Commons:Help desk/Archive/2009/02

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Flickr Image Question

I have been using contributions from a friend who normally emails me images that I upload onto Commons. Yesterday, we tried something new, and the same contributor I've used in the past simply posted the photos to Flickr and used a 2.0 ShareAlike License. I then took the images off Flickr and uploaded them to Commons. The creator is someone with whom I normally work. Apparently the Flickr bot has now decided that these images cannot be used, which means I'll have to have him email them to me with a 3.0 License signed by him. Is there any way around this snafu? The images are File:NewNorthChurch.jpg‎, File:SamuelLincolnHouseSign.jpg‎, File:SamuelLincolnHouse.jpg, File:SamuelLincolnHouse1.jpg. Many thanks for any guidance on this! MarmadukePercy (talk) 19:37, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

As seems predictable for Wikimedia Commons, I have posted my question, received no response, and now the images are subject for deletion. MarmadukePercy (talk) 02:57, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
What do you base your "prediction" on? Past question asking here? The response you received when asking the maintainer of the upload bot this question? Are you in need of any answer or are you in need of the answer to the questions that you asked? I could easily provide any answer (as long as accuracy is not a requirement) if the first option is desired. -- carol (talk) 03:23, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I would simply like some help resolving this issue, that's all. Thank you. MarmadukePercy (talk) 03:48, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I have made the text names of the images to be links to the image page, this should help the people who "volunteer" and "contribute" by answering help desk questions to see the problems you have encountered.
If the upload bot is malfunctioning, downloading the images from Flickr and uploading them here and manually filling in the form {{Flickr}} would help to avoid software problems. Also, a look at the user page for the upload bot and the author of the bot might give some insight to current problems with the software or known problems during upload.
When I read of the chain of events that caused your problem, I was curious about the complicated sequence of events that exist to get those images from the photographer to here. The photographer has a Flickr account and can upload there and can also send email with attachments but is unable to get an account here to upload the images directly? Complicated systems have almost by definition several nodes where problems can occur. Perhaps there are a few steps in the upload process which can be removed which would allow for more efficiency? -- carol (talk) 04:22, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The photographer has chosen thus far to have me upload his images, although I've pointed out to him that he could create a Commons account and upload them himself -- which you can see that I have done with other users whose photographs I post to wikipedia. I try to honor the work, and suit the conveniences of those kind enough to share their work with me and Commons. MarmadukePercy (talk) 04:27, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I checked one of the images at its flickr location and the license used there is not allowed here -- the non-commercial licenses are not allowed here. Perhaps that was not the intention of the photographer when the license there was chosen and if the license changes there then the image can be here and the deletion should be canceled. But things as they are the review system did the right thing. -- carol (talk) 04:33, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Okay, thank you. I find the many categories of licenses confusing. What license should I have told him to use? (He thought he was selecting the right one for the purpose). MarmadukePercy (talk) 04:47, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Best practices are any of these three: CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, or GFDL. --Damian Yerrick (☎) 15:34, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
See Commons:Flickr images (COM:FLICKR) and Commons:Flickr images/Guide. I made a template on Wikipedia (w:Template:Flickr free) to help me search for photos on Flickr under either of the two licenses to make them suitable for uploading to Commons: CC-BY and CC-BY-SA (Commons also accepts GFDL but Flickr does not seem to offer this as a license option to its users). Are you using Flinfo to generate your {{Information}} template which you can then paste into the Simple Commons upload form? (And then edit it to taste, of course.) Uploading images from Flickr to Commons can be a bit hard to figure out. I had little luck when I tried to use Toolserver :: ~bryan :: Flickr web tools, which doesn't seem to be working reliably yet, so I just stick with the Flinfo method. I wrote some fairly detailed notes of my trial and error learning at w:User:Teratornis/Notes#Flickr and I have a gallery of my uploads from Flickr. The Flinfo method I'm using is not efficient if you want to upload multiple photos from a photoset on Flickr. For that, something like Commonist might work better, but I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm getting sidetracked just now working on an Editor's index to Commons (to be like the Editor's index to Wikipedia) which incidentally will have a nice complete section of links to all the instruction pages about Flickr on Commons. I too have noticed that the Commons Help desk is not as responsive as the Wikipedia Help desk, but Commons is smaller and that's kind of typical for smaller wikis. On a smaller wiki, users have to be more self-reliant i.e. able to look up their own answers. Commons has lots of relentless documenters, so the answers to most routine questions are in writing somewhere. --Teratornis (talk) 08:43, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

downloading images and descriptions in a batch

I need to download some images donated by the German Federal archive. I looked into using wikix but as I understand there is no way to download the photos including their corresponding titles and descriptions. Any help/suggestions, how to do a batch download of the photos including their descriptions would be great!!!

Download to what? If the destination system is not another wiki, it's not obvious what format you want to get the descriptions in, or how you will correlate the description files (?) with their photos. The description of m:Wikix makes it sound like a tool you can use. You will start by downloading the descriptions as an XML dump, and then use Wikix to extract the filenames of images to download. In other words, if Wikix can't do what you want, I don't know what else will. I have not used Wikix so I cannot tell you whether you need to know anything that isn't already in the instructions. --Teratornis (talk) 08:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

How do I edit a Commons file?

I uploaded File:Sir Frederick Currie.jpg and received a nikbot to say I hadn't provided enough information. How do I provide the information requested? There is no edit tag on the file and I've searched for info how to do it without success. I asked the question on User talk:Filnik a week ago but so far haven't had a reply.Apuldram (talk) 21:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

There is edit tab on the top of the file page. Same as for other pages in wiki. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:46, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Thank you EugeneZelenko. There was certainly no edit tag on the file I was looking at, but your reply led me to wonder if there is another file with the same name. Yes, I found it. Originally I followed a Wikipedia trail to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Frederick_Currie.jpg and there is definitely no edit tag there. After your reply I used Google and found http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Frederick_Currie.jpg which is almost identical, but it does have an edit tag.

Surely it causes unnecessary confusion to have two files with the same name, File:Sir_Frederick_Currie.jpg, and almost identical appearance. Is this a problem Wikipedia should address?Apuldram (talk) 22:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

This file does not actually exist on Wikipedia, even though a non-editable page is visible on Wikipedia:
Note the standard messagebox template below the image which says:
The real (canonical) file is here on Commons:
Your confusion probably results because you had not yet learned how Wikipedia handles images. Some images are on Wikipedia, and some are on Commons. When an image is on Commons, Wikipedia "transparently" makes it available, as if the image was really on Wikipedia. Sometimes the illusion is a little too good, as it was in your case, causing you to think the image you saw on Wikipedia was actually on Wikipedia rather than on Commons. Evidently your mind locked onto that belief and temporarily blinded you from recognizing the messagebox that said otherwise. That happens all the time when people first look at something complicated and new. Our brains have to grow into being able to recognize all the important new details, so we don't impose our incorrect beliefs on what we are looking at, which can actually prevent our brains from seeing what is really there. This sense of early confusion (often accompanied by emotional distress) is a familiar sensation to anyone who spends much time with computers, continually learning new software and systems.
Is Wikipedia confusing? Yes. Wikipedia is one of the most complex human artifacts open for the general public to play with. By its incredibly permissive nature, Wikipedia invites users to dive in and mess with things that can easily outstrip the amount of knowledge and skill they have gained by reading the friendly manuals. If you want to avoid feeling confused, the answer is simple: read all the manuals before you try anything. Of course almost nobody does that, because most people find reading the manuals to be boring. Most people evidently prefer to feel confused.
Is the confusing nature of Wikipedia necessary? That is an interesting philosophical question. Consider that Wikipedia is unlike anything most people have experienced before. Almost nobody comes to Wikipedia already knowing how to design a Web site using primarily volunteer labor that becomes the fifth most popular site in the world. The four Web properties ahead of us: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AOL. If you want to learn how any one of the top five sites works, in enough detail so you could contribute significantly to it, you would undoubtedly have to make a major life commitment and completely absorb yourself into the respective culture. Nobody would expect to become an expert in the culture and technology of, say, Google, just by clicking around the site and trying stuff in an afternoon. No, we would expect it to require a tremendous effort. Since you wouldn't start off already knowing all the amazing techniques the designers of the site invented as they built it, surely you would find many things confusing at first. But of course this all depends on how you learned. If everything you needed to know was in writing, and you could read it in a systematic order, you might not have to experience any confusion. You could learn about each aspect of the site in turn, and the manuals would tell you just what you need to know for each part. If you are feeling confused on Wikipedia, then maybe you are pushing a little too far ahead of your manual reading. You have to decide which feels worse: reading manuals, or being confused. --Teratornis (talk) 00:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Web interfaces are doing the same thing that all of the different computer languages did before them (and still are). If you were writing these softwares, you would be expected to know Perl or more recently PHP or Python or it seems the wiki gets managed by a markup which is supposed to be easier than the html it translates into and javascript. Further back in time, the choices were FORTRAN or B.A.S.I.C. or Pascal, often with or needing compilers that translated those instructions into machine language. Automobiles also. Some put the control for the headlight on the turn-signal lever, some put them as a button in the dash board on the left, others on the right. The list of confusing things that the species has created is un-ending.
I suspect that O'Reilley and other publishers tend to lose some toes by keeping their foot stuck in the door (a typical position for any salesman) and that reading that book will tell you of how things worked the year before last. It is not so confusing if you look at the examples of articles that you like. As for the confusion about where the images are -- each image which is hosted here and displays on an English wikipedia article, if you look at the image page there should be a fairly clear and easy to find link to the commons page for the image. So, do yourself a favor -- don't waste time with the books or even the how tos which are here. Look at existing examples/articles, learn what you need to do when you need to do it -- let us know what Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft provide for your problems with the confusion that they contributed to. I personally don't think that wiki-markup is any easier than html, but that is my opinion. There are a few things that it can be really really good for, however. -- carol (talk) 04:32, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Are you really able to learn all this stuff only by looking at examples and not reading any manuals? I agree that seeing how stuff works is essential, but how do you know what you are seeing if you don't read some manuals that describe it? I'm sure it is possible, but it seems so much harder that way. After all, humans invented writing because it's faster to learn something by reading than by (only) reverse engineering. Also, the author of w:Wikipedia - The Missing Manual is our very own w:User:John Broughton, and he got permission from O'Reilly to publish under the GFDL and put the full text of his book on Wikipedia:
which means the user community can keep the book up to date, in theory at least. I'm pretty sure John will stay on top of it, for a few years at least. --Teratornis (talk) 20:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

New user request: Move file Azteccodeexample_new.jpg to Azteccodeexample.jpg

Hi, I'm new to Wikimedia Commons and thus can't overwrite files.
Could somebody move to .
If someone could further turn it into an SVG with InkScape; that would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Nazrila (talk) 18:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I created an svg version named Azteccodeexample.svg. It makes no sense to overwrite the existing jpg version with your _new.jpg version and moving it is not possible. Your job would be to change the picture extension in all places where the jpg version is in use. A listing of these lemmata you find here. -- Хрюша ?? 08:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Sorry

I apoligize, my last upload is a mistake, I tried but could not undo this. I am afraid I dispalced previous file with the same name. Sorry sorry. Please, help.--Rédacteur Tibet (talk) 18:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spirit_of_Compassion.jpg

Don't worry, I reverted it. The old image is now restored. Would you please upload your file under a different file name now? Thanks and best regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 20:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

My grandfather is the author of a photo. What kind of license should I apply?

My grandfather is the author of a photo. What kind of license should I apply?

He can release it under whatever license he wants, though if he wants us to use it, PD, CC-BY, CC-SA-BY, or GFDL are the normal options.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Assuming he is still alive of course. Theorically if he passed out, you have to prove that the heirs (probably you and other persons) approve the free licence, in theory. Esby (talk) 14:18, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

This image was considered as a featured picture (see Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Japanese river boat). However, it failed because it had slightly contradictory licenses (attribution required and public domain). The original photograph is 100+ years old, but the uploader explains that the scanning and rendering of the photograph justifies attribution (see User_talk:Esby#File:Japon-1886-32.jpg). So, should it be attribution required or public domain? Mikael Häggström (talk) 06:52, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I think further discussion should take place at the image discussion: File talk:Japon-1886-32.jpg

Add picture to slide

I just want to ask 1 question.If I wanna give you one of my pictures and put it on the slide how do I do that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.10.48.61 (talk • contribs) 19:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Please define "put it on the slide". Do you want to use it on Wikipedia? Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 20:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Read Commons:First steps to see how to upload images here. I can't guess what you mean by "the slide" either. That's not really a term we use on Commons with a specific technical meaning. Commons has some gallery pages if that's what you mean. You can also make galleries on your own user page. For example, my uploads are here: User:Teratornis/Gallery. --Teratornis (talk) 20:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I was reading about Photo sharing sites and I stumbled across one called Slide.com. Is that what you mean by "put it on the slide"? If so, then you need to license your photo under one of the licenses suitable for Commons, and license it the same way on Slide.com (if they will let you). Since Slide.com seems to be Web 2.0 friendly, maybe they work like Flickr in that regard. See Commons:Flickr for instructions about how to license photos on Flickr so we can use them on Commons; maybe you can do something similar on Slide.com if that's what you mean. --Teratornis (talk) 05:49, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello - can you tell me, is it possible to make a lower (but still reasonable) resolution image available on Wikimedia Commons, under a free licence, whilst still retaining copyright and commercial ownership of a higher resolution version of the same image?

