Commons:Village pump/Archive/2005/01

Village Pump archives

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2015	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
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2024	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	Not available yet

Possible to change filename?

Hey guys maybe you can help a newbi who screwed up. I uploaded a better version of Image:Itaipu.jpg used in the English Wikipedia article Itaipu. Just after I uploaded it to the commons I realized that it doesn't replace the one used in the Wikipedia. What should I do now? There are several ways to deal with that I know, but I do don't want screw up again. cheers

Cyc 13:56, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You can delete the image on the English Wikipedia, or you can upload the new version there as well. - Andre Engels 16:15, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Cross-referencing system for Wiki

Every time I've wanted to know the name of an animal's young (e.g. duckling, cygnet, etc.) I've found myself frustrated with dictionaries and encyclopaedias which never seem to have good cross-referencing... so I built a mechanism based on making general assertions about resources and a bunch of people on the old YourDictionary.com's Agora helped me flesh it out.

the sytem can be found at: http://www.arix.com/animalis

At present, the data is focused on the domain of the Animal Kingdom. However, the system is generic enough that it could easily be used to cross-reference all manner of other things.

I would like to donate this work to the Wiki family of projects and modify the system to crossreference into the WikiPedia and other Wiki pages. Can anyone tell me who I could talk to in order to pursue this idea?

I may be contacted directly (see http://www.arix.com/ec/contact-me)

cheers - ekkis

Other languages

Wouldn't it be possible to change the title for that box in the left colums with something like "related encyclopedic articles"? For as far as I know... commons is not language-related. It would also make it a useful tool for directly linking commons-pages with wikipedia-articles, to e.g. check if any image is used in all the articles. On the other hand, we should then watch out for the possibility that a bot would add a common-link in the wikipedia pages. Guillaume Bokiau 00:40, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

already seems to have been done the box that is normally labeled in other languages in wikipedia is labeled "in wikipedia" here Plugwash 00:46, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ow.. ok. But it hasn't been translated then. At least not for the french interface. Guillaume Bokiau 22:51, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Public Domain Textures for Commons

I googled the last days for a good site to publish my selfmade textures under PD and nowhere seems to be a appropriate central site that offers such a service. Textures should be shared as free as photos or other graphics. What do you think of a Texture-Category in Commons? --MilesTeg 03:21, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why not? Upload them - they are valid and valuable. --81.130.33.136 17:59, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

i don't think they would pass the current Commons:criteria for inclusion (be feasiblly usefull to at least one wikimedia project). commons is running on wikimedia resources so this does seem reasonable. Plugwash 23:10, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I believe the way Commons is constructed and the way it has grown so far implies that it will not in the long run be *only* for the Wikimedia projects, but for all that need it. So yes,I'd say go ahead. notafish }<';> 15:59, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

images User Koko all to be deleted

User Koko uploaded a series of pictures yesterday and today. Unfortunately he thought that pictures on a site that has no copyright claim on it are free for use. I've explained to him that this is not the case. He agreed on deleting all of the pictures he submitted. Can anyone here delete those, or tell me were I can list pictures for deletion? TIA Muijz 19:31, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That can go to Commons:Deletion requests. I would like to delete it now but Wikimedia is soooooooooooooooooo slooooooooooooooooow at the moment... - Andre Engels 14:56, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Image:Flag of New Zealand.png

I have noticed that this image of the New Zealand flag has been licensed under GFDL. Is this allowed? I'm can't quite be sure but from what I gather the flag is either PD (having been around since 1902) or Crown Copyright. Evil Monkey 05:22, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know, the design of the Flag is public domain, a concrete graphic of the flag is owned by its creator and can be released under the GNU-FDL by the creator. If the creator of the flag indeed owns any rights also depends on how "creative" the work is considered. Thus for simple flags, the person doing the graphics may not hold any rights (and the GNU-FDL-tag yould be void resp. unneccessary), while for complicated graphics s/he does. -- Duesentrieb 17:12, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Renaming files

Hi. I've got confused while uploading files, and I mistook an Velletri-type Athena statue for a Parthenios-type one. As a result, Image:Athena type Parthenios.jpg should be renamed to Image:Athena type Velletri.jpg. Using the "move" tab won't work. Can a sysop do that for me? This is my photo and I uploaded it myself. TIA, Jastrow 13:52, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just upload it again with the right name and put {{delete}} on the image description page and save it. You should also put a copyright Tag on the new uploaded image. -guety 23:34, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. Jastrow 10:51, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Translation of English words in Spanish interface

Hello, I just wanted to ask if any administrator could, please, translate a few words in the Spanish interface which are still in English. Especially the words «Main Page» (Portada) and «Community portal» (Portal de la comunidad), in the preferences page there are also some other words, for example:

User data >> Datos del usuario

Interface language >> Lengua de la interfaz

Real name (optional): if you choose to provide it this will be used for giving you attribution for your work. >>

Nombre real del usuario (opcional): si decides incluirlo se utilizará para atribuirte tu trabajo.

