldn't be surprised if the size was chosen as a compromise between bandwidth use, loading time and a good thumbnail size -- after all, categories can show 200 images at a time. As Jacklee says, we need to accommodate all displays, big and small, so I wouldn't support a general increase in the size. If it were possible to set the thumbnail size for categories in Preferences, then that would probably be all right. Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 16:42, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
We now have collapsible instructions in this template. Does anyone else think this is a nuisance? It adds three steps to an already long process, as you now have to open the instructions three times:
Visit the deletion requests subpage, and place the following code:
Visit the deletion requests log and place the following code at the bottom:
Notify the item's uploader
I understand and appreciate that it cleans up the page once the dr is complete, but I'd be happy to sacrifice that for ease of use. Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 14:05, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, if you use tabbed browsing you'll only have to open it once, and if you use the "nominate for deletion" toolbox link you won't have to do it at all. Also, haven't checked if the template starts out in the uncollapsed state if the DR subpage doesn't yet exist, but if not, it should be an easy feature to add. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:23, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Since we would resent interference by users there in the workings of Commons, actively canvasing for Commons users to try and close a project there is maybe not the best thing to do. If some users are behaving as you suggest then yes there is a problem. From what I can see their copyvios are of "public" art works without FOP in their source country. Given some of the threads that appear here from time to time they would not have a too unsympathetic audience here. However until Commons decides to ignore FOP restrictions (as it did with pd-art) such files on Commons are copyvios and should be deleted as they occur, with users who persist in uploading copyvios should be dealt with accordingly. The best thing to do though,rather than agitating for the closure of the project would be to help them behave responsibly. To alert them to the fact that some files cannot be uploaded here because of FOP restrictions, but that wikipedia itself allows fair use local uploads in some circumstances, i.e. that their has to be an article on the work.KTo288 (talk) 08:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
The rudeness is on their side: they don't reply to polite messages on talk page and go on uploading. Teofilo (talk) 11:29, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
And who are they ? Please do not use this pronoun if it is one individual who does not perfectly understand copyright, derivative works, and FOP. You are based on what exactly to imply that the wikiproject is the problem ? We (including me) delete screenshots from copyrighted video games every week, and we do not nominate the VG wikiprojects for deletion.
As for « polite messages on talk page », please give a link. If you refer to User talk:Missvain, I see nothing but automatic messages, which hardly qualify as « polite » in my opinion.
If they do not answer to warnings, we block them until they listen. That's the way we do things, and as far as I can see, the problematic user has been blocked, and its uploads nuked.
Wikiproject people are not newcomers. They can't at the same time bragg to the outside world that they are representatives of Wikipedia and internally take the excuse that they are newcomers unfamiliar with Wikipedia. Teofilo (talk) 16:07, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Why suggest admendments to people who refuse to hear what they are told on their talk page ? If they don't listen to what they are told here, there is no reason they would hear if they are told the same thing in an another place. Teofilo (talk) 12:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
When I read the guide, I was under the impression that it was too restrictive in regards to Commons, as it seems to be written from a US perspective. Personally, I think this type of project could work well with Commons for countries with FOP. -- User:Docu at 09:04, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, appropriate guidance is being provided at RichardMcCoy's link. Teofilo's absurd nomination is already defeated. Dcoetzee (talk) 01:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
To the wikipedia project's Image Guide I added links to the Commons templates {{Information}} and {{Painting}} and their respective documentation pages with a request that the guidance there be followed. Now, this Commons search lists images already uploaded via the project and after looking at a few I am unsure if they meet Commons free license requirements, and if not, how they could be made free without explicit permission from the copyright holders. -84user (talk) 01:38, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Do other Commons reviewers have better clues than mine concerning how the SIRIS pages document their pictures ? On this one there is a "Digital Reference:" field with two black and white "jpg" thumbnails one can mouse-click to view two somewhat larger jpg images. Below, there is an "Illustration: " field containing "Image on file. Goode, James M., "Washington Sculpture: A Cultural History of Outdoor Sculpture in the Nation's Capitol," Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, no. 3.30". I guess that they have a paper file somewhere, which is filled with at least one paper image, which happens to be a copy of an image from that book. And I thought that the "jpg" images presented on their website might be the same as the pager images they have "on file". So I guessed that the two jpg images are scans from the book. But this is only a guess. I can't be 100% sure. Do other people guess differently ? Teofilo (talk) 13:31, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I have found this help page which is quite consistent with what I had guessed (the paper pictures and the jpg pictures are the same pictures). They also say that the pictures are not intended for publication: If you wish to obtain a photograph for publication purposes, you need to contact the owner of the artwork. Every museum has its own "rights and reproduction" policies and charges for obtaining photographs. Teofilo (talk) 14:05, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I see that Special:GlobalUsage is not listed in Special:SpecialPages which makes it a little difficult to find. Usually that's not a big deal, since the information is already included on normal file pages, but unfortunately that doesn't seem work with redirects; as far as I can tell, the only way to know if a redirect is used somewhere is to enter it in the box at GlobalUsage. Derlay (talk) 22:09, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. BTW, on every page in the File namespace (including redirects), hovering the cursor over the triangle next to the search box pops up a menu which includes GlobalUsage, so it's not as difficult to use as I thought earlier. Still, I think it would be good if GlobalUsage reported not just what uses a file, but also what uses any redirects to the file; this would eliminate the need to check the usage of redirects individually. Derlay (talk) 22:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
June 10
Cat-a-lot doesn't work in Vector theme
I have noticed a couple of days ago. I have always used Vector... Now with Monobook it works again. --Stegop (talk) 04:23, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
It works for me. BTW you should always state which browser you are using when you report problems with Javascript tools. TheDJ (talk) 09:58, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
It seems to be sputtering on and off. When I was using Cat-a-lot last night with Vector, it worked most of the time, but occasionally on refreshing certain pages it failed to appear. (I am using Mozilla Firefox 3.6.3.) — Cheers, JackLee–talk–10:15, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Same with me, I noticed it did not appear any longer yesterday. I first thought it was something with the conversion of Germn wikipedia to vector, but on Commons I had already used vector before. I tried with Firefox 3.0.19, Firefox 3.6, Internet Explorer 6.0, always the same result. --Bjs (talk) 12:19, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
In the meantime I used monobooks, were it still worked. I have now changed to vector again, cleared the cache, and Cat-a-lot is back again (Firefox 3.0.19). Thanks for fixing the bug. --Bjs (talk) 15:02, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I've just created this image using Maple. I tried to follow the instructions in this page (item 1), but I wasn't really able to export the file from Maple in a very good quality in the Bmp format (I found a strange way to do it, but in that way the labels are too small, so I didn't use it. Is there a way to do it properly?). Anyway, when using the image in an article (it:Costante_di_Legendre), the graph is not clear at all and the lables are almost unreadible. Since I'm planning to creat quite a few graphs of that kind, is there somebody that can help me with some easy instructions? :) Thanks!--Sandro(bt) 17:44, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
> display(plot(b, color = blue,thickness=3),plot(a, color = red), view=[1..100000,0.8..1.2]);
but the problem is not how to create the picture in Maple, but to understand how to export it and upload it to Wikipedia, without losing quality.--Sandro(bt) 19:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
If I were to write a program (something like Commonist, but different), would I need to get advanced permission to upload or edit pages on Commons? Or is the API (given username/password) acceptable for uploading? I've done this on my personal MediaWiki installation, but not on Commons. 129.120.86.18918:35, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Batch uploading seems to fall into the gray area between bots and normal editing. Generally, I'd say that using a batch upload tool to upload reasonably sized sets of files (up to a few dozen or so) that you've individually picked for uploading does not really require permission in advance. If you were planning to upload hundreds or thousands files, though, you might well want to ask first whether others think it's a good idea. If in doubt, it never hurts to ask. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:19, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I think it's because WMF wikis are running in miser mode, which disables certain slow database queries. The fields containing the MIME type are not indexed, so Special:MIMESearch basically has to scan every file record for each query. For Commons, with almost 7 million files and counting, this would take impractically long even if it did work. I have a bot that runs weekly on the toolserver and updates Commons:MIME type statistics (and its Unusual types subpage); according to its log, the time for a single initial query has varied lately from as low as one minute up to over half an hour, probably depending on how busy the database server has been with other jobs. (The second query is often, though not always, much faster, since the database server still has the table cached in memory. Even so, it still takes about 10 seconds.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:54, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
June 12
User templates
Will a proposal of a much stricter policy on the usage of so called usertemplates have success? Proposals:
We should forbid the use of individual description/{{Information}} templates. Every file must have an template like {{Information}} or one of its equivalents for paintings and some rare special cases in some areas on Commons (e.g. airplanes) that however have acceptance of the editors in that area. Users are not allowed to create their individual appereance stiles of Commons file descriptions. Negative example for this: File:Shinkeisei-8800.jpg (just an example). Custom information templates lower the standardization efforts on Commons and make it harder to edit files. They are also very difficult to explain by wiki principles, since when does the layout of a page on e.g. wikipedia depends on the taste of an individual user and is transcluded from that users userspace?
We should forbid any use of "custom license templates" in user template, there is no need for any of such templates! Any license template or combination of license templates that is free and in scope of COM:L worth creation in the Commons template namespace in a standardized, non-individual way so that everyone can edit and improve them. It can't be Commons scope to collect and use 100rds of individual styled, non-standardised, hard to understand, 'not for editing because in usernamespace' license tags. Thats eroding our translation and standardisation efforts and it is against wiki spirit. Negative examples can be found in Category:User custom license tags, only a small number is categorized to that category.
Commons allows the use of small, clearly separated, individual boxes/templats containing author and attribution or camera information and maybe a small image. Users can create such small templates in their usernamespace and transclude it to file description pages. Small is to define by size and amount of text. The addition of any license tag is not allowed, the addition of license related information is allowed to a small amount - at the moment we have some users adding whole terms of use to "their" images. Keeping such extensive information is NOT required by the licenses, we can include attribution requierements to our license tags and not need to host such loooong user templates (example: File:Spanische Grillplatte 03(RaBoe).jpg, please dont mind using this as a negative example). A very small number of such templates is collected in Category:Templates for specific users, there are also some more bad examples with licenses, I like e.g. User:Medium69/Will.
Support Such templates make internationalisation more difficult and redundant. Is this template, Martin H., something you would consider an exception? ZooFari04:09, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Asked for my personal opnion I'd say: Yes. I like such templates as long as they are small and unintrusive and provide a small piece of information regarding the author. I see the creation of such templates similar to the widely used Category:Source templates that we use to provide basic information about many individual outside sources and collections. --Martin H. (talk) 04:20, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
I refer only to user namespace (added that word to my second point with this edit). If a user wants to put his file under a {{Attribution}} template he has to do so using the various parameters offered by that template. In the unlikely case that the template does not sattisfy his need to impose an attribution requirement he is advides to request improvement of that generic template instead of creating his own custom license tag in usernamespace. --Martin H. (talk) 05:27, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Support Making the existing templates more useful and polyvalent is the way to go and to avoid all sorts of maintenance problems. --Foroa (talk) 08:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree these custom templates are not very nice. Ugly look, breaks standardization, breaks internationalization and make it more difficult for users to understand. It doesn't mean we should completely eliminate custom templates. If custom templates are build on top of the regular templates, these can be quite useful. At this page I put a bunch of custom templates which are good. The templates all just contain a note about a project and use the standard template for the license. In the past I already patched up a lot of custom license templates. I do prefer the carrot over the stick, I don't want to piss of users over templates. Multichill (talk) 10:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Support mostly. I think this is sane. In the future much of this information will likely become stored in the database, so preparing for that with a lot of standardisation is sane. It will also greatly enhance bot work and normal maintenance. Some details would probably have to be worked out, but I agree that this is the direction we should be focusing on. TheDJ (talk) 13:19, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Support But we would have to do something about existing templates, and that would be a big job. I would support "use of individual description/{{Information}} templates" only if they use existing templates as their basis, that way dozens of templates created for books would be OK. --Jarekt (talk) 13:25, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
In the past, many user templates added standardization when descriptions weren't really standarized. As such, I think they were a good thing.
An additional problem solved by many user templates is that they answered a question that isn't easily answered by many file description pages: how to credit the author. It might be just me, but generally when I see images being used outside Wikimedia sites, the attribution seems almost always wrong (or maybe due to another licensing granted by the author). I don't think this is entirely resolved by the currently existing default templates. (Not to mention that the layout of some of these attribution templates is quite amazing). To some extent, this seems to be a point that the UsabilityUser Experience Team plans to address.
As I understood it, the current guidelines might grandfather a series of old user licensing templates, but doesn't allow creating new user licensing templates with standard licenses. However, there are some users who allow the reuse by additional licenses not supported by standard templates. Thus, before we exclude the possibility to use custom license templates, these should be created (or moved to template namespace).
For sets of images usually uploaded by third parties (generally batch uploads), it's probably still helpful to define custom templates that can include licensing information. These will generally be used by several 1000s of files.
As the UsabilityUser Experience Team seems to redesign and re-organize file description pages (see Usability:Multimedia:Hub), we might not want to re-organize file description pages too much if they are being converted anyways. Some preliminary cleanup can still be useful though. -- User:Docu at 14:57, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose I don't see any reason why we must not use user custom templates. Also many people are using, and will use user custom tags future. It will be very hard and boring work to find user templates continuously. And without very very wide consensus it may cause several great disputes. I think it will be definitely inefficient. – Kwj2772 (msg) 15:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Comment Kwj2772 makes a good point. Making this mandatory may be difficult and more trouble than it's worth. Strongly recommended may be the best we can do. . . . . Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 15:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Question Can we have an example of a user template that the group above will find acceptable? The ones that Multichill listed are rather more than I think we need. I think the user should be able to use a smallish template that contains any of the following, as applicable:
License (one or more of our required licenses)
Attribution requirement (yes/no)
Name to attribute
Required attribution text
Request (not requirement) for notification (yes/no)
Notification address (e-mail, snail, talk page).
"Similar images may be available." (yes/no)
"Higher resolution images may be available." (yes/no)
All of these are permitted by our current policy. I think we can agree that a user should be strongly encouraged to use a standard format, but it might have to be a new template, as I don't think we can do all of this in a combination of existing templates. Let's call this {{NewStandardUserTemp}}.
If we did this, then I think it should be acceptable for the user to keep a copy of {{NewStandardUserTemp}}, with the blanks filled in, but nothing else, on a user subpage and transclude the subpage. That then has the advantage that if her or she want to change anything, it doesn't require doing an AWB run against the user's whole list of uploads. . . . . Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 15:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
I think you might be confusing licensing templates and credit line (i.e. custom attribution templates). -- User:Docu at 21:38, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
"Custom attribution templates" fits the IMO desired form well. The templates listed by Multichill are on one hand a good examples, on the other hand not. Good, because they follow exactly the purpose of a custom attribution template, they indicate the author or source and provide additional information and doing a little bit of promotion for the source/author/uploader with weblink, email and so on. Bad because IMO they are not clearly separated from license templates in design and some of them represent a license such as the kremlin.ru template. Answering Jameslwoodwards points above: everything you mentioned is allowed except the first point. A user tag can mention the license, but it should not look like a license nor should it use any of our Commons:Copyright tags nor any self-created or combined license as any acceptable license or license combination worth hosting in template namespace so that everyone can use the template in its community approved form and not only a special user with a layout following his own wishes. I share the concerns of Kwj2772, however this is not a proposal to change something but an invitation to start a discussion about a problem that maybe is not fully anticipated by the community and that is growing. But I see Kwjs point that any change will not be desired becaue the restructuring will be too dificult and may discourage a group of users to contribute to Commons or even leave Commons in dispute. --Martin H. (talk) 05:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
What do we call an user template? Something that is under the user space and serves { attribution / information / ego } about a given author ? Something that specify licencing conditions to possibly the extreme options? Something else? Esby (talk)
Support. I think the idea for limiting user templates has been thrown around a few times, but I think it would be great if someone actually implemented it into a policy. Kaldari (talk) 06:08, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
{Oppose CC-by-3.0 requires attribution a custom user template is the attribution the author requires, failing to attribute inaccordance with the authors wishes would be a breach of CC-by-3.0, such breach would be grounds for a take down notice to be issued to the foundation. Gnangarra03:15, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose, though the second point (only) has some merit. Custom templates are a way for Commons to experiment and improve itself, without stifling contributors or subjecting users to project-wide changes, yet still allowing editors to "vote with their feet" by choosing to use them. The point about licensing is well taken, since oddities there can end up leading to later losses of contributions. However, even that should be imposed as a matter of policy (i.e., say that licensing terms have to be approved by consensus and available from a central index point) rather than by regulating "templates" per se. Bear in mind that anything that can be done by a template can be done by CSS markup within a page, so when you say you're regulating templates, what you're really looking to do is regulate page content. But if you put this proposal like that - that there shouldn't be any individualized page content, it becomes apparent just how wrong it is. Wnt (talk) 20:25, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
And I reverted, as Multichill knew I would because he's had this discussion with me before. It would be have been nice to be advised of this discussion before you took action to alter my licensing template. It complies with and has been maintained inaccordance with commons policies since I started using it. I use a personalised license template because it ensures a higher compliance with attribution when my images are used outside of Wikimedia projects, it also complies with Australian Copyright law notices which means I can enforce attribution and issue take down notices, I'm current seeking prosecution in Australia because a site claimed copyright over my work and the fact I use an orange colour make its obvious to any viewer that the license is clearly and prominently displayed with the image. The change to a grey box doesnt make the license tag noticable. Gnangarra02:08, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Well that was not a good start - the user specifically asks for his template not to be touched - specially if not communicated about first. I think the discussion above does not necessarily address all the issues - despite the support - I do think that the opposes or queries to this change need to be possibly sufficiently outlined or explained so that the less astute reader might understand the flow of the reasons for why not or why the change is happening - a simply summary would help on this one SatuSuro (talk) 02:12, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Comment - The issue raised by Gnangarra is quite a pertinent one and needs to be addressed before any potential change to user template is made - if there is a tendency for outside users to claim copyright over images that are uploaded to commons that in fact belong to the uploader - how is the removing of a template in fact going to help the uploader in maintaining copyright? Despite the obvious internal commons logic shown by the supporters - is it in fact actually helping the individual uploader maintain their legal rights - or simply placing internal practices before the rights of the uploader?