I think the answer is yes. I believe you are only donating the copyright to the actual file you upload. A higher resolution version should remain copyrighted by you. (Although this is what I think is true, I am obviously not in a position to give legal advice) Thanks, --Anonymous101 talk 20:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
I think you need to hire an attorney, if you want a real answer to the question; worse, if it went to court, I suspect the answer would depend on which judge you pulled, as I'm aware of no precedent. Ignoring the legal issues, merely putting the image under the GFDL may be enough to discourage commercial reuse of the image without paying you for a different license, and if you only release high resolution copies in a limited manner to paying customers, it's unlikely that anyone who has access to a pure high-resolution copy is going to be interested in giving it out. There's no one here who can authoritatively answer your legal questions, and the practical issues may depend a lot on what you're doing.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:51, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Correcting a file name

While uploading this pic, I noticed the related image which I uploaded last May is labeled wrong. The description and categories have already been corrected, but how do I change the file name (if that's even possible)? AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 08:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Please look here Commons:FAQ#How_can_I_rename.2Fmove_an_image_or_other_media_file.3F. --Foroa (talk) 10:14, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

File:A-12 Oxcarts.jpg

The image: File:A-12 Oxcarts.jpg has a license of:{{PD-USGov-Military-Air Force}}) "This image or file is a work of a U.S. Air Force Airman or employee, taken or made during the course of the person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image or file is in the public domain."

However, I contest that this picture was taken by a DoD employee of a classified military installation, of then classified military aircraft. I find this doubtful, we have no way to verify that this was taken at Groom Lake, or authorized for release? I don't doubt that the image is authentic, I believe I have seen the aircraft on the CIA website, but the image's location can't be verified, and we cant prove it's authenticity. --— Preceding unsigned comment added by Sephiroth storm (talk • contribs) 02:15, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Did you ask the user who uploaded the image where it came from? Ideally the image page should contain an {{Information}} template with a field that lists the source. The user who uploaded the image should have filled out the |Source= parameter when he or she uploaded it. --Teratornis (talk) 06:07, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately the user does not appear to be registered on Wikipedia. I just now found that the user is registered here at commons. Looking at the user's Talk page here: [1] there are numerous image deletion warnings and copyright violation notices. Sephiroth storm (talk) 03:21, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Wow. That's quite a checkered history, casting doubt on the licensing of File:A-12 Oxcarts.jpg. --Teratornis (talk) 21:52, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
That image is credited here to Lockheed Martin. As far as I can see, it is not included in the CIA's released documents on the A-12, and is not part of their "Archangel" publication. Hence I'd really assume Lockheed Martin is the owner of the copyright. Thus not {{PD-USGov}}: contractor's works are not governmental works. Lupo 22:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Commons:Deletion requests/File:A-12 Oxcarts.jpg. Lupo 08:36, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi! I want to use a photo I found here on Wikimedia as a design element (background image) on a website I'm currently designing for a hostel here in Norway. Must I / How do I contact the photographer to ask if this is OK?

Regards, Ottar

Please see Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia. In short, it depends on how the image is licensed. Some licenses require attribution and so on. The page I linked to goes into detail. If you say what image you are considering, I can help you figure it out (if you still need help). -Andrew c (talk) 23:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Looks like I'm free to use this photo, but just for being sure: the picture I consider using is this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trondheim,_Norwegen,_Speicherhäuser_2005.jpg

Just make sure to attribute the author and mention the license for the image (see [2] and this).-Andrew c (talk) 00:08, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I Have Uploaded Photos, How do I Move Them into Commons?

I have some photographs of British Rail Class 317 that I have uploaded and I inserted [[Media:]] and typed [[3]] as the location for where I wanted the photographs to go, however they would not move there. The same thing happens if you type [[:Image:]][[4]] nothing works.

Why is Wikimedia Commons so hard to use to upload photographs into the relevant Wikimedia Commons category section?

Please can someone help?

From

--Peter Skuce (talk) 00:49, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

You only need to write "[[Category:British Rail Class 317]]" (without the quotes). No "Image:". No "Media:". No ":" in the beginning. No "http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/" or whatever. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:52, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
You don't actually upload photographs into a particular category. Instead, when users upload photographs, they all go into the File: namespace. Then any user can add a photograph to a category by editing the photograph's File: page and adding a category tag to it. See Help:Category. It's only hard if you're new to the MediaWiki software that Commons uses. In that case, many things are hard at first because MediaWiki is unlike anything most people have used before. Most people have not written encyclopedias before, either. There is probably no simple way to write an encyclopedia. --Teratornis (talk) 10:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Images from Wikimapia or Googlemap

Hi, I wanted to know whether we can upload images (mainly screenshots) from Wikimapia and/or Googlemap/Google Earth? These are both as such copyrighted websites, but don't know whether there is any specific licence to use while uploading images based on these. If not, I had come across an Image taken from one of NASA's site, which is free from Copyright, can someone please provide me the link fo that site where we can take satelite images from?--Dsvyas (talk) 10:58, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Since Google tend to mix public domain/copyrighted data in Maps/Earth, will be good idea to use http://openstreetmap.org and en:NASA World Wind for same purpose. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for your help EugeneZelenko. --Dsvyas (talk) 14:08, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Chemical formulae

If I'm not wrong, the chemical formulae are not to be copyrighted. What kind of licence should I select to upload an image from this site: [5]?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Esmu Igors (talk • contribs) 20:57, 5 February 2009 (UTC) (UTC)

I'd say those are {{PD-chem}}. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 21:08, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Thank you

I'm doing something wrong!

Trying to upload a photo I took from my computer. I fill in all the information, including license and categories, and click upload. I don't think anything happens. I looked in "Latest Files," and the image isn't there. Frustrated, because I have done this before, and it was easy.Hammerdrill (talk) 13:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Hammerdrill, jst try it again. Maybe you had connection issues or the WMF server wasn't able to process your request at that time. If it's a permanent problem, please report again. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 18:49, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

free screenshot

I am doing school project and I want to use screenshot from the jZip software. Is that ok ?

What is jZip license? Is it open source/free software? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
Do you mean you want to use these images:
It looks like both images are the subject of deletion discussions now. The w:7-Zip article says jZip is based on 7-zip, and 7-zip is under the LGPL. So I don't see what the problem is there. --Teratornis (talk) 10:40, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I deleted the pictures. jZip is effectively an unfree software (that LGPL allows to do). →Diti the penguin — 10:58, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying that. And apologies to the original questioner. Perhaps in your school project you can use a free software package instead, and then we can keep our screenshots of it on Commons. See Commons:Screenshots for our rules, and w:Category:Free data compression software for some softwares we can picture here. --Teratornis (talk) 10:33, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Requesting an image move

I'd like to have Ionizing energies 2.png replace Ionizing energies.png due to it being almost 9kb smaller. Unfortunately my account is too new to perform said move myself. Help appreciated. Thanks - Madmikeuk (talk) 22:58, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

It might be easier to upload the image again to the new file name, and put a {{Duplicate}} template on the old one you want to remove. Then an administrator will come by in a few hours (probably) and delete it. Unless someone jumps in here and does the move for you. With my method, you don't have to wait to use the new file. But why don't you want to upload your new image over the old image? --Teratornis (talk) 10:00, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

How do I display a wikimedia image in wikipedia?

Wikipedia linked me to wikimedia to upload a photo so i did, but wikipedia wont display it! How do i transfer a photo from wikimedia so that i can use it on wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashleyspider.webs (talk • contribs) 23:16, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Hopefully I understood this question and categorized it appropriately.

Assuming I understood the question: Wikipedia will automatically search Wikimedia for the appropriate image with this construction:
[[Image:theFileNameOfTheImage.JPG]]

This construction allows the placement, the size of the image and a caption to be specified as in the following:

[[Image:LatrodectusHesperusMaleLightColoredDorsal003A.JPG|200px|thumb|left|Male Western Black Widow]]
Which produces this:

Male Western Black Widow

I noticed that you didn't sign your question. You can do that by clicking on the little button that has a sort of signature on it above the text edit box.

--Davefoc (talk) 09:39, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Your contributions show that you uploaded two photos before posting this question:
The first file is available on the English Wikipedia at this page:
Read w:Help:Image to see how to display it in articles. However, the second file you uploaded has a name collision with an already existing file on the English Wikipedia:
You uploaded that second file again under a different name, File:Ashleyspider.webs.jpg, so the easiest solution is to request the File:Victorino.jpg to be deleted by putting a {{Duplicate}} template on it. You should try to pick distinct photo file names to avoid name collisions with our millions of files. If you want to use a generic name like "Body shot" or "Victorino", you can add some unlikely characters after it to reduce the chance of duplication, or give a more complete description for the title that is unlikely to be on another file already. --Teratornis (talk) 09:49, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
The signature button looks like this: . See Commons:Talk page guidelines (COM:TALK) for the rules we follow on this page and on other talk pages on Commons and the Wikipedias. --Teratornis (talk) 09:56, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Add an article about a company - logotype

Hello! I would like to add an article about a company. I've spent many hours making sure the article is as great as I can accomplish! I understand how to add the article and that is has to be validated and so forth, but my problem is that I want to place the company logotype in the infobox.

After searching through over 60 articles about image policies and such, I finally found how to do this. It will go under the license-tag non-free logo. Still, I even contacted the company about writing these articles about them (I'm working on a few for their products as well) and they gave me permission to use their logo. I have this in an e-mail.

I understand that I might use the OTRS, but since it was supposed to fall under the category non-free logo, this should not be necessary, or even correct.

Can someone please tell me how I'm supposed to proceed to be able to put the logo in the info-box?

Thanks for your time and help!

//dimhoLt

If you're adding a free content image - that is, an image under one of the acceptable licenses here at Commons, then use the "Upload file" link to the left. If you're adding a fair use image, however, as appears to be the case, then you need to upload to Wikipedia, not to the Commons. See w:Wikipedia:Uploading images, and use the "Upload file" link at Wikipedia, not at Commons.
Regarding adding an image to a Wikipedia article, that's a question for Wikipedia, not the Commons. The quick answer is that (a) first you upload the image, and then (b) you simply add something like this to the text of the article: [[File:Name of image.ext |thumb |caption for the image]]. If that doesn't work, or you need further information about editing Wikipedia, including uploading images to there, you can ask at the help desk there. John Broughton (talk) 17:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

photos of Al Burke aka Mr Outrageous

did thak answer the questions you had about the photos of my husband was trying to put on his wikipedia page that was deleted by someone at wikipedia saying he wasn't a real person? we are trying but this is all new to us. thank you Janice faye

PS. My husband does have a photo that was sent to him by a fan. This fan pulled it off of some old taped footage of the WWF now known as the WWE. Our guess is that this still shot off of footage that was aired is probally licensed by the WWE. Can he use it stating that?