• Email (optional): Enables people to contact you through the website without you having to reveal your email address to them, and it can be used to send you a new password if you forget it. >>
• Correo electrónico (opcional): posibilita a otras personas contactar contigo a través de Commons sin que tengan que conocer tu derección de correo electrónico, y también puede utilizarse para enviarte una nueva contraseña si decides cambiarla.

Thank you very much. --Javier Carro 16:21, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Redirects to image articles

I'm not sure if that was already proposed somewhere, so I'll just bring it up here and ask for some comments. Creating redirects in all languages to articles of the same topic would be a nice idea IMHO. That is especially needed in the animals galleries, as the articles there have the latin names (e.g. Vulpes vulpes instead of Red Fox). Having a redirect from Red Fox to Vulpes vulpes would be quite useful, and I think it would be nice to have redirects from other languages too, so people just need to type in what they want in their language and they end up on the right article. The disadvantage would be that we'd have alot of redirects, and it would be quite annoying to change all these redirects if the article gets moved to another name. We could use bots for that tho. There's also the vote, deciding whether we're going to use articles or categories or other schemes for displaying images. Maybe we should wait until that's finished before we start creating alot of redirects. --Conti|✉ 19:43, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki translation proposal

Hi admins :-) Today we got a new link "latest files" in the navigation bar in addition to the portal link (which was used a while for that instead). Before the integration I created MediaWiki:Latestfiles and MediaWiki:Latestfiles-url and I already translated both with the appendix /de to german. If you want this link appearing in your language interface too, you just have to create these mediawiki files appropriate to the english or german versions. Thanx and have fun with that useful feature. --:Bdk: 02:45, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Error message after installing wikimedia.

After installing I get this message

[pear_error: message="Template function 'tpl_0_7_0_f0e0747aa024bf98a1122fbe0f6b38d8' not found (template source : /web/straname/public_html/alliancewiki/templates/xhtml_slim.pt" code=0 mode=return level=notice prefix="" info=""]

The addy for the site is

http://www.stranamechty.com/alliancewiki/index.php

Any ideas what this is?

i suspect its an issue with your hosting provider. Here isn't really the place for such issues though try meta or somewhere. Plugwash 07:04, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Linkage? Ive looked around very hard with google for forums ect but no luck.

Please have a look perhaps to this meta page or ask on irc.freenode.net #mediawiki. Good luck. --:Bdk: 06:27, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for main page

I worked in a new Main Page to portuguese, this page is strongly based in Bdk's proposal. You can copy if you liked. Thank you, Gbiten 21:37, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just changed our german Hauptseite likewise. It is based on the early style of the german portal either way ;-) --:Bdk: 04:42, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A new list to prevent uploading of contradicting images

discussion moved to Commons talk:Bad sources Plugwash 04:34, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

animals

Moved to Commons talk:Taxonomy. --Conti|✉ 16:56, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

commons and non wikimedia wikis

the wikimedia wikis use commons by means of a shared filesystem. This system works well enough but requires the wiki using the image to be trusted (it needs write access to put the thumbnails) it also requires os level setup that is unlikely to be possible on shared hosting and im not even sure that the nfs server for images is on the public network. Realistically this method is not workable for non-wikimeda wikis.

the present situation of having to copy to non wikimedia wikis manually is far from ideal. Plugwash 16:29, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

copy on use

Copy the image to the local wiki when inserting it in a page.

pros

would still work if wikimedia started having refferer restrictions (assuming downloads with no refferer were allowed)

less bandwidth for wikimedia.

cons

copyvio images deleted from commons would persist on the local wiki

some system would need to be devised to deal with the copyright tags.

links would need to be translated into external links back to commons.

images would not be updated when the one on commons was

more badwidth for the local wiki and in total.

direct linking

use images directly from commons inside the pages.

pros

less bandwidth for local wiki

copyvios would not be copied to local wikis

updates would be used on the non-wikimedia wiki.

no need to modify image description page as it could remain only on commons.

cons

more bandwidth for wikimedia

a method would be needed to force commons to generate thumbnails. A preview request would do this but at what cost?.

local wiki needs to contact wikimedia server to check any image attributes.

would break if wikimedia started enforcing refferer controls.