By pursuing this I suspect that some users will simply withdraw their images and involvement in commons on the basis that internal policies may not be sufficient in their duty of care to the uploader. Not defending the copyright of the uploader by an internal policy quirk is hardly a way to maintain involvement of volunteers in a project like this. SatuSuro (talk) 02:34, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Question - For the issue of external usage - has anyone actually surveyed compliance by external users of commons images? I think the whole template issue is potentially inadequately mis-directed if in fact there is lack of compliance by external users - the issue is surely if commons has inadequate measures for defence of uploaders implied rights - and inadequate means of maintaining measures to maintain those rights - why should anyone upload? I would really appreciate any response on that from the supporters of the removal of user templates - thanks. SatuSuro (talk) 02:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
That is a problem, that individual license will not solve. Also it is a problem, that users should not try to resolve on their own, imo. I like to stress the wording above: "my licensing template". Im strongly against such ownership claims in our file: namespace. The license template requires attribution in a specified way, thats a valid requirement. As long as the attribution is given we can easily change the layout of OUR file description page as WE want. --Martin H. (talk) 09:32, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Who besides me is going to give a tinkers cuss about whether other sites comply with attribution, its certainly not the Foundations and noone but the copyright holder can take any legal action. Gnangarra14:57, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Of course I'd use the term "my license template" because it is specifically designed for my images inaccordance with my attribution requirements, simplistically as I can phrase this. If you dont want to comply with my attribution requirement then delete my images.Gnangarra10:46, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
We did comply with your attribution requirements. No where in the CC-by-3.0 does it say you can demand you be recognized in bright orange, which would be a serious problem in many publications.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
People should go an read CC-by-3.0 before they proceed any further. Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor as I created the templates and add them to my photographs when uploading this is the way in which I am specifying attribution within Wikimedia projects. Gnangarra14:48, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
That's not the relevant page. If you read http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode you'll see that what you can require is actually a lot less. Essentially you can choose the attribution text but not much more. You can not demand e.g. a specific template or a byline in the article or a watermark on the image etc. /Lokal_Profil15:08, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Actually both links are identical in the information as the link I used is a summary of the link you used, written by the same people Creative Commons would be using deceptive practices if their summary was not the same and as such it would invalidate all cc-by-3.0 licenses. Can you clarify that the two are different Gnangarra09:20, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Your link goes to the "human-readable summary" page for the license. Mine goes to the "Legal Code (the full license)" page which is the actually binding part of the license. Section 4b deals with the attribution clause. I've put it here below (collapsible though). /Lokal_Profil17:08, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
CC-by-3.0 Unported clause 4b
If You Distribute, or Publicly Perform the Work or any Adaptations or Collections, You must, unless a request has been made pursuant to Section 4(a), keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties; (ii) the title of the Work if supplied; (iii) to the extent reasonably practicable, the URI, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and (iv) , consistent with Section 3(b), in the case of an Adaptation, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Adaptation (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). The credit required by this Section 4 (b) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors. For the avoidance of doubt, You may only use the credit required by this Section for the purpose of attribution in the manner set out above and, by exercising Your rights under this License, You may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any connection with, sponsorship or endorsement by the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties, as appropriate, of You or Your use of the Work, without the separate, express prior written permission of the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties.
There is no such license as "cc-by-3.0", that's an abbreviation. The full name of the license is the "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License". The word "unported" is a change in version 3.0 license (in earlier versions it was "generic".--Nilfanion (talk) 00:55, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
There is a distinction between ported, unported Jurisdictional "ports" are legal translations aimed at addressing differences in local laws not necessarily language barriers. The unportedlic ense uses a number of international treaties, instead of any particular jdx's laws changing to unported changes my rights and protection under Australian Copyright law. Example -- the term Ugg/Ug/Ugh is a generic term in Australia/NZ to describe a traditional type of footware as such its use is unrestricted. Outside of Australia/NZ its has been registered as a trademark which means it cant be used except in describing product of the trademark holder, when you change the licensing of my photographs to unported you change my rights in respect to naming and description of the subject in that the trademark holder can seek to have the pictures renamed and the descriptions changed by a court outside of Australia, where as with the ported license(which I used) I'm protected by the decisions in the Australian courts that over turned the registration of the trademark and recognise it as a generic term. I can guarantee that no-one here is going to fund my defense if any such actions occurs because you change my license conditions. Gnangarra04:03, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
? But your license template has always pointed to the unported edition of the license (first Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported and later Attribution 3.0 Unported) thus that is the license by which you are bound, not the Australian one. Furthermore the Australian one (once a 3.0 version is created) is unlikely to deviate in this respect since it's a matter of keeping the the content free and usable for downstream users. Anyhow it's probably best if future posts are in the bottom of the text to make it easier for others to follow. /Lokal_Profil08:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
P.S.: and you may not only ask surveyed compliance by external users of commons images? - if you try to determine that you must controll for other factors such as a general reusers non-compliance with license terms. --Martin H. (talk) 09:33, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Of course I picked someone who would object. Everyone is in favor and this is a good example of the problems we will run into. What is exactly wrong with this edit? The author is mentioned and the attribution is there. Multichill (talk) 10:59, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Of course you could have made me aware of the discussion and give me an opportunity to put my point of view, as its something that effects the whole community 8 support votes in 3 days doesnt make for consensus. Instead you chose the course of action that was intended to piss me off! Gnangarra14:55, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Everything is ok with that edit, it is inline with the license and its requirements. "Gnangarra custom license" (so it is written on the file description, sorry for picking this out) is not custom at all. However, the user should degrade his license tag to an custom attribution tag and add it to the author field, the permission field or above or below the license tag. --Martin H. (talk) 14:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Multiple templates only create confusion, that was the reason behind the shift from GNU/GFDL and CC-by-2.5 combination to CC-by-3.0 Gnangarra14:52, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
I really fail to see the point here: We all have uploaded pictures under GFDL and/or CC-by licenses & most of us realize that this does not prevent third parties to use the images in a way which does not respect the license terms. Of course take-down notices are possible, but very time and money consuming. Just look at the piratebay case: They're mass distributing copyrighted content, and after a long trial the site is still accessible. So if a third party choses to use the images under infringing terms, they will do, no matter whether the border is 2px grey or 3px orange. If there were a consensus that we should restyle the templates in the hope of reducing infringements, we should go ahead and change all the templates.
But I just don't see what makes Gnangarra's pictures so special that they need a differently styled template. Quote: it also complies with Australian Copyright law notices: Does the normal license template not comply to aus. copyright? Is there a special Australian copyright paragraph saying "only licenses with a border of the color #CC0000 need to be respected" or what?--DieBuche (talk) 17:39, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
The change was caused during the migration to 3.0, my intent was never to shift off an AU license I have reverted back to AU. The licenses are compatible except Australian CC is locally recognised. Gnangarra10:11, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Your license never pointed to the AU license to start with but that is besides the point. Still now under the cc-by-2.5-Au license the relevant (i.e. legally binding) text is that at [14] and once again it's clause 4b which deals with attributions. And just like 3.0 it safeguards the text of the attribution but not it's formatting. Thus there is nothing there allowing you to require a personalised template, watermarks, bylines (instead of other types of attribution) etc.
The reason for this is simply that such additional requirements could be used as loopholes in the license. As an illustrative (but not serious) example: Assume I make a derivative image of one published under cc-by-sa. Then my image would also have to becc-by-sa. Now if my attribution requirement would be "the letters LP must be printed over the image in letters at least 20 meters high" then that would effectively mean that no one could reuse my image without negotiating separate conditions from me... hence I'd effectively circumvented the ShareAlike component of the license. A more common (and realistic) example would be "byline requirements" which means an book which lists all image sources in the end (which is very frequent) couldn't use the iamge, thus again circumventing the spirit of the license. /Lokal_Profil13:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
My attribution requirement doesnt impede on the Wikimedia Commons to use the images, nor does it impede on the ability of any one outside to used the image. My attribution requirement take into consideration that when they are used within Wikipedia I dont get attribution with the image as prescribed. Therefore this is a separately negotiated attribution to take into consideration the circumstances, one which has been in place since 2006. Now if Commons wants a new format for attribution for images uploaded in the future thats fine I'll consider it but I wont be agreeing to an alteration to the attribution for images already uploaded and compliant with Commons policies at that time. Gnangarra00:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
It is beside the point whether or not the user's licence template is necessary or justified. Commons should not (and legally cannot) change the licence which an uploader attached. Your options are to persuade the uploader to change the licence themselves or else to delete the file altogether if they will not and the licence is unacceptable. SpinningSpark11:09, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
We aren't changing the license. We're changing the license template. That's entirely legal; we are still recognizing and notifying the user that the picture is under the CC-BY-3.0 or whatever.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Indeed. There is no valid reason a user can demand a big colored custom box to announce their copyright. Demands about the color of your attribution box is not what the attribution requirements are there for and it actually makes the pictures less free than we should desire. We have recognizable and consistent templates for a reason. Not that they might not benefit from a bit of work here and there, but standardization is good, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the presentation of licenses and Information templates. TheDJ (talk) 13:34, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Support. Absolutely. Image pages are not user space. Standardization is of more benefit to the reusers. Standard templates are continually developed and translated. Standard templates make data extraction easier. An image archive like this needs structured metadata. Unfortunately the Wikiformat does not allow forcing a structure, so we need to force it through policy. I think some of the opposers got sidetracked by some chatter about license templates, but the real issue are inferior homebrew {{Information}} or camera information replacement-templates. --Dschwen (talk) 22:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I don't see how that makes your case. We did follow the uploader's request in that case, and he still left. It's possible nothing we could have done would have convinced him to stick around.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Come on, everybody who voted Keep over there were people who didn’t want to take the uploader’s concern seriously; the final decision taken by Gmaxwell on this DR was a luck. I am the one who convinced Samuel Blanc to upload his pictures here, and I can tell you that since this case in which the community wanted to force his will, he started to hate Commons and told other French professional photographers to never upload their pictures here. Aka “creating rules that seem useful for maintenance but which discontent uploaders’ wills” are not going to make it. Do we want to make Commons appealing for professional people or not? Ditithe penguin — 09:11, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
No, I don't want to make Commons appealing for people who are going to turn around and demand that we delete their files. He didn't have a serious concern; he wanted to back out of an agreement he made for his own personal gain.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
No, you missed the point: he actually wanted to upload his photos on Commons, not deleting them. The problem, mentioned in the aforementioned DR, was that he uploaded a HD version by mistake, and wanted to replace it. The unnecessary drama that happened over there (as well as its consequence) made me aware that Commons’ policies are, well, followed too often, regardless of common sense; and I wanted to interfere because I feel like I am the only admin here who is more concerned with uploaders’ well-being, than following strong and—according to me— unnecessary policies like this one (I see nothing wrong with “strongly recommending” this, but “making it mandatory”, what’s the point?). Ditithe penguin — 22:47, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
That's not how I read the DR. The photographer writes "One month ago I saw one of my picture sell in a shop as print, without my autorisation ! I put picture on wikipédia to share my passion, and my knowledge and not to allow people to print it or to do business, or I don't know what with ! So I did a mistake with this great picture, and I want to let this one on wikipedia but with a lower resolution." two months after he uploaded the picture. He didn't make a mistake, he later regretted his decision. Instead of being polite about it, he says "Hi, I am the author of this picture and as the international laws on copyright said, I stay the owner of this one ! [...] there is no more discussion to have !" Those aren't the type of users I want to work with.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:18, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Rereading the upload log, it's possible he did upload a smaller version the day after he uploaded the large version, and you yourself reverted him. (I can't exactly tell, since the old picture history has been deleted.) In which case, instead of reverting, you could have helped him fix the problem; or at the DR he or you could have explained the history of the file, which probably would have gotten a much better response then the way it was done. Historically, I haven't seen anyone object to the deletion of a mistaken upload promptly after it was uploaded. It's when uploaders come back and demand months later that their photo in use be deleted that tempers get raised.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Machine readable
To make it easier to re-use files from Commons, maybe we should just create a category for all files with machine readable license data.
To determine what works well, one could use the "PDF export" on Wikipedia (try an article that uses an image and check the "Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors" section in the PDF). -- User:Docu at 19:03, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I've also seen one or two images which where here for years & never had a license tag. We definitely should run a bot like that--DieBuche (talk) 10:38, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Definitely needed. I've seen too many images wich never had any license. Or where the description page was blanked and then some bot just added a warning about missing categories. Have a bot add {{Nld}} to all those without a valid license template, or - maybe the better solution - put them into a maintenance category so experienced users can check them. Some of the images will probably be just cases of broken/incorrectly used templates, vandalism, inexperienced users, etc.. that can easily be fixed. --Kam Solusar (talk) 17:06, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I have added a modified {{NoUploads}} template at the top of this category, as most of the contents are derivative works without permission in "No-Fop" or "No-FOP-indoors" countries.
Or does the amount of contents in this category (and subcategories) mean that Wikimedia Commons has an unwritten policy allowing them as a kind of "fair use" ?
I think there needs to be a usage note (or a link to another page) explaining which jurisdictions allow photographs of models and which do not. Singapore, for instance, permits photographs of architectural models: see {{FoP-Singapore}}. — Cheers, JackLee–talk–07:37, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
after a brief discussion on de.wikipedia and Commons:Forum#Amtliche_Werke_der_Europ.C3.A4ischen_Union of how to proceed with images/files out of the en:Official Journal of the European Union because they are in pd in a lot of EU countries I suggested the above mentioned template. It would be appreatiated if you can give imput on this matter (e.g. do you agree on this template/improvements. what is the legal status in other EU countries) on the discussion page of this template. When a consensus is reached the template can be put in the usual form. --Isderion (talk) 23:54, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Afaik, there are a few thing we have to look into:
Ok, apparently they are published by the "Publications Office of the European Union " which is residing in Luxembourg. What's the legal situation there?--DieBuche (talk) 16:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
June 13
Category chaos
Hello!
I recently found this category of a technical museum in Russia. The sub-categories are unfortunately very chaotic and oftenly misspelled. Besides to this, how meaningful are categories like this: "Category:2K11 Krug in Techical museum Togliatti"? The creation of categories of one certain exponat that is displayed in a museum cannot be conducive to the category structure of Commons, or am I wrong here? This is at least not applied in other museum-categories on Commons. Greetings, Ralph 15:36, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree that in this case, for some of the exhibits, there is a reasonable number of images of the same exhibit. As it isn't easy to group images of one exhibit otherwise than through a category, such subcategories are occasionally done. One could use "other versions", but this isn't really convenient. -- User:Docu at 15:54, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Knua, thanks for correction. My understanding from the discussions you linked to is that illustrations in governmental ordinances etc. are exempted under Article 13 only to the extent they are included in those ordinances; in any other cases the illustrations are protected until the copyright over them expires. As for the claim of PD-Japan-organization, some of symbols may be created by anonymous artists and published under the name of government and thus PD-Japan-organization is applicable after 50 years of publication. --Sushiya (talk) 13:55, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Are the notes copyrightable? In many cases, notes consist of short, descriptive bits of text that may not be copyrightable at all. Such notes can be duplicated in the Commons.
Have the notes been added by the copyright holder? Assuming that the author of a note has written what amounts to a short essay which is copyrightable, and that the same person is also the copyright owner of the photograph, I think it is reasonable to assume that the Creative Commons licence added to the image page applies to both the photograph and the note. The CC-BY-2.0 legal code, for example, defines work as "the copyrightable work of authorship offered under the terms of this License". I'd say that by uploading a photograph to Flickr and annotating it, the author is offering both the photograph and the notes under the Creative Commons licence added to the image page.
What if the notes are added by someone other than the copyright holder? However, if a note added to a photograph is extensive enough to be copyrightable and is added by someone other than the copyright owner of the photograph, then I'd say that permission has to be separately sought from the author of the note to copy the note over to the Commons. For the reason stated in paragraph 1 above, I think this scenario is unlikely to occur very often.
Another interesting question is: what license is the text on Commons? Is it misleading of us to say that someone's file description is CC-BY-SA/GFDL multilicensed if it's actually e.g. CC-BY? Dcoetzee (talk) 20:56, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Commons is licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL, like it says at the top of the edit box. a CC-BY text can freely be converted into CC-BY-SA 3.0. -Nard the Bard21:02, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Incomplete usage listings
I've noticed that many files here list usage on other projects, but that a significant proportion of them fail to note usage on en.wiktionary.org. For example File:En-us-Italy.ogg is used on en:wikt:Italy, but en.wiktionary is not included in the "File usage on other wikis" list on the file's page. This may be related to the problem I've seen several times in which Commons Delinker sometimes failed to remove deleted images from the English Wiktionary. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:51, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
That does not explain why it does not work on Wiktionary. Wiktionary uses ordinary file syntax in a template. The images for proofreading on Wikisource are used in a completely different way. /Ö21:30, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
I think the problem is that English Wiktionary used lowercase for the first letter. After I made this edit, the file is listed in "File usage on other wikis". That is probably a bug that should be reported to bugzilla. /Ö11:59, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Hello!
Two years ago the SUL became broadly available. And most Commons users came from another Foundation projects. But this help page at Commons shows only an obsolete Image: MediaWiki-Login-link.png and does not mention the modern way of account creation. It just was overlooked or there is a policy to deter SUL advertising? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:16, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I have used a lot of old PD ornaments and designs in the past, but it's a little tough to find them again since searching for "ornament" now takes one directly to a selection of about 16 musical ornaments... I don't seem to be able to just search for "ornament" as it always redirects to this page. Perhaps that page should be renamed "musical ornaments" to allow for a wider range of results from the search term "ornament"?
Not sure of your policy on renaming categories etc.
BTW, "ornaments" (with an "s") works well as a search term, bringing up a wide range of different results. Perhaps I'm not using the engine correctly.— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:|]] ([[User talk:|talk]] • contribs)
The new wikipedia/commons layout has no search and go buttons (used to be on the left) as far as I can see... just a graphic of a magnifying glass (at the top right). However, I noticed that if you click the rolldown to "containing" instead of just pushing the magnifying glass, it will work. Thanks for the reply, it seems I was just using the new wiki interface incorrectly after all.
