Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 6

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Virus

I think I've found a virus in an image! Help! It's in image: Immagine quadripolo 01.sxd 79.73.237.242 12:16, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Redundant with Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Attention#Virus. I answered there. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 13:01, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Puppet accounts blocks

Earlier on today I blocked a number of users that appeared to be operating as puppets uploading copyvios under a number of names. I've also blocked the underlying IP address. My block log will give details (here) and if anyone wants any further information (or feels I have missed anything) let me know. This was not a "case" as such but my suspicions were aroused - my thanks to those who helped. --Herby talk thyme 20:36, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

replication lag of Toolserver

Does anybody know why the replication lag of the toolserver is increasing again? (Especially for the en.wikipedia part.) Is this the beginning of the end for en check usage again? --ALE! ¿…?

Enwiki was moved on a new server which unfortunately wasn't scalable enough, so it's moving to yet another server. [1] --Para 12:47, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Contributions from User:Ksnow

Most of Ksnow's contributions seems to be uploading png thumbnails of svg images hosted on Commons. These images are named something along the line of Image:98px-Lumbrein wappen.svg.png with the svg at Image:Lumbrein wappen.svg. Since there are about 150 of these images I figured it's better if an admin delete them as duplicates (linking to the svg in the deletion summary) directly rather then me having to first tag them as dupes. /Lokal_Profil 16:34, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Fine, I'll tag them as dupes... /Lokal_Profil 04:49, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Briana Banks

Please revert deletion /restore/ of page and cat. Briana Banks. We have already a image of her Image:Briana Banks.jpg. --Nolanus ✉ (C | E) 21:40, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I restored the page. I think you had less work creating the page on your own ;-) --Polarlys 21:55, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Please restore too Category:Briana Banks. Tja, I think I had less work if the page wouldnt be deleted :) I understand that the cat and page were empty but in such a case, when it is probably then we will have stuff to complete it, I think it is better to wait a moment and not to delete immediately.

I think it is usefull to rescue the history of the page, too. --Nolanus ✉ (C | E) 22:10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

A moment? ;-) Someone deleted page and category in may … --Polarlys 22:40, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but it was deleted after deleting od an /or more?/ image of her [2] and the deletion of page and cat was too days later [3]. I am trying to say that in such a case a longer deadline would be usefull - the immediate deletion in this case means more work in future. But nevermind, restore the cat too, please:) --Nolanus ✉ (C | E) 23:00, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Urgent request Asking you to upload an image into Wikimedia commons

This is a copy of a note I have left on the Help Desk and also at User:Man vyi Talk Page.

I am however asking for your immediate urgent action.

PLEASE NOTE: I am not a Wikimedia Commons user. However, I am a Wikipedia contributor and my username on Wikipedia is FClef. I say that because I don't know if that name will appear on this signature.

I have a special request. Having largely authored and edited the Wikipedia article w:Trooping the Colour, I see that a number of pictures from Flickr were recently uploaded into Wikimedia Commons by User:Man vyi and have been used on w:Trooping the Colour to good effect.

I would like to ask you, or anyone kindly disposed, to please ASAP upload this picture into Wikimedia Commons, to sit alongside the others uploaded by User:Man vyi.

(It is one of Jon's pictures in Flickr and is on free licenses, with author attribution requested. Not having Flickr upload bot or being any kind of photographer I don't have the knowledge or technology to do this at all. Please please help.)

Once the pic is in Wikimedia Commons, I intend to upload it ASAP into both the Wikipedia w:Trooping the Colour article and also another article that I am preparing.

Your immediate uploading of this picture into wikimedia commons will be much appreciated. The title should be "Massed Mounted Band, Trooping the Colour, 16 June 2007". (I believe it is this year - but perhaps check when you upload the image.)

The words "Trooping the Colour" must appear in the title. (for ease of searching)

Thank you. --82.12.254.61 21:38, 26 July 2007 (UTC) damn! I see my signature doesn't work in wikimedia commons. In Wikipedia, I am w:User:FClef - please reply to my Talk page there if you would be so kind. None of my blue signatures comes out in Wikimedia commons but if you go to Wikipedia you will see I am legit. Please help immediately. Thanks a million. xxx

  • You don't need to answer to my Wikipedia Talk page. I will check back here for an answer and I will also check in Wikimedia commons for the image urgently.
Just register an account here dude. If you want it done urgently, better do it yourself eh. NielsF ? (en, nl, fr, it) 01:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
✓ Done - please see Image:Massed Mounted Band, Trooping the Colour, 16 June 2007.jpg.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 18:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

User:RNYX

It looks to me like User:RNYX is using his Commons page as a personal blog and his uploads have no relevence other than there. I wish to get a second opinion or reccomendation before taking action. -- Infrogmation 06:16, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally I agree. I know a user page may have content that might be unusual elsewhere but I see this as outside what I would want. Additionally there is no actual contribution to Commons. I think I'd go for "delete & warn on project scope" maybe? --Herby talk thyme 07:07, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Looks like Samulili did the warning part. If it persists I agree, I'd blank the page first before deleting, then if it still persists, delete. Thanks for bringing this up! ++Lar: t/c 23:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

An issue arose on en.Wikipedia where this template was created with the claim that copyright on Australian Public Domain images has revived for some images after 1923, all images after 1946.

From Australian Copyright Council As a result of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), the period of protection for most material has been extended. There has, however, been no revival of any copyright that expired before 1 January 2005 under the old rules.. Please exercise caution when deleting images tagged as being PD-Australia, as the old rules were 50 years as such images between 1946 and 1 January 1955 can be PD. Gnangarra 09:08, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Is this so difficult to understand? Australian pre-1955 images are PD in Australia, but not necessarily elsewhere. In the U.S., the U.S. copyright on Australian images from 1946 or later was restored by the URAA in 1996. Lupo 11:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Any bureaucrats in the house?

Seeing as we don't have a 'crat board, this seems most appropriate: Is me asking here nicely for someone to press Special:Makesysop enough - or would another full-blown RfA be more appropriate? I'll be happy to go with whichever, and whatever is done please don't make this into a precedent for future cases. Note if I had not requested the bit removal I would not be one of the admins being discussed for inactivity, haven't been gone that long. At the very least I'd like community reaffirmation in a thread here so please don't make it instantaneous!--Nilfanion 23:33, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

 Support - I fully support the return of tools here without a full RfA --Herby talk thyme 08:46, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 Comment Welcome back! There's certainly plenty of work to do here! I am a 'crat and I'll gladly turn your bit back on after a short period for comment, unless there is some major issue raised, but I would very much be surprised if there was. That would be the only reason I'd see for a full RfA again. (note, some other 'crat may choose to just turn it back on now, who can say...) ++Lar: t/c 12:20, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
See also Commons:Administrators/Requests and votes/Nilfanion Nilfanion had 7 supports (or 8 if you count Bastique's comical attempt to blame a hurricane on Nilfanion) and no real opposes. We are already pretty close to that mark and no one is opposing so I'm thinking one day is plenty of time here. However I must take exception with one thing Nilfanion said... I see nothing wrong with letting this situation be a guide to future resysop requests. ++Lar: t/c 18:09, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Umm Bastique voted twice if you include the sarcasm. In my comment, I was more thinking about the circumstance where I was re-RfAed - in that case someone like me going through a full procedure would set a precedent I'd rather not be associated with. This one though - no problem :)--Nilfanion 23:02, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 Support I agree with Lar. --EugeneZelenko 14:21, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 Support no reason not to --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 16:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 Support A non-controversial removal of the sysop bit. I see no reason for concern about Nilfanion having it back. EVula // talk // 17:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 Support No bad hurricanes this year. Cary Bass demandez 00:53, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

✓ Done ... and welcome back! Now get to work! ++Lar: t/c 01:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Hum - technically should such requests as this be archived in some way? Maybe as Commons:Administrators/Requests and votes/Nilfanion req or similar? Cheers --Herby talk thyme 11:37, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I archived it by giving a history link, see the archive where all the rest of the RfAs are ([4]). I think that is good enough but if someone wants to introduce new process?? I guess? but would rather not... —the preceding unsigned comment was added by Lar (talk • contribs) 18:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Create an account

Excuse me, Would an admin be able to create the account TheJosh for me please? it wont let me because of "The Josh". I use the name TheJosh everywhere, so it would need to match. Can you email me at josh dot sickmate at gmail dot com Thanks. Thanks, Josh --58.104.94.162 11:01, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

✓ Done -- Bryan (talk to me) 12:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Anyone know what happened to these images?

I was looking at the archives (for another reason) and came across this Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 4#Legal Concerns. Does anyone know if legal advice from the foundation was even sought (since this seemed to be the primary concern)? If not, does anyone know why they (3 images listed near the bottom) were deleted? There didn't appear to be any consensus there was a problem. According to the log it was speedy deleted, not edited in 0 days but I don't quite get what that means Nil Einne 14:50, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The deletion logs are as follows:
I have asked Zirland at User talk:Zirland#Commons:Administrators' noticeboard#Anyone know what happened to these images?.  :)   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 04:30, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi there. I checked back for the reasons. Those photos was displaying children nudity and was disputed as kind a children pornography. That is someway controversial topic. --Zirland 16:38, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Didn't we have a deletion request on similar images resulting in a keep? Or is my memory failing me? Samulili 19:05, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
I think these should be undeleted. There is no consensus from that discussion for deletion. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:18, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

User Grandmaster?Parishan has extended his disagreement to Commons

Dear Admin,

User Grandmaster?parishan has falsely tagged by images from wikimedia commons, extending his dispute with me from wiki. please see:

Articles Azerbaijan, Azeri Waffen SS Volunteer Formations, and several others. I did nothing wrong, and gave right source of image, and they are more than 50 years old, and authors of the web pages are ok with those images on wikipedia, can you help me. please see my and grandmaster?parishan edit history on here and wiki. please help me.Azizbekov 17:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Please provide diffs; I really don't want to hunt across multiple websites and multiple user histories. You need to provide more information; help us help you. ;)
A cursory glance of Image:Azeriwaffen.jpg suggests that the images are still under copyright,[5] which the simple statement of "authors of the web pages are ok with those images on wikipedia" doesn't sufficiently address. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:58, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Azizbekov uploaded several photographs from the websites that state that their content is copyrighted. Azizbekov provided no information which would help to verify that he has a permission to use those images. This is what the problem is. --Grandmaster 04:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Azizbekov reuploaded this image as Image:162lrg.jpg after it was deleted by the admins. No proof of resolving copyright problems has been provided, despite the warining given by the admin: [6] Btw, we have similar copyright issues with Image:Warsawazeriplatoon.JPG, also uploaded by this user. --Grandmaster 04:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Issue seems to be with me in general, because they hunt my every edit related to Wermacht Azerbaijan Collaboration. Why is that?Azizbekov 05:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

If you're uploading copyrighted images, there's good reason to hunt your edits. EVula // talk // ☯ // 13:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Harvesting Images

I am harvesting some images from wikicommons using an automated script. I am trying to be conservative in terms of bandwidth (one image each 5 seconds), but if you find I am pumping too much resources, please contact me. I've also put my e-mail in the user agent string. SaintCahier 12:02, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Just one aside: I've got an ACCESS DENIED error using Python 2.5 urllib.urlopen(), but no problem using subprocess.call(['wget', ...]). Doest anybody know if this is expected behaviour? SaintCahier 12:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

May I ask what you'll be using them for? (I hope you're also grabbing the info like license and author?) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:13, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I am trying to build a standardised image database for the evaluation of CBIR methods. The idea is to make the data available to scientific community at large. At the moment I am concentrating on images with Public Domain license, and I am keeping all the page text as an attached metadatum (which includes the licenses and authors). Ideally I would like to parse the text and put the info into Dublin Core tags, but since each user uses a different format, I don't know if that's feasible. At least the licensing should be easy to parse -- that is, if the category links are a reliable way to determine the license. Are they? 201.80.35.163 14:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC) <- Sorry this was me, forgot to logon SaintCahier 14:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Send a different User-Agent header (use urllib2.Request). -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
You could also use pywikipedia - it's a bit more overhead to learn, but the "MyURLopener" class isn't blocked, and the Page class gives you the raw wiki text and some basic parsing tools (such as finding templates). --Davepape 19:52, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
In my experience using categories is more reliable to determine licenses than templates, so I think you're on the right track. We would be interested to see the finished result, if it's open to the public, so please post back a link when you're done if you can. :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:04, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the feedback. Once the database is compiled I am sure to send you a link. SaintCahier 03:58, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Looking for High Res version of Wikipedia image

I'm writing on behalf of Photosearch, Inc., a firm of picture editors in New York City. We are currently working on an American History textbook and are looking to include one of the images that appears in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Y-ostrog.jpg#file

I understand that this image is already available for use. However, as we are working with print, we are looking for a high resolution version of this image (5 x7 300DPI). I'm wondering if anyone knows the source of this photo, or if there is a higher resolution photos available.

Any information would be greatly appreciated

68.53.193.7 14:55, 10 August 2007 (UTC)JC

You would have to contact that author of the image to acquire a higher-quality version; generally on Commons, what you see is what you get when it comes to image quality.
According to the image's description, the original author is Saaska; you can contact Sasska at en:User talk:Saaska. Hope that helps! EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:09, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Change name of image

I just uploaded a picture I have taken myself, but I have given it a wrong name: Image:Holden EJ.jpg should be named Image:Holden FE.jpg. Could someone change this, as I don't see any way to do it myself. Thanks! WHB 10:15, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Please upload it again and put the template {{duplicate}} in Image:Holden EJ.jpg. Regards, --Polarlys 10:23, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, will do. WHB 10:27, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Deleted duplicate Image:Holden EJ.jpg. NielsF ? (en, nl, fr, it) 12:36, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

We should really develop some tool (or upgrade wikimedia software) to allow easy renaming of images. I can't believe it hasn't been done for years...--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:05, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

It's being worked on and is called FileStore or something like that. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:09, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

TigranMets

I would like to draw the attention of the community to malicious tagging of Azerbaijan related images by User:TigranMets, who is permanently banned in Wikipedia as User:Artaxiad. He was engaged in such activity in Wikipedia and Commons before, I discussed this issue with Wikipedia admins and Artaxiad acknowledged that TigranMets was him. [7] Please check the contributions of TigranMets and you’ll see that he specifically targets for deletion only images related to Azerbaijan, and his motivation is clearly an ethnic bias. He is also known for using socks here: [8] Urgent attention of community is required. --Grandmaster 12:11, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I support. Artaxiad was banned in Wikipedia for his distructive activity and it should not be allowed to continue battle here.--Dacy69 16:50, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I support per Grandmaster. I am a sysop on the English Wikipedia with a memory of this one. Artaxiad was blocked and banned for disruptive sockpuppetry.--Sandahl 18:00, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Support per Grandmaster. TigranMets (a.k.a. Artaxiad) added deletion tags on the Azerbaijan-related photos added by me in the last couple of month. The copyright for most of them has expired, but TigranMets either claimed they required names of authors (which were missing), or did not provide any reasoning at all. This leads me to believe that this user most likely does not possess enough knowledge about copyright rules and procedures, and intentionally haunts Azerbaijan-related files in order to have them deleted by any means possible and to damage the quality of Wikipedia articles having to do with Azerbaijan. Parishan 20:22, 4 August 2007 (UTC)


In the history of User talk:TigranMets, I don't find a sign of any warning regarding something User:TigranMets did wrong.
Recently, an administrator added hundred useless deletion templates to widely used categories, and you didn't criticize him for that. What are the grounds for a so much long block? Presumption of bad faith? But where is the evidence of bad faith? Bad faith is not in Wiki principles.
Note that I've never heard of this guy. --Juiced lemon 19:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
This user is blocked permanently in Wikipedia for the similar behavior, and it is not the first instance of him hunting Azerbaijan related images here. He did so in February and reverted himself after the issue was discussed with admins in Wikipedia, where he also tagged for deletion more than 50 images related to Azerbaijan. Given the history of disruptive editing by this user and his ban by the arbcom in Wikipedia, his abusive use of socks both here and in Wikipedia, I don’t think that the punishment was too harsh. --Grandmaster 04:26, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, but I don't find patent disruption made by this user, since copyright issues are not simplistic, and nobody warned him that he did heavy mistakes.
In particular, I looked at the last nominated picture Image:Aslanov.jpg. Unless a clear rule about unknown authors, there are no reasons to keep this picture. --Juiced lemon 11:15, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
While not disagreeing with the local issues involved, this is very much a cross wiki problem and is reasonably extensive. There are further issues that are currently under investigation. It is possible that the length of block may be questioned (it might even be indefinite in the end) but not, in my mind, the fact that a block is appropriate. --Herby talk thyme 11:19, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
This user has posted an unblock request, which I declined. To make sure that what is claimed to be the same user on en.wikipedia and here is true, I will file a checkuser shortly. (→O - RLY?) 11:39, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Please be aware that this user is known for using open proxies and multiple IP addresses to evade his ban in Wikipedia. That was the main reason for his indefinite block. Please see this: [9] and this: [10] for more details. --Grandmaster 11:57, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if that user grants a block, but the warning gives this reason for the block: disruptful contribution. I disagree with this reason, above all this only reason doesn't justify one year block. --Juiced lemon 12:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Requested checkuser. In the meantime, the users and IP will remain blocked. (→O - RLY?) 12:25, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I see that this user continues the same behavior as in Wikipedia, he hunts and deletes only Azerbaijan related images. Such selective approach to the images based on ethnic or national affiliation of the image is not appropriate. Many of Armenia related images have serious copyright issues, but neither me nor any other user ever tried to get them deleted only based on the fact that they were uploaded by Armenian users. I believe that copyright issues (if there are any at all) should be dealt with on individual basis, but I don’t think that mass tagging of images based only on a certain national criterion is a good faith attempt to improve Wikipedia. It is better if deletion is initiated by someone who has no interest in this issue. We can pretend that it is just a coincidence that all the images tagged by this user are related to Azerbaijan, but I’m afraid we can open the gate to more serious conflicts if we let this continue. --Grandmaster 12:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I had an email discussion with this user, and he promises not to do it anymore. I think he might be given a second chance, if he promises to the community not to engage in any disruptive activity in the future. --Grandmaster 05:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes I got an email too and have no problem unblocking. Is everyone ok with an unblock? / Fred J 11:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm ok, since he promises not to do anything like that again. We can give him another chance. --Grandmaster 12:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I've unblocked him. / Fred J 11:20, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Suspicious uploads

Ok, I'm not sure where to report this, but I crossed a user that uploaded all his pictures as GFDL-self. Since I found 3 pictures on the internet (I listed then to deletion already), but I'm now suspicious of the others uploads he did, such as Image:Baroda Makarpura.jpg and Image:Baroda KM.jpg. Since I couldn't find the source, I'm wondering what can be done? Lucasbfr 16:44, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

You can ask him about it.
Or you can nominate them all for deletion in a mass request, please read Help:Mass deletion request.
Fred J 11:32, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

"Page delete" issues

Probably a technical issue however for a while now the deletion of some of the GFDL language pages has been slow. However trying to delete Template:GFDL/la just now it timed out several times before the delete was successful. The page has bow been deleted 25 times. If this is the issue we are going to have problems deleting these pages when they are used for "testing" over time? Pointers/thoughts/developer issue? Cheers --Herby talk thyme 07:02, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Seems due to the page being linked on millions of pages (2556000). Probably also the reason why it's created so much. I'd recommend either semiprotecting the missing ones or hiding them on {{GFDL/lang}} Platonides 14:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Why not just create it with 'PLEASE TRANSLATE THIS TEMPLATE'? Then if people put stupid stuff on it, it can just get reverted, and hopefully that isn't as painful as deleting. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 14:07, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
I filled in some missing languages and requested translation on the main pages of some other wikis. -- Bryan (talk to me) 11:58, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Can someone help me please?

Can someone please make the account TomRed for me, I use TomRed for all my other Wikis and would like it for Commons too, I can't make it because it is similar to Tomred. This is the same thing that happened on Wikipedia (The TomRed Tomred issue) and they made it within a few hours. Thanks.

