Hello. I am an administrator from the Portuguese Wikipedia. I have a complaint about user Machocarioca. He is uploading images like Image:1956 Melbourne.jpg, 2D (scan-alike) photos of posters of the Olypic Games with the logo of the Games on it. Obviously, the logos are copyrighted, but Machocarioca insists that since he is the photographer, he owns the copyright of such photos. I am putting the tag of fair use in such images, but he continually replaces the tag with the GFDL-en. Could an admin warn/block him - I tried to talk with him in the Portuguese Wikipedia, but he just ignores me, even after one such image was deleted. Besides, I would be careful of some images that he claims PD/GFDL-self, they could be pretty much copyrighted images. Regards, Leslie07:40, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for letting us know! I gave this user a warning. Can you give us a link of specific images you are referring to? This user has a lot of uploads.
Thanks, Pfctdayelise. There were three of such images (the one above, 1992JO.jpg and 1952.jpg, it appears they were all deleted already, the problem was his insistence in putting GFDL-en on them again and again. Also, 1912.jpg may be copyrighted as well. At last, KEITHR.JPG looks suspicious, it was deleted in the Portuguese Wikipedia, and a number of users there do not believe that such photo was taken by him. Opinions here? Leslie10:09, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
CategoryTree has been integrated into mediawiki and is now enabled on all wikimedia projects - details are at meta:CategoryTree extension. Most importantly, all category pages now show a dynamic tree of subcategories, and <categorytree>Name</categorytree> can be used to integrate a tree directly on a wiki page (like in the box to the right). -- Duesentrieb(?!)13:18, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Table 1. Note that using Windows/Linux Firefox or Safari or Konqueror, wide tables will overlay the CategoryTree.. It displays ok with Internet Explorer (hey, but I thought they were imbeciles-- well maybe not.... aaaaaaa bbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbb ccccccccccc dddddddddddddddd eeeeeeeeeeeee ffffffffffff gggggggggggg hhhhhhhhhhh
To avoid this problem with CategoryTree (or any other floating entity eg images) on all browsers, prefix such tables with <br clear=all/> or <div style="clear: both"></div> EG:
By the way, Doozey and Tim Starling- here's your for making this happen. Now, when are you going to implement the gallery pages only Mode? (Just kidding.) -Mak20:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The overlap problem exists for all floating boxes, afaik - I don't know how it could have anything to do with the tree itself (making flaoting boxes isn't even a feature of the tree extension). Just don't use width="100%" - or, if you must, use clear:right to shift it down. -- Duesentrieb(?!)21:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You underestimate the scope. It is not just the rare use of width=100%, it is anything that will create a table that will compete with screen real estate with any floating entity- not just your CategoryTree. Also, I wasn't suggesting it was your fault at all, nor do I think this detracts in any way from CategoryTree, which is a really cool improvement. It is just something people might run into since IE editors would be completely unaware of the problem when creating a page. My purpose was to give the workaround. Your suggestion of forcing alignment actually introduces other layout problems with other browsers. The solution I gave works 100% on all browsers.
Anyway, this is a browser bug affecting Firefox and Safari- Not that I am dissing them either- laying out the client area of a window correctly and efficiently is a hard problem. If Mediawiki engine were to do anything about it, it would have to be a generic change- because as noted in my first response, any floating entity (eg thumbed images) is affected. -Mak22:52, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
CategoryTree itself doesn't have that problem - but the way it is integrated into the category page causes it. All pages (subcategories, images, everything) is retrieved with a single query, paging applies to all lumped together. The tree view doesn't change that. -- Duesentrieb(?!)09:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll have to play with it again, the patch i made is probably stale now. I'll look into it as some point - though in conjunction with the CategoryExtension, it causes some pain with respect to caching. -- Duesentrieb(?!)09:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am mostly an editor over at en Wikipedia. The image Image:Cory Doctorow 2005j.jpg was linked to by an editor there which has made some other dubious edits. I noticed this one carries the tag "courtesy of KTLA]] which I assume is w:KTLA, a television station. This makes me wonder if the tag is accurate. It is difficult to tell with such a small image, but it may be a photoshop job as well (there seems to be a trumpet player in the background, which is curious for a comics convention). Sorry if this is the wrong place to bring this... --TeaDrinker22:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for notifying us; this is as good a place as any to bring it up. I've tagged it (no source), and asked the user to clarify. That way, we'll either get proof that the tag is correct, or we'll know that the image should be deleted. Should you notice this happening again later, you can just tag the image with {{subst:nsd}} and warn the uploader as instructed in the tag. Cnyborg23:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I started Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia after answering one too many reuse queries to wp@davidgerard.co.uk, which is supposed to be my email address for press queries. OTRS have boilerplate for this sort of thing as well. That is, it's common enough that we do need a page on the subject.
The idea is something that says "this is what is reusable, this is where you look to see what license, this is what you do to obey the license." Note intro stressing that this is not only not legal advice, but we take no responsibility for the listed licenses being accurate.
This template is a little confusing, small wonder it has a massive backlog associated with it. The top of the tag states "This image is an exact duplicate or scaled-down version of..." and the base of tag states "Only use for images that are exact duplicates!". That is a contradiction as it says tag Image:Enceladus moon (large).jpg as a duplicate of Image:Enceladus from Voyager.jpgand don't tag it as such. In the case of the smaller image here it should be speediable IMO (identical content just at a lower res...).--Nilfanion22:06, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Duplicates áre speediable. The backlog is probably because usage hás to be replaced while for other categories of speedy it's recommended only. I think the exact means same colour, same contrast, same brightness, same file extension (both are .jpg's for instance), same size, same quality, same whatever, only differing in name; the scaled down refers to an image that's only different in size and name. Maybe the wording should be changed a bit but I think this was inserted because there were numerous complaints, especially about SVG->PNG duplicate deletions. There's no consensus in the community whether it's ok to delete images that are alike but not exactly the same (let the projects choose) or just keeping one version of an image (keep only the best image). That's why {{Duplicate}} is so tightly worded and replacing usage is mandatory, imho. NielsF22:43, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I'm thinking that the scaled-down should just be removed from the template. Of course that will put even more workload on COM:DEL.--Nilfanion23:45, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, just leave it in. If it's a scaled down version but otherwise exactly the same, it's still a duplicate imho. Maybe change the wording to "Only use for images that are exact duplicates or scaled down exact duplicates" or something like that? Higher resolution images if exact duplicates in colour/size/brightness/whatever should take precedence imho (and according to policy as I understand it. So in the case you mentioned, Image:enceladus moon (large).jpg should be deleted and its use replaced with Image:Enceladus from Voyager.jpg. NielsF00:47, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with NielsF here. A scaled-down version is identical--except for size. We don't want to store multiple sizes of an image unless there is some justification to do so. ~MDD469614:59, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
September 3
Admin abuse - anglocentric language domination
Could the administrators of this project please comment the following edit [1]. German Wikipedia is discussing stopping every cooperation with Commons (de:WP:UF) re "PD" Soviet pictures. Thanks --Historiograf17:05, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, i spend my time on Commons especially to create and manage image about computer and video game. In a lot of case i know if an image is free on not. Some case are borderline for me, i dont know, and i need help :
But more generally, its impossible to have free screenshot about copyrighted game. If someone take photo looking a player and a screen is this photo can be free ? For example a person playing Half-Life, Doom, Super Mario Bros., Final Fantasy...
We had a talk on it.wiki about this kind of images (it was about photos of people holding books/DVDs to show the cover or so). The answer was "no, they are not allowed", but I can't remember details. --Jollyroger13:03, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think if it shows a person playing a game, and incidentally shows some of the game, it's OK. But if there's hardly no person, or it gets cropped to only show the game, then no. pfctdayelise (translate?) 15:33, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The images in the two categories mentioned seems OK to me. They're illustrations of an event where copyrighted material is unavoidable, but the actual game playes is incidental; it's the event that matters. The other images listed I'm more uncertain about, since the games/consoles are names and feature prominently; I'd say they're photos of copyrighted material rather than photos with incidental copyrighted material in the background. Cnyborg16:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For example - look at Moscow - several redirects to name in native language, but it is a big city... Do we wait for WiktionaryZ or not with it? Secondary: what can we do with categories? Categories always will be in English, Latin or native languages. Przykuta05:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know why you say Cats will always be english. Categories appearing in a single language is an entirely temporary condition. Polymorphism with respect to the viewer's native language is a pretty standard database manipulation. The developers are marching along just fine and I think we just need to be patient. One short term approach I have seen described is pretty cool. The insight is that for category names that correspond to articles in a WP, the interwikis can be consulted for equivalent names. EG: Category:Painting, Interwiki is ru:Живопись, or de:Malerei, or zh:繪畫.
OK, but you know - we have category:Paintings, but we have not category:malarstwo. For example I don't know English and I am user on pl wiki or on cs, ru, ro ... I want to find some images on commons. Article on native Wikipedia has not interwiki. But this is problem only for users, who edit wikipedias. Another example - I want to look at animal galleries, castle galleries, natural fenomena... I have to open Wikipedia (for example pl wiki) - (articles without link to commons) look for interwiki - go to en - go to commons. It is not friendly. We have tool (search engine) on commons. Maybe it will be good use bots to make redirects, maybe not. Przykuta09:51, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK so... I'm not sure exactly what the question is, but... if I was you, I would first search for the terms in your native language. Try and find a gallery. Then, just look in the category that that gallery page is in. If you can't find anything, then probably you will have to do some searching via interwiki links which takes some time. But hey, once you find it, you can create a redirect and save some time for the next Polish (or Czech, Russian, etc) speaker! :) Also, for help in Polish, you can ask at the Commons:Bar. --pfctdayelise (translate?) 10:43, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One thing that would help, until a multilingual system is in place, is links from categories on the different language project to the corresponding Commons category. That way, users can search in the language they're most comfortable with, and then jump over to Commons. I don't know if this has been done on the Polish Wikipedia, but and example in Norwegian can be seen at no:Kategori:Grunnstoffer. Cnyborg22:42, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding Occupied Palestine, these pictures have once been nominated for deletion but since the photos are in line with project scope they were not deleted. Regardless of any POV problems the names of these images are horribly undesrciptive. With current technology it is, however, not easy to change the name of an image. -Samulili11:08, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This page has named pictures and description with no NPOV. Please change the names of the pictures and the descriptions. They are truly offensive. 192.115.248.212:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What's the problem? Part of Palestine is actually occupied by Israeli forces, and descriptions suits photos. Can't see what's wrong, except they are not very descriptive --Jollyroger12:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To 192.115.248.2: It's a wiki, yo. If you're so bothered, sign up and re-upload them all with more descriptive titles and captions. Oh, and update all the links from where they're being used, to the new images. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Be our guest. pfctdayelise (translate?) 15:30, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the page does depict a message and is very POV, however, imho this is within the boundaries of freedom of expression. Other users may, again imho, have personal (sub)pages with the damage of American attacks in Iraq, the damage done by terrorists on the WTC, the damage done by terrorists in Northern Ireland, the horrors inflcited by terrorists in Beslan, the horrors inflicted by muslim suicide bombers on Israeli civilians, the murder of arab terrorists in Munchen, and so on. TeunSpaans18:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ladies and gentlemen, pull yourself together. The use of the term "Occupied Palesine" for pictures taken in Tel Aviv is outrageous, and I simply cannot understand why we have to go through this discussion. Israel is an internationally recognized and honored state. Tel Aviv is an Israeli city. Using the term "Occupied Palestine" for it is like saying "Boston, the Rebellious British Colonies", or "Taipei, People's Republic of China". None of these descriptions is acceptable here. Using OP term for the West Bank is also problematic, as it makes a political statement where this kind of statements is inappropriate. The user may execise his freedom of speech in many places. Here he may use it with regard to the community rules of NPOV and mutual respect. I demand clearly and fairly that this term will be changed. I can understand there are technical problems, but still where the technical issues permit - it should be changed immediately. Drork05:04, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The term "Occupied Palestine" reflects a POV, but so does "Israel" — a name unrecognised by many states. The consensus is that Just1pin's pics should eventually be given better, more descriptive names, but that there is no justification for immediate deletion. Drork should also cease vandalising Just1pin's user page. — Erin(talk)(FAQ)06:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Considering the fact that the very existance of the State of Israel is questionable here, and that Wikimedia's guidelines are violated without any action taken, I will suggest that the Hebrew Wikipedia stops its cooperation with the Commons. I will suggest that all Hebrew users delete their contributions from the commons, and that no links will be made from HE-Wikipedia to the Commons. This attitude of questioning the very existance of Israel should not and will not be tolerated. I heard complaints that there is not enough cooperation between Israeli Wikipedians and Wikipedians in other countries. This discussion proves why. Believe me, I feel sad about it. Drork06:23, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If I commented on all of that, I would doubtless be accused of incivility and personal attacks, so I will limit myself to pointing out that (1) the Hebrew users are highly unlikely to all want to delete their contributions just because we will not allow Just1pin to be bullied and (2) they cannot in any case delete their contributions once released under a free licence. — Erin(talk)(FAQ)06:31, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I found this discussion after receiving endless complaints from other Hebrew Wikipedians. Eventually one of them sent me the link to that page, and almost forced me to look at it. I must admit I am very angry and disappointed at the way this issue is handled. As I said, in this case I will urge the Hebrew Wikipedians to stop any cooperation with the Commons and do their best to withdraw any material they have uploaded here. The bully here is Just1pin who tries to express his extreme political views in the most inapropriate manner. The fact that he gets such an enthusiastic defense is even more regretful. Drork06:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I very much agree DrorK. If you keep defending this bully and his POV image names and descriptions, I will also urge the HE-Wikipedia and all other HE Wikimedia project to boycott the Commons project. The He community can simply download the commons pictures and upload them locally. Yonidebest07:17, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to make one point very clear - I acknowledge the fact that there is a profound dispute over the territories of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Anyone who lives in Israel knows that, and HE Wikipedia discussed and handled this issue quite fairly in my opinion. I wouldn't mind a statement like "Hebron, the West Bank" or "Hebron, the Palestinian Territories". These are worldwide excepted terms for places in the WB&Gaza territories, even in Israel. I can also accept the use of Palestine in English as a geographical term when appropriate (e.g. "Palestinian viper" in zoology). What I cannot accept is the claim that "Israel" is a POV term. It is neither more POV nor less than the terms "Mexico" or "Spain". I can neither accept trying to sneak problematic political terms into the Commons like "Occupied Palestine", masking it as file names or "personal work". The photo of Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv might be used in any article dealing with Israel, and the reader who dowloads the photo should not see a political statement, such as "Occupied Palestine" on his desktop. Drork09:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please, let's keep on a good discussion here. (I must say I feel like the Finnish peacekeeping forces in Suez (1956), Lebanon and Golan (1961-) :)) First I would like to reiterate where we stand:
Commons will accept all media files that are within the project's scope.
Files can not be renamed, they can only be uploaded with another name. Furthermore, duplicates can't be deleted if they are in use in a project.
So, to restate the point made earlier by pfctdayelise: Those who think the names are undesrciptivemay reupload them all with a more descriptive titles. This should only be done if one is ready to update all the links from where the images are being used, to the new images.
Who has the right to what piece of land is not an issue in Commons. The only issues in this case are descriptive names, valid licenses and usability in a Wikimedia project. Discussing political issues are not useful for any one involved in this conversation. Nor is it useful to make threats when there are still open solutions to the problem. -Samulili09:33, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The issue here is not the ME conflict, but rather the proper use of terminology, and the way to handle offensive content. The problem is not only with the file names, but also with the content of Just1pin's usepage/gallery. The text there is editable even if the filenames are not. And about the filenames - if someone upload files naming them "kill_them_all01.jpg", wouldn't these files be deleted for bearing offensive name, even if the fotos themselves are great? As I said above, these pictures might be used in an article about Tel Aviv or about Israel, and if the reader wishes to download one of them he will be left with the statement "Occupied Palestine" on his desktop. Drork10:04, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A picture with George Bush with the name Kill_this_man.jpg would be deleted after it was uploaded with a better name, yes.