Derivated work, artistic alteration

Is there a policy about derivated work, artistic alteration from a public domain media ? I uploaded Image:Paris-montmartre-sacrecoeur-alawarhol.jpg altered from Image:Paris-montmartre-basilique-du-sacrecoeur.jpg. Greudin 18:23, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If you made those alterations and they are elegibale for copyright then its up to you how you license them (and in this case you have already done so as pd) If someone else made them then and they are eligable then its thier call. I personally doubt that tiling the color channels of a cmyk version (which is all it appears has been done) would be eligable for copright anyway. Plugwash 05:58, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Question

Sorry if this has beeen asked before but my time on Wikipedia is limited. Can someone answer tese two questions? Thankyou. 1. I want to put an image (it's a postcard printed in 1904 which I found on e-bay) on my user page. Will this be okay, and if I scan my own similar vintage photos will this be okay. 2. Can one upload .tiff files?

1 for the postcard you can upload it and tag it as {{pd-us}} because of its age. For images you have taken yourself (and i presume not published) the selection of license is up to you (read commons:image copyright tags)

2 im not sure if you can upload tiff files but most web browsers can't deal with them anyway so thier use here would be stupid. For lossy compression use jpeg for lossless compression use png. Plugwash 21:34, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the trouble to answer my question.

Category:Unknown subject

I just added a category which is destined to receive files which subject is unidentified (but which has all the other information). I also updated the community portal with a little Help ! thing in Participate to tell people we need help on those. notafish }<';> 04:23, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Structured Information

As usual, this might have all been discussed before, sorry if I missed the point, etc.

But from the reading of the various documents for the project, I get the idea that it intends to become a image library of sorts for wiki projects. A great idea, and I will contribute when I can, but I'm a bit unsure about the current use of meta-data with the media. At the moment it seems to be just a brief free-form sentence descibing the photo, then the photo is placed into one (or more) categories decided by the submitter (correct?). But this seems to ignore the various pieces of information that can be categorized precisely and then searched on. For example, most digital cameras now save various bits of useful information with a photograph showing date, aperture, exposure, ISO, etc. Other bits of information such as location, photographer, film/camera type, etc can also be recorded by digital and film photographers. This kind of information can be easy saved as key:value pairs (ISO:100, EXP:1/50, Location:Canberra, Country:AU, Film:Fujichrome) and formatted in a pretty way on the relevant photos page, but most importantly can then be searched on (independant of the actual contents of the photo). So if somebody wanted to find all photographs taken inbetween 1960 and 1965 in Liverpool they could do so via a search engine looking at the relevant meta-data. This seems more useful (especially if the image library grows to hundreds of thousands of photographs), and faster then just text searching, or making the user guess whatever categories various people have indexed their photographs under.

Or in summary, no free-form text with photographs (with some exceptions when needed such as Category:Norwegian rulers ).

-- wombat 04:24, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Does it sound crazy ?

Do you think it'd be a completely crazy idea to have not a Village Pump in every language, but an international Village pump ? I just noticed the Germans don't have one, when they are more than well represented here, and I find it very difficult to keep up with the French one, for I know that questions never get answered there (my laziness ;-) ). Questions here could be asked in any language and answered by whomever speaks the language. Any thoughts ? notafish }<';> 04:31, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Doesn't sound crazy at all. --MarkSweep 04:39, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

it seems we have three choices here

1: accept the fact that english is the en:lingua franca round here and that we must use it for things that are to be widely understood (ie discussions of policy etc)

2: have people posting here in all sorts of languages with most people being unable to read most of what is said and risking splitting the community on language lines.

3: (the status quo) have seperate village pump pages for different languages. This avoids people having to search past stuff they can't read but has most of the other disadvantages of option 2 and requires those who do speak more langauges to check more pages. Plugwash 04:50, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea. I'm not comfortable writing in French or German, but I can read them reasonably well; I suspect many other users may feel the same way about other languages, including English. If we put them all on one page, everyone will get a chance of seeing them. Multilingual users could provide translated summaries of the discussion now and then. What good is discussing policies if everyone can't participate? -- Ranveig 14:14, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

de : Ja, ich finde das eine sehr gute Idee jeder sollte sich so ausdrücken können, wie er es am besten kann und möchte. Aber wir brauchen nicht verschiedene Stellen dafür ;-) --Paddy 05:14, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) translation en: Yes, I think this is a very good idea, everybody should be able to express themselves in the language they master and choose to use. We don't need different pages for that. notafish }<';> 14:16, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I prefer Village Pump in every language, the portuguese Village Pump has already some movement. And people like me that can read only two languages will have difficulties to follow a multilingual talk. For example, I have no idea what Paddy said above. Gbiten 10:38, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

@Gbiten, I see your problem there. But will we not loose good contributions too all different sorts of Village pumps?! I would rather have you write something in portuguese here if you think you can express yourself better that way and mark it with pt so we can look it up with babelfish or google translate. If the thread seems interesting there could always be a request for a quick summery into one or two languages. What do you think? --Paddy 15:25, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That requires finding a suitable online translater (easy for german french japanese etc but very hard for hebrew arabic and similar languages). If a thread has 4 or 5 languages is anyone really going to btoher finding and using translators for all the different languages? If we are to restric each conversation to one language the we may as well have them on different pages (as we do now) so people can easilly ignore the languages they can't read.