Being handled. -- Bryan (talk to me) 11:50, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, I just created the account. Drop me a line per email and I'll reply with the details. Cheers! Siebrand 11:52, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
✓ Done Siebrand 09:43, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

request for revert - Fission bomb assembly methods - he.svg

Hi. After some discussion, we at the HE wikipedia decided the previous version was more accurate. Could someone please revert this to the previous version? Benherz 12:20, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Done. You could however have done it yourself. Just click the "rev" link in the file history. -- Bryan (talk to me) 12:21, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Dear all!

Could someone please close the remaining deletion requests concerning the copyright of money listed in Commons:Deletion requests/2007/03 the one way or the other? If nobody does so, I will close them tomorrow keeping the images due to the lack of consensus. --ALE! ¿…? 11:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes I think they can be kept for the time being. / Fred J 11:43, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Money is not concerned by the Berne convention on copyright and author's intellectual property rights. It may be concerned by the Paris convention (on state emblems), but then, this convention does not forbids reproductions. Reproduction may be forbiden by specific national law, but this is to be determined on a case-by-case basis. If no prohibition is identified, the reproduction is legitimate. Michelet-密是力 19:33, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Why is money not subject to copyright? Is that explictly mentioned in the Berne convention? -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
That would be really of interest. Can you give more information why money is not copyrighted? --ALE! ¿…? 13:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
(Artistic property right is not the only issue in "copy-right" problems.) In that case, the artistic property right protected by the Berne convention is only relevant to resolve legal disputes between the artist and the local mint (it is the same distinction as for logos). Once the thing is published and produced under the "money" status, the main problem becomes to avoid illegal monetary reproductions: the only organism that has a "copy-right" on the thing is the mint (or the central bank, whatever); any other "reproduction" (of monetary items!) is obviously illegal, and there are various penal laws that enforce this prohibition (whatever the duration and the artist's life or death, by the way). Some laws (eg, Ireland) prohibit reproductions even of images of monetary items, but this is quite rare.

For the difference made in legal terms, see for instance the french law that states "Les billets de banque et les pièces de monnaie bénéficient de la protection instituée au profit des oeuvres de l'esprit par les articles L. 122-4 et L. 335-2 du code de la propriété intellectuelle. Les autorités émettrices sont investies des droits de l'auteur." (Article L123-1 Code monétaire et financier), =the "copy-right" is owned by the emission organism. Compare with the other article "il n'est pas non plus dérogé à la jouissance de ce même droit lorsque l'auteur de l'oeuvre de l'esprit est un agent de la Banque de France" (Article L111-1 Code de la propriété intellectuelle), =the artistic property rights nevertheless belongs to the artist. See the difference?

Most of the time, illustration of monetary items is not problematic anyway, simply because the emission organism dosen't care about publications like "money of the world", their only concern is to prevent fraud efficiently. Michelet-密是力 08:19, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

And article L. 122-4 of the French IP law requires prior written consent of the rights holder, i.e., the Banque de France, for any reproduction. Besides, some countries do explicitly copyright their money; see e.g. the Irish Copyright Law of 2000, Chapter 24: Copyright: Legal Tender; §200. Some other countries explicitly exempt their money from copyright; see e.g. the Russian copyright law of §1993, with amendments up to 2004, article 8. Lupo 10:27, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

So, what do we do now? Do we keep the money images listed on Deletion requests or do we delete them? Coudl someone please decide at least on the images listed in March? Thank you! --ALE! ¿…? 08:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia.en sysop has questions

Hi, I'd like to talk to one or two Commons regulars about the differences between Commons site standards and Wikipedia.en site standards. This will be background research for an article I'm writing. Please reply via e-mail (enabled through my userpage). Durova 07:46, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't actually seem to be enabled here. Please try enabling it again. (check by mailing yourself something...) We have a bug that has not yet been nailed about email coming unenabled on people! ++Lar: t/c 16:52, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Indef block of people attempting to revoke their free licenses

I propose we indef block people attempting to revoke their licenses. Our images' copyright status should be more stable than someones inner world. Goes along with Wikipedia:No legal threats. -- Cat ちぃ？ 16:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I propose we explain why revoking licenses isn't really a good thing to do and why we can't allow it (perhaps using a multilanguage template???) except in cases where we do allow it purely as a favour, followed by promtlly deletion of the image... if someone does it unilaterally and repeatedly after being warned, perhaps a short block... but indef seems a little harsh unless it's really a persistent problem. ++Lar: t/c 16:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
While revoking a once-granted free licence is obviously a condemnable action, we should have a clear policy on why it is not allowed. Indef block is rather harsh, per Lar.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
We contribute to Wikimedia Commons: Wikipedia:No legal threats is irrelevant and I reject it completely.
You have to admit that, in most cases, we cannot prove that the uploader have the copyright over the uploaded files. The consequence of an attempt (by the uploader) to revoke a free licence is uncertainty about the owner of the copyright. Therefore, legally, we cannot keep the pictures anymore. --Juiced lemon 21:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, free licenses such as the GFDL and CC are not revocable. Look at the fine print and search for phrases such as "perpetual", "irrevocable", and "unlimited in duration". --Itub 09:52, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

You cannot give, irrevocably or not, what you don't own. If the owneruploader states that he didn't own the copyright, any free licence is worthless. We are not insured against the liars, in particular anon liars. --Juiced lemon 10:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
If the uploader has said during the upload that the image is his own work, and after a year he “recalls” that it is in fact not his own work, but he copied it from some forgotten source with uncertain copyright status, it is a very strange behavior and obviously there has been some violation of the rules – either the uploader lied about the source during the upload, or he is lying now.
Anyway, AFAICT this discussion is about people trying to change their mind about the image licensing, not about those corner cases. When a user requests his images to be deleted just because “these images are mine and I wants them deleted” and we explain that we don't do that, and the user response “OK, I do not want to change the license and have the image deleted, but I confess that the image is a copyright violation, so that you have to delete them”, it would probably be just a trick and should be handled cautiously (i.e. request the exact source from where has it been copied, not just accept the foggy statement).
--Mormegil 11:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree, but what does that have to do with this discussion? I thought we were talking about users who granted an irrevocable license to use their property and later changed their mind, not about copyright violators. --Itub 11:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
To clarify, my first comment above ("free licenses such as the GFDL and CC are not revocable") was not a reply to Juiced Lemon (which is why I didn't indent it after his comment), but a general one addressing the comments by White Cat, Lar, and Piotrus. My point is that we don't even need to decide whether to "allow" the licenses to be revoked, because they simply cannot be revoked (obviously assuming that the license was valid in the first place!). What we could decide is whether to delete the file from Commons, but the license is out of our hands. --Itub 12:01, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Right. What is legal and what we SHOULD do are two different matters. In general, I believe it is not legal to revoke licenses like GFDL or CC, once granted, as that is written into the license. Whether that would actually stand up in court is a different question too. But that said I think where we can, we ought to do what we can to honor the requests of contributors, as long as so doing is not going to damage projects (using the images) in big ways, because we ought to be nice people, not people standing on their rights to be non nice. People ought to just ask nicely to have their images removed, not try to force it by trying to revoke licenses. So that implies when we see that we ought to see what the underlying reason is, and honor it if we can. ++Lar: t/c 13:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Lar, we should use common sense, review such requests individually and don't create more policies than necessary. -- Bryan (talk to me) 22:02, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

A long running deletion discussion here: Commons:Deletion requests/Aircraft drawings (2007-07-29) is ripe for closing. The discussion seems to have pretty much run it's course. The debate hinges on some fairly fine points of copyright law, especially regarding derivative work and the threshold of originality for copyright work and it would be desirable that whoever closes it has an excellent understanding of this area. Can someone help out here please. Megapixie 11:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Hang on, I'm working on the deletion requests from May right now :-)
Fred J 11:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
This one is fractious enough that it probably ought to be closed, even if out of sequence. I wonder if there is any admin that has a completely unbiased view? I participated in discussions related to this... so maybe I'm biased. But if I'm not TOO biased I'll take a crack at closing it I guess, if no one else steps up first, because it's a needful close. IMHO anyway. ++Lar: t/c 16:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Sure, no problem. / Fred J 19:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
If no-one wants to pick it up, I could do it tomorrow evening. I've been away, so I haven't been involved so far. But don't let me stop anyone who really wants to close it before then ;) --MichaelMaggs 21:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, powercuts here this evening have stopped work on that. I'll have another go tomorrow. It's only 20,000 words, after all! --MichaelMaggs 19:26, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Now done. --MichaelMaggs 11:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Technical question about the upload box

How can you make the upload description box to have automatically the Information template? We could use it on ro.wp --Alex:D 13:18, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Asking at Wikipedia:Help desk which is read by more users may be helpful.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 02:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Cervantesvirtual

Now there are 18 images or digitalization of pages that come from a spanish website called http://www.cervantesvirtual.com. This website states at http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/marcolegal/acceso.jsp, that:

4.3.4.- De conformidad con lo dispuesto en el artículo 129.2 de la Ley española de Propiedad Intelectual (Real Decreto 1/1996, de 12 de abril, por el que se aprueba el Texto Refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual), corresponden a la UNIVERSIDAD y/o la FUNDACIÓN los derechos exclusivos conexos de reproducción, distribución y comunicación pública sobre las ediciones digitales realizadas por las mismas de obras de dominio público.

A quick translation could be this:

4.3.4.- According to article 129.2 of the Spanish Intelectual Property Law (Royal Decree 1/1996...etc), is owned by UNIVERSITY (UNIVERSIDAD DE ALICANTE) and/or the FUNDACIÓN (FUNDACIÓN MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA) the exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution and public comunication refered to digital editions of public domain works made by them.

Wikisource users transcribe those digital editions of "public domain works" into Wikisource's projects (spanish and catalan ones), I think all that is legal; but I think that images are not PD as pointed by 4.3.4.
What do you think? -Aleator 19:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Articles 129 and 130 of the Spanish copyright law are about the publication right, which exists throughout the EU and was introduced by Directive 93/98/EEC. Article 129.2 grants editors of PD works the exclusive right to authorize reproductions of their edition, insofar as this edition shows some creativity in the typography, layout, presentation, or editorial characteristics.
Also interesting is article 129.1, which says that anyone who (first) publishes a hitherto unpublished work that is in the public domain shall benefit of the same exploitation rights as would have the original author. This part would cover individual images of PD works, but only if those PD works had not been published before.
The rights conferred by article 129 last for 25 years since the publication of the previously unpublished PD work (article 130).
See here for the Spanish copyright law (in Spanish).
For the 18 images you mentioned: they'd be fine if they were published before. Otherwise, they're not ok under Spanish law. Under U.S. law, they'd be fine in any case, as U.S. law doesn't have this dreaded "publication right". Lupo 08:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Many are scans of PD books, tagged PD-Art/PD-Old. Although CervantesVirtual seem to be claiming copyright over those (based on it being a collection?), i feel we could keep them. I'm more concerned about Image:AgustinMontiano.jpg, Image:José Hernández.jpg & Image:García Guerra2.jpg whose real source is not so clear (the books were digitized, but the paintings? Who's the painter?). I nsd Image:Francisco Gutiérrez de los ríos.png for not giving the real link.
We may send a letter to CervantesVirtual asking for clarification to use the Public Domain contents.
Platonides 21:51, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Anonymous users and open proxies

Many of you may not know about open proxies. They are generally seen as a Bad Thing (tm), although the may serve their purpose in some situations. Especially for vandals/spammers they come in handy. nl:User:RonaldB has developed an advanced checking system that will alert wiki communities in real time, on wiki, about edits that have been made through them. I have asked Ronald to configure his instruments so that the Commons community will also be alerted if edits are made from open proxies[11] (in Dutch). I expect {{BLIP1}} and Commons:Open proxy detection to appear in the near future. When it's there, have a look and see if you can use it, if vandal fighting is your thing. Setups in progress can be observed on w:Wikipedia:Open proxy detection and its interwiki friends. Cheers! Siebrand 17:36, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Nice. BUT can I ask folk to be careful. I know there is an indef block policy on en wp and that other admins do the same - the internet is a changeable place - even open proxies do not last forever. I will now only block an open proxy for 1 year - it can always be blocked again if it continues. However there is no doubt that these are usually used by both vandals & spammers so such a tool is very useful.
Next BUT - be very wary of blocking TOR nodes. They are a very grey area in wiki terms. If vandalism comes from one that may be a different issue but valid users do edit via TOR nodes.
Thanks a lot for the info Siebrand, appreciated --Herby talk thyme 11:52, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Seems a good system, as it not only looks ofr suspicious addresses, but also confirms that they are open proxys (on en: some non-open are blocked as open proxies). Platonides 21:34, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
@Herby,
Indeed internet is a changeable place. See a.o. this background info (at 'Auto-blocking' and 'Lifetime of OP's'). Although the pro-active blocks I apply on a.o. nl:w:, are indefinite, these IP's are unblocked again if they could not be reconfirmed after a certain period of time.
Another remark on the grey area (i.e. TOR nodes). If not pro-actively blocked (as several projects do in different manners), TOR is an easy open door for sockpuppetry, registered or anon. Checkuser is useless in such a case. - Rgds RonaldB 00:03, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Please do not spread the word, but the we very, very little to suffer from anonymous open proxy edits, based in the current stats. That's nice to know :) Siebrand 10:52, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I've been using the excellent information supplied by the bot on en wp to block on other wikis if the edits are vandal or spam bot ones (open proxies that is). I see the minimum en wp block for seems to be 5 years which I do see as wrong frankly but the ability to pick up active open proxies that are targeting Foundation projects seems so good.
TOR to me is very different. I am aware that valid users here use TOR however if vandalism arose I would probably take the view that blocks might be appropriate (I hope we don't get there). For those who have not found it this tool is great for reviewing cross wiki edits (it can be temperamental at times) --Herby talk thyme 11:05, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

/me is inactive

As it is written on Commons:Administrators/De-adminship I tell you that I'm inactive from (~) 2007-09-01 till 2007-09-20 and again from (~) 2008-01-07 till 6 months later. --D-Kuru (00:48, 30 August 2007 (UTC))

bad tag ?

(copied from my talk page: The history in short: I have tagged several images from Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires with a cleanup tag ({{Cleanup image|In order to apply {{PD-Art}} the 3D frame has to be removed. So please crop the painting and reupload (update) the image.}}) because I thought that the usage of {{PD-Art}} requires the frame to be roemoved. However the image where taken by the uploader. Does he have to remove the frames or not? --ALE! ¿…? 07:31, 31 August 2007 (UTC))

Text on my talk page

Hi ALE!
I noticed you put a tag saying the licence is not correct on the images I uploaded from the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires. The licence is PD-Art because it's a reproduction of a work of art I created, taking pictures from the paints and the frames in the museum. I don't understand why the frame has to be removed. (actually, I don't want to remove it, we have very few paintings with the frames, and they are important too). So if the PD-Art is OK for you, please remove the tags you added. Fabienkhan 01:19, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Hang on, I will ask my fellow Admin collegues about that. It might be that you have to use another license than. --ALE! ¿…? 07:26, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

End of text on my talk page

So what is correct? --ALE! ¿…? 10:27, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

PD-Art should only be used if the taker of the photograph is not a Commons user and then indeed the framing stuff applies. If you take a picture of a painting with frame, you did not create a faithful reproduction, but a derivative work (of a public domain item) and you can claim copyrights on them. In this case the tags should probably replace by one of the {{Self}} tags. -- Bryan (talk to me) 11:56, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Image categorization in commons and wikipedia

[Later note. The template in question is at w:en:MediaWiki:Sharedupload. And to be clear, I don't see a problem with images being categorized locally, too. The images remain stored at the commons even when they are categorized in other-language wikipedia categories. --Timeshifter 16:52, 2 September 2007 (UTC)]

Please see en:Image:US correctional population timeline.gif.

I don't know what the template name for this is. Can someone point me to the talk page for this template? I am referring to the transcluded template on the wikipedia image description page that currently says.:

"This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. The description on its description page there is shown below. Commons is attempting to create a freely licensed media file repository. You can help. Please do not categorize this file locally but help commons by categorizing it there."

The emphasized part was recently added. Please see this section (and the related sections that follow) on my wikipedia user page:

A lot of people do not read English. The commons categories are in English. The other-language wikipedias use their language for categorization. Also, similar articles and images are categorized differently in the various other-language wikipedias. I read French. They do not have the same category trees as in English wikipedia, even after translation. There are many reasons for this. There is no universal logical category scheme. There is no quick fix to this naming problem concerning categories in many different languages. The categorization is different in the various languages.

Even though the commons and English wikipedia both use English categories they often have greatly different categorization.

So when people look in a category in their language, they want to see the images for that category, not just the articles. Images are just as important as articles. They want graphics labeled in their language, too, if there is text on the image.

Especially for map and graphics categories they don't want to have to wade through many images with text on them in other languages. As in commons categories with maps and graphics.

Images without text on them still have the problem of the difference in languages for the category names on the commons and wikipedia.

And finding the correct category in English to look for related images can be impossible for a native French speaker who also speaks fluent English. Because the categorization is oftentimes different in many confusing ways. This confusion has caused many problems that has been discussed before on commons talk pages.

Some more examples may be helpful. Look at the images in the categories below on wikipedia versus the commons. There are sister links from the commons categories to the categories on various wikipedia projects. Note the many images with text on the image.

There is no need for people to have to wade through all the commons images in order to find the English-labeled images (for example).

Also, imagine the difficulty of a non-English speaker who is looking for maps, and is trying to figure out the breakdown of the commons categories for something as arcane as the "old maps" versus "maps of the history of..." categories. See Commons:Categories/Maps. I bet many of the native English speakers reading this are even confused. :) Especially if you have tried wading through the current chaos... --Timeshifter 15:50, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

The message that says to not categorise images locally at English Wikipedia is w:en:MediaWiki:Sharedupload. /Ö 09:07, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I left a request there on its talk page, en:MediaWiki talk:Sharedupload. I also pointed to this talk section for further discussion. --Timeshifter 14:00, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
I was going to bring this up, but you beat me to it. I would rather use one of the pages that are linked to mention this rule. Like changing the link to the main page into [[Wikipedia:Wikimedia Commons]], I haven't read trough that article, but I think the above line should be added there instead of the system message. --Steinninn 16:32, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Here is a clickable link: w:Wikipedia:Wikimedia Commons. You prefer a link to that page instead of to the commons main page.--Timeshifter 16:59, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
I do, that would also solve our problem with the now-removed-line. Any other suggestions? --Steinninn 03:12, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
While I do not have the access to "oppose" local business, I do not see the point of categorizing commons images locally. Granted there still are multi-lingual related issues on commons but the solution to that is not local categorization in my humble opinion. -- Cat ちぃ？ 11:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
In a talk page concerning unified login, m:Help_talk:Unified_login#Usernames_2, you and I are part of a discussion concerning the difficulty of distinguishing between people using signatures with different character sets. Latin versus Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, etc.. Especially when not all the character sets are installed on many users' computers.
It is even more difficult to follow categorization in languages different from your own. So local categorization is necessary. You support non-Latin signatures on English wikipedia. And with unified login coming some day, more people will edit on English wikipedia. With their local-language timestamp signatures. You want to accomodate them by using monochrome images of their signatures if necessary. I suggested using numbers in signatures in addition to the language signature. My point is that we have to accommodate people using many languages. --Timeshifter 13:11, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Unusual deletion request (old versions)

Could someone please delete some old versions of images?

Explanation: There's an active Wikipedian, de:Benutzer:Luftfahrer, who uploaded a couple of nice aerial photos to de.wikipedia, and has a lot more images on his personal website. The images he personally uploaded were explicitly released under the GFDL, but he did not generally release all other images that one can find on his website under a free license.

Now a new user, Kiu77, uploaded several photos to Commons, apparently taken from the website, and replaced the images in de.wikipedia with them (which show other motives!). Then he tried to get the original Wikipedia versions deleted through the NowCommons process. It took me some time to understand this and to fix these images by re-uploads, so that the Commons images are now the same as the ones on Wikipedia. I also corrected some wrong information and provided complete file histories which where missing before.

Note: I assume this did not happen in bad faith by Kiu77, as he seems just a bit unexperienced regarding copyrights. I left him a note on his talk page therefore (waiting for reply).

