Commons:Village pump/Archive/2005/11

Village Pump archives

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Template:En

Template:En was (fairly) recently changed in a way that has broken many pages. I was about to go around fixing this when I thought, "why make this change at all". I'd bring it up at the talk page, except no one would see it there. What's the advantage to doing it the old way and can we get a bot to fix all of the broken ones (many have been fixed, I couldn't say what percent though). BrokenSegue 02:32, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

With this new system, different languages use different CSS classes, so you can customize how they display. For example, with User:Dbenbenn/monobook.css, I see {{En}} but not {{De}}, {{Es}}, or any other language. dbenbenn | talk 04:00, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Program "CommonPlaces"

Why does the upload-program "Commonplaces" doesn't work in the last time? I think it makes a good job for me for around 400 pics and its the only program that works under windows ( in contrat to commonist). Kolossos 11:54, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm quite aware that Commonplace is broken :-( I hope to have a fix within a week, and include the ability to upload .ogg files as well. -- IlyaHaykinson 03:05, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

How to report copyright violations?

What should I do if I see an image that I believe to be a copyright violation? Normally if the image is on en.wikipedia.org, I report it at Wikipedia:Copyright problems. But what should I do if the image has been uploaded to commons.wikimedia.org? Should I report it here somewhere instead? Thanks, Stephen Turner 14:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

You could use Commons:Deletion requests, or add {{Copyvio}} with explanations to image's description. --EugeneZelenko 14:58, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Contributions

FYI, I uploaded a bunch of images, but at second glance it looks like they may be copyrighted (see the bottom of the source web site). If you want to delete them, change their tags or move them elsewhere, that's alright. --Jtalledo 20:35, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

this website suggests that the iamges are actually in the public domain. So I think it's fine. BrokenSegue 17:39, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I also think so. But to be sure, I wrote them a mail. --Avatar 09:33, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Guidelines for wikipedian pictures

I could find nowhere a guideline saying what a picture of wikipedian has to comply with (beyond licensing) for it to be acceptable here. MosheZadka 15:31, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

(Please see Commons:Personal pictures for a draft policy) MosheZadka 15:54, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Have a look at Commons:Criteria for inclusion -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 17:47, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I did. The "Relevance" section is waaaaay too ambiguous. I hope my proposed policy clarifies it for an important special case. MosheZadka 22:28, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think an extra page is a good idea - but the criteria you are suggesting make sense to me. Please put them on Commons talk:Criteria for inclusion, or be bold and integrate them into the policy page directly. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:12, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Done. Created a redirect from Commons:Personal pictures to criteria for inclusion, and added a section near the top regarding that. Thanks for the help MosheZadka 06:48, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Metadata problems

I wonder if someone can tell me who to contact about metadata problems (data associated with images such as f/ratio, subject distance, exposure time, etc.)? For example the metadata displayed for Image:BumpassHell 8328.jpg gives the F Number as 0.979034803375. If I download the file and look at the metadata, the F number is 7.2, the same as in the original file. Wsiegmund 13:06, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I have reported this at bugzilla:3892 -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:28, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Problems Uploading SVG Files

Hi, I just created some Graphs with graphviz (dot) as *.svg files, but I cannot upload them. Whenever I try to do so I just get a warning saying: This file contains HTML or script code that may be erroneously interpreted by a web browser. Checking the box to "ignore all warnings" does not have any effect at all. Yes, the file does include HTML, but so do other *.svg files on commons. Can anyone help telling me what to change so that I can upload my files? Here is the source code of the most simple picture I have:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.0//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-SVG-20010904/DTD/svg10.dtd">
<svg width="68pt" height="48pt"
 viewBox = "-1 -1 67 47"
 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<g id="graph0" class="graph" style="font-family:Times-Roman;font-size:14.00;">
<title>G</title>
<g id="node1" class="node"><title>Arad</title>
<ellipse cx="33" cy="22" rx="28" ry="18" style="fill:none;stroke:black;stroke-width:3;"/>
<text text-anchor="middle" x="33" y="27">Arad</text>
</g>
</g>
</svg>

And when answering, please mind: I do not have technical knowledge about the svg format itself... Regnaron 17:51, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

The file is rejected because it meight look like HTML to MS Internet Explorer, shich would cause it to render it as HTML. That would be a security problem (not with your file, but generally). I think it's triggered by the <title> tags. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 21:01, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, you were right: When I deleted the <title> Tags and the HTML Comment (which for some miraculous reason *g* did not show up here) the commons accept my files. Long live Microsoft with its up-to-date products... Regnaron 09:04, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I just ran into the same issue.

:-/ Deleting the <title></title> from the File helped, but I could keep the Comment without a problem, see Image:Herzlinie.svg. --Boris23 20:18, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

This is a technical burden that should be eliminated. The wiki should just strip out anything that isn't known to be safe. Another answer is to simply deny SVG to any browser that reports itself as IE. Wait, isn't that the way it works anyway? We certainly shouldn't be serving SVG to browsers that can't handle it. 24.170.177.130 01:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

How to open and listen to your ogg-music files?

subject: "sound", category "music"

Most files in your category "Sound", sub: "Music" are in the ogg-Format.

I have various music players (real, zoom, winamp)installed on my pc, but none of them can open such ogg-files. Even after installing an ogg-to-mp3-converter (i.e., "db-poweramp")the conversion did not work, since your ogg-format was not recognized by said converter!

You must have had a valid reason to select the ogg-format I am sure, which so far i have not been able to grasp.

so could someone help me to solve my problem how to open and to listen to your ogg-music files?

Retrieved from "http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump"

Ogg Vorbis, from there you find players which plays oggs and many reasons to use ogg instead of mp3. - Linnea 09:45, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Any genuine Ogg file will play in a winamp since version 2.91. Current version is 5.xxx The problem is some people install "Winamp Light" which does not have an Ogg plugin. Use winamp "Full install" version.

Help please

Brookie here - in a pickle - I have just started uploading some of my pictures here instead of the Englsih Wiki as I had done previously. I have added a Photographer category entry to my pictures which have now dumped themselves in a group on the main category page - how do I get them to list themselves under either my user name Brookie or my real name R Neil Marshman? I know it is something to to do with being a sub category - but don't know how to do it! Sorry! I since removed the cat entry to move them and created my own cat - which doesn't seem ideal.Brookie 11:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I added Category:Pictures by RN Marshman to your user page User:Brookie. Thuresson 12:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

new category

I've altered the two custom license templates I use (user:Thryduulf/cc-by-sa-all and user:Thryduulf/copyleft) to put the pictures in the Category:Photos by Chris McKenna which is a subcategory of Category:Self-published work. The category page for Category:Self-published work isn't showing any subcategories though - why is this? Also, is there any way that I can get Category:Photos by Chris McKenna to display all the photos in it other than making a null edit to all the pictures that should be there? This worked for 2 of the 3 images I tried it on. Thryduulf 14:03, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I asked me this quite a while... perhapps a bot is able to do this for you... --Stefan-Xp 14:16, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Requested image moves

I've found a template to request category moves, but how do you request the move of a mistitled image? - 82.172.14.108 20:09, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Images can't be moved, they have to be re-uploaded with the correct name and then the originals deleted. See #Renaming an image above. Thryduulf 20:31, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

The file you uploaded seems to be empty

I'm uploading a load of images I took of the Tramlink system in south London, and mostly its going OK. However, about every other time I try I get an error message saying:

"The file you uploaded seems to be empty. This might be due to a typo in the file name. Please check whether you really want to upload this file."

The files are not empty, they were selected using the browse function, and when I retry they work 90% of the time (the remaining 10% work on the third try). I'm using Firefox 1.0 under linux, but the files are on a windows XP (NTFS) partition on my hard drive. Is this a known problem - possibly server capacity related - or is something else going wrong? Thryduulf 20:31, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

The error message is a little misleading - it just means that no file data reached the server. Ther's a number of reasons why this may happen, some on your box, some on the server. Maybe you are just experiencing the general slowness of the image server lately. We'll get a second one soon, hopefully. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 21:39, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

What happened to monobook?