Wikipedia policies regarding what images are and are not acceptable are covered at Wikipedia; here at the Commons, the only restriction is that uploaded images must have a free content license. Any image that came from a commercial television program almost certainly is not free content, so it can't be uploaded here at Commons. On the other hand, if you have a picture that you took, you can post it at Commons, since you can license it any way that you want.
In general, Wikipedia doesn't allow any images of living people to be posted unless they are free content licensed; that is, a "fair use" image, such as a screen capture, can't be uploaded to Wikipedia if it is about a living person.
Finally, if you have a question about what happened at Wikipedia (such as something being deleted on a Wikipedia page), the best place to ask is at the Wikipedia help desk, not the Commons help desk. John Broughton (talk) 17:51, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Official Canadian Parachuting records:

The following three parachute jumps are considered the official Canadian records in their respective categories:

Record Jump #1: Canadian High Altitude group/dayjump Date of jump: September 20 1969 Parachutists : William H. (Bill) cole D-41, and William Murray Smith D-60 Location of jump: Camp Borden, Ontario Altitude: 31,000 ft, ( recorded on 3 sensitive aircraft altimeters, technician verified) Aircraft: Lockheed Learstar (CF-BAL) Freefall time: 130 seconds

Record Jump #2: Canadian High Altitude Individual/day jump Date of jump: April 7th 1973 Parachutist: William H. (Bill) Cole D-41 Location of jump: Baldwin, Ontario Altitude: 36,916 ft ( recorded on 2 barographs ) Aircraft: Turbo 210 Cessna ( CF-VHH ) Freefall time : 149 seconds

Record jump #3;Canadian High Altltude/group/night jump Parachutists: William H. (Bill) Cole ( D-41) and Richard Wall (unlicenced) Location of jump: Pearson International Airport, Toronto. Altitude: 30,571 ft ( recorded on 2 barographs) Aircraft: Turbo 210 Cessna ( registration unknown) Freefall time ; ( unknown at this time)

The Commons is for images and other media files. Text, such as the above, might belong at the English language Wikipedia. But keep in mind that per Wikipedia policy, Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate facts, so things like national records aren't necessary something that belong in any Wikipedia article. (Please direct further questions to the Wikipedia help desk.) John Broughton (talk) 17:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Need infomation

I need some information on this painting. I seen it once in an encyclopedia years ago but im having trouble finding information on it

Heres a link to the pic

http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m205/raymon872000/Image002.jpg http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m205/raymon872000/Image011.jpg http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m205/raymon872000/Image008.jpg

Questions like this should be posted at the Wikipedia reference desk, not here. John Broughton (talk) 17:57, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

a village near milan

there is a small village near milan italy,named as albero nero, i want to see its locatin & view it on google earth plz can u help me ? my e mail is [email address removed] idia

Questions like this should be posted at the Wikipedia reference desk, not here. John Broughton (talk) 17:59, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


Temples in India sub-categories

I was trying to categorize Temples in India. I came across inconsistencies in the naming of the subcategories dealing with temples in each state. I list them below

  1. Temples of Goa
  2. Temples of Gujarat
  3. Temples of Tamil Nadu
  4. Temples of Karnataka
  5. Temples of Uttarakhand

All of these should be "Temples IN Xxx". I could not figure out how I can change the names of these categories to the correct ones.How do I do that? --Belasd (talk) 20:32, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

See: Commons:Rename a category. Your question is clearer when we view Category:Temples in India, which shows an untidy mix of subcategories that use the words "Temples in..." or "Temples of...". I agree it would be nice to make the subcategory naming scheme consistent, but you may find renaming categories is not the simplest operation. It's good that you wish to try. --Teratornis (talk) 21:02, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing me in the right direction! --Belasd (talk) 21:34, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Reuploading

"You must give a description of the file changes with respect to the file you will overwrite." Where? I used to reupload (a better version of course) and the description was kept. Now I'm stuck. Tekstman (talk) 20:48, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I cannot tell from your contributions which image you refer to. I think you can go back and edit the image file page after you upload a new image, and edit the {{Information}} template fields to update the description. --Teratornis (talk) 21:07, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
That was what I want to avoid, it used to be preserved when reuploading. Now I have to keep the page open and do a copy/paste action. That is pretty time consuming. Tekstman (talk) 21:32, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
If I understand you correctly, I wonder if that is a recent change. I uploaded a new image over an old image not long ago, and the old description remained. Tedium seems to be a characteristic of everything I've tried on Commons so far - uploading a series of related images has been absolutely mind-numbing by the methods I have tried (I ended up editing the wikitext I needed in a text editor, where I could copy, paste, and edit efficiently for each image, and then I pasted a block of wikitext into the basic upload form for each image in turn. Of course I made several mistakes as I went along because it was impossible to stay alert while doing the repetitive monkey-like operations). I haven't gotten far with the fancy-looking tools in Commons:Tools#Upload media yet. Maybe one of them could streamline what you're trying to do (I have no idea). --Teratornis (talk) 09:38, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Yes, you're correct it is a new "feature". I am struggling with it for about a week now. Some developer should know more. Tekstman (talk) 10:49, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

This is the first time I 'contributed' to Wikipedia and still learning the ropes. I have uploaded an image 10th_Anniversary_Logo.jpg into the Commons that I copied from the oneworld.com website and used it on Oneworld wikipedia page to add into their 10th Anniversary section. Am I allowed to upload images just to use it to add to the relevant company/topic pages? Also, I know I probably setup the image information wrongly, especially the copyright part, it would be great if you can check it for me! Aviator006 (talk) 23:58, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Aviator006, pelase note that right now you are on Wikimedia Commons and not on Wikipedia. We don't have free use here, Wikipedia does. The logo you uploaded is copyrighted and can thus not be hosted on Wikimedia Commons. It might however comply with Wikipedia's fair use rules, so you can reupload it there in order to use it in an article. Wikipedia's upload form is here: en:Special:Upload. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 16:07, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

File Upload Help!

I am trying to uplad a file, and I looked in the "Upload file" and I have no clue at all, how to do it. Could anyone help me? I got the description.

[[6]]

Syntheticalconnections (talk) 05:18, 8 February 2009 (UTC) - Never mind. I got it. Syntheticalconnections (talk) 05:20, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Uploading problems

How to upload entries. I have just posted History of dipolog but I could not find it in the page? How come?

The Commons is for images, and audio and video files. It is not clear that what you posted is one of these. Nor is it clear why you would not just edit the Wikipedia article w:Dipolog City if you have some information about the history of Dipolog that you want to share. Please explain more what you did when you "posted History of dipolog" - did you upload a file, and if so, what type of file was it? John Broughton (talk) 21:45, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Also want to upload a picture

I want upload my scanned book photograph from my system and make it an attachment to my wikipedia text.

In general, an image that you scan, from a book, is copyrighted. If the book is still under active copyright, you can't legally upload such an image to Commons because it would not have one of the licenses allowed. w:Wikipedia:Uploading images has some general information on this. If the book is old enough (at least 80 years old), then its copyright may have expired and it would be okay to copy (it's in the public domain), but if the book is newer, you (generally) can't put an image from it on Wikipedia. (See also w:Wikipedia:Image use policy.)
Making an image visible in a Wikipedia article involves two things: (a) uploading the image, and (b) you simply add something like this to the text of the article: [[File:Name of image.ext |thumb |caption for the image]], where you want to image to appear. But, again, you first have to upload the image, to either Commons or to Wikipedia (the latter for "fair use" images). John Broughton (talk) 21:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Image question

...About this: File:Mindaugo aktas su antspaudu.jpg. Is it a valid copyright? The document is ancient. Novickas (talk) 13:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe it matters how old the document is; it's (generally) when the photo was taken that determines whether or not a particular copyright can be properly claimed. John Broughton (talk) 21:49, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks :) Novickas (talk) 13:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
That's oversimplifying it; for two dimensional documents, the copyright on the original document is what holds; a simple reproduction of the original is never copyrightable. For this document, however, it's generally accepted that the 3-d nature of the original means the photograph itself is copyrightable.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:53, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Oxford United F.C.'s league positions.jpg

How do i delete the following image on Commons, File:Oxford United F.C.'s league positions.jpg. I have tried adding Template:Db-f8 to the top (as it is a copy of a better image i uploaded) but it doesn't work. What do i need to do ? Eddie6705 (talk) 13:14, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

You could use Nominate for deletion link in toolbox on image page. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
It looks like you should follow the procedure in Commons:Deletion policy#Redundant/bad quality. --Teratornis (talk) 07:20, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Fair use

Hi, I am an employee of Coffee Republic and would like to know how to set the copyrights by uploading our company logo which is registered. It should be marked as: This is a logo of an organization, item, or event, and is protected by copyright and/or trademark. It is believed that the use of low-resolution images on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, of logos for certain uses involving identification and critical commentary may qualify as fair use under United States copyright law. Any other uses of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement. Certain commercial use of this image may also be trademark infringement. See Wikipedia:Non-free content and Wikipedia:Logos.

Thanks for any hints.

"Fair use" images are not allowed here at the Commons. Lupo 12:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
You can upload your logo to the English Wikipedia instead. Please go to en:Special:Upload. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 13:03, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
I've choose non-free logo and OTRS pending and wanted to send license details but I stuck on the license type. What option should I select from the drop down menu while uploading the file? Crcappuccino 18:03, 9 February 2009 (GMT)
If you did manage to find the en-wp upload form, there is a license selection from which you choose Logo. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 18:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, but there are no relevant 'Logo' option on the drop down list. The only logo is under public domain and our logo is copyrighted. That's the options I have there:
  • None selected (add a license tag in the box above, or this file will be deleted)
  • I don't know what the license is
  • Your own work (best practices):
  • Own work, copyleft, attribution required (Multi-license GFDL, CC-BY-SA all versions)
  • Own work, all rights released (Public domain)
  • Own work, copyleft, attribution required (GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0)
  • Own work, copyleft, attribution required (GFDL, Free Art License)
  • Own work, attribution required (GFDL, CC-BY 3.0)
  • Own work, copyleft, attribution required (GFDL)
  • Not self-made, but has been released under:
  • GNU Licenses
  • GFDL content with disclaimers from English Wikipedia
  • GFDL content with disclaimers from Italian Wikipedia
  • GFDL content with disclaimers from Japanese Wikipedia
  • GNU Free Documentation License from another Wikimedia project
  • Screenshot of a page included in a Wikimedia project licensed with GFDL (not Wikinews)
  • Creative Commons licenses
  • Attribution ShareAlike 2.5
  • Attribution ShareAlike 3.0
  • Attribution 2.5
  • Attribution 3.0
  • Free Art License
  • Free Art License
  • Flickr photos
  • Image from Flickr and I do not know the license
  • Uploaded to Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0
  • Uploaded to Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
  • Public domain:
  • I found the image on Google or a random website
  • Author died more than 70 years ago
  • Reproduction of a painting that is in the public domain because of its age
  • First published in the United States before 1923
  • Original work of the US Federal Government
  • Original work of NASA
  • Original work of the US Military Navy
  • Too simple to be copyrighted
  • Logo with only simple text (wordmark)
  • Other alternatives:
  • I found the image on Google or a random website
  • Fair use image
  • Copyrighted, but may be used for any purpose, including commercially
  • May be used any purpose, including commercially, if the copyright holder is properly attributed

Crcappuccino 10:03, 10 February 2009 (GMT)

As we've told you, you must not upload a copyrighted logo here. You may upload it under a "fair use" claim at the English Wikipedia at en:Special:Upload, where you will have a "Logo" selection in the drop-down license list. Lupo 10:58, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
I am getting the error message like this:

"Unauthorized From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search The action you have requested is limited to Autoconfirmed users, Administrators, Uploaders. Return to Main Page." I have no idea how to became at least an Autoconfirmed user. Can you help me please. Crcappuccino 11:43, 10 February 2009 (GMT)

Wait four days. New users at the English Wikipedia cannot upload right away. (Sorry, I had forgotten to mention that before.) Lupo 11:44, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
You mean four days more or four days in total? I have created the account about last X-mas because 'Your e-mail address was authenticated on 24 December 2008 at 11:36' Crcappuccino 12:41, 10 February 2009 (GMT)
To become autoconfirmed on the English Wikipedia you need to have a account that is four days old and have 10 edits. Best regards, Abigor talk 12:47, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
We also have en:Wikipedia:Images for upload for users who are not autoconfirmed (fancy word for someone who has beem registered 4 days and has made 10 or more edits).-Andrew c (talk) 17:00, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

File weirded

I uploaded an image File:Croke Park fans on the hill.jpg. The site was flaky around that time. The file is there but the software thinks it's not (e.g. there's a "Create" tab instead of an "Edit" tab). Thus I can't fix up the license, categories, etc. Can this be fixed? Should I just upload it again? Jnestorius (talk) 21:51, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The full upload comment is visible, so that could be transferred to the image description page by editing that manually. Ditto for the license, which could be looked up at Flickr. (And have {{flickrreview}} added.) But see bugzilla:15430: this is a longstanding spurious bug in the software. Maybe leave it like it is for a few days to give the developers a chance to see this. Lupo 22:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
See COM:EIC#Flickr for lots of information about uploading photos from Flickr. When you upload a photo from Flickr, you might use these tools:
For example, you can paste the Flickr photo id: 1029302309 into the Flinfo form, to get the proper output for pasting into the upload form. Since you already uploaded the photo, you can just edit it into the photo file page.
{{Information
|Description= 
|Source=[http://www.flickr.com/photos/72246095@N00/1029302309/ Croke Park fans on the hill]
|Date=August 04, 2007 at 16:03
|Author=[http://www.flickr.com/people/72246095@N00 Dearbhla] from Dublin, Ireland
|Permission=
|other_versions=
}}

== LocationAustralia.png ==

Could someone please move File:ContinentalAustralia.png to File:LocationAustralia.png

It appears that [[User:Luan|Luan]] has previously been reverting it to a political map of the Commonwealth of Australia. I have added transparency to last map of the geographic continent.[[User:AndrewJ|AndrewJ]] ([[User talk:AndrewJ|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 00:05, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