Now the old versions of the following files are still unfree images:

So it would be nice if someone could check this issue as quickly as possible and delete all versions but the latest. Thanks a lot --Überraschungsbilder 07:25, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

✓ Done / Fred J 11:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot! --Überraschungsbilder 11:54, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Japanese maps

Hi, I was looking at the Wanted categories list, and there are a few categories with maps of Japan. I think we already have categories for these maps, however I am not 100% sure that the below is correct. Can someone let me know & I'll get working on it (or rather, Commons delinker probably will :))

Thanks in advance - Deadstar 12:18, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Something is wrong here: copy empty (red) categories with x members to categories that contains many maps ? --Foroa 13:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Not sure I follow your question. We should not have duplicate categories with slightly different names, one or the other should live on... ++Lar: t/c 12:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
The left red categories are indicated with a certain number of members; these red categories do not exist but x members are calling for it. I am not sure that the move bot can copy categories that don't exist. --Foroa 14:39, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
“Prefecture” is better with upper case P: Category:Maps of Iwate Prefecture (see Iwate Prefecture. --Juiced lemon 23:40, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Why? Note that there are a lot of prefecture categories that would need to be renamed and all their items moved. I'm not sure I see the benefit of uppercasing at this point. Consider Category:Maps of counties of England doesn't uppercase county. But maybe I'm missing something. ++Lar: t/c 12:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Same for cities, countries, provinces, districts, depart(e)ments, town, village, commune, municipality, arrondissement. On the other hand, in Greece and Japan, "xxx Prefecture" is used often. A decision is to be taken followed by some harmonisation work. --Foroa 14:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
The explanation is Iwate Prefecture. The reason of the explanation is still in the English Wikipedia Capitalization#Places and Geographic Terms: Capitalize generic geographic terms that are part of a proper noun (Atlantic Ocean, Mt. Muztagata).
Iwate Prefecture is a Japanese prefecture. Notice that the second “prefecture” is not capitalized because it's not part of a proper noun (like in List of Japanese prefectures by population). --Juiced lemon 19:04, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

To get back to the original question - it seems that at least one of them has been created (Category:Maps of Fukushima-ken). Do we know if this is now a duplicate/severe overlap of Category:Maps of Fukushima prefecture?

@Lar: Sorry my question was unclear. As per Foroa's explanation, there are a large number of files marked with the "red category", which should be marked with the existing category IF the two are the same (of which I am not sure). Hope that helps? @Foroa: As far as I know it can move non-existing categories (+ it's not hard to create a cat anyways).

Deadstar 12:15, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

User:LERK looked at the Fukushima-ken category and merged it into the Fukushima prefecture one. I have left a message for the user to see if they can help with the other three too. Deadstar 13:14, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Another (somewhat) unusual deletion request

Could someone please delete the original version I uploaded of Image:Enthroned Virgin and Child from Champagne 2.jpg? I accidentally uploaded the reference photo I took of the museum plaque, which is copyrighted text. Cheers, Postdlf 00:59, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

✓ Done (→O - RLY?) 02:18, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Mr. Krabs

From what I can see, User:Mr. Krabs is a pure nuisance account. No actual work done, just silly comments, mostly on user pages. - Jmabel | talk 02:39, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

✓ Done User indefinitely blocked. EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:30, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Some kid having fun. Lot's of characters from en:Krusty Krab: User talk:SpongeBob (blocked) and also User:Mama Krabs, User:Squidward, User:Sandy Cheeks (the latter three appearently helping us against those first two). Don't think we need a CU to block all of these characters. Finn Rindahl 08:11, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
With respect disruptive users who tie up admin and user time are one of the things that CU is intended for (in my opinion & such play frequently comes from an open proxy or compromised machine). Folks do have better things to do with their time than play I think --Herby talk thyme 08:17, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
OK, I just thought this was so obvious that a formal CU request was not needed to block (all accounts created at moreor less the same time etc). But I would be happy to post a CU request if that a necessary formal step, just thought we would be wasting time going through the bureaucracy... Finn Rindahl 08:24, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
SORRY, never mind, didn't see the post at /User problems until now Finn Rindahl 08:30, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
No problem - as I'd just done the check I wondered. If I'm around "formal requests" are unnecessary if I see "multiple users" or almost anything similar! --Herby talk thyme 08:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Glad to hear we're cutting through bureaucracy (...that's a difficult word to spell...) when possible! I should have checked the blocking-logs before requesting blocking ;) Expected {{Blocked}} being added to user talks when blocked... Regards, Finn Rindahl 08:58, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Confession time - I am really bad at that. The culture on en wb was to block naughty people who knew that had been naughty and not to bother with the "and behave when the block expires/or similar" type templates. I have had my wrist slapped on en wq for not placing block notices (open proxies for instance). If folk feel strongly do say and I'll work on improving but I do think quite a few of the offenders are as used to looking in block logs as we are from their history across wikis. (as to spelling "bureaucracy" that is why I always refer to them as 'crats!). By all means open CU reqs if anyone sees anything they feel requires investigation, however messages placed on any admin board will attract my attention if I'm around (as will block log entries). Cheers --Herby talk thyme 09:53, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
I see block notices as having more benefit for everyone else than for the blocked party (who will see a message stating that they are blocked anyway). Someone that may have warned them in the past now knows that the user is gone, and someone who has run across the edit and gone to make a warning will quickly get a summation of the situation without having to dig through the talk page's history.
Then again, I'm also block-happy on en.wp, and enjoy using the block notices to infuriate the vandals which I'm oh-so-often pissing off. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:35, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I suspect (or hope!) that last bit is a bit tongue in cheek. Please don't actually be block-happy here, just do what's needful. Also, WP:DENY while not policy here, is nevertheless good advice, but balance that against the very clear need to actually let other admins know what is going on by adding items to the user's page, as you did. Herby has few faults but not adding templates often enough is one of them :). ++Lar: t/c 10:15, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, some of us are adding various templates too often, so I suppose even Herbys "fault" contributes to a good balance at the end of the day :-) Finn Rindahl 11:00, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Wasn't the whole point of block templates originally to avoid overlapping blocks? That no longer seems necessary given the improvements to the admin block interface. So what is the point of these templates? If people really care they can still check the block log. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:28, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure that is the entire reason for them. There are several other useful things that can be gained from using certain of them, such as knowing that the ID is a sock of another user and which one. But their use is not universally accepted so ... ++Lar: t/c 13:56, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, a block message can share a lot more information than what goes into the actual block itself; for example, links to blocking policy, how to request to be unblocked (good faith and all that), and any other information that may be relevant. Obviously this need is lessened in certain cases (like blocking an abusive sock, where the editor clearly knows what they're doing), but I feel that it's a good habit to get into regardless. (and yes, that was a bit tongue-in-cheek earlier; I have no plans on going rogue here, or anywhere else for that matter :P) EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:32, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

OTRS

Isn't there any template for requesting the uploader to provide an emailed permission? From what I gather, there's plenty of images where the uploader claims permission but it's impossible to verify without the email (example: image:Lucianopavarotti1983.jpg). --Lumijaguaari (моє обговорення) 07:27, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I know we have this on Commons somewhere but it's escaping me where... meanwhile, check w:Category:Wikipedia_image_help which includes a page on example permissions letters/emails. Sorry, I bet someone else will have a better answer soon, but hopefully that helps. (and once we find it we probably should link to it from the OTRS page if it isn't already, I didn't check, a bit rushed...) ++Lar: t/c 11:46, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a reasonably prominent link to Commons:Email templates on that page. I noticed today en.wp has quite a few so you could check out theirs too. w:WP:BRP. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:26, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Yepp, thanks to both of you. There are indeed boilerplate emails, and quite a few of them, but I was trying to locate a easy-to-use template to slap on userpages, so that I would not need to write the same text all over again when I encounter the next pic with unclear permission claims. Maybe it's buried somewhere on Commons, or maybe some helpful soul with great template-making skills will give birth to it in the near future. --Lumijaguaari (моє обговорення) 09:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Oh! Sorry, I misunderstood. Yes, there is something like {{Npd}} (no permission date, in the tradition of NSD(no source date) and NLD(no license date), and it has an accompanying template for the uploader's talk page. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:36, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Ahh, that'z bettah, will do the trick. --Lumijaguaari (моє обговорення) 13:40, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Hw-columbus.jpg

not Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus

Image:Hw-columbus.jpg is not Christopher Columbus, even though it was a POTD as him. I have emphasized this, but, wouldn't it be better to upload an actual image of Columbus here, such as Image:Christopher Columbus Face.jpg? BenB4 05:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Is this the place...

...to draw attention to stuff like [[Special:Contributions/USERNAME DELETED|this]], seems like obvious copyvios? Finn Rindahl 23:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

If you suspect a user's contributions are all copyvios, you can either open a mass deletion request for them or tag each image with the appropriate tag;{{Copyvio}}, {{speedy|REASON}}, etc.. For large-scale incidents, f you think there may be a misunderstanding on the part of the user or if they are persisting after blocks, you can bring the issue up at COM:AN/U or COM:AN/B. -- Editor at Large • talk 14:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, the question above was posted as the uploads was taking place, my thought was that a warning from an administrator might stop further uploads. I see all the uploads has since been deleted (I deactivated the link above, in case this user comes back with legitimate uploads). Finn Rindahl 17:38, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Take a look maybe

Could I ask those interested to look here - thanks --Herby talk thyme 11:04, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Image linked from Digg

Image:Saddam rumsfeld.jpg has been linked from Digg. While the flow of users is pretty low compared to what Wikipedia usually endures, I thought it would be good to leave a note here so that an administrator could drop by there from time to time. -- ReyBrujo 23:54, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Jeff G.s pages should be semiprotected while this is going on... Finn Rindahl 00:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

wrong name the pictures are oploaded with the good name but i dont know how to delete the folowing pictures

I just uploaded a picture I have taken my 

00:33, 9 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.11 R.jpg‎ (uploaded a new version of "Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.11 R.jpg") (top) 
00:23, 9 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.1 R.jpg.jpg‎ (uploaded a new version of "Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.1 R.jpg.jpg": {{Information |Description= |Source=self-made |Date= |Author= Rob Hille }}) (top) 
00:21, 9 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.12 R.jpg‎ (uploaded a new version of "Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.12 R.jpg": {{Information |Description= |Source=self-made |Date= |Author= Rob Hille }}) (top) 
00:20, 9 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.11 R.jpg‎ (uploaded a new version of "Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.11 R.jpg": {{Information |Description= |Source=self-made |Date= |Author= Rob Hille }}) 
00:18, 9 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.11 R.jpg‎ (uploaded a new version of "Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.11 R.jpg": {{Information |Description= |Source=self-made |Date= |Author= Rob Hille }}) 
00:17, 9 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.6 R.jpg‎ (uploaded a new version of "Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.6 R.jpg": {{Information |Description= |Source=self-made |Date= |Author= Rob Hille }}) (top) 
00:15, 9 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.5 R.jpg‎ (uploaded a new version of "Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.5 R.jpg": {{Information |Description= |Source=self-made |Date= |Author= Rob Hille }}) (top) 
00:13, 9 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.3 R.jpg‎ (uploaded a new version of "Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.3 R.jpg": {{Information |Description= |Source=self-made |Date= |Author= Rob Hille }}) (top) 
00:07, 9 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.2.jpg‎ ({{Information |Description= |Source=self-made |Date= |Author= Rob Hille }}) 
00:04, 9 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.1 R.jpg‎ (uploaded a new version of "Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.1 R.jpg": {{Information |Description= |Source=self-made |Date= |Author= Rob Hille }}) (top) 
23:51, 8 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.1 R.jpg.jpg‎ ({{Information |Description= |Source=self-made |Date= |Author= Rob Hille }}) 
23:47, 8 September 2007 (hist) (diff) Image:Salvia nemorosa ostfriesland 0.1 R.jpg‎ (→Licensing) self,

but I have given it a wrong name:

this can delete. —the preceding unsigned comment was added by Rob Hille (talk • contribs) 00:59, 9 September 2007

Which of these images was uploaded with the wrong name? If you accidentally uploaded an image to the incorrect name, upload the picture to the right name and then tag the one with the bad name using {{badname|Image:otherimagenamehere.jpg}}. Hope that clears things up, if you have any more questions or need help feel free to ask on my talk page. :) -- Editor at Large • talk 14:23, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Confusion over Luciano Pavarotti images

Can any Commons admins help out here? There is confusion over a set of Pavarotti images where a waxwork image on Commons was deleted and re-uploaded several times, and then, causing immense confusion on en-wikipedia, a non-waxwork image was uploaded to the same name on Commons following the latest deletion. From what I can work out:

  • [12]: The waxwork image (Image:Pavarotti.jpg) got deleted on Wikipedia at 00:47 on 7 September 2007 with the comment "at Commons".
  • [13]: The Commons deletion log history of the waxwork model shows lots of deletion and undeletion as a derivative work, with the final deletion at 11:21, 8 September 2007.
  • The confusion really started when the Stade Velodrome image got uploaded on Commons with the same name as the previous waxwork image, on 14:40, 8 September 2007 (see the image log linked above).
  • [14]: The original Stade Velodrome performance photograph (Image:Luciano Pavarotti 15.06.02.jpg) got deleted at 22:50 8 September 2007, on Commons, because it was a duplicate of the newly uploaded picture. Surely the later picture should be deleted and the earlier one kept?
  • The upshot of this is that w:Wax museum on Wikipedia, which was using the waxwork museum image, for some time showed (link to old version) the picture of Pavarotti performing at the Stade Velodrome, with the image caption claiming this is a waxwork in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vagas!

This is a complete balls-up, to put it mildly. The full timeline of what happened will be a lesson in how not to handle this sort of thing. But for now, can anyone suggest the best way to fix this so that talk page and deletion discussions refer to the correct pictures? At the moment, w:Image talk:Pavarotti.jpg and the IfD discussion here make no sense because of this Commons deletion/re-uploading/Wikipedia deletion fiasco. The system most definitely failed here, in multiple ways. Carcharoth (Commons) 10:21, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

More at w:User:Carcharoth/Luciano Pavarotti images confusion. Carcharoth (Commons) 13:08, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
It at least shows us that one should not use generic names like "Pavarotti", but "Pavarotti wax model at Venation Hotel" or whatever... We probably need a Wikipedia & Commons admin to find out which files coincide.
What would be the best solution to avoid confusion is to undelete Image:Luciano_Pavarotti_15.06.02.jpg, delete Image:Pavarotti.jpg and protect it from recreation. Opinions? -- Bryan (talk to me) 13:23, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. That has probably solved all the problems. All the old versions I was linking to, showing the Stade Velodrome pic in place of the waxwork pic, now show a redlink. Thanks! Carcharoth (Commons) 13:33, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Been bold, undeleted the image with the less generic name and replaced all usages of the generic one by the other. The generic one is also protected against recreation. I hope the other problems can be solved by somebody who is both admin here and at en. -- Bryan (talk to me) 13:35, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
The other point is that when you have duplicate images, check the usage on all projects before deletion! Deleting the later image is usually best. Also, when uploading, is there a warning that an image of the same name has previously been deleted? This would have been avoided if such a warning existed, or if the latest uploader had read the warning. I agree that vague names like "Pavarotti.jpg" should be avoided. Carcharoth (Commons) 13:37, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
The warning actually exists. In fact, I was the uploader of the "original" Image:Luciano_Pavarotti_15.06.02.jpg, and the funny thing is that I chose that name to avoid confusion because of that message. I was quite surprised when, afterwards, someone uploaded the same photograph with exactly the same description and my file got deleted as a duplicate of the new one :-). And then, all this confusion... Thanks, everything has been sorted out now. --jynus (talk) 04:13, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. If you look closely at w:User:Carcharoth/Luciano Pavarotti images confusion, you will see that the user who uploaded the duplicate of the Stade Velodrome picture seemed to realise the mistake, and requested a speedy deletion as a duplicate. The real problems started when Yuval Y removed the speedy deletion tag from the duplicate, and put a speedy deletion tag on the original instead! This probably came from looking at the usage across all projects and thinking that the copy that was used more should be kept. What was needed was to look at the page logs and see that previous files of this name existed and that they were a different picture altogether. And the original uploader should have (a) not uploaded it in the first place; and (b) returned and said "no, don't delete that one, delete my one". Oh well, at least it got caught this time. Carcharoth (Commons) 08:59, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

how do I change my user name ?

My user name is currently king_brian_boru

though I want to change it to King Brian Boru

how do I do that ?

Regards Brian (<email removed>)

See COM:CHU. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:27, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Where you should report backlogs

If you have problems with a particular backlog that you won't be able to handle yourself, please do mention it at Commons_talk:Announcements. While there is no guarantee that you will be helped, it is still more likely to happen.

I would like to add the Announcer to various places but I am not sure if it would be intrusive. Originally I had though of adding it to all admins' user talk pages but on many talk pages it didn't fit at the top.... plus lots of admins aren't intrested in general maintenance. But if you think it would be suitable somewhere, please add it there.... I suggest your own user or user talk page.

Fred J 16:28, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Renaming files

Is there an easy way to rename files? I just uploaded ~20 with the wrong town in description :( They are not linked from anywhere (other then my private galleries). Or would I have to delete them and reupload manually?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, no easy way to rename, I don't think, you will have to reupload. but at least you can just paste the entire description back in ... a tool to do this might be a nifty thing for some toolserver wizard to write. ++Lar: t/c 18:37, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I applied for adminship here so I can do it myself in the future :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
The only difference with admin status would be that you could delete the old ones yourself instead of tagging them with {{Badname}}. You would still have to re-upload the images and copy and paste the descriptions. The inability to move images is a technical limitation that applies to everyone; it is not based on policy. —LX (talk, contribs) 21:14, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
True, but at least I can correct my own mistakes myself instead of burdening somebody else with fixing my errors :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 23:11, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I may have to muck with that myself sometime, there's a certain file (those of you who know what it is know why to not link to it!) that has bad metadata and when you try to view it, causes a "Wikimedia Error". Ahwell. ~Kylu (u|t) 23:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Bugzilla is thataway... ++Lar: t/c 00:56, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
...what, you can't unilaterally add features to MediaWiki? That's not what Bureaucrats do? (yes, I'm kidding) ~Kylu (u|t) 03:43, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Code it up and I'll see what I can do. (Most extensions require access to the underlying filesystem where the MediaWiki software is installed, as they have components that need to be placed there and require changes in configuration or startup files). (Yes I know you knew that, but I have access to a wiki where I could test it, so get coding!) ++Lar: t/c 11:01, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
...eh, fine, but I'll have to wait until I can get back in toolserver again. Gotta figure out how the images and metadata are stored. ~Kylu (u|t) 21:04, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Don't do it. It's being worked on. (FileStore) -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Bryan, I was just going to peek on Bugzilla & MW to see if there were mentions of this. ~Kylu (u|t) 20:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
It's bugzilla:709 Platonides 09:57, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
You might be able to do something using imagecopy.py. It currently copies files to Commons, but could also copy files from Commons to Commons, possibly using {{Rename}} in the image description as a new file name suggestion. It might require some (minor?) changes to CommonsHelper. Tag the original file {{Duplicate}} and add the pair as a {{Universal replace}} to User:CommonsDelinker/commands, so it would also rename all instances in all Wikimedia wiki's, which would ease the process even more... (Yeah, I know, this is shameless plug/push for development of a bot we could very much use.) Siebrand 22:28, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Full support for that bot. Unfortunatly they are not my specialty, so I can only help with campaignig for it :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:09, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
I'll go and see if I can poke Bryan, Filnik and/or Orgullomoore (yes, the usual suspects...) Siebrand 22:33, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Any progress?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
bugzilla:1062 * not much. ~Kylu (u|t) 06:11, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Special:Upload file

Some of the English on this page is not very idiomatic. It would be good to change the sentence starting "As well do only upload useful files .." to "Please upload only useful files". --MichaelMaggs 17:07, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm... you're an admin, you could have updated it! :P But I did. If you want to make more tweaks it's at MediaWiki:Uploadtext. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:02, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I did try, but didn't know how to do it. Thanks for the pointer; very useful for the next time! --MichaelMaggs 09:02, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

{{ACClicense}} and red categories

This Template puts images in unexcisting categories like Category:乙, Category:口 or Category:雨. Now we have around hundred categories named ?. I don't know about description of this different categories. I wrote Yug in june here, but he leaves commons, so i ask here what we can do. Will or can anyone change the template? Can a bot categorize the red ? categories?. --GeorgHH 18:03, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I was asked on my talk to help doing some maintenance on his image. Will see what I can do in the weekend. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:02, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Asking for help from German speaking admins. Please add section title to this template as in {{Please link images}}. --EugeneZelenko 16:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok this way? -- Cecil 16:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Sure. Thank you for help! --EugeneZelenko 14:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair use uploads

Going over en:WP:DRV, I found Saracity123 (talk · contribs) and his uploads to the commons, all of which are fair use screenshots of a webpage.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 07:15, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

{{skiptotoctalk}}

Please see en:Template:Skiptotoctalk. To see it in use please see:

en:Talk:Iraq War

This template does not work on the commons. [Later note. It now works]

{{skiptotoctalk}}

produces

Template:Skiptotoctalk

Is there a version of this for the commons? It is needed on this talk page in order to find the table of contents quickly. --Timeshifter 03:28, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

You can edit the English Wikipedia template page, copy the text there, and paste it at template:skiptotoctalk, and it should work here. (But this is not a talk page....) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 04:03, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! My first template. I applied it to this talk page. --Timeshifter 09:12, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Resizes of PNG conversions are lossy?