I'm on the classic skin, and wanted to go back to monobook, since I like that one better. Unfortunately, it looked UGLY. Did the Commons implementation of monobook break, is it a MediaWiki bug, or is it a different problem? Wcquidditch | Talk 22:34, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Never mind, problem gone. Wcquidditch | Talk 22:54, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Re-discussing a copyright "clarification"

Could we PLEASE re-open the deletion debate on [1]. It is pure nonsense to argue with a mail saying that the picture is PD in Canada. Nobody has contradicted to that fact. Fact is: Wikimedia can be sued in nearly each country (incl. the USA) by the Karsh Estates for offering this picture (only a Canadian court has to reject). There is no world wide Public Domain. International conventions like the Bern Convention protect the image outside of Canada. --Historiograf 03:04, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

While I don't agree with Historiograf, I also belive that we need to clarify a very important point: By the laws of which country do we determine if an image is PD? We currently have the "golden rule" that an image is PD worldwide if it is PD by the laws of the country it was created and published in. But is this assumption legally sound? If not, we have a huge problem with lots and lots of pictures. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:20, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

IANAL but to me this assumption seems the only one it can be fair to make - what right does country B have to dictate the image rights of an image created and published in country A? For example, if a photograph was taken and published in England in 1950 and the copyright law says that copyright lasts 50 years (I don't know whether this is the case or not), then in 2000 the image became public domain. I have the right to do (almost) anything I choose with a public domain image, inlcuding export it. If I choose to export the image to the United States then just because the US has a 70 year (for example) copyright term, why are my rights to use the picture curtailed? Unless there is a specific piece of legistlation that puts conditions on importing public domain images into the US, then I cannot see how the image is anything other than PD.

If an identical copy of the image was published in the US in 1950, then between 2000 and 2020 surely it is up to the copyright owners to prove that the image I have used is the one they own the copyright to, rather than for me to prove that I have used as my source the public domain image.

How does this affect copyleft licenses? I can use a PD image as the basis of a new work, and license that work as GFDL - what holds the weight in the USA, the valid copyright or the valid GFDL? Thryduulf 18:40, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Our golden rule is nonsense. If there is a strong likelihood that some one will sue us we should avoid to upload such a picture. We should not ignore the fact that there is forum shopping (i.e. searching a country/court with a conventient law). Berne Convention assures each creator a copyright term of 50 years pma. Karsh Estate can use the pictures as copyrighted in nearly all countries except of Canada - why should they set the money aside? --Historiograf 13:36, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

So, what's you oppinion about PD-Soviet images? And how about PD-USGov? Do you belive for instance, that a member of the US millitary who created images on duty could sue use for use his images in Germany? In effect, this would mean we have to delete all such images from the commons. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:45, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

This is getting very interesting indeed. I have until now been operating under the assumption that for Wikipedia, only two countries' laws were applicable: the copyright law of the originating country, i.e. the country where the work was first published, or, in the case of unpublished works (which I guess are very rare indeed on Wikipedia), was created, and U.S. law. The image in question is clearly in the public domain in its originating country (Canada), and until recently, I had thought it were therefore also in the public domain anywhere else, but it appears that the reasoning I had been using is, while it may seem logical, flawed, and the more I read up on this whole issue, I find myself — against my will — coming around to Historiograf's point of view. I had thought that when a work goes out of copyright in the originating country, it also would do so in other countries, for reasons similar to those stated by Thryduulf above. Also, I thought the Berne Convention and its successor treaties were intended to harmonize copyright protection. It appears that I've been wrong on both counts. Let's take this step by step:

1. According to the Berne Convention, local law applies — that's the basis for the court shopping mentioned above. The Berne Convention was not intended to harmonize the laws, but to ensure that works protected in the country of origin were also protected in all other signatory countries without the rights holder having to register claims in each and every of these countries. However, I think it's quite unlikely that anyone would succeed to sue Wikipedia over a work in a court that was neither in the originating country nor in the U.S.
2. "World-wide PD" may exist for PD-USGov images; in any case, since the copyright holder (the U.S. government) explicitly places its works into the public domain, I would say it is safe to say that this applies world-wide, regardless of other countries' laws. Works not eligible to copyright protection in the originating country in the first place cannot miraculously become copyrighted in another country.
3. For other "public domain" or rather, "copyright expired" works, no such "world-wide public domain" appears to exist. Instead, local laws in each country determine whether or not some work is still copyright protected. It is thus possible that something is in the public domain in both the originating country and the U.S., but still copyright protected in some third country.
4. Even if a work is in the public domain in its originating country, it doesn't necessarily follow that it was also in the public domain in the U.S. In fact, this chart seems to imply that this may well not be so in a great many cases.

Unfortunately, the disputed image appears to fall under that category of "public domain in the originating country, but not public domain in the U.S." works. Even if it was PD in the U.S., the tag still shouldn't say that this applied world-wide.

On PD-Soviet and related PD-X tags, with X your favourite country: we most probably cannot say that these works were in the public domain world-wide. (Note that PD-Soviet does not say they were.) In fact, for each of these cases, it would even needed to be evaluated whether the works so tagged also were in the public domain in the U.S. See again this chart. Country-specific PD tags should only be allowed if the work was demonstratably in the public domain in both the country of origin and in the U.S.

Time to ask the real lawyers on their mailing list? (I don't remember the e-mail address, but Jimbo would know whom to ask where...) Lupo 15:53, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Side comment to Historiograf: there's absolutely no need to use language that you don't dare write out in clear but that makes you use "***". Lupo 15:53, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Another comment to Historiograf: the discussion on the urecht mailing list is interesting, but as far as I see, only establishes the same principles as I've outlined above. In what way would the question whether a Canadian image was protected under German law have any impact on any language edition of Wikipedia, which are all based in Florida, U.S.? It might have an impact if the German Wikipedia Verein wanted to use such an image in a WikiReader, or any other German re-user wanted to re-use it, but other than that, I fail to see the implication. Lupo 16:30, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for beeing unable to formulate law subtilitates in the English language. At Commons:Forum I am discussing the same topic in German which I clearly better understand ;-)

• My own gold rule would say: Upload only photographs without consent of the rights holder if
  • they are in the PD in the US
  • AND
  • the creator is 70 years dead (EU term).
    

That means: Ignore the f***ing Mexican legislation (100 years pma). Some exceptions:

• In the German wikipedia we accept PD-US-GOV works and I agree with this practice although it is a MYTH that the US government has set them in the PD worldwide. You should read a comprehensive weblog entry [2] and you will find there quoted an US Senate report: "The prohibition on copyright protection for United States Government works is not intended to have any effect on protection of these works abroad. Works of the governments of most other countries are copyrighted. There are no valid policy reasons for denying such protection to United States Government works in foreign countries, or for precluding the Government from making licenses for the use of its works abroad." But it is not likely that US government will sue us and FWS has given it's pictures free worldwide (mail quoted in the blog entry).
• UK Crown Copyright

We should accept such pictures because I cannot see a way for the photographer to sue us. UK law gives the copyright to the Crown.

• Pretended Soviet PD

I think we are on the wrong way here. Germans should read the legal advice by the German lawyer Stechlin at [3], see also [4]. --Historiograf 17:39, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

To clarify re UK Crown copyright.

• All works produced by the crown, the government (or one of its departments, or agencies, etc) and certain other organisations (e.g. w:en:Ordnance Survey) that isn't specifically released under another license is protected by Crown copyright.
• Crown copyright lasts for 50 years from the date of creation (this is defined in the legislation, because (until the Monarchy ceases to be) the Crown never dies ("The King is dead, long live the King!").
• Crown copyright is not compatible with the GFDL, in the official opinion of w:en:HMSO (someone from the English Wikipedia (or the Wikimedia board or whoever) asked them). It has been inferred from this that it is not compatible with other copyleft licenses. These images are therefore not allowed to be uploaded to Commons.
• I think that when Crown copyright expires, the material becomes PD in the UK (and presumably the Commonwealth also).
• Works created by civil servants as part of their official duties are crown copyright.
• I have asked for, and not (yet?) received clarification on whether works created when performing official duties, but not for official purposes, are Crown copyright or not.
  • To give an example of the above: I am a civil servant (with the w:en:Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)), and have taken photographs when on private land for the purposes of official duties and/or official training. Most of those photographs were related to the training or other reason I was there, but some were not related.
    • Photographs taken for official purposes, e.g. to show evidence of a breach of an agreement the land owner has with Defra are Crown copyright, regardless of where they are taken from.
    • Photographs taken for other purposes, e.g. photographs of w:en:Athelney may be Crown copyright if taken from private land. I am waiting for clarification on this.
    • Photographs taken for other purposes from publicly accessible land, are my own copyright. If I have gained permission from the land owner to take photos of/from their land for non-official purposes, then these images are my own copyright.