== Images from dc.gov ==

(I posted this on the 'pedia, but no replies yet.) Are images from District of Columbia government sites free to use? I know images from federal government sites are fine, and that images from state government sites are a no-no. But since Congress has ultimate jurisdiction over Washington, D.C. and the District isn't a state, I'm a bit confused on whether or not dc.gov images are considered federal property. [[:File:Hilton Washington exterior.jpg|Here's]] an example. [[User:AgnosticPreachersKid|AgnosticPreachersKid]] ([[User talk:AgnosticPreachersKid|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 15:24, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
:According to our information, they're not. See [[:en:WP:PD#U.S. government works]]: "The United States Copyright Office, in section 206.02(b), 206.02(c), and 206.02(d) of the Compendium II: Copyright Office Practices, has stated its position that works of the U.S. Postal Service, of the government of the District of Columbia, or of the government of Puerto Rico are ''not'' "works of the U.S. government" and thus ''are'' subject to copyright."[http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/CopyrightCompendium/chapter_0200.asp] [[User:Lupo|Lupo]] 15:42, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
::Ok, thanks for your help. Cheers. [[User:AgnosticPreachersKid|AgnosticPreachersKid]] ([[User talk:AgnosticPreachersKid|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 16:34, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

== OOo Free? ==

I want to upload a screenshot of the callout menu in NeoOffice (OOo for Mac). Is that free software? Thanks.[[User:ecw.technoid.dweeb|ecw.technoid.dweeb]] ([[User talk:ecw.technoid.dweeb|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]])

:According to the wikipedia article, NeoOffice is [[GPL]], so I'd assume a screenshot could be licensed as such. -[[User:Andrew c|Andrew c]] ([[User talk:Andrew c|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 18:36, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
== Interpretive signs ==

Hi.  I've [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions#Interpretive_signs asked a question] on Wikipedia about interpretive signs, but I haven't had any response.  Since I am trying to upload photos of interpretive signs here, could someone take a look at my question or let me know if it has been addressed before?  Thanks. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 23:10, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
:I'm pretty sure if a photograph depicts copyrighted text, it is a derivative work, and thus wouldn't be allowable on Commons. I recently collected all the copyright-related documentation I could find into the brand-spanking new [[Commons:Editor's index to Commons|Editor's index to Commons]] here: [[COM:EIC#Copy]]. Maybe somewhere in that stack of can't-put-it-down reading you'll find a definitive answer. --[[User:Teratornis|Teratornis]] ([[User talk:Teratornis|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 09:42, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
::Thanks, but the sign(s) in question all have text in the public domain, but some of the photos and drawings (incorporated as a collage or as an insert) belong to the copyright holders.  Note, this is only true for some of the signs.  Many of the signs use old photos that are now in the public domain or are historically important.  The problem is really with the signs that use newer photos and drawings.  I believe that the signs which use copyrighted material specify this in small print, but I'm wondering if they can still be used if I obtain permission from the copyright holders. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 09:49, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
:::Signs using new photographs and drawings will be copyright-protected and can't be used here unless either FOP applies in the relevant country (it doesn't in the US by the way), or if you have a written free licence from the copyright holder. In the latter case, the permission should be recorded in the OTRS system. --[[User:MichaelMaggs|MichaelMaggs]] ([[User talk:MichaelMaggs|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 10:00, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

:(ec) Yes, that's right. There are various types of copyright. Copyright in an image is known as "artistic copyright", while that in text is "literary copyright". The former does not require artistic merit, and the latter does not require literary merit. There are three main situations where a photograph of the board may be OK:
:*The text itself is old enough to be out of copyright. That applies even if the board is new;
:*The text is too short for literary copyright to apply (a few words only); and
:*[[COM:FOP|Freedom of panorama]] applies. In many countries, FOP covers only artistic copyright, but some national laws cover literary copyright as well, provided it is permanently located in a public place.
::--[[User:MichaelMaggs|MichaelMaggs]] ([[User talk:MichaelMaggs|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 09:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
:::Ah, yes.  That's exactly what I was looking for.  Thank you very much.  So, if I take a photograph of a famous public location, such as a notable county beach or public monument, and the sign just happens to appear /somewhere/ in the frame, it might be acceptable for Commons?  I should also note that the signs in question were paid for in whole or in part with public funds, even though /parts/ of some of the signs include copyrighted works. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 12:59, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
::::The public funds issue usually doesn't make a difference, but if the sign happens to be a work of the Federal Government, it will be public domain. Unfortunately, that does not apply to State Government works.  Another possibility, in the circumstance you mention, is that the copyright parts of the sign are so small and insignificant in the context of the image as a whole that they count as [[COM:DM|de minimis]].  That won't work, though, if the sign is an integral part of the photograph, and has been included on purpose. In that case, you would have to blur or blank out the copyright parts.  Do you have an example or two that we could look at? --[[User:MichaelMaggs|MichaelMaggs]] ([[User talk:MichaelMaggs|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 16:27, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
:::::Yes, I do have some samples, but I won't be able to upload them until tomorrow night.  [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 11:18, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, without having to upload anything, a good example can be found [http://www.tri-isle.org/?page=Projects%2FActive%2FCultural%2FSouth+Maui+Coastal+Heritage+Corridor here]. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 01:11, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
:Unfortunately, that won't work on Commons - we are always having to delete similar images.  The board is too big and essential to the image to count as de minimis, both the text and the printed design are almost certainly copyright-protected, and there is no available freedom of panorama in the US.  The only option with something like this would be to get a written release from the copyright owner, and lodge it at OTRS. Sorry! --[[User:MichaelMaggs|MichaelMaggs]] ([[User talk:MichaelMaggs|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 17:30, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
::As I explained above, most of these signs do ''not'' have copy-protected text and images.  For example, some of the signs at the shoreline near my house use images of Hawaiian native birds, images donated by Forest and Kim Starr.  Most of the Starr's images are licensed as Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0.  Many other images used on these signs are in the public domain.  A few signs use images and drawings that ''are'' copyright-protected, and the signs say this at the bottom.  Therefore, I will proceed as I did before, with caution, on a case by case basis. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 03:24, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
:::OK. For an image like this, the permission that has been granted by the copyright holders (both images and text) would need to be formally recorded in our [[COM:OTRS|OTRS]] system so that a permanent record of the permissions can be kept.  Please ask the copyright owners to send the permission to '''''permissions-commons@wikimedia.org''''', mentioning by name the image in question, and also the specific licence/permission that is being granted, for example {{t|cc-by-sa-3.0}}. The email must be sent from a domain which can be identified with the copyright owner (eg if the copyright is owned by a company, from the company's domain). In the meantime, to avoid deletion you can tag the image with {{t|OTRS pending}}.  --[[User:MichaelMaggs|MichaelMaggs]] ([[User talk:MichaelMaggs|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 07:44, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
::::Since the Starrs already publish on the web, links to the web page where the photo comes from, and http://www.hear.org/starr/imageusepolicy.htm , is an accepted alternative to an OTRS permission mail, as far as I know.    --[[User:InfantGorilla|InfantGorilla]] ([[User talk:InfantGorilla|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 12:19, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
:::::Yes, for the images, if it's clear where the image comes from and a link to both it and to the licence can be supplied, that would be OK. --[[User:MichaelMaggs|MichaelMaggs]] ([[User talk:MichaelMaggs|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 12:59, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

== Licensing ==

{{cc-by-sa-2.0}}
{{flickrreview}}
[[Category:Croke Park]]
[[Category:Football]]
Of course you will supply the missing Description and probably edit the categories. Flinfo supplies the proper {{Cc-by-sa-2.0}} (licensing) and {{Flickrreview}} templates automatically. Flinfo is the least painful tool I have found thus far for uploading photos from Flickr. My main unrequited wish is for a user-editable mask when uploading successive photos from a Flickr photoset, but for one-off uploads it's much better than the fully manual method. Like you, I've seen some delays between the time I upload a file and when it actually appears in the file page, but usually the delay is just a few minutes if it occurs at all. --Teratornis (talk) 22:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
But then you can't edit might not want to edit the photo file page while that "create" tab remains stuck there. I haven't seen one get stuck like that for so long. Which variant of the upload form did you use? In any case, if you use Flinfo at the time you upload, you should get all the proper information into the photo file page. --Teratornis (talk) 22:27, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Teratornis, as you can see from the image page (well, from the upload summary in the file history on the non-existing image page), he did everything right. Evidently he knows how to upload. But a server bug resulted in the image description page not being created during the upload. Which can be fixed easily enough by creating the page manually and transferring the text from that upload comment, but actually it'd be good not to fix it right away so that the developers who should fix that bug in the MediaWiki software that runs on the server can see it. Lupo 22:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I used Flinfo to upload. I tried tweaking the default info using hotcat before saving, which might have contributed to the failure; though, since the site was intermittent at the time anyway, that might be a red herring. Jnestorius (talk) 22:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
My bad. I looked at the upload summary (that's where I saw the Flickr id number), but it didn't register on me that you must have used Flinfo to produce that summary. My malfunctioning brain locked onto the misleading indication that the description information is missing from the page, without realizing that must be an artifact of this upload bug. I was confusing this bug with another I have seen before, where I upload an image and I still see the "create" tab initially (that must be a different problem because it has always fixed itself after a few minutes). Oh well, maybe my unnecessary instructions will help someone else learn the proper way to upload Flickr photos. I apologize for appearing to condescend. --Teratornis (talk) 23:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Incidentally, I've found that one of the best ways to learn something is to make a big whopping mistake on the Help desk. --Teratornis (talk) 23:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Rwandan genocide

In the Rawanda genocide section, there are almost no pictures. i wanted to download pictures of the Rawanda genocide to the website, to help better explain, ( and give interesting images) to the particular article. I'm having trouble figuring out how to put those images into the article. how can i tell what licenses that particular image has? How do i take that image from my picture files, from my PC, and upload it to the article for editing? how do i replace the wiki example image, to the image ,(uploaded from the internet to my picture files on my pc, to the article?

--Random searcher (talk) 18:56, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Your talk page history shows that a few minutes before you posted this question, a {{Welcome}} template appeared on your talk page. It contains links to instructions which answer your questions. The instructions are extensive, so you will probably need to refer back to them repeatedly as you learn to use Commons. How did you search for photos of the Rwandan genocide? Wikimedia Commons has a Category:Rwandan Genocide. Note that lots of individuals upload photos to Commons, and to the many Wikipedias in various languages, and not everyone coordinates their efforts with any sort of master plan. Thus there could already be many photos of the Rwandan genocide floating around on the various Wikipedias, many of which should move to Commons. (I recently slogged through a similar process to collect photos about Wind power and move them to Commons. This type of work can be tedious.) --Teratornis (talk) 23:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
For more information about determining the licensing information for an image, see: COM:EIC#Image and COM:EIC#Copy. If you have questions about a specific image, give us the link to it if the image is already online somewhere, and someone with more understanding of the intricacies of licensing can advise you. --Teratornis (talk) 02:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Almost all of my images are used on pages on the english or norwegian wikipedias. But the Links section for all says that there's no pages which links to the files. How come? Tengilorg (talk) 16:07, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The "Links" section will only show links on commons.wikipedia.org. You need to hit the "Check Usage" tab in order to see where your images are being used on other wikiprojects. Hope this helps.-Andrew c (talk) 17:23, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. Tengilorg (talk) 19:13, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Photo of the battleship Connecticut

I found a nice photo here (the top photo), but I don't know if I can upload it, as the U.S. Navy is not stated as an author (like all of the rest of them). However, it was taken on 31 Jan 1908 - would that make in PD? Thanks, —Ed 17 (Talk) 22:13, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe not, according to Commons:Copyright rules. In the worst case (from our point of view), the photographer might have been very young, and it might not have been 50, 70, or 90 years since he or she died. You have to assume the worst possible cases when the photographer and/or location are unknown. Also see COM:EIC#Copy. The copyright page on the site you linked to gives a contact address; you might contact the sitemaster and see if he/she can tell you the author and public-domain status of the photo you want to upload to Commons. --Teratornis (talk) 09:57, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
On further reading, I'm guessing that since the photo was taken in New York in 1908, {{PD-1923}} might apply. That might require the photo to have been originally published before 1923. I'm not an expert on copyright law. As is probably obvious. --Teratornis (talk) 10:08, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
And see Help:Public domain. --Teratornis (talk) 23:59, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to know what the copyright status and copyright ownership of a French Second World War era newspaper, Resistance La Voix de Paris, are. The date on the paper is obviously within (American) copyright limits - so in theory it could still be copyrighted (at least if it were made in America). The problem I have is that it was made in France during a period when it was still a bit unsettled (September 8, 1944), and i'm not sure how to present the information in the paper itself. The original I have is crumbling to bits, which is why I took a picture of it. Moreover, I discovered it in my (deceased) grandfather's high-school yearbook, of all places, near a wartime photo album. I also have other photos from said album, only one of which I took a picture of, and I know the "author" of the photos to be said grandfather. Rickyrab (talk) 07:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The copyright ownership of the newspaper could be almost anyone, but it's still in copyright; in the US, it will be until 2040. Under no cases will it be out of French copyright law until 2014 (70 years) and likely much longer depending.
As for the photographs, they're still in copyright in the US until 70 years from your grandfather's death, presuming they're unpublished. (France may or may not be longer; I understand that's a complex question.) You'll have to get permission from the owner of the copyright, which is whoever the will says it is, to license it under a free license.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
See COM:EIC#Copy, which lists all the pages I have found so far that explain copyright rules on Commons. One which looks applicable to the original question is Help:Public domain, specifically the sections Published outside the United States and Copyright terms by country. These sections appear to support the above claim about French copyright, in case you want more details. --Teratornis (talk) 21:00, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Seeing as the photo album was found in my grandma's apartment a few years ago (my grandfather died in 1987, and so this copyright extends into 2057), I presume the copyright owner is my grandma (and/or possibly my dad and/or my dad's brother, but my parents now have the album in their house, although my grandmother is still alive). Approval is likely not a problem, but I am wondering what they would think of it. Rickyrab (talk) 05:17, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
I'll hold off on Wikimedia-ing that for now.Rickyrab (talk) 05:20, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
The physical ownership of the item is irrelevant for copyright. If your grandfather left everything to your grandmother, she most likely is sole owner of his copyrights.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:21, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Fishing ships versus boats

There are a number of fishing categories which refer to fishing ships or to fishing boats. This means editors must be clear whether their vessel is a boat or a ship. What is clear from the actual entries, is that there is no such clarity (perhaps editors are unaware that they are expected to choose). I would like all these categories to refer simply to fishing "vessels". How do I proceed? --Geronimo20 (talk) 11:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Review the links under COM:EIC#Cat, especially Commons:Rename a category. What you want to do might not be simple. You might have to overcome political issues in addition to technical issues (that is, there might be some users who would object to the change). Getting computers to do what you want is usually just a question of reading the friendly manuals, but I haven't found a manual that tells me how to control other people. If you are lucky, everyone with an interest in the existing categories may agree with your suggestion, and then it should be just some grunt work. --Teratornis (talk) 23:43, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Status?