Wiki syntax error in move message
Resolved
On the page when you request a move:
"Administrators: When moving files, please make sure that the redirect is delinked by adding {{universal replace|Green River near Nelson Landing 01.jpg|Replace this with the new filename|reason=[[Commons:File renaming|File renamed]}}
Please indicate if you are interested and can make one of the times listed here. Commons is one of the topics that is sure to come up again. --SJ+16:24, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Anyway to check whether something is in the public domain?
Is there somewhere on here where I can get someone to look over some images to double check if they're acceptable? I only have one in mind so far but I'm sure when I do some more searching I could find more! The one I'm currently looking at is here from the Library of Congress, it says, "Fred Hess & Son copyright claimant , photographer" (and actually has this on the image) but then it also says, "No known restrictions on publication. No renewal found in Copyright Office." Can someone tell me if this is ok to upload or not? My knowledge of what's acceptable doesn't get much further than .mil images and flickr creative commons unfortunately.PageantUpdatertalk • contribs14:46, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
I'll blush and admit that as a lay person I find that page VERY confusing. Good to know that image is in the public domain though. For the future... how do I know if copyright has been renewed? If I use the Google News Archive to find a photo in an old newspaper, for instance, how old does it have to be to be considered public domain? Cheers! PageantUpdatertalk • contribs08:13, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
This image looks pretty much like a photo for a sports clothes catalog. If that should be the case, it probably is copyrighted. Is there any way to search this and make sure that it isn't? Thanks --Santosga (talk) 21:41, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
TinEye could find no comparable images in its database. That said, the branding is very apparent (see http://golfjunkie.nl), it's the only image that User:N.Maulany ever uploaded, is not being used, and doesn't seem very useful IMO. You are welcome to nominate the image for deletion, by clicking "Nominate for deletion" in the toolbox on the image page. — Huntster (t@c)23:01, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
It looks like the resizer is having trouble with the big version, for some reason that is unclear to me (I've uploaded plenty of JPEGs bigger than that). Stick with the lowres version for now, keep the highres version in the file history, and file a bug about it at MediaWiki Bugzilla. Dcoetzee (talk) 19:09, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
The actual reason seems to have been that the high-res version was uploaded as a progressive JPEG. ImageMagick can downscale normal JPEG files line by line, but for progressive JPEGs it must first decode the whole image into memory before scaling it. For very large progressive JPEGs, it will run out of memory. I converted the high-res version into non-progressive format using jpegtran and it seems to work fine now. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:08, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
In addition to allowing progressive JPEGs, I think it'd be a good idea make all JPEG thumbnails progressive above a certain resolution, so that they can be viewed partway through a long download for low bandwidth users. But this would all require software changes. Dcoetzee (talk) 07:34, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Educational image use
I was going to start a mailing list thread, but as it looks like discussion here on the village pump is manageable, all the better to have it on the wiki. This is in part a follow-up to the board's statement on appropriate educational content. Last week we also had a board meeting to further consider some of the issues involved here. One important conclusion we've reached is that we would like to continue discussion with the Wikimedia Commons community about policies and procedures in this area.
Some of this will probably touch on issues falling within the scope of policies on other projects, such as individual Wikipedia languages, but since Commons is our main image repository, I think it's the best place to have the conversation. I should add that I'm acting on the board's wishes in starting this discussion, but in what I say I speak for myself, I won't be expressing official board opinions unless I make that quite explicit (and I don't anticipate that will come up). --Michael Snow (talk) 04:36, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Hi Michael, good to hear from you. Most of the conversations about this issue are now taking place at the policy discussion page Commons talk:Sexual content, where we've come pretty close to settling on a policy that I think we can all agree on. If you'd take a look at the current proposed policy at Commons:Sexual content I'm sure your input (and the Board's) would be valued. Thank you! Dcoetzee (talk) 05:00, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
We should be able to support an educational guide like the w:The Joy of Sex. With video on every position, every act, no less. We have always held nudity and sexuality files to a higher standard for an educational use, and if we have legal and privacy issues to worry about, that's entirely separate from "educational image use".--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:08, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
As you'll see below, I believe there's also work to be done in other subject areas, and I think we'd benefit from some more discussion of general principles, which is why I came to a more general forum. That being said, I do know that people have put considerable effort and thought into the topic of sex specifically, and I encourage continued dialogue there to maintain a focus on the mission of educating and informing. --Michael Snow (talk) 05:38, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
A good case
If you read the board statement, one thing you may notice is that it talked in part about removing material from the projects, and I gather that some people were not happy with the way Jimbo went about removing (specifically, deleting) some of that material. I think the statement itself is good and I'm confident the board still endorses it, but that's not directly what I want to focus on. Some images have little enough value that deleting them is called for, yet it's a bit of a blunt tool, and some of the issues in that area are currently being sorted out. But we still need to figure out how to handle things we decide to keep even though we know they are problematic.
I thank Gmaxwell for pointing out that surprising people with images they prefer not to see is generally counterproductive to our educational purpose. While a blanket notice covering the site may not be the right solution, I think we could do more to help viewers find what they want and not hit them with things they don't want.
For a case in point here, I'd like to highlight Category:Muhammad. I looked at this category a few weeks ago, keeping in mind how a Muslim audience might react to it. Among other things, it contained some calligraphy of Muhammad's name and maps related to his journeys - so far so good. But while the historical illustrations of Muhammad from Islamic sources were in a subcategory identified as Category:Muslim depictions of Muhammad, illustrations from Western sources were still in the parent category ready to offend those who believe visual representations of Muhammad should be avoided on account of idolatry.
We talked about this kind of issue in the IRC meeting Sj organized. A name like "Category:Muhammad" is simply not clear enough to visitors for them to know if they want to avoid it. A Muslim might be keenly interested in the calligraphy or the maps but not want to see an image of Muhammad himself. All the name indicates is that the contents will relate to Muhammad, not that they will actually be pictures of him. On the other hand, putting those pictures in a subcategory clearly identified as depictions is pretty unambiguous (although personally I'd prefer a simple term like image or picture), so if you go there, you know what to expect, and if you expect to be offended, just avoid going there.
Anyway, the organization of the category has since been improved, and there's a new subcategory for Category:Western depictions of Muhammad. The parent category now no longer contains any files directly - maybe that's overkill, but at any rate it's the right solution for the images of Muhammad himself. As far as I know, you wouldn't reach any of those now without knowing in advance that that's what you will see.
That's an example of a good outcome and a kind of cultural sensitivity we can appropriately practice. What situations can we think of in which this can be applied? What other ideas can we come up with to address similar issues? In the next day or so I'll come back with a "what not to do" example, but I hope we can brainstorm from positive approaches as well. --Michael Snow (talk) 05:30, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
This whole issue of 'cultural sensitivity' and how far we should go to accomodate it is a tricky one. Obviously the images of Mohamed were offensive to Muslims and it is right that they were moved to a sub-category away from the parent cat, but have you considered that Islam shares most of its prophets with the Hebreo-Christian tradition and that images of Isa (Jesus) and other prophets are also considered blasphemous, even if they are otherwise non-controversial devotional works of art? This obviously touches on other areas, including s-e-x and nudity, but that's already been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere. To what extent can we reconcile cultural - or 'moral' - sensivities with our aim of being a universal educational repository and archive, that is the $64,000 Question. Anatiomaros (talk) 15:41, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
The issue of categorization is also mentioned in the context of sexual content (ref Commons:Sexual_content#Categorization). I'd welcome a general categorization policy, but we should be clear that images are categorized according to content, not according to offensiveness or some rating system (if that happens to coincide with some people's notion of offensiveness all the better). Another important tactic going forward I believe is for unaffiliated third parties to make filtering systems available that can take advantage of the Mediawiki web interface and our category system - I already have plans to implement such a system (see Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2010May#Designing_filtering_software). Dcoetzee (talk) 07:52, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
While I concur that in general we shouldn't be adding "surprising" images to categories, sometimes you do need to call a spade a spade. For instance, suppose we have a picture of a fan pointed at a topless woman (it's been hot here, forgive me). Then clearly this belongs in the toplessness category, but does it really make sense to make a new category "Fans and topless women" just for the one image? We will assume for now that the image is educational in some manner. We can't filter everything into "non-offensive" categories, because doing so is just ridiculous. Some people find sex offensive, others don't. Some people find Republicans offensive and would rather not see images of them. Heck, some people find that buttons offend their religious beliefs. Are we to create subcategories for every single conceivable item which may cause offence? "Images of spades containing bottomless republicans wearing buttoned shirts holding pictures of Muhammed"? Considering how many possible things people can take offence at, we'd have every image in its own single category and a category tree more vast than the amazon rainforest. -mattbuck (Talk) 11:59, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Although I do see the point, I'm really somewhat worried about this. Basically this kind of idea will get us the subcategories "Depictions of Mohammed...." and "Sexual content ...." and slews of other variations of potential "offensive" behavior for EACH category. That simply isn't workable. I say tagging and filtering software and let people filter out whatever they want. This is an endless discussion, whatever we do, it will never be enough to these people, so let them sort it out. I'm aware of the 'dangers' pointed out by scholars about enabling this kind of thing, that it could 'hurt' our mission to educate, if we enable others to censor. In all honesty though, is this really what we want to be fighting for ? We create and provide knowledge and information, is it also our responsibility to make sure that others are not limited in their ability to access it ? I think not. So if we can get rid of the whiners and the bad press by enabling filtering/tagging, then I say put out a big press release "You have harassed us and our editors so much, that we are enabling censorship, so that WE can get back to business". I will also get real pleasure out of combining the american puritans and pakistani fundamentalists into one group in that press release. TheDJ (talk) 14:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
It seems to me the problem lies in how we display categories as a "tree", rather than a more flexible display method that supports freeform non-heirarchical tags. This could be improved. I'd like the default view of / search for "dogs" to show me a cluster of things that are highly correlated with dogginess -- only in that and related categories. I don't want to see a picture of a fire-engine saving a building with half of a dog visible in a corner. But if I specifically ask to see "ALL matches", that should include every image with a casual dog reference. --SJ+13:38, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree about categorizing based on content, I haven't seen a persuasive case that rating systems are the way to go here on Commons. But I think there's considerable room for improvement in our practices nevertheless. The point is not to make categories "non-offensive", it's more of a "truth in labeling" problem. The category tree is what many people will use to navigate when looking for things, for better or for worse, and it should describe its contents accurately, both for the benefit of people who want to see a particular thing and for those who don't. It would certainly be a concern if a picture of a topless woman appeared in Category:Fans, even if there happened to be a fan in the picture as well. --Michael Snow (talk) 04:14, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Does someone have statistics on the claim The category tree is what many people will use to navigate when looking for things. My expectation would be that text based searches via a search engine would be a more common method. I'm all for improving the categorization of images, but I think tagging with more well-defined metadata would only enhance our ability to achieve our mission (especially to give library and school administrators confidence). I don't think there's a great deal of downside to adding extra information about our images. --99of9 (talk) 05:33, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I don't have any statistics immediately available, but simply as a matter of logic, to navigate a media repository like Commons that is not text-focused, text-based search has limited utility. I'm basically extrapolating from my own user experience. To look for a certain kind of picture, I will dive into categories that seem promising. (Note that this is a different issue from the fact that people may encounter individual pictures through text-based search; in that situation, it's usually because of the relationship to text in a Wikipedia article, so not directly on point to the question of navigating Commons itself.) --Michael Snow (talk) 05:48, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm also extrapolating from my own user experience. Since we do encourage descriptive descriptions, good images are usually well documented and easily found in a text search engine. For example, here's Google's result for "honey bee nectar" [15] (bee nudity only). Once you get to a picture you like, it's then a single click to see the whole category for more of the same. I use the category tree much less frequently. Anyway, the point is that our users access our content in many ways (including the single image users you mention), and any "protection from surprise" system we provide should attempt to help as many users as possible. A tagging system could apply to every image, no matter how it was accessed. --99of9 (talk) 07:34, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
For me, those search results mostly confirm my preference for using categories directly, since it doesn't actually yield that big a selection, a number of the results are irrelevant (apparently because something with bees was a featured picture of the day), and if the ultimate destination is a Commons category, why add an extra step? It does pick up pictures with a decent description, but many more pictures here lack that, and I've worked with collections that are much more thorough in their descriptions than even our good examples. Anyway, tastes and preferences differ, and part of the tension in a system of organization is that you get pulled in different directions trying to cater to those needs. That's why a quality image resource will usually have more than one system (including tagging or whatever name one wants to give it). Our categories are a form of tags too, but of limited utility and reflect the fact that MediaWiki was not designed with a media repository in mind. This is a bit of a digression, though. --Michael Snow (talk) 04:38, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Base-level categories are a good set of "significant tags". A better system would support a larger number of tags, and excellent ways to find and navigate large collections based on intersections of tags, clusters of related tags, and the like. We might well fix our Search so that it becomes the dominant way to navigate by tag/category, and improve what you see when you click on a category (ideally: you'd get the search results for //category:dog// rather than the category page. One prominent option would be to view the full category; it would also directly show a list of the most-relevant images clustered around that topic. The 'full category view' would be like what we have now, and would show all of the other tags applied to works in that category, for sorting or filtering your view.) --SJ+13:38, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
A bad case
As I mentioned, I also have a counterexample, which happens to be Category:Gonorrhea. In reaching this, I started from the English Wikipedia article Gonorrhea, and as is extremely typical, it links to the Commons category. Now, the article has several illustrations: a public service announcement warning about the disease, some advertisements for medical treatment, and a map representing the spread and impact of the disease worldwide. This sets the context for what I as a reader would expect to find in the category of related media at Commons.
When I get to Commons, there are in fact a few more images of a "promotional" nature, if you will. But there are also some relatively graphic images of gonorrhea symptoms, including images of genitalia. Having followed this path without encountering any such images before, the viewer is not necessarily prepared for that, and the name of the category does not make clear that one should expect to be exposed to these images directly. There is a subcategory for the bacteria that cause the disease; there ought to be one for images of symptoms as well. That would be a more appropriate way to handle the material for all concerned, whether they want to see such pictures or not. --Michael Snow (talk) 05:14, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I find it very strange that the enwp article does not have any images of the symptoms. I find it strange that you would expect that. Via the interwiki links one can go to de:Gonorrhoe, which is much more educationally illustrated. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 07:51, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I have to agree with Pieter. You're looking up images relating to an STD - expect genitalia and possibly vomit-inducing images. -mattbuck (Talk) 10:14, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree that knowing our typical practices, it was mildly surprising to me that the English Wikipedia article doesn't include images of symptoms, but that wasn't the point. The point is that our readers have no particular reason to know what our typical practices are, but will develop expectations based on what they encounter, plus whatever they may know about the practices of reputable sources elsewhere. When they don't see genitalia in the article on gonorrhea, it may seem that we're just like most publications. Reputable media coverage of a new treatment, or perhaps an "epidemic" of the disease, is highly unlikely to show genitals; Britannica uses an image of non-genital symptoms. That sort of thing sets people's expectations.
I can appreciate that there would be educational value in making symptom images available, including genitals, for those who want to see them. That doesn't mean following the German model is a good practice, though. I would say the French Wikipedia has the right approach in this case - the pictures are included in the appropriate section of the article, but behind a Javascript template that informs the reader what they contain. For similar reasons, pictures like this really belong in categories that are unambiguous and explicit as to what they contain, instead of just indicating the general subject matter. Let the reader or viewer make their own decision about what they choose to see, instead of us making decisions for them. I don't believe it's our role to dictate expectations to others, it would be imposing our cultural point of view and is decidedly not neutral or objective. --Michael Snow (talk) 05:46, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Are you really unaware that this is your cultural point of view? Illustrating Gonorrhea only with posters and graphs is definitely not culturally neutral. As User:Erik Warmelink did not tire of pointing out, there is a problem with a culture that has no problems with the shocking illustrations in en:My Lai massacre (only a short discussion on the talk page in 2008), but where images of genitals create enough commotion so that first the Founders get engaged and that now the Chairman of the Board enters discussions on Commons. Because the problem is not the grossness - there are lots of gross images in articles about deseases affecting other body parts on enwp. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 06:55, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
This is not based on my cultural point of view, it's based on allowing the reader or viewer the freedom to control their own search for information. That is about as close to culturally neutral as we can get. I'm not arguing that the prevailing culture of the English Wikipedia is where we want to be, or even that it's internally consistent. Notice that I haven't suggested the English Wikipedia handles this case right either, I highlighted French as having a better solution. Nor is this simply about images of genitals, that's just one of the relevant concerns for this particular case study. Violence and gore in the case of the My Lai massacre could be considered for similar handling, certainly (for Commons purposes, I would suggest categorizing pictures of dead bodies at the scene separately from memorials). Perhaps you missed it, but the first case study I posted above had nothing to do with sex or nudity of any kind. --Michael Snow (talk) 06:20, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
You're looking up a sexually transmitted disease and are not prepared to see images of the symptoms, which, given the subject, may quite possibly contain a few genitalia? On top of that you didn't even stumble on the category by hazard, but came from the en-WP article, which should have made clear (and does so, in the lede) that "Gonorrhea" is not the latest Hollywood blockbuster but a, uhm, sexually transmitted infection... Come on! Besides, the images in this category are not inappropriate: rather clinical, documentary photos of the symptoms.
Besides, this "subcategorize away" idea fails if you consider possible future developments in categorization. The system employed currently at the Commons with its combination categories à la "Black and white half-length portraits of American Caucasian men facing left sitting on chairs taken between 1901 and 1910 by photographer X" is not exactly, ahem, sensible. A flatter category structure more akin to tagging (in this fictional example maybe "Black and white photographs", "Half-length portraits", "Man", "American", "Caucasian (race)", "Created 1910s", "Photos by X", plus possibly "Facing left") might make more sense. With such a system, the images you mention might just get an addition category "Symptoms", but not disappear from category "Gonorrhea" at all.
