Nina Paley

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, Nina Paley!

First steps tutorial Our first steps tour and our FAQ will help you a lot after registration. They explain how to customize the interface (for example the language), how to upload files and our basic licensing policy. You don't need technical skills in order to contribute here. Be bold contributing here and assume good faith for the intentions of others. This is a wiki—it is really easy. Getting help More information is available at the community portal. You may ask questions at the help desk, village pump or on IRC channel #wikimedia-commons (direct access). You can also contact an administrator on their talk page. If you have a specific copyright question, ask at Commons talk:Licensing.		Goodies, tips and tricks Put Babel boxes on your user page so others know what languages you can speak and indicate your graphic abilities. All your uploads are stored in your personal gallery Please sign your name on Talk pages by typing ~~~~ Use the CommonSense tool to find good categories for your files (then other people can find them too!) To link to an image page without embedding the image, type: [[:Image:Foo.jpg]], which produces: Image:Foo.jpg If you're copying files from another project, be sure to use the CommonsHelper Made a mistake? Did you want to rename or move a file? Simply upload the file again and mark the old one like this: {{bad name|correct name}} For more information read the full deletion guidelines.
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Project scope/heading

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Thank you for your contributions. Your image or other content was recently deleted, or will soon be deleted, in accordance with our process and policies, because it was not, or is not, within our scope. Please review our project scope, but in short, Commons is targeted at educational media files including photographs, diagrams, animations, music, spoken text and video clips. The expression “educational” is to be understood according to its broad meaning of “providing knowledge; instructional or informative”. Wikimedia Commons does not contain text articles like encyclopedia articles, textbooks, news, word definitions and such. Each of these other kinds of content have their own projects: Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wiktionary and Wikiquote. If the content seems to fit the scope of one of those other projects, please consider contributing it there. Otherwise, consider an alternative outlet. If you think that the deletion was in error because the contribution really was in scope, you can appeal it at Commons:Undeletion requests, giving a reason why it fits our scope to help others evaluate the matter. Thank you for your understanding.

 

Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:35, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I've been following Paley's efforts to upload her works since meeting her at the open video conference last month. I think it's cool to see artists relicensing their own works and adding them to commons - is it possible to be more friendly? Let me know what you think of this version. +sj + 14:02, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Aside

I understand the need to be wary of self promotion, but don't see anything in scope guidelines that discourages creators from sharing their own art (which many fan artists seem to do). Which raises an interesting point - are there standards for notability of venue of publication/showing of a work of art? If someone were to come by and upload a dozen images that Danny Hennesy claims as his art, without reference to where they were published or shown, is it promotional to keep them? What if they were works that had been shown at a very-private gallery? A page on original research/publication might be a good place to discuss further. +sj +

(Herbythyme responded on his talkpage - thanks!) +sj +

your portrait File:NinaPortrait4.jpg

Hi Nina,
even if it may look as I'm another nerd (read your blog entry), we would prefer to have a permission email either by photographer Ian Akin or by yourself (if you have the rights) for your nice portrait image. The reason is simply that you uploaded it and provided an other name/person as author/photographer (usually the photographer retains the rights, though that may differ in some countries or contracts). This constellation usually requires a permission. And another nerd suggestion: if the photo was made by another person, you cannot write "own work" as source entry. ;-) --Túrelio (talk) 15:54, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I was told, "wikimedia's goal is sharing educational knowledge freely, with a sense of neutrality and balance." Acting as a volunteer police force for the Permissions Culture isn't part of that mission - it isn't even compatible with that mission. Nina Paley (talk) 16:29, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that a lot of people come here and try to pass off non-free work as free. A lot of people. So we kinda hafta be a little diligent about it; otherwise we become not "A database of almost 5 million freely usable media files" but "A database of 5 million freely usable media files plus 10 million non-free files, and we can't tell which ones are which". Powers (talk) 18:11, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I understand this. Making sure images are 100% verifiably legal is an impossible job. It's one of many profound flaws with the copyright system, which is broken. Copyright is ©ensorship; Wikimedia volunteers doing copyright's bidding here is a tragedy. I know y'all have reasons for doing this, I'm sure you've gone back and forth on it, etc., but enforcing ©ensorship is bad for Knowledge. Enforcing vague ideas about copyright through reflexive deletions as a pre-emptive measure to be "safe" - well, that's what's killing culture outside Wikimedia too. Thank doG for Archive.org!Nina Paley (talk) 18:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

@Nina, you may not know, but you already got a sort of "preferential treatment". The standard procedure would have been to put a "permission missing"-template on the image page and the resulting template message on this talkpage. Instead of that, I used my time to write you something more nice and individually, while at the same time providing you a rationale for my request. I'm rather sorry if you as an artist don't understand that we try to take care for the rights of artists. By the way, most or all of those whom you may perceive as Commons' "police force" do also contribute own works. Have a nice day. --Túrelio (talk) 18:40, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I know very well I got preferential treatment. I'm appalled that was needed.

