Commons talk:Walters Art Museum

Creative Commons

The website, http://thewalters.org/rights-reproductions.aspx,wc says that the content is licensed under the the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Is it outdated?Smallman12q (talk) 01:42, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

We have permission (via OTRS) that images uploaded here will be CC-BY-SA. This supersedes the Walters website. We'll check and see if they want to change the website also (I hope so) but at the same time don't think it's mandatory that they do. Cheers. Aude (talk) 02:05, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed they have changed their website. See for example http://art.thewalters.org/detail/80435/footed-dish-with-animal-motifs/ (click license, lower left). Now licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License. --Pete Tillman (talk) 21:59, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Preparing Creator templates prior to batch upload

I uploaded a table of artists of works from Walters Art Museum which will be uploaded and placed it at google docs. I am at present working on matching Walters Art Museum artists to Commons Creator templates. In many cases we have categories but not Creator templates. Any help in matching or in creating new Creator templates will be appreciated. --Jarekt (talk) 03:55, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I've had a look at the table. I'm a bit surprised at some of the names, like Pope Gregory I or St John Climacus: surely they must be persons represented in the artworks. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 10:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I asked about it once and Some of the museum items are old books. Those would carry the unusual creators. However the way I see it we should create creator templates for painters and sculptures first, since those templates would likely affect most files. --Jarekt (talk) 03:26, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Medium, dimensions, date parameters are not templatified

Some feedback re. File:Thai - Vessantara Jataka, Chapter 4 - Vessantara, Maddi, Jali, and Kanha Enter the Forest - Walters 35234.jpg.

• medium, dimensions, date parameters are not templatified although they can and should be. "Bangkok" does not belong to a "date".
• Artist is apparently unknown ("Thai") but {{PD-old-100}} is claimed (with a date of "late 19th century").
• Since the photo is not PD I would like to see the "PD-old-xx" less prominent. Maybe just as a link to the template or at least below the other license tags. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 12:26, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

• I agree that medium, dimensions, date parameters should be using templates
• At the moment {{PD-old-100}} is the default in Template:Walters Art Museum license with the idea that in some cases other templates would be used, like {{PD-old-70}}. I guess in this case {{PD-old-70}} would be more appropriate.
• In Template:Walters Art Museum license I was trying to capture the complications of CC photographs of 2D and 3D PD-old artworks. 2D artwork will be mostly without frames so at least in US can be {{PD-Art}}. Also descriptions are provided as CC but if trivial than they are {{PD-ineligible}}. Current layout was trying to strike a balance between all those options in a single template, since it would be unpractical to have a license template with different parts being less or more prominent. --Jarekt (talk) 13:06, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks, Jarekt! "late 19th century" may not even be PD-old-70 if nothing is known about the age of the artist when creating the work - I would nominate it for deletion then. At least PD-old-100 should not be there - that is a way to far claim.
• Sad that the museum did not agree to simply a PD-license (or CC-zero)... if there are no frames it may be PD-art - yes. However, here in that example image there is a big frame and so PD-old-100 is irrelevant except someone does a crop. Maybe there should be a explanation sentence added to the template if it gets added to all uploads (some with and some without frame). --Saibo (Δ) 14:07, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that CC-zero would be easier, but CC is what they agree to and as far as I know the source website is still customary CC-nc. I do not agree that PD-old-100 is irrelevant - if the object is not PD than CC of the photo would be irrelevant. And we will have to make sure that all the uploaded artworks are PD-old, by matching them to creator templates if possible. See previous post about that. --Jarekt (talk) 15:16, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, yes - it is not relevant in the sense that it gets overridden (with restrictions) by the CC license (however, this CC license is only possible if the original is PD, which should be documented - just maybe not with a expanded template which btw sorts this image in a PD category which is wrong). --Saibo (Δ) 15:43, 28 February 2012 (UTC) DR: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Thai - Vessantara Jataka, Chapter 4 - Vessantara, Maddi, Jali, and Kanha Enter the Forest - Walters 35234.jpg. --Saibo (Δ) 15:49, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, our templating system does not work well with handling multiple copyrights in a single work. See some of our featured sounds, for example, which often have 2 or 3 different licensing templates to cover different aspects of the work: lyrics, musical composition, performance, etc. Current best practice is to use separate templates for each of the separately copyrighted (or formerly copyrighted) components and label which aspect each template covers. This has the advantage of accurately explaining the full copyright situation of the work. It has the disadvantages of being confusing, and muddying the automatic license categorization. Until we develop a more robust license information system (hopefully not based on templates), this is the best we can do in the meantime. Regarding the metadata problems, I fully agree with your points. Right now we are just importing this data from the Walters database, and much of it does not map cleanly to Commons templates. We are trying to pre-map as much of it as possible (artist names to Creator templates, for example), but I'm sure we will miss a lot of it. Any assistance cleaning up this metadata would be greatly appreciated. Kaldari (talk) 21:38, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, Kaldari! Regarding the templates: I think you all are aware of the problems (at least now) and try the best. Regarding the metadata: yes, I guessed it. If there is no easy way to convert it to templates before upload it needs to be a task for manual or bot work later on. As happy I would be to help with metadata processing, I really cannot start a new project for time management reasons, sorry. --Saibo (Δ) 23:46, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Review of the current batch of test-uploads by Dylan