I was concerned when I saw this. Look at the fine lines of the small handwriting:

JPG

PNG

You can see how bad the problem is if you open each in a browser tab and switch back and forth between 500px versions. At full size, they look almost but not quite identical.

Anyone have any idea why this happens? BenB4 03:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see much definitive difference between the images at 500 pixels wide. They look identical at 600 pixels wide. They use the exact same number of colors at 600 pixels wide.
The WikiMedia software is using lossy compression when scaling the original 600-pixel-wide, 489 kilobyte JPG image to a 500-pixel-wide, 137 kilobyte JPG image. Right-click an image to get its properties and kilobyte size.
My tests with the freeware image editor IrfanView shows that they are using a "save quality" setting of around 85 to 90 depending on the resampling method used when scaling the JPG image. If they used the least compressed setting of 100 when scaling, then the JPG image would be around 269 kilobytes at 500 pixels wide.
The 600-pixel-wide JPG image is using 36,666 unique colors. Note the gradient shading in the blue areas, etc.. One can get the number of colors by clicking "information" in the image menu of IrfanView while viewing the image in IrfanView.
The PNG image format is a lossless format. PNG image editing software can losslessly compress when scaling. There are levels of lossless compression from 0 to 9. My tests with IrfanView get results between 409 and 881 kilobytes when scaling to 500 pixels wide, depending on the level of compression used. I used fast untweaked compression just like the Wikimedia servers would use when scaling.
It is usually best to use thumbnail versions of PNG images in wikipedia articles. In order to allow the article to load faster for dialup users. PNG images use a lot of kilobytes when scaled by Wikimedia servers.
If the number of colors is below 256 colors (8-bit color), then GIF is a good lossless image format to use. It scales to low kilobyte sizes since it is only a low-color format. It is good for some types of graphics, maps, diagrams, illustrations, etc.. But it would not work for this image due to the shading gradient and 36,666 unique colors. --Timeshifter 06:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
PNG may use lossless compression, but shrinking an image is always lossy. Perhaps there was some difference here in the way the image was resized. In the PNG version, the letters look noticeably blurry. But in the JPG version, they look "noisy". I can't decide which version looks better (or worse), but they certainly look different. --Itub 06:35, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I noticed a difference too in the 500-pixel-wide images but I couldn't define it. But your use of the words 'blurry' and 'noisy' might work. I think there may be some compression artifacts in the 500-pixel-wide JPG image producing the noise. Such artifacts are easy to spot at higher levels of lossy JPG compression.
As for the blurry, scaled PNG image... I have noticed similar blurriness in scaled, GIF images too. So, compressing a PNG or GIF image is lossless only when saved at the same pixel size.
There is no JPG setting for saving an image that will not compress the image. It is always a lossy compression.[15] --Timeshifter 12:44, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I think our thumbs are a compromise between filesize and quality. For some more info see bugzilla:6193 and the code that creates thumbs (in function doTransform). pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Isn't it just that the JPG scaler algorithm is better than the PNG scaler we use? 209.77.205.2 13:25, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

User: Some Person

I am trying to register this username, but I keep getting this message: 

The name "Some Person" is very similar to the existing account "Some P. Erson"
(contributions • logs • user creation entry). Please choose another name, or
request an administrator to create this account for you.

Some Person is my username on Wikipedia. May I please have the same username on Commons?

—65.65.182.123 21:57, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The block log of Some Person on en:wp shows some issues with copyright... Are you prepared to abide by the copyright provisions here? If so, have your en:wp account mail my en:wp account with a statement that you intend to abide to the best of your ability and your desired temporary password. I will modify that account's talk page after I have created the account for you here, with the password you desire. Please make it a safe one. You can change it again as soon as you get the notice. Is that satisfactory? ( Note that if you are not really Some Person, then I won't get an email from that account and... we will have avoided a naming problem )++Lar: t/c 22:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree to abide by all copyright laws, and I am really Some Person. I will mail you right away. —65.65.182.123 23:06, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
I think you posted the password you wanted to my en:wp talk page instead of emailing me... that may not be the best approach, as anyone else could see it and try to use that password before you yourself did, gaining control of the account. Best to actually use the email link there. Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 14:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

What is sufficient as own work statement

This stems from a deletion by me of a perfectly fine pic (I've since restored, mea culpa). I deleted it as it was in a sub-cat of CAT:U after being tagged by Siebrand because the source= parameter wasn't filled in. I discussed this with him but we are apparently at loggerheads - so time for a wider take on this please. Note he is incorrect, it is only true for the English ownwork upload that source is prefilled, this is not the case for the Spanish one. Given this its no coincidence that a lot of CAT:U deletions are Spanish (in general spanish speakers are more likely to upload copyvios, but this is different).

Fundamentally, IMO there is a failure to assume good faith in this. If the user asserts PD-Self, we should believe it unless we have some evidence to the contrary (definitely not just because source is blank). If the evidence is equivocal, a new Spanish user uploading pics that could be copied from "some website" for example, they should either go into CAT:U with a comment saying "I doubt this is their pic" or better, a full blown deletion request. Siebrand asserts policy supports just nsd tagging, notifying user and moving on in these cases. Maybe it does, but I strongly believe a little more should be needed. The good uploads should never be in the CAT:U queue long enough to get in the backlog, even if the user made errors in the upload process. The process for a new genuine contributor should be: "Upload, welcome, told mistakes, improves next time" as opposed to "Upload, nsd warned, image deleted...". The first encourages users who are good intentioned but don't quite get it right, the second drives them off.

I'm also concerned about deletions from Category:Possibly unfree Flickr images and Category:Possibly unfree Flickr images reviewed by FlickreviewR. The "possibly" in the category names was there for a reason at their creation, that is being in these category is not a deletion reason in itself (unless that has changed - if so give me link to the discussion please)? IMO deletions from this category should be considered on a case-by-case basis - presumably at COM:DEL.--Nilfanion 23:01, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Just tag {{Own work}} and we'll never see the images again. Great dustbin. Siebrand 23:07, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
That misses the point and over trivialises this issue. At this time, I'm half tempted to run a undeletion request for all the images zapped from the Flickr categories. We aren't supposed to think in terms of dustbins...--Nilfanion 23:15, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not. I take the bucket, sift through it and don't stop until it's empty. The categories you mention and the one I mentioned *are* dustbins with all kinds of unclear material from a license point of view, sometimes heavily used, that no one/few dare to touch. Same goes for the {{Attribution}} and {{Copyrighted free use}} variaties - heavily used for evading clarity on any and/or all of the important freedoms from a license and/or permission point of view. If we want to take ourselves *and* our users seriously, I think that we should continue applying strict rules and not walk away from a flame here or there. We have all kinds of nice processes: speedy processes that can takes minutes, nsd/nld/npd that takes at least a week, email notification on watch list and/or talk page changes, CommonsTicker, COM:DR taking up to six months, soft deletion, and ultimately COM:UR.
We can keep on making admin's lives more and more difficult by tightening procedures even more. That'll lead to larger backlogs and sad admin faces, I fear. I know it will for me. At the moment I can, if I work all day on it, deal with about 1000 images, making about 1000 edits on images, DR pages, talk pages and deletions. Especially closing DRs is very intensive work. Your pleed to create more DRs - made on my talk apge - will in my opinion only increase the required admin attention to closing them, where I hope to have given more insight in the tools we currently provide to our own Commons community and the 700+ Wikimedia communities we serve.
Finally: declare your own work by any statement in text like "own photograph", "self-made", "own work", "trabacho proprio", "eigen werk" or anything rembling that declaration, add a license, either in text or preferably as a template, and no one will, aside from an occasional error, nominate an image from deletion as nld/nsd. Let's not overcomplicate things, educate our users well (COM:WL anyone?) and assume good faith undeleting easily if a user claims own work. Cheers! Siebrand 23:46, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
The thing is tagging with {{Self}} is an assertion that it is their own work (it may be a weak one, but it is still an assertion). That's the crux of this. I think at the least these "self" uploads should be split out from the other CAT:U stuff, as they require more than a cursory examination. The Flickr categories are different from the inadquacies of self uploads; I suggest a seperate thread to discuss that. Please, bear in mind I am one of those who trawls through these backlogs heavily, I'd rather know I was doing it right - even if it took that little bit longer. Others comment?--Nilfanion 23:56, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
No, {{Self}} is an assertion that one is the copyright holder of the work. That in itself doesn't say anything about the authorship (origin) of the work. This is an important distinction. {{Self}} is an assertion that one has the right to license the work, but without source information, we have no way of verifying this or knowing whether that right was acquired by creating the work or through transfer of rights. This is analogous to {{PD}}, which asserts that a work is in the public domain, but which does not explain how this supposedly happened. —LX (talk, contribs) 14:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, other opinions would appreciated. We obviously both have the best in mind for Commons and choose different strategies. I'd rather throw out a baby with the bathwater now and then knowing that it can be pulled from the sewer at any time, primarily to save time, accepting the occasional flame, while you advocate carefulness and move to rather not delete to not upset users (assuming good faith) and take more care assessing deletion criteria. Did I summarise your POV OK? If not, please feel free to change it in this comment. Cheers! Siebrand 06:14, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Sounds a fair summary. My position is that {{PD-self}} or {{Self}} on an image description counts as a valid assertion that it is their own work by themselves, irrespective of any text (or lack of) elsewhere - such as in {{Information}}'s source parameter. If such an image has a blank source parameter, in many cases I think the correct action should never be not just nsd tagging. If that assertion is disputed, it needs countering somehow (like the license struck through, or a comment on the image page). Making one additional edit for every image with a {{Self}} license (either "cancelling" the license or filling in the {{Information}} depending on the nature of the image), would save a lot at the cost of a few seconds per image. Oh and can someone update Special:Prefixindex/MediaWiki:Licenses this lot in light of the source parameter?--Nilfanion 10:56, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Also to be considered is the advantage of having proper and accurate information. An image with all the fields filled (date, location, description, author) looks a lot nicer than one that only has "PD-Self" (such as this one I just picked from recent files). It is also more useful for Commons as a media repository, and it makes us easier for us to verify its copyright status. As Siebrand said, it isn't too difficult to fill out the fields.
Fred J 11:29, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree it is nice. However, my point is of the 50,000 images in Category:Images without source many of them are tagged with an own work license; many of which were uploaded before source was required; and many images are getting nsd tagged and deleted merely because of chance in practice - not because there is anything wrong with the files or the information about them.
Oh, and what page controls the auto-filling of the summary field in upload? I can't see it...--Nilfanion 13:43, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I'd rather see {{Own work}} phased out. I've been deleting images that we've been using illegally since 2005 because they had no license. Sure, authors have the legal right to upload their images, and they might not mind if we use them, but without a license, nothing gives us the right to retain images. But that's an entirely different discussion. —LX (talk, contribs) 14:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
If the Spanish "own work" upload form fails to add the authorship assertion (which the user has made by selecting that form), please fix it. —LX (talk, contribs) 14:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

An image with missing information is fixed by adding the information, not by deleting the image! Why have so much bureaucratic red tape? If the user added the pd-self template, it is implied that the user is the author, and therefore the source. Deleting the image because the user didn't fill out the latest fashionable template or added redundant information is counterproductive to say the least. --Itub 16:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

What NilfaBot does is highly contraproductive and that’s why I blocked him for now. See Commons:Bots/Requests for flags/OsamaKBOT 2, where we had the same problem. I delete every day a hundred files with „PD-self“, whenever they are obviously copied from the website of Manchester United or the author is „google“. On Commons, user have explicitly to express that their upload is their own work. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Image:119A65B284882ACBE4C41F4D2970.jpg for a fine example how these bots work.

Some more images:

Please undo your edits except for some series where it’s possible to determine if the uploader is the author. --Polarlys 16:52, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I see no reason undo these edits. I accept that there are many images that are falsely tagged with {{PD-self}} of course. These should be identified and deleted. However, I have a much bigger problem with edits like this or this. You reverted the bot's tagging, and I reverted you back to the original state as there is no reason to disbelieve the claim - you apparently only tagged it at all because it was in Category:Images without source. What the bot run is doing is transferring the source information from the license template to {{Information}}, not making any value statement about the validity of that info. This is why the bot did not remove nsd tags where present, I made the assumption that someone looked at all the information and made a determination that the image wasn't their own work (as opposed to just seeing a blank source=) and moving on.
To address the 8 images above: The first is still nsd tagged and liable for deletion. Nothing has changed on the second, except that the source= parameter matches the uploader's claim - as it would have done if they had used the English upload. The same with the third, fourth and fifth. As for the username not matching the author name, so? If I used my real name in the author tag would you be concerned that they were not my own work? The bot is emphatically not validating the licenses just accurately presenting the uploader's claim, which should then be verified.
About half the images in the category are not self-licensed. Those should be identified and nsd tagged as fast as possible - removing the self-tagged images speeds that process. As a bot has edited these, it is still practical to readily identify them, when the run is complete I will write a page (probably in my userspace) listing all of these so users can verify if these claims of self-work are valid or not. However, to call this highly contraproductive is disingenuous. Remember the uploader is claiming it is their own work, we believe that unless we have evidence to the contrary - not filling in an obscure bit of red tape is not evidence!--Nilfanion 17:16, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm very much against adding own work with a bot. Manual: yes. That means that you have at least mad ea decision on it. I do that a lot. The Images without source is, although a huge bucket, the ideal category of image that have to be checked. Either you fill the source field manually or tag the image for deletion for some reason. Getting rid of files in the cat with a bot is not a solition IMNSHO. Cheers! Siebrand 17:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
It makes it much harder to identify these images, if a bot added something like „own work“ just because of the template. The people working on Category:Unknown don’t need such false claims, we always had to check if the uploader expressed it or a bot. If someone declares an upload as „own work“ we usually assume good faith as far as possible, such statements are generally worthless if they are added automatically. The information template is necessary to provide high quality content, the fields can only be filled by humans. What about a bot who adds a date or author, looking at the upload date or uploader? Useless as well (it doesn’t matter when a file was uploaded or who uploaded free content from other sources). As long as I know Commons, users added something like „own photo“ or „own work“ to their files, or „own scan“ if they reproduced old content. That’s the difference to en.wikipedia.org, a lot of files transfered from this project to Commons are deleted since it is nearly impossible to reconstruct the true authorship. The (few) sysops who are working on Category:Unknown know why, {{PD-self}} is improperly used every minute. We don’t need a tool who fills the empty information template with a invalid claim, giving more legimation to the upload (since regular users add these statement to their files on their own, as a trustworthy statement). The uploaders explicitly have to express that their upload is their own work, a copied license template under a file name and an image is not enough and qualifies for deletion. --Polarlys 17:43, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Sigh. Why won't people hear this: {{PD-self}} states I, the copyright holder of this work... Therefore they are explictly saying with just that that it is their own work. I know pd-self is badly misused yes, I work CAT:U myself, but will refuse to so whilst images are being needlessly tagged simply of pointless red tape. People are misusing the category and many, many pics are being inappropriately deleted - I hope we all agree that is bad.
There are two distinct classes of images in Category:Images without source: ones that are self licensed and ones that are not. The second need only cursory examination, whereas the former require a more extensive one. Therefore there is a compromise position here. If I modify the bots task to:
  1. Continue to fill in source as own-work
  2. Add the image to Category:Images with source corrected by bot, which will be a subcategory of Category:Images without source.
This will:
  • Separate out the easy to nsd-tag non-self sourced images from the self-sourced ones, which require judgement.
  • Keep the self-sourced images readily identifiable.
  • Hopefully, make reviewers look at the important parts of the image and its data and their edits to the bot category are quite likely to be removal of the category not nsd tag.
I consider this a fair compromise here, that does not detract from the utility from the category (in fact by splitting it it will increase it), whilst adding a definite speed-bump. If there is consensus for this, I will redo those images the bot has already tagged before continuing the run with this modification.--Nilfanion 18:06, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
No Nilfanion, that’s not the same. The license template is something that people pick from a menu after previous files without such a funny box were marked by a bot and sooner and later got deleted. (All in all it’s the same like templates on user pages on various projects: people collect dozens of templates, they say that they are interested in a lot of topics, a lot of language, programming and graphic qualifications, but in my experience it doesn’t represent the real qualifications, they are used inflationary. A user who expresses in text: I am interested in quantum physics. is likely more educated concerning this field than most of the people who would add a similar template.) Adding a license template is much easier than expressing: „this is my photo“ (text). There are almost no problems with files with such an entry, the only problem which appears regularly are “own” reproductions of copyrighted work. Files with such an explicit statement have a different value, you know that there is someone who added a username as the author, declares it as own work and adds description and date. Sure, it’s possible to lie here, but most people don’t. We elevate files through adding such statements automatically whenever their status didn’t change. I have to think over your proposal. For me, it was easier to go through the category manually, adding source or deleting/tagging files for some weeks. --Polarlys 18:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Maybe it was easier for you to do that. However you have made at least one incorrect call. IMO, 1 falsely deleted image is worse than 1,000 inappropriately kept - and the error ratio is higher than that. Splitting the category should make things easier all round IMO.--Nilfanion 18:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Some more example:

Please have a look at such a user: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:DeletedContributions&target=Nazareno Every upload with a „self-license“, but every upload a copyvio. That’s not an exception. --Polarlys 18:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC) Sigh.. given the extreme lack of interest in discussion of this, I'm going to carry out what I proposed above. Discussion that involves one side trying to debate the point and the other ignoring it doesn't solve anything, just makes Commons an even less pleasant place to work. The utter lack of discussion is close to driving me from Commons to en.wikipedia!--Nilfanion 00:31, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I missed the edit you referenced. I like what you propose to do, except for the adding of the (from your point of view) additional own work statement. I'd rather see a template added that does not add text to the image description and only a category. You could add it in the Author= part of information, though. Cheers! Siebrand 06:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
From my POV it is not making an additional statement, its there already... The whole point of what I propose is to remove these files from Category:Images without source itself, and then place them in a related category. There is no way to do that without putting something into source=. This means they are still identifiable for maintenance purposes, but "self"-licensed images are separated from images which are not self-licensed at all; as these should get a more in depth examination.--Nilfanion 09:36, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
There are discussions on every single project you work on and sometimes you simply forget one. I still see no need for another maintenance category, your bot would be helpful if he added such a statement to whole series by users, where it’s possible to check two or three images. This way you could add such a statement to a large part of the files without making statements on the uploads by users who just pick self-licenses for their copyvios because they are the first ones in the dropdown menu. If there is a need for an additional category: Please add it. But please no additional statements on the author, the important difference between en.wp and Commons is that you not just choose a license and working on CAT:U is much more difficult if there are statements which don’t fit to the image’s character and you have to check the history (to see a bot edit). BTW, could anyone help me with CAT:U? There are still very old categories left. ––Polarlys 09:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I won't touch CAT:U until this is resolved. When things like this are occurring, I don't trust the nsd-tagging in CAT:U; meaning I cannot work there in good conscience. The edits by the bots you highlighted are incorrect yes, but are they merely repeating the uploader's claim. The bot making these edits hardly means the image will not be deleted if appropriate. By placing into a distinct category which only these bot-edited images are placed into you can adjust your assessments accordingly, as the category is obvious when reviewing a page. If its that big a deal to you, I can make the bot add "Own work.(Bot-verified, please confirm)" instead of "Own work".
Please, just remember a self license is an assertion of own work. I agree it is not a strong assertion and it is a false assertion in a significant number of cases, but that doesn't make it an invalid assertion in all cases. With unsourced non-self pics we should nsd-tag on sight, whilst we should investigate further with *-self pics. This indicates two different approaches are required, suggesting moving self works into a distinct category will help with maintenance.--Nilfanion 08:55, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Ask for help from Portuguese speaking admins. Please add header as in Template:Please link images, Template:Please link images/es. Thank you. --EugeneZelenko 15:55, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Done! PatríciaR msg 16:46, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Thank you! --EugeneZelenko 16:51, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of not quite duplicate images