P.S.: offtopic: why did I not get an edit conflict here?? I loaded the page before Pieter's comment, but saved afterwards. The software just inserted my comment above Pieter's. Lupo08:06, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
And there's the sub-category Category:Barefoot women with blue, green, pink, and/or purple hair, currently empty (well, they take a bit of finding, don't they...?). Madness. I agree that 'adolescent girls' are not neccessarily 'young women' (and vice versa), although again there comes the question of definition and that tends to depend on where you are, culturally and legally speaking. What do we go by? Age of consent? Varies widely. Biology? Depends on the individual, etc. Anatiomaros (talk) 23:18, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Previously "young women" in category names was something of a code-word for images showing attractive women who were somewhat youthful, but generally fully developed (say maybe roughly 18-35). I can understand the desire to purge this semi-private code-word, but "adolescent girls" is not equivalent... AnonMoos (talk) 05:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Why are we imagining that the reader is prepared to see genitalia? That's assuming a whole lot of context and prior knowledge for which there's no justification. If our goal is to educate people, it generally defeats the purpose to make that kind of assumption, which is why in this situation the French Wikipedia has the best approach. Even knowing that gonorrhea is sexually transmitted doesn't mean anything; for the disease in that category that gets the most attention, none of the articles on HIV or AIDS have images of genitalia, nor do they have any particular reason to. (As far as future developments in categorization, or the general limitations of the existing system, I fully agree that it could use improvement, but we need to use culturally appropriate practices with the tools that we have in the meantime.) --Michael Snow (talk) 06:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Why do we assume someone looking up images related to "Gonorrhea" was not prepared to see clinical images of the symptoms, including symptoms on genitalia? That's denying all context... Honestly, I think you could probably have found more convincing examples where images containing gratuitous nudity are included in categories that are, prima facie, completely unrelated to such content.
French Wikipedia? Now you've lost me. When I go to fr:Gonorrhée, I am presented with two of these images as rather large thumbnails right there on the page. Do you suggest we include these images at en:Gonorrhea? At fr-WP, they just slapped the text "Photographies d'organes génitaux affectés par la gonorrhée (peut heurter la sensibilité de certaines personnes)" above the photos... In all fairness: I think the images are supposed to be in some expandable box, but that box shows in expanded state for me and has no "hide/show" toggle. So much for relying on JavaScript.
"Subcategorizing away" is an abuse of an already messed-up category system. Categories that are too specific already are a problem when trying to find images.
Alternate suggestion: abandon categories altogether. Keep only the internal maintenance categories. Partner with Google such that their image search can adequately handle related Commons images. Direct all category accesses to appropriate Google queries and let the images to be shown be selected by Google's "safe-search" settings.
I've frequently argued that what we ideally want for images is not a category system but a tag system, a la Flickr and many stock photo sites. The category tree is useful but limited to categorizing by a single set of attributes in a specific order; rather than having humans set up the tree, the category tree should be synthesized on the fly from tag sets and user preferences. However, that's not likely to happen without substantial software changes. Dcoetzee (talk) 08:45, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Dear Micheal: "Why are we imagining that the reader is prepared to see genitalia?": Why are we imagining people are prepared to see images of Mass_graves ? I say again, we should enable people to censor themselves, because i'm not prepared to start cutting in our content for a 'think of the children' argument. TheDJ (talk) 16:19, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Oh and I only read it just now, but I fully support Pieter Kuipers arguments at 06:55, 27 May 2010 (UTC). TheDJ (talk) 16:22, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I've been talking about labeling content better, not "cutting" it. The purpose of that is indeed to let people decide for themselves, although "censorship" is the wrong term to describe that. (As for what's going on with Lupo on the French Wikipedia, that's odd, but perhaps another indication that we need more robust technical tools to help us work out these issues). --Michael Snow (talk) 06:20, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Then throw money at the problem and get the software written. Categories are not gonna cut it here. Sure we can create 'labels' using categories, but categorizing content 'away' is basically another form of us hiding our content for ALL users. It is not a solution to the problem you are trying to address. And censorship is exactly the right word to describe the effects of such tagging systems, be it self-censorship or actual censorship, both will be enabled and facilitated by any tagging that we do. People think censorship is a 'bad' word, but we do it all the time and everywhere. It is simply part of our culture to engage in moral censorship. We should recognize that such systems can and will be used by countries in Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Italy, the UK and Germany. It is inevitable. And many in the Commons community have repeatedly stated that do not think it is a good idea to adhere to just american/western standards when implementing tagging and that other cultures should be offered similar protection from material that they find offensive, particularly depictions of Mohammed. Either we are free and potentially offensive, or we are free but give you tools to protect yourself. Hiding material and making it less accessible to all users, is not a good solution and never has been. See also heated debates on Television series spoilers, and depictions of mohammed in the English Wikipedia. TheDJ (talk) 11:19, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
That's a good suggestion. I agree that categories -- which have done quite well at realizing their initial goal of providing basic classification -- are not a substitute for good search. But our search interface isn't ideal either. We should both fix search (or find another tool to handle it, as you say) and make sure other tools work (e.g., a spoiler feature, extra image markup that determines how an image is shown by default, permanent links to an image-free version of a page when you want to link specifically to a text). And I like the idea of choosing a few non-Western examples as the litmus test for whether this is working. The important questions here have nothing to do with a particular morality or culture. --SJ+13:38, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I don't see the remotest impropriety in showing people pictures of gonorrhea when they look for gonorrhea. I think that middle-school children have been seeing images like this during sexual education classes for the past thirty or forty years in the U.S. I highly doubt that these images are being used for "prurient" purposes. Their effect on children will hopefully be to prevent cases of gonorrhea and other STDs that are harder to treat. I would have hand-picked this as an example of the sort of content we need to preserve.
We could take some measures for sensitivity if truly desired; for instance to split up the category into images of bacteria, symptoms, and charts and tables. But anyone who's come in that far isn't going to leave till he's seen the show.
Wikipedia and related projects are a hard hat area, an encyclopedia under construction, a place where content is built. That content is free to anyone who likes to sand off sharp edges and rope off hazardous areas. Our task is getting the content available in the first place. Wnt (talk) 18:42, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Splitting the category up is in fact exactly the measure I suggested, and there should be no concern about whether we need to "preserve" the content. We would only go in the direction of deleting material if its educational value wasn't established, and that's not in question here.
As for "anyone who's come in that far isn't going to leave till he's seen the show", that has to be one of the sillier arguments I've seen on the subject. The whole point here is that there are many people who do not want to see this particular show (whether it's gonorrheic genitals, My Lai, or Muhammad), as we should know very well by now. They may be looking for a different show of the same name, so to speak, yet we're seeing fit to inflict this one upon them anyway. That's not fulfilling our educational goals, because there is no educational benefit in giving potentially offensive images to people who did not willingly choose to see them. No real education can be provided by force, only by choice, so we should take care that we are leaving that choice available to our readers and viewers. Sometimes that requires taking a few extra precautions. --Michael Snow (talk) 06:20, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Surely this conflicts with the foundation's NOTCENSORED policy? And besides, you haven't responded as to how this deals with the fact that given a subject there will be someone who finds it offensive. -mattbuck (Talk) 11:06, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Like I have stated before, I have no problem with these kinds of technological changes, but it definitely is a LARGE change from our current practices and flies square in the face of NOTCENSORED in my opinion. But adding something like [[File:mohammed.jpg|thumb|censor|caption]], that only loads the image upon clicking a button, for those users that desire it, should be relatively simple. TheDJ (talk) 14:15, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I note however that most of our readers are IP users, so this would have to be the default mode, and that might not be liked by many folks either. It would also be a JS option, and those are not really liked by editors either. TheDJ (talk) 14:17, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
And such scripts that hide contextualized content have been routinely denied by the English Wikipedia at the very least, so they would require to be imposed by the Foundation in a new policy, because I don't see anyone getting consensus on that. Unlike tagging + self imposed filtering, which would first of all protect a user better, hiding almost all changes of accessing such content, be configurable depending on material and context and be usable by external filtering software. TheDJ (talk) 14:30, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Commons:Not censored takes you to a section of Commons:Project scope that explains that we will not remove lawful material (so long as it is within the scope of the project) simply because it may be offensive. Not being censored doesn't conflict with anything that's been suggested. One of the reasons "censorship" is a confusing term to use here is because it normally implies government interference, not us using our own editorial judgment. Otherwise, every Wikipedia article is an exercise in self-censorship, which if you want to say it that way, fine, but the term begins to lose all meaning. Editorial judgment is a wonderful thing, and I believe it's perfectly capable of dealing with the possible range of subjects that might be offensive.
As for TheDJ's suggestion for an option in the language markup, I've thought myself that something like it could be a good solution. I'm not sure about the issues with Javascript, but people who want to see offensive images directly should certainly have the ability to override such a feature in their user preferences. I'd invite people to come up with other suggestions so we can evaluate and compare them. --Michael Snow (talk) 06:09, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Michael Snow that striving to make WMF more welcoming by to all cultures by making internal decisions about how to collect and display content is not censorship. We need to examine our current practices to see if we need to alter them in order to broaden our demographic groups of readers and editors. I think that it is possible to satisfy the cultural sensitives of more people AND retain content if we use categorization and/or tagging system that more accurately describes the content and gives users control over what they will see, so I support these discussions. FloNight♥♥♥17:13, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I have no problem if Michael Snow would like to split up Category:Gonorrhea - elaborating our categorization scheme is something any editor should feel comfortable doing. I may do it myself just as an exercise. And once proper categories are established, then the existing rules on categorization call for the deletion of "overcategorized" category links, i.e. they would no longer turn up under Category:gonorrhea.
But I would be utterly appalled if some poster were blocked, banned, or even called to account for himself to a noticeboard, simply because he put a picture of gonorrhea under gonorrhea. It's just a really obvious place to put it, and I can't picture a general policy that would tell editors where else to put such a picture. Not unless you resort to a content-tagging scheme, which is a major error, since such a scheme neither prevents the offendible from reaching the offensive, while hindering proper encyclopedic categorization. Wnt (talk) 20:36, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree that it would be a serious mistake to block or ban people for categorizing gonorrhea symptoms under gonorrhea. Such people are almost certainly acting in good faith, even if we do branch out the subcategories. But if we put some effort into better labeling and organizing our categories, it will have multiple positive consequences. Viewers will have a better idea of what they will encounter, and can more effectively avoid things that would offend them. People uploading images may well discover a more appropriate category on their own, without needing some kind of enforcement coming at them. If they fail to discover it, anybody else can easily fix the categorization, and maybe offer gentle advice for future consideration.
I don't know how well a general policy would settle all questions, in the sense of giving people directions about how to categorize and so on. That's not what I'm looking for at this point. Many of the instructions about categorizing are more mechanical and technical, and don't really fall under a "policy" heading, because editorial decisions about categorizing are fairly case-dependent, so creating a comprehensive policy may not facilitate the work. But it's certainly possible to have guiding principles, and I believe that our principles should certainly include identifying to the viewer as clearly as possible what they should anticipate seeing, and not surprising them with (potentially offensive) material whose appearance wasn't obviously indicated. Or, for a simpler formulation of the principle: What the viewer sees should be due as much as possible to the viewer's choice, not ours. A culture focused in that direction is better suited to our mission (and also more pleasant) than having offender and offended at loggerheads over whose fault it is that offense was given/taken. --Michael Snow (talk) 06:09, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Michael Snow when he says that we need to put the control in the hands of the reader about which type of content that they will see. Given the international reach of WMF, there will be different expectation about what will be shown to a general reader. In order to better met the expectations of all cultures, we can do a better job of naming content, describing files, and then categorizing, and/or labeling files in order to supply the reader with content that they would then expect to see. FloNight♥♥♥16:54, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Those are nice words, but utterly useless. First of all, that doesn't give people more control. Control requires filtering and tagging systems. The rest of what you are saying can already be done, is already being done, but can never be done perfect and to the satisfaction of everyone. I'd really like it if someone made some actual proposals of technology that we can really use and for plans on how to approve those within the community. I haven't seen a single new proposal in this entire thread. The same problems persist. TheDJ (talk) 21:04, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
As this seems to have wandered off somehow, let me rephrase my question: do we expect people to read the Wikipedia article, specifically en:Gonorrhea#Signs_and_symptoms before clicking on the link to Commons. -- User:Docu at 06:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
"We" as in those of us working on Commons as editors, or "we" as in the average visitor to the project? I wouldn't lean on such an expectation in either case, but without knowing which you mean, it's a little uncertain what your question is getting at. In general terms, though, expecting people to pick up on every last aspect of their environment, and expecting that they will have recognized and understood it, is not sensible. --Michael Snow (talk) 06:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
At the beginning of this thread you wrote that you started out from that article. Even if the description in that article is somewhat technical, it does list some of the possible (external) symptoms. Despite that, you seem to base your expectation primarily on the few images in the article. Despite being distributed over the entire page, they seem to be primarily historic in nature. -- User:Docu at 07:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
In answer "we" should not distinguish between readers and editors, because every reader can be an editor. We should never forget this when considering how to write policy. If "you the reader" see a policy that is being violated, you can fix it. If you see a policy you don't like, you can complain about it. Everyone reading our pages is one click of the edit button away from being a contributor.
Next, I don't think we should count on editors having read the Wikipedia article on gonorrhea, especially not the English Wikipedia article; still, many have.
As for categories, most of them are in a sorry state. People are henpecked by an annoying bot to slap some category on their image, and do so without any real belief that anyone is finding the images by category. After all, they're usually uploaded to illustrate a Wikipedia article, and even if someone looks for them on Commons it's probably by text search, and the easiest time to add them is with a script that suggests alphabetical matches to what you type, but doesn't give you an idea of what other categories are in those. The categories surely could use straightening out - the trouble is, fixing Commons categories is some of the most direly dull work a person can find to do on any project commissioned by Wikimedia. While I am glad that Michael Snow and I agree that editors should not be sanctioned for putting these images in this category, I still feel that guidelines meant to "clean up" sexual content in categories have the effect of ordering other editors around and ignoring the priorities they would set. My feeling is that if so many people want sexual content neatly pigeonholed, they should come do it.
As for providing "child-safe" versions of Wikipedia, I made a suggestion on May 12 about this at strategy:Proposal:Provide services to facilitate "child-safe" and selective mirror sites. My feeling is that those who believe in and can aon certain mores about what should and shouldn't be shown to children should be responsible for using Wikimedia content to set up "mirror sites", but that Wikimedia can meet them halfway by serving up historical versions of pages in a way that would fit neatly into another site's frame. We should not try to do some hack-job of rating here, because there's no one standard of what is inappropriate for children (or if it is, it is that nothing is inappropriate and parents should guide them through the real world). The fact that we're here, arguing about including the sort of images of gonorrhea that have been shown to young children for generations by federal mandate ... there's no way we can work up a one size fits all standard. Wnt (talk) 22:23, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
To follow up, I've reorganized Category:Gonorrhea, with all of the skin pictures now in Category:Gonorrhea infection in humans. So far I didn't touch the articleGonorrhoea, which looks like a badly substandard copy of the category and seems more likely to confuse than help searchers. I don't know much about the standards for such pages; it's a separate issue that may be worth examining. Wnt (talk) 19:43, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, the first comment by Michael Snow included, "There is a subcategory for the bacteria that cause the disease; there ought to be one for images of symptoms as well." Having obtained his agreement to my main point that no one should be censured for putting gonorrhea under Gonorrhea, I view it as the individual prerogative of any editor - him, me, or you - to divide up categories into subcategories to better sort out the content. There were some fringe benefits to this as well - for example, I was then able to class "Gonorrhea posters" under "sexually transmitted disease posters", which could not have been done with the undivided category. Wnt (talk) 19:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
That was just his initial comment. Subsequently several senior contributors gave their opinion. Your edits don't seem to take their opinion in account, futher you seem to address their objections by some "prerogative" of yours (or his). Michael Snow does have that, but he didn't invoke it. -- User:Docu at 14:12, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
another example
Another example, raised by Peter above: The en:My Lai massacre. It has the traditional challenge of depicting a well-documented but disturbing subject. There are many high-quality photographs of the event, many not suited for those with a weak stomach. Currently en:wp displays three thumbnails in the article, and a gallery at the bottom of the page. The Vietnamese article displays two more graphic and larger photos in the article, and the same gallery at the bottom. The French and German articles are shorter and do not display a gallery. Different languages have different contexts. Are these all respectful ways to display images of violent death? If not, what would be more respectful? --SJ+13:38, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I would simply call those german and french articles incomplete and classify them as being in an early development stage... TheDJ (talk) 14:32, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Though I've focussed on sexual content policy since the Jimbo Wales deletions, I think that the guideline Commons:Photographs of identifiable people actually imposes more censorship than even the extreme anti-porn positions, and needs to be scrutinized. I do very much have the feeling that — just like with BLPs on Wikipedia — issues pertaining to wealthy or well-respected people in the U.S. are treated with kid gloves, whether out of sympathy or out of the fear that they'll sue the Foundation. Meanwhile we have no shame about, say, citing unnamed foreign intelligence sources to claim that the Chinese Army massacred thousands of civilians at Tiananmen Square, and when we show photos of war dead from abroad we feel like we're doing them a favor. This kind of cultural bias needs to end, and it should end with a greater commitment to present the unvarnished and patchwork truth. Wnt (talk) 22:36, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
As a further update, I did go ahead and recategorize the My Lai images here on Commons so that there's a subcategory for memorials and another one for all the pictures of dead bodies. Since Wnt took care of the gonorrhea pictures, that makes for improvement on all three examples we've covered here. Now it remains to extend the principle out to other places where it should apply. For example, if there are other pictures of corpses that might be shocking or offensive, it could well be worthwhile to look through Category:Corpses and see in what other categories some of those files appear. If those don't adequately give the viewer an idea of what to expect, then it should probably be reconsidered. --Michael Snow (talk) 05:44, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Picassa web
Can upload option from Picassa web be incorporated in "Upload file" like flickr ("It is someone else's work from Flickr")? If an image from Picassa is to be uploaded, what channel can be used? Is license of this image (for e.g) [16] (CC 3.0; I think flickr uses CC 2.0 generic) OK for wikicommons/wikipedia upload? --Redtigerxyz (talk) 04:47, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Adding "It is someone else's work from Picassa web" option similar to flickr will arrange uploaders to search Picassa web too for suitable images for wiki articles. At present, people may assume that wikicommons only accepts flickr (not Picassa web) images. --Redtigerxyz (talk) 17:03, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
I should create an upload bot for Picasa Web Albums but haven't gotten around to it. There's just the review bot right now and you have to use the {{Picasareview}} tag on new uploads. Dcoetzee (talk) 07:27, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Using Wikipedia Cite DOI or Cite PMID templates in file summaries?