I took a look at the current batch of test-uploads. They are online at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Media_contributed_by_the_Walters_Art_Museum

Here are some notes.--Dylan k (talk) 02:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Dylan! :-) I have moved them from top of the page to bottom (there is where new sections usually are added). --Saibo (Δ) 02:12, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I know you're still testing the waters, but, a few days ago I did some categorizing and also placed a number of images in articles =) Can't wait to get my hands on more! Thank you to the Walters and Dylan!! SarahStierch (talk) 04:28, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

OTRS Ticket Message

I see a note that reads as follows, but I don't understand it. The permission for use of this work has been archived in the Wikimedia OTRS system. It is available as ticket #2012021710000834 for users with an OTRS account. … Ticket link: https://ticket.wikimedia.org/otrs/index.pl?Action=AgentTicketZoom&TicketNumber=2012021710000834 — what does this mean? --Dylan k (talk) 02:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

OTRS is the system we use to store, track, and respond to emails at our scores of email addresses that are answered by teams. (not individuals) That's where you sent your email to (with the letter scan attached) and where the response came from. I don't follow what else might be confusing, does that clear it up? Jeremyb (talk) 02:18, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

That clears it up. Thanks. --Dylan k (talk) 02:20, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Object History vs. "Provenance"

I really do think that the field named "object history" should be called "provenance" because that really is the name for this type of information about an artwork. Conservation history, and exhibition history, those are named well, but is there a compelling reason to name it "object history" rather than provenance? --Dylan k (talk) 02:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

'Conservation history' and 'exhibition history' are new fields; before their creation this information was stored in 'object history'. I agree a renaming into 'provenance' would be clearer, but this means we have to check our older files. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 09:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done I renamed "object history" to "provenance" in {{Walters Art Museum artwork}} template. I will start talk at {{Artwork}} to do the same there. It seems that is the proper name for this specific concept in art history and we should keep it. --Jarekt (talk) 20:01, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

You could also hyperlink the museaum name in Attribution so it'd be

"Attribution: Walters Art Museum" or
"Attribution: Walters Art Museum, http://thewalters.org/ " Smallman12q (talk) 02:53, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of linking within the attribution, especially that first example, but would it be possible to link to the page about the artwork rather than to the institution's homepage? This way, as and when more scholarship becomes available on the museum's site, it'll be easy to see that from this hyperlink.