I seem to be often coming across deletion of 'not exact duplicates', I have no great problem with deletion of exact duplicates, but think all deletion of non exact duplicates (ie where files are not binary equivalents) should go through a normal deletion request process. Often subtle differences between versions or the images' relation to some FP or QI discussion are not noticed by the deleter. Is there a policy on this? --Tony Wills 14:05, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if there is a policy per se but we have switched away from replacing PNGs with equivalent SVGs, for example. I think if the image is not an exact dup, that keeping the original around seems prudent, and at the very least, a discussion is merited. ++Lar: t/c 00:35, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Commons:Guide to adminship

Pfctdayelise & me have written Commons:Guide to adminship. Comments and improvements would be appreciated. -- Bryan (talk to me) 14:52, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

A very nice piece of work... ++Lar: t/c 15:57, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
A simple, yet very useful guide. I'll be looking in it several times, no doubt about that. Please consider adding a link to it in {{AdminWelcome}} and/or somewhere in Commons:Administrators. PatríciaR msg 22:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Good idea. Done for en. Needs translation for the other languages (I think perhaps along with other stuff added recently...) ++Lar: t/c 23:56, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
We did not have {{AdminWelcome/de}}, so I made one. It needs review by someone who is more than de-1 though. :) ++Lar: t/c 00:20, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I have reworked the text a little bit, but is it possible that something is not linked properly in {{AdminWelcome/lang}} because if I click on an other language in the welcome-text on my talk page I always get to the respective template. -- Cecil 01:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the corrections. Did you remove the welcome template from your page? I wanted to go check and did not spot it. It's "supposed" to take you to the template when you click on any language, I think. See any of the other message templates. I could have broken it though. I just went around and was substing it to get rid of all inclusions. ++Lar: t/c 01:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
My welcome template is already archived. I don't think that it should take you to the template. After all you get a welcome and then maybe decide that you have better knowledge of an other langage. But then instead of reading the message in the choosen language you get to the template, where you still can read the text but get the red text at the end and your name is missing at the beginning (shows AdminWelcome/en, congratulations! instead). -- Cecil 04:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) Maybe the red text shouldn't be there. I don't know. But consider this talk page (picked at random from all those that link to a message template) User_talk:Heidas ... it contains an instance of {{Please link images}}. If you click on one of the other languages at the top of the message, it takes you to the template for that language, and you do not remain on the user talk page. I know that in some techniques used in other applications (I forget where, maybe the vote pages for board did this??) there are ways to display all the text, via dropdown or lang code, while remaining on the page. If we want to do that, maybe we need a redesign? Not just of this welcome template but of all the templates in Category:Message templates as well? Because they all, I believe, work that way. It might be an interesting and fun project (for someone well versed in templates) to change the behaviours ++Lar: t/c 10:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Commons 2.0 ! project : make a graphist community here need leaders

User supporting commons 2.0
User supporting commons 2.0
This user strongly support Commons 2.0 ! See GVP-GLab-GA.

Hello, I make an adversing to get contributers and leaders on the Commons 2.0! project, which aim to make a true & active community of graphist on Commons.
The ideas come from the French graphic lab which made alone about 1.300 images creations or improvements in 2 years with about 10 to 20 volunters. On commons, we have now and we talk about 1.000 graphists in the "Graphics abilities" categories (GA), 1.000 graphists ready to help, and already understanding the wiki-syntaxe, the principles of Wikipedia, etc.

I set up this list of projects since 2005. Since I'm now leaving Wiki-commons, I hopes somes actives users may put the energy need to make this project active and significantly efficient for 2008.

So, I encourage all actives users/graphists to involves themselves in the project, all uploaders to make images clean up requests on the Graphic Lab, and to perform clean up if you can, to lead the project toward innovating services. In short : be aware of this Commons 2.0 ! and its graphics Lab, and make the place living !

You can show your support by adding {{User commons 2.0}} on your user page which will be REALLY helpfull to allow more users to know about the project.

More informations and links on :

Yug (talk), the place is your ! 06:21, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Édouard-Henri Avril (8).jpg

Trying to use the image in :en Talk:BDSM/Translation I tied really hard but can't make it work. Trying to access it directly, Firefox 2.0.0.7 issues a warning of an attempted cross-site-scripting attack.

Warnung: assignment to undeclared variable mns_tooltip

Quelldatei: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Quick-delete.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript

I even can't access it directly, only using http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:BDSM

I would be really happy to use the image in the translated article since it is the only one on the project demonstration the issue. Could someone please fix it? Thank you. --Nemissimo 11:47, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyone?--Nemissimo 14:03, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Can't reproduce it (same browser, same version). -- Cecil 14:13, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Me neither, the picture displays fine in FF 2.0.0.7/MacOS X. Did you try clearing your browser cache? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 14:16, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Cache cleared, still not working. That's strange I tried Opera a minute ago and it works?!?
Anyway thank you for your help, I will reinstall firefox, maybe that's the answer. ;-) Kind regard.--Nemissimo 16:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Cone-response.svg

Image:Cone-response.svg is not rendering for me, in thumbnail or on the image page, unless I click through on it all the way to the raw image. Could someone please have a look? Thank you. 209.77.205.2 08:10, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Same for me. I tried a purge, see if that sorts it, after the purge it showed up on the description page. ++Lar: t/c 11:23, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
It is working for me -- AnyFile 20:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Could an administrator add a tooltip and accesskey to the "Random file" link in the sidebar? It could be done by creating two system messages:

But FYI, x is already the accesskey for a random page link, but it is not in the sidebar so there would be no conflict. —Zachary talk 01:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Done, but I put "file" instead of "image". pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Change my name

Hi. I'm a french user of the french wikipedia. Can you change the name of my account please ? Current Name : Cylence. WantedName : JulienS. Thanks a lot. Sorry if isn't the good page for this request, I'm new on Media Commons ;). Cylence 08:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Please request your username to be changed here. --Matt314 10:48, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Ahonc violated my rights by uploading images Image:Выборы на Украине 2007-2.jpg Image:Подсчёт голосов 3.jpg from Russian Wikipedia (my nick in RuWP is ru:User:Водник). I gave other licences originally:

The only difference that I see is that at one picture he wrote {{Cc-by-sa-2.5}} while you wrote {{Cc-by-sa-2.5,2.0,1.0}}, and with the other picture it is exactly the opposite. You wrote {{Cc-by-sa-2.5}} and he {{Cc-by-sa-2.5,2.0,1.0}}. I have repaired that. -- Cecil 16:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
No, wrong. I mixed the pictures. Repaired once again. He didn't gave different licences. -- Cecil 16:39, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
So, since he gave the correct licences and named you, where exactly is the copyright violation? -- Cecil 16:42, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Proxies

Can anybody help me figuring out if this IP 87.242.116.208 (talk · contribs) is an open proxy? It's definitely a spammer and is currently blocked for one month (had been blocked before for one week for the same reason). PatríciaR msg 15:11, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

My 0.02. Given a previous one week block I'd might go for three months without any real thought on the same offence. Then this given it is sorbs would influence me. Equally this is often a great way of finding proxies with this given good info on spamming. Final straw is this which shows prolific cross wiki spamming. If it were me I would go for 6 months I think although I think it is probably an open proxy. Put it like this I'm off to block it elsewhere! And this is as much for sharing with others as just for you Patricia! --Herby talk thyme 16:00, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you so much. I have increased the block period and will cherish those links ;) PatríciaR msg 10:23, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Image:WW2 TitlePicture For Wikipedia Article.jpg

Please see Image:WW2 TitlePicture For Wikipedia Article.jpg

The above-linked collage image is used here:

One image [18] in the collage image has been deleted. See

I am talking about the image labeled in the collage as:

Left Upper: German police entering the city Imst in Tyrol/Austria National Archives, source: http://www.temple.edu/history/amhist2images.html

The collage image version I am looking at is the one dated:

Was this image correctly deleted? Can it be uploaded to wikipedia maybe, instead of the commons? I have been studying

Would this tag work:

w:Template:Non-free historic image

I see it in use here: w:Image:Soviet flag on the Reichstag roof unaltered.jpg --Timeshifter 03:14, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

It was tagged delete|reason=no reason for PD given, no author. The license was {{PD-USGov-NARA}}. I would say it was correctly deleted. I don't know if the PD claim from enwiki would be accepted on Commons. Commons does not allow non-free content so the Non-free historic image tag would not work. Please see Commons:Choosing_a_license for more. Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
OK. Thanks. I see that the non-free historic image tag is used on the wikipedia images listed here: w:Category:Non-free historic images. I guess those images are just more fair-use images used only on pages directly related to the image, and where no other historic image can be found for the subject at hand. --Timeshifter 04:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Image deletion

Since these images tagged with {{Copyvio}}, can anyone delete these images now? Then I can re-upload those to the en.wiki right now using the same file name. Thanks --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ walkie-talkie 20:32, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

✓ Done —O (说 • 喝) 23:20, 06 October 2007 (GMT)
Thank you very much. --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ walkie-talkie 11:27, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Image protection

Request protection for Image:Broom icon.svg. Rich Farmbrough, 11:01 9 October 2007 (GMT).

✓ Done thanks --Herby talk thyme 11:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Special:Nuke

Poking around (!!) I found an "special" page on Meta "Nuke". Now this allows mass delete of pages created by a user or an ip. Skating briefly over the potentially lethal consequences anyone know why it does not exist here? In practice it could be very useful at times. Cheers --Herby talk thyme 13:08, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Never heard of it, but why not make use of it if possible? It would also be cool if it was possible to delete all images in a category or on a gallery. / Fred J 16:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Meta seems to be a small and tight community to me. I'd strongly advise against enabling nuke on commons, unless a corresponding unnuke extension is created that restores the workload symmetry for undoing a rogue nuke. --Dschwen 16:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I'll sit on the fence a while as I agree with both views :) --Herby talk thyme 17:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
True enough; meta is completely different in their purpose. However, if the deletions were at 4/minute, it would actually be slower than a fast admin. / Fred J 18:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
You could always use the pywikipedia script delete.py. CO2 22:17, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Installed extensions are in Special:Version. Nuke is an extension I expect to be implemented on all Wikimedia wikis once it has been fully tested on meta - if you think you need it, request activation through bugzilla. Localisation for it has been added recently. More documentation can be found at mw:Extension:Nuke. Cheers! Siebrand 08:18, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

A screenshot is available at Administrator#Unusual_tools if you're interested. Not that great. If you do use it on meta, please upload it so we have more complete screenshots for mw documentation. ~Kylu (u|t) 21:19, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Better error message

I've noticed that people rather frequently ask what's gone wrong when the software doesn't produce thumbnails for large images. In response to this, I have changed the error message for this case (it's customizeable at MediaWiki:Thumbnail invalid params). It'd be good if native speakers of other languages could similarly improve the messages in other languages (just append "/" and the language code, as in MediaWiki:Thumbnail invalid params/de). See also Commons:Help desk#Image rendering problem?. Thanks. Lupo 12:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Please do not change it here. Request the English message to be changed in the MediaWiki source through bugzilla:. Cheers! Siebrand 13:55, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
By all means, do so. I won't; I don't do bugzilla as the e-mails are visible for everyone. I also figured that correcting it here and now was the better approach, as Brion recognized already in April that there should be a more useful error message,[19] but it still hasn't been improved. I suppose the devs have way more important things to attend to. Lupo 14:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Spanish speaker assistance requested

Hello, I'm the newest newbie admin. I believe I need the assistance of a Spanish speaking administrator relating to the uploader of Image:Escudoescuela.png. This was deleted as a logo, but he reuploaded it stating that he is the creator. However, the actual site appears to reserve all rights. The uploader doesn't seem to undersand enough English to get any explanation I might offer, though he has asked for one, I think. So rather than engaging in a cycle of delete-upload-delete, I wonder if someone with the proper language skills could explain the situation to him? Apologies if there is some established procedure for these situations that I'm missing. Thanks, BanyanTree 09:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Whether or not the uploader thinks the deletion was incorrect, recreating images without going through Commons:Undeletion requests (which, as an admin, you should have on your watchlist) is not acceptable. You may delete the image again (it didn't have a license this time around either) and notify the uploader with {{dont recreate/es|Image:Escudoescuela.png}}, and if they ignore that, block them for three days to a week to give them time to read our instructions and the messages they received, which have of course been translated into Spanish. In any case, the deletion was correct, since even if it was the uploader's own work, the uploader failed to issue a license for it. This means we couldn't use the image legally. —LX (talk, contribs) 10:07, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
I have dropped him a note explaining we cannot verify he is the copyright owner. The legal section of the site states the logos cannot be reproduced without permission, and told him that he should modify that section to indicate he is the copyright owner and that it allows the reproduction under a free license. By the way, I am not sure the logo should be updated, although the user may be working in a Spanish article about the school. Cheers! -- ReyBrujo 17:32, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks LX and ReyBrujo. I knew that the image wasn't permissible, but couldn't figure out a way to let the uploader know why. Cheers, BanyanTree 17:40, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
He left a note saying he modified the license terms of the site. However, he did not choose a specific license, instead stating "licencia para libre distribucion" (license for free distribution), so I left him another message explaining the basics of free licenses, the four most used as examples and that, if he wanted to license the images under a specific free license, he should mail OTRS the authorization along with the image. If he decides so, I am guessing someone from OTRS will be uploading the logo and specifying the ticket with his confirmation. Cheers! -- ReyBrujo 07:46, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Edit request: MediaWiki:Licenses/ja

MediaWiki:Licenses/jaの「PD-ineligible」の項から、「日本の法令文書」という語句を除去していただけますか。詳細はノート参照。 Please remove a phrase "日本の法令文書" (Legislative document in Japan) from MediaWiki:Licenses/ja, PD-ineligible item. Thanks. --Hatukanezumi 03:46, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

除去しました。ありがとうございます。
It appears (assisted greatly by a dictionary) that an ongoing discussion at ja:Wikipedia‐ノート:メディアファイルのライセンス/CC・デュアルライセンスの導入の提案 has questioned whether PD-ineligible can apply to Japanese government documents. A suggestion at MediaWiki talk:Licenses/ja that the blanket placement of government documents under the PD-ineligible be removed was seconded by another user, while Hatukanezumi has suggested that it be removed until consensus is reached in the relevant ja discussion. This appears reasonable and I have done so.
I don't pretend to follow all the ins-and-outs of the legal argument, being only ja-2, so a review by a native ja admin would be welcome. - BanyanTree 22:27, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

RFC: User:Siebrand/fix redirected cat

Edit at will. Cheers! Siebrand 18:04, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff

Dear Friends, I ask to pay attention to constant harassments and spy-mania, copiright-mania and PR-mania to user Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff and his works from User:Jeff G.. I understand, that the specified participant of our community (User:Jeff G.) very much loves me and "roughly breathes" because of me, hinting at a number of "gay photos" which are not present and never was, but so is simple to him I will not be given.)) Any of my works does not break and did not break whose copyrights and is loaded here for articles of various language sections 'Wiki/s', and not just for the English version. Please, people, take care of User:Jeff G. and occupy him with something another and more useful, that he would not prevent to work. --Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff 13:05, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I've been looking into this matter. In my opinion, Jeff G. (talk · contribs) has been following Commons policies and guidelines. That cannot be said of Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff (talk · contribs) in every instance. I have protected Image:Alexandroffs v7p68.jpg to prevent Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff from removing the delete tag which he has done twice now. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:28, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Many of Pogrebnoj-Alex's images were tagged as copyvio a while ago, but without any evidence at all, so the speedy delete tag was removed. Later they were nominated in a regular deletion (Commons:Deletion requests/Pictures of User:Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff), but there again kept in the end, due to lacking evidence of them being copyvios. / Fred J 21:21, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
  • First of all have respect for users! It is not necessary to deform names. Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff but not Pogrebnoj-Alex. These are different names - accordingly and users. You first of all offend by it others. --Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff 14:11, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Sorry Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff, I thought Alex was an acceptable short form of your name. / Fred J 15:50, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
There are copyvios, for sure, but most pictures are his and all have been deposited here in good faith. The problem is elsewhere.
No doubt I will be accused of P-A-harassment but while dealing with orphan categories, I've just stumbled upon a whole bunch of non-free images by Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff, uploaded by Genius 3 (which is undoubtedly a user alias, as is Genius 2). Most, if not all, images uploaded by Genius 3 require the author to be informed. Having discussed with P-A, I'm quite sure that P-A not only expect to be informed but intends to grant (or not) his permission to use and/or modify his images.
Worse: despite the free license and even though those conditions are not mentioned on images uploaded by User:Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff, according to P-A the mere fact that he put a link to his repository implicitely add those conditions on his images and make them non-free.
It's very difficult to discuss with him (I gave up) first because he's using some kind of automatic translator (russian-speaking users are welcome) and second because... well... you'll find out (beware, it's not easy to deal with geniuses). In my opinion, you should not focus on copyvios but on this licensing issue. No doubt problems will arise again and again with this user, and not only for copyvio reasons. For example, I've tagged a lot of his images with {{Watermark}} and {{Remove border}} and I'm sure he won't let the watermark go easily. Despite the license banner he put on his medias, I'm 100% sure they are not free so you should react quickly before they are widely used on WP. If someone can persuade him to let anyone modify and redistribute (even commercially) his content, fine because many of his pictures are worthful, but it requires some patience and russian-speaking skills I have not. — Xavier, 15:56, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm blocking Genius 3 as "abusing multiple accounts" --Herby talk thyme 15:58, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I think this user should be blocked if he'll continue uncivil behavior. He used offensive lexics in address of users from Russian Wikipedia and was warned 3 times (on my memory) to not do that. --EugeneZelenko 14:17, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
  • HAS not understood!!! And where you have seen concrete "insult" someone from the present? Show me though one "pederast" by whom I have offended? Give the party names, nicknames, passwords, appearances... What - you can not? And it is not necessary to give out your wished for really valid. It was not for my part. Or, "on the thief and the cap burns"? Only at me all in a full order.--Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff 14:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually, two months ago, this user was blocked for a six month duration while he was working anonymously as 24.168.39.49 (talk · contribs). I was in the belief that everyone was aware of this and was giving him some kind of second chance. My concern, following what I wrote above, is that the conditions of use of (most of) his content are not clear at all and eventually, a bunch of P-A's pictures will be proposed for deletion (especially pictures uploaded by Genius 3 (talk · contribs)). If P-A is blocked, I'm quite sure this will be the end of any discussion with him, therefore we won't be able to persuade him to change the license of those pictures for a compatible one and we'll have no other choice than delete them. But anyway, if polite discussion is not possible with him, block may be unavoidable. — Xavier, 15:32, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Duly warned [20]. --SB_Johnny | PA! 15:21, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Duly answer too [21] )) --Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff 14:04, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Uh yeah. I tried talking to him, but I'm not quite sure what he's accusing me of now. If he doesn't maintain a level of civility, I recommend an indefblock. I don't think commons is the appropriate project for how he wants his photos used. --SB_Johnny | PA! 15:15, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
That is my impression, as well. I thought perhaps the Russian-English language barrier was the problem. However, the sense I get from Babelfish translations of the talk page of EugeneZelenko, a native Russian-speaking administrator, is similar to the English language discussions.[22] His ruwiki block log is not encouraging.[23] He appears to have been indefinitely blocked on 10 October 2006.[24]
Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff says he is contributing to Commons because he "tried to be registered [at Flickr] some times, but something is impossible. Registration does not pass."[25] I'm sorry that he can't register at Flickr, but Commons has a completely different scope. "Everyone is allowed to copy, use and modify any files here freely as long as the source and the authors are credited and as long as users release their copies/improvements under the same freedom to others." (See Commons:Welcome) The images that he uploaded with non-free conditions will have to be removed, unless he is willing to remove those restrictions.
Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff's lack of acceptance of the fundamental condition of contribution to Commons and his inability or unwillingness to assume good faith or be civil (in Russian or English) is disruptive, in my opinion. He has been warned repeatedly in both Russian and in English. Walter Siegmund (talk) 19:01, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Wsiegmund, I agree with you entirely, but I can't find a specific policy saying that images that are watermarked are an issue, or more specifically that watermarks can't be included as an invariant section. I'm afraid I don't have the legal knowledge to determine whether the permitted licenses make that disctinction, but it's our commons (all of us! even those of us who haven't joined us yet!), so we might want to make a policy about this. (I don't support making policies to deal with particular users (actually I don't support making any more policies than we absolutely need), but this is important, and is likely to come up again and again, and besides Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff will almost certainly slip up and get tossed out for incivility anyway.) --SB_Johnny | PA! 21:09, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
See Commons:Watermarks and {{Watermark}} and meta:GFDL FAQ#What_about_invariant_sections.3F_Everyone_says_those_are_trouble. There is actually a {{GFDL-IS}}, but it's only used for three images (one of them has no invariant sections specified and explicitly didn't have any on German Wikipedia, one is a possible copyright infringement of a textual work, and one is a featured picture), and I believe it should be converted into a speedy deletion tag for being against policy. —LX (talk, contribs) 22:23, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
LX, I've read both of those (not my first rodeo when it comes to "ownership" issues). The problem is that the commons page is just a proposal, and the meta page is just an explainer (with links for further reading). A simple, cut-and-dry policy about this is not only needed, but easy to write and enforce. As it stands now Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff has been warned about incivility, and won't be surprised by a block if he's uncivil again. --SB_Johnny | PA! 22:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree that we should formalise those principles. Nevertheless, both texts are solidly rooted in Commons and Wikimedia community values and current practices. Commons:Watermarks is a much more stable document than, say, COM:DW, which is apparently categorised as a policy, so don't focus too much on words like "proposed" and "policy". Guidelines and policies are only descriptive anyway (w:WP:IAR?). —LX (talk, contribs) 06:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of whatever (watermarks?) is being discussed right now, I have already blocked the user for three months because of harassment (incivility), abusive sockpuppetry, and uploading files incompatible with COM:L after tons of warnings. The watermark discussion (which is probably off-topic) should be held elsewhere. O2 (息 • 吹) 03:06, 18 October 2007 (GMT)