Note that IANAL and most of the information above was not given to me by a lawyer but in informal discussions with senior staff with knowledge of Crown copyright issues. Thryduulf 21:04, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

To Historiograf: the discussion at Commons:Forum is more about a new general "golden rule" for use on the commons. I'm more interested in trying to determine what to do with the Karsh images. As you have pointed out yourself, these Karsh images would be in the public domain in the European Union according to the "rule of the shorter term" (§7(1) of the EU directive 93/98/EEC), which the EU applies (in accordance with the Berne Convention) to non-EU-member countries such as Canada. The remaining issue seems to be whether it is also in the public domain in the U.S., and that seems (according to this chart) to depend on whether the image was still copyright protected in Canada on January 1, 1996. Does anyone know when Canada declared "any photos which are not created by a crown institution, are Public Domain if it has been created prior to January 1, 1949" or indeed where this 1949 cutoff-date comes from? Lupo 12:24, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

All right, finally found it myself (see [5] at the bottom): until December 31, 1998, the old Canadian Copyright Act postulated a copyright term for photographs of 50 years since the creation of the image. On January 1, 1999, Bill C-32: An Act to Amend the Copyright Act came into effect, replacing this old rule with 50 years p.m.a. and stating at the same time that works whose copyright had already expired would remain copyright-free (no grandfathering). Thus in Canada, any image created before January 1, 1949 (and not under Crown copyright) had entered the public domain and remains in the public domain in Canada despite the current Copyright Act. Applying this, together with Hirtle's aforementioned chart with the critical date of January 1, 1996, I think we can conclude that any Karsh image in the LAC's holdings created before January 1, 1946 is in the public domain also in the U.S. Now, can someone explain where Hirtle gets his 1996 date from? Lupo 15:39, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Moving images from the Polish Wikipedia

As the Polish Wikipedia is no-fair-use, it should eventually contain no images (well, the English will certainly become no-fair-use too, it's just going to take a bit more time).

Images that are useful and properly copyright-tagged will be gradually moved from the Polish Wikipedia to Commons. Other images will be gradually replaced or deleted.

I have teached my bot to move images from the Polish Wikipedia to Commons. It only does it for the images I explicitely ask it to, so it's not a real "bot".

For now it's only a small batch to test the technical aspects of such a move. See: Image:B-dur.png, Image:C-dur.png etc. for the bot in action.

Any suggestions are appreciated. Taw 23:42, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Cool... and thanks for helping to make the commons more useful to the wikipedias. Here are a few points to consider:

• please make sure all images uploaded by the bot are placed in a category and/or on a gallery page. Orphaned images are a major problem on the commons, and are useles to the community. This has to be done by hand, i'm afraid. Maybe some categories could be derived from the cats on the pages that use the image on the polish wp.
• Please make sure to copy all info that was given with the image, like the original source, original creator, etc. I suspect you are alredy copying the description page, but i can't really tell from the examples. Note that this info is mendatory for images that where not created by the uploader.
• Please make the bot link the original uploader's name to the account on the pl wp.
• There are already a couple of tools for uploading images (but i'm not sure if they also automatically download and collect info). Pybot has a mode for it, and commonist may be worth a look, too.

Thanks again! Catch me on IRC if you have questions -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 01:45, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I changed the template, so that original uploader's name is a link. The description consists of original uploader's name in a template and a description from pl.wikipedia's image page.

Unfortunately:

• I really don't see how can I add categories/galleries automatically. They aren't categorized on the Polish Wikipedia, so I would have to do it by hand. Somebody will probably have to do it later, but it's not directly related to the bot's job, and could be done later (and it can't be done in the different order). Should I instead add some "image is not categorized" category or a tag ?
• The information about original source/uploader etc. is typically not available in an explicit way. What is available is the licence template (they're the same on Commons and on pl.wp), the account name of the original uploader, and whatever given was in the description. I'm certainly only going to move images that are license-tagged. The original author is sometimes given in the description, sometimes not (in which case usually it's the original uploader, but it's not always certain).

I think that despite those 2 problems, the bot should proceed, moving more used and licence-tagged images. Taw 19:18, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• Categorizing is problematic in two ways: it's a) time consuming and has to be done by hand, and it's b) crucial to the commons. Tagging the images with a "uncategorized images" category would be a little better than not tagging them at all. But please upload images only if you make sure that they are categorizes, preferrably by the original uploader (who supposedly knows most about them).
• Please only copy images from any wikipedia if it has complete licensing information, i.e. license tag, author and source (or a statement that the uploader created it). I'm away that that is a lot of work. But if you upload images without those images, it's also going to be a lot of work to go through deletion requests for every single one.

Moving images to the commons is a good thing. But it should also be an opportunity to make sure only really free images are used. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 20:40, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

As far as categorizing is concerned, no images on the Polish Wikipedia are categorized (except for automatic licence categories).

So the actual only choices are:

• Move them to Commons first, categorize them later ("move first, categorize later"). I think this option is strongly preferable.
• Move them to Commons only when the mover does the categorization ("move and categorize at the same time"). I don't think we will get the images moved anywhere near fast enough this way. Categorization is time-consuming, but everyone can do that. Bot upload is fast, but few people can do that. If wa require that the bot operator does the categorization, then we have very few people doing a very time-consuming operation. They won't even be able to deal with the new uploads.
• Create a mirror of Commons categories on the Polish Wikipedia, categorize the images there, and move only the categorized images ("categorize first, move later"). I think it's a lot less practical than the other order - a complex system of categories would have to be organized, and when something actually gets a category it will be moved out of this system to Commons. I think there are much fewer people willing to work this way than in the first way.

Taw 22:12, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Duesentrieb that categorization is very important. If you want to bot-upload a bunch of pictures without categorizing them immediately, feel free, but it's your responsibility to make sure thay get categorized eventually. Perhaps you could recruit users on the Polish Wikipedia to help out with the categorization. dbenbenn | talk 23:19, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

It's not his "responsibility" to categorize them, it would be nice if he did but it's certanly not manditory. In any case these images are better off here uncategorized than at plwiki uncategorized so I don't see why they shouldn't be moved. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 23:57, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion it is mandatory, though I can understand that others would disagree. dbenbenn | talk 00:50, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I talked with Duesentrieb and we think that bot operator could select one among some small set of "big" categories, like a chemical formula or an animal. Anything that doesn't require browsing the Commons categories for every image is ok, from the operator point of view. Taw 00:00, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest to have at least the following categories for a first "broad" categorization of the images, to make it easier for knowledgable people to find them:

• Category:Animalia, Category:Plantae
• Maps / Landscapes / Buildings: by country, or at least by continent. Maybe "Poland" and continents, in this case.
• Drawings: by field of research: Chemistry, Physics, Mechanics/Engineering, Social Studies, Math/Informatics
• Famous art: by period/"style"? I don't really know...
• Portrait fotos: hard to tell. I don't really know.

On a related note, it would be cool to have portals/projects on the commons, like on many wikipedias. That way, it would be much easier to contact people knowledgable in a specific field. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 00:28, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea how to find out the period or style looking at the photo, and even if it was provided in the Polish description, it's very likely I wouldn't know the English name of it. So this is probably out. A kind of art (picture / sculpture / architecture).

So at least:

• Category:Animalia, Category:Plantae. Some easy subcategories like "trees" or "birds" would be possible, but obviously not genuine binomial clasification.
• Names of cities/regions/countries (should they be local or English ?). In the worst case such category would non exist yet, but it's very easy to connect it to the next geographically higher category.
• For field of research some "complete" list would be necessary, as it's too slow to browse the category tree each time.
• For art, portraits, I don't really know.
• Maybe a list of a few big functional categories like churches, industrial buildings, etc. could be provided.

The way it's going to work, if the operator has no idea how to categorize the image using the standard categories, they may browse the categories and enter the name by hand. But it would be too slow to do that for each image. Taw 01:04, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Theoretically you could use English interwikis for category(es) for article(s) where image is used. Good idea to check such categories for existence on Commons before actually using them. --EugeneZelenko 06:00, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm planning to write a tool to do exactly that. We'll see how it turns out. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 11:26, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Another way is simply to add a temporary Category:From pl to each moved image, then interested persons familiar with commons category structure could simply scan through it and recat images until it's emptied.

I have a working prototype for category guessing. Taw, please contact me when you need it. It'll have to polish it a bit before making it "really" public, though. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 01:45, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Server problems?

I am finding that images I uploaded only a couple days ago aren't displaying. Then when I click on the "download" link from the image page, I get a message something like this:

The image “http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Probable_Route_of_Cardenas_BHoU-p5.png” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

But I know that can't be the case because it was ok when I uploaded it. Unless the server is corrupting images, I can only guess this is maybe a symptom of an overloaded server. —Mike 03:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I switched to a different browser and now the images are loading. Go figure. Sometimes technology really sucks. —Mike 05:41, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Translation help needed

While searching for plant photos, I came across a Japanese site with a lot of plant image:

[6]

It would be good to include it in the Wikipedia:Public domain image resources list, but I am unsure of the exact wording of its copyright (it is on the bottom of the linked page). Would anyone who knows Japanese confirm if it is indeed free from copyright?