Have you checked your e-mail permissions-commons@wikimedia.org regarding?:

--Fanoftheworld (talk) 19:42, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Are you following the procedure in: Commons:OTRS? If so, what step are you on? --Teratornis (talk) 23:52, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
I've forwarded an e-mail from the owner (Fabrizio Cavalca) of the images. He says in the e-mail that he allows to publish the pictures on Commons. Fanoftheworld (talk) 02:27, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
I linked all the files in your list for easier reference. According to Commons:OTRS#If you need to confirm permission, you should evidently add {{OTRS pending}} to each image, and note the following:
  • To find an OTRS volunteer, go to Category:Commons OTRS volunteers. If your email/request is taking a long time to get a response, try contacting one of these people and asking them to follow it up.
--Teratornis (talk) 05:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
It's somewhat peculiar that the {{No permission since}} template which is on File:Steinway & Sons Timepiece, model C.jpg does not link to Commons:OTRS, since the latter documents the procedure one would presumably follow when e-mailing the permission to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org. I left a note on Template talk:no permission since about this. --Teratornis (talk) 06:53, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

(This has probably been asked and answered a thousand times - but if so, my apologies for not being able to find it...) If an image was published before 1 Jan 1923, it is in the public domain. Now if someone then posts a scan of this image on their website (and does not significantly modify it), is the posted image also in the public domain, or is it now newly copyrighted by the poster?

In other words, if I find an unmodified photograph of President Taft on someone's website that they originally scanned from a book last published in 1912, is there any reason why I can't then just copy their web image and submit it to the Commons? Or do I have to go find the orginal hardcopy myself and scan my own public domain digital copy? - Wormcast (talk) 17:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Scanning does not constitute new copyright, so using their scan would be fine. Keep in mind, though, that the published before 1923 rule holds only if it happened in the US. --rimshottalk 18:26, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Excellent - thanks, Rimshot! - Wormcast (talk) 18:40, 11 February 2009 (UTC)t
Pedantically speaking, an image published before 1 Jan 1923 is in the public domain the US no matter where it was published, and an image published before 1 Jan 1923 may not be in the public domain everywhere even if it was published in the US. The issues are about the Commons rules, not the legal status of the image.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:00, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
More details of this pedantry are in the page: Help:Public domain. --Teratornis (talk) 23:46, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Also, the template {{PD-Scan}} may be of use to you when tagging scans. Anonymous101 talk 20:52, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

NOAA Photos

Are all these Photos pd? May I upload the high resolution form of this image and put it into category Sled dogs? --Anka Friedrich (talk) 12:35, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

PD unless they are third party images used by NOAA. The sled dog image looks ok. Use {{PD-USGov-NOAA}}. --InfantGorilla (talk) 20:47, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

How to vote

how do i vote for pictures? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Purepearl (talk • contribs) 01:43, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

COM:EIC#Elect has an entry:
COM:EIC#Feature has several entries, including a link to Commons:Featured pictures which links to Commons:Featured picture candidates where you can vote (or !vote, depending on whether you believe we really have elections) for featured pictures. Also see Commons:Quality images candidates and Commons:Valued image candidates. All sorts of pictures to vote (or !vote) for. --Teratornis (talk) 03:39, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

subjectivity of administration

I'd like some help regarding Wikipedia's structure. I cannot locate the relevant person to deal with a problem I would like to raise. Who does one contact about the subjectivity of administrators? If administrators appear to have operated outwith their sphere of knowledge and therefore are making inappropriate editorial decisions which mean that information which has no factual basis is not presented as such and that factual information on the subject is being withheld from the public because it disagrees with the viewpoint of the administrators, is there anything that can be done about it?

Convice them that you are right. Alternatively, tkae the discussion to a noticeboard, e.g. the Village pump, so more people will read about it and can post their thoughts. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 19:28, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Must people chat away on noticeboards about evidence unheeded by administrators while Wikipedia allows administrators to promulgate their own ideas rather than verifiable facts raised by those who specialise in the subject? The success of any action related to the first imperative given immediately above would depend on an administrator's ability to think objectively and also respond to factual evidence. In light of what I've written, it doesn't seem a worthwhile approach. It could be said that action related to the second imperative given above has already been carried out in that I am posting here about an issue which is not related merely to a specific subject. I find it difficult to believe that Wikipedia has set up a system whereby administrators are merely installed and thence answerable only to themselves. I find it a preposterous notion that the Wikipedia structure has no method of evaluating those it ensconces with editorial authority. It would be like considering administrators to be Balance's representatives on earth, holding viewpoints which they need subject neither to fact nor to peer evaluation. Is there no one operating within Wikipedia who can identify faults in administrators and who would look into a matter of this kind? Alternatively, would someone within Wikipedia confirm unequivocally that administrators are, according to Wikipedia's own modus operandi, in fact i) free to disregard factual evidence as substantiated by experts in the relevant field, ii) free to not respond even once to any points made to them about the information purveyed by them, and iii) free of any peer assessment of their activities?

Are you talking about Wikipedia? That is a different site, that you will find here: [7]. This page belongs to Wikimedia Commons, the media hosting site. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:37, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that all sites using the Wikipedia nomenclature have administrators. It would be good if someone could think of a clear reply to my query.

First, please sign your posts on discussion pages such as this Help desk. Second, it is impossible to give a clear reply to a vague question. You have described a hypothetical situation, along with your interpretation of it, but we have no easy way to check the facts of the situation to see whether your interpretation follows logically from the facts. Virtually everyone considers himself or herself to be perfectly reasonable and firmly in command of the facts (to see this, simply question any belief held by any person). Thus your self-endorsement is meaningless in and of itself - nobody here knows who you are, and you don't know who we are, so everything we write must be logically self-contained, resting only on truth claims each reader can independently verify. We cannot rely on our reputation or self-concept to win the day for us. Most people couldn't name even one of the standard fallacies and are not consciously aware of how many fallacies they habitually employ when they think and communicate. (Many if not most fallacies are essentially Heuristics which most of us absorb as part of our Received knowledge. It takes a lot of work, not to mention sangfroid, to identify flaws in one's own thinking - in fact this is often much harder than identifying flaws in someone else's thinking. See also List of cognitive biases.) Anyway, to your question: while administrators on Wikipedia and Commons are fallible, they almost certainly know a lot more about how their respective wikis work than the average user who is still so new to the game that he hasn't (for example) learned how to sign his posts yet. While it is not impossible for the new user to be correct and for the administrator to be wrong, anyone with much experience on Wikipedia understands that to be a rare occurrence, which requires extraordinary evidence. In other words, we would have to examine the dispute you allude to so we can see exactly what is going on. Wikipedia is unlike anything most people have experienced before, so if you are new to Wikipedia, you almost certainly have some sort of misconceptions about it (everybody does when they first arrive). Reading the friendly manuals on Wikipedia is a long process of discovery - you would have to be an extraordinarily innovative thinker to have already thought of everything the Wikipedia community has worked out as the complex unintuitive formula to build the world's fifth most-visited Web site with volunteer labor. What Wikipedia has done would have been considered flatly impossible by everybody just ten years ago - even Jimbo Wales didn't really expect Wikipedia to work when he started it. Since the vast majority of people have absolutely no clue about how to duplicate Wikipedia's success on a site of their own, one must approach Wikipedia with the expectation to be astonished as one gradually learns about the unguessable details of the method. --Teratornis (talk) 09:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  1. administrators don't have editorial authority: all users share that with admins
  2. Each website (each of the Wikipedias, Wikimedia Commons, and so on) have their own methods of appointing administrators, and of setting guidelines for their actions.
  3. "The unwritten manual" to English Wikipedia (published in print by O'Reilly) will be coming online free-of-charge soon.

--InfantGorilla (talk) 09:56, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

That last item refers to w:Wikipedia - The Missing Manual. It is a pretty good introduction to Wikipedia. Users who have less knowledge than what is in the book are likely to have more problems on Wikipedia than necessary. --Teratornis (talk) 10:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
The full text of the book is online now: w:Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. So I guess it is no longer "Missing". --Teratornis (talk) 10:30, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, despite what Teratornis says, discussions of hypothetical questions can be carried on without any relationship to specific facts or instances. This is what makes them hypothetical discussions. Secondly, despite what Teratornis says, my query is not endorsement, it is merely a query. Thirdly, despite what Teratornis says, I am not relying on anything, I am asking a question. So far, no one has shown here any indication of who one would contact in relation to such a concern. Teratornis has postulated about the contrast between respective fallibilities of administrators and newbies but this doesn't directly address my question. Can anyone give me an answer to the straightforward question I am raising about accountability of administrators? Or I am to take it, in lieu of a pertinent response, that they have freedoms I have described above?

I am afraid that if you are unwilling to explain the background to your query, nobody is going to be able to help in detail. If you have come across a problem with an administrator here, on Wikimedia Commons, the place to take your complaint is Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:01, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

My query is general and not a request for detail. The background to this query is that it is a query about Wikipedia's structure and how it would face tackling a problem of a particular nature, as I describe. From the lack of direct, pertinent response to my query I must assume that no direct pertinent structured planning has taken place to tackle the kind of issues I have outlined. Lacking a pertinent response, one would presume that administrators do have the freedoms I mention above. That I would consider a very poor state of operation indeed, especially in relation to any inexperienced newbie who would chance upon it.

Your question was "Who does one contact about the subjectivity of administrators?", which has been clearly answered above. By the way, did you try asking your question on Wikipedia, as that appears to be the site you are interested in? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:06, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

That was one question. It is clear to any reading my initial request that my question was double-barrelled. "Who does one contact about the subjectivity of administrators? If administrators appear to have operated outwith their sphere of knowledge and therefore are making inappropriate editorial decisions which mean that information which has no factual basis is not presented as such and that factual information on the subject is being withheld from the public because it disagrees with the viewpoint of the administrators, is there anything that can be done about it?"

If one were to ask, 'who does one contact about police corruption' and told 'the police', then it would be a clear and pertinent reply. However, perhaps the police are the last people that a person having a problem with them wishes to speak to, particularly if only the police investigate the police, especially if they belong to a specific section of society and if they live in a very small country and particularly if they do not wish their identity to be known to certain police. I could be wrong. On the other hand, this could be the extraordinarily innovative thinking referred to above.

I still take it that Wikipedia has no system to cater for those people for whom the presentation of complaint in such a public manner as a noticeboard would be out of the question. This facilitates mistreatment of editors by administrators. I regard this system as poorly thought through at best and backward and self-preserving at worst.

Furthermore, the reply to contact a noticeboard about the issue seems at present likely to elicit the kind of responses above. It is apparent that when individuals such as I raise this issue, it is circumambulated around by referral to noticeboards like this. Not everybody would be willing to waste weeks on a circumambulatory campaign of pursuing an administrator of poor judgement from article to article. Better to leave Wikipedia in the hands of such individuals than waste time trying to sort out its own misbegettings.

Daunting administrators in small Wikis are clearly institutionally free to run the roost their own way and the way of their cronies as editors who wouldn't abide their slight regard for factuality and even-handedness would simply shake their heads, walk away and commiserate with the academic community over the fact that the small Wiki in question is the hands of people who live in and rule their own little universe.