Anyway machine translations are usually much worse than even the worst english i have seen humans produce Imo encouraging people to use them has FAR more possibility for misunderstandings than a bit of poor english from a non native speaker.Plugwash 18:05, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Machine translations is the second best, although they do usually give you an idea of what the speaker is trying to say. Human translators shouldn't be too difficult to find in this multilingual beehive. Also, requiring English simply excludes those who do not speak it. I agree with notafish; at least as long as we're discussing policies, the discussion should be open to speakers of all languages. -- Ranveig 19:04, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am not saying it should be the usual case but it should be possible here. --Paddy 23:41, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am not saying we should translate everything, on the contrary, as Paddy said, everybody should express themselves in their preferred language. I feel it is especially important in the first stages of Commons, when policies are being discussed and help needed. Some issues are raised and resolved on other village pumps and we don't know about them, which I find a bit counterproductive. Maybe we could have sections for different languages? I just believe that most things happen here for now, and splitting the information is more dommageable than it is helpful.notafish }<';> 14:16, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maybe, in order to keep things more orderly, we could keep "trivial" discussions (such as "Help, how do I do this?") to separate language pages, and serious discussion at a multilingual "commons" where everyone is welcome. -- Ranveig 19:04, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. Keep all explanations separated and have a multilingual discussion pages for important topics. Bad speek Errors should be corrected by other Users. Aditionally there should be some kind of templates, to explain this unusual behaviour.

• This page is translated from xxxx for information purpose only.
• Every language is accepted here. If possible, try to comunicate in english / Jede Sprache ist auf dieser Seite zulässig. Nach Möglichkeit sollte Englisch verwendet werden.

--Heidas 19:53, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

FULL ACK! If you want to express yourself rather in Japanese, Greek, Czech etc. feel free to do so. This is commons. Hopefully we find someone to translate it. But to scatter important issues like babel ist definitly bad. --Paddy 21:11, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

GEDCOM file format

Is it possible to add GEDCOM (.ged) file format to the allowed formats? It's plain text and stores relevant data for an enciclopedia/book, as genealogical data. I was trying to upload one, but it seems there's a file type check. Nuno Tavares 09:00, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Did I say something stupid? Or isn't this the right place to ask for it? -- Nuno Tavares 17:34, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Avoiding unused/uncategorized images

As I am helping to work through the many unsorted images we have on the commons, i thought a little about how to avoid this situation. I just created a templated to be put on the talkpage of users who have uploaded some images, but did not put them on a page or into a category: Template:Please link images. I hope this will help some.

But this is not really sufficient, and it has to be done manually after things have already gone wrong. So User:Ranveig suggested to tell people about this (using a similar but shorted message) before or just after they uploaded a file. This could easily be done by adjusting MediaWiki:Uploadtext and MediaWiki:Fileuploaded respectively. I could do this (i was just made an admin here - yay!) but wanted to hear your opinion first.

So, what do you think of the idea? Do you like the text for the talkpage? What text would you suggest to put into the automatic messages before/after uploading?

Thanks for your input -- Duesentrieb 21:18, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think the text is pretty good for adding to user pages. For the edit box or related I would use the following text (or a variation thereof):

The Wikimedia Commons needs the following information about the image/file you uploaded: Add as much information about the image as possible Displayed object Author (Photographer/Painter...) Source (where downloaded/published) Place and time of creation Add a Copyright tag Add the image to one or more appropriate categories If there is not sufficient information, the image may have to be deleted.

How does this look? --Chris 73 09:36, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)).

not bad. it should say "pages or categories" rather than just categories though. Plugwash 10:11, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

True. I have not yet added this to the upload page, since I want to wait for the outcome of the vote about where the images go. No need to confuse the user by instucting them now in one way and later in another -- Chris 73 01:55, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like the tag (with improvement), and hope we can get it into work soon. -- Ranveig 16:52, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we should add - if technical possible - the translated text on each language: If you are not able to describe your upload in english, use your national language so that someone could translate it for you. So for an upload from germany, this hint is displayed in german. It is at least better than to have no information at all. Nevertheless I support the idea even without this change. --Heidas 19:24, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest to put this into MediaWiki:Fileuploaded very soon - in fact i'm tempted to do it now. Every day we get dozents of new unsorted pictures, i'm afraid when we re-generate the really-unused list, we'll see that it is as big now as it was in the beginning. I would also like to suggest a few changes to the box above:

• Add a link to a more detaild page. I have started a rough scetch at User:Duesentrieb/Upload checklist, feel free to edit it.
• Make the point about placing the imag on a page / in a category bold and maybe even blue or so, because the rest is "just the usual stuff" and people are bound to just skip the rest.
• State explicitely that "from the englisch wikipedia" is not a valid source - the original source is important, and all info from the description page on the wiki should be copied here, especially since local copies of images will often be deleted in time.