"I'm rather sorry if you as an artist don't understand that we try to take care for the rights of artists." Artists have the right to access and build on culture (aka knowledge). Calling ©ensorship "the rights of artists" won't score points with me.Nina Paley (talk) 19:00, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

And calling copyright "censorship" isn't going to get far with us. I apologize if you were misinformed as to the purpose of the site, but we do respect copyright here, because it's the law. Powers (talk) 01:10, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

If I was misinformed, there's no need for you to apologize - it wasn't your fault. And just because it's the law, doesn't change the fact that copyright is ©ensorship. Nina Paley (talk) 01:49, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm ok if you call copyright censorship. (It is, but that's irrelevant since we didn't make the law.) LtPowers doesn't speak for all of us. But he is right with the last part. We respect it because it's the law (respect as in "respect the speed limit" not "hold in high-esteem"). We don't do it for the artists, we do it for the reusers. We don't want them to get into legal trouble. When trying to become a respectable and reliable free media repository, it's very important to make sure everything really is free. Rocket000 (talk) 13:43, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

What I meant is that calling it censorship won't make us suddenly start applying COM:NOTCENSORED in place of Commons:Licensing. Powers (talk) 22:55, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I think that what comes as a surprise to many new users of Wikipedia and Wikimedia is how rigidly the rules are enforced. Mostly the rules do make sense, but the way they are applied can sometimes be a little rough. Perhaps some occasional discussion with one of the more experienced and kindly editors, such as Durova, could smooth things out for you a little. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 14:02, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Welcome

I'm glad to see you are here and uploading your stuff, even if your "welcome" wasn't quite as warm as many of us would have liked. Your stuff is great, and I'm thrilled to see it on commons. —mako๛ 19:18, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Welcome

I am glad to see you on here as well. Nice to see another editor who believes that the purpose for an encylopedia is to present information and knowledge rather than supress it and delete it. It should be our mission as editors to offer guidance to those who struggle with the difficulties then encounter as new Users. The site can be complex and extremely hard to navigate until you learn the ropes (I am not in the latter category as of yet) I understand your frustration and agree completely. I nearly left myself, but am not one to surrender so easily as I can see you are as well. Perhaps it is our artistc need to express. I must say if you need help, User:Turelioand User:Foroa are the best! They are very kind and helpful. You may be interested in my user page, I am "vacationing" until I can figure out what I actually can say about myself without being deemed "Promoting myself" hang in there girl. We will master this yet!--Jackie ohlsen (talk) 18:39, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

License Policy Recommendations

Hi Nina

I was most interested to read the License Policy Recommendations that you posted on the Village Pump a while back. Over the last two or three years, copyright policies on Commons have been clarified considerably, mostly in the direction of "better safe than sorry", which I understand is a position you are fundamentally opposed to. I have myself perhaps played a greater part in that than most, as it was I who largely drafted the Commons Scope policy, including the "Precautionary Principle" that you mention. My aim was to capture so far as I could editor consensus at the time, but of course no policy should be immune to change if consensus changes.

A by-product of focussing on areas where Commons used to be fairly lax has been to draw the attention of admins to media where copyright ownership/licensing is unclear. The result has been closer admin scrutiny of certain classes of images, which has most often resulted in deletions.

A particular difficulty has been to apply the Precautionary Principle to old and unsourced images (very old photos taken from the web, old postcards and so on), where copyright could theoretically still be in force in the country of publication, but where the practical chances of anyone actually asserting that copyright must be vanishingly small. These images are often OK under US law (eg are pre 1923), but in Europe and elsewhere may still be protected for 70 years after the death of the author, who is often now virtually impossible to identify at least without a disproportionate amount of effort.

Your Village Pump posting attracted the usual range of views from regular editors here, but I doubt that a discussion on Commons alone will generate enough momentum to bring in many users of other wikis who of course do (or should) have a large stake in what happens here.

Have you seen The Wikimedia Foundation's Strategy Wiki, aimed at helping to decide the future direction of the Wikimedia projects? There is a call for proposals, and it would be good if you could work up something to post there, as a formal Wikimedia-wide proposal. Your ideas are thought-provoking and are worthy of consideration by a a wider audience. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:57, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Mwah!

Hi, Nina. I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for Sita Sings the Blues. A unique and wonderful film.--Father Goose (talk) 08:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
	Thanks for your tireless work with great graphics and supporting free culture! Kocio (talk) 12:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)