I clicked on that link, and at the bottom of the page found the statement "Copyright 2001-2005 shu(^^). All rights reserved." in English. Fg2 04:59, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Format of person articles

I moved all Swedish person articles to the format Lastname, Firstname, so they sort neatly in Category:People of Sweden. This should be no problem, no? // Fred Chess 13:37, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

To achive neat sorting, it's unneccessary to move the pages: you can just use [[Category:People of Sweden|Last, First]], which will cause the pages to be sorted by last name, no matter what they are called. A convention for consistent naming is desirable, though. But most wikipedias use First Last, so I belive we should do the same on the commons. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:41, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Please go move them back. We definitely want to use a person's actual name as their article title. dbenbenn | talk 16:27, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Can you give me a reason why? IMO, wikimedia commons is an archive. Most articles do not contains much information. As such, its main objective should be to be well categorized. The format mentioned by Duensentrieb is inferior for supervision. // Fred Chess 16:31, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

How is it inferior? According to what you wrote above, the only reason for your page moves was to get articles sorted right in the category; category sort keys achieve that without having to break page titles. That's what sort keys were implemented for. dbenbenn | talk 17:11, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

No, I did not move only to get them sorted right, but to get them sorted right and neatly. To explain myself: The reason why it is superior is because it gives a more natural look when sorted alphabetically according to first word and not according to last word, e.g. putting Kamprad, Ingvar under K, instead of Ingvar Kamprad under K, just as most encyclopedias write Lastname, Firstname when they sort like that. (Notice that the Ingvar Kamprad redirect to "Kamprad, Ingvar" in case someone wants to link to the name they can go about as normal). // Fred Chess 21:12, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

True, it makes the category look neater, but it makes the individual articles look worse. No Wikipedia in any language uses articles called "Lastname, Firstname". Unless someone else expresses support for this change within a day, I'll move them back. dbenbenn | talk 21:48, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Please don't move articles to Lastname, Firstname. The format is deliberate. Reason: To find a person in the archive, you simply type the name in the search box.Longbow4u 10:19, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Longbow, that is why there are redirect from the name, as explained above. Dben: I will just post this final comment, that although the individual article looks worse, it doesn't matter because the article is not a main source of information for readers. If still no-one supports this idea then I will accept the status quo. // Fred Chess 12:24, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I have a question re: naming of articles on persons, in particular royals. Did we ever make a decision to put them all under the English name (i.e. Charles X of Sweden), or was the moving of many royalty galleries simply done on some individual initiative? -- Ranveig 20:01, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I think the policy is roughly that categories are in English, but pages are in native language. So Charles X of Sweden should be at his name in Swedish. (The reason for the difference is that category redirects don't work). dbenbenn | talk 21:48, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Moving the articles was a bad idea to start with. This should have been discussed before the move, not _after_. Thuresson 18:13, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

How do I make a subcategory?

I would like to make a subcategory Dutch landscapes as subcategory to The Netherlands. Do I need anyone's approval for this, and how do I do this? Regards, MartinD 14:08, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Follow the red link to Category:Dutch landscapes and write a sentence or two describing the category. You'll want to include [[Category:The Netherlands]] to include it in that category. dbenbenn | talk 15:50, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! MartinD 09:30, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Commons image display REALLY slow lately.

Recently, images have been exceptionally slow to load in commons, and commons-hosted images have been exceptionally slow to load in at least the English wikipedia. Does anyone know what the problem is and if any work is being done to rectify it? Morven 20:10, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that we are too popular, and there's only one server for images at the moment. A second one was delivered and installed, but broke down completely during setup. It'll hopefully be up and running soon. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 21:03, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree. It is approaching the point where it is pointless to contribute images or use images in articles. I tried for 10 minutes to view an image with a title I was interested in using for the Botany textbook, and still ended up with the blank square—and I have broadband! Hopefully the fix you describe will improve the situation. - Marshman 04:02, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know, the new server has been fixed - now all the images need to be copied from the old to the new server. Unfortunately, this has to be done very slowly, or the old server would die completely. Please be patient for a few more days. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Category:Weather maps

The last map dates 19. septemter. Do we need this material anymore? These maps are huge in number and any real image of weather maps which could be used to illustrate encyplopedia articles will disapear in this category. It would be fine to have this category cleared and free for other stuff. For me it's not important if the images get deleted or moved in their own category (which would have the character of a cemetery). Any suggestions? --Saperaud 06:38, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Someone is right now working on dynamically generated weather maps. I would suggest to keep those until that works. Also, we should talk to the server-admins about how to mass delete the weather images efficiently - doing it by hand would be very tiresome. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:17, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

That's great that someone is working on dynamically-generated maps! Wikinews:Weather currently displays the September 19 maps. Older maps are never going to be displayed, ever again. In fact, you can't even find them in the history, because of the templatization of the whole system. I suggest maps from before September 2005 should be deleted. I'm willing to make a bot to do it. dbenbenn | talk 15:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I think deleting them should be fine and help to get a more accurate media count (I always manually excluded the weather maps and market data when we didn't have automatic media counts yet). But please post to wikinews-l about this first, as these are used on many different language editions, and there may be some affected pages.--Eloquence 06:00, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

The maps as such might not be useful anymore but the weather data is, is the data avaible somewhere? —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:12, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Logging in problems

I have tried several times to log into Commons with my Wikipedia user name but it always tells me I must have cookies set. I have no trouble with that on Wikipedia and know that my system is set to except them. I cannot upload images for my articles as an IP and don't even want to. I know it is better to upload to Commons. Do I have to form another id which I don't want to do either?.--71.28.246.3 03:01, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

It is necessary to create a new and separate account in the Commons before uploading. This should be no problem as it only requires to enter the desired username and the password, as in the Wikipedia. It is usual, but not required, to use the same username as in the wikipedia. IPs cannot upload files. I do not know about the cookies, but perhaps this problem will go away after creating the new account.

Greetings, Longbow4u 08:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

If the username doesn't exist at Commons, but you get error messages about cookies, I think the Commons has a poor error handler. Normally if you get error messages about cookies, the username exists but there is something wrong with your browser's handling of Commons cookies. In the latter case your problems are similar to those reported under "I can't log in" above. Anyway, this may need a developer's consideration. --Eddi 09:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps there should be a disclaimer: "Wikimedia experience is best powered by Mozilla Firefox." Just kidding. Neutrality is in the way. Longbow4u 16:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Possible copyright vio

This image [7] desribed as 1892 pledge to the flag cannot be an 1892 image. The children in the picture are dressed in 1940's or 50's style clothing (Leave it to Beaver styles). The uploader is a registered user with no other edits. I commented on the photo on it's discussion page earlier. It cannot be a pre 1923 image as the copyright template states. It has been up awhile and I am apparently the only one to question it. Found it while looking at black and white images (I restore antique images and am always interested in them). Someone more experienced than me needs to rake a look at it.--71.28.246.3 06:48, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Images with obvious dicrepancies in the licensing should be tagged with an {{unknown|11/16/2005}} Template, there should be a reason given on the image talk page or description page. Furthermore, the uploading author should be asked on his/her talkpage for clarification of the source. If there will be no clarification in a given time, the image will be deleted. Longbow4u 13:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Please protect Image:Wikiquote.png

en.Wikiquote is (slowly) attempting to get rid of all of its images. However, if we remove this image, and use commons version, we open ourselves to main-page vandalism. There should be no reason to modify this image without discussion anyway, and so I would like to request protection of this image as a pre-emptive measure. None of this should be taken to imply that there is currently consensus for en.Wikiquote to use the commons version: I am trying to build consensus there. If this is unacceptable from Commons policies point of view, just note here that there won't be such pre-emptive protection. Thanks MosheZadka 09:54, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it's OK. As far as I remember we protected images used on Commons main page and English Wikipedia main page by requests. --EugeneZelenko 14:41, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Please use Image:Wikiquote-logo-en.png insetad. Do you want to protect this image? --EugeneZelenko 14:45, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and protected Image:Wikiquote-logo-en.png. User:dbenbenn 21:35, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone involved. MosheZadka 11:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Pictures that, incidentally, have people

Hi, I have always wondered about this but I have never seen a clear policy articulation anywhere. What's the legal standing on using pictures of people to illustrate something? Specifically, I am thinking of sport. If I have a picture of people playing a sport, just amatuers, do I have to get those people's permission to upload the picture? When really I just want to illustrate the sport. Any ideas? cheers --pfctdayelise 14:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

If they are clearly recognizable for the picture, and they are not professionals, then yes, you probably have to have their permission. But this also depends on the local legislation of the country the image was taken in. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:08, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

This is what I mean. What legislation, exactly? How does one define "clearly recognisable"? etc. It all seems very vague. pfctdayelise 04:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I think you can upload a down-scaled version, with say 300pix width, in which it is hard to distinguish faces. Most images used on wikipedia are at used in thumbs 180-300 pixels anyways. Fred Chess 05:03, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

What juristiction and law are you talking about? There are no limit in Danish copyright law of using pictures of people taken in public places. There are some limits in other laws about when you can take the pictures (no unmarked automatic supervision), and what context you can use them (for some commercial use, you may have to pay a model fee), but they are not likely to be relevant here.--Per Abrahamsen 06:27, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

To calrify: this is not a copyright issue. It is, however, a question under what circumstances we can legally publish recognizable pictures of people. AFAIK, it all depends on where the image was taken. In german, for example, there's a special form of Personality rights, called Recht am eigenen Bild (right to pictures of yourself), which basically states that Every person can decide on his/her own, if and in what context images of him/her may be published. It's defined in § 22 S. 1, KUG (IANAL, i'm just quoting ther German Wikipedia). This applies as soon as a person can be identified on a picture, regardless of how he/she can be identified.