So, what do you think? With the modifications suggested by me and the others, I would like to put this into place in a couple of days, if noone objects. The sooner, the better, I think. -- Duesentrieb 00:01, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If you are going to edit the upload form Duesentrieb, how about also folding in my suggested changes to prompt for specific items of information (Location, Country, Date, Photographer, etc see User:Wombat/Upload) ?. The only other change required would be for the processing form on the server to insert the information into the filepage. cheers, wombat 00:32, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Because to do what you requested, i would have to a) have access to the servers and b) change the software. I am a commons admin, not a server admin or developer, there is a very big difference. All I need to do here is edit a wiki-page like any other (well, it can't be edited by anyone, but still). I like your idea though, but I think that there are some problems with it (namely, that it is crafted for photographs and does not account for drawings, sound files, etc), and I have been meaning to reply to your post on the mailing list for days. I hope i'll get around to it tomorrow. Regards -- Duesentrieb 01:42, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Being a little impatient, I just changed the message that is shown after a file is uploaded. Have a look here: MediaWiki:Fileuploaded. For the lazy, here is what it now looks like:

File $1 uploaded successfully. If this is an image, you can insert it like this: [[Image:$1|thumb|Description]] Please follow the link $2 to the description page now and put the following information there: Describe what it is about in a short sentence. (What does the image show?) State the author and the date of creation. If you made it yourself, say so explicitely. If you did not create the file yourself, state the source you got it from. Add a Copyright tag NEW: Add the image to one or more gallery pages and/or appropriate categories, so it can be found by others. If you copied the file from another wiki, please copy all information given there and say who uploaded it to that wiki. Please add as much information as possible. If there is not sufficient information, the file may have to be deleted. Thank you.

I modified Chris' proposal quite a bit, I hope you like it. The link to the detailed checklist is still pending, as the page is not there yet. Have a look at User:Duesentrieb/Upload checklist and help to improve it. -- Duesentrieb 13:37, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Template:CopyrightedFreeUse

There have been questions raised as to whether this tag also implies that modifications are allowed. If so, this should be stated explicitely. If not, this tag should not be "accepted" but handeled as a reason for deletion, just like {Copyrighted}. Please help to clarify this -- Duesentrieb 10:52, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure what it means, but Template:CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat is even worse. At least en:Image:Egypt COA.gif gave me a good laugh. I suggest rename to Wikipedia:Stuff from somewhere on the Net. -guety 03:18, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Title of stats page is misspelled

This just bugs me. Look at the title of this page (on your browser's title bar or tab title):

Combined request reates(sic)

Could someone with webmaster access fix that? It makes me feel like I'm logging into Ian Paisley's website... 65.122.15.98 23:24, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Images in Categories

Hi, I'm new to Wikimedia Commons, but I have a couple of questions/concerns/suggestions about categories. First, I second the idea that it would be awesome to get aliases up and running for categories. I'm not exactly sure how it works now, but I don't think that images stuck on redirected categories get redirected, right? In any case, that isn't my main point.

I have been looking through the way images are categorized, and it seems to me that the current method is somewhat problematical. Right now, many (most?) images are stuck in a bottom level category, that is then itself in another category, on up. So if I'm looking for a picture of a spider (or maybe lots of pictures of spiders), I have to go to Arachnida, then Araneae, then Araneidae, then Araneus marmoreus, for example. But if I have no idea what these classifications mean, then I'm stuck blindly traversing a complicated hierarchy until I find what I'm looking for.

What I wonder then is this: Why don't we put pictures at the highest level we think that someone would search for them at. For example listing a picture of that spider under Spider (hopefully aliased to Arachnida), and also under Araneae, Araneidae, and Araneus marmoreus. That way, someone who knows what species they want (or which floor of which building in which neighborhood of which city of which state of which country on which continent) can click on the appropriate categories until they get down to a manageable number of images. But someone who just wants a picture of a spider can look for spider, and see 50 pictures of spiders.

It seems unnecessary to me to have so many categories with just one image in them, or worse still, one category containing one category containing one image.

--Jacobolus 09:44, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There are two main problems here which really need solving in the software

1: there is no easy way to bulk remove stuff from categorys when they get oversized you have to edit the images/pages in the category one at a time. Therefore when a category gets too big to be useable its very hard to split it. Maybe a software feature to view images in a category and all its subcategorys and pages would be nice here.

2:redirects to categorys are still broken so we cant take users who type spider in the search box straight to Category:Araneae

It is not a good idea to put items simultaniously in different levels of a category-branch. This would defeat the whole purpose of having an easy to navigate and manageable categorization system. I do understand what you mean, but this should be solved at the software-level, so that it will be possible to view the content of subcategories, if this is necessary. Until then, we should stick to a clear and categorization tree.