Either that or the people reading my post simply cannot see what the issue is here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.165.152.71 (talk • contribs) 23:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC) (UTC)

To be honest, I still don't understand what you actually want. The organization is like this: The community appoints and removes administrators. If you think an administrator should be removed for some reason, present your request to the community and let them decide about that. There is no other way. If you feel you cannot present this information publicly, contact the OTRS. However, those people will hardly tell you anything you haven't already heard here: Get community consensus to remove the administrator. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 00:28, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your clear reply, ChrisiPK. From the above it appears that Wiki administrators are promoting a system that makes any attempt to unseat certain of their number very arduous/time-consuming/undesirable. Apparently Wikipedia administration either cannot or will not see and respond to the problem I have attempted to raise, both demonstrating and pleading a degree of inability to understand the nature of this query. Despite my raising the query, it appears that Wiki administration believes that every problem between administrators and editors (particularly new editors) can be solved efficiently by community consensus only. The issues that I have raised through enquiring about the existence of an alternative policy apparently engage the minds of others scantly: I am simply referred back, obliviatingly, to the 'community consensus' policy. I can only conclude that certain newbies and editors are disadvantaged by Wikipedia through institutional means, as per my comments above. This is extremely counter-productive in my view.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.151.80.41 (talk • contribs) 23:58, 14 February 2009 (UTC) (UTC)

All Wikimedia projects are based on community participation, thus the community is the legislative and judicial organ. If you wish to change that, you will have to attain community consensus. You are right, there is no alternative way to remove an administrator. It might be that the foundation chooses to remove administrators in very clear cases of abuse, but from what I understand, this is not the case here. I can only repeat my advice from the last posting: Turn to the Support Team. Those people will not remove the administrator, but may choose to intervene and edit on the project. They may also talk to the administrator and resolve the issue. Please note that the Support Team is run by volunteers who are not employed by the Wikimedia Foundation, so requests can take some time to be processed. However, first choice always is gaining community consensus. I am not sure whether you already tried that. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 00:28, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia cannot be all things to all people, because all people want different things. Imagine an ocean liner in which all 2000 passengers are fighting for the helm, so each can steer the boat in a different direction. The boat can only go in one direction at a time. Wikipedia not only has passengers arguing about which way to go, it also has vandals who constantly try to sink the boat. Among Wikipedia's millions of registered and unregistered users one will find every contradictory opinion that exists on every topic, from mainstream views to every sort of fringe and crackpot belief. To maintain coherence, collaborative projects must find efficient methods to settle on one course, and filter everything else. This is bound to make someone unhappy. But there is no free lunch. To get power on Wikipedia and to get your views respected more than the views of the next million people, you have to do what the people currently in power did. We don't know the identity of the administrators you complain about, but we do know how they became administrators: they read lots of manuals, they took the advice of more-experienced users on Wikipedia, they learned from their mistakes, they learned to respect consensus even when they disagreed with some of it, they contributed lots of good work to the project, and if they didn't figure out how to sign their posts on their own, they only had to be told once. They didn't come to Wikipedia expecting to find a "womb with a view" - instead they established stable identities or pseudo-identities by creating accounts, and they allowed other users to build up an impression of them from their body of work. If you're looking for shortcuts to Wikipedia, there are none (short of hiring an expert to edit for you). If you want to steer the boat, you have to earn the right. When someone is trying to help you by providing a link to a document, click the link and read the document. When another user asks for information necessary to let them understand what you want, provide it. The users who are trying to help you here have substantial influence. We have been involved in disputes and we have some ability to resolve them. If you don't want to tell us where the problem is, so we can look at it, we cannot determine what the administrators in question may be doing wrong. For the physician to cure an illness, the physician must examine the patient. There is no safe way to generalize about disease, or discuss disease purely in the abstract, because there are thousands of diseases, each requiring its own treatment. The cure for one disease might be harmful if given to someone who has a different disease. Wikipedia is like that - a tremendously complicated place, and every dispute is different. If you don't want to let the physician examine the patient, then your only option is to become your own physician by duplicating the physician's years of study. --Teratornis (talk) 02:38, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Flickr upload didn't work

I just tried to upload the following image from Flickr (

) and it didn't show up. Here's the image, and Here's the author's permission to upload it. ----DanTD (talk) 17:55, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

The image works fine now, apparently. --rimshottalk 18:36, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
Great. Did I have to wait for the image to show up, or did somebody do something while I was off categorizing other images? ----DanTD (talk) 18:51, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
The file history apparently shows that the Flickr upload bot uploaded the image 21 minutes after you created the image file page. --Teratornis (talk) 20:21, 7 February 2009 (UTC)


Okay, now I've got another problem. The owner of this image gave me permission to upload it to the commons, and despite the fact that he changed the copyright on it, the tool for uploading images from Flickr won't let me do it. What is it that I, or the person who owns the image doing wrong? ----DanTD (talk) 19:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The creator chose a NonCommercial license. Those are not allowed on Commons. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 19:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
The creator changed it and it still didn't work. I received the following message;

"Edit the image description. Please give the image a filename that describes the image and add categories to the image."

So when I told him this, he did and even that didn't work. ----DanTD (talk) 17:03, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Its neutrality is disputed

Hi,

My username is kashmirian and in Jan-2009 I add some informations about the political party (UKPNP) and my home country (Kashmir) and Party leader (Sardar Shaukat ali Kashmiri).

I have added my party under heading of UKPNP (Abreivation) and also tried to add under the heading of FULL PARTY NAME: (United Kashmir PEOPLE'S National party and United Kashmir PEOPLES National Party). My aim was to facilitate the users for search with any of name and that time I had no idia that it gona be under investigation and will be marked as "Its neutrality is disputed".

I am sorry for that and learned from this and in future will be carefull for to adding an article with two names.

My articles are correct one and if need any more references, I can add to verify.

I need your help to clear my user name and IP address from investigation/block to add some more informations in future.


Thanks


kashmirian@hotmail.co.uk zahid.mehmood@mail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.171.129.73 (talk • contribs) 04:54, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

You question is easier to understand if you link to the pages you refer to. Presumably these are:
Editing articles about controversial topics can be difficult even for experienced Wikipedia users, because the w:English Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy represents a new and unnatural way of thinking for many if not most people. Normally, when there is more than one way to think about a subject, people choose sides, and henceforth their side is completely right and the other side is completely wrong. This is as natural as breathing, and is quite difficult to unlearn. You should read all the links under w:WP:EIW#NPOV. Your question appears to be more about the English Wikipedia than Commons, but I suppose you are having trouble posting there. If you are currently blocked on the English Wikipedia, read the links under w:WP:EIW#Enforce. The Commons Help desk probably cannot help you with a problem on one of the Wikipedias. But we can point you to all the manuals you need to read. --Teratornis (talk) 10:44, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
You should also read w:Wikipedia - The Missing Manual, the full text of which is available for free at w:H:TMM. --Teratornis (talk) 22:24, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Question according to my watchlist: Hide uploads?

How can i hide log entries from my watchlist? The upload logs entries there are realy distracting: An image is uploaded, i marked the image as missing permission, source or license and the upload log appears on the watchlist, on an active day in checking the incoming files my list is getting longer and longer and i probably miss a change on another image im watching: (Upload log); 06:58 . . Abc (Talk | contribs | block) uploaded "File:abcde.jpg" ({{Information.... This entrys are ugly, they are two rows long and because im watching my deletions they are red in most cases ;). Is there any option to remove the upload and/or the deletion log entries from the watchlist optional? meta:Help:Watching pages does not help me. --Martin H. (talk) 11:28, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Did you read everything linked under w:WP:EIW#Watch? If the answer isn't somewhere in there, I don't know where it would be. You might be able to customize your watchlist with CSS. The Help desk on the English Wikipedia gets many questions and complaints about watchlists. Maybe in some of the answers you will find something you can use. However, my general impression of watchlists is that everyone seems to find something they wished worked differently. --Teratornis (talk) 22:32, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

How to replace a photo

Image4Sound (talk) 02:09, 15 February 2009 (UTC) Can I replace a photo on a Wikipedia biography page? If yes, what are the steps to delete the current photo and replace with a new one?

Yes, but so can anyone else, so your image may or may not "stick." Only as long as other interested editors prefer your photo will it remain. The actual steps can be very complicated thanks to copyright laws. Things are simplest when you yourself have taken a photo of the subject, in a public place, and you will publish it under a free license. If you did not take the photo, then things can become more difficult. See the links under COM:EIC#Copyright and COM:EIC#Upload for many of the details. Note that dealing with images is one of the harder areas of Wikipedia. If you only want to upload one image to put in one article, the amount you have to learn to get the job done may be difficult to justify. Many of the people who become experts at photos on Wikimedia Foundation projects tend to upload lots of photos, thereby getting a large payback on the effort they put in to learn all the ins and outs. --Teratornis (talk) 03:19, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Image4Sound (talk) 08:11, 15 February 2009 (UTC) Thanks. It is my photo. It is a bio page of a close friend and the photo someone place is just not very flattering. I have a much better photo and my friend, the subject of the bio, asked me if I could replace the one that is there with the one that I shot. So I just need to know how to do that. All rights are mine so copyright is not an issue.

You can upload the image on Special:Upload as soon as you are autoconfirmed (meaning you need to have been registered for at least 4 days). Please answer all the questions and fill in all boxes there. Once you uploaded it, you can replace the file name on Wikipedia with your newly uploaded image. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 08:39, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
And see Commons:First steps and w:Help:Images and other uploaded files. --Teratornis (talk) 20:33, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Kinetic art

User:Allyn has uploaded a significant number of pictures of his own artwork, which to me seem to be of questionable educational use. I'm not sure if I should be nominating them for deletion or not. Can someone suggest a course of action? - Themightyquill (talk) 15:26, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

You could nominated images in question for deletion. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:47, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Proving that something has no educational use seems to me like proving that God does not exist. It would be hard to search the entire universe to rule out the possibility of a highly elusive God. At best, one can only say that one cannot think of any educational use right now. Before deleting this uploader's contributions, I would want to know what harm they are causing to the project. Commons can always use more people in more locations who are willing to upload photos. If they upload some photos of unobvious value, what's the harm? Maybe someone else will think of a use for them in the future. The vast majority of photos on a site like Flickr look useless to me, but Flickr itself becomes more useful as it keeps getting bigger, because it encourages users to upload everything they shoot. Just my opinion. --Teratornis (talk) 21:00, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Geograph image size

Having investigated thoroughly, I am sure the answer is no, but I thought I would double check - for geograph images, do they store images of a higher resolution than the photo page like Flick does? Or are they only uploaded at the displayed resolution? Ultra7 (talk) 20:15, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

The FAQ says:
  • You can upload images of any size, portrait or landscape, but we do resize them so their longest dimension is 640 pixels. We do not keep your original print quality image, only our resized screen-quality version.
Boo, hiss. Suddenly my earlier favorable impression of w:Geograph British Isles went down a notch. You might contact the uploader(s) of the image(s) you like, and ask whether they have uploaded higher-resolution images to a site such as Flickr which allows them. --Teratornis (talk) 20:46, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Ha. My thorough investigation missed the FAQ page. Typical. Cheers. Ultra7 (talk) 20:58, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Well, I'm sure you found all sorts of interesting serendipitous things while looking in the unobvious places. It's not your fault really, you can blame it on the general lack of good FAQs in the world, which conditioned you against supposing the answer would be where it should be. All seriousness aside, it's hard to find this stuff on random Web site X, because everybody uses a different style. No two Web sites have the same layout. That's what I like about Wikipedia - every article on every topic has the same layout, at least once the articles get developed. --Teratornis (talk) 21:04, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Question on uploading my own photos

I would like to upload photos that I have taken at a recent F1 testing session open to the public. Is there any problem with it? Are these photos of F1 cars covered by any type of copyright of the F1 teams? Thank you.— Preceding unsigned comment added by MorganaF1 (talk • contribs)

If you mean images of formel1 cars there is no problem with that. Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 00:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
See Category:Formula One cars and its parent, child, and sibling categories. And see Commons:Derivative works. The Formula One cars are festooned with sponsors' logos, which are usually trademarked and often copyrighted as well, but the presence of these logos is probably incidental because the car is a utilitarian object. Only your lawyer knows for sure, but it looks like a whole bunch of other people have uploaded these kinds of photos to Commons and they haven't been deleted yet. --Teratornis (talk) 02:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello

I want to upload 2 pictures to my page which were taken with my camera and I own the copyright. Why do I keep being asked for a licence? I have stated the images are my own work, what else can I do??

Many thanks

Nicktw

www.nicktw.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ncktw (talk • contribs) 23:10, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Nicktw. The license indicates under which terms you chose to publish the photo, see Commons:Licensing. All images at commons must be free for others to use, but you can for instance chose a license that demands that you are attributed as photographer when other use the image. Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 00:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

file to delete

Concernig this edit [8]: you can delete File:Azulechos Madrid (3).JPG JPG as I have it replaced by File:Azulechos Madrid (3).jpg jpg, thx, -jkb- (cs.source) 13:34, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

will do. Please use {{Badname}} for such uploads. Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 13:48, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

is the phrase "unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed" a typo or a new definition?