Current Location

"current location" can, for some objects, change quite frequently. For example, the painting "The Ideal City" moved back and forth between the gallery and the conservation lab, maybe a dozen times, last year. If we choose to publish "current location" from the museum's data, we run the risk of it becoming incorrect, over time. It might be better to indicate that the object is located at the museum, but not to specify which gallery it is in, because this information is likely to change over time. --Dylan k (talk) 02:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

How often do objects move from one cluster of buildings to a completely separate facility? or from one museum to another? (e.g. on loan or as the result of a transaction) --Jeremyb (talk) 02:21, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

it is infrequent, though it does happen, when an artwork will remain on view, but it moves from one gallery or building to another. More frequently, it will go from "on view" to "not on view" -- this can happen for conservation reasons, at which point it will go to a lab, either at the museum or elsewhere; this can also happen because the object is on loan to another instution, at which point the location changes to "not on view traveling" Sometimes, a whole week can go by with none of these changes. Other times, there are dozens of changes all at once. I'm not concerned about the frequency of changes as I am about the buildup of the changes over a period of months or years, which would eventually render this information useless or require regular maintenance. --Dylan k (talk) 02:36, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I think we can skip this information without much harm. If people want to visit the museums having a look at the museum's website seems the most sensible thing to do to get up to date information. --Zolo (talk) 10:31, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

May be we can store museum department, collection, etc. in that field. --Jarekt (talk) 13:32, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Mentioning the curatorial department is a good idea. Any information that can help identify the work is welcome when scholars have the annoying habit of using vague references such as 'the Virgin and Child from Siena now in the collections of the Met'. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 14:28, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I've removed the current display location from the upload script and the existing images. Jastrow, if you have specific suggestions on what data fields would be useful for that, let me know. Kaldari (talk) 20:44, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Dimensions

The museum does not provide a standard format for information about the dimensions of an object. Have we decided on a solution for this? --Dylan k (talk) 02:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

My current thinking is to upload them in the original format and than I will run a bot with bunch of regular expressions to recognize multiple frequently used formats and replace them. That is what I already did on current uploads. --Jarekt (talk) 13:57, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Linking to the Museum

I don't mind, but somebody at the museum is likely to ask: "can the link back to the museum's website be made somehow more prominent?" --Dylan k (talk) 02:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done. I changed source field to provide link to museum main page and the artwork. Actually both of them are already at each page , link to the main page can be found after expanding institution template and link to the artwork can be found after clicking on the accession number, but not in very intuitive places. --Jarekt (talk) 05:35, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Cateogries

On a file like this one: File:Chinese - Sarasvati - Walters 35292 - Detail.jpg The categories given are things like "art of india in the walters art museum" which is good, but i wonder: is there no general category for things like "art of india"? I want to be sure that the categorization doesn't cause a silo effect. --Dylan k (talk) 02:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Categories can be part of other categories. diff Jeremyb (talk) 02:36, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Our categories are organised as an arborescence, so Category:Art of India in the Walters Art Museum is a child of Category:Collections of art of India by museum, which itself is a child of Category:Art of India. I agree a picture shouldn't be classified under a 'museum' category only, to avoid the silo effect you mention. Take for instance File:Leaf calligraphy Met 1982.120.4.jpg: it's categorised under Category:Islamic art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as Category:Safavid art and Category:16th-century illuminated manuscripts. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 09:26, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

We definitely need to go through the various Walters collection categories and make sure they are all assigned to other categories. Kaldari (talk) 20:46, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I was planning to do that once those categories start filling in. I do not want any body deleting "empty categories" --Jarekt (talk) 03:28, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Geography