File:Five Myr Climate Change.png has good references, hand done. w:Template:Cite doi/10.1029.2F2004PA001071 bundles up the File references into one citation that can be included in the Wikipedia articles using the file. Is it possible to directly use the Wikipedia template in the commons file references?
Are there enough of these graphs where references could be included from Cite DOI or Cite PMID templates to warrant considering this as an enhancement?
RDBrown (talk) 14:30, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
There is no way to directly use templates at Wikipedia on Commons, but all you really need to do is use the local {{Cite journal}} template, just the same as you would on Wikipedia. It may not be as powerful as the en.wiki template, but it'll get the job done. — Huntster (t@c)22:54, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, understood, the Cite doi and Cite PMID templates are include files for the articles, so a slightly different beast. RDBrown (talk) 09:19, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Oh certainly, but the Cite doi subtemplates still just use "Cite journal" behind the scenes, so it should still work out here. — Huntster (t@c)22:47, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Dan Watts, who is helping Mike Godwin here in our San Francisco office, has drafted some templates to be used for DMCA takedown notices, as well as some DMCA counterclaims.
As these impact Commons as much as any one Wikimedia community, it is our hope that community can come together to discuss these templates and incorporate the suggestions offered herein, to improve the lines of communication between the community and the Wikimedia Foundation when it has been directed to remove materials in accordance with DMCA.
As I mentioned on the mailing list— I think we need to be careful to avoid the suggestion that you can counter-claim the communities removals. Actual DMCA requests are very rare on commons because the community is pretty diligent and because almost no one knows how to write a proper takedown request, so the overwhelming majority of the copyright related deletions are based on the judgement of the commons community. And.. For future reference, don't use PDFs for this. Just some plain text without trying to to the layout would have been a lot more productive (e.g. I'd be making changes to the text rather than waving my arms here). --Gmaxwell (talk) 03:11, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Do we get many of those? If not, wouldn't it be easier to decide case by case, instead of establishing another set of templates, queues etc.?--DieBuche (talk) 09:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I think it is best to centrally manage these things on meta and just have a local DMCA page link to the meta information. This is in response to a DMCA claim on the french wikisource btw. Some people voiced their concern on how the foundation handled this and informed the community about this. (no notice left behind, no clear path for recourse given to community). TheDJ (talk) 09:57, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Since this is a general forum, some basics might be useful to know:
I assume that submitting to such legal take-downs involves more than ordinary editing or even ordinary deletion, and that the purpose of the notice is to make clear what happened to a file that suddenly has no history?
When you say these templates are made, do you mean that there is already a Template:something that can be directly transwikied, or does someone need to mock up new templates to match your pdf files?
In particular, automatic translations of the templates to the user's language preferences may be desired, with a longer explanation of what the U.S. DMCA law and take-down process involves.
The most important part of the templates isn't shown: the categories, by which editors can get a sense of where the problems are.
Another concern is the edit history: if the previous revisions are being concealed, editors and admins might want a way to track who is leading to multiple DMCA problems, for example if "sock puppetry" is a factor.
I don't see the point in having a DMCA template since we have {{Copyvio}} and {{Speedydelete}} (basically the same type of template), DMCA is really for web hosts (those who own and/or operate servers) and yes I understand Wikimedia is a host as such but having another deletion template just adds to the confusion plus another template to be abused by vandals. Bidgee (talk) 13:44, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
The WMF is going to get DMCA takedown requests sometimes, and is required by law to act upon them. That's not really something we or they can just decide not to do. The only question is whether there should be a standard process for informing users about them and dealing with possible counter-notifications, or whether the WMF staff should just wing it every time it happens.
Anyway, your comparison with {{Copyvio}} and {{Speedydelete}} suggests some confusion about the purpose of the proposed templates: while it the draft templates do, confusingly, look like our deletion templates, they're not. The one in the first draft is apparently meant to be posted on the file description page after the file has been deleted, while the one in the second draft is meant for files restored following a counterclaim, and should really look more like {{Kept}}. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:19, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the apparent confusion seems to indicate that we need a different template layout for such a "left in place of image"-template. TheDJ (talk) 18:32, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I think some new and distinctive icon should be created for this purpose. I was thinking of something along this line... a pity I'm not an artist. While I'm at it, I should also ask: do all the underlined links in the PDF template actually have somewhere to point at? i.e. "the take-down notice is archived here", "file a counter-notice here"? Wnt (talk) 14:02, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
it makes sense to have a template to replace an image when its taken down that way instead of delinker just running across other projects removing the link the other projects will get advised via the template of the issue. If the image is restored then the detail of DCMA and its subsequent restoration should be documented on the talk page. Gnangarra12:24, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
You can't replace an image file with a template. Images get removed for being copyvios by Delinker all the time, if we'd ever get such a notice, why'd do smt. else?--DieBuche (talk) 16:16, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
You can't replace an image with a template, but you can replace an image with a warning image that indicates a problem exists, and you can make the template part of that image's accompanying text. The reason to do this differently than for copyvios is that copyvios leave a paper trail - a deletion discussion, a speedy deletion, a deleted draft that can be proposed for undeletion or shared with an individual editor for purposes of improvement - the DMCA requires Wikimedia to act on its own, without going through the usual processes of community discussion. That is why the special message is most welcome. Wnt (talk) 00:52, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
DMCA takedowns are so rare here that I think any user whose images are subjected to such a takedown should receive a personally written message from WMF's legal counsel. If they want to have template e-mails that's their perogative. This is pretty far out of the hands of the community, the only reason I can imagine having templates is to ensure that we review the uploads of any user for which one of their uploads led to a takedown. Dcoetzee (talk) 20:52, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
A personal message sounds like a nice idea, if WMF's legal counsel has time. But the templates would serve the larger community. For example, you could look at whether the rate of DMCA notices over the course of a few years differs for images uploaded by very recently registered users, or previously blocked users, or is lower in images that have survived a deletion discussion. Wnt (talk) 00:52, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Why? It seems ... unfriendly to write a note there instead of here. In any case, Picture of the Day provides for a continuously moving front page, and rewarding good work is part of a way to encourage the production of more good work. You misrepresent my statement of "bad composition"; I have never been involved in the Picture of the Day stuff, and composition is relevant to being educationally useful. For example, File:Burnt Historical Building in Lowell Feb 2010.jpg has terrible composition if it's claiming to be the picture of a stop sign, and with the other pictures of stop signs at Commons, would be out of scope for that.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:46, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Teofilo, you lost me here. What exactly are you trying to accomplish here? You'll probably won't accomplish anything except upsetting some users (like you did with your previousidea) Multichill (talk) 16:03, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
(editconflict) So we should prefer low res, badly lit images over more professional photographs, because you don't have the resources to compete with them? I feel that's a very weak argument. If you take, for example, wildlife articles: A clear, focussed, & high res image of eg. a lion has obviously more educational value than a small & blurred version, in which you could only observe the rough shape of the animal--DieBuche (talk) 16:09, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Your (Prosfilae) statement is not the only reason I wrote this. See also Commons:Deletion requests/File:Still Life 2 19900600.png where people tend to think that uploading "still lives" is perfectly normal. There is a "keep the beautiful and delete the ugly" spirit, regardless of the usability of the picture for illustrative purposes with which I disagree. Teofilo (talk) 21:49, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
For one minute, I imagined how it would be if everyone posted on foundation-l every time they have something to whine about. *Sigh* Jean-Fred (talk) 16:47, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
One can do really good images with a 29.95€ camera!!! And I checked your image contribution and I must say, that you are adding a lot of good and valuable images with your 29.95€ camera so I would find it a shame if you would stop doing this. I do think though, that it is very good to have an artistic competition here as this is attractiv for people whith good photo skills. I also think, that images will not get deletet only because of bad composition. But if those images have a bad composition, are of the back garden and are out of focus,... they should be deleted. You can also get quite good second hand cameras on ebay. They wont have 12MP but still will be good cameras. I actually have a Nikon d70s if you want one. Amada44 (talk) 17:51, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
This user seems to have little or no understanding of what Picture of the Day is. I think he's confusing it with "Featured Pictures". Kaldari (talk) 18:44, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree that there is too much emphasis on artistic merit. The primary purpose of most of these images is to illustrate a subject and not to look nice. By no means however should we discourage good photography. Many of the 'featured pictures' do little to illustrate any subject and may not be used on any Wikimedia projects, while many images that are not technically flawless are used to illustrate a wide range of subjects. I agree that 'poor composition' alone should not be a reason to delete an image. All of my early pictures I took with a 3mp Poloroid digital camera I bought from Argos in 2003 for £99 (some of them were pretty good), although I have to admit the Sony SLR I use now is better.Mtaylor848 (talk) 11:46, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
What does the price of the camera have to do with composition? Composition isn't about how many pixels there are, or how noisy the image is, or how good the color representation is. It's about whether what we're supposed to be looking at is where our eyes are going to go to when we look at the picture. It's about whether we have things in front of what we're supposed to be looking at. It's not much influenced by whether we have a $4000 SLR or a Fisher Price My First Camera.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:26, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
While its not the tool you are using but they way you use it that matters, its also true that under the pixel by pixel scrutiny of FP the cheaper cameras just dont stack up to the quality of a DSLR or a Pro-DSLR. It does ask the question if one of the many out of focus, overexposed, and other percieved faulty images could actually pass FP for being a demonstration of that particular problem. "I nominate this image for being a great example of overexposure causing chromatic abhorations". FP isnt our only process in recognition of images theres Quality images for self made high quality image of boring subjects, and then theres valued images where uniquesness and a set of images is considered as well. Gnangarra12:40, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, we do not reward people for writing a stub article in Wiki. Articles should be really good to appear on the front page, as "front page article" is something to learn from and admire. Therefore, I believe that mediocre quality images shouldn't appear as "Picture of the Day" either. It's a simple logic. -- deerstop. 14:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Though I agree with you, the fact is that the english speaking Wikipedia does reward new articles on the main page with the « Did You Know ? » section. I do not how other WP do (the french speaking one does not AFAIK).
That could be an interesting idea for Commons, but I am unsure if we have the manpower to select the "Pretty good picture uploaded yesterday or the day before", write some translations, etc. (and probably manage all the upcoming surrounding drama ;-). Jean-Fred (talk) 14:59, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Actually, creating "Did You Know" or similar section is an interesting idea. I wonder, is Teofilo willing to organize that? :) -- deerstop. 15:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
That could be a good idea. We could have "Did you know we have a whole set of SVG country flags" one day, then "Did you know we have a complete set of Beijing underground stations" the next, then "Did you know old book "<name>" with valuable illustrations has been completely scanned by Wikisource people", and so on... Teofilo (talk) 07:44, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Instead of highlighting individual pictures, a "category of the day"/"featured category" could recognize that a category, or a subcategory tree has reached some high degree of exhaustivity, meaning that Wikimedia Commons has a full pictorial inventory of a certain topic. For example, if we have a complete set of SVG country flags, the corresponding category could be a featured/of the day category. There were probably some good ideas in Commons talk:Featured galleries. Teofilo (talk) 15:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
POTD is not just the image displayed on the main page. There are also short descriptions in different languages of the image. Those descriptions are very good place too have links to galleries and categories with more interesting images. Anyone can help adding links by doing edits like this. /Ö16:27, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
For example File:Bottlenose Dolphin KSC04pd0178.jpg selected as "featured pictures" a few days ago is a good picture. But at the same time the Dolphin category page at Category:Tursiops truncatus is not very well sorted, not very "usable" for people looking for dolphin pictures. It should be sorted into at least 3 subcategories : in the wild, in captivity and in art. Categories are the poor relative of Wikimedia Commons. In its present state it is not the kind of category page that could apply for a "featured category" status. Teofilo (talk) 11:06, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Comment -- Your comments and votes in the FPC poll may be considered by some as an attempt to make a point. Also, some of them reflect you are not familiarized with the culture and guidelines of the page. Please give us the benefict of the doubt and study carefully what FPC and POTD are about before trying to teach us your ways or making this kind of attempt. -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 23:10, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Once again, you are making wild extrapolations on what the purpose of Commons is. Yes, beautiful and high quality pictures like this one, illustrating graphic textures and a particlar type of brick, have educational value and may be useful in many projects, both inside and outside the Wikimedia world. I wished that 10% of all junk uploaded daily to Commons had the same value. The deletion request was just ridiculous. -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 12:32, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Please insert the picture into Wikipedia article en:Graphic texture with a caption as detailed as Graphic texture. Photo: Eurico Zimbres The feldspar is white and roughly 10 x 10 centimeters. Quartz are the little cuneiform and gray ones as is provided for the existing photograph, and I will admit that I was wrong. "particlar type of brick" --> Please create a type of brick category sub-tree and insert the picture into the suitable brick subcategory. Teofilo (talk) 13:45, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Please do it yourself if you think it is appropriate. We have no stewards here and you seem to be the categorization expert. -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 16:24, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
From me is the today's picture of a day. My photo equipment has a value of nearly 800€, I saw worse images from photograph with a much more expensive equipment. So I learn over the years here on Commons a lot about good photography. Many of my over 2.000 images here have in my eyes also an education/documentary value. The reason for good quality and the much work that I invest into images here is motivation. So Teofilo, if you want to kill this motivation, you are on a good way to do this. Not sure how this way should help the project. --Kolossos (talk) 17:32, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Category:Moses Mabhida Stadion spelling?
Category:Moses Mabhida Stadion seems to be misspelled. According to their website, it is spelled Stadium. Their is a Category:Moses Mabhida Stadium with a redirect to Category:Moses Mabhida Stadion.--The Three Headed Knight (talk) 03:11, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
The difference between the two is that Stadion is from Greek, while Stadium is from Latin (the difference is in the grammatical form of the neuter singular ending between the two languages). AnonMoos (talk) 13:11, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Lupo seems to be correct, so I guess the images will have to be deleted. As for Teofilo's point, "Commons:Language policy" does not really seem to deal with the situation. There is a general rule that category names should generally be in English, but I think this is aimed at names of objects and the like (e.g., "Category:Books" and not "Category:Bücher" – did I get that right?), and not place names. In view of the general preference for the use of English (since it is a very common lingua franca), I would say that if there is a widely used English name for a place, then that name should be used (e.g., "Category:Munich" and not "Category:München"). But if there is no such English name, then the official local language name should be used. — Cheers, JackLee–talk–09:39, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
".... Stadium" is probably the widely used English name for that stadium. So an enforcement of the policy would mean we have to change that name. If user:The Three Headed Knight is satisfied with the explanation that this is more a translation problem than a strict English spelling mistake, he might not request this enforcement. And it would be quite unconsistent to try to enforce the language policy as long as we don't enforce the copyright/licencing policies... Teofilo (talk) 11:27, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
I don't think my suggestion amounts to policy yet! It needs further discussion somewhere (the "Language policy" talk page?). But why do you say we are not enforcing copyright and licensing (or other) policies? Surely we are all trying our best? — Cheers, JackLee–talk–14:51, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
I can live with the Stadion spelling if it too big of a problem to change. A quick check of several images in the category shows that they are being by several dozen wikipedias. I don't know how to check to see how many reference the category name, or if you have a global rename ability.
I hate to bring this up, but Moses Mabhida is just one of ten stadiums involved in the FIFA world cup. Most of the other stadiums have a number of images in commons also.--The Three Headed Knight (talk) 20:13, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
If you would like the category renamed, put a {{Move}} template on it and if no one objects after two weeks you can request for it to be renamed at "User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands". But since there is a freedom of panorama issue, maybe it is better to just make a mass deletion request by following the instructions at "Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request". (Is it really the case that one breaches copyright by taking photographs of buildings in South Africa? Perhaps someone can check this?) — Cheers, JackLee–talk–20:43, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
I think the translation framework of this template is flawed. For instance, when viewing an image tagged with it on ro.wp (ro:Fișier:Hubble_01.jpg), it shows the Romanian text (as expected). If I click another language, say Esperanto, I am taken to Template:PD-USGov-NASA/eo. From there, if I click Romanian again, the page title remains the same, the text of the template is now in Romanian, but there are now 2 warning boxes below, one in Romanian and one in Esperanto. If I then click English, there are 3 boxes, and so on.
If I watch the file on commons, i.e. File:Hubble_01.jpg and click on another language, I am not taken to the template page, but multiple warning boxes still appear on the page.--Strainu (talk) 08:17, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Fixed, I think. The extra warning box at the bottom was confusing the script — the code couldn't tell that it was part of the template, and so left it in whenever it replaced the template with a different translation. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:47, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
I see the problem that Namazu-tron encounters when viewing the GIFs using Firefox 3.6.3 under Windows XP. — Cheers, JackLee–talk–12:36, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
I changed the category for "red pandas in trees", a subcategory of "red panda behavior" diff. You may revert if you disagree. Teofilo (talk) 23:57, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
I am having trouble with my image on the w:Scotland Manufacturing page. This page has been reviewed and approved, along with the image having gone through the steps to get it approved and uploaded. However, when I go to the page, the title is correct to the image that was approved, but the image won't show up. Please tell me what I can do to fix this issue.
The image file name is Image:Scotland1979Logo_CMYK.jpg|220px|Scotland Manufacturing Logo
People in Mainland China complain about being unable to upload files to Commons (and other WMF wikis) due to Internet censorship. But in my test, they see no problem when uploading files to other hosts. So I made a "proxy" on Toolserver for file uploading (ie. they upload files to my script, and my script uploads them to WMF wikis). Uploaders will be verified with a Commons TUSC account and their user names will be displayed on description pages of bot-uploaded files. All uploading actions are performed under the user name Liangent-bot-uploader, with a log in my Toolserver database. Liangent (talk) 16:07, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
I don't think it's a good idea to provide a way for people to upload images without any description whatsoever, and without leaving any trace of who the wiki editor was who initiated the upload. If this thing runs as is here, or runs without formal bot approval, it'll get blocked. (Even if that might AFAIK take down a number of other useful tools, since your bot runs on the toolserver.) Lupo07:17, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
In the Swedish Wikipedia, we have categorized all biographies by gender, years of birth and death (or as being Living people), in addition to nationality and profession. Here on Commons, the same people are not so well organized. Often, individual images are categorized with birth year and profession, even though there are more than one image for that person. I think that each person should ideally have its own category, where such personal information is recorded once and for all, so that each image can be categorized by depicted person, in addition to image source and other aspects of the image (rather than the person).