It is not entirely that easy with sub-sub-sub-categories. There are two considerations:

1. Ease of use. The tree should be as deep as necessary and as shallow as possible. However, there is no simple definition of what is necessary and

possible, depending on how many images one is willing to have on one page. At any case mixing categorization-levels together should be avoided.

2. Structuring for future additions. I prefer to have a clear structure at some basic levels - let's say down to families. Things tend to get messy, if even basic categorizations are missing and therefore categorization levels of different levels are mixed together. Further down the tree it is easier to cope with those than to have to move whole branches.

Bottom level categories shouldn't be considered as categories but as a way to replace gallery pages, making it easy to add new images without having to change a gallery page.

Regards Peter_Aut 07:52, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good point, Jacobulus. Fortunately, a picture can be shown several places. In your example of spiders, there could be an overview page (either an "article page" or the top of a category page) for spiders which showed generic pictures of "your typical spider" and perhaps examples from every category. See Canis lupus for a good example. This solution would certainly ease navigation, as it would add the dimension of images to navigation, rather than just the dimension of text. -- Ranveig 20:11, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

category:People by occupation

until recently the people by occupation category was largely empty. then user:gabor moved a load of pages into thier. Whilst some are clear cut others (photographers for example) are done by many on a non occupation basis. Personally i thing we should do away with that category entirely and put all the entrys directly in Category:People but i would like to see a consensus on the matter first. Plugwash 17:28, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I´m sorry if I interfered with someone, of course I´m open to discuss this. My native language is German and my dictionary says occupation is not only a profession (job) but something you occupy yourself with, not only for money. I think this category should list people for that, what they are famous for, even if they didn´t do it for money. My intention was to clean the Category:People a bit up, again, I´m sorry if I overdid it but it seemed obvious for me that a lot of categories were wrong labeled with "People" instead of "People by occupation". Gabor 17:52, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think the "People" category would get too big and confusing if all the occuptations are put back in. Maybe "People by occupation" isn't entirely accurate, but most users will understand what it's supposed to be. Keep it, and let's tidy up People some more while we're at it. -- Ranveig 23:49, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia logos

The logos for the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are (or will be) copyrighted by the foundation, and usually we don't allow copyrighted logos here. We have the logos of the wikimedia projects on commons, which is obviously an expection to the rule. Now, should we state that the images, while they're copyrighted, are still allowed to be on commons somewhere? Not that someone *cough* proposes them for deletion for copyright infringement. --Conti|✉ 05:32, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Image:Versionsgeschichte-aendern.jpg

Does commons need pictures like that? First of all it is german. This disqualifies it IMHO totally for commons use. The second point is it has a minor mistake in it. The checkbox is not ticked in the first image. Thirdly I do not understand what it is for?! What do you think? --Paddy 07:30, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Borderline, as this may not really be useful for others. The german language, however, is not a disqualification. Otherwise this would also disqualify all images with english text. For example, we also have multiple copies of the same map in different languages. BTW, the image seems to be used in de:Benutzer Diskussion:Jesusfreund.

I would support a deletion of the image -- Chris 73 01:57, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Meinst Du "bottomline"? Und was soll der erste Satz überhaupt bedeuten? Irgendwie ist der Satz unvollständig IMHO. Ich habe auch gar keine Ahnung was du sagen willst und ja ich halte Bilder mit regionalen Beschriftungen für falsch hier! Guck Dir mal die Übersetzung von common an auf dict.leo.org. Ich glaube auch nicht, dass die Übersetzung von "commons" auf diese Projekt zutrifft, es sind gemeinschaftlich nutzbare Dateien gemeint. Auch wenn solche Bilder hochgeladen, werden ist es dennoch der falsche platz hier in meinen Augen. Ich zitiere:

"The Wikimedia Commons is a project that provides a central repository for free images, music,sound & video clips and, possibly, texts and spoken texts, used in pages of any Wikimedia project. Unlike images uploaded on other projects, images on Commons can be embedded on pages of all Wikimedia projects."

Wenn Du Hilfe bei der Übersetzung brauchst stehe ich Dir gerne zur Verfügung. (PS ich habe es jetzt Übersetzt. Ist im deutschen Portal zu finden --Paddy 13:53, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)) mfg --Paddy 12:53, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Moreover, pictures with German text can be used by more than one German Wiki - the German Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikinews... Ausir 03:01, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

@Ausir that is a very good point! And as soon as this is the case I would not support what I have been writing. That is for sure! Nevertheless this picture has limited use anyhow. I is a picture/sreenshot describing a single sysop action with the mediawiki software. This could nevertheless be described by some short sentences. Do we really need a "little idiot" guide with pictures for every action with the mediawiki software in every language? That is my question here. That is why I am asking here. --Paddy 07:56, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

And what all non-anglophones are wondering here is: When will anglophones like you Paddy finally accept the fact that you are a minority on this planet? User:NlJcwf P.S. I am Dutch.