For a file like this one: File:Egyptian - Woman Kneeling Before an Offering Table - Walters 322.jpg The Geography information is missing. If you look at the source at http://art.thewalters.org/detail/23169 you can see that the museum provides: "Geography: middle Egypt (Place of Discovery)". The museum often provides one or many data cells to describe an object's place or origin, etc. Is this something that the upload tool can currently accomidate? Another, different example of the way the museum provides Geography info. can be found at http://art.thewalters.org/detail/34269 --Dylan k (talk) 02:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I added new "geography" row where fields like place of origin and place of discovery can be shown, if provided. --Jarekt (talk) 05:37, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll look into adding this to the upload script. Kaldari (talk) 20:47, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm confused. What's the difference between 'geography' and 'provenance'? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 20:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

en:Provenance in English language when referring to art history means "chronology of the ownership". {{Artwork}} template calls it "object history", but "Provenance" should be less ambiguous (at least in English). That is the term used on Walters Museum website and most other similar websites. Jastrow, I notice you speak French could you (or any other French speaker) add translation of this term in Template:Walters Art Museum artwork/i18n. Actually we are missing many other languages as well. --Jarekt (talk) 02:58, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

What's the difference between 'provenance' and 'conservation history' then? Also the place of discovery is a different information from the place of origin. Lots of Attic vases have been found in Vulci; they're way different from the Etrurian vases produced in Vulci. As far as I know the Met uses 'geography' (or 'culture') only for the place of origin. The V&A uses 'place of origin' for both, but differentiates the information ('Attica, Greece (made)' and 'Italy (found)'). The British Museum uses 'production place' and 'place (findspot)'. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 09:28, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Conservation history is supposed to be used for restorations and the like. By the way, what is the source of translations for "provenance" in Template:Walters Art Museum artwork/i18n ? Some are different from those in {{Provenance}}. --Zolo (talk) 09:57, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah yes, sorry. In French 'conservation' can also mean 'curation', hence my confusion. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 10:38, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Zolo, I used interwiki links from en:Provenance as the source of translations for "provenance" in Template:Walters Art Museum artwork/i18n and than I added Polish version I found on the web. I forgot about Template:Provenance. We probably should have only one place for those translations. --Jarekt (talk) 12:47, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I have moved proveanance to {{Provenance/i18n}} (pretty simple, though it is potentially brittle to access a subtemplate shortcutting the template. I have kept the words of the template and kept the one from interwikis in comments. ~--Zolo (talk) 17:39, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

It looks like the Walters database has 4 different kinds of geographical info related to artworks: Source of Materials, Place of Origin, Place of Discovery, and Place Depicted. Do we want to include all of them as optional fields? I'm not really a fan of grouping them under 'Geography' as they don't really have much to do with each other, other than all being related to places. I would rather list them as separate fields and keep the template syntax simple. Kaldari (talk) 02:54, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

It would be fine with me either way. --Jarekt (talk) 12:35, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Exhibition History

There is an error in the way that exhibition history is written on the file at File:Tibetan - Identification Deity Vajrabhairava with Retinue - Walters 35293.jpg In this case, the semi-colons from the original record do not separate distinct exhibition items, but rather, they separate locations where that exhibition was shown (this is my guess). I can provide further detail about the way the museum's exhibition histories are structured, if needed. --Dylan k (talk) 02:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I used regular expressions to split the string into lines, but if that does not work we can leave as is or find a different pattern. Is there some pattern that can be used to correctly split it into separate lines? --Jarekt (talk) 14:02, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

The data structure of the exhibition history seems to be complex and not easily parsable. For example, a work can have multiple exhibitions and each exhibition can have multiple locations. I think we should leave these alone for now, unless there is some way that we can reliably parse them correctly (which doesn't appear to be the case). Kaldari (talk) 20:54, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

That is my take on this too. I am no longer trying to parse them. --Jarekt (talk) 21:11, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

New batch of images

User:Kaldari uploaded a new batch of images and I run my post processing AWB script recognizing most commons patterns and applying Commons i18n templates when possible. A few comments on current batch:

1. Creators: lets concentrate first on images with creator templates and creator categories and on anonymous artists ("Egyptian", etc.) I am working on creating some new ones.
2. Conservation History: what is the current treatment of that field?
3. Tags: many images in the collection have tags . We cannot use them very well at the moment (Commons unfortunately have no similar construct), but I think we should preserve them for possible future use. May be create a new field "Museum_tags" which for http://art.thewalters.org/detail/11703 would be in the format "Museum_tags = man/prayer/drawing/line/religion/muslim/muslin". We would not display that tag at the moment.
4. I think the newly uploaded images should have some category indicating that they need to be post-process. My bot could than remove this category after post-processing. May be Category:Media from the Walters Art Museum: no internationalization or Category:Media from the Walters Art Museum: no i18n