I don't know where to inquire, but thought to start here in Commons (1st-timer): I am puzzled by the apparent opposites included in the single phrase "unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed" at the introduction to Commons. As a native English speaker (and retired professor) I would think that "unfree" is quite similar to "commercial," but that "NON-commercial" means free, the opposite of unfree.

The question is, is there some implied category of material that fits the very narrow or theoretical zone between unfree and non-commercial (can there be such a data set?), or did some editorial person overlook the mix of terms and forget to remove "non" from "non-commercial?"

Trivia and collecting pins and bottlecaps are the warp and woof of the professor's universe.

<e-mail address removed>— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.210.3.102 (talk • contribs) 14:52, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

This sentence refers to two types of material which are not allowed on Commons: 1. "unfree" material is material which isn't available under a free licence, for example a recent photograph with all rights reserved. 2. "non-commercial" material is material which has been released under a licence which allows reuse for non-commercial purposes only, such as CC-BY-NC. For example, some institutions release their material under a licence which allows free reuse for educational purposes, but not for commercial purposes; such material would be in the data set of non-commercial, but not unfree material (though that depends on your definition of "free"). Material uploaded to Commons must be under a free licence and the licence must allow all kinds of reuse, including for commercial purposes.
Could you please link to the place where you found the sentence, so that we can try to make it more clear? Thanks, Pruneautalk 15:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
It's in Commons:Village pump/Header. Should be rephrased. Lupo 21:37, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
The ambiguity appears to result from the "/" character which seems to mean "or", but as the "/" character is not a part of speech with distinct meaning, it might instead seem to mean "and", which is what I think the original poster interpreted it to mean. Commons does not allow "unfree or non-commercial" material. It's not obvious how something could be unfree and non-commercial at the same time, although with all the crazy licensing permutations out there I suppose it is possible. --Teratornis (talk) 22:00, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
There is also some ambiguity as to what the modifier "non-commercial" modifies. "Non-commercial material" is not as precise as "material which the copyright holder licenses for non-commercial re-use only" but the second doesn't have the same ring. To fix the ambiguity in Commons:Village pump/Header, I suggest:
  • Replace the "/" character with the word "or".
  • Link each of the jargon terms "unfree" and "non-commercial material" to sections that clearly define them.
--Teratornis (talk) 22:00, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I am not finding coherent definitions of these terms to link to. Commons:Licensing and Commons:Project scope mention the terms in context, as if the reader should already be familiar with them. Commons needs a Glossary. I might start one. --Teratornis (talk) 22:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Another "failed Flikr"

Actually, I have two. I just used "Bryan's Tool" to attempt to upload a couple of suitable Flikr images. The result was two description pages, but no .jpg files. So...what'd I do wrong? --PMDrive1061 (talk) 06:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Oops...never mind! They came through. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 06:36, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, sometimes it takes some time, 30 minutes >, from the creation of the page to the upload. Someone already asked bryan to describe this in his tool. --Martin H. (talk) 07:04, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Question on a list of all file names here

Is there a downloadable list of all filenames on wikimedia.org? I'm not looking to download all the files, just a list of the names. I saw a page where I could download the information 500 files at a time, but that would take quite a while. I looked around the help desk and the FAQ and searched google restricting it to this site, but could not find an answer. Thanks in advance.

I found the answer to my own question. I am posting it just in case it helps someone else. That file is at http://download.wikimedia.org/commonswiki/latest/commonswiki-latest-all-titles-in-ns0.gz The filenames are zero terminated strings, so you'll need to know how to handle that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.105.130.254 (talk • contribs) 00:29, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for answering your question. Questions that answer themselves are the best kind. I will see if I can add the link you found to the Editor's index at: COM:EIC#Download. --Teratornis (talk) 02:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Actually it looks like the file you downloaded will give you the titles in namespace 0 (zero), which will be all the "gallery" titles, e.g. the titles of gallery pages such as Germany, Toronto, Wind power, etc. To get the image names, you might need this file:
--Teratornis (talk) 05:30, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. After I looked further into the file I did recognize that it wasn't the list of filenames. I returned here today to see if someone had posted the correct info, and you had. I appreciate it. 216.105.130.254 16:32, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Copyrightability of satellite imagery

I've asked at Commons talk:Licensing, but have yet to receive a reply. Since this page seems to see more activity, though, I'm taking the liberty to re-post.

Please direct me to a relevant discussion if one has previously taken place. I'm wondering about the copyrightable elements of satellite images. Suppose I took a screen capture of a satellite view of a city from Google Earth (images appearing in which are copyrighted), and created a map by tracing the streets of the city from the satellite image. Will my map be considered a derivative work (and unsuitable for Commons), or is such information uncopyrightable and my work therefore original? --Paul_012 (talk) 13:16, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I think will be good idea to use en:NASA World Wind and http://openstreetmap.org for same purposes. Definitely all derivative works form Google Earth/Maps will be Commons:Derivative works. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Scan from a book

Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere but I looked and can't find it. Is it ok to scan 2 pages (the title page and a random page) from a dictionary that was published in Spain in 1905 if the author didn't die himself until 1951? Someone on the help pages referred to the publication date of the book - I was always under the impression copright duration is in relation to the death of the author. Cheer! Akerbeltz (talk) 20:52, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Help:Public domain lists a number of conditions, for various countries, some depending on publication date, and some depending on "life" which the page does not clearly define (but I guess that means the life of the author). See also COM:EIC#Copyright where I am trying to link to every document on Commons relating to copyright. If the dictionary had been published in the U.S., it would be under {{PD-1923}}, but Spain may have more restrictive rules. --Teratornis (talk) 21:18, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Ouch, life +80, so I guess not but thank you! Akerbeltz (talk) 21:33, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Look on the bright side, you only have to wait until 2031. I suppose it's a good thing that geeks are so few and so generally docile, otherwise there'd be blood in the streets over these repressive copyright laws. --Teratornis (talk) 22:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Which raises the natural question: if I stage a coup, publically execute the heads of state, and seize iron-fisted control over a nation, and then decree my own copyright laws, can I then upload works previously restricted in that nation? Or would I first have to demonstrate that my fragile military regime was likely to remain in power for a long enough time? Dcoetzee (talk) 22:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
There's only one way to find out. --Teratornis (talk) 07:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Renaming a file

  • I just uploaded this image, and as you can see, I named it with ".svg" in the end when saving it from the picture editor, resulting in double ".svg" in the file's name here on Commons. I'm kinda new and would like to know if or/and how I can rename it, what would result as same as "moving" an article in Wikipedia. Mr.Yah! msg 02:11, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
It looks like a bunch of people have asked this question before. I don't know what the official answer is, because I haven't faced this scenario myself yet. --Teratornis (talk) 03:50, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
I like the answer in this question:
Actually I recall now that I did something like this, when I misspelled the name of an image I uploaded. --Teratornis (talk) 03:54, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
And you'll notice basically the same thing just four questions above this one. --Teratornis (talk) 03:55, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
We could use a search link to the Help desk archives, for example at the top of this page. There is also COM:FAQ#How can I rename/move an image or other media file?; it is not as utterly painless to search for these things as would be ideal. Perhaps I will try to fix that after I finish a few other tasks. --Teratornis (talk) 07:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

PREGUNTA

ME GUSTARÍA SABER EL ORIGEN Y EL IDIOMA Ó LENGUA DE LA PALABRA FEHUINA, YA QUE UNA PERSONA QUE CONOSCO LA LLEVA POR NOMBRE Y NO SABE LO QUE SIGNIFICA NI SU ORIGEN DE ANTEMANO AGRADESCO LA ATENCION QUE SE SIRVA DAR AL PRESENTE — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.178.138.175 (talk • contribs) 21:36, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Try es:Wikipedia:Consultas. --InfantGorilla (talk) 12:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

File:WPT Champion Bracelet.JPG

When I uploaded this image, I added the information that I had available, but just got tagged by a bot as not meeting the minimum requirements. Could somebody with more familiarity with images help me out here? The picture was provided to me by the World Poker Tour for use here on WP, where I explicity asked for something that could be used in conjunction with WP's GLDF licensing.Balloonman (talk) 18:50, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Did you get a mail from them, saying they're releasing the above file under GFDL? The problem in this case, is that you haven't put up a license on the file page. You might want to see our licensing guide, and our OTRS guide on how to forward the permission to OTRS. I hope this helped you. Best regards, --Kanonkas(talk) 18:59, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Also it's missing a license tag. Without these, we can't determine what license the image is under. See Commons:Copyright tags for more info. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 19:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

How do I link my uploaded photo to an existing Wiki article? I uploaded my photo using Wiki Commons, and used Apex to link a few links to it. But it's not showing up in the main existing article. How do I add the uploaded image to the main Wiki article? There are no other photos in the article. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jillianc502 (talk • contribs) 13:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I have added it to the en wiki page. You can see how it is linked by looked at the text in edit mode. Snowmanradio (talk) 13:15, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Evidently that would be the w:Darrell Griffith article. To learn more, read:
--Teratornis (talk) 19:54, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

File:Sacred Cod of Massachusetts.jpg

Hi, I uploaded this image from Flickr under a free license to replace a low res wikipedia image of the same name... yes, I gave it the same name as the wikipedia image, so when I try to insert it into the article, it shows the other image instead. Could someone rename this image, or is there a way to override the local file...? Please help... Lithoderm (talk) 22:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, I re-uploaded it as File:The Sacred Cod of Massachusetts.jpg and tagged the old file for speedy... Lithoderm (talk) 22:25, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
I deleted the old image as unused duplicate. --Joku Janne(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 22:50, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, and at the same time an en.wikipedia admin deleted the file there... It all turned out well, though. Lithoderm (talk) 04:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

PLEASE somebody stop this BOT

Please, can somebody stup urgently Filbot? See discussion of the bot and of the user for the many complains of users. Thank you! --Sailko (talk) 09:34, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello,
The bot is doing very good work with warning people when the uploaded a file without a license. And I don't see a discussion, could you point me the place where the discussion was please?
Best regards,
Abigor talk 10:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
I think the user is unhappy about Filbot tagging his page repeatedly for files like File:Tino di camaino, monumento a gastone della torre 02.JPG, which it also incorrectly tagged the file. It's a touch verbose for something that may hit the same user page repeatedly.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:42, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Alphabetizing categories

Can somebody tell me why I can't move Category:Amtrak stations in Virginia to "V" instead of "A?" See Category:Amtrak stations in the United States for details. ----DanTD (talk) 15:41, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't tell you why you can't do it, but perhaps I can give you some hints on how. This is the usual syntax: [[Category:CatName|Sortby]] - replace Sortby with whatever you want the category listing to use to sort the page by. J.smith (talk) 15:51, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
What do you know? It worked. I thought I did that before and it didn't. ----DanTD (talk) 15:55, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
Sometimes you may have to purge the category page and the page containing the category link that you changed. Or wait for the servers to catch up on their own. When you edit the page which is in a category, you are not directly editing the category page itself. --Teratornis (talk) 19:35, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


Delete category

Will somebody please delete this category for me?:

Category:Steinway & Sons in the White House

Thanks. --Fanoftheworld (talk) 04:07, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

See Commons:Deletion requests/Speedy deletion, particularly the last item:
  • It is rarely necessary to delete category pages. In the vast majority of cases, simply remove all the files from the category, and then redirect the old category to the new one (using {{Category redirect}} with |Other-Category-Name without prefix).
Is there some reason why this category would be an exception to the above rule? (I have no opinion either way - if you really want it deleted, try the speedy deletion procedure.) --Teratornis (talk) 08:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for your help. A speedy deletion request is now created on the page "Category:Steinway & Sons in the White House". --Fanoftheworld (talk) 15:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Need help to determine correct license // Hilfe bei Feststellung der korrekten Lizenz

Hallo

Meine Frage: Unter welcher Lizenz kann ich ein Bild hochladen, das ich zwar nicht selber aufgenommen habe, an dem ich aber die Urheberrechte (durch Erbfall) und Nutzungsrechte besitze?

---

Which license can I use for the following case: I want to upload a picture to Commons that is not my own creation, but of which I am the copyright owner(according to German law, by means of inheriting the rights)?

Minvogt (talk) 12:52, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Hallo Minvogt, das kommt darauf an, ob du der Alleinerbe bist. Wenn du als Alleinerbe die Urheberrechte geerbt hast, dann kannst du selbstverständlich jede beliebige Lizenz für das Bild ausgeben, die du möchtest. Ansonsten brauchst du die Zustimmung aller anderen Erben. Grüße, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 13:17, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Vielen Dank fuer die sehr schnelle (und hilfreiche) Antwort. Gruss, Minvogt (talk) 00:21, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I wish to contribute but...