I'm now trying to create a category for each new person I encounter on Commons, but are there any plans or projects for going back and fixing existing images?
I'm a great fan of the CatScan tool, which helps me find articles or images in recursive levels of categories. But when I start from, say, Category:People of Sweden and search for all subcategories, there's no way to distinguish the leaf nodes (categories representing a person) from intermediary categories such as Sportspeople from Sweden. Is there another way to get an overview of how much work I have in front of me? Has anybody already done this clean-up for some other part of the huge category tree on Commons? --LA2 (talk) 23:59, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
In the gadgets section of Special:Preferences, there is one that adds a CatScan2 link to categories. You can use this to create requests like [20] to eliminate some of the intermediary categories. Notice the "|1" option on the negative categories. It tends to timeout if you use too large negative categories (e.g. "Categories by country by alphabet|2") and it wont work even after restarting it once or twice. For the samples here, it might need restarting to work, but they did work.
Once in a while I updated Category:People by name. This should include all categories for specific persons. If it's up-to-date for Sweden, it allows you to get:
If you keep Category:People by name updated, these should work for you. BTW, if the person already has an article, e.g. in sv_wiki, I think you should create a subcategory at Category:People by name for them.
Once in a while, we synchronized the birth year/death year categories of Commons with en_wiki, but now that it was re-organized by month or hour of birth, this might stop working. Some seem to want to maintain them manually :(
Hi, I am working on the template {{Taxasource}}. This template uses {{PAGENAME}} to construct a link to an external web site.
Exemple: on page Category:Botaurinae, the template creates a link named "ADW" to http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/search?category=Classification&SearchableText=Botaurinae.
It works perfectly except on pages like Trias (Orchidaceae).
My question: is there a way to automatically transform the {{PAGENAME}} containing "Trias (Orchidaceae)" into "Trias" (simply getting read of the "(Orchidaceae)" part)?
Exactly as the en:Help:Pipe trick does transform [[g (factor)|]] into [[g (factor)|g]] (but trick is done by wiki save mechanism + only for internal links, not in templates).
Any idea, who could help me ? A wikisyntax master ? Liné1 (talk) 11:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
May be we need to add an extra parameter to the template like name and which could overwrite the {{PAGENAME}} if provided. Than for the pages where with irregular name one can provide the name by hand. --Jarekt (talk) 15:06, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Very good idea if there are no other solution. I still hope that someone will give me the magic command. Thanks Liné1 (talk) 15:12, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Someone left a message - to say that you are 100% wrong. And you are. None of them are going to be deleted (per your reasoning anyway) and none of them should be scaled down. You might want to stand down until you learn your way around here a bit. Wknight94talk14:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, some of those are similar, but it's hardly a large sample size. They show different roads too. If I photographed every single road in Greater London, I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem. Arriva436talk/contribs16:57, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
naaa, I'm not saying that it is a problem, it's still okay. holding the camera out of the car and taking pictures is not really advisable though. except with a GPS device those images are pretty useless. Here are some good examples of really non-useful images: [21],[22],[23],[24]. (those could be anywhere in spain,...) But User:Editor5807 did a good job in categorizing and that makes them allot more useful. Amada44 (talk) 17:40, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. It was really to show the different roads the Binstead and Haylands shuttle bus served as I didn't have a photo of the bus everywhere before the service was withdrawn. Also to show the fact that an open top bus was used on what is not really a traditional open top bus route (basically through a housing estate). Open toppers were used because they were readily available through the Winter period. Editor5807speak17:48, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Page-blanking Abusefilter also for autoconfirmed users
Hi,
I would like to propose two changes to the AbuseFilters.
) The current filter that Disallow's page-blankings by new users should also give a warning talking about the use of {badname} and {speedy}.
) There should be another filter that Warn's page-blankins by autoconfirmed users and gives warning that page should NOT be blanked when deletion is intended. Instead {{speedy| reason here }} should be used.
This because in the last two weeks I've been watching page blankings in cvn-commons and over 90% of them were all with the intention of deleting. –Krinkletalk16:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
If this includes category deletion, it is probably because that is the standard procedure on most wikipedia editions, e.g. 'en'. There it is normal to empty content entirely to prepare for deletion, including the category's own categories, which probably explains why it happens here. I agree that a notice explaining this to autoconfirmed users would be helpful. Anatiomaros (talk) 16:35, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Hm.. I'm not active on en.wikipedia but I'm wondering what reason there could be to empty a page to prepare a category for deletion, why not just tag it with speedy ? According to their policies (here) that is the case. In my opinion blanking doesn't prepare anything, it only causes a mess. Because links to it appear blue, but the page is empty/non-existant for all other purposes. That goes for Wikipedia aswell. –Krinkletalk16:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm not active there much either, just offering a possible explanation. What I said applies only to categories, and not articles of course(!). At least that's what I've seen myself. If a category on en is/was emptied completely it gets deleted automatically after something like 7 days. But maybe they've changed that. Sorry if I've caused some confusion... Regards, Anatiomaros (talk) 16:52, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I am deleting tens of blanked pages per week, some users create hundreds of wrong pages per week. I insist that they use by preference {{badname|Good name}} to indicate to the creators/users where the category and its contents moved to. So blanked pages that have been modified by several users are reverted with the message: "Please, do not blank categories or galleries, use {{Badname|Good name}} or {{Speedy|Unused and empty}} if no replacing category exists". Some people are getting a bit nervous about it, but in the end, they learn it. --Foroa (talk) 18:18, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Instead of having the blankings reverted, the great thing about a AF is that it can warn the user. In other words, User:Foobar blanks a page, hits 'Save page' and sees a message that says the page wasn't saved (yet) - shows the warning message talking about the Badname and Speedy templates. And then the user can either modify their edit to use that template or save anyway. Not only is it annoying to clean up all those blankings. It's easy to miss some. –Krinkletalk00:37, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
I am interested in using the Commons' File:Bias.jpg (a coin) at Wikipedia. However, there is a different file (a book) with the same name already in use there. How can I use the current Commons version (the coin) while bypassing Wikipedia's current file (the book)? Steve3849 (talk) 09:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
You may be able to get around this by creating an image redirect here on Commons. I've never tried that in this situation. However ambiguous names should be avoided. Dcoetzee (talk) 11:48, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
You are right. It's actually a 16th century portrait of Bias in the form of a coin face, one of a series designed for the book Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum. So it's not even a drawing of a [genuine] coin as such. Anatiomaros (talk) 16:44, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
some copyright violation with chinese actresses
User:Cuyfrg uploaded several image with chinese actresses, for me all these images look like copy violation, see gallery at
[25] - two are already heading for deletion. The source is given in Chinese, not easy to understand :) Cholo Aleman (talk) 17:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
With the last two uploads they wrote the sources of their uploads, but the sources are simply not free. Deleted this uploads. With the uploads in the middle they upload with false author and source information. Will delete this uploads. With the first uploads we have clear flickrwashing - deleted too. Regretably just the usual copyvio uploader here on Commons :(. --Martin H. (talk) 19:40, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
IANAL, but it smells Flickr-washing-like. I believe this image is what is worded as an "User Submission", and even assuming that the submitter actually owns any right on that photo (I do not, but that's my opinion), the final part of point 3.b.ii seems quite clear (emphasis mine): «You also hereby grant each user of the India-forums Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these terms of use.» (i.e. ok for derivative works, but only on India-Forums). Not exactly public domain, I'd say. -- IANEZZ (talk) 19:53, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Category for 2010 World Cup supporters in their home countries
I'm thinking of creating a new category for fans/supporters during the 2010 World Cup outside of South Africa. There are country-specific supporter categories (e.g. Association football supporters of South Africa), but this would be specific to media of supporters watching or supporting their national teams during the current World Cup who were not in South Africa at the time. There is a category for supporters at the World Cup itself (Category:Supporters at FIFA World Cup 2010), however I'm not sure of the wording to use for a category that covers supporters in their home countries during the World Cup. Ideas? BrokenSphere20:04, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
I don't know about a lot, but there are already several. There is also a specific category already, Category:Soccer in the Circle, for an event in Washington, DC during the England vs. USA match. I just think it would be a good idea to separate those supporters who are at the World Cup itself, vs. those who remained at home, as opposed to putting the latter into the parent FIFA World Cup 2010 category. BrokenSphere20:35, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Copyrighted images
I do not know where to contact an administrator, but I think this user uploads copyrighted files without providing the source, author etc. I think he needs to be blocked.—Minisarm (talk) 21:02, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, obvious case. Also without source and especially without license the files tagged with {{subst:nld}} will be deleted, but in this case I delete them directly. --Martin H. (talk) 21:28, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Popups is so convenient that I am surprised we don't have it here already. Perhaps the majority of Wikicommoners are not aware of popups and its uses? If so, we may need to push this a bit more to raise awareness.--P.g.champion (talk) 15:36, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
The way the amount of storage space you get for a given amount of money has grown is really incredible, my first PC had a 20 Mb hard disk, my son bought a 1 Terabyte external hard disk the other day... I think that's about 50.000 times as much, although I might be wrong by a few noughts.;) MartinD (talk) 09:20, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
large poster titled THE AGE OF THE RUM RUNNER PASSES WITH REPEAL
hello!!! I was wondering if anyone knows the origin of this poster. It has 42 pictures on it of everyone from Al Capone to George "Bugs" Moran. It has all of the bios that go with the pictures . Its approximAtley 26"X 19". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.170.30 (talk • contribs) 01:49, 19 giu 2010 (UTC)
I have tried several times to upload this image on Wikimedia Commons with little success. It keeps sending me to an error page. I have permission from the author and have sent the e-mail twice with the image to be used attached to the correct recipient for Commons, but haven't heard anything back yet.
Is there a way you can check into this and tell me what I am doing wrong and what the status is? The image listed in the subject line above is for the Cold Spring Granite page.
There wasn't a message, but it just loaded for a bit and then took me to a "internet connection" issue page. This has happened many times when uploading, but somehow they still received the image and request. Is there something else that I can do, since I've tried to upload multiple times? I don't want this to look like I'm trying to upload multiple times to cheat the system, make sense? Please help! The image is Cold_Spring_Granite_Building_Sign_&_front.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.172.221.186 (talk • contribs) 17 June 2010, 05:05 (UTC)
If you got some sort of "Internet connection" issue page, that suggests to me a problem with your Internet connection rather than with this website. Clear your cache (press Ctrl-F5) and try again. Otherwise, try accessing the website from a different computer with a different Internet connection (e.g., a friend's computer or a computer at an Internet cafe) and see if that works. If it does, then it is a problem with your Internet connection. But what do you mean by "they still received the image and request"? Are you saying that you did succeed in uploading the image? I'm confused. (Don't forget to log in before posting messages and to sign your messages!) — Cheers, JackLee–talk–19:15, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
I reuploaded with your suggestions and it took fine, thank you! It appears that it is still pending and I have sent the e-mail for a third time now with the link provided for the image page - any idea if I can use it on the page just yet? When I inserted it to the Cold Spring Granite page, it let me insert and I put the comments in for editing of: "inserted image pending approval". Am i good to go?
Hi. The image seems to have been uploaded correctly. Have a look at the image description page to see how I've updated the image description and categorized it. Regarding the e-mail you sent to permissions-commonswikimedia.org – you appear to work for Cold Spring Granite. I hope you sent it from a Cold Spring Granite e-mail address and mentioned in your e-mail that (1) you are authorized by the copyright owner, Cold Spring Granite, to license the photograph to the Wikimedia Commons, and (2) that you confirm that Cold Spring Granite consents to licensing the photograph to the Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA-3.0) licence. — Cheers, JackLee–talk–15:30, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
IUCN red list
Hi. I have gotten authorization from the IUCN red list to generate distribution maps from their spatial data. See details at Commons:IUCN red list (in draft). Only the .png or .svg files generated from the data will be released with a creative commons license, not the original data. I am currently looking for volunteers to help produce the maps, upload them, and complete the source information. There are about 25,000 maps. Help from anyone with programming knowledge to extract the source data from the metadata of the shapefiles, would be highly appreciated. GoEThe (talk) 11:06, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! I've being having some problem with the .SVG export from ArcGIS, but if I can solve that, I will definitely use that instead of .PNG. GoEThe (talk) 13:39, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Could you also please send an email to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org with documentation of the permissions? Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 22:43, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I did send an email to OTRS, but more explicit info was needed, so I have asked the guys at IUCN to send it. GoEThe (talk) 14:01, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
They're both probable copyright infringements, copies of professional photographs that are copyright the photographer. Past that, if they aren't notable, I'm not sure they're actually in scope, and even further, the image description pages are for Commons use, and I think we should feel free to remove all text in any photograph that's simply puffery or spammish domains.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:57, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Good idea. By the way, I think the Choose Resolution gadget (gives a quick link to other resolutions for easy re-use of pictures) should be disabled on such pictures. The template text would be easier to understand by copying conservative parties such as creators of print versions may wish to avoid using this media onto the template itself. The present easier to reuse language sounds misleading. Teofilo (talk) 11:58, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
I have added a new category. There must be lot of other pictures wich can be classified by "station restaurants", only I dont have the local knowledge to find them. Please keep the cat structure for other countries the same. Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
A very good idea. A question that comes to mind: "full" restaurant facilities are getting rare, most railway fare is sold at food stalls, along the lines of Category:FEBO. Does this count as "station restaurant" as well? Best regards, MartinD (talk) 12:41, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Indeed. And time is running out. Many such restaurants are disapearing fast in Belgium and the Netherlands due to the commercial policy of the railways. Every space in the stationbuilding has to earn the maximum of cash and they dont really care what comes in the place. In many stations you no longer have the possibility to have a seat and a drink and if you are unlucky there is nothing around the station either.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:17, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, there is often a lot to do around the train stations, especially the older ones, but it might not always match your style or needs. :) --Foroa (talk) 10:47, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I really liked the idea of Nichalp's upload.pl but could never get it to work. It seemed like a great script but not well tested and maintained. Hopefully this will solve some of the problems. --Jarekt (talk) 12:59, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
This Agreement shall define applicable procedures, permitted uses and restrictions at the time that Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center (hereinafter referred to as ERSDAC) provides the ASTER Products, which are produced at ERSDAC ASTER Ground Data Systems (hereinafter referred to as ASTER GDS) from the data acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection radiometer (hereinafter referred to as ASTER) onboard Terra Spacecraft by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to those who wish to use them.
Does it really apply to all ASTER images, or just the ones that ERSDAC provides? Pulling File:ASTER Views the Himalaya.jpg, it gives http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=4426 as source, whose only statement about copyright or anything is its Image Use Policy[28] that says "Most materials published on the Earth Observatory, including images, are freely available for re-publication or re-use, including commercial purposes, with the following exceptions: * where copyright is indicated, you must obtain the copyright holder’s permission; we usually provide links to the organization that holds the copyright, * images from the SeaWiFS sensor ..." Really, ASTER is a really fancy camera, so the copyright should be held by who ever shot the picture and who hacked up the data in Photoshop, not necessarily the owners of the camera.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:22, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your comment, Prosfilaes. I was not sure about the applicability of the agreement. Now I suppose that those published by NASA without indicating other person's copyright are no problem. --Sushiya (talk) 14:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
June 20
Fixing color value on vector graphic without having to upload a new file
It's come to my attention that the blue color value for Category:British_motorway_plaques is incorrect. I'm willing to update them all, but I was wondering if there were a faster way, like with AWB. All that needs to be done is change the blue value, currently #1F4191, to #0079C1. Thanks. --Fredddie™22:45, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
AWB is not going to help here you will still have to regenerate and reupload the files. I would try Commons:Tools#Commonist for your uploads. I did not try it recently but in the past Commons:Tools#Commonist would give you warnings when reuploding files on top of the existing ones (as it should) and did not have "ignore warnings option" so one needed to use auto clicker with it to upload larger batches of files. --Jarekt (talk) 13:08, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I could probably modify my BMP-to-PNG converter script to do this fairly easily. (In fact, the replacement itself should only take one or two lines, the rest of the code is just a generic klugey download-modify-reupload framework.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:21, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
Ooh, that would be excellent. Anything that beats manually downloading each file, changing the color, and reuploading is a bonus in my book. --Fredddie™21:36, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
It appears to have not changed anything. The svg source still shows #1F4191. As for the non-SVGs, I was planning on creating SVGs for them myself, so it's not necessary, but thanks for the offer. --Fredddie™04:27, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
I purged the page three times and refreshed three more. It did indeed work. Commence with the rest! --Fredddie™04:30, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
Thanks again. Is this script available to use? I'd like to get the yellow-on-green signs changed as well (Green #00693F→#00703c and Yellow #FFD41C→#ffd200). Unlike the motorways, not every SVG should be changed as some are black-on-white. I don't have any other requests pending the outcome of this. So, I'm willing to do it myself. --Fredddie™06:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
I actually didn't use that script, but a couple of general purpose up/download scripts (here and here) and a simple one line search and replace command (perl -i -pe 's/#1F4191/#0079C1/ig' *.svg) instead. They're not quite as fancy (in particular, the upload script doesn't have any throttling or existence checks yet), but they require less customization. Feel free to play with them. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:19, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
June 22
Is my screencast broken?
The Chromium browser 5.0.375.70 that comes with Ubuntu Linux 10.04 plays video and audio out of sync in my new screencast. It seems the video plays as fast as it can, while the audio plays at normal speed. Other Ogg Theora files play just nice, like another screencast I did. What's special about my new screencast? Both were created with recordmydesktop. In Firefox 3.6 both videos play nice. --LA2 (talk) 21:36, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
June 23
License of uploads of user Caravaggio
I just noticed that in 2008 user Caravaggio uploaded several images of clearly PD-Art paintings (or details of such paintings) from [29], but specifying the GFDL license tag. He was notified shortly after of the incongruence, and was asked to fix the license, but as of today these uploads are still marked as GFDL. Should we correct this de iure, since two years have passed and (for what I can see) nothing has been done? -- IANEZZ (talk) 07:56, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
Do we really need DRbot making edits such as this ?