Additional review and comments would be appreciated. --Jarekt (talk) 16:13, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Feedback

A few small points:

1. Do we need to have a number in the file title ?

The number in the filename (I assume that that is what you mean by title) is to ensure uniqueness of the filename otherwise there is a good chance that some authors have more than one artwork with the same name or that we have multiple pictures of it. Adding a unique number to the end is the easiest way (and standard approach) to ensure unique filenames during mass upload. --Jarekt (talk) 13:07, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

That number also corresponds to the museum's accession number, which is its own classification for the art object depicted. Retaining this number makes it easier to look the artwork up in other places. --Dylan k (talk) 20:42, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

2. In the ownership history of File:Tony Johannot - Old Man Blessing a Girl Kneeling - Walters 371304.jpg. the non English character "ô" became "ô", and then the semi-colon was apparently interpreted as a separator between two events, giving a weird-looking result.

I fixed it but this is going to complicate parsing a lot. Kaldari, is doing the initial parsing of ownership history now, so he will have to get involved, but I see only 2 solutions. Find and replace the HTML characters before the upload (we did it once by copying a lot of text to some page on Wikipedia, saving and than copying it back). The other way would be to make regular expression rules more complicated to catch that scenario. --Jarekt (talk) 13:07, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I've fixed this in the upload script. Kaldari (talk) 04:53, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

3. In the inscription field of File:Charles Chaplin - Girl in Confirmation Dress at Prayer - Walters 371325.jpg, what does "Turkey Hill" refer to ?

4. Maybe use {{Anonymous}} for "artist = Thai" and this kind of things. It could help finding find that do not require creator templates without adding ad hoc categories. --Zolo (talk) 10:08, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes "artist = {{Anonymous}} (Thai)" would be better --Jarekt (talk) 13:07, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

5. Is the full content of the "creator" field uploaded. File:French - Covered Bowl with Flowers and Plum Blossoms - Walters 491982.jpg just has French, while the Walters' database has "Chinese (Ceramicist); French (Metalworker)".--Zolo (talk) 07:57, 22 March 2012 (UTC). Same thing in File:Albrecht Dürer - Ecce Homo - Walters 37243.jpg--Zolo (talk) 12:53, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

6. The "place of origin" does not always match what seeems to be on the museum website. See File:Egyptian - Intaglio Portrait of Cleopatra II - Walters 421319.jpg and File:Greek - Head of Queen Arsinoe II (?) - Walters 42190.jpg.--Zolo (talk) 21:49, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Provenance vs. Object history

Although I think it's a good idea to name the provenance parameter 'provenance' (since this is the name of the data from the Walters Museum), I'm not sure I like displaying the data as 'provenance' rather than 'object history'. Only museum people and art historians know what 'provenance' means, while everyone understands what 'object history' means. Since Commons is designed to be used by everyone on the planet, we should make our data labels easily understandable. Thoughts? Kaldari (talk) 20:39, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I changed it based on a brief discussion here. I originally added "object history" to {{Artwork}} after discussion about if we should use term "Provenance" or "Object history". We assumed that "object history" would be easier to understand by more people and that is why it was chosen. However based on recent discussions here and here it seems like term "Object history" is often misunderstood to include "conservation history". On the other hand "Provenance" seem to be confused with "place of origin" (in French?). User:Zolo proposed to use term "ownership history" which is more precise than "object history" and less elitist than "Provenance". May be that would be the best solution. --Jarekt (talk) 21:43, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