Flags

Hi all, I'm new to commons. Here is the issue I have : I need a flag for the province of Namur in belgium (and also for the city, wich is a different flag, and for other provinces of belgium). I've found one on the nl wiki here. I've asked the person that uploaded the file what kind of copyright it has, but it was a long time ago and he isn't sure. I don't know if flags themselves are subjet to copyright, and if they aren't are the images representing them also subject to copyrights.

It's a pretty simple flag really, but I'm very very bad with drawing programs.

So, what should I do?Nicnac25 22:13, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion, you should go ahead and upload it ad PD :). Ausir 02:59, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Amnistia

Ola Nuno,

escrevo sobre um esboço de artigo sobre a Amnistia Inernacional que estava a começar a escrever. Pois ta claro que comecei por fazer copy paste dos sites disponíveis, e caiume o copyright violation em cima...

portanto, mesmo sendo esboços o melhor é editar "em casa" e depois enviar nao??

Uma abraço

Gonzoc

Good example of how commons should work. May I have a brief summary of this text? It is about copyright I understand and Amnistia International. The last thing I did understand it is about hugging ;-) Free hugs from me too. many thanx --Paddy 01:06, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Apparently Nuno was writing an article about Anesty International and did a copy/paste of existing sites. Gonzox is saying that it'd be better to do the drafts on the home computer before posting anything to the wiki. But then, my portuguese is as good as nihil. ;-) notafish }<';> 14:01, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanx, that is near to what I thought it could mean. --Paddy 17:12, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Agradeço orientação e ajuda

Obrigado Nuno, pela ajuda sobre o uso de esboço. Tô novato, neste maravilhoso mundo Wiki. O que escreveu, faz sentido, se é esboço... não preciso avisar que foi feito as pressas, né!!!

Sempre que tiver que "puxar as orelhas", receberei o castigo, com humildade de um aprendiz... Valeu

em tempo: quem digita é educorpo

Category:user gallery

I would like to have an automatic list of all my pictures (about 300 to transfer from fr: and as many waiting on my PC). The problem is I don't upload only personal pictures and all my pictures are not only uploaded by myself. That mean that "my contribution" page don't list all my pictures. I created a category:Guillaume Blanchard to put all pictures into and added this category to category:user gallery into category:user. What do you think about that? By the way, "user language rank" may be moved to a sub-category, isn't it? Something like:
<category:user<category:user language rank<category:user fr<category:user fr-1
Any opinion about that? Aoineko 11:18, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Could you rename your gallery to category:User:Guillaume Blanchard, or even better category:User:Aoineko? Otherwise there is too much potential for confusion with a username that is also a regular category. As for me, I just listed my images here with a gallery here by hand. That has the advantage that I can see a missing image if an pic of mine ver gets deleted. I may list these galleries under category:user gallery if that category takes off. Also, if the category and articles are merged, then you may even categorise theimages with a user sub pages of yours. -- Chris 73 13:02, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

category:User:Guillaume Blanchard or category:User:Aoineko sounds good for me, but I prefere to wait other opinions before to rename this category. Manage hundreds pictures by hand is a pain (I already experienced on fr:). Aoineko 13:43, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I actually think Category:User:Aoineko makes more sense since we are referring to the user. But how about, rather than Category:User:Name of user a Category:Author:Name of author. Users may not be authors, the two terms are different in my opinion, and one can add in the head of the category their User name if they want a link to that. Mes deux centimes d'euro ;-) notafish }<';> 13:56, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In fact I fisrt thought about "Photographer:User_name" but I was afraid that mess people with "real" photographers (= famous photographers). "User" or "Author" are both ok for me (even if I think "user" is more consitant with actual Common organisation). Aoineko 14:46, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fellow admins, and other people

I need your input here on a few minor reorganisations of the deletion page. notafish }<';> 13:47, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

well done and good work! --Paddy 17:55, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ditto -- Chris 73 23:52, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Commons:Criteria for inclusion

I have summarized the discussion about Commons:criteria for inclusion into what I believe is a "readable" page. Please DO add/amend anything that might not seem clear or that is missing. Previous discussion has been moved to the talk page. notafish }<';> 16:31, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

new copyright tag

i just added the template template:PD-user-en for use when copying images to here from the english wikipedia. its based on template:PD-user with two changes. firstly it links to a user page on the english wikipedia rather than one here. Secondly it adds the text from the english wikipedia after the link.Plugwash 20:23, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Need someone french