As far as I know, the rules found at en:Wikipedia:User_page#What_can_I_not_have_on_my_user_page.3F are based on Jimbo's words and therefore they binding here, too. Can we consider that the phrase "occupied palestine" belongs in the category of "Personal statements that could be considered polemical, such as opinions on matters unrelated to Wikipedia"? I will refrain from stating my own opinion for now. -Samulili10:58, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For me, it is an obvious violation of the above rule. First, the very use of the adjective "occupied" is rather polemical. About places in the WB&Gaza: There is clearly a dispute there, but saying "occupied" is taking side. Moreover, there are legitimate more neutral terms: "The West Bank", "The Palestinian Territories", "The PA Territories" or simply stating the specific place name without a country attribution. As for places within Israel, they should be attributed to Israel, as you would do with any other country name. If you say "Barcelona, Spain", then you should say: "Tel Aviv, Israel". The pictures are very good, but if the creator is unwilling to upload them again with different names, I think they should be deleted. For me, it is almost as offensive as writing "kill_this_man.jpg" for a file name. Drork11:36, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Part of the purview of Commons, or any wiki is that we maintain ourselves. The information above is derived from the English language wiki, and applies to the English language wiki. Commons has no policy regarding userpages or NPOV in images. If you don't like the image names... Download them and reupload them with better names. Then nominate the old ones for deletion, citing the new names. Copyright and freeness of images is a vastly bigger issue on Commons than NPOV. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir15:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maintaining oneself is a difficult task vis-a-vis offensive statements introduced through a back door. Naming a picture of Tel Aviv "Occupied Paletine" is an offense to me as well as to most Hebrew contributors. You should realize that this issue occured to me after a long and angry discussion in the Hebrew Wikipedia. I get the feeling that people here are unaware of the sensitivity of this issue, and its potential damage to the cooperation between different projects of Wikimedia. Furthemore, this issue should have been hadnled on the spot, when the files were uploaded. Not only was it not handled on time, I was condemned for trying to change it. Drork17:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Consider the methods you attempted to change it. You charged in like a bull and expected people to conform to your way of thinking instead of trying to find out how things work here. We've had this sort of issue come up before and we've established methods of dealing with it. Erin's arguments on her talk page, also, are valid. A number of Arab countries don't recognize Israel as a nation. We have a fairly active Arab Wikipedia in existance. In examining the images, however, it's evident that the user had an agenda when he uploaded them and put them on his user page. That could have been discussed to begin with before causing extreme divisiveness and ill-feelings all over this debate.
Images can be changed to any name. You can name the images Image:kaid929392.jpg and the "NPOV" issue goes away. Images are not inherently POV and image names are immaterial in the long run.
Israel is a state recognized by the UN, EU and most of the states in the world. If our Prime Minister decides to call Jordan "Eastern Israel", we won't change its name here, and if anyone would, you and I will say it's POV and has to be either renamed or removed. You can't say that we don't have to call Israel "Israel" because some Arab countries don't recognize us. BTW, they also don't recognize USA. Yellow up18:43, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What you call "a bull's reaction" is the result of frustration which derives from disregarding several request to tackle this issue. I must use strong words here - the claim that the very existance of Israel is questionable is despicable. Using it will regretfully lead to lack of cooperation between HE Wikipedia and other Wikimedia domains. Israel is no less of a country than Mexico or the United States. One cannot intoduce his extreme political views about Israel while hanging on the thread that a few countries refuse to recognize the State of Israel. By the lack of treatment of this issue, and by using such arguments, you open the door to political arguments in the Commons. I am not sure that this is in the best interest of this project. Drork19:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Allow me to suggest that we 1) ་rename the images, especially the ones that aren't in the West Bank or Gaza, to something more descriptive (so that they can be deployed into articles without everyone having to copy this user's POV; 2) remove all of the captions on this guy's user page that say "Occupied Palestine" just on the grounds of redundancy; 3) leave the header at the top; he's entitled to his opinion; and 4) proceed to forget about the whole thing.—Nat Krause19:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone can rename an image, but we are not talking of one image, but of hundreds. Also, based on the "rename image" category, not many are prepered to do this. I am definitely not going to spend my time running after such anti Semitic people and rename all their images, when one can simply delete this propaganda nonsense. I'd like to remind you that Drork tried to comply step 2 but his contributions were reverted, the page was protected and he was called a "vandalist" - all this done by an admin who uses her own private POV as the Wikimedia Foundation guideline. In the mean while, these anti Semitic file names and decriptions are doing what they were probably meant to do - upset the jews. Yonidebest21:34, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, things are getting too far. Let's do without the term "Anti-Semitic". It is improper here and suggests false accusations (and beside this point, I would like to mention that Israel is home to many non-Jews). We had a very good talk at the IRC #Wikimedia channel, and there is an understanding about what should be done. I do regret the high tones that this argument reached. I admit being angry at some of the claims above, but I shouldn't have let it deteriorate to an exchange of accusations. I believe that the problematic content will be changed soon, and that we have established good channels to solve such problems in the future. Drork02:01, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Every image has been reuploaded to a NPOV filename. However as the POV ones have not been orphaned yet, they will not be deleted (use CheckUsage...)--Nilfanion20:14, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think that it is important to stress that these are the names of the images (actually, the computer files). These names do not even appear anywhere when you use the images on a page. I know for a fact that lots of images have improper names, like spelling mistakes for instance. I myself uploaded images with titles containing slang -- I was bored and I am not proud of it ; what happened is that someone asked me whether I would mind him re-uploading the files, which I did not of course, and the problem was settled.
In this particular case, I understand that some people sensitive about naming conventions of the... err... former protectorate of the British Empire in the Middle East (happy, now everybody hates me the same), and I do think that it is improper to take a stance which is not neutral and cautious. But I also am under the impression that people who cannot tolerate that the hidden source code of the page that they are reading contains something of which they would note approve are over-sensitive.
As to the suggestion that we all follow the banner of those who want us to re-upload all these images, I fear that I have to remind that although the numerous conflicts which have arose around Israel are a very interesting problem, they are not the only problem of everybody. Rama20:29, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You're wrong by thinking nobody knows the name of the image, if he's not a Wikipedian. The whole point of WikiCommons and the "free images" policy is to allow everybody to download the images to their own computers and use them everywhere; however, if you try to download the images Justin uploaded, you will be asked to save them as "Palestine occupationX.jpg". It is highly offensive, POV and should not be accepted here, no matter if it is about Israel or another country. For example, if somebody uploads here a picture of Vitoria called "Spanish occupation of the Basque Country", it should and it will be deleted immediately. Yellow up21:54, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is a case of figure for which you can rename the image on your own computer in a very few seconds. Someone who takes offence for such a trivial matter to the point of putting Commons into question has in my opinion an odd perception of priorities. Rama16:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As I mentioned above, we cannot adhere to an NPOV policy in most (if not all) Wikimedia project, and do without it in the Commons which serves all of these projects. Furthermore, leaving filenames out of that policy is like locking the door while leaving the window wide open. In my view, everything written by a user according to his own discretion is a text and should be treated according to the basic guidelines which govern texts in Wikimedia. I wonder if writing "Québec Libre" would be offensive to a Canadian. I am sure that using a term like "Occupied Malvinas" would be offensive to a resident of the Falkland Islands, and so would be "Gibraltar, Spain" to a Gibraltar resident or "Occupied Moroccan Ceuta" to a Spanish person. Israelis are no different when it comes to describing Tel Aviv as "Occupied Palestine". Drork08:08, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I protest! if any city of Israel is called "Occupied Paleastine" I will delete all the images I added to Commons.
& u have to remember very important thing. Most of the Israeli territories were puchased! thats includes Tel Aviv. Palestinian peoples was never really exist, it was just invented In 1964.
Just removed an off-topic political comment. Please concentrate on the project Commons and take political debates irrelevant to this specific topic elsewhere. --Swift16:54, 5 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Template:wikipedia
Someone created Template:wikipedia, which is kind of a duplicatie of the interwiki links. It displayes a text referring the reader to the english wiki (default), or to another language wiki. I have made the template more language independant (You can now have: Die Deutsche wiki hast mehr information uber...). You can see an example at Banksia integrifolia.
But I am not sure we want this template. Take for example William Wordsworth. It has some 10 interwiki links. If we want to be language independant, we would have to repeat this messagebox for all interwiki links.
I sincerely dislike the use of templates to provide interwiki links, when interwiki links already serve that purpose. If non-wikipedia projects have relevant links, then that giant supertemplate that links to everything all at once should be used, I don't know what it's called, but having a million individual links is stupid. pfctdayelise (translate?) 15:19, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yesterday I found a great PD image taken by a pilot in the attack on Pearl harbor. It is particularly amazing because it illustrates shock waves, torpedo tracks, the plumes of additional incoming "porpoising" torpedos. Even a geyser of water from a hit is visible. The image provokes a lot of questions, and so links to wiki articles on both the USS West Virginia and the general article on the Pearl harbor attack were needed.
Issue1: Sidebar interwiki links cannot be used for multiple subjects in this way. Indeed, some people on Commons believe that an interwiki should not be used for see alsos, but to keep track of usage of the image in various WPs.
Issue2: It is not entirely clear to novice users what those sidebar interwiki links mean.
Issue3: Sidebar interwikis are not compact, and for subjects coverred well in the WPs, make it diffult to get them all on the screen in one handy place.
Of course. But issues 2 and 3 apply to galleries and Categories, no? On Category:Pearl Harbor attack, I get 24 interwikis dead center of the screen, with a Wikipedia sybol marking the significance of the links in a non language specific way. On Category:Adolf Hitler I get 76 on the screen requiring less than the space required for 6 lines of text. -Mak07:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, they are nearly as unobtrusive as normal interwiki links. Re Issue3: IMO they are very compact (it would be blank space otherwise), and I'm not sure what the need to have them all on one screen is anyway. Re Issue2: the vast majority if not all of our users are familiar with at least one other Wikimedia wiki. They are only as complex as any other element of wikisyntax. It is consistent for Commons to use interwiki links like every other Wikimedia wiki. This is irrelevant to Tuenspaan's point (either of true interwiki links or your templates are both more condensed and lang-neutral than {{Wikipedia}}) and my opinion about your templates is unlikely to change at this point. pfctdayelise (translate?) 12:22, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Where used, info pages have dramatically increased our visibility of our content in multiple languages to the internet search engines. Nonetheless, I can sympathise with the sentiments about the additional text in other languages. If folks have not installed the css filter for languages, then the text of the other languages can get in the way. To address this, I shall:
bury the info pages at the end of a page (after licensing),
put the transwiki texts after the see also links
put the transwiki text in small font.
Is that more acceptable to you? (Note also that the current templates are radically upgraded- I have gone to a lot of effort to address the suggestions for improvement voiced in prior discussions, eg. about not using template namespace (now, they use pseudo namespace "Info:", replacement of logic templats (qif, booland) with parser functions, and the objection about opening the transcluded page and finding esoteric code. These issues have all been addressed.) -Mak20:29, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You have done a good job. The templates are not aesthetically offensive, although given that no other project has anything like them, they are probably still esoteric. (I assume part of the "special case" of Info:Adolf Hitler is the fact that it doesn't use language metainformation eh {{En}}-style templates, which sucks.) But the category looks blank and unusual to me in not having interwiki (transwiki...?) links under the menu on the left. (BTW um... category:Pearl Harbor Attack is a subcat of Category:Pearl Harbor attack...?) So I still prefer to use the existing syntax and standards used everywhere else. --pfctdayelise (translate?) 10:12, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well Brianna that is very kind of you and a big relief to me to read these words. They may always be esoteric. Usage is dependent on popularity with editors, of whom there are really few regulars interested in such information enhancement of Image and category pages. But who knows.
Anyway, topics with huge numbers of WP articles are problematic because of the highly unorthodox mechanism I used to hide the complexity from people who prefer not to click on the edit button from the page. The problem is that when you have huge numbers of callbacks, the wikipedia engine assumes the template is taking so much time to execute that it is likely locked in some endless loop condition. So because of the way the evaluator expands everything- I was forced to provide a more optimized mode where very few templates were employed. It is a rare case for only the hugest topics, and I intend that the default usage be of internationalization language templates. And yes, there are a few more bugs and features to add. I have not done vernacular names/ synonyms for example.
So are you saying you think it unnecessary as far as you are concerned to bury the transcluded text at the end of image pages? I thought you were one of the folks who really disliked them because of the prominence of the background text. -Mak23:15, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well I still disagree that it should be used on image pages. If you were going to use it, however, I would put it in between the specific caption and the licensing information. So - specific info - then generic info (your templates) - then licensing. pfctdayelise (translate?) 03:28, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That has been my practice until recently. Ok, I will go back to that order unless others object. Sometimes it is problematic though in cases where people have used the Information template that also includes licensing. I saw one case where the Info Page got embedded inside the Information table's "Description" cell. I don't think this is a particularly good solution and will in these cases follow the Information template rather than embed in it. As far as use with individual image pages, when and if the internet searchers make Image search work for Commons, I think the arguments in favor become pretty crushing since Google and the others favor the highest resolution images in their rankings. That buries WP and gallery pages in the results. Commons image pages would be top ranked though- but to do this, we would have to individually cache enough text of likely search terms on the pages. These templates do that, and the cost of being repetitious in the background descriptions. I fully appreciate people's view that it is somewhat like spam text, and so my proposal that I bury the text and make it in microscopic fonts. -Mak20:28, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There's been a whole slew of impersonator accounts like this in the last few days: an account claiming to be a bot run by some well-known admin or other (which one changes) leaves messages on talk pages asking people not to upload offensive content or copyvios or the like. It's probably not even a real bot, just a vandal. Just revert, block indefinitely, and move on. Angr14:17, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A broken image
I noticed that the image: Image:Symbol move vote.svg doesn't display correctly. When viewed on its description page, or another Wikimedia project, the image is invisible. However, when the file is viewed by itself, it can be seen. I tried reverting to an older version, but that didn't change anything. Does anybody know how to fix this? -- w:Kenb21518:26, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What a fucking joke! I'm banned on Wikipedia for uploading photos of myself!!! I can verify they're mine!!
What a fucking joke... are the people on Wikipedia Al Capone?? --Publicgirluk10:51, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to further the collection of free encyclopedic knowledge available in the world, your contributions are welcome. If you want to upload files for any other reason then they are not. regards, pfctdayelise (translate?) 11:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Publicgirluk, if you had truly wanted to provide Wikipedia et. al. with photos of yourself, you would've just gone along with the simple request for a photo with a sign saying "I love Wikipedia". ~MDD469615:53, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I followed the debate over your your photos on en.wiki. It seems that en community reacted in a very uncivilised way. Sorry Mdd4696, but a photo of your self with a sign "I love Wikipedia" is not a requirement in any project. No body asked this model here, or here to hold the same sign. We even have photos for women nude on beaches, with no clear statements. En wiki have much worse images, possibly illegal in lots of countries, en:Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg, but they use the "solve it all" magical fair use excuse. Publicgirluk did use the images on the related articles on enwiki, but that is not a requirement here, every photo adds some knowledge to someone. Personally I find them inappropriate , but that is not an excuse not to allow them; if we follow such role, then 99.9999% of commons will disappear. On commons we have our share of photos, with no hard statement that says "This is me and I don't mind having it on your project". My guess is: This is the first high quality images ever done from a female. And that stared sharks from both sides on enwiki. All sides ignored the policies and just started improvising. Publicgirluk, if they are your photos, then no one can tell you what you can't do with them, if they are not yours then it is your legeal problem. --Tarawneh10:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just because it's not stated as a formal requirement doesn't mean it shouldn't be. These photos could be rather embarassing for someone who did not intend to have them published, and it could be some time before the subject learned of their presence on Wikipedia. I think the sign would've been a show of good faith; by refusing to provide such a photo en:User:Publicgirluk demonstrated that she was unwilling to cooperate with the community. Assuming good faith doesn't apply when someone clearly acts in bad faith. Now really, what's the big deal about providing a simple photo? All they wanted was verification that the photos were actually hers; I expect that any new user who uploads a number of high quality photographs would be questioned as to their ownership. ~MDD469616:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi - it is Publicgirluk here, I've just found this page and would like to say that the post has NOT come from me. I made my position clear on wikepedia and don't need to complain about wikepedia decision here, nor would I use language like that on a pubic forum. I just want to make sure people don't think it is me 195.92.194.1100:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I have noticed it via a log file analysis that another person was impersonating you among others. I had thatfor blocked that account. Arnomane00:16, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, there is no indication the author has released this under a free license. Thanks for noticing it, I've marked it for speedy deletion as a copyright violation. —da Pete (ばか) 13:31, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
questions
I have just upload this Image:Hirundo_tahitica.jpg i'm note the owner i contatted him by the message sistem of flikr.com and him respon me whit this:
I am delighted that you appreciate my pictures. I give you full permission to re-produce and do what you like with them.