He made an edit conflict with me. And I can't understand why a bot is undoing what the "nominate for deletion" link is doing. If the nominate for deletion tool adds a blank line between each request, there must be a reason, so this blank line should not be removed. Teofilo (talk) 04:54, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
There's no reason for the blank line. I think the quick delete tool just adds an extra newline just in case there wasn't one at the end of the page already. It shouldn't be too hard to fix, I've just never got around to it myself (and apparently neither has anyone else). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 06:19, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
But there is also no need for a bot to remove blank lines. Such edits should be done only when other, more significant, edits are performed. --Jarekt (talk) 15:55, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
That fourteenth century manuscript is in the public domain worldwide. The copyright assertion, added by a new editor as his or her only contribution so far, is curious. Jonathunder (talk) 23:00, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
I believe the photo was taken by Oxford or some organization associated with Oxford, and that they sell licensing reuse for these photos. US copyright law regarding PD-art does not apply. I'm not sure on the UK law. But obviously they are selling rights to their own photos, even if the subject matter is in the public domain,and perhaps this is protected under UK law? And it is plausible that this editor works for Oxford as well... In situations such as this, should we point out that higher resolution versions are for sale? Or that if you are in the UK, you may be obligated to pay for re-use, even if our reuse is legal in the US? I'm probably making things far more complex than need be. Should we just remove the disclaimer and warn the user to follow US law and that our hosting of their free content is going to undermine their sales, so deal with it ;) -Andrew c (talk) 23:23, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
I'd suggest just removing the disclaimer. The uploader specifically says that it was photographed at Musee de l'Armee, Paris, so it isn't like we're even using Oxford's copy of the image. Public domain is public domain. — Huntster (t@c)23:59, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
English copyright law doesn't affect US re-use. As I understand it, UK law is undecided on this point; there's arguments either way, and no good law or court case to point at that resolves the issue. We could put {{Copyright claims}} on it if we take this anonymous editor seriously enough.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:05, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
This is no different from the National Portrait Gallery case. The image is a faithful reproduction of a two-dimensional public domain work, which makes it public domain - any assertion of rights that Oxford makes under UK law are irrelevant. The notice should obviously be removed, since if the terms applied, the image would not be suitable for hosting here, but adding {{Copyright claims}} might be a good idea. Dcoetzee (talk) 09:34, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
Better quality image?
An unrelated point: the latest version of the image is better than the original one because it is of higher resolution, is brighter and the colours are more vivid, but the entire top half of the image has been lopped off. Can a more complete version of the image be found? — Cheers, JackLee–talk–04:56, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
Above is a link to the image file that I uploaded a few days ago (June 22). It won't show up, but it gave me a link to send the e-mail for permission. Could you check into this and let me know if it is ok and/or what I need to do on my end?
You need to get written permission from the photographer (John Roberts), that he releases this image under the CC-by-SA license. Afterwords you send this per email to COM:OTRS. Otherwise the file will be deleted in a few weeks--DieBuche (talk) 18:29, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
This was done already and the e-mail was sent on 6/22, see below:
To permissions-commons wikimedia.org
I hereby assert that I am the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive copyright of WORK [30].
I agree to publish that work under the free license LICENSE [ GFDL and CC-BY-SA from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Choosing_a_license#Common_free_licenses — THIS DECLARATION IS NOT VALID UNLESS YOU FILL SOMETHING IN HERE ].
I acknowledge that I grant anyone the right to use the work in a commercial product, and to modify it according to their needs, as long as they abide by the terms of the license and any other applicable laws.
I am aware that I always retain copyright of my work, and retain the right to be attributed in accordance with the license chosen. Modifications others make to the work will not be attributed to me.
I am aware that the free license only concerns copyright, and I reserve the option to take action against anyone who uses this work in a libelous way, or in violation of personality rights, trademark restrictions, etc.
I acknowledge that I cannot withdraw this agreement, and that the work may or may not be kept permanently on a Wikimedia project.
Again, I'm not sure what you mean the image not showing up. I can see it when I visit the web page "File:DiamondGroundPavement.JPG". It can take a while for OTRS to get round to reviewing the e-mail that you forwarded to it, but there shouldn't be any problem using the image in an article in the meantime. Just to check: from what e-mail account did John Roberts send the above e-mail? It should have been from his own e-mail account and not, say, yours. — Cheers, JackLee–talk–08:27, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your suggestions and time. When I go to Diamond grinding, the placeholder for the image is there in red. When I click on the image link, it takes me back to the Wikimedia page asking if I'm uploading a "free" image. is this what you mean by using the image for the time being until approved? If not, there appears to be something wrong with the image link and it isn't showing the actual picture. Also, I sent the e-mail on behalf of John Roberts from wablesconstructivecommunication.com. If John needs to send it from his account again, I can arrange that. Are you able to check the status on the permissions end before this just gets deleted because of it coming from a different account? I have uploaded images before for someone else without it having to come from their account, so I'm not sure why this would apply this time. Again, thank you for taking the time to help me with this. It is much appreciated. Please let me know what I need to do on my end to get this image approved and viewable from the Diamond grinding page. Wendyfables (talk) 14:55, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
The image was not showing up in the article because you had typed the file extension wrongly. Filenames are case-sensitive. In the article, you indicated the file name as "DiamondGroundPavement.jpg". However, you uploaded it to the Commons as "DiamondGroundPavement.JPG". I've fixed the problem.
As long as there is an e-mail from John Roberts from wablesconstructivecommunication.com and you forwarded it to the OTRS, that's fine. Roberts doesn't have to send an e-mail directly to the OTRS. I just wanted to be sure that you didn't just copy and paste the text of his e-mail as you did on this page, because if that's what you did the OTRS volunteer will have no way of knowing whether Roberts actually sent the e-mail to you or not. — Cheers, JackLee–talk–18:12, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Pronunciation of Paris in Spanish
Paris has pronunciations of "Paris" in English and French. But in addition the City of Paris uses Spanish in its city communications, so conversely we also need a pronunciation of "Paris" in Spanish. Would someone mind posting a recording of "Paris" as said in Spanish? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 19:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
June 25
Language selection list
When uploading an image one can apply a description in many languages.
How does one add new languages to the list? Among the ones to add are Hmong (hmn), Marshallese, and Chuukese (I don't think any of the three have any Mediawiki projects specific to them) WhisperToMe (talk) 02:28, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
When uploading an image, one will see it in the "Description" section - Where the user is prompted to put in a description for the image he or she is uploading, a language selection list appears. WhisperToMe (talk) 11:52, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is a government source and all of their images are in the public domain, would it be a good idea to have a copyright tag for it instead of the copyright tag that covers government sources in general? Schuylar (talk) 05:38, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
For a number of years image researchers have been working on object removal algorithms, which attempt to seamlessly remove an object from an image, and they've finally made their way into mainstream in the form of Photoshop CS5's "content-aware fill" feature. This is big news for the eternally backlogged Category:Images with watermarks - many of these watermarks can now be removed with seconds of effort, for the cases where the content-aware fill works correctly. If you have or can get a copy of CS5, I encourage you to help process some of these images, starting with the most frequently used ones. Dcoetzee (talk) 08:46, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
"The AWM allows the use of images from its online database whose copyright has expired for non-commercial purposes only on the condition that the AWM's watermark is not removed. Higher resolution images may be ordered through the AWM (Source: email from the AWM to Nick Dowling 6 January 2006).
The copyright has expired on this image. The AWM, however, requires that the AWM watermark is not removed and that permission be sought for commercial use. Higher resolution versions of this image may be ordered through the AWM Website at www.awm.gov.au"
Or at the very least change "requires" into "requests". Then we don't upset AWM too much, without providing users with incorrect information. TheDJ (talk) 11:39, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
I think we can now safely remove the messages. It appears that the message reflects what the uploader Nick Dowling was told by the AWM when he contacted them in 2006. However, if you look at the current page on the AWM's website where "File:Mine (AWM 304925).jpg" can be found, you will see that the AWM has stopped putting its watermark on PD images, and the webpage now bears the hyperlinked statement "Image copyright: Copyright expired - public domain". Clicking on the link brings you to the page http://www.awm.gov.au/copyright/#pd, which states:
This term describes material held in the National Collection that is clearly out of the period of copyright protection. Material that has passed out of the period of copyright protection is known as being in the "public domain".
You do not need permission from the copyright owner to copy this image from the Memorial's web site, or to reproduce it elsewhere.
A high quality reproduction of this collection item may be purchased from the Australian War Memorial’s eSales Unit. In this case, a user fee may apply to your intended use of the reproduction. ...
The Category:Microsoft software contains a lot of screenshots of Microsoft products. If I read Commons:Screenshots correctly, screenshots of proprietary software are not allowed. Should those be deleted?
I would guess that consensus on what's acceptable and what isn't might have changed since that discussion, but I could be wrong. Powers (talk) 13:11, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
For anyone not following the discussion at Commons talk:Sexual content, I've created a new warning tag {{2257}} intended to be used on media that is "made after November 1, 1990 and depicts one or more actual human beings engaged in sexually explicit conduct." It informs content reusers in the US of their record-keeping requirements. It is currently on 70 images. Please drop any feedback at Commons_talk:Sexual_content#A_tag_for_2257.3F. Dcoetzee (talk) 15:28, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
I propose that page to be adopted as policy. Before you freak out, the page was proposed with rules regarding syntax that may cause technical flaws, which won't be a problem for most of us. Discussion is/will be taken place at Commons talk:Signatures. ZooFari16:08, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
I am sure that somebody knows how to download the Mandelbrot_sequence_new.gif. I have not found any download instructions for this file. I bet that when somebody tells me how to do this, I will slap my forehead, say, 'Of course!' and call me names.
So, how do I download this Mandelbrot_sequence_new.gif so that I can use it on my XP PC.
Saving animated GIFs in Internet Explorer is a bit confusing. First, click on the image to display the full-size version. Wait until it downloads completely and displays "Done" in the status bar at the bottom (this may take some time). Then, right-click it, select "Save Picture As..." and you're good to go. To view it later, use "File -> Open" in your web browser (many other image viewing applications will not display animated GIFs correctly, but your web browser will). Dcoetzee (talk) 18:00, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Or simply right click on image or on the link below image, in the Firefox, choose "Save Link As" from the menu. in the Internet Explorer, choose "Save Target As". then save it anywhere you want. ■ MMXX talk18:08, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Here's my brief summary of the resolution: the Board has called for the Executive Director "to undertake a project studying this issue [of potentially objectionable content]" in order to "develop recommendations" about how it should be handled. The work is in consultation with "Robert Harris, a former executive with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" and "an experienced Canadian journalist and writer" (chosen as a neutral party), and she's also expected to consult with editors (that's us), "other organizations which have grappled with the same or similar issues, and thought leaders including relevant members of our Advisory Board." They say the recommendations could take any form, from doing nothing to policy recommendations, and that the investigation will take into account existing policy. They emphasize that no new measures will be imposed without discussion.
As usual, they're pretending that Jimbo did nothing wrong: "Jimmy himself then deleted a bunch of imagery he thought was problematic. In so doing, he made a lot of admins on Commons really angry -- essentially because they felt Jimmy was acting unilaterally, without sufficient discussion." But hey, that's water under the bridge - we should be looking forward to polishing up the Commons:Sexual content policy in preparation for its inevitable consumption by these third-party investigators, and I should worry about developing my proposed third-party filtering solution. Dcoetzee (talk) 14:38, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm disturbed by the language of this proposal. They're investigating "the possibility of people being exposed to objectionable material that they did not seek out... including depictions of potentially dangerous activities" (my emphasis). What do they mean there? That you could see a picture of someone skateboarding down a railing? It doesn't pass the sniff test. I think they're talking about something more along the line of fireworks and explosives, but that's not the sort of thing where blundering across an image is a factor. So when I read this the whole thing it keeps sounding to me like a euphemistic way of reaching at very significant censorship of all the text and image resources, no matter what some of the text would seem to imply to the contrary.
I think the community needs to stand together against the sort of ruination that could come out of a process where "nothing is off the table", and support the retention of all the content the way we've had it, without playing games like hiding it or trying to separate "adults" from "children" among the anonymous users and readers. There are mandatory third party censors under w:CIPA in the United States, as well as for the entire populace of nations like China and Australia with a weak commitment to freedom of inquiry. The only compromise I'd propose here is strategy:Proposal:Provide services to facilitate "child-safe" and selective mirror sites — we could make Wikipedia content as easy as possible for others to pick over and sort through. But that's ultimately their task, not ours — our task is to create the open access content in the first place. This is a meat-packing plant for information, and those who faint at the sight of raw tripes had best find themselves a retail shop. Wnt (talk) 17:01, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
I was also disturbed by Michael Snow's ill-conceived suggestion that we develop "new projects that are appropriate for children", although that appears to be hypothetical brainstorming.
@Wnt: largely agree, and I think there's wide support for third-party filtering independent of the WMF projects. I personally favor client-side filtering with browser plug-ins because I think "selective mirrors" fail to support fine-grained policies that are as open as possible. I wouldn't worry too much just yet - perhaps nothing is off the table in terms of recommendations, but they can't make us implement policies we don't like. Dcoetzee (talk) 21:25, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
Filtering with Browser-Plugins was always the wrong way. They simply can't keep up with a fast medium like the internet. What is the gain of such an plugin, when it can be easily bypassed (multiple browser, not updated lists, etc.)? There are so many examples that this things just don't work. "Clean" mirrors of wikipedia would be the far better solution. --Niabot (talk) 22:11, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
"Clean" mirrors of Wikipedia are worthless; you can find a million and one "unclean" copies of Wikipedia out there. There's no possible plan that can work without up-to-date lists, whether they be opt-in or opt-out. (Generally, there are going to be a lot fewer false negatives censoring everything not on the list.) If you've got multiple browsers, you can probably get past a lot of things; if the blocked user has the technical savvy to have multiple browsers, about the only thing that will stop them from getting around your filter is putting it on a server they don't have access to between them and the world. Possible in an office or school, but not so much at home.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:39, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
I still think that tagging+page lables (a bit alla ICRA labels, but more fully developed) is the best way to go. Then china/iran can block all pages with tags they object (censorship historically always fails, so i'm not worried about that) and we could have in-house options that parents/religious folks can use to apply 'self-censorhip' or they can use an internetfilter that supports our labels. The right tagging and labeling standards and software might perhaps not yet exist, but I think we could easily develop something like that in the next 3 years. TheDJ (talk) 00:44, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Should we really support their ill efforts, by helping them to tag inappropriate content? Looks like an definite step into the wrong direction to me. --Niabot (talk) 06:27, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
I don't understand Prosfilaes' objection to a "clean" mirror. Everyone knows that there are a million and one "unclean" sites on the Internet - the point is, if an organization seriously compiles a set of approved historical versions (as modified) for various child-friendly Wikipedia topics, then children can be turned loose in this walled garden without encountering unexpected information, or unmonitored conversation, or anything else that would cause their particular organization to be upset. The only way that I can see someone objecting to the existence of another "unclean" version is if in truth their objective is censorship, not merely for themselves or their children or their country, but of the information and discussion wherever it might occur. And that is an objective diametrically opposed to the purpose of Wikipedia.
I don't think tagging is a viable solution because it is an unwelcome encumbrance to a community that won't agree on what should be tagged. While some media have fallen victim to mandatory "voluntary" rating systems in the past, this only works in one country when implemented in close collusion with legal threats. For example, Americans may be surprised when the Indian government speaks harshly of mere kissing in Bollywood videos, yet puts up graphic photos of the dead in a train crash for identification (see [31]). When dealing with multinational internet content, rating systems like w:RSACi have been futile. If implemented on Wikipedia, ratings would either (a) balkanize into a thicket of specific tags which are haphazardly applied or (b) if widely and consistently applied, they would turn into a tremendous nuisance as different editors tried to steer an article to fall into differently rated categories by either covering up useful content or preemptively adding 'objectionable' content to defend their freedom of navigation. But most importantly of all, we have to remember that a rated Wikipedia is still a Wikipedia where children are talking to anonymous strangers from all over the world, or perhaps pedophiles from five blocks away. The openness of the site, which we need for effective collaboration, demands for children who participate here to be "street smart" and hard-headed, independently capable of protecting themselves and what values they choose to embrace. Wnt (talk) 08:13, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
I have two main objections to a "clean mirror" (as opposed to client-side filtering): 1. it doesn't update in real time so they don't have the most recent versions of articles and cannot participate in editing (this may be resolved by a man-in-the-middle mirror); 2. it makes it difficult for to adapt to individual needs in a precise way. Parents should be encouraged to make fine-grained, thoughtful choices about what content they're comfortable with their children seeing or not seeing, not to just pull a common blacklist off the shelf. Dcoetzee (talk) 15:21, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
The logic I'm going by is that someone shouldn't be invited to edit Wikipedia unless they discuss articles freely in the Talk page, and children who aren't allowed to see potentially explicit content likely may not be trusted to converse with anonymous strangers or to follow links to source material. How important is it to allow editing by young children anyway, when their parents don't trust them with unrestricted internet access? Wnt (talk) 04:17, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
As many of you are aware, Commons has been developing a proposed policy regarding sexual content at Commons:Sexual content. It is now stable and ready for review by third parties - if you haven't read it yet, please look it over and provide any feedback on the talk page. We want to move forward on adoption soon. I'm also going to request feedback from the English Wikipedia, and I'd appreciate it if you can all help spread the news to your own local wikis, since this affects everyone. Thank you! Dcoetzee (talk) 22:58, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Hypothetical Question on Depositing an Historic Video Interview
Let's say you know someone who did something rather unique more than fifty years ago, and without a video interview some historic and interesting information will be lost forever. You plan an interview, get out your video camera, and shoot with all necessary legal stuff in place. No living person is defamed, and you feel that many editors here would agree that the speaker is honest and the information is valuable - perhaps unique. You subtitle to catch words that are difficult (e.g., place and people names). By Commons policy, how do you upload? In terms of technical issues, what format do you use (i.e., are there codec problems, etc.)?