  1. What's the difference between creating an account in Wikimedia Commons and creating one in Wikipedia.
  2. I wish to contribute photos. I read that when you open an account in Wikipedia, you get a User Page, but you can put only a few photos on that page. How do you open a gallery?
  3. I read that that photos "may be reused and modified for any purpose with or without the author's consent." I understand the "reused" part of this statement. How does Wikipedia/Wikimedia justify that anyone can modify a photo without the photographer's consent?

83.49.127.124 17:56, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Answering each question:
  1. You only have to create one account on one of the two sites, which can be your "home" account. From there, you can set up a unified login using Special:MergeAccount. Thereafter, when you browse to another Wikimedia Foundation wiki (such as any of the language Wikipedias) while logged into your home wiki account, the new wiki will recognize you as being logged in under your unified login username (i.e., the username you chose on your home wiki).
  2. For information about galleries on Commons, see COM:EIC#Gallery. You can make a user page on Commons and display galleries of any photos you upload which comply with the terms of Commons:Project scope.
  3. Every site on the World Wide Web has rules for content, and the justification is a consequence of property rights. If you put a site on the Web, you decide what belongs on your site. People who agree with your rules can use your site, and people who want different rules can use another site. However, the rules of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation are not entirely arbitrary; they evolved from rules developed earlier by the Free software movement. In particular, see The Free Software Definition to get an idea of where the notion of unrestricted reuse comes from. Also see Commons:Licensing. The issue of copyright vs. freedom gets very complicated; see COM:EIC#Copyright for some of the details.
(Note: I reformatted your questions to use wikitext list formatting. We generally aren't supposed to edit other people's posts on a discussion-type page such as the Help desk, but your intent was almost certainly to make a numbered list, so I put in the markup to do what you probably wanted.) --Teratornis (talk) 20:40, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
In addition to the answer to #3, let me say that Wikipedia and Wikimedia do not justify that anyone can modify a photo without the photographer's consent. Rather, the contributor of the photograph justifies that. Anyone who does not agree to that provision has, as Teratornis noted, many other sites on the Web that don't require it. Commons, like Wikipedia, works on the principle that editors can improve on each others' work by editing (modifying) it. Many photos are modified by cropping, straightening, adjusting the contrast and color, sharpening, removing noise, and more far-reaching methods. But earlier versions, going right back to the contributor's original upload, remain visible. It's the spirit of the free-software movement. Fg2 (talk) 20:59, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Teratornis and Fg2. All very clear.

This question is about an audio recording of a passing truck operated by a food vendor in Japan. The vendor sings a jingle, with no instrumental accompaniment, over a loudspeaker mounted on the truck. The jingle seems to be traditional, rather than individual or a modern composition, although I'm not sure. The voice may be that of the vendor, probably recorded. The recording is 35 or 40 seconds long. I made the recording while standing on a balcony while the truck passed by on the street below.

The vendor is selling ishi-yaki imo (stone-baked sweet potatoes). The Japanese Wikipedia article is at 石焼き芋, and the recording would accompany the topic. The English Wikipedia doesn't appear to have an article on the topic, but sweet potato mentions it, and has a photograph of a vendor with a cart (not a truck). The food is a symbol of winter, and its name is a kigo used to indicate the season in haiku.

Does this meet the requirements for Commons? If it's not, how about uploading it to the encyclopedias? What license would be appropriate? Fg2 (talk) 11:21, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd think the first requirement would be to determine who composed the jingle. Can you contact the vendor and ask? The vendor must either know, or not know, where the jingle came from. Everything else would have to start from there. Generally on Commons the burden of proof is on the uploader to show that an uploaded file is freely usable. When there is doubt, we assume it's copyrighted. You might be able to upload to one of the Wikipedias under some fair use argument, but personally I don't like that, because it complicates the job of translating content to other language Wikipedias which have different rules, and makes it harder for other people to reuse Wikipedia's content. If people don't want their content in Wikipedia, then in my opinion that is their loss. As Wikipedia grows in popularity, the people who want to impede Wikipedia by hoarding their information will probably have to spend more time explaining to people why their content is not in the Wikipedia articles about them or their companies. When more people are looking at the Wikipedia article about company X than are looking at company X's own Web site, company X may have to reconsider its approach to intellectual property. In other words, I think that rather than give free publicity to information hoarders, we should instead preferentially develop articles about people and organizations that freely license their content the same way that Wikipedia does. Just my opinion. --Teratornis (talk) 20:29, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, that's a good place to start. I'll see what I can come up with. Any additional opinions? Fg2 (talk) 20:33, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
There's lots of material about copyright laws around the world under COM:EIC#Copyright. Some of it surprised me. I was not aware of how many laws I have been breaking all my life, along with everyone else I know. Clearly, many of these laws must not be universally enforced. However, on Commons we need to comply with a higher standard due to the visibility of the project. Thank you for approaching this problem in the prudent way. --Teratornis (talk) 20:38, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Incidentally, the ice cream trucks that ply the streets where I live during the warm months typically play jingles with themes from composers such as w:Scott Joplin who are now safely in the public domain. Hopefully your Japanese vendor does something similar. --Teratornis (talk) 20:53, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks again. I've invited the members of WikiProject Japan, many of whom are Japanese, to chime in. Perhaps someone knows whether the jingle is modern or traditional. (I wish it were as widely published as Scott Joplin!) Fg2 (talk) 22:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

An editor on the English Wikipedia pointed out that commercial recordings of this are sold to the drivers of the trucks. What I recorded might be the voice of the driver, or it might be a commercial recording; I don't know. If it were a performer performing a public-domain work in public, that would be one thing, but playing someone else's commercial recording is another matter. So even if the song itself is out of copyright, I don't plan to upload the recording I made. I'll stop watching this discussion. If anyone has further comments, they're welcome at en:User talk:Fg2. Thanks once again. Fg2 (talk) 01:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm stymied

I uploaded a photo, but when I search for it by the filename it's not there. It's not in "Latest files." So I thought I made a mistake and tried to upload it again. HOWEVER, this time I changed the file name to something simpler. When I hit upload I was informed it had already been uploaded with a different name. If it's there, why can't I get at it???? The filename is Edgewater Industrial 1930 Fortune.jpgHisland7 (talk) 21:27, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried looking through your recent contributions? File:Edgewater Industrial 1930 Fortune.jpg appears there for me. Nanonic (talk) 21:35, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
Yes, by golly, it is there. My next problem is that I can't make it show up in a wikipedia article. I use the same instructions I alway use, which have worked in the past. [[Image:Edgewater Industrial 1930 Fortune.JPG|thumb|left|250px|<center>1930 view from ''Fortune'' magazine of industry in Edgewater</center>]] I'm still stymied!!!!
You must use the exact filename: .jpg not .JPG ;) --Martin H. (talk) 22:32, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Perdón señores...

Acabo de subir una imagen a commons pero no tengo suficientes datos sobre el origen, la saqué de acá. ¿Alguien me puede ayudar? la imagen es

ésta

--Ente X (talk) 15:26, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Approximate English translation of this question (to possibly speed up getting an answer):
  • I just uploaded an image to commons but I do not have sufficient data on the origin of the shot here. Can anybody can help me? The image is File:Burlaks on volga by repin.jpg.
The questioner's user page on the Spanish Wikipedia says en-2 so presumably help from English speakers will be acceptable. --Teratornis (talk) 23:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
Few people who read this Help desk are likely to already know about this particular image. You can help us look up information about it by telling us anything you can about it:
The image is safely in the public domain because the artist died more than 100 years ago. So all you need is to add a Source= value to the {{Information}} template on the image file. The copy of the image on the English Wikipedia (w:File:Burlaks on volga by repin.jpg) does not help, because it lacks a source description also. Two options come to mind:
--Teratornis (talk) 00:29, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Muchas gracias, sólo una pregunta más... sirve ésta página para el propósito? perdón si no entendí muy bien el punto... en todo caso, le pregunto al que la subió--Ente X (discusión) 00:21, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

photo uploads from commons

I am working on a wiki page "Edward Jackson (photographer)" and have uploaded photos to be shown on the page. The photos are in wiki commons. How can I upload or link them to the subject page in the areas they belong?

niteflyer Niteflyer (talk) 04:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Photograph taken by Edward Jackson of the four allied leaders at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 which resulted in the adoption of the Treaty of Versailles.
The same way as you would insert any picture, images on commons can be used on wikipedia instantly if there are no other images local to wikipedia with the same name. Use the wikicode -
[[File:<imagename>.<ext>|thumb|<left or right>|<caption>]]

like this:

[[File:Big four.jpg|thumb|right|Photograph taken by Edward Jackson of the four allied leaders at the [[Paris Peace Conference, 1919]] which resulted in the adoption of the [[Treaty of Versailles]].]]

Which produces the box to the right of this paragraph. Please note however that this particular image already exists on commons at File:Council of Four Versailles.jpg, I haven't checked your other uploads. Nanonic (talk) 05:27, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Read w:Help:Image. --Teratornis (talk) 05:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Which One is The Best Option?

Hello.

I have sent an email to Sabrina Deep asking if i could have a picture of her to add to her wikipedia article; in my email i specified that the picture should have been released under the 4 freedom rules. She has answered me sending a picture and stating that i could do any use i wanted of that picture. Can somebody please help me to figure out under which licensing option i should upload this picture? It is not my work, obviously, but i also have not found that picture on another website, therefore i am a bit confused. Thank you very much in advance for your help.

Please use Commons:Email templates and Commons:OTRS. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Writing e-book

I am in the process of writing a how-to ebook about fishing for Northern Pike and would like to use some images from your site. Most of the images are public domain but a few are under different licensing. What is the proticol for using those images? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.46.211.237 (talk • contribs) 21:01, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

See Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia. --Teratornis (talk) 23:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

what this does?

<div class="dshuf">

I found this in the coding of the POTY. Does it rearrange items in a list automatically? If so how can I program it to do that? Deathgleaner (talk) 02:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Searching the English Wikipedia with Google for: dshuf finds only this mention:
which has some links in the eighth discussion entry. --Teratornis (talk) 04:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
Dshuf "shuffles" the order upon every new reload. See meta:User:Gmaxwell/dshuftest for an example/explanation. Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 05:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

File:Monitor gamma checkerboard.gif: Trouble with derivativeFX

I uploaded that picture, but derivativeFX left four license plates on that work. What should I do now? The original work is PD-self, and so is the derivative. It would be great if somebody could clean up the dirt, because I don't understand the heading structure now anymore. The only thing I know is, that it looks to me as if there is too much. Thank you!

Ich hab dieses Bild hochgeladen, aber derivativeFX hat mir vier Lizenz-Schilder draufgeklatscht. Was soll ich jetzt machen? Die Originaldatei ist PD-self, wie auch das Derivat. Es wär wirklich klasse, wenn da mal einer rüberschauen könnte, weil ich keinen Überblick mehr über die Überschriften habe. Das einzige, was ich weiß, ist, dass das für mich aussieht, als wär da etwas zu viel. Dankeschön!

--Lazer erazer (talk) 19:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help, J.smith! --Lazer erazer (talk) 20:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

can i please insert a picture and how?

hello . I would be glad if you tell me if i can insert a picture and how. Good bye. --Francisdenis (talk) 00:44, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean how can you add a Commons picture into a Wikipedia article? See the section #photo uploads from commons above. If you mean something else, could you please explain? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:58, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Long list of incorrectly tagged images

Seems these uploads http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jvfulcher are all incorrectly labeled. What is the best way to tag a large number of images for deletion without spending 20 minutes doing it? Thanks! EhJJ (talk) 23:55, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Translating image description template text

I noticed that the translation for "Own work" in Slovene (sl) language is incorrect. It says "Sopstveno delo" which is Serbian/Croatian, where in Slovenian it should be "Lastno delo". Unfortunately I cannot fix this myself since all the MediaWiki labels are locked for editing by ordinary users. The second problem is that I can't even find the correct MediaWiki page for this phrase. I only found MediaWiki:UploadFormOwnWorkLabel, but that one is for the text "Own work by uploader" and is translated correctly at MediaWiki:UploadFormOwnWorkLabel/sl. Help would be appreciated. --Yerpo (talk) 11:54, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you're looking for Template:own. It's protected, so you'll need an admin to do the change for you. Pruneautalk 12:27, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
That's the one, yes. Thanks. Do I need to inform an admin somewhere else or do I just wait for one of them to see this request? --Yerpo (talk) 12:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
✓ Done by Eleassar. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 13:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Church image on http://www.northerncape.org.za/getting_around/towns/Strydenburg/

Can someone tell me if it's ok to upload and which category it comes under? --Africa South (talk) 09:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

No. According to http://www.northerncape.org.za: All photographs remain in the ownership of the photographers and cannot be used without their written permission.. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:56, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Help_desk/Archive/2009/02&oldid=48444019"