This right does not apply in full for people making a public appearance, like giving a speach, or a professional, public performance (in case of the latter, copyright may however be an issue). It also does not apply in full for people of public interrest (Personen der Zeitgeschichte), but legislation hase become more restrictive regarding that recently, following a new EU guideline (e.g. pictures of politians are no longer OK if they don't show the person acting "in office"). AFAIK, Germany is particularly strict about this, but simmilar rules are in effect throughout the EU. In the USA, I belive pictures taken in a public place are generally OK. I'm not sure about the details, though.

The question would be now, what type of permission we would require from a person on such a foto. Is permission to publish it on Wikimedia projects enough? Does commercial use have to be included? Since the restrictions don't arise from copyright, we have to think about this apart from the licensing policy. Note that we have lots of pictures that can't be used commercially because of non-copyright legislation (especially, seals and coats of arms). -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:45, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Great, thankyou very much! Now I have somewhere to start.

The other thing is...do I only have to worry about personality rights in Australian law (as I am Australian, and so would they be)? Or because the pictures are published the world over, the whole world? Or because the servers are in the US, US law as well? pfctdayelise 14:22, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

For the personality rights, I would say that the location where the pictures where taken indicates the relevant legislation. For copyright issues, the location of publication is also relevant - in that case, I would suggest to take the most restrictive rule applicable in any of the following places: place of creation, place offirst publication, USA (servers), EU (lots of users). See some sections above for a discussion about which copyright laws are applicable - apperently, noone really knows, inlcuding judges and polititians. Maybe the same is true for the personality rights stuff - not sure. I don't hope so... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:33, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I also would think, that for a picture of Australians taken by an Australian in Australia only Australian personality right is relevant. Copyright should not be a problem at all. Since the pictures are taken by pfctdayelise privately, he/she has the full copyright and can apply every licence at will. Commoms-compatible licences given by the original author are never a problem, the problems discussed above apply only for old images, where the exact status is unclear or the image has different statuses in different countries. --::Slomox::&nbsp;[[User talk:Slomox|><]] 16:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree: pictures taken by the uploader are unproblematic with repsect to copyright. If they show people, and they gave explicite permission, this is excelent. But think of images taken from flickr, etc, which are license cc-by-sa, and show people... there it gets tricky. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 17:20, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

So... because I am only using the pictures for this non-commercial use (WP), maybe I don't have to worry about personality rights? But anyone who, in the future, wanted to use one of the images for their own purposes (including maybe commercial), maybe they would have to worry about it? Is that right...? pfctdayelise 01:22, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Personality rights apply to all publications, commercial or not. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 17:42, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

How to ask for permission to use web-site pics?

Anyone has some good templates for asking a small organization permission to upload pictures from their website to Wikipedia? My assumptions are 1) They do want to give permission, 2) If I add too much legalize in the request, it will scare them away, 3) If I put too little legalize, their permission may not be adequate.--Per Abrahamsen 06:13, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

See w:Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission for a few examples. Probably this would be a useful page to have on commons, too. pfctdayelise 04:23, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Language learning wikibooks are in need of good drawings: would you help?

A very efficient tool for learning language are pictures related to expressions. I have seen that many language learning wikibooks could be highly improved with drawings. I have many ideas of how this drawings could be, but I lack the creative skill to draw them. Is somebody willing to help? We could create a wikiproject in Commons which would be fruitful for any language learning wikibook in any wikibooks project. --Javier Carro 13:01, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Abysmal performance

I don't understand how anybody is getting anything done here. It averages 5-10 minutes to get just one image to show up, and a gallery can take hours, if it even completes successfully. I have other things I could be doing with my life, so don't need to be here anymore, but I wonder how others are still able to upload, tweak images, etc. Stan Shebs 00:25, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Look a little further up on this page. Commons:Village_pump#Commons_image_display_REALLY_slow_lately. Hopefully things will be a little less sucky soon. (I can deal with wikipedia being slow, but this is too much.) --Quasipalm 02:42, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Pictures of museum exhibits

Hello, another Q... I have some pictures of museum exhibits (see [8], [9] and [10] for low-res versions). They are all from museums in China (whereas I am now in Australia). Is it likely that the museums have any kind of copyright hold over these images, or does the copyright only concern me now? Thanks for any advice. --pfctdayelise 04:14, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the rules, but considering that "copyright" is practically an unknown (well, ignored, actually) word in China, I'd have no doubts on placing any pics from China on my own HP. On Wiki I suggest You concider all museum interiors worldwide "no-can-do-pictures" unless writing an article on that specific museum. In this case I'd upload the pictures so small that objects are unclear. -- G®iffen 12:29, 19 November 2005 signature added -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:44, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I don't know anything about chinese legislation. I can only try to tell you how this would be handeled in America and Euprope: The Museum does not have any copyright. But may museums explicitely forbit photographs, or require you to pay an additional fee if you want to make pictures. So, if you take and publish pictures you took without permission, they may try to sue you for preach of contract (if bying a ticked can be viewed as entering a contract). If this is possible also depends if the museum is private or public (i.e. run by the govenment). There's a lengthy discussion in german about this here: Commons:Forum#Rechte_an_den_Fotos.

As for copyright: whoever created the original your are photographing may have rights to the resulting picture. The first and third picture you linked look like the show very old works of art, which are themselves PD. In the case of [11], the artist may still have right - but I have no idea how this is handeled in china. Also, as as stated in some thread above, it may be that Chinese law isn't relevant at all, but we would have to determine if it is PD by stadards of the US, the EU, and, in your case, Australia.

This is complicated and confusing. I have the impression that noone really knows how to handle copyright internationally, including politicians and judges. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:41, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Thankyou both for your replies. It seems no one really knows. Sigh. I also asked this question at enWP: w:Wikipedia_talk:Image_use_policy/copyright#Museum. Thanks --pfctdayelise 15:20, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

In the UK it depends on the policy of the museum in question. I have recently uploaded a lot of photos from London's Transport Museum Depot (Category:London's Transport Museum). I asked as I went in about photography and was told there are no restrictions. In contrast I have heard that the musuem in Salisbury claims copyright on everything in the musuem - including a prehistoric human skeleton. Thryduulf 22:13, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

We should not accept COPYFRAUD of museums claiming copyrights they cannot have. Let us follow the wise footsteps of OUR DIVINE MASTER Free Art! --Historiograf 05:14, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

A very good read on the background of copyright is Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, which is available for free (.pdf-file) download under cc-by-nc-licence on his website. It has lots of arguments pro free photos, e.g. that in the beginning of photography, laws did not restrict the right to photograph objects and persons, so that photography was allowed to prosper. The relevant part is from book pages 31-35 (pdf-page 45-49). Longbow4u 11:48, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Silmilar problem is with archives and libraries, if they store some drawings. For example, Library of Warsaw University (Poland) claims that drawings of architect Tilman van Gameren (d. 1706) are protected by copyrights [12]. Pko 08:49, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Even more astounding stipulation is made by City Archive in Toruń on page [13]: We wish strongly point out that plans and maps published on our website cannot be copied, moved to other servers or pages without permission of project's authors. Moreover, using published here sources as illustrations in all kinds of publications without permission and adequate fee on behalf of State Archive in Toruń is forbidden. (in Polish: Pragniemy w końcu z naciskiem zaznaczyć, że opublikowane na naszej stronie plany i mapy nie mogą być kopiowane, przenoszone na inne serwery lub strony bez zgody autorów projektu. Ponadto zabronione jest wykorzystywanie zamieszczonych źródeł jako ilustracji w publikacjach wszelkiego typu bez zgody i odpowiedniej opłaty na rzecz Archiwum Państwowego w Toruniu.): Pko 09:39, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

A similar discussion on en prompted this comment: In any case, it's up to each uploader to decide respect museums' rules, it's irrelevant to image legitimacy. Is this true???? (With respect to any museum claim on copyright, obviously any applicable artist copyright would still apply.) If so, I will simply take my chances that the museums won't sue me. :) pfctdayelise 06:28, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I would agree with that - it's pretty clear that the museum does not have a copyright. It's unclear if they can forbid you to take pictures, and what they could do to you if you take pictures anyway and publish them. I belive it's up to you if you want to take this chance. However, it would be fair to mention it on the description page, lest someone uses the picture in a book and get sued for that... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:20, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