If possible just display my name: Johnny Wee.
Cheers and Good Luck
Johnny Wee
I'is right?
bye Lillolollo14:46, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Will be good idea to ask author to change hes/her license to cc-by-2.0 on Flickr.com. As for now licensing is conflicting: attribution on Commons and All rights reserved on Flickr.com. --EugeneZelenko14:57, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
EMail him asking to clearly state it, something like "I hereby declare those photos under a Cc-by-2.0 license". What EugeneZelenko commented was to change it on flickr. From [7] the process to do so is:
You can add a license for a specific picture by clicking on the "change" link next to your current photo license (usually set to "All rights reserved") under the “Additional Information” area near the bottom of your photo page. This link will take you to the Privacy and permissions settings page for that photo. On the right hand side, near the bottom, you will see a link that says "Add a license to your photo". Clicking on that will bring you to a screen where you can choose from one of the six Creative Commons licenses.
I´ve uploaded a Photo (winterweg.jog), under a license, but i can´t find it now in Wikimedia commons.
But if i try to upload it again, it says, that it is already uploaded.
What happens ?
The present categorization does not help to find the good name for a such category by country. According to Commons:By location category scheme, we would use the of preposition, because media is a national origin thing.
My experience doing the location category scheme is that nearly all folks are for uniformity of naming, even though they may have misgivings about whatever the rule of uniformity is. So go for it. I think in this context "media" is not ambiguous, so yeah- "Mass" is superfluous. Enough words, no more than enough. (A rule others perhaps wish I would heed my village pump posts). I could go on, but I suppose not. If you have any need for bot runs, let me know. -Mak15:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
PD Italy
Here and here someone had the great idea of stating that the PD-Italy and PD_ItalyGov template should be deleted because german laws changed.
In Italy images can be PD after 20 years, under some particular circustances. Berne Convention states that copyright for can't be longer than the time given by the national laws. German laws changed to comply with this directive, but Italy decided to keep the old "20 years rule", since EU directive is not mandatory.
Moreover, images that became PD can not regain their protection status, so they should not be deleted anyway: laws can't be retroactive (at least in Italy).
Deleting the PD-italy template will lead to deletion of lots of images that are perfectly compliant with Commons rules, and all due to a small group of misinformed (german) users.
Please, give a look. We are risking to lose precious material for a silly mistake. I think the question deserves more visibility, so I post it here. --Jollyroger19:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The European Directives are mandatory for all member states to implement into local law. So either Italy implemented it, or has to do so - sooner or later. In the first case we can't use those pictures even now, in the second case we would have to delete many pictures as soon as it is implemented (and from what I read on the discussion pages, it already is).
laws can't be retroactive (at least in Italy) It wouldn't be retroactive. It wouldn't change the fact that pictures were legal to use until the law changed, but after the implementation they would simply regain their copyright and you wouldn't be allowed to use them anymore. --88.134.44.12701:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Your opinions might change after consideration of the facts. An english translation of the law is available from Unesco and is surprizingly unambiguous. By rules of the Uruguay rounds, since these images were Public domain in their country of origin on January 1, 1996, they became public domain in the United states. There is an unproven theory that the italian lawmakers were ignorant about the European directives and that the laws of Italy are illegal. This surprizingly bold theory asks us to believe the assertions of these theorists rather than the laws of Italy. It further requires us to believe their interpretation of the EU directives, which according to WP articles, have no force of law.
In 1996 italy implemented PART of the directive. They decided to keep some of the old rules. They can do that. And they did. So this deletion has no point at all. --Jollyroger08:22, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Could someone lend some background information? There has recently been a huge surge in voting and interest in deletion and subversion of licensing templates. Simultaneously, I have seen some notes saying that certain templates are not acceptable on German WP. I know that there are some german commercial ventures based on WP, and can understand that there would be commercial interest in leveraging the volunteer time of Commons editors to screen content for these ventures. I see the key proponents of template deletion most active on the german WP. All this correlation is possibly an accident, but I'd just like to understand from someone who is not polarized onto one side or the other of these controversies what the common ground portrayal is of the larger context if any. -Mak16:52, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
September 9
Uploading DVD Screenshots
I've seen many DVD screeenshots uploaded onto wikipedia but when I tried to do it, it was deleted in a couple of hours. What is the process I need to go through to meet the copyright standards, so my image ends up like this one and not deleted! [[8]]. MozUK 20:56, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
en.wiki has different standards. They accept some not-free images (too much of them, IMHO). On commons you can upload only images with a free license, as PD, GFDL or some CCs. No DVD images are allowed because are not copyleft.
By the copyright requirements, yes you can. But you also need to justify its inclusion in one or more Wikimedia projects - do they really need an entire movie? (The devs especially would be interested to know why so much bandwith is required. :)) pfctdayelise (translate?) 02:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I had an idea to set something up either here or on Wikipedia, but before doing so I would like to check that it does not already exist. The idea is to keep a list (or preferably, several lists divided by geographical location) of special events (like political meetings, sports events, festivals) where there would be an opportunity to photograph famous people or other things we would like to have photographs of but cannot usually easily get them. People who live near the place where it will be held and have the time could then write in to make photographs for Wikimedia. So my question is: Does it already exist? And if not, are others of the opinion that this would be a good idea? - Andre Engels09:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is a good idea. It doesn't exist, to my knowledge. For example when I went to the Australian Open (tennis) at the start of this year, I tried to drum up some interest from (English) Wikinews, but there appeared to be none. :( So it's a good idea, but getting people interested and actually collaborating might be the hard bit. pfctdayelise (translate?) 14:50, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Legions of Wikirazzi? Cool. The only related thing that I can think of is only a few days old: Commons:Picture_requests#Do_you_live_in_this_city? The idea there was that we can be global virtual tourists for everyone else. Well, maybe not tourists- more like researchers but you get the idea. Your idea is much cooler though because we could get some very high value pictures. To address pfctdayelise's point, I was thinking that it might be nice to solicit photographers open to considering covering these things to state their location. That way, if someone became aware of an opportunity, they could scan the list and make a directed appeal. I find that if someone I respect makes a personal request for something and doesn't make a huge habit of it that I am pretty likely to help out if I can. If there is some huge benefit for the community, that makes it even more compelling.
Any way you want to roll this out will have my enthusiastic support. But I anticipate your first obvious question: The answer is yes, the singular of Wikirazzi would of course be Wikirazzo. -Mak16:41, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(Without looking at the history, I'm guessing this comment was by Mak.) We should get one of those maps you can "pin" your location on. Hm, they're only Google Maps AFAIK, not Whirlwind. Maybe the map will have to be off-wiki. But my point was actually that getting the writer-counterparts motivated might be harder than the photographer-types.
Doing nearly all my work on Commons, I was unaware of that index. Is anyone aware of similar indexes on other WPs? I suspect folks that work on other WPs may be equally unaware of it. It is good but really needs to be mirrored onto commons and extended to the other WPs so that everyone is posting their requests to a common location in whatever language they are comfortable with.
Maybe that would be too much to roll into an event index. Again as I said Andre, however you want to architect this- I think it is a great idea and I will attempt to contribute if any events are nearby me. -Mak16:41, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
w:Template:Politicalposter makes a "fair use" claim. Commons does not accept images that can only be used by claiming "fair use", so political posters cannot be uploaded here. You can upload it locally to English Wikipedia using the w:Template:Politicalposter tag if you provide full source information as well as a fair use rationale detailing why this image is essential to the article where you want to use it. Angr13:01, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your answer. I have uploaded the image to the English and Greek Wikipedia and I have also notified the Chinese one, which was also using it.--Valentin14:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Greek cultural heritage
I'd like to point everyone to this deletion request: Commons:Deletion requests/ΦΕΚ: Β 1491 20051027. User:Conudrum tells us, that based on a greek amentmet of copyright law, we can't use any picture of any piece of ancient greek art, history or culture, as the gouvernmet claims a perpetual copyright on all of them and demand a licence to publish any of those images plus royalties - said to be used to preserve their culture. --h-stt!?14:40, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please be aware: This user who just failed to be an admin because he has less than 200 edits - abusing this community by "sending" many friends who does not really contribute here [9] of him to vote, now tries to exploit Wikimedia Commons. To prvoe my point look here ([10])": He wrote that he wants to make 200 edit by uploading images of another user to meet with the minumum requestment and then to became an admin in the same way. --Haham hanuka19:31, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A bit unrelated, Haham hanuka is a troll which is banned for infinity from the Hebrew Wikipedia, for vandalising the site (for example, having a porno image on the article about "Adolf Hitler", and registering dozens of nicknames such as "X is gay") and threatening. To this day he still vandalises the Hebrew Wikipedia once in a while. Yellow up13:27, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Let's leave the tale-telling outside, hm? Anyone who trolls, vandalises or otherwise disrupts the Commons will receive treatment here as appropriate. If you have a problem with a user on another project, then deal with it on that project, please. pfctdayelise (translate?) 13:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hanuka attacked here a member of the Hebrew Wikipedia, I want to make sure you know who you are dealing with. Also see his block log at the English Wikipedia. Yellow up13:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The arbitration is taking place on User:NielsF/Arbitration. See also above for more discussion on the subject. I'd like to invite some outside opinions about the subject, please post them in User:NielsF/Arbitration#Outside_opinions or if you wish, you can ask questions about the statements of the parties involved. Thanks in advance. The "deadline" for questions and opinions is September 13th 00:00 UTC). NielsF22:33, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
francais - french speaker please check license terms
The French license was {{DomainePublic}} = {{PD}}. I've interpreted this as {{PD-self}} because author was also the uploader. NielsF23:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Can someone who understands SVG please take a look at Image:Ulster Irish vowel chart.svg and tell me what went wrong? It's supposed to look like Image:Ulster Irish vowel chart.png, and indeed the (current version of the) PNG was exported from the SVG in Inkscape. But when I uploaded the SVG it came out all screwy; none of the text portions are there, and there's this stray black box. Help! Angr16:54, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
font-family:Doulos SIL seems to be the problem (it is not available in the wikimedia servers). I guess for this illustration the glyphs can safely be converted into curves. --Dschwen18:24, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
hm... I'm so stupid, haven't read the answer and didn't recognize the "Doulos SIL"-font. So my edit on the image isn't really the one you need. Simply open your SVG with Inkscape, select all the text and convert it to shapes. After saving and uploading it should look correctly.
I'd rather keep it text if possible so it's easily editable. There are plenty of fonts with the IPA characters in them; where can I get a list of what fonts are available in the Wikimedia servers? Angr19:10, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There doesn't seem to be one; I tested a few fonts on Image:Fonts.svg, mostly those you'll find on a Linux system plus some typical Windows fonts. I'd only count on having a serif, a sans-serif and a monospaced font, not any specific one. In cases like yours I think converting to shapes is the only reasonable solution. —da Pete (ばか) 12:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
look at Image:Schema Spanische Erbfolge.svg. It should look like anything (e.g. like this one), but *nothing* is really bad. *But* if you go to the image URL, for example [11], you'll see this strange error message (not really a HTTP 404):
Although this PHP script (/w/thumb.php) exists, the file requested for output (/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/Schema_Spanische_Erbfolge.svg/800px-Schema_Spanische_Erbfolge.svg.png) does not.
I don't know what's that. That's not a rendering error (my local rsvg-installation renders it just fine). Very strange.
It does work! I have no idea why, but suddenly this url serves a nicely rendered PNG. Even if the alphanumerical ordering is wrong (a/a1/Schema... - it should be s/sc/Schema, shouldn't it?).
The strange 404 was complaining of the original file not existing (thumbs.php is the script which would resize Schema_Spanische_Erbfolge.svg into the 800px-Schema_Spanische_Erbfolge.svg). The alphanumeric is right. It's not teh first letters of the name but the first letter of the Md5 hash of the filename: MD5("Schema_Spanische_Erbfolge.svg") = a163ad6b1200d808a5ac631b2949d264 This is used to balance the number of items per folder. Platonides12:43, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect Template:Redundant to Template:Superseded
Redundant is marked as deprecated, but newly marked images continue to flow in. I'm trying to reassign redundant images to vector version available, supersededSVG, duplicate or superseded where appropriate, but this is an endless job.
I suggest redundant is redirected to superseded -- the two has nearly identical effects so it shouldn't have any disruptive effect. -- Himasaram12:25, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just leave it. It clearly says that it should not be used anymore and a more specific template should be used; people can make it more specific if they want. — Omegatron14:36, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Archiving the Village pump
If a user with some free time would like to build up an edit history in the Commons namespace, I would suggest archiving this page. In a summary, this means copying any discussion older than a week into the relavent archive page, or creating an archive page if none exists for that time period. Thanks. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir14:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
POV stands for Persistence of Vision. It's the file format for computer generated images from POV-Ray. Ravedave, yes, I think having the source for a POV image would be very useful. However, I'm confused why you would want a way to upload SVG sources seperately... all you have to do to view an SVG's source is to open the *.svg file in a text editor. ~MDD469621:25, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
September 12
How to prevent edittools.js from being loaded
How to prevent certain part of monobook.js from being loaded for ex: edittools.js? My browser takes longer time loading page when editing on commons compared to en.wikipedia. (en.wikipedia not using edittools.js) Borgx06:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have the same question but with another reason. I'm using these tools from my monobook.js as it suitable for me, and I don't need such duplicates. --Panther07:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
en.wp has a lot more js (Commons just two). So it is unlikely that speed has anything has to to with that. But well I will look how to implement a switch. Arnomane07:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can try disabling javascript and check if that solves it. Which browser is it? It's strange that edittools loading slow you. Plus your bworser should only load it from internet first time, as next it will be on its cache. Platonides12:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok folks. I have implemented switches for each script (wasn't that easy because there are some strange bugs with Javascript-I18n since some time in MediaWiki). You now can turn these scripts off one by one for you indidually the following way:
Create a User:YOUR_USERNAME/switches.js file
Write there:
load_extratabs = false;
if you want to switch off the extra tabs to external functions (like CheckUsage) in the interface.
load_edittools = false;
if you want to switch off the dropdownbox for extra characters at editing. However the default charset is always visible as long as you don't set it's element ID to invisible for yourself (like in vanilla MediaWiki without that script).
Don't forget to refresh your browser cache after you have modified the switches. I have tested these switches carefully and they do work perfectly for me. Arnomane15:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As of now not a single user has created a personal /switches.js file. I'd like to keep it that way, as I'm planning to introduce a new configuration framework. --Dschwen16:15, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can I request the creation of two new categories? I don't know how-to and would find it usefull:
1.
in english: Prague Castle
in czech: Pražký hrad
in french: Château de Prague
2.
in english: National Gallery in Prague
in czech: Národní galerie v Praze
in french: Galerie nationale à Prague
I don't know if the categories are translated into other languages, I provide the translation in the languages which I speak for convenience.
1. should/can be a sub-category of: Praha monuments; History of Prague; Castles in the Czech Republic
2. should/can be a sub-category of: Praha; Art museums
I created Category:Prague Castle; please now fill it up. (Add [[category:Prague Castle]] to appropriate images - the search is a good way to find them. If they are in a parent cat like Category:Praha, change it to this new one only.) I didn't create the second because I couldn't find any images here of it. Generally categories should only be created as they are needed. If you know of such images, then, you are welcome to create the category. (Just type the name into the search box, and follow the red link to create the new page.) pfctdayelise (translate?) 10:49, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would some administrator please replace Zii-EN.jpg with the new file Zii-EN-new.jpg that I uploaded.