Also, it looks like the text in the image itself just says "泰山石敢当" (except that it uses the traditional "當" instead of the simplified "当"), which, according to both Google Translate and JackLee's translation above (I don't know any Chinese myself) apparently means something like "Mount Tai tablet". So, yes, apparently it describes itself. Although I'm not sure if "tablet" is really the right translation of "石敢当" — it seems to mean something more specific. In any case, there appears to be a Chinese Wikipedia article describing these things at zh:石敢当, and related a Japanese one at ja:石敢當. Neither makes much sense to me after computer translation, though. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:39, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Followup: I Googled for English-language pages with "石敢当" and found this page. Actually, Searching for "shigandang" (or "shi gan dang") produces even more results. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:09, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
I looked up "
石敢当
" (shígǎndāng) in my Comprehensive Chinese–English Dictionary. It means "stone tablet, erected at the entrance of a lane, etc., to drive away misfortune or evil spirits". — Cheers, JackLee–talk–15:55, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Per a recent Foundation-l email thread, there are users who think commons is too English centered, to that end I have developed a translation tool for mass translation using one of google's APIs. One example from the mailing list was the lack of localized names for creatures. (they gave horse as an example) so I created a script to easily mass translate a phrase into as many other languages as possible, see http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:%CE%94/Sandbox&oldid=40748125 for the word horse. I know its something that could become very useful for non-english speaking users who search commons for images. Thoughts and feedback are welcome, should this be something I pursue or abandon? Δ17:36, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
Looks nice. All that comes to mind is to use {{Mld}} in the final version, asuming this would for example be used in the description on top of a gallery/category. –Krinkletalk17:52, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
PS: Also, I remember the Google Translation API also returns the percentage of how much it is sure of something. Perhaps, when the percentage is high enough (random number: 85% ?) let the bot (or another bot) create a redirect. (for galleries atleast), so that it turns up in the Search-suggestions. Find them is imho more important then descriptions. I'm not sure redirects should be created for categories though. –Krinkletalk17:55, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
The Ukrainian translation seems wrong (it's in the genitive/accusative case). I think such texts must be clearly marked as machine translations if they are to be added; and not displayed as the only ones when they are likely to be wrong. --AVRS (talk) 18:06, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
thats why I was thinking of a three step process, request translation, bot translation, and review. IE the bot would add {{uk|коня|bot=yes}} or something similar for each language when the bot=yes parameter is included it adds it to a hidden category for tracking purposes. (one for each language) which allows for translating and then reviewing those machine translations for errors by those who speak the language. Δ18:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
Somehow the new skin made things worse as (interwiki) links to Wikipedia are now generally hidden (folded in). If these were displayed differently, we could probably do away with most category descriptions. 1. Generally taxon categories would use {{VN}} to add names in as many languages as possible, e.g. Category:Phoebastria immutabilis. 2. {{Translation table}} is a similar template in use for other categories, e.g. Category:Self-portraits. I'm not really enthusiastic about either being populated with machine translations though. Just start with interwikis and add more synonyms. -- User:Docu at 21:12, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
Interwiki's are only half of the solution as they are unfortunately not integrated in the search database.
Last week, I deed a significant effort integrating Sum-it-up provided information, such as in Category:Mbira and Category:Pedal cars. A nice example where many words exist for the same thing although different from country to country. If you are lucky, you can integrate Sum-it-up info in one minute, sometimes it can take many minutes, though I only spend such time for things that have many meanings/words or a special vocabulary; for most places, I tend now to insert only the English and the local language text. It seems to be the best way of providing a real translation data pool. Sum-it-up could be significantly improved, but it is so far the best we have. --Foroa (talk) 06:44, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
Try the two samples and you will notice they work. In addition, it doesn't create as much text that you feel you have to hide it. -- User:Docu at 18:55, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
The nice thing about more complete texts is that one has some interesting context, so for Category:Mbira, you know what it is and how it relates to its other categories (for examples, for cities and villages, you know at least in what country it is). Moreover, one can be more complete and autonomous and one has not to wait till someone comes around that is capable of extracting the used names from the various languages. --Foroa (talk) 09:06, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
The context for Mbira is indeed useful. I wonder if we couldn't provide it differently, e.g. through a tab link leading to WP (based on your language preferences or other settings).
The cities and villages question you mention should indeed be solved somehow. It's even worse for buildings .. I was hoping the usability team would come up with a solution for that, but maybe we should try to find one ourselves. -- User:Docu at 09:50, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I have to think on that, especially if we want to avoid maintenance problems. In the long run, it would be ideal if each wikipedia should provide a function that returns a "summary"/first paragraph of an article.
I have the same problem concerning localisations of villages or any location related item: sometimes you need to click 3 to 5 categories before you know in what country you are. A template in subcategories "item in xxx country" would be extremely handy, but difficult to sell. Bot work ? --Foroa (talk) 06:29, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
"Location" on page 6
It depends what you put in the template. There are several ways of deriving location from existing parent categories or coordinates (e.g. at Wikipedia) and it's obviously easier if most is done on the MediaWiki side. I mentioned the usability team as the mock-up includes a location field (for file description pages, not categories). It's not clear how this populated though. -- User:Docu at 07:42, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
@Foroa: I'm not sure what you mean by this edit. It doesn't default to 'nl'. It defaults to the language setting in your preferences. If that one is not available then it defaults to English, with the option to switch to another language or view them all. In my opinion more effecient that always showing the English version and in a collapsible-box a huge list of all languages listed. This requires more user interaction and afaik lacks usability in a strong way. –Krinkletalk01:09, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
My preference/user profile settings are set to en - English but {{mld}} defaults to nl, so not usable to me as I work primarily in English (maybe related to browser settings ?). For cities and villages, I display always in English and the local language, the other collapsable. Not sure what is the most efficient: having to type the language acronymn + OK, or just uncollapsing the box. Anyway, I think that the english version should always be displayed, so people can compare and learn English words.
Last, but not least. My collapse approach takes easily 10 times less time to insert than the reformatting effort needed for {{mld}}. --Foroa (talk) 08:54, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Why deleted the page Valga Jaani kiriku orel by user ABF, who wrote, that out of scope project.
What was wrong? Please explane.
I sow artikles in Wikimedia about organs in Schwerin, Poznan church, Poland for example.--Jyriorgan (talk) 19:15, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Why do panorama categories have the general formula, "Panoramics in X"? Grammatically, I thought it would be "Panoramas of X". Maybe someone could shed some light or correct the wide-spread error? Thanks. Sincerely, Blurpeace19:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Someone thought "panoramics" was cool to say and became a role model. Panoramic grammatically is a verbadjective used to describe something that has extended view, which is why panoramas are panoramic photography. Panoramas of X would be the correct way if I'm right. ZooFari19:49, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. "Panoramics in X" is pure gobbledegook. You could have "Panoramic photographs/views of X" maybe, but "Panoramas of X" is the simplest and most natural description. Maybe it's time we started a 'Plain English campaign' to clean up this and similar category names? Anatiomaros (talk) 23:03, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
About that: should it be "X by country by type" (e.g., "Category:Buildings in Patagonia by type"), "X by country and by type" or "X by country and type"? I think "X by country and by type" may be the clearest. — Cheers, JackLee–talk–07:59, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
I would like to apply to become an OTRS volunteer, but I can't find much information on how to do that. Does anybody know how I should apply? Laurent (talk) 21:22, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Looking at the template's history, this is done on purpose. The instructions only show if the DR is incomplete. Although I have to say in my case, the instructions are visible either way, but it may be because I'm not using Vector. –Tryphon☂11:29, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
@Pieter Kuiper, I see no change. Do you mean the instructions for incomplete? Or the four instructions for the other pages to be updated (uploader notification and deletion archive page)? Which language? Wknight94talk11:34, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, the DR for File:Shapeimage 2.png is incomplete, as the uploader was not notified. I usually fix this by copying a line from the DR template to uploader's talk page, but that line is not there anymore. Also. if I click on the language versions, I get instructions that are nonsense. Please do not try to do fancy things here. It was not broken before, please leave the template alone. Now, there are other problems, that the script does not save all the pages it should edit. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 11:40, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Ah, looks like a Vector thing, where the collapsible instructions are invisible unless you click on the header. I am still using Monobook where it works as it always has. Wknight94talk11:55, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Strange... it works here at home, but not on my computer at work. I also stuck with Monobook. My software in both places is very similar, I do not know of any differences. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 12:57, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Have you tried clearing browser cache? Ctrl-F5 on Firefox. How about cookies? I had some strange problems with the deletion quick-links on the left until I cleared all my cookies. No idea why that fixed it but it did. And it would explain why it behaves differently on different machines. Wknight94talk13:55, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Anyway, also here where the template displays as it should, when one clicks on the translation links, the instructions on {{Delete/en}} etcetera are about deleting the delete template. I do not know if that ever worked correctly. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 16:32, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Oh, well that's just because it has relative references like FULLPAGENAME. If I say {{FULLPAGENAME}} here, it says "Commons:Village pump/Archive/2010/06". If you say it on {{Delete/en}}, it says, "Template:Delete/en". Wknight94talk16:44, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Hmmm, I see. Looks like that template isn't designed like many others, i.e. where the language-specific message shows in place when you click on the link. I couldn't say why. I also couldn't say if that ever worked - I never noticed until you mentioned it. Wknight94talk17:29, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
I changed 'Category:Musée Royal de l'Armée' (French)into 'Category:Royal Military Museum, Brussels' in compkliance with wikimedia policy. I've added a category 'Koninklijk Legermuseum' (Dutch). Both French and Dutch categories refer to the English one. However 'Category:Musée Royal de l'Armée' cotnains about 500 images. Too many to change manually. The O bot apparently can change text in a file description, but I do not know how to operate this bot (if I am even allowed to). Can anybody help?
AdMeskens (talk) 14:03, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia Commons does not seem to have a unified view regarding the copyright issues related to maps and in some cases interpretations have been subjective and not always consistent with the legislation and the jurisprudence of the matter. However, Wikipedia does not have the competence to make laws – this is the prerogative of the legislative bodies of the various countries. Also, Wikipedia does not have the competence to decide how the laws have to be applied – the interpretation of laws is the done by courts, at least in countries where the rule of law prevails. Wikipedia policies are supposed to comply with the legislation and jurisprudence of various countries and to present the ways in which it should be applied in Wikipedia.
Because of the inconsistencies, I consider that a discussion of the matter is necessary. However, participants are requested to present legal arguments and way the problem of copyright of maps is tackled in various countries and how the courts have interpreted the laws. Unsubstantiated personal opinions are not very helpful in solving the controversy.
In principle copyright law is intended to protect intellectual property, mainly the result of creative activity. Simple ideas and facts are not the object of copyright in any country. This raised the question of principle, to what extent information included in maps is the results of creative activity and consequently, what elements of the maps are actually protected by copyright laws.
The problem raises the following questions:
What maps are protected by copyright laws.
What elements of maps are protected by copyright law
What elements of maps are protected by database rights
What is the relation with aerial photographs.
What maps are protected by copyright laws.
Maps are frequently produced by government agencies. In many countries government produced maps are not subject to copyright. For instance, in the USA, many maps produced by the USGS, NASA and other government agencies (but not all) as exempt. This is also the case for instance for Russia, where the copyright law excludes all official documents produced by the government or local agencies. It would be desirable, within this discussion to identify government or otherwise produced maps which are copyright free by law.
Elements of maps protected by copyright.
In most countries, copyright legislation contains only general information indicating that maps are protected by copyright, without specifying what elements of the map are protected by copyright and which are not. Therefore in some countries there have been lawsuits regarding the elements which are protected by the copyright law, and the courts have decided on the issue.
In the United States, the court decision is that geographical elements constitute facts and that as facts cannot be considered the result of an intellectual creative action they are not covered by copyright. The only parts which are protected, according to United States legislation are the elements regarding the general artistic conception of the maps, but neither the geographic elements nor the texts, symbols and other information on the maps.
It would be desirable to indicate in the discussion examples of how the courts in different countries have decided on copyright litigations.
Database right
In Europe, a database right has been instituted by the European Union and the provisions of the EU recommendations have been included in practically all EU member nations. Countries which are not part of the EU, either in Europe (such as Russia, Serbia, Ukraine etc.) or countries in other continents have generally not included the database right in their legislation. However, contrary to the basic copyright, which in most cases covers 70 years after the death of the copyright owner, the database right covers only 15 years after the production of the database.
In court cases regarding copyright law in Germany, the court has decided that maps are protected by the database right provisions of the law, as a map has the character of a systematically presented data. The implication of this decision is that the data on the map are protected only for 15 years.
It would be desirable in the discussion to indicate how courts in other countries have ruled on the database right of maps and how the issue is handled in countries who do not have the database right.
Aerial photographs.
Generally, according to copyright legislation, photographs taken by automatic devices are not the result of creative activity and are therefore not covered by copyright. This is valid mostly for satellite photographs, but also for photographs taken from aircraft. The database rights do not cover aerial photography. Therefore, most information aerial photographs can be used freely, if used directly from the photographs.
However, maps created on the base of these photographs, are subject to the general copyright rules,
It would be desirable in the discussion to indicate legal provisions regarding the use of information from aerial photography for the production of maps and specifically what copyrights the producers of the photographs have.
The information provided by various participants on the specific provisions of the copyright laws and of court verdicts in cases related to copyright should thereafter constitute the basis of a corresponding Wikipedia policy article.
Afil (talk) 18:49, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
This is interesting, particularly the relationship between maps and database rights. On Commons we've traditionally given respected the (admittedly dubious) copyright claims of producers of satellite and aerial photography - my impression is that this is an area still under debate. We might want to have a guideline about maps, but I think our existing conservative practice is okay, given the preponderance of free maps. Dcoetzee (talk) 19:01, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Wikimedia may choose any interpretation of the law that results in the deletion of all copyright infringements, and still be on the right side of the law. Wikimedia may delete files from its servers for any reason it likes, including false claims of copyright infringements. Furthermore, there are serious questions about whether we should push the limit on things like satellite photos that are widely held to be copyrightable and probably eagerly defended. It is a reasonable position to pick and choose which fights you will fight.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:42, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree to having something clear and plain on what is acceptable and not for maps. It would make things easier for everyone. Jappalang (talk) 07:40, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
I've encountered such issues before, and I agree that some guidance is needed. I think that it has actually been fairly well established in projects like w:OpenStreetMap that tracings of features from satellite photos can be entirely public domain. I think it seems entirely reasonable to think that a tracing of a copyrighted map should also be free of copyright claims, if the deviation of the tracing from the copyrighted map is equal to or greater than the copyrighted map's deviation from the underlying geographic data. I don't know how well you'll do in court with that though. Wnt (talk) 13:59, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
A librarian chronicles a bunch of US case laws that pertains to maps here. This might prove useful in coming up with something. Jappalang (talk) 05:30, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Filter?
Has the filter idea for so called "bad images" already been denied or is it still a possible idea? Because I might have some stuff that may work. --The Evil IP address (talk) 17:35, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
My general impression is that there's support for third-party filtering (whether by browser plug-ins or mirror sites or web proxies) but not filtering that would involve modifications to the WMF websites. There is support for content-based categorization, which may help facilitate filtering. Dcoetzee (talk) 17:45, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
My impression is pretty much the same, though I could see a set of templates as an alternative to categorization for this. - Jmabel ! talk17:52, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, what I did was trying to write a JavaScript that automatically removes images from categories that are defined over an array. It didn't quite work, but I think the principle used there are actually ok, though this may only be my POV. At least, I know that there has been no error on the "Error Console", so it can't be completely horrible. The source follows below:
// ==UserScript==// @name Filter// @include http://commons.wikimedia.org/*// ==/UserScript==varcatstoremove=newArray();catstoremove[0]='Category:Pornography';// and so on...if(wgPageName&&document.images&&wgNamespaceNumber!=14){// let's check if there's a pagename and if there are imagesvarimg=document.images;varimgsrc=img.src;varreq=newXMLHttpRequest();req.open('GET','http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&generator=images&titles='+wgPageName+'&prop=categories|imageinfo&iiprop=url',true);// most important stuff comes from herereq.send(null);varxml=req.responseXML;varfilenames=xml.getElementsByTagName('ii').getAttribute('url');varpages=xml.getElementsByTagName('page');varcats=pages.getElementsByTagName('cl');varcatnames=cats.getAttribute('title');for(vari=0;i>pages.length;i++){if(pages[i].getElementsByTagName('cl')){for(varu=0;u>pages[i].getElementsByTagName('cl').getAttribute('title').length;u++){for(vart=0;t>catstoremove.length;t++){if(catstoremove[t]==pages[i].getElementsByTagName('cl')[u].getAttribute('title')){varimgsource=xml.getElementsByTagName('ii')[i].getAttribute('url');for(vare=0;e>img.length;e++){if(document.images[e].src==imgsource){varimagetoremove=document.images[e];imagetoremove.parentNode.removeChild(imagetoremove);}}}}}}}}elseif(wgNamespaceNumber==14&&document.getElementById('mw-category-media')){for(varr=0;r>catstoremove.length;r++){if(catstoremove[r]==wgPageName){varmedia=document.getElementById('mw-category-media');media.parentNode.removeChild(media);}}}
-- AnonMoos (talk) 18:36, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Resolved
Villa Los Navegantes
An earthquake
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Support. I'm sure that if we can trust users to review one type then they can also be trusted to review the other types. Therefore we only need one list of reviewers. If someone is "experts" in one area and can help contact users on Flickr/Panoramio/Picasa we could add an manual note.
Done I changed the licenses on all user:Dlebouc uploads. --Jarekt (talk) 13:54, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Strong support: We should really try to reduce our template creep. --The Evil IP address (talk) 14:44, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose I don't see any reason why we must not use user custom templates. Also many people are using, and will use user custom tags future. It will be very hard and boring work to find user templates continuously. And without very very wide consensus it may cause several great disputes. I think it will be definitely inefficient. – Kwj2772 (msg) 15:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Comment Kwj2772 makes a good point. Making this mandatory may be difficult and more trouble than it's worth. Strongly recommended may be the best we can do. . . . . Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 15:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Question Can we have an example of a user template that the group above will find acceptable? The ones that Multichill listed are rather more than I think we need. I think the user should be able to use a smallish template that contains any of the following, as applicable:
wikimedia.org – you appear to work for Cold Spring Granite. I hope you sent it from a Cold Spring Granite e-mail address and mentioned in your e-mail that (1) you are authorized by the copyright owner, Cold Spring Granite, to license the photograph to the Wikimedia Commons, and (2) that you confirm that Cold Spring Granite consents to licensing the photograph to the Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA-3.0) licence. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 15:30, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
? Teofilo (talk) 12:11, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
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