A third party cannot be sued for using photos which are taken without consent. We have to discern immaterial rights and ownership. --Historiograf 15:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

License of an old map

I'd like to use an old Gibraltar map to show a point in an article on its status. I've found this one: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/unicorn/chartZoom.cfm?imageID=F0151&x=4548.26666667&y=3313.48333333&zoomlevel=4&#content. It's a 18th century map. If it were in a USA site, it would be clear that according to their laws, the bidimensional photo o a bidimensional artwork (a map here) is in the public domain. However, as long as this photo is exposed in an academic site in the UK, may I assume also that the picture is in the public domain? Many thanks in advance --Ecemaml 21:18, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

IANAL, and I'm not from the UK, but as far as I know, noone can claim copyright to reproductions of PD material in the EU. Though people, especially museums and libraries, are known to try. You may want to ask Hitoriograf about this, he's an expert on the topic. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:09, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Also ask Soufron. David.Monniaux 20:50, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll talk to him. --Ecemaml 19:57, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Watermarks

Those are really annoying. The terrocrats in China has seen fit to affix its name to all the historical photographs of the Second Sino-Japanese War, even though those are by their own laws public domain. I've a ton of these photos that have the watermarks, which I don't know how to get rid of. I'm sure there's a tool or tutorial somewhere that allows/teaches you to do that? I use Photoshop and GIMP if necessary. Thanks. Miborovsky 08:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Collapse of image

This picture collapses when rendered with Firefox, but is shown properly in IE. Does anybody know why? Gugganij 22:37, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

No problem with Mozilla here. Try clearing your Browsercache. Is your Firefox tuned in any way ?--Denniss 22:53, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

i have the same behaviour in FF and IE. I think it has something to do with the server problems these days.

by the way: the first version of the picture ("20:02, 21. Aug 2005") can imo be deleted because pixel and file size are the same. I can see no difference in the both versions. the same with Image:Patrouille-suisse ILA2002-24.jpg: also 2 duplicate versions. the older one ("17:57, 25. Mai 2005") can also be deleted. --BLueFiSH ?! 23:01, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, the image is rendered without any problem at my friend's computer (who uses FF as well). I clear the browser cache regularly and I think FF is tuned in properly. Gugganij 23:08, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Thios was probably due to the image server being offline for a while: some people where still getting the images from a cache on some squid, other didn't. The image server is back now (different server actually, much faster than before). Enjoy!

Oh, if the image still does not work after ctrl-r in FF, then it's probably a strange problem on your box. Shows fine in FF for me. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 00:16, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

No, it doesn't even work after ctrl-r. Strange indeed. Gugganij 22:42, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

The file resides in a directory under /a/ad/..., which some (arguably misbehaving) ad-filtering proxies consider to be a proof that the picture is just an advertisement and filter it out. If your proxy settings differ between IE and FF or you use some ad-blocking software, this may be the cause. --Mormegil 12:27, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

That's it! I am using ad-blocking software indeed. Thanx a lot for your help. Gugganij 12:31, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

• @somebody: please delete the redundant image versions as i write above. or explain why not to delete these versions. thx. --BLueFiSH ?! 14:33, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know an upload on the same image page replaces any previous version. Thus, I would say that there is nothing redundant, since just one image version exist. Gugganij 22:42, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Image:Panorama Urbino2.jpg: 2 versions. same file size, same pixels. --BLueFiSH ?! 01:36, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate revision deleted. --Mormegil 12:27, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello

I'm new here! Could someone guide me around this place at their leisure? --HappyCamper 03:18, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

The Commons:Community Portal is probably a good place to start. If you have concrete questions, feel free to ask on my talk page. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:10, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

New Image Server

Just wanted to say 'good work' to all those involved in the image server upgrade yesterday. The real proof will come this afternood when the American users start pushing the server load up, but so far things are looking more responsive. -- Solipsist 11:11, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, thank you people (especially JeLuF and Brion)! Images now load quite fast, and I belive the new server will take the peak in stride. Sadly, page loading will probably still be slow, because squids & apaches are still overloaded, but this is not time to mope ;) -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:14, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you from me as well, its always good to see concrete benefits from the donations we make. Thryduulf 15:31, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

A great job, thanks a lot! MartinD 21:31, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Roundels

I just want to ask you where can I place air forces' roundels that I will start producing? Now, some of them are in Category:PD_Seals, but there is a need to make separate area (category for them), because there are plenty such marks. So can I create Category:Roundels? -PioM _EN DE PL 20:02, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Make it a sub-category of Category:Military. Thryduulf 21:19, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, thanks. -PioM _EN DE PL 16:41, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Grandscrus 1.jpg?

I know this is a stupid question, but I hope you will help me out. A few days ago I stumbled upon a picture which (I think) was called Grandscrus 1.jpg. It showed bottles of what are generally considered -at least in France ;-)- some of the finest wines in the world. Never being able to buy them I would like to have them on my desktop. But I can't find the picture anymore. I've tried searching on several keywords, but no... Your impecunious winelover, MartinD 21:37, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Image:GrandsCrus 1.jpg, found with Special:Allpages. User:dbenbenn 00:43, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! MartinD 05:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Uploading pictures

I found out that it is still not possible to upload pictures through the English version of the page of commons while at by the Dutch page it is possible. Rasbak 11:12, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I've not tried today, but certainly I've had no problem uploading files through the English interface recently, incluing last night (UK time). Thryduulf 11:43, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Full length songs

I just wanted to let everybody know that there are large numbers of full length songs available on the commons, but in my experience the organization on commons is such that they are particularly difficult to find. There's no master list anywhere, except: I have been keeping track of them using a table of my own design on en, along with the articles they go with, the composers, 'etc. w:Wikipedia:Sound/list has the list. Raul654 11:17, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

In theory, thy should all be in Category:music sound. Not sure what's so difficult about this... would you add everything on your list to that category, or an appropriate subcategory? Thanks. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:21, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, that category includes midi files (which are not recordings), samples (which are not full length songs) and includes few full-length music files I did not myself upload and/or already include on my master list. Raul654 15:23, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Basically, you're saying that the category structure is poor, and that you're responsible for that fact. There's no reason you can't create, for example, Category:Full length songs, Category:Symphonies, Category:Recorded music, or whatever. You just have to put in a little effort to do that when uploading. User:dbenbenn 18:06, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Licnece in France

I probably ask a question that has been asked several millions of time.

I noticed in the licence that there is a possibility like this one : "First published in the United States before 1923 - public domain". there is a similar one (less stringent) for Argentina and Soviet Unions.

Does anybody know if there is a similar possibility for France?

I have an od book with lots of nice and intersting pictures about aeronautics (This is my lunch break, I do not have the book with me and I do not remember the date). I do not know if I can upload some of thtese pictures. Romary 11:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

There is a similar possibility for France if the book is old enough. The precise conditions are somewhat complex. Who are the authors of this book and when did they die? David.Monniaux 16:20, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

The book was published in 1938 by "L'illustration" and the authors are Charles Dollfus and Henri Bouché (Title : histoire de l'aéronautique). I have absolutly no idea when they die. Romary 11:36, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Charles Dollfus die in 1981 [14]. The book is more a compilation of pictures and drawings (balloon). The textes is from the authors, the iconography is from other authors.Romary 11:46, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

In this case, you'd have to go look for the death time of the other authors, but they are likely to be somewhat recent given that aeronautics are themselves recent. David.Monniaux 23:12, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Where did this meta-data come from?

I just uploaded Image:Australian beer production 1945.jpg. I got it from a website (don't worry, it's PD) and I was very surprised when the page also showed some meta-data on the right-hand side. I'm used to that happening for photos I've taken, but should it really do that for just any photo? I have no idea if the metadata is correct - it might be, if it is talking about when someone took a photo of an old B&W photo.

If it is wrong, how can it be removed?