The previous file had a misspelled label, 'length'. It was difficult enough to repair the image, now
I find it is equally difficult to replace it!! LymanSchool12:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Done.
Please note that SVG is better format for such images.
I was wondering if it was possible to have some type of cross-site username usage script, which would allow a user who has registered on one of the Wikimedia projects to use that same account on another project without requiring a separate registration. I thought of this after trying to log into Wiktionary with my Wikipedia account and being told that I was entering a non-valid username.
If someone can shed some light on this, telling me whether or not this is possible, that would be absolutely great.
On Wikimania Brion stated it was to be implemented 'soon' after the election for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. Siebrand05:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it is supposed of being waiting for the new member so the Board of Trustees can approve it. Anyway, you shouldn't be using different names accross projects. Even you confuse! ;)
Hello, please have a look at the top of, e.g., Category:Arecaceae. This was displayed still correctly yesterday, so something must have changed to the bad. Can someone please do something about it? -- Ayacop06:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It appears to be a $10,000 bill from hell, written in Chinese. It's being used in the Bosnian article on hell in the section "Chinese and Japanese religion". You could ask Immanuel Giel for more info, since he uploaded it. I must say I'm not entirely satisfied with the source info provided. Angr06:00, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you mean to upload the correct image, just upload it with the old image name. If you wanna erase it, add {{reason for deleting}} to image description.
Stop Vandals who uploads series of copyrighted pics
The Template {{Wait}} is creat to inform and block new users uploading series of pics probably under copyright. Many vandals work by this way, just uploading many copyrighted pics. Block such users stop their uploads, limit the task of deletions, and keep more time for other task. Blockage of 1 day should be enough.
Improvements and discussions welcome !
I highly doubt that that image "is a work of the United States Federal Government". Most likely a german photographer and most likely still copyrighted. /Lokal_Profil02:22, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The validity of the PD tag can still be questioned though. What are the chances of a United States Federal Government employee taking that photograph? /Lokal_Profil01:30, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm... It's a picture taken in Poland in 1941. NARA says the creator is "Department of Defense. European Command. Office of Military Government for Germany (U.S.). Office of the Chief of Counsel for War Crimes. (03/15/1947 - 06/20/1949)" (which is doubtable IMHO), "Level of Description: Item from Record Group 238: National Archives Collection of World War II War Crimes Records, 1933 - 1950" and "Part of: Series: Photographs relating to the Minor Nurenburg Trials, 1946 - 1949"
Doesn't seem like it was taken by an employee of the US government, but rather collected and archived by the US military government in Germany in the years after the war. Does this make this picture PD (we don't even know the real photographer)? --88.134.44.12714:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Having confiscated a photograph doesn't give you copyrights to the photo. There might be a special clause for WW2 photographs in US copyright law but I doub't that clause would be valid anywhere else. I recommend recommend delete unless it's free under Polish law./Lokal_Profil21:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The first and third of those were deleted too long ago to be recoverable. The second one is a picture of some swans standing in the water in a marsh. Angr12:11, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have created a simple hack for localization of commons content. I expect that it would be used to make boiler plate deletion notices appear in the users preferred language, but it is a general mechanism which could be used for anything. You can see an example at User:Gmaxwell/sandbox. Set your languages in your language preference to one of de, fr,en, or es and load that page (you may need to press shift-reload). The no source message should be displayed in the selected language.
I have also created a template which makes the feature fairly easy to use inline:
{{local
|default=en
|en=This is a message.
|fr=C'est un message.
|de=Dieses ist eine Anzeige.
|es=Esto es un mensaje.
}}
... and a possible further step would be to add buttons along the top of the screen to change the displayed language without reloading. This would allow anons to take advantage of this feature.
This solution is not perfect: all the languages are sent to the browser (makes pages larger), and it currently requires JavaScript (but this could be fixed with a one line change to MediaWiki). This is effectively equal to the HiddenStructure feature which is widely used (outside of enwiki) but discouraged in favor of parser functions. Parser functions, however, can not solve this issue.
There may be other technical problems with this solution and I would like to invite people to point them out. If there is support for this feature I will continue to develop it, but I'd like to get community input about if and where we should use this.--Gmaxwell03:25, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think that this template will be very useful. However, I recommand to make the “default” parameter consistent with others parameters, and to put text in it. Therefore, if the default text is in english, you can leave out the en parameter. --Juiced lemon09:03, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. I had only checked sandbox2 earlier. Now that I know more, I can positively say that I don't like this: it totally disregards accessibility[12] and because of the long pages this would a source pain if you have a slow connection (GPRS, rural area, developing country). -Samulili12:03, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hm. Arnomane broke this today [13], so the examples are not currently working. I don't want to undo his changes until I understand what he was trying to accomplish.
Pfctdayelise, I was unaware of m:Meta:Language select.. This is the same solution (with the exception that what I configured here will follow the UI settings).
Samulili, please expand on your accessability concerns. For all users with CSS enabled browsers (including browsers for the blind) they will have the correct behavior. For users without CSS they will see extra languages. The size is a concern, however, if it is used directly on the text (like sandbox2) there will not be so much inflation (as in sandbox1). If we are concerned about the size of pages with deletion notices and the like we are already doing poorly: The HTML for our no source template in english is almost 5Kb. If the text were the only thing included in the translation (rather then all the layout) we could include around 15 languages before doubling (assuming the english text is average in length) the size of the html of the box. --Gmaxwell18:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I really like it. But you should improve it. Cause to work properly, you have to include all the 200+ languages in which there are Wikimedia projects. And 200 times the default text is a bit annoying ;-) So there should be a mechanism to exclude languages, in which there are no messages. --::Slomox::><18:46, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It would be good if users could actually specify more than one language. With the current CSS hack (like this), you can. For our multilingual users this would be especially good, if a translation exists in one language but not another, they can still see it. Because we often can't guarantee that a translation exists. I would like to see m:Meta:Language select developed a little bit more. pfctdayelise (translate?) 13:19, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The only thing the image specifies is Source: "Trabajo propio" which means own work and Permission: "Ver más abajo" which means "Look further down". If one looks further down there is no license. /Lokal_Profil23:59, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This template claims that be public domain worldwide; however, it says that it is "for public domain images of two-dimensional works of art where the artist died more than 70 years ago". Mexico uses 100 after death (hence, the PD-life-70 tags on English Wikipedia.) This may need to be addressed. Rmhermen19:06, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
anyone know what i need to do to use an image i find on the commons in wikipedia? i've tried using the standard image tag, but it doesnt work. whats up? - Patrickjsanford
In Wikimedia Commons random people create again and again mere "text articles" like in Wikipedia and obviously either confuse Wikimedia Commons with Wikipedia or create help articles by accident in the "article namespace" (quite often). Thatfor the "article namespace" shouldn't be called "article" or just "page" in the interface but "gallery" as it is meant for galleries only. I thatfor changed the content of MediaWiki:Nstab-main to "gallery". However there are two side effects:
The Main page. We either need to move it into another namespace (as Commons: or Portal:), compare http://en.wiktionary.org, or make a special interface exception for it via CSS or so.
Many other MediaWiki pages refer to "article" when in fact either a gallery page is meant or more neutral any page.
On 24 June, Image:Split-arrows.gif was listed for deletion under the theory that it had been "superseded" by a PNG conversion. On 13 July, Erik Möller posted a message indicating that this did not reflect policy, so the image was to be delisted. Nonetheless, on 19 July, Shizhao deleted it. At the time, it was in use on hundreds of pages at the English Wikipedia (via templates that Shizhao didn't bother to edit).
I responded by posting this message to Shizhao's talk page (explaining the situation as I did above). I never received a reply. This was of minor concern, as Duesentrieb restored the image (and posted an explanation below my message on Shizhao's talk page) before Shizhao resumed editing. (A reply from Shizhao still would have been nice, however.)
In discussing this matter here (in response to a message that I posted before the image was undeleted), Fred Chessstated that Shizhao "doesn't understand the arguments that well but only looks at the number of delete and keep votes. I don't know why he is deleting images on the commons:deletion requests but maybe we are just too polite to tell him not to ;-)"
Once again, I contacted Shizhao via his talk page. Once again, I received no reply. This was particularly worrisome when I noticed that he had made twelve unrelated edits (including two updates to his userpage) in the interim.
At that point, I posted an undeletion request here (and then relocated it to Commons:Administrators' noticeboard when I realized that it was a more appropriate forum). A short time later (well over an hour after Shizhao's dozen edits), Cary Bass responded by restoring the image.
I then posted a follow-up message to Shizhao's talk page (inquiring as to why my earlier message had been ignored). This was over a day ago, and I've yet to receive a reply (despite the fact that Shizhao has made thirteen edits during that time).
This is no way for an administrator to behave. Someone who doesn't comprehend English well enough to understand what's being discussed has no business closing English deletion debates. Someone who deliberately ignores other users' messages regarding administrative matters (because it evidently is more important to update a vanity page) isn't fit to serve as a sysop here. —David Levy19:43, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have to agree, Shizhao should not close deletion debates. Fred Chess is totally right when he says that Shizao only looks on the "votes" and count them.
ZOMG calm down! The situation is not so dire. I or Fanghong or someone will translate your messages. Shizhao may be acting in ignorance but he does not act in malice. Things can be undeleted and corrected. The sky is not caving in. PS: we have an Administrators' noticeboard. pfctdayelise (translate?) 09:33, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A sysop is inappropriately deleting images (some of which are used on hundreds of pages) and ignoring attempts to contact him regarding the files. Even if he is unable to fully understand what people are saying to him (despite his "basic level" of English and the availability of Babel Fish), what possible excuse could there be for not responding at all? I don't ascribe "malice," but "reckless disregard" seems like an accurate term.
And if he needs someone to translate English messages for him, why the heck is he attempting to close English deletion debates in the first place?
User:Shizhao edited recently this He added 3 categories :
He didn't act here as an administrator, but I think he is really ill-advised, because I am presently working to remove such categories (I'll explain later). Has he some useful activities as an administrator ? If not, I would prefer him as a simple user. --Juiced lemon09:41, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is important to have multilingual administrators for a multilingual project. It is troubling, however, that Shizhao is not making any effort to reply. --tomf688 (talk - email) 14:42, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
He said his English is not sufficient to explain. He found someone reversed his misdeleted and thought it is enough. He said he would be more careful in latter action.--Fanghong00:36, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't make sense. Shizhao ignored my message (performing a dozen unrelated edits while I waited for him to respond), more than an hour elapsed, and then the file was restored.
And of course, I await an explanation of why someone with a limited understanding of English is closing English deletion debates. As far as I can tell (based upon Fanghong's translation and the one that I previously obtained from Babel Fish), Shizhao has not indicated that he plans to cease this activity; he only promises to be more careful. —David Levy00:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
David Levy isn't the only one here who is more than a little uneasy about someone with so limited a grasp of the English language taking an active part in such important procedures as deletions are. If he isn't able to explain himself to the community, he should not have responsibilities to it. I urge him to withdraw fully any from admin task involving discussions in languages where he isn't fluent. --Swift03:56, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You know, instead of talking ABOUT him, you could talk TO him. In his own language. Why don't you ask user:Fanghong or user:Jusjih to translate your messages? It would be a kind of nice gesture if the statement 'Commons is a multilingual community' has any meaning at all. Shizhao does a lot of good work and it would frankly be a loss to the small active admin community we have, that is already vastly understaffed. I want to ask you both to please try pursuing dialogue a bit more before requesting deadminship.
Maybe you think this is unreasonable because you have a complaint about an admin. But I think in a multilingual community it is the responsibility of the person with something to say, to seek out the translation(s). When I see new users uploading copyvios, I do my best to find out what languages they speak and get a translation of my warnings if appropriate, even though from my perspective, they are in the wrong. I could just post a dozens rants in English but it is not a true attempt at dialogue, I feel. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 15:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My words were directed to him (as well as anyone else here). Using the third person, I was hoping to make this less personal as I feel this is a general issue, not one limited to the one admin. This is, I feel, a good polite way to approach someone who might take offense to something on the order of "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! BACK OFF!". I know that I would.
I want to ask you both to please try pursuing dialogue a bit more. Erm. That is what this is! If we were requesting de-adminship we would do so in a more explicit manner (so far, it has only been suggested as a possible course of action).
As for the translation; I was under the impression that Fanghong had taking it upon himself to translate this discussion. If you'd prefer, everyone could seek translations to whichever translator they prefer for their own comments, spreading the burden, but introducing delays. In case it will appease you, I will check with either of the two. --Swift18:38, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
1. Shizhao has decided to interact in English. He closes English deletion debates, tags files with English templates, and posts English warnings (also via templates) on people's talk pages. When people attempt to respond to him in English, he routinely ignores them. He doesn't seek to translate their messages, nor does he even reply by informing them that he's unable to fully comprehend their posts. He simply ignores them.
Would it be appropriate for an English-speaking sysop with little understanding of Chinese to close Chinese deletion debates and contact users in Chinese, ignoring anyone who responds in Chinese?
2. I repeatedly attempted to deal directly with Shizhao, and I initiated this discussion only after he failed to reply to my messages (despite having plenty of time to update his userpage). Per your request, Fanghong translated my concerns (and those of others) into Chinese and informed Shizhao. Shizhao responded with the false claim that he ignored my message because the file already had been restored (which didn't occur until much later), and he provided no indication that he intends to cease engaging in activities that require a firmer grasp of the English language.
3. Do you honestly believe that when Shizhao inappropriately deletes an image (because he's taken it upon himself to act on an English discussion that he doesn't understand), it's the responsibility of others to contact him in Chinese (finding someone to translate, if necessary)? Do you not recognize the importance of rectifying these situations (some of which involve broken images on hundreds of pages) as quickly as possible?
Furthermore, how do you expect users to realize that Shizhao refuses to deal with people in English? As noted above, he frequently conducts Commons business in English (via the use of templates) and claims on his userpage that he's "able to contribute with a basic level of English." Then when people politely contact him to discuss his mistakes, he ignores them. Is this not discourteous, disrespectful, and irresponsible? —David Levy20:05, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Shizhao said he promises that he would cease deletion if he didn't understand all-sidedly. He cannot reply your message immediately since his English is not good but he will seek a more useful tool to solve the problem. And he apologizes for his mistakes and the delay in replying sincerely.--Fanghong06:20, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Shizhao: How do you expect to know when you are simply misunderstanding something? Are you saying that your previous mis-actions were done despite realising that you didn't understand the debate!?
At this point, none of the comments since your last reply have been translated. Have you read through them and understood them? Will you reply to them explaining your actions?
There is nothing wrong with realizing your limits and working accordingly. Could you possibly negotiate with some Chinese speaker who has a better grasp of English to swap tasks; that you may give that user an English task you come across in return for a Chinese one? --Swift19:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Shizhao said he was only sometimes misunderstanding. He replied sometime but not on time and owe an apology. He should improve the situation.--Fanghong00:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You have not answered any of my questions and, more importantly, not addressed David Levy's concerns regarding your actions. Skirting the issue like you do is starting to portray you in a very unfavourable light. --Swift04:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As Shizhao does not understand English very well, I have referred him http://translation.langenberg.com/ with some English-Chinese translators. Since machine translators are not prefect, please write standard English here, i.e. keep the sentences structurally simple with no homophone abbreviations such as "2 u" and "4 u" to say "to you" and for you" (neither easily understandable by non-native speaker nor friendly to machine translators).--Jusjih04:43, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
我已经说了，我对于没有及时或者没有理睬他人给我的留言，我承认是我的不足，我会多花一些时间来处理这个问题。但是错误删除的问题，我只是对极个别的讨论产生了理解上的错误，我会更加注重这个问题，更加小心对待。此外，我的绝大部分删除操作都是根据commons上的守则来进行的，而且我所作的大部分的删除，我自认并不存在语言理解上的障碍。不知道我还要做什么解释才能停止这次的讨论？Plese translation, thanks! --Shizhao01:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have already said that I sincerely apologise for any late/delayed responses which have been seen by others as I being ignorant of other's concerns, I realise that it is my lacking, I will spend more time to resolve such matters in the future. But as for my wrongful deletions, it has happened only to very few specific files, I will take more care and be more attentive to such matters. Besides these matters, the great majority of my deletion edits have been done accordingly with the rules of Wikimedia Commons, moreover, with most of the deletion edits I have done, I have not felt there to be language barrier problems. I'm not sure what more is required for me to do to resolve this issue. --Shibo7715:06, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see what is the problem. People make mistakes, even native English speaking administrators make mistakes, let alone a non-native. If you tell someone to stop in a language, but that person doesn't understand the language spoken, and continues, it is simply a little language problem, not a misdeed or being ignorant, nor something with which you should be agitated. Similarly, if an English speaking administrator wrongly deleted Chinese-tagged images, then I would try to contact that administrator in English of course, and if I didn't know English, I would try to find someone who does know English to translate for me, (machine translations are terrible). This is a multilingual community after all, it's not very difficult to find an active user who speaks a specific language with the Babel categories. Besides, it seems to me that he hasn't said anything wrong, they're all apologies, and he has promised to be more careful in the future.