User:Gegeours seems to be only speeking french, could please someone tell him about the importance of giving the source of an Image and adding a copyright tag. Thanks. -guety 21:40, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Done by Rama. Greudin 06:48, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Commons:Babel project is nice when you need someone : look at Category:User fr-3 and you can also ask on irc freenode #fr.wikipedia for urgent request, moreover there is also a fr "village pump" on commons : « Le Bistro » FoeNyx 16:48, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Foguete pirotécnico

O que vc fez com o meu artigo foguete foi uma falta de respeito. Poderias ter criado um artigo sôbre foguete pirotécnico de autoria própria sem deletar o meu trabalho. Poderias ter criado um link para o teu artigo sem apagar a minha contribuição. Nunca faria coisa semelhante com artigos teus. Hinkel 22:48, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Please, ignore the message above, I talked with the user Hinkel, and he said that he posted in wrong place. Gbiten 16:06, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

sv speaker needed

could a sv speaker please place HSB in an appropriate category Plugwash 16:57, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Said and done! Category:Swedish organizations Xauxa 00:03, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

transfert a file from a local wiki to commons

Hi my question has certainly already been answered but I haven't found the solution... I want to transfert a file (ShishaPangma.jpg) from the english wiki to commons, how can I do (step by step please ! I'm a newbie !)

thanks !

Well, first of all the image en:Image:ShishaPangma.jpg has a copyright problem, and cannot be accepted by the commons. We are very restricted in what we can add to the commons. If you have a proper image, the steps are as follows:

1. Ensure the image has the proper copyright
2. you need to download the image to your computer from the (english) wiki
3. upload it at the commons (preferably under the same name)
4. Copy all the information from the (english) wiki image, including the username of the original uploader. We can't have enough information about an image!
5. Add a proper Commons:Copyright tags
6. Add a link back to the english wiki (e.g. [[en:Image:NAMEOFIMAGE.jpg]])
7. Add the image to one or more appropriate categories or image pages

Hope this helps -- Chris 73 11:37, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Chris !

212.243.147.202 12:56, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks !

Poleta33 12:58, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for putting this here - I guess we should have a page in the Commons-namespace that elaborates on this. I started something similar (just a rough scetch) at User:Duesentrieb/Upload checklist, feel free to comment/edit there. Maybe we could combine what's already there with the info here, and move the page to the commons namespace, translate it to other languages, etc? That page could then also be linked to prominently form the pages that are shown before and after upload. What do you think? -- Duesentrieb 13:16, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to say, you can use the image as you would with a local wikipedia image, e.g. [[Image:FILENAME.JPG|thumb|CaptionHere]] -- Chris 73 15:08, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Foreign Characters below edit window

Hi. I just modified the system message below the edit window to link a set of different international characters and some frequently used code, which can be added to the edit window by clicking on it. This will be very helpful on an international project like the commons. For example, I use an english keyboard, and always have major trouble writing something with german umlauts. Now it is just a mouseclick away. Let me know if there are some more additional urgently needed characters or codes, subject of course to the limited space we have on the screen. -- Chris 73 11:30, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much indeed! BTW: where could I edit this list if need be? (yes, I'm an admin here) -- Duesentrieb 13:13, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Special:Allmessages has a list & link to of all system messages. The one for the message below the edit window would be MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning. And yes, you would need to be an admin since the page is protected by default. Have fun! -- Chris 73 14:55, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Excellent ! This was definitely missing. I must say that since I have most of those funky characters on my own keyboard, I never had to look for them ;-). notafish }<';> 00:25, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You have most of them on your keyboard? Where are you from - Switzerland? -- Duesentrieb 02:28, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Since redirects to categories...

...don't work, I have thought of something to go around it until we have a real solution.

I have changed the message MediaWiki:Categories from Categories to Browse categories. This allows to redirect pages to categories in a more understandable way : see for example Animal (and incidentally also avoids a double categorization, or no categorization with funky messages such as for example this. Please feel free to revert if you think this is weird, or change it into "see" or "have fun with" or whatever you feel is more appropriate. notafish }<';> 15:53, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Category:Unknown origin coins

Is there anyone who knows about the coins of Arabic countries? I posted in the category above the scans of three coins that I've never been able to identify. I'd be very grateful if someone could help me in finding their origin (the files will be renamed accordingly, of course). --Paginazero 16:11, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Copied request to Commons:Images missing information -- Chris 73 08:26, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. I didn't know that page. Next time I'll post my queries directly there. --Paginazero 16:59, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There's also the very handy Category:Unknown subject that is advertized on the main page for passers by. notafish }<';> 20:52, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Special Categories

After sorting through some of the unused images list, I thought up some special categories that could help in the categorising fight. They would do things like automatically add higher level category tag(s) to subcategories, automatically generate list based categories (e.g. View by Century, View By Country), one-way category links, hidden categories to store image meta-data, etc. Something for the developers to work on in their copious spare time. Comments welcome. wombat 03:05, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)