--pfctdayelise 13:31, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

The metadata is contained in the image file itself. It may have been added when the picture was taken, or explicitely later on. To remove it, you have to download the file and edit/remove it with a tool that can handle EXIF data. Some picture editing programs can do this, google for "EXIF editor" to find alternatives. Under Linux, ther's a small command line tool called jhead that can do this for jpeg files. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:33, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I meant remove it from the page, not from the image itself. I guess it doesn't really matter? pfctdayelise 14:38, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

As far as I remember here was suggestion to add EXIF data show/hide option (default off) in user preferences, but I can't find it in http://bugs.wikimedia.org. I'll file request. --EugeneZelenko 14:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

There already is a bug about this - Bug:3439. Thryduulf 14:57, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Which has been marked as "WONT FIX". Sigh. Thryduulf 01:48, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Updating the Upload page

It would be great if Template:PD-Australia could be added to the drop-down list of licenses. There are a few other country-specific tags listed at Category:Public domain which may be useful to add as well. Thanks --pfctdayelise 13:35, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal: Special signs in the upload form

It would be great to have some special signs listed also in the upload form, so that they can be added to the file description without having to edit it again after the upload. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 13:38, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

If you mean accents and the like, I support this. At the moment I generally start editing a page on the English Wikipedia and copy whatever symbol I need from the edit window there. Thryduulf 20:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Having had a scout around Special:Allmessages on en, that the code to add the symbols to the bottom of the page is:

<div id="editpage-specialchars" class="plainlinks" style="margin-top:15px;border-width:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:#aaaaaa;padding:2px;"> <small> Insert: <charinsert> Á á É é Í í Ó ó Ú ú </charinsert>   <charinsert> À à È è Ì ì Ò ò Ù ù </charinsert>   <charinsert>  â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ä ä Ë ë Ï ï Ö ö Ü ü </charinsert>   <charinsert> ß </charinsert>   <charinsert> à ã Ñ ñ Õ õ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ç ç Ģ ģ Ķ ķ Ļ ļ Ņ ņ Ŗ ŗ Ş ş Ţ ţ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ć ć Ĺ ĺ Ń ń Ŕ ŕ Ś ś Ý ý Ź ź </charinsert>   <charinsert> Đ đ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ů ů </charinsert>   <charinsert> Č č Ď ď Ľ ľ Ň ň Ř ř Š š Ť ť Ž ž </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ǎ ǎ Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ǒ ǒ Ǔ ǔ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ā ā Ē ē Ī ī Ō ō Ū ū </charinsert>   <charinsert> ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ĉ ĉ Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Ĵ ĵ Ŝ ŝ Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ă ă Ğ ğ Ŭ ŭ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ċ ċ Ė ė Ġ ġ İ ı Ż ż </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ą ą Ę ę Į į Ų ų </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ł ł </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ő ő Ű ű </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ŀ ŀ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ħ ħ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ð ð Þ þ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Œ œ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Æ æ Ø ø Å å </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ə ə </charinsert>   <charinsert> – — … </charinsert>   <charinsert> [+] [[+]] {{+}} </charinsert>   <charinsert> ~ | ° § → </charinsert>   <charinsert> ≈ ± − × ¹ ² ³ </charinsert>   <charinsert> ‘ “ ’ ” </charinsert>   <charinsert> £ € </charinsert>   <charinsert> Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π </charinsert>   <charinsert> Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ </charinsert>   <charinsert> Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω </charinsert>   </small> </div>

This is part of the copyright warning message, which isn't displayed on the upload page. It could be easily added below the pink box on the upload page by any admin (I'm not an admin on commons) by just adding it to MediaWiki:Uploadtext. This would not be ideal imho, as it would be better located below the upload file buton. To do this might require a developer to add a new field, MediaWiki:Charinsert perhaps, that is displayed on that area of the page. This could also be added to normal edit windows to separate the message from the copyright warning (MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning), which would make sense imo. I'll drop a note on Ævar's talk page to get his opinion as a developer on this. Thryduulf 11:33, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

As Ævar appears to be busy, I've raised this as Bug:4100

Thanks very much. I copied special signs to the Mediawiki:Uploadtext, but I wasn't able to isert them in the description box. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 15:46, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Could you to make a comment to that effect on the bug page to that effect, as it will probably save the developer's some work if/when they choose to implement this if the workaround doesn't actually work. Thryduulf 16:06, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I will. Another thing, as to normal edit windows, on Slovenian Wikipedia we have added the special signs to our Mediawiki:Summary page so that they come before the list of all templates, which can be very long sometimes (like on this page). Try to edit e.g. the sandbox there to see how it works. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 15:46, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

That is a much better place for it, the Templates used on this page is of much less use imho. Thryduulf 17:30, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Equivalent template

Is there a template equivalent to this one in WikiCommons?

No (or at least, not yet). Either you could create it here and use it, or you could just use {{PD}} and copy the text of it underneath as a further explanation as to why it is PD.

Personally I would do the latter, unless you would be uploading tons of photos under this template, because there are soooo many US government-specific PD-related tags on en:w. pfctdayelise 23:44, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Please use {{PD-USGov}}, not just {{PD}}. I agree, though, it seems like overkill to have a special template for every tiny fragment of the US federal government. User:dbenbenn 01:20, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

There is something weird going on with Category:Public domain. Why can't I see the subcategory Category:PD US Government? pfctdayelise 01:56, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Because it's title-sorted under U - [15]. When I was browsing bugzilla earlier today I think I saw a bug related to this, but unfortunately I'm too tired to remember which bug it was. Thryduulf 02:48, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

For a temporary solution, see this list I put together by hand, but it needs a permanent solution. Very problematic. pfctdayelise 04:36, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

How about adding "| " on every public domain subcategory? It would make all the categories listed on the first page (I believe). Väsk 15:52, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

That would be the ideal behaviour. But can you give an example? I don't understand what you mean. pfctdayelise 15:59, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

If you write [Category:Public domain] the category will be sorted alfabethicly along with the images and therefore get lost in the category. But if you write [Category:Public domain| ], the category will be sorted on the very top and therefore appear on the first page. Some of the categories already use this system (see Category:PD-Mexico-NIP for an example). Väsk 16:19, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

(Resetting indent) OK, I fixed nearly all of them, but there is a bunch under "V" that are set up strangely, I don't know how to fix them properly. See User:Pfctdayelise/Public_domain for a list. pfctdayelise 02:41, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Problems with SVG

Is it just me, or do anyone has problems with this format? (Sometimes the image doesn't show, regardless of the number of times refresh the page on Internet Explorer, and they never show when I use Firefox)

Some of the SVGs are simple broken. Some of them are very large, so the server gives up when trying to render them. Also, two days ago all SVGs where broken for some hours due to a bug. Can you give an example of which images you have problems with? -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 00:09, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Image:Germany Laender Arbeitslos.png

There is a strange behaviour with this image; it is categorized as "Germany" but it is shown in "Country of Europe" category. —Mac9 11:16, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

That's because it contained {{Category:Germany}} instead of [[Category:Germany]]. I fixed it. {{Category:Germany}} caused the category header of Category:Germany to be included in the image description. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:09, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Semi-Automatic categorization

I have written a tool that (hopefully) helps people categorize images that are on the commons, or are supposed to be compied from a wikipedia. Please have a look:

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CommonSense.php

The tool works based on where the image is used, or, alternatively, based on keywords. Please try it, any feedback is welcome. If you like it, spread the word... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 00:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Wow, great idea. Two minor suggestions: I think you should link to the check-usage tool since it makes sense to use them together; and I think you should move the placement of the "Random orphan" button. I will try and test it out over this week. :) pfctdayelise 05:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Looks very promising! However I had time only to test several images... --EugeneZelenko 06:04, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi, It looks very useful. I have a doubt. I've tryed it with an image from a silk factory in Khotan that I've uploaded recently, Image:Khotan-fabrica-seda-d02.jpg, I've initially categorized it with Category:Khotan and Category:Silk. I used the "Use keywords from the description text to find more categories" (useful) option and it suggested me Category:Silk, Category:Khotan, Category:2005, Category:Textiles and Category:Cities_in_China.

My question is, if it is better to categorize the image with Silk and Textiles, or is better just with with silk and categorize silk in Textiles category as a subcategory? And, is a good idea to categorize the year for so much images? (I don't know, it's just a question).

Best regards, --Colegota 08:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! a few answers:

1. the suggested categories can never be perfect - the tool is pretty dumb, it does not know what the image really shows or what the categories actually mean.
2. "Use keywords from the description text to find more categories" will often produce much "noise", i.e. misleading categories. It's intended for situations in which you don't find anything useful initially. As it simply looks for all the words in the text, I don't know how to make it "smarter".
3. Category:Textiles would not show up in the suggested list if Category:Silk would have been itself correctly categorized as a subcategory of Category:Textiles (right now, it's an orpahn category, which is bad). Redundant "broader" categories are automatically removed from the suggestions.
4. Year-Categories are only useful for images that have strong historic relations, or artwork that belongs to a specific period. I will probably add a filter, so year-categories will no longer be suggested, because it often is just the year when the picture was taken, or, worse, uploaded. Or maybe it would be even better to all year-categories up to, say, the year 2000 or so.

Thanks again for your input! -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, here are some things i plan to improve:

• make the interface simpler. Some of the options are not really needed. Also, I intentionally separated the "move image" and "commons cleanup" use cases - maybe that wasn't such a godd idea. I'll have to think about that a bit more.
• add some more filters (like for year-categories - see above).
• make a multilingual interface, automatically detect user language. This would make the tool much more useful for people that don't know english so good. When I have the technical stuff set up, i'll ask for translation help.

please keep trying it and giving feedback! thanks -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

sad news: the box hosting all my tools (zedler, the wikimedia toolserver), just died due to a bad disk. It may be dome weeks until it is back up :( -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:33, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi. I'm so sorry! I find it very useful. Please do it again when you have time.