1. Shizhao has not explained his failure to respond to English messages posted on his talk page. I realize that a language barrier exists, but that's no excuse for simply ignoring attempts to contact him. He doesn't respond by informing these people of his inability to understand English well, nor does he seek translation to Chinese. He simply ignores the messages. Apologizing doesn't excuse this breach of conduct, especially considering my next point.
3. Shizhao has promised to be more careful in the future, but he refuses to elaborate. Does he intend to continue closing deletion debates written in a language that he barely understands? He's provided no indication to the contrary.
4. Shizhao has not explained why he engages in activities (such as deletion debate closures) that require a grasp of English that he lacks. I believe that he should concentrate on things written in Chinese (the area in which he can be the most helpful), and it would be nice if he would acknowledge this. —David Levy17:02, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On this picture I uploaded, I've been told there was a problem with source... But, actually, I did wite the source Lectures pour tous, a French newspaper in 1916, which is then in public domain. I even mentioned the first author of the painting M. Aranson. I think everything is OK with this image. Can I remove the warning? It looks stupid to have a No source Label juste next to the source... --Sebb09:23, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's quite different, as in Lectures pour tous, it is written from a painting of M. Aranson, I don't know who is M. Aranson, but the paper was published before 1922. It is so in the public domain, isn't it?--Sebb10:39, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I never asserted that. M. Aranson may be a contributor of Lectures pour tous at the time, but as there were many contributors to this magazine, it is collective and, so, it is in the PD 70 yr after the publication, is 't it?--Sebb15:40, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If Lectures pour tous had not precised their source, I assume it would have been OK, no? Because it is a collective work. In fact it is not exactly written it is a picture by Aranson, but that this picture is based on a picture by Aranson. Is it a totally new work or not? We can't say... So maybe, you are right and this picture should be quickly deleted... But, I think, the tag should not have been Image with unknown source, but image with unsuitable source or something like that... I did precise the source!--Sebb22:26, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If we don't know for sure, it doesn't belong on Commons. We can't take the risk ourselves, and we certainly can't expose our downstream consumers to that risk. -- Finlay McWalter22:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Image dispays as landscape when should be portrait
Sorry if this is an obvious question. I have just uploaded an image(Image:Unknown mushroom.JPG) which shows in Commons as landscape, even though before upload it correctly displays in Paint Shop Pro and in Irfanview as portrait. What do I do to get it to show correctly here?--MichaelMaggs17:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When I download and view it locally its in landscape. I tried it in Firefox, Photoshop 7, Windows print and fax viewer, MS Paint, Opera, Paintshop Pro 6, Nero photosnap viewer, and Inkscape, and its in landscape in all of them. -- Finlay McWalter18:40, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How odd. It definitely appears as portait on my machine here. Presumably some metadata defining the orientation is read differently in different situations. I've seen similar effects before.--MichaelMaggs18:57, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at the extended metadata, you'll see that it's "Rotated 90° CW"; it's quite possible that your software reads this and rotates it 90° clockwise, which would give a correct portrait format. That doesn't happen on my computer, but your camera software might have an influence on it, even when using other programs. Cnyborg19:20, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll assume that yellow spheres are spheres with a yellow color. We can think about Category:Yellow spheres and Category:Spheres.
I upload a picture which shows yellow marbles. I categorize the file in Category:Yellow spheres. Now, if I categorize the image file in Category:Spheres, this is over-categorization: because we already know that the yellow marbles are spheres.
So, “over-categorization” doesn't bring any information; it's just some sort of advertising as the same image is duplicated in more general categories. Allowing over-categorization leads to big clusters of unsorted images in general categories. People who watch at these categories waste their time, and I think that this practice must be strongly discouraged.
This is an important task, which I find is complicated by users continually reverting changes (the Snellius image mentioned above is a good example of this problem). I think there are three main reasons for overcategorization that we need to address:
The wish to have ones image listed as many places as possible. This stems from a lack of understanding of the category system; having the image listed in several layers means filling up the top categories to the point where it's impossible to find anything in them; it becomes less visible, not more. This could be partially dealt with by expanding on the help page for categories.
Related to this is a general lack of understanding of the category system. It's complicated, sure, but one does need to take a look at the relation between categories in order to avoid over-categorization. To take one example that I frequently encounter, users need to understand that a category for towns and villages in England will always be a sub-category of Category:England, and that putting all the images in the top category is not helpful at all; it means that to find the generic England images you'll need to look through hundreds of more specific ones. This too could be partially dealt with by expanding on the help page for categories, but we also need to check that the categories are indeed categorized correctly; I often come across categories that are under-categorized.
Use of CommonsSense category suggestions. While being a great tool, it does frequently suggest overcategorization. Ideally it should be refines so that it does not suggest both a category and its sub-category, only the more specific subcategory, but a clearer warning that use of the tool does require some form of thought process would also help.
One thing I've found helps with this is to give advice to users who have over-categorized a number of images, explaining briefly how the system works. The ones that do categorize several images are likely to upload more, so explaining it to them directly will prevent future problems. Having a clear section about this on a help page would also mean having something to point to in order to stop an editwar. Cnyborg07:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look at this talk. I gave up explaining such obvious things, because I cannot prove that it's the Commons policy, and not mine. So, we need a explicative document with examples.
Riddle.Riddle: how do you categorize this picture ?
Nice riddle. It took me a little while to figure out why the last one was relevant, but I got it. The reply on the talk page you linked to it typical of the lack of understanding of how the category system works. As long as there are few images in the relevant category tree, it won't be a big problem, but when it goes into the hundreds it all gets meaningless. We've been pretty strict on categorizing on Norwegian Wikipedia, and I can have a look at what we have there and try to write something useful here. Commons:Categories adressess the issue in a single sentence: "Generally files should only be in the most specific category that exists for certain topic. For example files in Category:Paris should not also be in Category:France."; I'll add an explanation of why this is the right way to do things, and we can take it from there. Cnyborg17:51, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Californian photographers who'd like to go to the Oscars?
Are you interested in red carpet photography, or reporting on the Academy Awards? I'm trying to get one reporter for Wikinews, and one photographer for Wikimedia Commons/Wikinews/Wikipedia into the whole red carpet/backstage stuff. Press credentials for the Oscars are being released now, so we need to act fast.
I'm looking for someone that is clearly reliable, if not skilled with the camera. Being an entertainment buff with a good memory for famous faces is a big plus (so you don't miss stars, and shoot photos of random people), and living in or around California, particularly in or around Los Angeles are also big pluses. The photographer is my main concern, the reporter is less critical
Post your reply info and a sample <gallery> of four photos, at least one has to be of a human, and at least one has to have been taken in natural light, and at least one photo has to have been taken in artificial light. Submit your interest or questions to .
I've uploaded a new file called, for now, "Flag of Romania (proper).svg". The source of the new file is this page. It is licensed under CC ShareAlike. The reason for the replacement is that the old file uses the wrong colors. If you follow the research on the source page, you'll see that at the origin of both flag pictures there was a series of Pantone colors: 280c, 116c, 186c. However, the way to transform these to digital colorspace differs. Zscout370, who created the first file, attempted direct transformation of Pantone codes to RGB using an online transformation chart. This is wrong. Pantone-to-digital conversion can NOT be done directly and is not a trivial matter, since it requires laboratory conditions. On the other hand, the author of the second file used as reference CMYK color codes from a very respected vexillological reference book (Album des Pavillons). --Wirespot10:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like the author of the second file has updated the version on his site since last time I checked. So the latest version of the file is this one, not "Flag of Romania (proper).svg" which I uploaded. Please use that, I'd replace it myself but my account is too recent. --Wirespot10:56, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest [[Category:National symbols of COUNTRY]] for precision. For the U.S., [[Category:State symbols of the United States]] seems clear enough to me. Jkelly15:55, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I want to ask, why? It seems to me some countries have many coats of arms, or many flags (historical). If we delete these categories, won't new users just recreate them? Anyway if you do this, it should be #2 (directly under the country category). pfctdayelise (说什么?) 16:44, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Excuse a newbie question... There seem to be a large number of flag images up for deletion right now on COM:DEL (for example: Commons:Deletion_requests#Image:Flag_of_Cote_d.27Ivoire.png and many others) and the argument advanced is thta they are dups, but some of the keep comments allude to the argument that it is a good thing to have both an .svg and a .png version of the same (or similar) image(s). Has this been discussed before and what's the consensus? Thanks! ++Lar: t/c21:29, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It has been discussed ad nauseum and there is no consensus. :)
Some of the arguments include:
Commons should remove all duplicates as they are 'junk' and clutter the database
Commons has no right to dictate to the projects which version of an image they must use [in the past, before CommonsTicker, some projects complained about this]
SVGs are usually more versatile and easily edited, so they are usually preferred
Especially on figures such as coats of arms with fine detail, it may take a lot of work for the SVG to look good enough to use
Colour differences - it may be appropriate to keep two copies of one image where one is for "screen", one is for "print"
It may be appropriate to keep PNGs as they constitute the "history" of the SVG, as SVGs are sometimes but not always based on PNGs
People who have worked hard on a PNG tend to dislike seeing it summarily disposed of (so either: we have to work hard to change that attitude and keep good contributors, or we just keep the image to keep them happy)
We're not running out of server space, so this should never be a reason for deletion.
The past complaints are the main reason that 'superseded' images are now required to go through COM:DEL and are not speedyable. But I rather think we should split them off and have it separate, because there's just so many now. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 02:14, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the info... sounds like there's no consensus either way. (and hence I'm not sure how I should be commenting but I'm more inclusionist than not so.. would tend to say keep :) ) When you say "split them off and have them separate" did you mean a new namespace, or putting them in a special category or??? Or did you actually mean the DELETE process itself should be separated out for supercededs? Thanks again for all that background, very helpful. Although maybe you shoulda just told me what to do! ++Lar: t/c15:50, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A few days ago, ithere was a suggestion that namespace 0 aka ("articles" or "pages") "is meant for galleries only".
This idea is unnecessarily restrictive. There are many pages that are not articles which are useful. On WP, the namespace zero is not just for articles, so why should we restrict our namespace zero to a single type? On WP's, lists for example are extremely useful, but aren't articles. Examples of pages that aren't galleries on Commons besides lists:
To my knowlege, there is no policy statement that Namespace zero is restricted to galleries. Nor is it clear to me why there are any advantages to such a proposal.
With the understanding that WP style articles do not belong on Commons, does anyone have a problem with usage of the Pages namespace for Pages that are not galleries? -Mak22:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well some threads above you will see the discussion about that very topic. ns-0 is for galleries. Have a look as well at Commons:Welcome. ns-0 pages are refered as media collections there since quite a while and well Commons:Project scope defines as well what we include and what not (see for example first paragraph). And as you mention policies: Commons does not want to repeat the policy bureaucracy of Wikipedia: We want to keep the number of policies on every little piece as low as possible and assume that people are not dumb, beside that Commons usually does not vote on policies. If a certain policy is really needed it just get proposed, written down and supported by common agreement or just gets rejected. Above all: The best policies are these that are corollary to the software interface. So the interface is the policy and thatfor the "gallery" label is a policy per se if you want to name it policy. This is very much contrary to Wikipedia.
Refering to your examples. Sorry but there is something better possible: Have a look at Frankfurt (Main). That very page is a digest gallery, linking to more narrow sub galleries. This is very much like the Wikipedia concept of digest articles with external articles on each detail. You have a visual overview in the digest gallery about Frankfurt and can zoom into the details if you want. So you examples would be far better if you turn them into real digest galleries as well. Arnomane23:45, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What is the justification for banning all page types except galleries? If you are saying that there is no other valid page type except galleries, then you need to study what it is you are asserting is invalid. Tour:USS Nevada- Pearl Harbor attack is a transclusion. Still think it is similar to a digest gallery? Doozey explained that such data transclusions should not be in the template space. Ok. Fine by me. So where do they belong if not the page space. And what about lists? Are they illegal too?
If you which to make a proposal about the use of namespaces, go ahead- declare a project and organize a concensus. If on the other hand you all you want to do is fiddle with the name of a tab, fine by me. As MDD's comment above pointed out, no one really pays attention to them. -Mak00:15, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
At first I gave you an esay example how to make your examples better. Second I did not say how to do that in detail. Third: Every ns0 page that does not directly inherit media files has been subject to deletion in the past. Yes that includes mere link lists (in that case we often weren't evil but converted these lists in digest galleries). Arnomane00:49, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mak, I think that renaming ns0 as gallery rather than article will go a long way toward discouraging random "article" creation, which get deleted out of hand anyway. We have neither the resources nor the inclination to monitor articles for POV or relevancy, style etc, that other wiki projects have. Gallery is what we're using the ns0 namespace for here, and it seems entirely appropriate. We've simply put a name to it. Cary "Bastiq▼e" Bassdemandez01:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. If you're writing something which is appropriate for Commons (which you are), then don't stress too much about what the tab happens to say. And gallery/article are very, very much synonymous around here so I think it's a good change. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 02:22, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Pfctdayelise- I don't have any problem with what the tab says. I have a problem with a ban on pages that aren't galleries.
Bastique, as I stated in my first note, I am not arguing in favour of WP like articles on Commons. Everyone I think agrees they don't belong here, and the deletions of such are seldom disputed. What I am saying is that though galleries are dominant, they are simply not the only way and often not the best way to navigate multimedia databases. For this reason, such a ban is needlessly restrictive. If there is some reason to be restrictive, the burden of proof is on the proponents of those restrictions. That is all I am saying.
Arno, perhaps you felt that your advice was requested. All I asked was, on what basis do you feel that you personally are entitled to ban any page that is not a gallery from namespace zero? It is silly to assert that gallery pages are the best and only way to navigate multimedia. As I said, if you want to propose some widespread rule, then feel free to gather a concensus. If so, you are going to have to answer some very fundamental questions about why one very particular form of image navigation somehow negates the past 20 years of experience in use of pages that don't use galleries. Some obvious questions off the top of my head in addition to navigation lists pointed to above.
Are timelines also banned to fron namespace zero? If so, then in what namespaces do you feel the rest of us are entitled to use the <timeline> tag?
Why should it be impermissible to put up a page consisting only of a table with the family tree of the Nobility of France and leave out the thumbnails due to space considerations?
Why should it be impermissible for an editor to construct an alternate hierarchy of categories on an index page?
Mak. Please. We do not intend to force people on a narrow detailed style guideline for gallery pages. We do not force people using the gallery tag only at gallery pages. The only thing is: These pages have to embedd and present media files. How you do it is subject to creativity of involved people. So absolutely nobody has a problem with using for example a timeline if its not the only thing the page shows. And above all I never said that I will delete your example pages: I just said that I think that they can be improved in a certain way. You seem to feel an opposition and restriction that is simply not there. Arnomane08:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea how relevant these comments are, but
I have not and I don't intend to change the Finnish translation which is and has been "page" (sivu), not gallery or article.
Well I need to clarify it: Gallery does not mean that you have to use the gallery tags. Forcing people using the gallery tags only would be naturally a bad restriction. So Kakuro is a perfect gallery in the above definition that a gallery is simply everything that embedds and presents media files and there is more than one way to do it. ;) Arnomane08:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I get it. The ban is on any page that doesn't sprinkle pictures on it.