That sounds like a good solution. Kaldari (talk) 22:14, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Useless information I'm sure to you both now but, in the museum and art collecting world we use the two words interchangeably. Provenance and actually provenience - regardless of the French meaning, etc. I've worked in galleries where we've used one spelling, and museums where we've used the other. And I'm comfortable with having "object history" be the term of use, versus either "P" word; just adding input as a museum person :) SarahStierch (talk) 02:39, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I thought 'provenance' meant it was an act of God, but this is why I don't work in a museum ;) Kaldari (talk) 02:58, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I seem to have been thinking of 'providence', which I thought was a city in Rhode Island! Kaldari (talk) 03:02, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

According to en:Provenance, 'provenance' and 'provenience' in archaeology are two different concepts, one relating to the ownership history and the other relating to the findspot. Yet in the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum for instance, 'provenance' describes the findspot; ownership history and present location are stored in 'collection name'. My point is that museums don't all have the same practices; there seems to be a difference in particular between museums storing archaeological artefacts and other galleries. So we have to find names that minimise confusion, and to document with care the 'correct' use of the template. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 12:46, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Current Upload

There are many different tasks related to the current mass upload some of them already taken care of and some not:

• File upload, handled by User:Kaldari, anticipating that all of the files will be uploaded by some time this weekend
• file metadata internationalization handled by user:Jarekt with AWB based bot. Performed on the files in the Category:Media contributed by the Walters Art Museum: waiting for i18n‎
  • If there are more places we can apply i18n templates, I am open to suggestions (may be titles?)
• Many artists have Creator template at the upload time, but many do not. user:JarektBot/AddCreators2WaltersFiles.py code is used to add either Creator template or {{Anonymous|Country}} and corresponding category to files in the Category:Media from the Walters Art Museum: no creator template. The bot reads 3 column CSV file with old name, new name and category fields. If old name is found in the file author field it is being replaced with the new name and a category is added. I need help expanding that file.
• File categorization is not being done in organized fashion at the moment. May be we should add Category:Media contributed by the Walters Art Museum: needs category review‎ to all the uploads and ask people to remove it when done.
• Adding files to articles. (?)

Also I think that at some point we need to advertise more widely at Commons:Village Pump, Main_Page and Wikipedia and ask for more help. It might be easier after we are done with the upload and initial bot processing. --Jarekt (talk) 13:53, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

For your last two points, it may help to replace NARA with Walters at the Main Page. --Zolo (talk) 15:15, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Kaldari (talk) 23:38, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

That is what I meant by Main_Page --Jarekt (talk) 13:19, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

See, note about the upload on Commons:Village_pump#Walters_Art_Museum_mass_upload--Jarekt (talk) 12:58, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

On the Creator matching front my user:JarektBot/AddCreators2WaltersFiles.py code updates now this page with the list of the most frequently repeating names in the Category:Media from the Walters Art Museum: no creator template folder. Just in case someone would like to know which creators are most needed to be matched with Commons categories and creator templates ;) But seriously, if you match or create any than let me know about it on this page. --Jarekt (talk) 13:19, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I have created the following cat/creators, but with a different spelling (pinyin instead of the more or less deprecated Wade Giles) Some other Chinese creators should also have a Pinyin spelling. I can provide the transliteration but I could not find any info on them.

• Ch'ien Ch'en-ch'un -> Category:Qian Chenqun
• Yüan Shang-t'ung -> Category:Yuan Shangtong
• Wang Yu-tun -> Category:Wang Youdun
• Ch'iang P'u -> Category:Jiang Pu

--Zolo (talk) 21:50, 25 March 2012 (UTC) Some more (kept speling or disambig):

• Ren Bonian -> category:Ren Bonian
• Fei Yigeng -> Category:Fei Yigeng
• Du Jin -> Category:Du Jin
• Zhang Xiong -> Category:Zhang Xiong (1803-1886)
• Zhang Lu -> Category:Zhang Lu (1464-1538)
• Zhou Xian -> Category:Zhou Xian
• Zha Shibiao -> Category:Zha Shibiao
• Lan Shen -> Category:Lan Shen

Thanks both sets are being used now.--Jarekt (talk) 12:48, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Clean up