I found specially useful the "Use keywords from the description text to find more categories". When I start upload images I know the description text (usually taken form wikipedias) but I must to search Commons looking for categories "in Commons". And, if not, in Wikipedias.

Maybe you can code a tool just for fill with description and look for categories without have any previously uploaded image?

Regards, --Colegota 11:35, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

What is a logo?

File:Apple Macintosh Logo.JPG

Logo?

I tagged the image to the left with {{logo}} but one user, Husky, asked about this. Husky meant that this is not an image of a logo but a photograph with the logo in it. Commons:Licensing says that: "Specifically, the following are generally not allowed: [..] Trademarked symbols, logos, etc". My interpretation is that photos of company logos and something else may be acceptable (for example, a photo of the front of a car with the manufacturer's logo visible) but that photos of nothing but the logo are disqualified. Any other interpretations? Thuresson 01:42, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I see it the same way: as long as the logo is shown in context, it's OK. The picture shown here is not. Arguably, the logo should also not be the main subject of the picture, but that's debatable (how about the McDonalds-M on a staff on a highway somewhere? Would be OK to take a picture of that, IMHO). -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 02:09, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Agree with both of the above. User:dbenbenn 03:54, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Definitely logo is main subject of image. --EugeneZelenko 06:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

With the McDonalds staff example above, I would say that a photograph of the staff with the M on the top would be ok, as the staff isn't a logo. A photograph of just the M would probably not be OK here, whether it would be fair use on projects that allow that is more debatable. Thryduulf 11:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I just noticed Category:Car company logos. Looks like most of those need to be deleted. User:dbenbenn 04:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

In de we have the policy that we ACCEPT logos provided that either they are PD (lack of originality= or "Panoramafreiheit"-photographs ("bleibend angebracht") --Historiograf 17:38, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Image keywords; redundant cats; what we call ourselves

1. I have been toying with the idea of explicitly adding keywords to my images. eg. for Image:Five Pagoda Temple, Huhhot, Inner Mongolia.JPG I might add a line to the summary saying Keywords: Five Pagoda Temple, Buddhist temple, Buddhism, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, Buddhist and another line with the same thing in Chinese. This is because I think a lot of people must be using (or should be using?) a restricted Google search to search Commons. There are too many uncategorised or badly categorised images for commons to be reliable. And I never use commons search myself, because the performance is so poor, unless I know exactly what I am looking for.

   Just wondering what people think about this - can't hurt? Adding unnecessary bulk to image info pages? Will become redundant once full categorisation is implemented? Don't care?

Hi! I think text info is ok on image pages. There is "a few bytes" compared to image size and it it's useful for people interested in the image. And also can be a good way to find it via serach engines. --Colegota 08:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

1. Going through Category:Public domain, I noticed its child [[Category:PD]]. It is quite large. Most of the images in here seem to also be in Public domain. Can anyone explain the existence and purpose of PD? If not, I propose it is deleted and any files that aren't already in Public domain are moved there.

   Also, Category:PD-user and Category:PD-self seem very similar. Why would you use PD-user - if another user created the image, wouldn't they upload it themselves? Could these be merged?

   • I think PD-user is a good choice if you're uploading something to commons that a different user uploaded to a specific project as PD - e.g. w:en:Image:Chinese temple gate-bright.jpg. Thryduulf 11:12, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Good point, thanks. pfctdayelise 23:13, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

1. What is the name (or what do you suggest is the name) for Commons users? Commonsians? Commons-ites? Commonsers? Commoners? :P

--pfctdayelise 05:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

1. • I think "Commoners" is apropriate as "Those who have a right to exercise a right of common are known as commoners", and AIUI the Wikimedia Commons was named by analogy to common land being a common resource. Thryduulf 11:12, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, here goes:

1. Do not use keywords, use Categories. To help categorize orphan images, i have written the tool CommonSense - it's still experminetal, but please try it out. One or two sentences that describe the contents of the image are also important to have on the description page.
2. google does not index image description pages, because google belives the page is an image itself (because of the file extension in the name).
3. most images on the commons are not PD, but copyleft. There are also many PD images. License categories tend to become pretty large, but they are not intended for searchin anyway.
4. PD-self is there so you don't need an extra statement that you created the image yourself. But maybe PD-user should always be used, not sure, especially because of the additional clause in the PD-self template.

Just my 2¢ -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:18, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't proposing to stop using categories, but to use keywords as well. But I had a closer look at google and it seems you are right. This seems like a huge shame, actually. I used the image search and looked for "china site:commons.wikimedia.org" and it only came back with 5 images that weren't even from here! Is Google indexing the commons well enough? pfctdayelise 23:13, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

No, not at all. But there isn't anything we can do to get Google to index image description pages, is there? Google should be paying attention to the MIME type, not the silly file extension. User:dbenbenn 01:28, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I've I create articles I use our local search to find and include images but that's a lot of work with themes like sunset. So keywords can be useful, anyhow it's better to write real descriptions using these words or creating the articles yourself. Making an article at Commons is a work of 20 seconds if you're used to do so, if you interwiki them from Wikipedias etc it could be a little bit more. --Saperaud 06:17, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

As I have seen someone else say, I don't understand what articles on commons represent. Are they encyclopedia articles? Definitions? What do they ideally look like? If there are guidelines that explain any of this, I'd love to see them. So I don't like articles. But maybe I will make some gallery pages to help google.^ Or is that what you meant anyway? pfctdayelise 13:06, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

^not that I care about google, but helping wikimedians who are using google

Galleries are mainly extensions to Wikipedia articles, serving as a database for authors and a feature for readers. We have dozens of images for certain themes but it is impossible to include them all into encyclopedia articles. So we have f.e. Ephesos with a lot of illustrative material and articles like en:Ephesus in several languages as background. Other encyclopedias are using only a small amount of their images - we have the possibility to use them all without to make Wikipedia a picture book. The reversal effect is that with Wikimedia Commons we have an image archive which is strongly sorted by theme and has like an encyclopedia all kinds of illustrative material + links where you can find their background written in your mother tongue. These links and a proper presentation of these images can only be given with articles, not with categories. I don't know any image archive where you can realize such a network between good media stuff and background materials in several languages. There might be archives with several millions of images but their usefulness has limits which we have not. Wikimedia Commons profits from good encyclopedia articles describing what can be seen in the images. Wikipedia profits from good image archives because they help making an article and improve it's readability in several ways. If you want to write an article like rainbow or Östra Hoby kyrka it is really helpful to have your illustration prepared by someone. --Saperaud 01:36, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

why do my drawings not show up?

Does anybody know why my black-and-white gif files with plant drawings do not show up in the gallery format? See for instance Tradescantia blossfeldiana. What should I do? On this page I included a 350px version. I am planning to upload many more. Elly 18:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

The problem was that the image was too big. For efficiency reasons, MediaWiki won't thumbnail PNG or GIF images that are more than 12.5 megapixels. So what you should do is upload the full-size version, then scale it down and upload the thumbnailed version with the same title. That way the original, large version is available for when MediaWiki gets the ability to scale large images. That's what I just did at Image:Tradescantia blossfeldiana ellywa.gif

Also, please use PNG, not GIF, for these drawings. User:dbenbenn 19:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I will upload the smaller sized PNG. I do not prefer PNG because it leads to larger files. It is funny, in this example, your gif is bigger in bits than my gif picture, but it loads in the gallery. Anyway, I will upload a smaller png in addition to the larger gif. Elly 19:39, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and uploaded Image:Tradescantia blossfeldiana ellywa.png. Note that the file is smaller, 284703 bytes for PNG versus 380432 bytes for GIF. That's one reason why PNG is preferable (another is that thumbnails are better, since PNG supports more colors. Also, PNG supports transparency much better). User:dbenbenn 01:02, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Pink image

This image is buggy, compare the thumb, why is it pink?

Can someone fix this please, buggy state was reported on irc channel #wikimedia-tech. - Z. 00:38, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I've seen this problem before with other transparent PNGs. I think the problem is with ImageMagick's thumbnailing; the image itself seems to be fine. The Gimp is able to scale it without pinkness appearing. The only way I know to fix the problem is to make it have a white background instead of transparent. User:dbenbenn 01:16, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Fixed now, sort of. User:dbenbenn 01:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Inactive admins

Enforcing the inactive admins policy, I've asked the stewards to remove sysop rights for :

• Grunt - no edit since 23 April 2005, 1 edit in the last 12 months
• Nadavspi - no edit since 20 February 2005, 45 edits in the last 12 months

villy ♦ ✎ 07:38, 30 November 2005 (UTC)