No Arno. You need to get concensus on this naive theory you are proposing that the only way to provide navigation to images is through the embedding of images on a page. My personal opinion is the idea is perposterous, but you are welcome to attempt to advance it on a project page. I shall be happy to point out the severe weaknesses of your idea, as I have above. Apparently you feel a timeline would be acceptable if a few images were sprinkled gratuitiously around the edges. Well, it's best to think before speaking. Take a look at a timeline. It is an extremely dense graphic and screen real estate is at a premium. You stick only tiny thumbnail in there and you have blown away 3 links, and obscured the structure of the graphic. You have a dense table like a family tree and if you start sticking thumbs in there, well brother, the tree will be about 10 times larger and pretty unusuable because people will have to scroll around to get the big picture. But they can't get that big picture because they have to constantly change context to see other elements of that big picture. They need to see it all on one screen to assimilate, draw comparisons, see relationships.
Try to understand the problem of screen real estate. Getting the big picture on information oftentimes means there is not a lot of room for sprinkling pictures around.
Lastly, though you seem now to have reread my first note and understand that at no time was I proposing WP style articles, you failed to make any attempt at understanding what the Tour of the Nevada is. Ok fine. I will show you. Here is what {{:Tour:USS Nevada- Pearl Harbor attack}} does:
is transcluded onto 22 pages. Instead of putting a "For other images of the Nevada", click on the following links, this presents a language neutral way of navigating a series of images directly from the image pages. I explained why this is not in the Template space- but you failed to assimilate that information as well. You simply glanced at the page, thought you understood it, and dismissed my explanatory text about it being a transcluded page.
I would suggest that it would be helpful in your activities of gathering concensus on a position you advocate to listen to what people are telling you, rather than too quickly assume that what is missing is that they have not benefitted from your valuable "help" and "guidance". -Mak15:33, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Since there seems to be no more comment, I will note that there is no concensus concerning Arnomane's proposal that any page not using images be banned from Namespace zero. The tab that reads "Gallery" for namespace zero can be equivalently translated as "Pages" or "Articles" in other languages, and in itself does not imply that pages without images (such as timelines or other useful pages for navigating Commons content) may not be stored in Namespace zero. -Mak19:22, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mind you acknowledging that you are not the hub of Wikimedia Commons? There are some other important things as well... If it helps you I will occasionally remove pages not embedding files from ns-0 as it happened in the past. Arnomane17:02, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I merely pointed out that you had not achieved any concensus on your proposal that any page not embedding a file should be banned from Namespace zero. Having a particular bit flag attached to your account does not relieve you of the requirement to gain concensus on new proposals. You are no more privileged in this respect than anyone else. My simple question to you in this thread has gone unanswerred: "on what basis do you feel that you personally are entitled to ban any page that is not a gallery from namespace zero?" Your only response is simply that you can and you will.
Asserting that no one is above the rules is a principle that anyone anytime is entitled to utter. If you have concluded that someone would have to feel that they are the center of commons to dare to point this out to you, then pardon me. -Mak23:03, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ahem. Maybe you are not aware but I haven't invented the "pages without media files in ns-0 get banned" policy in Commons. It exists since its beginnings (you can trace it in the delete log and in other places where such pages got collected and subsequently deleted if you want) but interestingly wasn't written explicitely down as a single policy like so many other common rules in Commons. You find this strange? Hey that's Wikimedia Commons. Arnomane01:42, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No doubt there is a time honored tradition, and that is that WP style articles do not belong on Commons. Beyond that concensus position, multiple people besides myself have taken issue with you. I really don't see why you feel it necessary to pervert it into some silly rule that the only way to navigate multimedia is by embedding pictures and other files on a page. If you wish to gather agreement for something like that, you are free to make your case. It is particularly ironic that you complain about too many rules while simultaneously trying to propagate one. -Mak04:47, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
September 21
Pictures from Kurdistan Regional Government
Busybodies keep deleting these very useful images. in spite of clear statements from KRG that the pictures may be used.;
i.e. the following email from site administrator:
Hello,
if you mention the source then you can publish any pictures of krg.org website.
I have uploaded some of these pictures, using the tag {{CopyrightedFreeUse}}, Other users have also uploaded images from the extensive galleries at KRG.org. Why is the freeuse tag not good enough ?
The permission mentions only use of the images, not modification. That question needs to be settled; until that's been taken care of the images are still eligible for deletion. If the permission for modification works out, the images should be tagged with {{Attribution}} instead, since {{Copyrighted free use}} does not include the demand for attribution mentioned in the permission. Cnyborg14:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This issue should be settled through permissions@wikimedia.org not here. KRG.org site admin may not necesarily be able to release all images of the KRG behalf of the KRG with a free license. --Catout14:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have indeed sent an email to permissions@wikimedia.org, but why is it I get the impression that anti-kurdish feelings are involved here ?--Vindheim10:48, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly dont care about your feelings, villige pump is not a median for that. Furthermore, kurds are NOT exempt from copyrights.
The legal issues surrounding the Kurdistan Regional Government should also be adressed. I do not want another nonsense similar to the PD-Soviet debate.
Some of the images from the Kurdistan Regional Government site can be deleted for simply being low quality. Wikipedia is not a dumptruck...
The impression of anti-Kurdish feelings is a figment of your imagination. These images are treated exactly the same way as others. You have sent a permission by email (OTRS ticket 2006092110009353), but as mentioned several times, that permission does not include the right to modify the images. There is quite simply not basis for the license {{Copyrighted free use}} in the email. To ensure that a permission which is acceptable under Commons policies is given, you can use the email template. This is not about feelings, it's about you ignoring the repeated request for a proper permission. Cnyborg17:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I am not unwilling to comply, I just have trouble figuring out exactly what is recquired here. I have however sent a new e-mail to the KRG webmaster, enclosing a form based on the email template. --Vindheim19:05, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Can someone please upadte this page or change it somehow... I belive there is no english version of de:Panoramafreiheit which probably makes it quite confusing for newcomers as it is one of the first links there (no existing en version is linked).
This template is useful, and they are anonymous works, so this request is quite strange. And what de.wikipedia requires is not the rule here, AFAIK. The images tagged with this template are in the public domain in most countries, including Germany and the USA. I really do not understand that people tag images which are obviously in the public domain for deletion. FYI, most images tag with this template are from India where the rule is 60 years after publication. So from copyright point of view, it doesn't matter if the author is known or not. Yann20:31, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm proposing this after, to my surprise, it turns out that there is no coordinated way of managing this. I was involved in a discussion where an admin had closed some deletion discussions without having much of a grasp of the language. In ensuing discussion at the Village pump, the discussion needed constant translations of everything into Chinese for the admin and back into English after he had replied. I believe that discussion would have benefitted from some sort of arrangement such as the one above.
If people see this as a good idea, I will (along with anyone else who is interested) start building this up. --Swift 04:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
For some ling time there are japanese maps in Category:Other speedy deletions with deletion reason "Wrong name". The problem is, images are still in use on jp.wp and I am not able to unlink them, because I don't know the correct new name.
Template {{Speedy}} is complete improper in this case, it should be tagged by {{Badname}}, which gives a new name.
E.g. in Category:Minerals are placed many empty subcategories, they are created since may 2006. I think they are candidates for speedy deletion, but i will not destroy any scheme.
Commons:Deletion guidelines only says: A page can be deleted if it is: A category with no content or containing only a parent category.
So i ask general: Should all empty categories be deleted or only special kinds of empty categories, whichever?
--GeorgHH21:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose we can delete empty categories... but I wouldn't do it if I thought someone would just have to recreate it eventually. Jkelly22:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The question is: will we have categories only for images/pages which available at the moment or is it better to have categories to structuring a topic in a similar manner for available and not available images/pages so in the future users can find excisting categories? --GeorgHH10:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
September 23
resizing graphics
hello everyone!
I would like to put up a gallery in an article, but the pictures I have found on Commons are all sizes, and though you may standardize the width, you get very uneven heights, so that the effect is rather shoddy. Is it acceptable to resize the document using the Gimp (unashamed publicity) and then upload it under a slightly different name with relevant references so as not to erase the original ? And in that case what is the proper description of the new image ? Thank you for help and tips --Anne9743211:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the new images would have to be encyclopedic in value, or would have to improve upon the original. Otherwise, they may be nominated for deletion. Uploading images just to make a gallery look prettier may not be a good enough reason for some people. --tomf688 (talk - email) 13:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is the possibility to make galleries using consecutive [[Image:]] constructs. Within that construct you can resize the pics to your liking. To make more than one row, you can use tables or <br clear=all/> if I recall correctly. -- Ayacop14:45, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mmmm. Thank you for your advice. It's not so much a matter of prettifying the page, but getting an even focus on a detail. I mean sometimes I have a portrait, sometimes a picture with a person in a crowd, and I want to format them so that they focus on the individual I need for the illustration. Is that unacceptable ? In lots of encyclopedias you get these details from painting x or y. --Anne9743215:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But a focus (i.e., cropped and magnified original) is different than what you described first. Focuses are certainly different images than the original, and if they find use in a WP-article, they are by definition of encyclopedic value. IMHO. -- Ayacop15:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I vaguely remembering hearing that somebody was working on a way to specify per-use cropping in the same way that we have per-use resizing now. So maybe image users will be able to pick a desired focus without needing multiple uploads. Stan Shebs17:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
is this possible?
hello,
usually, when a category contains more than the (say) 200 limit of pics, one can click on NEXT. If there are lots of articles AND lots of pics, they are evenly distributed on the first AND next pages, that is, the first page has half of the articles plus half of the pics, and the second the other half of both. But I want it that all articles are shown first, and only then the pictures on the next pages, possibly configurable in my preferences. Is this difficult to code? It would make certain solutions for certain problems very easy to solve, and would please most people. -- Ayacop18:47, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There are dozens of Kniphofia cultivars, even an expert wouldn't necessarily be able to id just from a couple pictures. (Which is why I don't take many random garden plant pics anymore - there is rarely a good use for them in Wikimedia projects, vs an image of a precisely-known cultivar. Go to a nursery and ask permission to take photos - so far they've always said yes.) Stan Shebs17:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Picture Needed
I am looking for a free content picture of the rap group, OutKast, to place on their article. I've looked throughout Wikipedia, here, and the free-content search engines listed on this site, but have yet to find an acceptable image. If you know of one, or where I could look, please leave a message on my en Wikipeida Talk Page with the link. Thanks, False Prophet on en Wikipedia.
Keeping data containers at Commons, and accessing the information from specific WP versions
Hello,
Today at a Swedish Wikipedia IRL meeting, we were discussing the possibility to create some sort of information objects at Commons and accessing the variable values from the different language versions, importing the Commons values into a local template. This would for instance mean that all WP:s could manage some information, such as the values of physical constants, population of countries/regions/cities and similar information, much in the way we currently access information about Commons images, displaying tables of image metadata in translated templates.
Would creating a few dozen such information objects for testing purposes require any Mediawiki software development, or could it be done within the current framework (for instance by defining small png files with "artificial" xml metadata and creating new locally defined templates for accessing and displaying that data)? In the latter case, is there any Mediawiki-specific documentation regarding how image metadata is stored?
The first practical wide use I saw of this was for pretty mundame attributes:
What is the picture that best gives an idea of what this object looks like?
What are the interwiki links for this information object?
What would one or two sentence description of this object in each native language be (this provided a search target of words to facilitate image search).
What are the vernacular names for this object (EG: Struthio camelus is an ostrich or struzzo
What are the pertinent See Alsos for this information object?
You can retrieve such attributes by doing a "get attribute" on any of 76 different "Info Pages" (Information Object pages). Example:
Returns you the arabic article on Yuri Gagarin, which is, Info:Yuri Gagarin
Arbitrary attributes may be added by any user. EG, if I were to add to the Info:USS Iowa (BB-61) page a new line the attribute
|Displacement=45,000 tons, then I could do the above query with What=Displacement. Arbitrary methods may be added by simply writing your own Template, then slipping that name in the "Do=" slot.
So in answer to your question, the answer is no, you will have to wait a decade before we get something real like an OODBMS to support information objects. In the meantime, we will have to make do with schemes such as this with cached attributes implemented in an extremely crude language.
This scheme is useless for the kind of centralized information fetching you were envisioning, because you can't do transclusions from outside the wikimedia database you are in. I don't expect that would change anytime soon because it is the kind of feature that walks and talks like a server instability disaster waiting to happen.-Mak01:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This feature may be closer than you think. Currently Wikidata is being developed, of which WiktionaryZ is the (pre-)alpha implementation. Wikidata features relational data in a wiki (i.e. heavily structured) to facilitate measurements, inhabitant counts, Commons COA/flag image name, date of birth, death date, born in, died in, translations of city names, etc. Somewhere in the future it will be possible to (re-)use all this data in Wiki projects so that we will no longer have to change incorect data in 700-something wikis but only in one place. Siebrand07:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeehaw. IMHO, the most interesting area of development, due to the sea change it could enable in extremely powerful information representations. And we are talking about more than tables of info like displacements and capital cities. Anyway, ad hoc templates such as those in Info Pages are only a place keeper for greater things to come. -Mak16:43, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I hope someone who speaks German can make a summary of those paragraphs for the template. At the moment, there is no way to follow the logic of whoever ads this tag on an image page (unless you click the link and speak German). -Samulili19:31, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The pages linked in the template state that there according to German Urheberrecht photographs are protected 70 years after death of the author. There is also a destiction between Lichtbild (protected 50 years after publication) and Lichtbildwerk (protected 70 years p.m.a.), but pretty much all photos would be considered as work and thus be copyrighted for 70 years after death of author (see Lupo's comment on the talk page). All images tagged {PD-Germany} that I flipped through would qualify as "work", e.g. Image:Katyn.jpg. I agree with Lupo who stated that the template is not usefull, these pictures should be tagged {PD-old} or being deleted.
§5 states that German law documents (Amtliche Werke) are in the Public domain but may not be altered (?). This would qualify for documents such as Image:Reichsgesetzblatt 1896 Seite 195.png.
I just noticed that there is acutally something for §5 only: {{PD-GermanGov}}. So everythink that is a photo and not PD-old should be deleted. That means that the picture you mention should be deleted. --Matt31421:30, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hello I'm Dfrg.msc and I'm new to commons. I have an account on English Wikipedia, and I upload many images, most of things that I either draw or take a photograph of with my shoddy digital camera. I've uploaded two images just as like a test and I'm curious to know how I can get them so if I search for them, they come up and so that I can put them directly from Commons to Wiki. Thanks everyone, Dfrg.msc07:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can use them from WP as soon as you uploaded them to Commons. The search engine on Commons has nothing to do with that, however, and it gets updated only from time to time, so it can take some time until your photos get found by the search engine. I'm not sure if that was your question, though. -- Ayacop08:03, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This project or more correctly members from this project have been very agressive to editors who dont comply with Policies which havent been publicly made available. They dont even have these written clearly within project pages, only when the issues becomes a topic of discussion they role obsecure links to complex discussions.
I have found this project a very unpleasent group to gain an understanding to point where I have now opted to for the time being future participation with Commons will be limited to maintaining image I have already provided.
Suggest that this project be brought to task to clearly provide all of their policies, until such time they should be restricted on implementing such policies.
The purpose of one these policies is over come a percieved lack in the capabilities of categories, please before implementing someone take the time to read the categories help on metawiki as categories are capable of doing what is required.
Additionally I recommend that all Commons help files be inspected to ensure that instructions are clear and that they also comply with these obscure instructions, where there are policies they are made available from the help pages. Gnangarra08:59, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please back your claim 'agressive' (sic) with references. You won't be able to. The policies you don't want to accept are laid down here as I have frequently pointed you to. However, I back your recommendation that Commons help files be inspected to comply with that document. -- Ayacop09:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
September 26
deletion of username and article
My user name of psnack has disappeared. I have tried to log in with several browsers with cookies on and also searched. Can someone please explain and email me? psnack@seznam.cz
Last Summer I wrote an article on Barefoot Deep Tissue (Massage) and it was deleted, although the 2nd book is being written on this subject by a prominent USA publisher.
This has made me lose faith in this medium. I hope that it can be restored.