I extended the block indefinitely because the user has resorted to more sockpuppetry and other block evasion tacticts to perpetuate the harassment. I don't expect this user's attitude to change after three months. —LX (talk, contribs) 14:55, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Moved from COM:AN/U. Siebrand 15:00, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Has already been blocked 3 times for, among other things, incivility, copyvios, and sockpuppetry. I am at the point of proposing an indef ban on him, based on his ridiculous personal attacks and behavior at Commons:Deletion requests/Uploads of Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff. This user has shown that he's not going to ever help this project (after being here for months he continues to upload files which dont' allow derivs or non-Wikipedia usage, as if he doesn't know better), and he has shown, by his behavior, he has no desire to be anything but disruptive, and will never cooperate. A perusal of his talk page: User talk:Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff should show as much; you will also notice that he has not actually contributed anything in over a month [26]; only returned to perpetuate his arguments over his incivility. See also Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard#User:Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff. Thoughts? Patstuart 23:24, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Blocked for three months, because of harassment (incivility) and uploading media that is incompatible with Commons's licensing guidelines, after the final warning. If, after three months, does the user still upload media incompatible with Commons's licensing guidelines and remains hostile, an indefinite block/ban can be considered when the time comes. The deletion request will continue as normal. O2 (息 • 吹) 02:50, 18 October 2007 (GMT)
Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff evaded block with IP edits.[27] I blocked for two hours for block evasion. Walter Siegmund (talk) 05:56, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I suggest a checkuser to see if the IP is used by editors other than Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff. Closing that loophole will almost certainly be needed, as he is (IMO) extremely unlikely to change his behavior. --SB_Johnny | PA! 08:44, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
The user has now been blocked indefinately. Please block any sock puppets on sight. Tells are babel translations in English. Cheers! Siebrand 14:38, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
No puppets obvious at present --Herby talk thyme 14:41, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
  • reset

For those of you who are bored probably worth keeping an eye on P-A's talk page. An IP just edited it faking a signature (user:72.11.219.220) which I think may be an open proxy but I can't find the evidence for now (& haven't blocked it) --Herby talk thyme 16:53, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

By the way I think we will find open proxies used quite a bit in this case - I've just blocked two of them, worth people keeping an eye (Commons:Open proxy detection may help but I don't think it picks them all up). Can I ask that folk deal with these carefully - blocks should be "hard" (not anon only) but equally I personally do not feel they should be indef, IPs change etc, cheers --Herby talk thyme 17:11, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I would like to point out that this user has already been blcoked indef on the Russian wp (ru:Обсуждение участника:Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff), apparently for "slander" (it's what my online translator says) so it's not like we don't know this user has a history of being disruptive. Patstuart 19:13, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
And it looks like we might have some sockpuppetry to commit 3RR and pump up his photos on en: en:User talk:24.168.39.49. Patstuart 19:16, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I just found another sock King 1 (talk · contribs), which just posted a message on P-A's talk page. I have since blocked the user, autoblocked the IP, and disabled email. O2 (息 • 吹) 03:07, 19 October 2007 (GMT)
He is using an anonymiser network. If you want someone to look into it a little further, notify nl:User talk:RonaldB. He'll investigate his open proxy sources, identify the exit nodes in the network and add then to the open proxy database so that edits from those hosts are alerted on the open proxy page. On some wikis that will lead to an immediate block (even if no edits have been made from the host yet - on nl.wp, and he.wp for example), here we will be notified on Commons:Open proxy detection within a few minutes. Cheers! Siebrand 06:50, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

RfC: User:Siebrand/renamebot

Please review User:Siebrand/renamebot. Edit at will, as long as you are not changing names of templates. Categories can be renamed, as long as you change references.

Betacommand will write a bot that will automatically process media rename requests, as long as they come from trusted users (admins + users on a whitelist). After re-uploading preserving all data, the source image will be tagged {{Bad name}}, so it can be processed from Category:Duplicate with [CommonsDupes. This includes a {{Universal replace}} before finally deleting it.

I could use some help on creating the templates and the text in the template. Feel free to create a common layout for them. I thing {{Rename}} could do with some touching up...

I think this process will finally take care of the backlog we have in rename requests and open the door for better file names. I expect the process to start trials in a few days, going into production within a week or two. Cheers! Siebrand 22:01, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

flickr abuse

Cadenamado1 (talk · contribs) The user uploads obvious copyvios to his own flickr account under a free license. From flickr he uploads them to Commons. This happened before, but I never saw a case which such an intent. Is there the possibility to implement a blacklist for the bot? --Polarlys 16:15, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Probably. Will look into it later. Oh and users who deliberately use Flickr to upload copyvios should be indef blocked, imo. -- Bryan (talk to me) 16:36, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
I won’t block him. We had to identify the new account again. --Polarlys 18:44, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Has anyone informed flickr? ~Kylu (u|t) 19:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

At it again. Someone needs to go through the new uploads and the user may need to be blocked, considering at least one of the images is just a re-upload from what was deleted before. ShadowHalo 22:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Still at it. Can an admin take a look and delete and ban this user. Megapixie 14:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Deleted them all. ––Polarlys 14:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Did you forget Image:Now That You Got It.jpg? 17Drew 06:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if it's the same person or not, but Usuariocrazylovo8 just uploaded all the same pictures again. Is there any way to end this cycle? 17Drew 23:52, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Clearly a sockpuppet. Blocked indefinitely and all images deleted. I put the filenames on my watchlist now so that I can see if they show up again. —LX (talk, contribs) 00:34, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I am placing these on COM:SALT so that they are protected from creation until someone removes the entries from that page. O2 (息 • 吹) 03:00, 07 October 2007 (GMT)

Please see Commons:Undeletion requests/Current_requests#Special:DeletedContributions.2FCadenamado1 where the user's "brother" asks to have the images restored after approaching me about it on my user talk page[28][29]. —LX (talk, contribs) 17:35, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Tupto

The above user is apparently an incarnation of the banned user en:User:Roitr on the English Wikipedia, and is uploading numerous copyvio images here that were deleted from the English Wikipedia. Videmus Omnia 23:46, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I strongly suggest we ban this user. Even if he hasn't been officially banned on commons, he has shown countless times that he is not to be trusted for ridiculous copyvio problems and sockpuppetry. If en:Wikipedia:Long_term_abuse/Roitr isn't enough evidence to kick someone off, even copyright problems aside, I don't know what is. Patstuart 23:52, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
See also User:Davric. Patstuart 18:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Davric is not related to Tupto. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
The Tupto account was blocked by Riana, but he's back as Tuptos (talk · contribs). If you look at his contribs, he's reverting a free version of U.S. Army rank insignia to a possible copyvio version that comes from this website. Would welcome any advice on how to handle this. Videmus Omnia 14:36, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Blocked Tuptos (& edits should be reverted in my opinion) but folks should take a look at Tertd (talk · contribs) maybe? --Herby talk thyme 14:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Tertd (talk · contribs) is another sock account - same copyvio images that were uploaded at the en Wikipedia. Videmus Omnia 14:43, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Blocked, reverted Tuptos, not got time to do Tertd. Thanks for alerting us, let us know whenthe next one turns up! Cheers --Herby talk thyme 14:49, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
And check my logs, couple of obvious IPs involved --Herby talk thyme 14:54, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Blocking the IPs is probably a waste of time - if you look at the long-term abuse case above, this vandal uses dynamic IPs. Videmus Omnia 15:05, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Rank insignia images

I have reverted the mass speedy nom of rank insignia images by User:Videmus Omnia today for not being obvious copyvios. It can go to COM:DEL but it is not an obvious case. If other such speedy noms happen, those should also be reverted. I also am semi-afraid of renomination of the same images as I did notice an isolated mini-revert war. -- Cat ちぃ？ 20:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid the images are obvious copyvios. Although the vast majority of the images have no source and no valid license template (a problem that White Cat did not correct when he mass-removed the speedy deletion tags from his own images), they were produced by the commercial website http://www.uniforminsignia.net, a website which makes enhanced digital versions of rank insignia based on official descriptions, then claims copyright on the resulting derivative works. These are not photographs or scans, so Bridgeman does not apply. I am disturbed by White Cat's mass removal of deletion tags from copyright violations that he himself uploaded. Videmus Omnia 22:22, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I should note that White Cat is also misusing administrative rollback tools to remove "no source" tags from images he has uploaded, and is telling me on my talk page that I can't tag these unsourced images for deletion. Videmus Omnia 00:47, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Since when do we expect images that are ineligible of copyright to contain a source. File a case like Commons:Deletion requests/Nazi SS rank insignia images. They are not speedyable. Also some of your speedy noms are user created images not from any website. -- Cat ちぃ？ 00:55, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
The so-called "user-created" images were also derivative works taken from the same website from which you took your uploads. Anyway, I plan to tag the unsourced images as such, and ask White Cat to recuse himself from using his admin tools and instead concentrate his efforts on cleaning up the images he has uploaded. Videmus Omnia 01:01, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
White Cat is also threatening to block me if I tag his unsourced uploads as unsourced. Videmus Omnia 01:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
  • reset

According to German copyright law, "laws, regulations, decrees and official announcements and decisions and officially drafted guidelines to decisions [do] not enjoy copyright protection." The military insignia would fall under decrees, and therefore everything is {{PD-GermanGov}}. O2 (息 • 吹) 03:39, 20 October 2007 (GMT)

Actually, the images from which White Cat removed the tags are of insignia of a multitude of countries, not just Germany. White Cat has uploaded scores of military insignia images he apparently found on the Internet. However, the German insignia images you refer to were not produced by the German government, but are apparently copyrighted derivative works created by a commercial site. (I should add that the images still have no source, in the vast majority of cases. I'm only presuming they came from uniforminsignia.net because they are identical in every respect to the images on that site.) Videmus Omnia 04:34, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Notice: No local sitenotices before and during fundraiser

From about a day ago until the end of the fundraiser, the contents of MediaWiki:Anonnotice and MediaWiki:Sitenotice will be inactive. The sitenotice will be filled centrally from meta. The situation will get back to normal after the fundraiser. See bugzilla:11705. Cheers! Siebrand 22:13, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Ask for Delete

Please, delete following image

[30]

Is a double of

[31]

Do not delete the second one, Latzina1888.jpg, we need it.

Thank you. --[[User:Createaccount 18:08, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Form here on, you can simply tag it {{Bad name}}. Patstuart 17:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
{{Duplicate}} also works. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:18, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

New tool to patrol the latest images

I've written a new tool to patrol the latest image, you can find it here and a basic description, here. Good patrolling, :-) --Filnik 14:35, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

How can I ...

if posible,

  1. How can I delete the older versions of my contributions?
  2. How can I redirect my commons user/discussion page to my personal es:wikipedia page?

Thank you,

--[[User:Createaccount]] 20:22, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

  1. To have a complete history, older versions will not be deleted.
  2. Instead of a redirect give a link to your user page like [[:es:Usuario:Createaccount]]

--GeorgHH 20:41, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Old edits can be deleted by administrators, but this will only happen if there are very strong reasons, such as the edits containing copyright infringements or sensitive personal information.
Cross-wiki redirects do not work; redirect only work within a single project. If you do not wish to monitor your Commons user talk page actively, please enable e-mail notifications using your preferences. —LX (talk, contribs) 21:13, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Silly image title

Please protect Image:Picture 1.png. -- RHaworth 15:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

✓ Done —LX (talk, contribs) 16:28, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

{{AgenciaBrasil}}

Hi, I have a question about images tagged with {{AgenciaBrasil}} . If the image does not a have url does it need to be tagged with "no source"? Thanks. PxMa 00:07, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Not necessarily. "No source" is used when you have a doubt on the "freedom" of the image. For instance:
  • Image by Agencia Brasil: author given (and checks out), proper and sourced licence, but not URL prior to 2006 because their website does not archive things sooner than this. => you do not put "no source", even if strictly speaking all sources are not given.
  • Image taken from a family album: the source is stated, yet there's going to be a "no source tag", because the author is not known, or he's known but the legal status is unclear. Rama 08:37, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Images claimed to be from www.aussieropeworks.com under GFDL

I have noticed several images claimed to be from http://www.aussieropeworks.com (clean home page, but do not proceed any further if you do not or cannot legally watch adult-oriented materials) with GFDL. Examples include Image:Model_in_stringent_hogtie.jpg, Image:Bent forward strappado.jpg, Image:Model in vertical hogtie.jpg, Image:Model in suspended hogtie.jpg, and Image:Model in elbow bondage.jpg. English Wikipedia also has several images linked to w:Template:Img-confirmation also claimed to be from the same source with GFDL. As the source site does not grant GFDL, I would like to ask anyone with access to OTRS to verify if any permission from www.aussieropeworks.com has been received, as no one responded to me at w:Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Hogtie_bondage about OTRS.--Jusjih 03:03, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Nothing I can find in OTRS. -- Bryan (talk to me) 08:43, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
w:User_talk:Jbc01#Images from JBC Productions seems to show that these images once uploaded to English Wikipedia in Septeber and October 2005 were licensed. That may be good enough, but there may be GFDL violations if images moved here do not credit w:User_talk:Jbc01. If not sure enough, I will email and ask him to forward a permission statement to permissions-commons at wikimedia.org for a clear record.--Jusjih 02:39, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

How to withdraw pictures whose copyrigth status is questionable

Hi, there are three images I would like get deleted as sone as possible. These are:

These pictures have already been requests for deletion last week, which I have questioned. Now I have received legal advice and based on that I like to withdraw these images. Now I have asked for a speedy deletion (??), half a day ago, but nothing has happened. Now I wonder what to do? - Mdd 18:19, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

✓ Done. Sorry, we're understaffed and overworked. I've deleted the images. Please see my comments at Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Karl Popper.svg. —LX (talk, contribs) 20:29, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much. - Mdd 20:37, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Change Username Spelling

Hi, my Wikipedia Commons username is Markambey, but my preferred spelling is MarkamBey, could someone fix that, or explain me how can I do it? Thank a lot in advance.

--Markambey 18:54, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

See Commons:Changing username. —LX (talk, contribs) 20:30, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

User:JerryA01

User:JerryA01 has uploaded several images which are obviously professional grade and not his own. I already found 3 of them and marked them for copyvio deletion, however, I would appreciate if an administartor could knock out the others, as they too are obvious copyvios. Patstuart 18:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Deleted the remaining and recreated copyright violations and gave the user a final warning. —LX (talk, contribs) 20:56, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Sandbox

Hum - contained a phone number which I cleared. Oversight was suggested to me but no one actually has the rights here (not really worth bothering a steward with) so I did a selective restore. If anyone thinks the other 1000 edits should be restored feel free.....! On books someone did a script that allowed an easy selective restore, not sure if it is worth the effort here? If anyone thinks I'm wrong I'm happy to hear, cheers --Herby talk thyme 16:54, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Please re-remove the pedolicious teddy bear

Some time back, on enwiki I think, it was decided that the teddy bear in Image:Missionary Sex Position.png had to go. Today someone uploaded the "uncensored" version replacing it. Please re-remove it. It appears at the top of w:en:List of sex positions, which is enwiki's 18th most-viewed article per wikicharts. 209.77.205.2 07:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Already done by Samulili. Administrators: Please leave a message here if you handled a request so that other admins don't waste their time. Thank you. -- Bryan (talk to me) 15:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately not done yet. I deleted the version with the teddy, but there's also Image:Missionary Sex Position1.png... it's used in the Russian WP at ru:Миссионерская позиция. Lupo 18:14, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
I've changed the Russian article to use Image:Missionary Sex Position.png instead, and updated an instance of the image on en.wp. There's still one more, but I'm inclined to leave it, as it's an archive talking about the two different images (and the broken link will lead anyone investigating back to the proper place). I believe Image:Missionary Sex Position1.png can now be deleted, no? EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
The image in a valid variation there is no reason to delete.Geni 23:16, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Hiroshima prefecture flag

I've downloaded new image for Hiroshima prefecture flag Image:Alex K Hiroshima kenki.svg. It is based on the prefectural regulations and show the emblem and colours of the flag more correctly than Image:Flag of Hiroshima.svg. Please, replace Image:Flag of Hiroshima.svg with Image:Alex K Hiroshima kenki.svg. Thank you in advance.--Alex Tora 18:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Username

Is it possible for me to have the username "And-Rew" that would be the same as my name on the English Wikipedia but on here it says that the user "Andrew" is too similar. Also "Andrew" has never made an edit so if I could have that account instead that would be great! 89.242.173.37 01:13, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Check your email. O2 (息 • 吹) 03:42, 31 October 2007 (GMT)

Several copyrighted uploads

Could someone please delete all the uploads by User:Charles Belmont, which are copyvios (e.g., game screenshots). I have already spoken to him. Thanks. Patstuart 00:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Large Flickr backlog

Hey guys - just alerting you to Category:Flickr images needing human review. There's a large backlog of images needing review, and a lot of unsourced ones that could be deleted. Many hands make light work :) Giggy\Talk 07:57, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Related: why did User:FlickreviewR do anything with Image:Alnatura Goetz Rehn 1.jpg at all? That image does not come from Flickr, and there's nothing on the image page suggesting that it did. Also occurred on several other images, e.g. Image:2007 Amigo é Casa 1310 088.jpg, or Image:20071012 paula batarse 01.jpg. If that bot mistakenly tags images as having failed a Flickr review, it bloats the categories. Lupo 08:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
This is because the uploader selected the "From flickr" option at upload, which is of course incorrect. Nothing I can do about it :( -- Bryan (talk to me) 09:59, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Ok... how about including code in MediaWiki:Upload.js to add an onclick handler to the "Upload file" button on the "From flickr" form that checks whether wpUploadDescription contains a least one link that starts with "http://www.flickr.com/photos/" and adds an error message to the page and returns false if not? In this way, uploads through this form would be disallowed if there was no indication that the file actually came from flickr. As a side note, is {{Flickr}} deprecated? If not, why does Flinfo generate {{Information}} instead of {{Flickr}}? Lupo 10:27, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. We might not, because a person might have claimed to get it from flickr, but then fail to give the proper URL, and we should know about this. Patstuart 22:39, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
The idea was that the script should display an error message to the uploader telling him that he has not given the Flickr URL of the image and instructing him to do so. If he then adds that info, all is fine; if he doesn't, he shouldn't upload the image anyway. (At least not through that form.) Lupo 23:18, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

"In short " on all cc templates?