Just some reminders for myself:

• Fix artists that are supposed to be "Style of X" rather than "X"
• Fix images that have multiple creators

Kaldari (talk) 07:54, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

There is also "Workshop of" and "Studio of" etc. --Jarekt (talk) 17:50, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Upload issues

Some filenames were not unique and resulted in several images overwriting each other for example:

• File:1350 BC) and Queen Tiye - Walters 4267.jpg
• File:1350 BC) and Queen Tiye - Walters 4267 - Reverse.jpg

I wonder if there is an easy way to detect images which have multiple overloded versions. --Jarekt (talk) 11:51, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, this happened for some Scarab images that didn't have proper 'view's set the in the Walters database. I actually compensated for this in the script, but it still broke in the cases where there were more than 3 images with the same name, or the artist had a slash character in it (the case above). I'll fix all of these today. Kaldari (talk) 20:39, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Most probably incorrect place of origin in quite many files like File:Egyptian - Priest Holding the Figure of Osiris - Walters 22174 - Left.jpg-Zolo (talk) 20:56, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Just like NARA

Hi all, due to the large mass of images and the people-power needed, we should consider developing this project like Commons:National_Archives_and_Records_Administration. This includes the the categorization project and so forth. Perhaps someone can be savvy to create something sexy out of all of this like the page seen via NARA. I'm in the categorizin' mood....but...I think it'd be great, and be super awesome for us when we can put Walters on the front page of Commons too :) Sarah (talk) 02:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I have categorized many NARA images but never noticed the project page, but you are right it is neat. As I proposed sometime before we could create new category, like Category:Media contributed by the Walters Art Museum: needs category review, add it to all the images and ask people to remove it once categories are checked. Than we can track down how many are categorized. Also I looked at Commons:National_Archives_and_Records_Administration/Categorize/Progress which is updated every hour by a bot. That is a lot of effort to set up, but it would be great. --Jarekt (talk) 02:50, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I loved that bot process, it was rather validating as a user - I loved seeing the work I did "progress" with the system that they had in place. IMHO :D Good for crowdsourcing! Sarah (talk) 03:08, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

bad uploads

Some uploads are bad. See File:Piri Reis - Map of the Western Coast of Greece From the Island of Levcas Going North as Far as Paxi Island - Walters W658141A - Full Page.jpg or File:Piri Reis - Map of the Islands of Kefalonia, Ithaca, and Aya Mavra Off the Western Coast of Greece - Walters W658139A - Full Page.jpg for example. I do not know if there are more. --Jarekt (talk) 03:38, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

The copies of those two files I had were bad, but I redownloaded them and have fixed them with the full versions. Let me know if you find any others. Kaldari (talk) 03:02, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Resolution

I don't understand, at what resolution are images being released? Nemo 14:16, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

all resolutions --Jarekt (talk) 16:15, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

What do you mean? Are they releasing them at the highest resolution thay have? Is there a max resolution they're allowing us to get? --Nemo 12:57, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

The images we got are at the highest resolution they keep in their database. And unlike Bundesarchiv which specifically states that only this digitization (and resolution) is released under CC license, if you find somewhere a higher resolution version of some images than it can be uploaded under the same license. --Jarekt (talk) 02:23, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. --Nemo 09:33, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Update on problematic artists

I've placed all the images which have mismatched artists (em_art_creators[name] doesn't match em_creators[name]) in the Category:Media contributed by the Walters Art Museum: needs artist update. This should include all the artists that are listed as "Workshop of", "Studio of", etc. as well as ones that are "(?)". Most of these will need to be corrected. Right now there are 559 images in the category. For most of the "(?)" ones, if it's already using a creator template, I would suggest adding the "attributed to" parameter, since this is usually what the Walters Museum seems to mean by "(?)", i.e. the artist is most likely the person listed, but there is no proof. Kaldari (talk) 01:23, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Of course I could just automatically replace all the artist params for these images with the value of em_art_creators[name] (what the Walters site displays), but we would loose the creator templates. @Jarekt: Now that these are all in a category, is there anything automated you can do on your end or do I need to write some scripts to handle it? Kaldari (talk) 01:49, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I can easily add "attributed to" to creator templates and "(?)" to {{Anonymous}} templates, if I know which one where. So far looking at random 10 files they all had ? next to a single Walters author which was missing in our description. May be we can divide it into subcategories ( or create a page with a gallery) listing all the files with a single author that need "(?)" and all the files that need other modifiers. we could also add an unused "artist1" field which will not be displayed but will contain Walters author string as displayed on their website. This way I would not have to always go to their website to verify it.