Image:CheyFidel.jpg and Image:Che Guevara2.jpg were deleted because the original template said that the images can not be used for certain commercial purposes. I wanted the images deleted at the time. However, I have since gotten a better understanding of copyrights.
It is clear that the author of the Che Guevara images allows commercial use, but that he is (or was) using his moral rights as an artist, by not allowing the images to be used in a way that degraded them: in an advert for Absolut Vodka, or as a anti-Cuba poster reading "Welcome to Cuba, the world's largest prison for journalists." [15]. Yes moral rights are valid in most countries except in the U.S. and possibly the Great Britain. That does not mean that the image can not be used commercially.
Yes the moral rights have a valid legal ground. I could probably sue anyone of you if you use any of my images in a way that degrades me or my work, and you do it in a country that follows and respects the Berne Covention. I can do this eventhough I have released all my work under a free license -- I could even release it under a PD license, but my moral rights are still valid.
This was an interesting discussion and I remember commenting it along the same lines as Fred here. In my opinion, what this boils down to, is whether an explicit statement "I'll sue your sorry ass if you hurt my feelings when using the image" is a more restricted license than a cc-by, which implies that I may sue you if I want to if you use the images in a way that hurts my feelings.
And to make things clear, any statement in any license/contract saying that I won't do the things mentioned above become legally void the second I change my mind (under Finnish law atleast, and probably many others). -Samulili14:39, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think that this makes sense. We don't delete every image from France because one cannot release one's never-expiring moral rights under French law. Jkelly20:13, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Problems Uploading Images
I am having trouble uploading some photos to the Commons. Each time I attempt to upload the picture, I receive an error message stating that the file format "." is not recognized. The problem is that I don't see a "." in the file name. Anyone have any suggestions?
The file location entered into the "Source filename" should be the full location on your computer and the full filename (including the extension). On Windows this will be something like C:\Documents and Settings\Me\My Documents\Foo.jpg, and is what is automatically generated if you use the browse button. Likewise the destination should be a full filename: Foo.jpg not just Foo. Hope that helps.--Nilfanion19:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Quite a few recent POTD selections are not Featured images. Some editors are simply posting their own images as POTD, without any peer-review, while others are posting images which have failed as FP candidates. I have removed Image:Soichi 20Noguchi em 20alta.jpg as the proposed POTD for 30th Sept since it is not featured. It failed its nomination in July 2006. But can anyone please tell me how to clear out the translations as well, ready for a new proposal to be made? --MichaelMaggs07:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The instructions in English have been unilaterally changed over the last few months (since around June 2006) to state that POTD should/must be Featured images. However instructions in other languages (I can't read them all, so I can't check how many, if any, have followed the updated instructions in English) continue to state that any image may be posted, but preferably from Featured images. As things stand, it would appear that only users reading the English-language version would believe that there was any requirement to use Featured images. Man vyi08:37, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. Is there some procedure, then, for ensuring that all the different language versions are based on the same rules? If there is a consensus in English as to the need for pictures to be selected from the FP list, how does the community go about getting that translated into other languages? Presumably this issue has been addressed before, as it must be inherent in the multi-language nature of Commons. --MichaelMaggs13:32, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why is it just interesting to reach consensus in English? Let the other languages keep whatever rules they have for POTD, or start a discussion for each language and try to reach consensus. /Grillo20:24, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's interesting to reach a consensus in all languages, as it doesn't make much sense for English speakers to be selecting the POTD according to different rules from - say - German speakers. But as nobody has replied to my query I'm assuming that means there is in practice no formal way to keep the different language pages in sync. --MichaelMaggs15:14, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal on Categories vs Galleries Problem
I've posted this further up, but I wasn't sure it would be seen by anybody, so I thought I'd repost:
To save you the bother of reading all this, I'll summarize: General opinion is that Categories and Galleries are to be kept. Big Categories make it difficult to keep them "cleaned" up. Solution: meta:DynamicPageList(DPL). With these you can make an automagically updating list of articles belonging (or not belonging) to certain categories. So add a category to either sorted or unsorted articles ( e.g. Category:Sorted ), and Bobs your uncle, you can list your unsorted articles very convienently. Problem: DPL isn't installed here. Therefore I made an example elswhere (beware, it might have been taken for vandalism, reverted and therefore be in disrepair). Sean Heron16:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Um, why repost the whole thing? wny not just give a link upwards. People were replying it looked like to me. On first glance this seems a good idea to me, is there some reaosn the extension hasn't been installed other than that no one has had time or no one has been asked yet? I'm not competent to comment on any nuances but it seems a nifty idea to me. Please consider replacing this duplicated text wtih a link though. ++Lar: t/c17:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's nice to have a way of providing an additional view on categories that is more pretty, but this has no implications for the separation between Gallieries and Categories. The idea that some feature addition would make it acceptable to remove the separation between Galleries and Categories is controversial. Categories ought to be all inclusive, whereas it is my opinion that Galleries should not- they should be subject to editorial judgements. This difference between these two sets grows with time, because unlike articles for Wikipedia, there really aren't practical upper limits on the numbers of images possible in Commons. The umpteenth picture of a slightly different angle on a famous sculpture probably should not make it into a gallery article for that sculpture. However, those editorial judgements cannot possibly be right for the entire audience, so for that reason the excluded images must be accessible some way. Categories do that- a student of sculpture could find that umpteenth angle very important and so ought to be able to find it there. -Mak20:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
@Lar, I had been contemplating just putting a link there, so I happily removed it now (I wouldn't have minded you doing it either :D ). I'm happy to hear you think it would be a workable Idea
@ Mak, perhaps I should have not put two proposals in one. While I would refute your argument against merging, my main intention was to give a (relatively) easy way to solve a current dispute, of some people wanting all images to be categorized as best as possible, while others are removing categories as a method for maintaing galleries. Here is an example only showcasing that bit. In hindsight, I also realized my english may have been overly complicated (seeing as it is second language to many here). Should anything be unclear, please ask, and I will try to explain better (elaborate :D). Unimportant bit: who says that all the pictures in in a category have to be showed in the gallery (article space of the category) ? Not me anyway :D . But I must admit that this is not urgent. . Regards Sean Heron23:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting technique. In the case of the Tree of Life project, it would suggest that, instead of removing the category:familyname from photos (after indexing them in articles), a category:sorted would be added to reduce confusion of photo uploaders. Then one would just have a page showing all photos in category:familyname and not in category:sorted. Well, while this addresses the removal of categories, there is still this category bug about multiple pages which makes showing of all photos in category:familyname a problem. Also, maintainers of the project would have to add the category:sorted tag. My Bot proposal would not have these problems, but has the downside that the bot needs to be run. I think we would have to decide between those two schemes in the Tree of Life Project. -- Ayacop 08:38, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
You can see how it looks like with such an Indexed category in Category:Urticaceae. -- Ayacop08:51, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There must be a place where all images for a topic may be found. It should be totally inclusive.
Very recently Commons reached one half million images. It is currently around 3/4 of a million, and unlike the numbers of WP articles, the number of potential images is infinite. There must be a place which is exclusive of content, so that good content is not diluted by the repetitious or of a lesser information value.
These two requirements are mutually exclusive. Two locations are required, and those two locations are Categories and Galleries.
Any "refutation" will have to confront these fundamentals. Perhaps the attempt should be made out of the context of this thread Sean. This technique is interesting and useful, but does not alter in any way these fundamentals. -Mak16:49, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While the concept is appealing, in practice I don't think you'll actually get much of a consensus on which images are of a "lesser information value". It's quite common for uploaders to replace good free images in WP with poorer ones just because they like their own images better; making galleries be selective here is just going to start endless fights over minute properties of one image versus another. Stan Shebs17:31, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You bet there won't be concensus. But I wasn't talking about "making" galleries be selective. I was simply noted that they already are. Further, the force of numbers will only intensify this selectivity over time. Galleries already don't include all the images for a particular subject. Let's look at it from the opposite viewpoint. Even if it were mandated that galleries always be inclusive, could it go on indefinately? On one hand, I can see there being some inclusionist folks advocating such a thing- those who would want to have every last grainy picture of the 700 photos of Michaelangelo's David in the Gallery article. Of course there are always going to be folks that think their grainy picture is amoung the best of the best- just as others feel their prose has no peer and is inviolable.
Even if there were a cabal of folks who asserted a policy of inculsionism for whole sets of galleries, inevitably over time their galleries would be ignored- submerged into oblivion by the deluge simply because no one wants to sort through dozens of screens full of thumbnails of to naive eyes identical pictures of the same painting or object. The general public instead wants to see the best representations of that painting. 4 or 5 at most. Not 60. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have that 60th picture on Commons. Of course we should have it- somewhere. Maybe that 60th image was the one that showed the signature the best, or the frame of the painting, or that showed the texture of the thick impasto unlike typical photos. It costs less than pennies to host them, so why not err on the side of keeping them somewhere for very interested parties to study. Index them with some relevant category and call it a day.
WP did not founder on the rocks of consensus needed for determining what information is of greater information value, so I don't understand the assertion that there won't be exclusionary pages on Commons. Really, how is this any different than the process for inclusion of text in WP articles? You are right- very often is not much consensus on which paragraphs are of lesser information value. On the whole, most articles are sane and do get pared down to concise presentations. I fully admit that all is not very clear at this point because we don't yet have cases which make it painfully obvious- We do not yet have 60 images of Michaelangelo's David. Will that go on forever? Given the ubiquity of high resolution digital cameras, I don't think we can count on it.-Mak04:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And in fact for the few WP articles that have already reached appropriate size there are all kinds of fights over what to include, for instance pop culture references to a subject, which are repeatedly added and deleted. The useful thing right now would be to think about how to define "information value" in a way that we can get some consensus and can explain it to newbies. Maybe every pic has to go through a mini-FPC evaluation before it can go into a gallery, for instance. Stan Shebs13:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am not happy with Sean Herons moving the discussion. The discussion originated here, and centered about the usage of categories in the Tree of Life project. This move makes it part of a much broader topic. I wonder if there is room for an approach where several topics have there own standards, best suited to their needs?
I might also put it another way: Could (large) projects have a mandate to create their own standards?
Also, the bot supposed by Ayacop seems to solve the original issue, so why prolongue the discussion?
Tree of Life project is not a separate project and, therefore, it cannot impose its own standards, in particular if they not comply with general rules.
Removing categories is never necessary for images classification: it's just a bad practice. Several days ago, I had proposed a simple way to tag images when they are in a gallery. In this example, I just added the character ® as a sort key for Category:Agathis australis in Image:Tane mahuta.JPG. Now, this image is the last one in Category:Agathis australis, and you can easily differentiate it from the others.
Sure there should be projects within the larger project, just as the WPs have their projects. 90% of uploaders are at the level of "purple flower.jpg", and don't really want to engage in a discussion about whether subspecies should or should not have galleries/categories separate from species, etc, but are happy to go along with what more knowledgeable people come up with. I don't think there will ever be as many projects here as on the WPs, there's just not as much to do for any particular subject. Completing ToL entails several million pictures and considerable scientific input, so a logical candidate for special treatment. Stan Shebs13:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Anotherthing: The “First steps”
Commons:Erste Schritte/Sortierung and Commons:First steps/Sorting both say catgories and/or galleries - but: while the english version just gives an example of what a gallery page can look like, the german version says “Es wird bevorzugt, Bilder und andere Mediendateien in Galerieseiten einzubinden, da sie mehr Informationen bieten können und für Außenstehende ansprechender ausschauen” which means it is preferred to use gallery pages for pictures and other media because you can give more information and they look more appealing to outsiders. --BerndH13:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The purpose of projects is to focus editors onto specific areas within their interest that need attention. Where a project wants to differ significantly from policy status quo they need to bring a formed proposal to the wider community for approval and then ensure that the proposal is accessable to all via the help pages and directly assessible from the project page, neither of which ToL has done with this. Metawiki help pages show that some of the reasons using galleries are possible with categories, additionally it highlights a significant limitation in galleries with the transfer of metadata from images when copied off commons via galleries. Metadata is where commons suggests that uploaders of images include copyright, author infomation. One of the major concerns in commons is ensuring that copyright violations arent added to our collections, the reverse should also apply in protecting the copyright of images when they sourced from commons. Gnangarra13:42, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Gnangarra, sorry, I absolutely dont understand your metawiki save statement. When i right click an image in a category, I have two save options, save link as and save image as. The first one saves something as an jpg but cannot be opened. The latter saves just the image. The results are exactly the same in a gallery in an article. TeunSpaans21:58, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty the ToL project has advertised every proposal here. There's really just a handful of people who even care about commons organization at all, and even fewer who work on plant and animal pics, so if you want to change how things are done, there is a lot of opportunity to influence the other four of us. :-) I threw up some ideas because people were complaining that there was no documented practice at all, but if everybody thinks they're stupid, delete them off the page and let's try something different. The only important thing is to try something; it's of no use to simply complain about other people's experiments. Stan Shebs02:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I keep coming back to how en:wp does things and how it is organised and so forth, which may be the wrong approach, bceause this is not en:wp.... but bear with me there may be lessons. One of the problems I think en:wp has is that there are, in many cases, multiple ways to do the same thing that have accreted, because different people or projects addressed the same problem, either at different times, or in competition, often without knowing, but sometimes on purpose (for a while there were two competing shark projects! that's sorted though) Tree of Life seems an absolutely massive project. A great deal of thought is worth investing, by those interested, in how to best/most efficiently get things done. And a great deal of liberty ought to be given. But not in a vacuum, whatever they come up with should get publicised and thought about and possibly taken on board. IMHO anyway. So it's not about imposing standards, per se, but about learnings they may have to get, or to give, to the rest of commons. So I agree with Gnangarra but think some latitude is justified. The question seems bigger than this one project though. ++Lar: t/c19:32, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, difficult to answer appropriatly to everything that has been said here...
OK, first, I now feel sorry that I had stated my thoughts on merging categories and galleries. As I tried to state above, this wasn't an important point for me, I do not see it as a priority, and did not wish to move the discussion to this topic ! So I will not further comment on that for the moment.
(added later) I just realized that I titled this section misleadingly :(. I guess that may well have led to people misunderstanding what I was on about, Sorry about that.
Secondly (and much more importantly): My proposal was basicly trying to address this problem.
"Dear fellow commons users, recently on two occasions a user has deleted catorisaties from images in the belief that adding images to an article gallery is sufficient and adequate. When I reverted the revert, it was reverted again. Because I hate edit wars I decided to stop being involved in it for now and try to get some input on the matter. The other user states "We had several time this discussion; plese try to consdier other point of view. We're otganizing italian cat this way. There is a page with the same title and the same cat. No loose of info...but more rationa. Thnaks for your comprehnesion.".
Several questions arise to me:
* Is there any general policy on this?
Do categorisation and inclusion in a gallery exclude each other?
Is there 'an Italian way' to do things? If so, where has this been decided with community support?
How to resolve this?
Thank you for your insight"
This was originaly posted here, and was dicussed for some time (I now also regret posting down here, instead of just up there, but too late now :/ ).
That statement should make clear that the problem which I wanted to refer to, ("indexed" articles being removed from categories for ease of seeing which pictures have not yet been included in a gallery [the ones that are thus left in the otherwise empty category]), is not limited to the Tree of life project, but can be found elsewhere as well. As such, I had thought that a universal solution would be called for. While I agree with Ayacop, that a bot renaming the categories (e.g. to indexed_*Categoryname* ) would be a solution, this has the drawback that in case some images are not sorted or indexed, the images are in two separate categories. Also when searching for a category, one is more likely to land in the unpopulated category, than in the "indexed" one. Using a bot of course has its advantages as well. But instead of renaming the category, the bot could just as easily add the category:indexed. OK, I hope I have adressed most points, and hope somebody might point me towards a user capable of installing the DPL extension :D . Regards Sean Heron11:59, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sean, to conclude, I'm aware that your solution is not far away from mine. The mentioned bug which prevents me from seeing all subcategories in a category with more than 200 entries, however, is grave enough to stay away from it. I wish you would implement DPL pages in another project, so we could compare the facts. In any case, both solutions can be automatically converted into each other, so at no time there something lost. -- Ayacop13:58, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My example is here. Or did you want something else exemplified ? For current (real) use of DPLs, just go to the english wikinews. In that example, the "Politics and conflicts" list is chosen by combination of category:Central_America and category:Politics_and_conflicts. I guess you are right with either of our "solutions" being able to be converted into the other automatically with help of a bot, which of course is a good thing :D .