A while ago, I added an "in short" notice to the cc templates Template:Cc-by-2.5 and Template:Cc-by-sa-2.5 as an experiment. It seems that the experiment worked well so I suggest that a similar "in short" notice be added to all cc-templates.

Otherwise, people might think that the "in short" only applies to the templates with the message.

Fred J 15:59, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Support this idea. ++Lar: t/c 01:26, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Sounds same. Go ahead. Cheers! Siebrand 08:24, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Support; seems helpful to me. Walter Siegmund (talk) 14:58, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Of course. That is why CC-BY begin with a "friendly" text and link to the legal one. -- ReyBrujo 20:17, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Need to make it clearer that the in short is not acutaly a legaly valid statement of the license.Geni 18:09, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
I have not been able to do this, mainly because of busyness. If anyone else is willing to, please go ahead. / Fred J 23:36, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

User:Rudana

This person seems to be uploading images of paintings from his museum. He includes permission, but from himself rather than the artist who has the copyright. See Image:Wianta-Calendar.jpg and Image:Blanco-Blanco.jpg (which is up for deletion). I think he is acting in good faith and believes he can give permission to use copies of paintings that are in his possession. --Simonxag 22:52, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Don't authors actually sell their works to museums? If so, then he would own the copyright. However, only if he holds it forever; otherwise, I think we should probably drop him a note to be more specific and get the OK from the author. Patstuart 17:08, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
It is common for artists when they sell their work to retain some rights, I think. In addition to the license, a statement that the uploader is the owner of the copyright may be desirable. By granting the license, this is implicitly asserted, but I don't know that it suffices. Walter Siegmund (talk) 19:08, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
Selling an artwork does not transfer any copyright to the purchaser. They only get the object. I'm no lawyer but I'm pretty sure about this for UK and US law at least: every informed (academic or legal advice) site I've looked at has confirmed this; can anyone find a source that says otherwise? It's a principle that gets hammered over and over again in the Commons:- just because you own a thing does not mean that you own its copyright. An author can transfer economic rights (as an alternative to a licensing agreement), but this is the sort of deal they'd do with a publisher, not a museum. User Radana stated in Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Blanco-Blanco.jpg "The painter Antonio Blanco has passed aay many years ago, so the permission can only come from the musuem's owner." In fact, according to the site they themself used as a reference, the painter died in 1999: this user is rather confused and needs to, at the very least, detail how they acquired the rights they claim. --Simonxag 20:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
✓ Done. All uploads deleted and the user warned after they continued in spite of existing deletion discussions to upload images with wiki-only permission statements and non sequitur GFDL tags, images where the subject of the image claimed to be the copyright holder of the image and other images where the person granting the permission obviously wasn't the copyright holder. See User talk:Rudana#Deleted_contents. —LX (talk, contribs) 18:24, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Creating an account

Hi. I went to create an account here on Wikimedia Commons called "EvanS" and found out that there was already an account called "EVANS" that was similar. If I understand the error message that showed up at the top of the page correctly, it said that an administrator could create the "EvanS" account for me. Can one of you all do that?

I also found out that the "EVANS" account has no userpage or contributions. Is there a policy for deletion of such inactive accounts?

At the bottom of the signup page it said a username should not contain known Wikipedians. My account on Wikipedia is EvanS, and if this "EVANS" account was created after my Wikipedia account was created, should this "EVANS" account be deleted? --71.125.104.148 01:12, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Check your email. O2 (息 • 吹) 02:13, 27 October 2007 (GMT)

Hi, I just wanted to create an account using the same user name as with my other (English and German) Wikipedia accounts, but the system told me that there's already an account called "Hari"(?) which might be similar to "Harl" (my actual user name would be "harl", though I'm aware that this isn't quite possible). And since "Hari" doesn't seem to be an overly active account and thus confusions should be unlikely, could someone please create "Harl" for me? --84.63.114.7 20:49, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I'm having the same issue, want to create an account davidshay, similar to my English wikipedia account. system says it is similar to another account David Shay (I had the same problem on english wikipedia, and there it was solved. you can email me through details of my english wikipedia account. thanks.

PanchoHardy (talk · contribs)

The images of this user all seem to be copyright violations slapped with a GFDL tag and lacking source information; the most blatant being Image:HBKElbow.jpg (taken inside a steel cage) and Image:HBKAWA.jpg (scanned from a magazine it looks like) however all the images in the log appear to be copyright violations from wrestling websites (excluding the ones that were transwiki'd from the en wikipedia such as Image:Orton WWE Champion.jpg and Image:CM Punk ECW Champion.jpg). Considering the user talk page is littered with copyright violation notices I think an admin is needed for blocking and image clean up. Lid 09:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed this looks pretty bad. Image:HBKPose.jpg in particular was apparently uploaded under another license, and, after deleted, reuploaded as pd-self. What's more, he has recent uploads that appear to have been on the internet before he uploaded them ([32] for Image:HBKElbow.jpg), and he has clearly uploaded stuff against policy before: [33]. I'm also bit skeptical that a man that manages to get this close to the action in so many US matches (how many does he attend?) claims not to speak much of any English (he's apparently been around for a while to have shot this). I haven't found all the proof I would like, but it appears quite doubtful that this user is the author of all these files. Someone might like to do a mass deletion request, that might be good too. However, there isn't a lot of proof, and he might be the author of some of these files. Patstuart 18:29, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Not got much time now but a while back there was a whole bunch of "wrestling" sock puppets uploading similar. They do not look valid to me at a quick glance, think I may CU that later --Herby talk thyme 09:41, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure there are quite a few copyvios in these contributions but someone more knowledgeable than me should take a look. There has been quite a bit of wrestling material in the past that was the same. --Herby talk thyme 09:35, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Image:X client sever example.svg with filename misspelt

"Sever" should be "server". Is it possible to move a image?---Kakurady 16:26, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

User:AnonMoos undoing my no source tag

User:AnonMoos has taken it upon himself that community policy should be ignored, and is removing the no source tags I have placed on many images. Someone please have a word with him, as I don't want to get into an edit war. Please see my talk page for details. Patstuart 14:31, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

User:Patstuart is persistently refusing to give any meaningful answer whatsoever to my basic continuing question as to how the situation of the images he wants deleted differs significantly from the similar situations of many many thousands of similar images already on Wikimedia Commons which no one is nominating for deletion, and which it has been the common practice on Wikimedia not to delete. User:Patstuart is placing technicalistic bureaucratic procedures far above the original goals which those procedures were originally meant to serve. Those who know about something about pre-20th-century 2-dimensional artworks can usually tell when an uploaded image is problematic and when it's not problematic. Patstuart wants to replace such informed judgements (which have sufficed so far) with a rigid narrow adherence to bureaucratic form-filing and electronic paperwork -- and I really fail to see how this will serve the larger goals of Wikimedia Commons, or help in weeding out problematic images (it will instead probably encourage further lying among dishonest uploaders, and discourage honest uploaders from uploading at all, without achieving anything particularly worthwhile with respect to copyright enforcement). AnonMoos 16:01, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
He is also now threatening to remove the tags in a few days, a clear violation of policy. Is someone going to address this or not? If we are going to allow this to happen, I might as well quit the project, as clearly no one cares to enforce our rules. Patstuart 19:38, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
As I have already clearly explained on your user talk page, the reason for my action is so the deletion of these images can be DISCUSSED, instead of being deleted for reasons divergent from past common practice without the reasons for the deletion even being discussed. I most certainly will not remove the deletion nomination code from the image description pages, since my goal all along has been to get discussion of this matter. AnonMoos 23:36, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

User:Thirdship has uploaded a ton of possibly copyvio photos

User:Thirdship has uploaded a ton of trailer screenshots from the 1930's-1950's. I tried to tag them with no source. Thirdship responded on my talk page with a link to a law stating that some law stating if the copyright was not renewed, the movies went into public domain, which was a good explanation. He also reverted all the images with "rv vandalism", which was not. And yet that's the reason I tagged them to begin with: because there's no proof provided on the page that the movies did not renew their copyrights (a valid concern). I bring this here now, because, to be quite frank, I have reported many users recently with similar problems, and I always just get ignored and the concerns goes unaddressed (see #User:AnonMoos undoing my no source tag and Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/Vandalism#User:Topicant), so there's no point in me edit warring to replace the unsourced tags. Patstuart 19:52, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

You know, you might not get into these disputes in the first place if you were willing to be informed about past practices here on Wikimedia Commons. Many film trailer images have been uploaded for a while now with claims that film trailers were not copyrighted in the U.S. before some specific year.
If you're skeptical about such claims, then the way to proceed is to start a centralized discussion at Commons:Village_pump or some other appropriate forum, instead of unilaterally adding a tag to a small number of semi-randomly chosen images (which are no different in the relevant respects from many hundreds of images already on Commons) -- especially since you addded the wrong template ("no source" is not particularly relevant, since you're questioning the claimed copyright status, not the source). The edit summary "rv vandalism" was presumably Thirdship's way of expressing his annoyance that you went about this in completely the wrong way. AnonMoos 23:46, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Someone using File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske) to mass-upload vandalism

At the moment, someone is using User:File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske) to mass upload vandalism pictures of porn, which is causing issues. I think we might actually need to block it for a while, as there have been many of these uploads. I am copying the text from the village pump: Patstuart 22:52, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Hello, I uploaded by automatic bot-process from nl:wikipedia Image:Grootschermer Menningweermolen.jpg but the uplaod was bot-vandalised (double-crossed by a dirt image from en:wwikipedia). Please can some-one take action? See also: [34] Havang 22:37, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I have already had a word with Magnus Manske about this: User_talk:Magnus_Manske#FileUploadBot:_listing_uploader_request. Someone is using his bot to vandalize at the moment. Patstuart 22:50, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Patstuart, for reuploading; but in the texte there was still a reference to the dirty picture as the original one, I have replaced the texte of the whole page. Thanks also for putting duplicate on my second upload. So the vandalisme has a build-in second step programmed. Havang 23:05, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

requested for deletion

here was a discussion about a delete request. I think the discussion is over and the image are free. Who is responsible for removal of the delete request?

--[[User:Createaccount|Antipatico]] 00:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

That deletion request has not been closed yet. Deletion requests normally run for at least seven days, and that deletion request was filed five days ago. We currently have a large backlog of deletion requests that need to be closed, so please be patient as current requests may take more than seven days to process, especially if there are comments made in several different languages. —LX (talk, contribs) 02:01, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

CommonsDelinker update

Some updates on CommonsDelinker:

  • CommonsDelinker is one of the first projects to run on the new stable toolserver
  • CommonsDelinker logs are now available here (important in case you messed up)
  • Bugs and feature requests can be reported here
  • CommonsDelinker is now running two plug-ins: on delinking media inside flag galleries on nl.wp, it does not delink, but replace with a place holder. It does the same on fr.wikibooks with other criteria.

Cheers! Siebrand 21:11, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

That's great news. The logging feature is something I've been looking forward to for some time.
Does the bot still remove image links (specifically images shown in gallery notation) on talk pages? To preserve the integrity of comments on talk pages, I would like to see all talk namespaces excluded, and I believe I've requested this before we had any ticketing system for such feature requests. Should I file a feature request, or has this already been handled? —LX (talk, contribs) 09:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
And there's the answer. It still messes with people's comments. I'll make a feature request. —LX (talk, contribs) 10:47, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Could you add archive pages to that request (I'm specifically thinking of FP & QI archives, but really the same for any archive) ? --Tony Wills 11:55, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
If you want any specific page to be excluded, write down some criteria for that and I can probably code something for that. -- Bryan (talk to me) 17:54, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
This type of features will *seriously* complicate many processes that have to do with duplicates. Basically this means that any duplicate reported by CheckUsage will have to be reviewed manually and, which I assume will be possible, the Commons admin needs to know the local policy for CommonsDelinker delinking and replacement of all 700 or so wikis CD works on. Orphaning will get a completely different meaning. All these exceptions sound great, but they will eventually overcomplicate the process. I at least will not be as active in Category:Duplicate as I am at the moment if this will happen... Please think of the global impact of change requests... Cheers! Siebrand 18:32, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, could you explain for the uninitiated how turning a blind eye to redlinks in a certain namespace would affect duplicate reporting? —LX (talk, contribs) 19:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Some_Person's account

Could you please make me an account with the username Some_Person, since that is my Wikipedia username? Thanks. —70.240.73.2 19:12, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Please enable email on the English Wikipedia account first. O2 (息 • 吹) 00:40, 12 November 2007 (GMT)

Admin category watching

Commons:Administrators' Category watch now working (the usual - thanks Bryan!). Currently monitoring "edit protected" & "unblock" requests. If anyone wants to add others fine. I guess admins maybe should "watchlist" this page. --Herby talk thyme 10:37, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The cat where pages with {{Editprotected}} end up could also be nice. Cheers! Siebrand 14:58, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry - make it clearer - that is what (I think) it is catching. I did a similar one on en wb for "speedy deletes" category (pointless here!) and - unless I made a mistake (not that unusual) - it should work --Herby talk thyme 15:15, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, guess I misread. Nothing to see here. Carry on :) Siebrand 17:14, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Steward Elections

Nominations are open.Geni 23:26, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Commons:Language for categories

This is not a guideline or policy even though it looks like one. I think entries should be moved to Commons talk:Language policy. Or any other idea? --GeorgHH 19:07, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

The other alternative would be to discuss it at Commons:Categories, since it calls into question the long-standing (March 2006) paragraph there:
Category names should always be in English (except life forms, for which the scientific Latin name should be used. Category names that refer to objects or groups of people should generally be in plural form: Category:Tools, Category:Artists, Category:Lakes, etc, as opposed to Category:History, Category:Weather, Category:Music. See Commons:Naming categories for more information.
—LX (talk, contribs) 19:21, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Image tagging for "no permission"

I just got the pleasure of having an image I uploaded, Image:Marshall Poe.JPG, tagged with {{no permission since/en|month=November|day=12|year=2007}} This tag says it will be deleted in 7 days unless I forward the permission to permissions-commons AT wikimedia.org. Well, I forwarded that permission the same minute I uploaded the image, and wrote as much on the image description page. That didn't help apparently, the image was still tagged the same day it was uploaded, today.

Now I have done this before, I have forwarded about half a dozen emailed permissions to permissions AT wikimedia.org, and it takes quite a few days for them to get around to marking the image with OTRS permission. One email permission, for Image:Viper and cat.jpg, for example, was forwarded to them Jul 05, 2007, and they didn't get around to tagging it with the OTRS label until Jul 28, 2007. If the 7 days standard had been applied there as that template says, that image would have been deleted three times over.

I will try to not dwell the fact that my feelings were hurt by the tagging (whatever happened to Assume Good Faith?), but just the practicalities. Can some longer period be given before tagging an image that says "email permission forwarded" for deletion? --AnonEMouse 18:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi! Your resentfulness is understandable, as the user who tagged your picture was too hasty indeed. Scanning new uploads to check for copyright data is a tedious job, yet useful and necessary. It happens to all of us to get carried away and to tag pictures automatically without paying too much attention. I can only recommand you to use the {{Otrs pending}} next time. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 18:23, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. I guess the bright colors help. Next time I get a {{No permission since/en}} I will replace it with a {{Otrs pending}}. --AnonEMouse 19:54, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
For the benefit of readers that come along later.. Riana updated this image to reflect that it has a permission on file in OTRS, it's ticket 1190052 ... she may not have known about this thread. ++Lar: t/c 01:58, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Oops - I was aware of the thread, which is why I went looking for the ticket - I just forgot to update the thread, sorry! :) ~ Riana ⁂ 06:02, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Arbcom for Commons

We've been through some pretty hairy times lately, and I have the uncomfortable feeling that this is going to come up again. An arbcom will help us speak with authority, and might even give us a better way to deal with our "inactive" admins. Best place to talk about it is on the VP. --SB_Johnny | PA! 00:34, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

*nudge*!

No one appears to have taken a look at some possible copyvios mentioned above (here) and it's been a while. They look like it to me (& to the user who reported it) but it is not my speciality - thanks --Herby talk thyme 13:17, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

User:Cyr

User:Cyr (inactive since 2006) tagged all his images with {{TomCorserCredit}}. The credit states that only low resolution images are cc-by-sa, but he has uploaded all his images at much higher resolution. Given that he claims to be the creator of these photographs should I take his uploading at the higher resolution as evidence of release under the cc licence at that resolution and remove the stipulation from TomCorserCredit, or should all the images be resized to the stated size? —JeremyA 02:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, this is peculiar. Technically it means that the upload (ie the "media file") is, per se, NOT under a free license. This could lead to several problems because material on Commons is assumed to be free of copyright restrains. I suggest to contact Tom Corser to get his view on this; if he doesn't change his mind then I suggest to download the images, resize them, reupload and delete the original.
Note: Don't let MediaWiki generate thumbnails for uploading because they are of comparatively low quality.
Fred J 07:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Some images (eg Image:Brown_Willy_Bodmin_Moor.jpg) are licensed with a free license in the form of GFDL plus his more restrictive boilerpplate template box.
  • Others I've looked at have his boilerplate template box, which contains the clause "(unless otherwise stated)", followed by a CC-BY-SA-2.0-UK license which says "This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales (UK) Licence" (my emphasis) which sounds like "otherwise stating". ie the explicit CC-BY-SA-2.0-UK is not negated by his boilerplate template as it allows for the variation. So my reading is that he's put his standard license on all images and varied that ("otherwise stated") with GFDL or CC-BY-SA-2.0-UK. If you read it otherwise it would mean that he uploaded hi-res images with no license for people to use them, except at lower resolution - why would he do that, rather than the obvious mechanism of uploading the lo-res images that he was licensing? His license box also states that he has higher res versions available, which implies he has specifically scaled down the images for use here.
  • There is also the question as to whether copyright has anything to say about different quality versions of the same image, the copyright applies to reproduction of the original work of art - can different rights be assigned to different sized reproductions? Is it all the same work, or is each scaled version a derivative work? I really have no idea. --Tony Wills 08:48, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I also note that at least some (I have not checked many) were uploaded as cc-by-sa-2.0-uk and then the boilerplate template was added later eg[35]. The boilerplate template did not originally have the size restriction, that was added by an anonymous IP later [36] (30 July 2006). --Tony Wills 09:07, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
  • So any images uploaded prior to 30-July-2006 are not in question (but the licenses should be reverted to straight cc-by-sa-2.0-uk). Which brings up a problem that I think has been aired before - people using templates to apply licenses to their images, it makes tracking license changes to a particular image very difficult - is it allowed? --Tony Wills 09:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Well spotted Fred, the size restriction was only added in July 2006. I also spotted, and reverted, a more recent change to the size restriction made by an anon editor. In fact images that he uploaded after 30 July 2006 were uploaded at the lower resolution. It looks to me as though at some point he had second thoughts about releasing his images under a cc licence. However, as cc licences are irrevocable I think it is reasonable to remove the size restriction from the template altogether. —JeremyA 18:38, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

subst'ing (custom) licence templates

Maybe we should require licence templates to be subst'd? Regards, Ben Aveling 06:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
See here for that discussion. --Digon3 talk 19:46, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I meant that custom licence templates should be subst'd. Much the same arguments still apply, but I think the pro arguments become a little stronger and the anti arguments a little weaker. Regards, Ben Aveling 20:18, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Towns and cities in the United States

User:208.81.184.4 has moved a lot of images from town categories to city categories. In some U.S. states, “towns” are administrative divisions with a special status, different from cities: that explains that they are normally classified in specific categories, as in the English Wikipedia (example: Category:Towns in Florida). User:Jeffq has also noticed these big changes (see User talk:208.81.184.4#Changing town categorization to cities).