That last one would be also useful with files with multiple authors. Walters info shows which one is "author" which one is "scribe", "artist", "publisher", "metalworker" or "ceramic artist", etc. We do not capture that. I was trying to fix some of that with manuscripts, etc. But my current approach of following links to Walters website is too slow. --Jarekt (talk) 11:20, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Prettifying tasks for bots

For your information, I have started collecting ideas of bot-doable tasks at Commons:Walters Art Museum/Cleanup. --Zolo (talk) 06:10, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Example of use of images

Just been able to use some of the images donated (mainly the medallions). Details (along with a few questions asked) are here (on en-Wikipedia). Many thanks for all the work done on this donation and the uploads. One question, are any of the other images of Henry Walters available? There seems to be only one in the donation, though I have put the images of the busts of William Thompson Walters's wife and daughter in his article, I noticed that there are other images of Henry Walters used by the museum as well as the one donated (unless I missed something while searching). Is it possible other medallion images are available as well, and are there plans for more donations in future? Carcharoth (Commons) (talk) 06:23, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

The example I had in mind was this portrait. Is that included in the upload or not? I couldn't find it. Is that because the artist died in 1962? If so, should it be made clearer that the 18,000 image upload is not all the images on their website? What it would be good to know is the total number in their collection compared to the 18,000 upload, and how many were not uploaded because of considerations like the above, and how many were just not uploaded, but could be on request? Carcharoth (Commons) (talk) 08:14, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Upload only included items which were in PD. This portrait and possibly many other artworks in Walters Museum collection are still copyrighted. Also my understanding is that user:Kaldari uploaded everything which was provided. If there are artworks which can be found on Walters Museum website, but which were not part of mass upload, then they can be uploaded by hand, if they are in PD. --Jarekt (talk) 17:39, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank-you. That is very useful. I am currently working on a list of portrait medallions by David d'Angers (he did rather a lot), and the photographs of the medallions (or copies of medallions) held at the Walters Art Museum are very useful (lots more are held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so I'm going to go and ask there). If I come across any others in the Walters collection that are not uploaded, I'll ask here again. Carcharoth (Commons) (talk) 07:36, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

The "Rubens Vase" nominated for Wikipedia featured picture

The "Rubens Vase".

FYI, I nominated The "Rubens Vase" for a Wikipedia featured picture. See discussion. Yaniv256 (talk) 22:12, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Undo batch delete?

I just uploaded File:Narino-Tuza footed Dish with Animal Motifs.jpg, since it (and others, per spot checks) has been relicensed to dual Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License. Relicensed from CC noncommercial, per our request, see Commons_talk:Walters_Art_Museum#Creative_Commons.

See Commons:Deletion requests/File:Chancay - Libation Vessel (Qero) - Walters TL200920218.jpg for the original batch delete of Promised Gifts. Since the Walters definitely owns the photos, and the originals are PD for expired copyright, looks like we could re-add these via the automation? Hope so, Pete Tillman (talk) 22:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I believe you are free to upload those images on your own, but the Walters museum doesn't want them to be part of the official cooperation project. Thus a batch undelete wouldn't be appropriate. Kaldari (talk) 20:09, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks -- do you have private info re this? Or a cross-ref? I didn't see anything public.

It sure would be nice to avoid manual uploads, if we can. Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 01:26, 25 December 2012 (UTC)