Now let's see if I also understood the idea of dynamic page lists. We have one category, category:Betula. Image:3 Birkenstämme.jpg would not have a category:sorted (or : identified?). It would appear in a dpl:
<br>
<DynamicPageList><br>
category=Betula<br>
notcategory=Sorted<br>
</DynamicPageList><br>
This dpl would be listed in the Category:Betula, or in an article Betula. The latter seems more logical to me, or we would have the same image Image:3 Birkenstämme.jpg appear in the category twice, once as part of the DPL and once as part of the category. Image:Betula lenta subsps lenta 01-10-2005 14.54.08.JPG would appear in the category, but would have a category:sorted making her not appearing in the dpl.
I see the following advantages and disadvantages:
a bot cannot be operated by every user (technically yes, but knowhow no), categories can be added by anyone
a bot provides more certainty, it mkes less mistakes.
DPL works on the base of a category "sorted" added to images, it does not look if the image has really been added to an article. Together with the previous one, that allows human errors. This could probably be checked by a bot like ayacops.
There is a bug which prevents me from seeing all subcategories in a category with more than 200 entries.
Uploaders who always directly list their pix in a gallery have to add an extra cat when uploading in the dpl alternative
In the dpl alternative, when a pic is identified, the person who identifies it has to change both an article and the image.
There are also similarities:
Neither alternative seems to require any extra work when a species is being renamed
Both can initially been done by a bot.
Both allow wikipedians to link with {{commons|Betula pendula}} to show visitors all Betula pendula pix.
Sean, I think your Category:Orchis is, sorry to say, not a real life example to show your scheme, as I have a feeling problems will show up when the number of photos/articles grow, and people are using it, not only looking at it. To clear up a few things in TeunSpaans' post,
5. is unclear to me and probably part of
6. ...the person who identifies the photo, always has the work to change both the image and the species article, and a bot (DPL or Indexed-Cat) can always do the first step for him/her, so no difference.
You're complicating the picture by adding the requirement that a user be able to see all Betula (i.e. genus) pix; that has never worked and noone complained, so why now? Also, Sean makes a similar assumption that one must be able to see all Betulaceae (i.e. family) pics. That was not complained about here. The initial problem was the removing of categories from photos. Please do not change the set of requirements within the discussion without clearly marking it.
7. It is not clear to me if we must be able to transfer any chosen scheme from family to genus (or any sub-family) level.
Note: None of the solutions need a bot and, in fact, due to some health problems I'm not sure if I can finish work on the LifeBot in the next weeks so it's simply a matter of the people doing the work in the Tree of Life Project what will happen. I hope they are not demotivated by all this. -- Ayacop08:01, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just to but in on the DPL issue, Wikinews makes extensiveuse of them. The first of the preceding links is to our Asia portal, the second to our United States portal. Neither page requires manual maintenance. As articles are developed and in various categorisation stages they eventually appear on these pages.
There does appear in the example done on Wikinews to be one drawback, the DPL lists a link to the image as opposed to showing the image (see example here that excludes pictures containing Tony Blair from those containing George W. Bush). --Brianmc09:03, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You are the next person to ignore the grave problem of the bug mentioned above. I'll repeat for you: There is a bug which prevents me from seeing all subcategories in a category with more than 200 entries.
Do you understand? If we kept all those images in Category:Familia, we would have to click again and again to see all subcategories of that category because subcategories are not shown 'all first'. This makes huge categories with mixed content (subdirs+images) unusable. -- Ayacop09:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why are you so aggressive? Nobody said: “Categorize every picture in Category:Images of the universe”. According to Commons policy, we should find less than fifty pictures in every category; so, if we find more pictures in a category (see Category:Hong Kong), the pictures have to be moved to more precise categories. As deletion of more precise categories is part of the Tree of life project policy, you may not complain of the situation you created. --Juiced lemon16:00, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fine with the situation, even if I didn't create it. And I'm glad you're finally accepting the Tree of life project policy even if you're totally misrepresenting it. You may have noticed that, after the fact of the vote getting through (which resulted in both categories and galleries being acceptable) to all of us, that noone touches those species categories any longer. -- Ayacop16:41, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Juiced lemon, sorry, but reading your reaction it looks you are quite vehement yourself. Some 90% of the images in ToL dont have a category directly attached to it, they are listed in an article, which is fine for most people in ToL. For the sole 'benefit' of those who want to see pix directly in a category, Ayacop tries to work out a solution where ToL is not harmed. TeunSpaans 17:20, 2 October 2006 (UTC) I would like to withdraw this remark, as it is about a person and not about the topic. TeunSpaans16:37, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The solution works already. I'm nearly through all plantae A-families and expect an overall worktime of the bot of 7 days, but as I want to watch it, it will likely take several weeks for plantae. If there is a person willing to work with this in the animals, please give me a hint. -- Ayacop17:46, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ayacop, you are right about your remark that currently there is no demand for viewing all pix on the genus level, I have dropped these 2 points. TeunSpaans17:24, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The demand is : don't remove categorization from files, don't delete categories; it concerns every level. Amongst human activities, botany is PEANUTS, and therefore species don't own to Tree of life project. We want create categories for genus and species, subcategories for species as we need them. --Juiced lemon18:01, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We have fulfilled your boldly typefaced request. Is there still a problem? If not, then let us all please end this thread, and move it into the archive. -- Ayacop18:15, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is no longer ToL policy as you can see from its webpage! So please discuss this with the people involved. I personally do not endorse it, and the policy no longer makes it necessary. -- Ayacop18:57, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I feel the discussion is getting to a personal level - if i somehow contributed to this I apologize. Would it be a good idea to let this topic rest for one week? To prevent further escalation? TeunSpaans10:47, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. OK. Everyone not editing on this for a little while would be good. Keep talking about it in a civil way, though. Remember to be polite, and then be EXTRA polite, to compensate for the fact that everyone's coming from different expectations and requirements and all that kind of thing. These are important questions for Commons to tackle. I would like to see this discussion continue in a subpage off ToL somewhere (the VP is too crowded and easily lost). Maybe someone could start by summarising the various requirements and positions/approaches so far.
A couple more comments. I think it is perfectly OK for ToL to have specific requirements that don't apply elsewhere, species are a huge part of our content. But maybe they also need to be relatively simple, in order to have any chance of actually being implemented. Secondly, on DPLs. Please speak to Brion et al before getting too attached to the idea of them. If we use them intensively the dev's might not be too happy about installing them here. (There's a reason they're not on enwp...) But I dunno, if commons is mostly wikimedians, it might be OK.
Remember: maybe you can not get everything you want. Try to decide what is most important and why. Think if there might be other ways of achieving it (like DPL or maybe custom toolserver software?). Look for a solution you can accept even if you're not 100% happy with it. Everyone here wants the best for Commons, it just looks a little differently for everyone. So, stay diplomatic, talk about arguments not individuals, and we'll get there. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:22, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm ok to let this discussion fall by the way side, for me I'll keep clear of ToL categories and and have another look at the whole policy in while. for now I'll quietly poke around some the much need house keeping with other images, and COM:QI as time permits.
I ask that when the Banksia genus is changed the old categories dont get deleted until after the new have been created and I've had time to adjust the 100+ en.WP articles which are linked into the current categories.
I would still like to see the policy made a seperate article and linked to Commons help pages so that it can be found. When you distille these dicussions down if I'd been able to find this policy easily I would have work within that. Gnangarra14:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am new here and just found this site. I am also beginning to learn web design and programming. I am teaching myself as I have a chronic illness and am waiting on the Social Security Admin to do something after 3 years. (Sorry just a rant). The problem is I am in a few months going to be offering my services either free, to non profit organizations, or very cheap to small businesses. I will use these to build a portfolio so I may start my own small business. This will mean that I cannot afford at the moment to go out and get professional photography or buy the rights managed stock photography. I am trying to figure our if this page and others would allow the reuse of the photos in websites that someone has paid me for or even that I am donating. I do not wish to violate any copyrights, nor do I wish to just use the work of obviously talented artists with out permission. Could some one please tell me in simple laymans terms what I can and cannot do with the works I find on this site. Thank you. One last thing If the pictures are altered in photoshop and made part of a larger work or just changed all together to be used for the above, is that a violation of any sort. Thanks again. —the preceding unsigned comment is by141.157.20.4 (talk • contribs) 16:50 (UTC), 28 September 2006
Hello and welcome!
As far as I understand, your central question is if images on the Commons may be used commercially. Yes. Each and any image on the Commons may be used commercially. Images with licences that do not allow commercial use are not accepted here.
There are differences though what else you must or must not do if you want to use the images. For these details, see the licence of each image. You'll find further explanation in the links of the licence tag under each image. --Wikipeder17:47, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The exception are thos marked as having Copyright by Wikimedia, and of course the copyright violations. Although you're not required, authors will probably be pleased if you notified them too. Platonides19:31, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Renaming request
Hi, I would like to be renamed into "Steinbach". I used to have quite a lot of different aliases on different Wikimedia projects, but I try to reduce them to one. Could some bureaucrat fulfil this request, please? Caesarion18:08, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot! And sorry for apllying for this at the wrong place, I'm not frequent enough a commons editor to know about that :-/ Steinbach14:03, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
CommonTasks - starting 9th of October
Hi there!
A few days ago on the Commons mailing list, I proposed a project for coordinating our efforts in keeping Commons in good shape and how to motivate both admins and regular users to do some cleaning up. You can read my mail here.
I have now prepared a draft of the project page, Commons:CommonTasks. I would like to here your feedback and I would love to see you being bold in improving the page. On the talk page there is a list of things to do before launching the project. At the moment the list has three points:
Listing possible tasks
Writing instructions for tasks (And improing pages we refer to in an instruction, or writing them in the first place.)
Finding out how one could collect data for statistics
Peoples and ethnic groups are two different things and should not be mixed up. In my opinion, Category:People by ethnic group is intended to categorize individual persons. It is useless to find media, and therefore out of the scope of Commons. You can delete this one. --Juiced lemon19:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I still believe the two concepts are mutually interchangeable in most cases, while not identical, at least in the sense in which they are used here. So after careful thought, I think it would be a good idea to move all the contents to the Peoples category instead, getting rid of the potentially controversial ethnic group category. Please tell me why it wouldn't work? --Himasaram22:57, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
September 30
Bad photos
I've been looking around at a lot of plant photos (specifically photos of weedy plants I'm writing about on en.wikibooks), and while a lot of the categories do indeed have a lot of photos, a lot of them are really bad photos (sometimes ok for thumbnail size, but often to far gone for even that). These include badly over-exposed photos, photos with such large aperture settings that only the margin of one leaf on a whole plant is sharp, photos where the capera apparently has moisture on the lense or on the capture plate, and even one with a thumb in the corner.
While it's really nice that people upload their pix for public use, and I don't love the idea of a photo-quality gestapo that might discourage people from uploading in good faith, I do think a lot of it should just be gotten rid of. So what's the cleanup system here? Should fuzzy images be marked up for deletion? If so, how... just use a {{Delete}} tag, or is there something else that's more appropriate? --SB_Johnny|talk|books09:01, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe you can do it the positive way: nominate the best images you found at Commons:Quality images candidates. This will highlight good pictures, is faster than the regular deletion process, and won't add any burden to the already overloaded request for deletion. CyrilB17:37, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have to agree with Cyril. These photos aren't really doing any harm, and it is of course a subjective belief regarding how good a photo actually is. --tomf688 (talk - email) 19:49, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is another reason, equally important. There is an immense backlog of images to examine for more pressing issues- copy violations, missing attribution and missing categorizations. Spending hours of collective time per image in order to save hundredths of a penny in storage cost is more than a little short sighted. We are donating our time, not throwing it away. -Mak23:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
These images are pretty bad... and there are others in the same categories that are better. While I realise that it's a minor issue compared to some others, it is frustrating to go through these categories, click on thumbnails, and find one bad photo after another (wasting the users time).
I don't think so. The robots.txt forbids wget on the wiki: "Sorry, wget in its recursive mode is a frequent problem. Please read the man page and use it properly; there is a --wait option you can use to set the delay between hits, for instance.!".
I could make such program (i already did one to list the images on a category) but should better ask brion or Tim about a proper delay. Platonides19:35, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
serious I18n-flaw
Hi folks I now realised yet another MediaWiki change that had some really negative side effects for us (the largest multilingual Mediawiki installation in the world). You all probably know that interface messages get defined by (admin-only editable) MediaWiki-namespace pages and translations of them via MediaWiki:$Pagename/$Lang-code.
In the past Mediawiki worked the following way: If there is no local translation of a given page the english message out of the wiki will be used.
However Mediawiki as of today does work totally different: If there is no translated message in the wiki itself it looks into the internal Mediawiki translation files and embedds this and if there isn't one it will use the default english Mediawiki message out of its language files but not the one out of the wiki.
Guess what was one of the most serious impacts?
Special:Upload did show some really useless crap (yes totally useless localised crap nothing else) if you had your interface language set to a language not translated in Commons yet. No wonder that so many international people simply never got the message what they have to care about at upload. Grrrrr I really love it.
Well I now have overwritten every not existing localised message of MediaWiki:Uploadtext you can choose from in your personal language settings with the english text so that at least everyone gets somehow the important information at upload. As well I did overwrite some totally outdated ones with english (for example french ;-) and moved these totally outdated translation to their talk pages.
So please look at [16] look up your language and if there is an english text instead of a translation translate it accurately. If you are an admin just overwrite it with your translation yourself, if you are not an admin post the translation to the talk page of that mediawiki namespace page. In both cases please name in any case your translation at Commons:Help_page_maintenance/Wikimedia_Commons_interface#MediaWiki:Uploadtext (so that others are either aware that it is up to date or can update the page with your translation). Arnomane17:41, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot for your translation. I have now updated the french text with your translation: [17]. However I left two links pointing to english pages because the french translations of them need badly an update: In detail Commons:Project scope and Commons:Copyright tags need to be retranslated into french. I'd be really happy if someone can do this. Arnomane00:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
.jpg and .JPG
From my own experience, Commons uploads as .jpg and Wikipedia, or at least en: as .JPG. Is there a way to just pick one for both sites, or at least for them to recognize caps and non-caps as the same in extensions, to prevent superfluous renaming and such? DVD R W20:12, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Since I've gotten no response, I consulted with the people at #wikimedia-tech about this, and they pointed me to the upload logs, and from there I've noticed that it is inconsistent at both en: and the Commons. I'm not sure what determines whether or not the extension is in caps or not, but it would be nice, for what seem to me to be obvious reasons, if this was consistent within each wiki and between them. Thanks, DVD R W03:18, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is determined only by how the file is named on your computer. I think you could also get different files called JpG JPg jPG and the like (also: jpeg). There is a very distant idea that maybe one day file extensions will be irrelevant altogether. But for now, extensions, like the titles of everything else on MediaWiki, are case sensitive. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:29, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Problem is mainly caused by Microsoft Paint. When you save an image in paint (after pasting a screenshot or cropping), default extension is .bmp (non cap), but if you switch to jpg it becomes .JPG (caps) --Jollyroger08:34, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We could have a javascript to lowercase extensions. That would uniform thing a bit. But there're also all-uppercase filenames which show better with uppercase extension. Platonides19:39, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
for making this happen. Now, when are you going to implement the gallery pages only Mode? (Just kidding.) -Mak 20:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
![14.1 Please replace "Flag of Romania.svg"](#Please_replace_"Flag_of_Romania.svg"){kind=link}
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![10:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2006/09#c-Wirespot-2006-09-19T10:41:00.000Z-Please_replace_"Flag_of_Romania.svg"){kind=link}
![10:56, 19 September 2006 (UTC)](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2006/09#c-Wirespot-2006-09-19T10:56:00.000Z-Please_replace_"Flag_of_Romania.svg"){kind=link}