User:208.81.184.4 has mixed-up what other users had sorted. I consider that such action is close to vandalism, because the only way to easily undo it is to revert the concerned edits of this user. However, when you look at his contributions, you can find sometimes correct edits. More, this user is still active.

So, I request:

  • a preventive block of this account (one or two hours)
  • a warning to this user to do not make massive and irreversible changes without previous discussion
  • the restoration of the content of the town categories (that is, probably, the reversion of most or all of the edits of this user)

--Juiced lemon 20:59, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

My Watchlist just lit up with these changes (in Florida), and I'm reverting those there. Cary Bass demandez 22:37, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Blocked for two hours, notably because he's been warned. I can't possibly undo all the changes he/she has made. Cary Bass demandez 22:40, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
I didn't actually warn 208.81.184.4 to stop, because (A) I don't work on Commons often enough to know the categorization mood here, nor did I see any info relevant to this situation in my minimal scan of VP & Cat policy pages; (B) I thought his/her position was at least arguable; and (C) I wasn't prepared to get into a drawn-out discussion about it, but was merely hoping for an explanation, which 208 provided. (I hadn't decided what to do next yet when others stepped in.) On the other hand, it doesn't appear that 208 has any more experience on Commons than I do, and I'm not in the habit of being bold, even on Wikipedia, until I research the mood and ask the community about large changes that are likely to upset others, as this predictably was. 208 argues on his/her talk page that the block was improper, but regardless of the level of existing discussion on this subject, I'd have to agree with such a short-term block to stop ongoing activity once concerns have been expressed about it and the editor plainly shows no interest in stopping to discuss. Even on WP, one can be bold but shouldn't be reckless, and shrugging off the concerns of long-time project editors instead of stopping one's bold activities and making one's arguments in the standard public forums seems unwisely reckless to me. All that aside, I have no strong opinion one way or another on these categories. I support avoiding needlessly specific categorization on smaller projects, but I also believe it's up to the active community to decide how specific it wants to be, and I don't think either 208 or I have investigated this adequately to push a viewpoint yet. ~ Jeff Q 23:27, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Mediawiki issue

Siebrand added a note on the sitenotice mediawiki, and I think it might be a typo: [37]. Please categorise three media files today - does he mean Please categorise these media files today? Just asking, because three just sounds like a really random number. Patstuart 04:39, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Typo fixed. Severely tempted to change "categorise" to "categorize", but didn't feel like being a jerk. ;) EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:55, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I thought it was just a random number like - if everyone picks 3 we'll get through it quicker, that sort of thing. Either way my sitenotice still shows 'three', do I need to purge something somewhere? ~ Riana ⁂ 07:03, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes. Pres Ctrl-Shift-R, and it should work. As for the the grammar, I got categorise; it was the 6.626 images that confused me (what? you're saying there is six tenths of an image?). Patstuart 07:07, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, we properly catagorized 2/5ths of an image; we just don't know what the rest is. ;) (in all seriousness, I had that exact same thought) EVula // talk // ☯ // 07:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Europeans often use . for a separator. Regards, Ben Aveling 08:04, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
At the risk of making an issue where there is none, perhaps it should be changed into a comma. I am aware that abroad often people use a period, but often times, they don't (e.g., the BBC). However, Americans like myself never use the period to mean a comma, and seeing it causes unnecessary confusion. Like I said, nothing to rip your hair out over, just a thought. Patstuart 08:20, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Welcome to an international wiki, commons exists in hyper space, so 'abroad' has little meaning :-). I'm glad your confusion is now eased (FWIW I call that little round thing "." a "full-stop" or "decimal point", but use it in the same way as those in the USofA :-) --Tony Wills 05:54, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Using a (non-breaking) space as a digit group separator is by far the most widely accepted. It's recommended by ISO, and it's equally compatible with those locales using a decimal comma as with those using a decimal point. —LX (talk, contribs) 08:36, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Changed it to a space. I must admit I've very rarely seen a period used instead of a comma, but I know they're both right :) The space should keep everyone happy. ~ Riana ⁂ 08:55, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I know the Spanish use a period. It looks awful and you end up with really bizarre lottery prizes. -- RedCoat 10:28, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
The count is deceptive, we have plenty of uncategorized pages that are not in Category:Media needing categories, and ones that are in that category that are already in other categories. While this may help focus contributors to cleaning this category up some, determining what the finite goal is should be more then the contents of that category. — xaosflux Talk 15:54, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

User:The-rude-landsknecht copyvios?

Would someone please check these uploads, they appear to be copyvio band logos. I've researched a few and nominated for deletion, but not sure how much good faith to extend to the ones that haven't been confirmed yet. — xaosflux Talk 03:08, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to believe they're copyvios. Compare Image:Ángeles del Infierno.gif with this fan site; it's just a band logo. I checked the usage for a handful, and they aren't being used, either; I'm just going to purge the whole lot of them, as they all have that same "this is a logo" feel to it. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:36, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

User:Btr

Disgruntled user from de-WP (quit there yesterday) marking all his uploads as {{Copyvio}}. However, I don't believe it. Please see Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Attention#User:Btr trying to retract CC licenses. Lupo 10:48, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

User:File Upload Bot (Omnedon)

This user account is mass uploading images, and is not flagged as a bot, is this normal, it is making reviewing recent changes troublesome. — xaosflux Talk 02:30, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I've blocked the bot until the user files a flag request that successfully goes through. O2 (息 • 吹) 02:37, 16 November 2007 (GMT)
It also looks as though all of the images are missing sources. /Lokal_Profil 13:39, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
The lack of descriptive material was a mistake on my part, due to a misunderstanding about the format of the files.txt file that the file upload bot Perl script uses. That has now been resolved; my scripts now will produce a files.txt file that contains complete information, and a request has been made for a bot flag (something with which I was formerly unfamiliar). If I can get a bot flag and get the bot account unblocked, I can resolve these issues very easily. I have edited Image:Map highlighting Nevins Township, Vigo County, Indiana.png to the standard that I plan to use (just as with the various photos I've formerly uploaded), and will get the existing items fixed either with AWB or by uploading new images (as I may have a few more tweaks to apply to the map contents, such as some transparency issues). Sorry for the difficulties; it's certainly a learning process. Omnedon 19:30, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I've unblocked the bot so that you can address its issues. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:35, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Thank you; the already-uploaded maps have all been dealt with, and the bot is now ready to upload the remaining maps with complete descriptions and licensing information. Omnedon 16:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I wonder whether it wouldn't be better to have those files in SVG? -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:41, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I considered that, and did generate some SVG versions offline, but it turns out that MapScript does not yet support the opacity parameter in producing SVG files. Also, the PNGs are quite small (less than 10K). Omnedon 16:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I have resolved the SVG issues, and can generate these maps in that format. Omnedon 18:28, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Please let us know if we now have PNG duplicates for the SVG files, so we can remove the PNGs. You can tag them {{badname|new}}. Cheers! Siebrand 17:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
If there is duplication, I'll be sure to tag the unneeded files. There is not yet any duplication because I don't yet have a flag and haven't uploaded anything further (beyond a test of a couple of maps to verify that the descriptive and license information was being uploaded correctly by the Perl script). Omnedon 18:50, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Some time ago we had lengthy discussions on several pages about this but without results. A JPEG image can have an EXIF-header which contains lots of information about shooting preferences, camera specs and so on. But it can also have the tag license and author/photographer. When licensed under the GFDL the deletion of that information from the file is a violation. The GFDL (which originally was made for texts) clearly says that the deletion of copyright from the text is not permitted. In this case the JPEG along with its EXIF data can be seen as text. Since Wikipedia does automatically generate thumbnails it will remove all EXIF data from them because they simply are overhead. But according to the GFDL this is void.

What do the admins think about that? Be aware: This problem only occurs when the JPEG image has copyright informtion in its EXIF. It has nothing to do with the description page where copyright information is normally stored here on the commons. I've read the statement of some people who clearly don't have read or understood the GFDL. So please. Only answer when you are confident with the GFDL. Fabelfroh 10:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

This issue has already been commented on by a developer as something that's not going to change. If you don't like it, take it up on that bug report. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:48, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Before dealing with the bug report we first should find out whether the deletion of copyright information from the EXIF is really a violation or not. I asked a german lawyer (who is not a professional in internet laws) and he backs up my thoughts. It should not be very complicated to add a script that looks for embedded copyright tags in the EXIF via exiftool and does not delete that information from the thumbnail. Fabelfroh 12:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I think it would not be difficult to argue that the information is preserved in the image page. It would be easy to script as you describe but I think the point is that it would put an unacceptable load on our thumbnail generation process. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:12, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Isn't this something we already do with images that have the copyright notice mebeded as a watermark? /Lokal_Profil 14:23, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I can understand that the thumbnail-generation process produces a lot of server load but if the process produces copyvio'd images it must be done somehow. I dont think that putting the copyright infos in the description of the page is enough because the thumbnail on the gallery-page lacks any information at all. Is there a policy with watermarked images? Fabelfroh 14:32, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
As you and I commented on bugzilla, this is not as much of a technical issue and the overhead is negligible. As for the GFDL aspect, if Commons doesn't allow GFDL content with invariant sections, as I believe, then I guess the comment may be safely stripped out as long as a copy of the comment exists in the description page. Unfortunately, the comment is not displayed with the other EXIF metadata. — Xavier, 00:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
JPGs can also have comments separate from the EXIF data, and you also can add any number of EXIF fields into which you could add copyright info. You can also embed copyright info in many ways (collectively known as watermarking), some forms are hidden and encrypted (which would be scrambled by scaling or converting the image from one form to another). This just appears to be a special case of watermarking so the whole question would need to be extended to GFDL and watermarks. Perhaps we need to insist images with GFDL are dual licensed to facilitate web-publishing (including commons itself). --Tony Wills 11:15, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
What second license should be taken then? Is the BSD license for example enough? Fabelfroh 08:09, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I guess Tony is referring to the CC-by-SA. — Xavier, 22:25, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Note that I eluded the watermark issue by arguing that GFDL with invariant sections are (allegedy) not allowed on Commons. As watermark are removed, inner comments may be removed (at least the one that are visible - Noone has to care about steganographic ones) as long as, like watermarks, they are copied back to the image page. Yet, currently they are not. — Xavier, 22:25, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Template:Done

Could someone please change the template's code from {{{1|'''Done'''}}} to '''{{{1|Done}}}'''? --Boricuæddie 18:16, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Edit made to both {{Done}} and {{Not done}}. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:51, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! --Boricuæddie 19:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

HE'S BAAAACK

User:Axz1v is still uploading porn, even after last block. Patstuart (talk) 17:24, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

✓ fixed Siebrand 17:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Image:Prince symbol album.svg and Image:Prince symbol.svg

As made news recently [38], Prince is going after websites hosting imagery of him and his works. I heard about this yesterday, and decided I'd take a look around our projects to see if we'd done things in line with our policies with regards to his works. I came across these two images hosted on Commons as free licensed works, where the uploaders claim they have the copyrights and are releasing them. I also came across a deletion request on the latter image at Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Prince symbol.svg which resulted in the image being kept.

However, I believe that deletion request erred in a number of ways.

  1. First; there was significant number of IPs and new users commenting on the deletion request. 5 IPs commented, and only two of the registered users (Kelly Martin and Bryan Derksen) who commented had more than 30 edits per user. On the delete side, three of the four deletes had substantial contribs. One of the two main opposers to deletion used (in part) a principle of defense of the image that was flawed; that in the case noted the court observed a potential problem with their being a copyright on the image and, so concludes the opposer, the image is not copyrightable. The court never actually ruled on that. See next.

  2. Second; whether or not something is copyrighted or not isn't a matter of opinion. It's a matter of fact. In this case, we have clear evidence that the image, Love Symbol No. 2, is in fact copyrighted. It was originally registered with the United States Copyright Office in 1992 at [39]. In 1997, all rights to the image, including right of pursuing infringements, was transferred to Prince Rogers Nelson (aka "Prince") [40]. There simply is no disputing that the copyright has been registered and is recognized by the U.S. Copyright Office.

    Now, whether something is capable of being copyrighted is a matter of opinion. Whether or not this particular image is capable or not has not been decided directly in court.

    The closest it came was the court case noted in the deletion discussion, which opinion can be found at [41] (also, new story). This case was decided in 2000. In that opinion, the court made reference to the potentially debatable nature of the copyright status of the image. However, it said "but the parties make [**2] nothing of this, so neither shall we". I.e., the court did not make a decision on that aspect of the matter. They did however uphold Prince's copyright to the image, and ruled in favor of Prince based on that.

    The only other time that I can find comment on the ability to copyright this image is in a case that Prince filed with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 99 Civ 1439. In that case Prince was acting, in part, to defend his copyright on the image. The defendant argued that they could use the image because it was not subject to copyright as a result of it being used as a name. However, the court never ruled on these issues; the matter was settled out of court [42]. The disputants were not permitted to discuss the particulars of the settlement, only to paraphrase it. In their comments on the settlement, the defendant noted that with regards to the use of the symbol, "Finally, the settlement contract specifically gives UPTOWN the right to use the symbol as a means of referring to The Artist, but that we cannot use it for purposes which are not editorial". I.e., it was acceptable to use the symbol in way that agrees with fair use law, but not in a way that constitutes free license.

  3. Third, whether or not something is able to be copyrighted as a name isn't the core issue at hand. Commons isn't in the business of deciding whether something is able to be copyrighted. The Foundation upholds a policy of supporting free content. See Foundation:Resolution:Licensing policy. This policy puts Commons in a position of hosting purely free content, not content that is flirting with the law. There is no question of whether this image is copyrighted. It is. It's a matter of fact (see point two). There is no question that Prince has and continues to be willing to defend the rights he has, which no court has vacated, to this image. Until such time as a court actually rules in favor of a party to a case that the image can not be subject to copyright and vacates the copyright registration, or the United States Copyright Office vacates the copyright registration on its own, or Prince specifically releases his rights to the image, a conclusion that this image is free is highly problematic.

There is also the question of trademark at stake here. I'll admit a fair bit of ignorance with regards to trademark law. Instead, I'll default to our handling of such matters on Commons in so far as I'm aware. We do not host trademarks on Commons. Yes, there is Template:Trademark. It's use is appropriate on images such as Image:Burberry_handbag.jpg. In that case, we have a product that has a trademark visible on the product itself. The image rights are held by the photographer, but the maker of the bag holds rights to the trademark. On Commons, we accept this. There are many other examples. However, we do not host works where the entirety of the image is the trademark. I deleted on such example earlier today [43]. Actual extant examples are understandably hard to come by on Commons because we delete them. But, to give an example if the image was not otherwise free; Image:National Park Service logo.png. This image is free due to it's nature as a U.S. federal government work. However, if it were the property of a company, we would not host it on Commons. However, hosting this image: Image:MLK sign.JPG would be ok. The difference of course is the entirety of the work. In the case of the Prince Love Symbol No. 2., we were hosting the entirety of the work, not as part of some larger work.

I've also discussed this with User:Bastique and he concurs that Commons should not be hosting these images. Local projects are free to upload replacement images in agreement with their local Exemption Doctrine Policy.

Based on the above, I am deleting these two images despite the conclusion of the deletion request. Comments are welcome, but I strongly encourage people to not knee-jerk undelete these images without substantial discussion to clarify these images as free, as it is obvious that Prince is embarking on a campaign of lawsuits against websites hosting (in the least what he believes to be) his works. We do not need a lawsuit. Thank you, --Durin 16:12, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I have to say I raised this issue independently to begin with, having read the BBC News report, and I'm quite shocked at the excuses that were used to upload an image which is realistically, honestly, unfree. It's a trademark, which means I can't use it anyway, anywhere or anyhow, and it's potentially copyrighted, and as such, we take the, "it's fully copyrighted" approach, which would mean, until copyright issues are finally resolved in a court of law, I would potentially be unable to use the image without permission from the copyright holder. We're portraying ourselves here as being an archive of images that can fairly readily be reused for pretty much any purpose, pretty much anywhere, and this and other heavily trademarked images being included other than through incidental inclusion are completely at odds with our mission to provide free gratis and free libre works. I believe that Commons really should err on the side of caution in these cases, and that anything that is anything less than totally free (PD, GFDL, CC-BY-SA etc) really shouldn't be included. We can make convincing cases for the use of these Prince images under Fair Use doctrine on individual project sites, but I'm left wondering if people aren't trying to foist unfree images on Commons, arguing complete nonsense to keep the images from being deleted, purely to prettify projects which don't allow fair use. With regards to the Prince images, let someone else be taken to court and argue the toss, we're a charitable foundation and we don't have money to waste arguing about the copyright and trademark status of an image in a court of law, especially when the image can be justifiably used in certain circumstances under Fair Use doctrine. Nick 16:26, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
If this is a trademark, than the name "Prince" is also a trademark. It is a name, so it can be used as a reference to that name. We made a big mistake here. Why not just wait until Wikimedia hears something of Prince' lawyers. I followed this quit a while and all the lawsuits against fan sites are, as far as I know, not about this symbol, but about photos, videos, song texts, etc... made or not made by fans. I didn't hear anything about the symbol. Yes in the 90s, when he used that symbol. So please re-upload those images asap. --Jeroenvrp 16:44, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • The image is copyrighted by Prince. Please see [44]. Until such time as a court vacates those rights, the United States Copyright Office vacates the rights, or Prince release rights on his own, the image remains copyrighted regardless of any claims it is not able to be copyrighted because it was used as a name. Commons is not a court of law. Commons hosts free content, period. There is no disputing the image is copyrighted. It's a matter of fact, until such time as those rights are vacated. Waiting for a lawsuit to be filed against us is not the way we should be doing things. Under that notion of acceptability, we could upload thousands of album cover images and song samples as free licensed and just wait for the nice folks at w:Recording Industry Association of America to contact us. --Durin 16:50, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
The original image is maybe copyrighted, but not a remake, like this one was. I re-uploaded them. Please do not remove them without a valid discussion. --Jeroenvrp 17:00, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • So now it's wheel warring? Do you understand the concept of derivative work? You can't just recreate an image someone else has copyrighted and then call it your own. You're *clearly* in the wrong here. If you were in the right, no company in the world could retain rights to anything it creates, because anyone could recreate it and call it their own. --Durin 17:01, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Are you saying that if I personally redraw any image that is protected by copyright, it no longer becomes protected by copyright and can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Please do tell me exactly how such an image is not a derivative work and why it would no longer be protected by law. Thanks in advance. Nick 17:04, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Images deleted. Blatant violation of copyright. How there can even be discussions about is puzzles me. Rama 17:08, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

This image is used in tens of articles, not as an illustration, but as a name in the text. Deleting those images with commonsdelinker have ruined a lot of articles. Who are you to decide which images can be deleted without a proper discussion?! Again it is a remake and yes it can be used everywhere, what properly already happened. This is not about a company. It is about an artist who used this as his name! Not as an illustration, not as a trademark logo. You didn't even asked the original creator of this image about his/her opinion first! --Jeroenvrp 17:09, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
The image is copyrighted in the same country as the servers that host this website are located, leaving the Wikimedia Foundation open to legal action over the claim that the image is not copyrighted and that it's use falls outwith that which is permitted by United States Fair Use Doctrine. This is not a community decision, but copyright enforcement. Copyright enforcement is never a matter for discussion and consensus, but pre-emptive action by administrators. So a few articles have redlinks, but the Foundation is no longer open to legal action, I know which I prefer. Redlinks ahoy!. Nick 17:14, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Have those symbols been registered with and granted copyright by the US Copyright Office ? No matter how absurd this situation, the fact remains that these symbols are copyright and trademarked to Prince, and given the fact these symbols are protected under copyright policy, they cannot be claimed to be freely licenced/not protected under copyright when we have evidence from the US Copyright Office that that is not the case, therefore their existence on Wikimedia Commons without a fair use rationale is in direct violation of US Copyright Policy, and the claim that the image is freely licensed is extremely problematic from a legal standpoint. Nick 20:42, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

When images like this are deleted from commons, it would be helpful if they were first copied to the wikis that do permit nonfree images. Few people on those wikis are likely to be able to view the deleted version of the image to do the copying after it is deleted. CBM 16:16, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

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